VOLUME TWO:
UNCHARTED TERRITORY
When I was a little boy,
I wondered ‘what is Revolution’?
For all the children in the park
spoke of nothing else.
I asked my father and he said
“Revolution is an affront to human nature, a challenge to God and Kings!”
I asked my mother and she said
“Revolution is a sad tale of blood and suffering.”
I asked my brother and he said
“Revolution is the glorious overthrow of everything in the world that oppresses us!”
I asked my sister and she said
“Revolution will set us free.”
I was very confused
so I got out the big dictionary from over the fireplace
And I looked it up.
It said:
“Revolution. Noun.
‘To go round in circles’.”
– Anonymous
Part #51: Viennese Waltz
Mediatisation. Reorganisation. Call it what you will. For those of us who still remember those times, no sweet-sounding word could ever justify it. The days when an insane Empire turned on itself and opened the doors to the most barbarous work of conquest and force since the death of Tamerlane. Did Leroux truly lose at the gates of Vienna? It might have been better for the Empire if he had won.
– Pascal Schmidt, in an 1829 speech
From – “Austria in the Jacobin Wars” by V.A. Rostopshchin (English translation) –
Austria’s position for the campaign season of 1800 was an unenviable one. The nineteenth century dawned inauspiciously for the Hapsburg monarchy, which had already seen so many ups and downs throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth. From the humiliation at the hands of the Swedes in the Thirty Years’ War, to the successes of the War of the Spanish Succession, to the rise of Prussia in the War of the Austrian Succession, to the collapse of Prussia and the temporary restoration of a Holy Roman Empire worthy of the name after the War of the Diplomatic Revolution – Austria’s fate seemed impossible to predict from one moment to the next, though of course it did not prevent commentators from trying.[1]
Even within the Jacobin Wars, Hapsburg fortunes had risen and fallen with dizzying speed. After the limited successes of Mozart and Wurmser in the opening phases of the war, the defeats in Italy by Hoche, and then the unexpected unleashing of the War of Lightning under Leroux and Ney, anything seemed possible. When Mozart, to the cost of his own life, managed to stop Leroux’s army before the gates of Vienna, he secured the survival of the Hapsburg monarchy if nothing else.
Some speculative romantics may have written reams on the subject of what might have happened if the claimant Emperor Francis II had turned the full force of his remaining armies on the disintegrating French position in Germany; but let us not indulge ourselves in the pursuit of the ‘what-if’, thankless as it so often is. In any case, regardless of how dark Austria’s position had been prior to the Battle of Vienna, Republican France was still a new and strange enemy to face. Turkey, though…existing as a bulwark against Turkey was in many ways Austria’s raison d’être. The Hapsburgs defined themselves by opposition to the Ottoman Empire: everything else, whether Protestant rebellions in the Thirty Years’ War or the rise of Jacobinism, no matter how objectively serious a threat to Austria, could only be perceived as a sideshow to the court in Vienna.
Thus, when Sultan Murad V and his Grand Vizier Mehmet Ali Pasha sent troops into Austrian-held Bosnia as a demonstration of Constantinople’s might, to warn the Austrians off interfering as the Ottomans occupied the former Venetian Dalmatian territories, Vienna predictably overreacted. Emperor Francis II proceeded to undermine his own claim to his title by concentrating his armies on repelling the Turks, sending only desultory forces after the retreating French – which was, to put it mildly, not a popular decision among the people of the southern German states.
After Leroux’s death, the French army had split into two factions – the main body under the crazed radical Jacobin Lascelles, who retreated to Regensburg and declared a Bavarian Germanic Republic with himself at its head, and a smaller faction, mostly professional soldiers whose service dated from the ancien régime, northwards into Bohemia. The latter, known as the Cougnonistes after its former leader, Colonel Cougnon (treacherously slain by Lascelles) was now led by Major St-Julien, who upgraded himself to general and took command of the army.
The Cougnonistes occupied the town of Budweis and ran it as their personal fief throughout the winter of 1799, subjecting the local Czechs and Germans to military rule. St-Julien recognised Lisieux’s new regime once word of it reached his ears, but the Cougnonistes were too isolated either to help Paris’ agenda or be helped by it. Thus St-Julien contented himself with raiding the Bohemian countryside to feed his men, at first convincing himself that he was helping the overall war effort by harming Hapsburg possessions, but soon becoming disinclined to participate in the war at all, an opinion shared by his men. Some took local wives and settled down, losing their fighting edge as discipline broke down.
Others continued to raid. The Bohemian peasantry were terrified of the Cougnonistes, who were liable to turn up without warning and requisition their year’s harvest, leaving them to starve. However, no Austrian troops were sent to Bohemia – those which Francis did send to the German front were mostly focused on liberating the occupied parts of the Archduchy of Austria. The Diet in Prague, concerned about what had happened repeatedly in the past in Bohemia when the people became angered, hastily assembled a Czech militia and attacked Budweis in May 1800. The attack failed. St-Julien’s troops might have lost some of their fighting fitness, but barely-trained militiamen were no match for them. The Bohemian regiments of the Austrian army, ironically, were at that moment fighting for their lives against the Turks in the defence of Sarajevo, and were in no position to even desert and return home.
In the wake of that defeat, the Diet convened once more to discuss their options. The debate was hampered by the lack of a strong central authority. Empress Maria Theresa had, in 1749, undertaken reforms that had merged the Bohemian Chancellery with that of the Archduchy of Austria, appealing to the Hapsburg centralising instincts that had repeatedly provoked Bohemia into rebellion since the sixteenth century. Although the Diet had been left in place, its authority had been sapped, and without any royal ministers in place, there was no single executive to make decisions.
