For nearly a decade there have been whispers of a secret group in French politics called the “Horaces.” Expecting that Marine Le Pen will one day become president, this circle of influential senior government officials and business leaders have been assiduously preparing for her first hundred days in power.

According to a report from Le Point, they numbered around eighty people in 2016, and included judges and teachers, members of the military bureaucracy, lawyers and CEOs, as well as functionaries in government ministries and higher education. By 2017, a report in Marianne put their number at 155, though a 2024 investigation in Libération narrowed the circle back down to an efficient twenty-eight. These men reportedly dine with Le Pen, draft her program and speeches, and author her campaign initiatives and about-faces (it was this group, according to an Agence France-Presse report, that urged Le Pen to step away from the aspects of her program that have sometimes feigned a defense of France’s social welfare system).

They’ve also plotted attacks on Le Pen’s opponents, like Jean-Luc Mélenchon, drafting messaging in 2017 in case the left-wing presidential candidate forced a runoff between himself and Le Pen instead of Emmanuel Macron.