Eventually the Diet rallied around Jan Miler (also known by the German name Johannes Müller), who advocated a policy of appeasement. Essentially St-Julien and his men were paid off to restrict themselves to Budweis and not to raid any Bohemian lands – the payments were dubbed ‘Frankgeld’ by the more intellectual side of the British satirical press. The agreement was made in July and after that time the Cougnonistes only raided lands outside the kingdom, especially Saxony, as the Saxon army was fully engaged in the Second War of the Polish Succession against Prussia and its border with Bohemia remained undefended. This situation would continue for several years. Eventually, the Cougnonistes’ early rapacity was forgotten by the Bohemians, who for long afterwards viewed St-Julien through romantic eyes, as his men’s Saxon plunder ultimately made Budweis very rich. In any case, from the beginning, the Bohemian people were more angry with Vienna for failing to defend them than with the French for attacking them in the first place.
To the south, Lascelles’ still-disorganised forces were driven back by an Austrian army under Wurmser towards the end of 1799. By the turn of the century, Wurmser had liberated the prince-bishopric of Salzburg, which had been occupied by the French during the war. Just as the moderate Leroux had been unable to restrain his men when it came to the taking of Regensburg, so here part of the city of Salzburg had been burnt and the prince-bishop had been publicly executed by the chirurgien. At this point came Emperor Francis’ second great mistake, if his failure to respond effectively to the Cougnonistes was his first. Although 1799 had been the year of Austria being saved from what looked like certain destruction, it had also been a year of defeats on almost all fronts. He had sent Archduke Ferdinand’s army straight to Zagreb, ignoring his uncle’s protests that his men needed time to rest, recruit and recuperate after their march from Italy, and the battered veterans had failed to stop the Turks from taking Sarajevo. Desperate to stop his rule crumbling at this crucial stage, Francis searched for any positive news he could use to boost public morale. As well as sending troops under General Quasdanovich to occupy the northern parts of the former Venetian Dalmatia (unopposed) which the Turks had not yet reached, Francis declared the annexation of Salzburg to the Archduchy of Austria, purporting this as some sort of territorial gain and therefore victory.
This was almost universally acknowledged as a dangerous mistake even then, and much more so in retrospect. Any gain Francis made by trumpeting this as a minor victory was outweighed a thousand times by the blow he had dealt to the Imperial system. It had been worrying enough for the countless small states that made up the Empire that the Hapsburgs had been on the back foot and unable to defend them against the French hordes. Now, it seemed that even the Imperials had turned against the system of peace and stability they had long protected. Showing their true features. And if not even the Emperor saw anything wrong with snatching minor states and adding them to his personal domain, why should anyone else bother with any moral qualms?
This was the beginning of what was later termed the Mediatisation of Germany, a curiously bloodless term for what amounted to the half-dozen or so most powerful states tearing into their weaker neighbours and conquering them, always claiming that they did it ‘only to help protect them’. In truth the mediatisation proceeded in lands far away from any possible threat from the French. The Dutch and Flemish, who had begun occupying neighbouring Hapsburg territories and Imperial free cities long before this time in order to prevent the French legally sending armies into the midst of their separated lands, began officially annexing them. Charles Theodore of Flanders and the Palatinate proclaimed a single united state (usually called Flanders, though it had a more complex title) that included the former territories of the prince-bishoprics of Liège and Trier and the Free City of Cologne. He titled himself King of this state, finally stripping away any acknowledgement of the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor.
His ally to the north, Stadtholder William V, approached John George V of Saxony with a proposal. The Saxons were still fighting tooth and nail with the Prussians at the time, while the armies of the Dutch Republic were poised to take over the Saxon possessions in the Rhineland.[2] The Saxons and Dutch avoided war by hammering out the Treaty of Minden, which was signed in August of 1800. This transferred East Frisia and Cleves, the two Saxon territories which the Dutch most coveted, to the United Netherlands as provinces. In exchange, the other Saxon territories of Minden, Lingen, Mark and Dortmund were left untouched. The treaty also divided the Rhineland into spheres of influence, with the Saxons having influence over the eastern independent territories of Paderborn, Lippe and Westphalia, while the Dutch extended their influence over Bistum, Osnabruck and Münster. These lands were not annexed, but they were intimidated into customs unions and other subservient policies.
The Treaty of Minden was strongly opposed by the ‘Mittelbund’, the alliance of the Hessian states, Nassau and Würzberg, which soon became a rallying call for other small states throughout the Germanies. Although the Mittelbund could not take any direct action against the Dutch and Flemish due to the fact that it was fighting against Ney’s armies at the time, its protests did attract new members, including Waldeck, Wittgen and Eichsfeld.
The Flemish and Dutch actions also alarmed Britain, or at least that small part of British political society that actually remembered that the crown possessions still included Hanover. With a Prime Minister who openly endorsed the French Revolution and a King who had never even been to Hanover, the prospects of gaining direct British help did not look bright for the electorate. George II, or perhaps William IV, had been the last king to really defend Hanoverian interests at the Court of St. James, and things had gone from bad to worse for Hanover since the Second Glorious Revolution. The defeat of Prussia, Britain’s ally, in the War of the Diplomatic Revolution had resulted in Hanover being partly occupied by French troops, and these were only ejected at the Peace of Amsterdam when Britain traded back the French West Indian possessions. Another attempted French invasion during the Second Platinean War only failed because of the general state of disorganisation at the French high command in that era. Hanover’s army and institutions had been neglected by Britain’s King and Parliament both, and it showed.
Thus it was that during the Jacobin Wars Hanover was essentially ruled in all but name by William FitzGeorge (or Wilhelm FitzGeorg as he was often known), the Duke of Cambridge. He was the son of George FitzGeorge, an illegitimate son of King George II by a Hanoverian mistress, and had followed his father in pursuing a career in the Hanoverian army, eventually rising to the rank of general. Neither he nor his father had ever seemed a likely enough candidate to the throne of Great Britain to be worthy of forming a Williamite resistance around after Frederick won the War of the British Succession. George FitzGeorge had been born while King George had been on one of his many campaigns in Germany, and neither he nor his son spoke English very well.
Nonetheless, when the Treaty of Minden was signed, the British government was sufficiently roused to adopt its usual policy in such times – find the strongest state in Germany and pay it to beat all the others up until Hanover’s position was secure. This was more problematic than usual, however, as the two choices of the past, Prussia and Austria, were both beset by increasing difficulties. Saxony was on the rise but was embroiled in a war, and of course the British could hardly appeal to the Dutch and Flemish to defend against themselves. Eventually Fox’s foreign secretary, Richard Sheridan, appealed to Denmark. The Danes were attractive to Britain for the same reason as Prussia had in the 1750s: they appeared to be rising to a position of prominence, having defeated Sweden and restored a Scandinavian union as well as gaining more territory in Germany. Denmark had transferred Swedish Pomerania to its own control and had, as part of the price for assisting Russia in the Great Baltic War, acquired control over all the dukedoms of Oldenburg. Oldenburg, though technically separate from the crown of Denmark, then achieved a status similar to that of Schleswig and Holstein within the Danish monarchy.
The British move was calculated, but Sheridan failed to realise that the Danes were out for territorial aggrandisement in Germany themselves. William FitzGeorge could have told him, but communications between he and the British government had been even frostier than usual since the Double Revolution. King Johannes II was concerned that his acquisition of Sweden might stir resentment in Schleswig and Holstein against being part of some primarily Scandinavian empire. Johannes and his government thus wanted to gain more German lands, not out of simple greed, but in order to try and balance the numbers of German-speakers with those of Scandinavian languages and prevent dissent. They were not concerns that would have occurred to many European monarchs even twenty years before, but the French Revolution had opened the Pandora’s box that was linguistic and ethnic nationalism, and now no-one could close it.
Thus, Copenhagen accepted London’s cavalry of St George[3], nodded and smiled, and then turned around and began threatening the Mecklenburgs. As well as the other reasons, the Danes coveted ever greater control over the Baltic. Ultimately Johannes’ vision was for the Russians to be excluded from it totally, even driven from St Petersburg, and the sea to become a ‘Danish lake’, even as the Mediterranean had once been a Roman lake. This somewhat crazy dream could only lie years in the future, but the acquisition of Mecklenburg’s coast was a first step.
The two Mecklenburg states – Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz – rejected the crude Danish demands in October 1800. The Mittelbund proclaimed its support of Mecklenburger territorial integrity, though it could do little in practice if Denmark invaded.
In the end, the crisis was resolved at the Conference of Hagenow, when the Saxons, Mecklenburgers and Danes reached an agreement, of which more is told elsewhere. But the Hanoverians were appalled at the backfire of Britain’s foreign policy, and in the end William FitzGeorge began acting wholly independently, without recourse to either the British Government or King Henry IX (Elector Heinrich I of Hanover). He formed his own defensive league, the Alliance of Hildesheim, named after that prince-bishopric in which the treaty was signed. The Alliance was composed of Hanover, Brunswick, Hildesheim, Bremen and the Schaumburgs, and was closely allied with the Mittelbund. If William had dared, he would probably have formally joined the electorate and its allies to that entity in the first place, for the alliance between Hanover and Hesse-Kassel went back a long way. The Alliance and the Mittelbund worked together to resist further encroachment by other powers, whether they be the Danes, the Dutch or the Flemish. The fact that most such powers (except the Austrians and Saxons) were primarily non-German and their capitals lay outside the boundary of the Empire tended to associate the Mittelbund-Alliance with German patriotism, and ultimately German unificationism. After all, Pascal Schmidt began his career as a soldier in the Hessian army.
It seems astonishing to us now that the Austrians virtually ignored these dramatic developments, focusing on the Balkan front. After the failures of the last part of 1799, the campaign season of 1800 saw the built-up Austrian armies repel Dalmat Melek Pasha’s forces from the siege of Zagreb, but the Turks were left in possession of Bosnia and the vast majority of Dalmatia. Only Istria remained out of Constantinople’s reach, and even that was contested instead by part of Lazare Hoche’s new Italian Patriotic Army.
For 1801, desperate to break the stalemate, Emperor Francis ordered General Alvinczi to shift his army to Transylvania and attack Wallachia over the border. At first this may seem a quixotic move, but it was calculated to try and drag Russia into the war. The Russians were still recovering from their recent civil war, but Francis guessed that no Russian tsar could resist the opportunity to sweep in and take back Bessarabia and Moldavia if the Austrians moved into Wallachia.
Unfortunately for the Austrians, Emperor Paul had already decided on a more leisurely strategy for regaining Russian power in the regions that Sultan Abdulhamid II had extended Turkish influence into during the Russian Civil War. He had concluded that open warfare at this stage would only undermine his rule. He needed some years to cement it first before attempting anything ambitious. The Turks, of course, did not know this (though they suspected) and thus Paul’s ministers were able to wring a number of concessions out of the Ottomans in exchange for remaining neutral. The chief of these was a withdrawal of Turkish troops and influence from Georgia: this act repaid Paul’s debt to Bagration. For the present the Russians conceded the Ottoman presence in Armenia and in the Khanate of the Crimea. That could wait for another day.
His plan having failed, 1801 ended badly for Emperor Francis. The Turkish armies had ground to a halt, but they had already taken more than Sultan Murad had expected. Alvinczi’s army had occupied the northern half of Wallachia, but Alexandru Morusi, the Prince of Wallachia and Moldavia, had raised an army and fought back with Turkish assistance.
And for the Germans living under the Bavarian Germanic Republic, the future looked bleak. Lascelles was a man whose conception of revolutionary thought had not got past the part about watering the soul with impure blood. The rapacities of the Cougnonistes were mild in comparison to what was inflicted and unleashed upon the people of Bavaria, the Upper Palatinate and those parts of the Archduchy of Austria which were still occupied by the French. Lascelles’ men murdered without compunction anyone suspected of having any noble blood – and in the Holy Roman Empire, scarce less than in Poland, that could be almost anyone. Desperate to escape such a fate themselves, the Germans turned on each other, claiming their neighbours were the illegitimate great-great-grandnephew of a ritter born in 1621. Some said (in hushed voices) that the drains of Munich saw more blood than water drain through them in those dark years. And Lascelles took racialist theories to even greater depths than Lisieux, who he rejected, arguing that the Germanic races were sub-human and it was the task of the Latins to reverse the mistakes of history (i.e. the Germanic invasions of the Roman Empire) and reduce them back to their ‘correct’ state of barbarism.
Such a murderous regime could not last forever, not even if its populace had been thoroughly cowed. Rebellion was inevitable.
And so we come to the man remembered by history, simply, as
Der Führer…
[1] The Russian writer Rostopshchin, of course, does not use the English ‘war of supremacy’ terminology coined by George Spencer-Churchill.
[2] Acquired from Prussia after the War of the Diplomatic Revolution.
[3] A poetic term for the gold guineas that Britain supplied as payment to its continental allies, because the coins bore the image of St George slaying the dragon.
Part #52: The Arandite Plan
From – “And the Sun shall Rise in the West” by P. D. de Veers (1951):
When the man who was named – depending on whom you asked – the Infante Charles, King Charles IV of Spain, or Traitor – fled into the west from Corunna, his initial plans were relatively simple. As his chief minister Miguel Pedro Alcántara Abarca de Bolea, the Duke of Aranda, had advised him, there was the possibility of gathering forces in Spain’s New World colonies in order to attempt a
reconquista at a later date. Trying to stand against the French at the present, it was clear, was suicide. Not only was Jean de Lisieux’s France a far greater military power than Spain – Spain, the old decaying former superpower halfway through military reforms and muddled all the more because of it – but only half of Spain, at best, would fight for Charles. Though pockets of Carlistas remained and some of these remnants allied with Portugal, the bulk of Spain supported the claimant King Philip VII, and French troops were there to make sure they stayed supporting him.
Some historians have claimed that Charles IV or Aranda had the same perceptive insight into Lisieux that is often attributed to Peter IV of Portugal. This is questionable. Peter’s information on Lisieux ultimately came from the Portuguese spy network in Paris, which was second to none – after all, Portugal, distant, not too powerful, and not really a traditional enemy of France, was low down on the list of the Garde Nationale’s list of countries to watch out for. While even skilful British or Austrian spies were uncovered and tortured by the Garde (along with many innocent Frenchmen and foreigners alike), the Portuguese were often capable of slipping by. Peter’s source is sometimes said to be François Bleuel, one of Lisieux’s secretaries, who was supposedly blackmailed by a Portuguese controller after his unnatural sexual activities were uncovered. This would have been a particularly deadly revelation in Lisieux’s France, in which anything that impeded reproduction of the pure Latin race required, in Lisieux’s bloodless term,
revision.
Regardless of this, it seems doubtful that Peter would share much of his knowledge of Lisieux with Charles. The two never met, their emissaries spoke only briefly and Peter did not see Charles so much as an ally as an opportunity. Supporting the Carlistas in Spain would help provide a buffer against a French attack on Portugal, but it would also weaken Spain herself: both were in Portugal’s national interests.
So it seems to be simply a lucky accident that Charles’ plan was less hopeless than it at first seemed. It was not until September 1803, two months after Charles’ fleet sailed from Corunna, that Lisieux published his
Nouvelle Carte in the wake of La Nuit Macabre. Charles could not have known that French interest in Iberia would not be permanent. Regardless of all this, his fleet arrived, at last, in the port of Veracruz in October. It had been a peaceful crossing and all the ships had remained together, yet morale had dropped into the bilges. The men knew that they were coming to Mexico not as conquistadors, as Cortes had almost three centuries earlier, but as the remnants of a defeated army.[1] Charles was well aware of this and did his best to counteract it: as soon as they had reached Veracruz and been welcomed by the local
alcalde[2] he declared a day of feasting to celebrate their triumph over adversity, comparing it to the escape of Pelagius of Asturias from the Battle of Guadalete. This was the battle of unnumbered tears, the defeat of the Visigothic rulers of Spain and the death of King Roderick that had ushered in centuries of Muslim rule. Yet Pelagius had escaped, Charles reminded his men, founded a Christian kingdom in Asturias, and ultimately begun the long
reconquista of Iberia.
Of course, that
reconquista had taken seven hundred years. It was to be hoped that this one might be a little more rapid.
The
alcalde of Veracruz was rather relieved when Charles declared his intention to go to the City of Mexico as soon as possible. As with all sailors released from routine and duty after a long voyage, the crews of Charles’ nine ships had wreaked havoc on Veracruz’s port districts and some way beyond. While Veracruz repaired itself, Charles and Aranda led their men on an overland march to the City. They marched at a leisurely pace, wanting for word of their coming to spread before they arrived. While they did so, and when they commandeered villages and towns to rest in along the way, Charles took counsel with Aranda and his brothers.
For all four of the other Infantes had thrown their lots in with Charles, some of them early on, others later when Philip declared all his brothers enemies of the state. Antonio, Ferdinand, John and Gabriel all had ideas of their own about what to do, and Charles knew he had to give them a voice in his notions if he were to retain their support. Possessing it would grant him a powerful tool of legitimacy against Philip, and besides, some of his brothers had talents worth having. Gabriel, despite being the youngest at the age of just twenty-six, had commanded troops during Cuesta’s abortive invasion of France and was an outspoken proponent of the slow and much-debated military reforms in Spain. Antonio had always had a grand if somewhat mad scheme for a great North African crusade, complete with plans from Ferdinand and Isabella’s book about how to rule over Morocco and Algiers by swamping them with Spanish settlers. It is suggested that he was inspired by the Anglo-American “policy of dilution” adopted in New Scotland and Canada. John was considered the best orator of the family, while Ferdinand was a quiet, hard-working prince who would probably have been better off if he had been born as a civil service bureaucrat.
However, none of the royals’ ideas could compare to those of the Duke of Aranda. His father had ultimately played a part in them, but Aranda took them further. Neither of the two had ever actually been to Spain’s colonies in the New World – those that had, like Saavedra, sometimes pointed out flaws in their plans for the region. But sometimes courageous plans born of ignorance of the facts can triumph over the predictions of the informed and the rational. If this were not the case, war and politics would have no excitement.
Charles’ host finally arrived in the City of Mexico in early December, as the people of the City celebrated the Feast of St Nicholas. Charles encamped his men outside the City and went in to meet the Viceroy, Martín de Gálvez. Gálvez was a competent administrator, but one who had gotten used to having his own way in a big part of the world due to being the uncontradictable lieutenant of an absolute monarch who was conveniently never there to watch what he was doing. The Viceroyalty of New Spain, as it was termed in those days, essentially also ruled over the captaincies-general of Guatemala, Yucatán, and the Philippines. It could be considered that Gálvez, despite being only a viceroy, was one of the more wide-ranging rulers in the world.
He was also one used to things staying the same and remaining in comfortable rows of figures. Gálvez had been credited for his cool-headed response to the encroachment of the British adventurer John Goodman in Spanish-claimed territory in Noochaland. As usual he had taken matters into his own hands, dispatching Admiral Rodriguez to arrest Goodman and negotiating directly with Fredericksburg without getting either London or Madrid directly involved. That coup had been four years ago and it had, most thought, ensured that Gálvez would remain in his position until his death.
Now, however, Gálvez’ comfortable world was crashing down around him. Charles, whom he acknowledged as the legitimate heir of Spain, had fled the country. The country was conquered in all but name. As with the rest of the Spanish Empire, the elite of the City of Mexico was composed chiefly of
peninsulares, men born in the Peninsula[3], and this shock resounded throughout all Spanish America as soon as the news got out.
It was also heard far beyond, in America that had never been Spanish, and in America that had been Spanish until recently. In the latter, in particular, it was considered highly…interesting.
The Viceroy did not disagree with anything the man he acknowledged as his rightful King said. He concurred with the idea that Spain must be reconquered, and he accepted that it was a good idea to recruit a new army in the colonies. He assented that he would do everything in his power to aid this goal. He went on agreeing with everything right up until the moment when the King informed him that his office was to be abolished.
That got Gálvez’ attention. But before he could protest, the Duke of Aranda explained: this was a perfect time to reform the colonial administration, which was in many ways still stuck in the sixteenth century from which it had been born. The previous reforms after the Second Platinean War were too limited, too cautious. A bold plan was needed. And the scheme of the Duke of Aranda and his father – as it soon became known, the “Arandite Plan” – was that plan.
Hours later, the three of them emerged from the Palacio de Virrey[4] with the bolder strokes of the scheme agreed upon. In truth only Gálvez’ inherent cautious conservatism stopped him from endorsing the plan more wholeheartedly. After all, he would no longer be Viceroy under the new regime, but he would have a better title: that of
Secretario Imperial de Estado de Nueva España…
The plan was reworked upon consultation with the other Infantes and with certain important political and church figures from the colonies, in particular the Captains-General of the other lands ruled from the City. Some of the latter, in particular, were unhappy with Aranda’s ideas, but were placated with being given more impressive roles and titles in place of their existing ones. The Captain-General of the Philippines demanded a fuller status than his domain eventually received, to which Aranda replied sweetly that such status would be entirely forthcoming if only the captain-general agreed to
dwell in Manila.
He withdrew his objection.
Though wild rumours spread throughout the viceroyalty of the earnest talks being held in the Palacio de Virrey, the people of the City were not informed of their content until December 26th, the Feast of St Stephen, which was ever afterwards the national day. On the day before, the people had celebrated Christmas, with King Charles taking Mass in the Cathedral Metripolitana in the Plaza de Armas, the main city square (
Plaza Mayor). Now, a gathering of a more secular kind was held in the Plaza, though many eyewitnesses said afterwards that its undertones had such sacred moment in the history of the land that they might as well be religious.
A platform, in a part of the square later known as ‘the plinth’ (
El Zócalo) was erected, and the Viceroy stood atop it with the King, the four Infantes and the Duke of Aranda. Before him stood the wealthy and important, yet beyond them were the great masses of the people, all eager to catch a glimpse of King Charles. It was the first time in history that a King of Spain had actually visited his New World possessions. The drastic circumstances of that visit were, at least temporarily, ignored.
Gálvez gave an introductory address that was not especially well-managed or –remembered, then gave way for King Charles, the Duke of Aranda and the Infante John, who spoke in turn. The words they said would have repercussions far beyond the Americans.
The Arandite Plan, which was given the name “Imperial Constitution”, was expounded to the people of the land which had, until that moment, been known as the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Yet that name had fallen out of popular use, forgotten as vague and undefined, and most of the people called their country Mexico.[5]
Now, King Charles declared the abolition of the Viceroyalty and all the Captaincies-General, and the people stared, as dumbstruck as Gálvez had been. The Infante John explained. He spoke of the great pride that the King held in his loyal Colonies, of the need to pull together in the great cause of liberating the motherland, and the bestowing of a blessing upon the New World in recognition of its faithfulness in the face of temptation. He compared the loyal colonies with the temptations of Christ, with the UPSA cast in the role of Satan, and then linked the UPSA ideologically to the Republican French who had conquered Spain. It was a masterful speech and touched most of those who heard it, raising their blood.
Aranda handled the details of the plan that had, in its basics, originated in his father’s head. A new state would emerge, an Empire of the Indies (later to become the Empire of New Spain out of common usage) which would cover all Spanish lands in the New World. This state would be held to be coeval with the Kingdom of Spain herself, or nearly so. In addition to his title of King of Spain, Charles took the title of Emperor of the Indies. So far, one might say that he was influenced mainly by Frederick of Britain.[6]
Yet he went further, pointing out that the new Empire was far too large for a single centralised administration to properly govern it all. Thus the Empire was divided into three parts: the Kingdom of Mexico, extending from the claimed lands in Noochaland down to San Cristobal; the Kingdom of Guatemala, from there to Panama and including the Philippines and the remains of the Spanish West Indies; and the Kingdom of New Granada, covering all the remaining loyal lands in South America. Charles appointed three of his brothers to be the first Kings of these new kingdoms: Antonio for Mexico, Ferdinand for Guatemala, and John for New Granada. Gabriel was left without a throne, but Charles declared him Generalissimo of the
Nuevo Ejército, the ‘New Army’ which would retake Spain from the French using reformed training and new ideas.
It is difficult in retrospect to consider what the immediate response to the speeches were, given the mythic proportions that day has grown to in the New Spanish national consciousness. Indeed perhaps there were many who could not see what good the reforms did for them, and the conservatives who saw only dangerous change. Yet the people lifted their voices in acclamation: both those who loved their King for what he was, and the liberal forces who praised his reforms and feared the dark side of the popular revolution that would be the only other way to get a more equitable land to live in.
And so on that day, on December 26th 1803, the colonies of Spain in the “Indies” of Columbus ceased to exist. The empire had become its own Empire, with its own Emperor and kings, and made it clear that it owed no allegiance to the pretender sitting in Madrid with a French bayonet at his throat. God had granted the New World to Spain in gratitude for the
Reconquista, it was said: now the New World would have to repay that debt by performing the
Reconquista once more.
Indeed that prophecy was entirely true – but it was not the kind of
Reconquista they were expecting…
As soon as the news reached Cordoba, plans were already being drawn up to take advantage of it. This was an opportunity which President-General Castelli had been dreaming of. The Partido Solidaridad’s dominance of the Cortes Nacionales was such that there would be no holding back. Castelli took time to prepare, of course, but on July 24th 1804, the United Provinces of South America declared war on the ‘unrecognised regime’ to her north.
It was time, as Castelli put it in a fiery speech, to free the brothers in bondage from the shackles of the King.
No-one could know the outcome of this clash between two very different ideologies for reforming the governance of the New World.
In a certain philosophical way, in the long run, they both won.
In the more immediate way that is of relevance to the people of the world, somebody lost.
[1] The use of “Mexico” here is somewhat of an anachronism by the author.
[2] Mayor.
[3] Though less so than OTL. Spain increased the powers of the Audiencias and relaxed the
casta system after the Second Platinean War, essentially an appeasement to discourage still-loyal colonies from joining the UPSA in rebellion.
[4] OTL this is now the National Palace of Mexico. The present building dates from the 1690s.
[5] A bit of an exaggeration on the part of the author.
[6] But inaccurately – the Arandite Plan is one indeed drawn up by the Count of Aranda (who in our timeline did not have any children) in OTL.
Part #53: Three Stripes of Neapolitan
“Tactics? I say damn the tactics, sir! FULL SPEED AHEAD!”
- Admiral Horatio Nelson
*
From – “MIDDLE SEA: A History of the Mediterranean – Volume VI: The Jacobin Wars” (Oxford University Press, 1976):
Horatio Nelson first came to Naples in 1789, when he was still first lieutenant of HMS
Raisonnable – though he would soon be made post and given the new fourth-rate frigate
Habana. The
Raisonnable had been patrolling the Mediterranean, guarding British shipping around Malta from Algerine piracy and sending a signal to Britain’s then enemies, Bourbon France and Spain. Although the cause of the Platinean rebels had emerged triumphant from the Second Platinean War with British help, the shock defeat of the Royal Navy at Trafalgar by the Franco-Spanish fleet weighed heavily on everyone’s minds. The Portland-Burke Ministry had reacted by ordering fleets of new and improved ships from the shipyards of Chatham, Blackwall and Portsmouth, but for the present the Admiralty was determined to recover the honour of the Navy by waving the flag in the enemy’s face.
So it was that when the
Raisonnable called into Naples the city on August 15th, politics was always present behind the appearances. The Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, ruled by Charles VI and VIII (the second son of Charles III of Spain)[1] were no less Bourbon than France or Spain. However, Naples had chosen to remain neutral in the recent conflicts – wisely considering how many times it had changed hands since the start of the century – and Sir Richard Hamilton, the British minister to the Neapolitan court, was doing his best to steer the kingdoms into a more anglophile policy. Splitting off Naples from France and Spain would be a British foreign policy coup and would significantly relieve the pressure on the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet. The loss of Minorca during the Third War of Supremacy was still acutely felt: Malta was now the RN’s only major base in the Mediterranean.
The task of Captain Robert Brathwaite was to use his ship of the line to impress upon the minds of the Neapolitans that Britain was still the predominant naval power. In this he was partially successful, but the
Raisonnable had another effect: perceiving that Naples’ own navy was somewhat outdated and outclassed by the larger and heavier-gunned ships of Spain, Britain and France, King Charles decided to implement a naval renewal programme. In this he might have been unsuccessful, save for the fact that his formerly domineering wife, Maria Luisa of Parma, had died two years earlier.[2]
Charles was well aware that Naples did not have the resources or manpower to truly match the great powers’ navies, but his thought was that at least a few large sail ships of the line, as opposed to the present force which relied mainly on galleys, might be enough to persuade the great powers that attacking Naples was slightly more trouble than it was worth. He was determined to continue his policy of neutrality, safeguarding his throne from any future Austrian intervention – as had happened during the First War of Supremacy, and the kingdom had been an Imperial possession until the First War of the Polish Succession, twenty years later. By focusing solely on Italy, he hoped to advance foreign-policy goals that centred around minimising the influence of expansionist Piedmont, the transfer of Parma from Spain to Naples, and eventually ejecting the Hapsburgs from Tuscany. Of course, in the event all these plans were rudely defenestrated by the intervention of the French Revolution a few years later.
However, it was on this trip that Nelson first entered the city of Naples and encountered Sir John Acton. He was a fellow Englishman and a fellow sailor, but had spent most of his life fighting under the flags of France, Spain or Tuscany against the Barbary pirates. Acton had distinguished himself in an attack on Algiers in 1775 – though, as with all such successful attacks, the pirates seemed to rise from the ashes and resume their own raids a few years later. The operation had earned him a privileged place, and eventually Charles had tempted him away from Tuscany in order to engage in reorganising the Neapolitan navy. Nelson was at first repelled by the idea that such a fighting Englishman would spend his time with foreigners rather than serving his country in a time of war, but was soon won over by Acton’s tales of his battles and, in particular, his monologues on galley warfare. This was one area in particular in which Nelson had had problems since arriving in the Mediterranean, but based on Acton’s knowledge – conveyed over a table at a court dinner in the Caserta Palace – soon led to Lieutenant Nelson’s keen mind proposing new ideas and tactics to tackle the piracy. Acton was impressed, and attempted to lure Nelson away from the Royal Navy with promises of a highly paid career, but the stubborn patriot was offended and decamped from the city soon afterwards.
Nelson was soon to return though, initially in 1792 aboard his new command
Habana. On this visit, as well as reaching a rapproachment with Acton – who was by now de facto prime minister under Charles – he became acquainted with Charles’ daughter Princess Carlotta, who remained unwed: her father was still considering his options in a diplomatic marriage. Just what passed between the princess and Nelson remains debated, but it is certain that she began to argue his corner in the court.
By the year 1800, in which Nelson resigned from the peacetime Royal Navy and finally came to Naples to take Acton up on his offer, the kingdom’s navy had been considerably improved. As well as the ships of the line that had been built, the fleet had been swelled by a number of galleys and galliots from the navy of the Republic of Venice, which had fled the rape of its home port and mostly ended up in Neapolitan Bari.[3] The Venetian commander, Admiral Grimani, had pledged the support of his ships to Naples if Charles promised to fight to liberate Venice. Although Charles liked to entertain the idea of doing so (and then, of course, keeping the Terrafirma on a tight lead as a puppet state) Naples was in no position to consider such a thing. Though still protected behind the Papal States and Tuscany at this point, the kingdom and its people knew their number was up. Lazare Hoche’s Italian Republic, after chasing the Austrian army of Archduke Ferdinand all the way to the Brenner Pass, had turned its attention once more to the south.
Grand Duke Carlo of Tuscany, in support of his fellow Hapsburgs, had sent an army that liberated Lucca, Modena and Mantua from Hoche’s rule while the latter’s army was engaged in the north. That could not be tolerated. Starting in August 1800, Hoche attacked the Tuscan-occupied regions and, by the end of the 1800 campaign season, had driven the Tuscans from them. However, in the process he had sustained considerable casualties, and thus 1801 was the first year to see newly raised Italian regiments fighting alongside his French veterans. The Italians bore a green version of the Bloody Flag with an inverted fasces, and soon the flag of the Italian Republic became a red-green vertical bicolour in recognition of this.
The Tuscans appealed for help from Naples, and Charles hesitated. On the one hand, fighting in someone else’s country was always better than fighting in your own, as would assuredly happen if Tuscany was conquered; on the other, the last thing he wanted was for his own army to become trapped and encircled in Tuscany, leaving Naples itself undefended.
In the end he chose the latter option, and Tuscany faced the Neapolitans alone. The Tuscans fought hard, knowing the fate of Piedmont and Venice, but in the end succumbed. By August 1801, Hoche was standing in the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence and being acknowledged as rightful ruler of Tuscany. The conquest of the southern half of the country followed more slowly, as the Tuscan army faced more and more of Hoche’s Italian recruits, who were green in more ways than one. Yet the idea of a united republican Italy was nonetheless a rallying cry, for all the darkness of Venice. The fact that Hoche had distanced himself from the excesses of Robespierre and Lisieux also helped. Girolamo Acciaioli, a veteran in Hoche’s Italian brigades, later reflected: “It was not truly for a cause that we fought, or at least none save the wide-eyed idealists. But nor was it for the cynical things, pay, loot, women. It was for Hoche. His charisma…it was like a shared delusion, you felt that you could march anywhere. To Calabria. To Paris. To the moon.”
By the start of 1802, the Tuscan army and their Grand Duke had retreated to the port of Follonica, and were pocketed there by Hoche’s Franco-Italian armies, which laid siege to the town. To their backs was the sea. The Tuscan fleet remained loyal and fought a pitched battle, the Battle of Elba, with Hoche’s own ships, which were mostly drawn from what had been the Republic of Genoa. The Tuscans emerged victorious, but it was a Pyrrhic victory, with too few undamaged ships to evacuate much of the trapped army.
It was at this point that Naples intervened, partly on Nelson’s insistence. His patronage by Princess Carlotta had helped him reach a high position in the court’s favour, and indeed it could be said that in truth the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily were now run by three Englishmen: Acton, Hamilton and Nelson. Native Neapolitan politicians, jealous of this favour, attempted to whip up popular sentiment against three foreign heretics being endowed with such power. In this, however, they were largely unsuccessful: Naples’ own political elite were mostly disciples of Bernardo Tanucci, strong Enlightenment anti-clericalists whose ideas were unpopular with the common people.
Nelson argued that the Tuscan army could supplement Neapolitan fighting force like the Venetian fleet had. Acton agreed and persuaded King Charles to authorise it. On 4th February 1802, the Neapolitan fleet under Nelson sailed unopposed into the battered harbours of Follonica and evacuated what remained of the Tuscan army, including Grand Duke Carlo. Hoche’s forces, who had half suspected something like this, tried to drive off Nelson’s force using shore batteries armed with hot shot. Although two Neapolitan galleys were burned, Nelson’s
Siracusa was able to silence the batteries by a swift descent upon the cove and an attack by marines – one of Acton’s introductions to the Neapolitan navy which Nelson had then refined. The result was both that most of the Tuscan army was successfully brought back to Naples, and that Nelson’s reputation was cemented into popular imagination. His ego doubtless helped. Here was a man who could challenge Lazare Hoche on his own ground.
Uncharacteristically, Hoche used 1802 as an opportunity to ask for assistance from Paris. Although he still officially refused to recognise Lisieux’s regime, the Italian and French Republics had been growing closer together once more since the Treaty of Savoy and the partition of Switzerland. Hoche demanded new, trained French troops, arguing that he was expecting a renewed attack from Austria and needed additional troops to both defend against it and to hold down the rebellious countryside. Lisieux was suspicious of Hoche’s intentions, but recognised that a collapse of the Italian Republic would remove a useful buffer state for his plan to isolate France from the rest of Europe, and so sent Hoche perhaps a third of what he had asked for.
It transpired that Hoche had, of course, been lying through his teeth. Although an Austrian attack did come over the Brenner Pass in 1802, it was a decidedly half-hearted affair and easily beaten back by some of Hoche’s more experienced Italian troops. Just as well, for that was all that he had left in Tyrol. The bulk of his army, both his French veterans, his Italian recruits, and the new troops from Lisieux, was assembling in Tuscany.
Ready for a thrust against the Papal States.
The resulting war could fill a book by itself, for all its brevity; Rome burned in November. Hoche had surmised that his Italian troops might be reluctant to attack papal institutions, and so had requested troops from Lisieux. He knew – though he had not foreseen La Nuit Macabre – that Lisieux was trying to get rid of his Sans-Culottes, and thus the troops he had received were among the most fanatical Jacobins there were, on a part with Lascelles’ army in Bavaria. They would have no compunctions against attacking the Church; indeed, they would revel in it.
Hoche’s argument was perfectly accurate, but he had perhaps not thought through the consequences. Contrary to the usual more civilised way of war in verdant Italy, the new Jacobin troops practiced
la maraude and terrorised the countryside. Churches and town halls were burnt, with priests and local mayors and nobles hanged or beheaded in the street.
In a move that has been later criticised, King Charles again hesitated and did not intervene in the war until Ancona and Civitavecchia had already been taken. Neapolitan-Tuscan forces marched to war in October, but it was already too late; by the time they entered Latina and glimpsed the spires of the Eternal City in the distance, they were on fire.
Indeed Hoche’s Jacobin horde had torched the city of Rome rather than attempting to besiege it. Hoche himself was, at the time, in Bologna, supervising the new Italian regiments coming down from the former Venetian Terrafirma, and did not witness the atrocities. It is certain that he would have been there if he could have been, for such a politically and strategically important phase of the war, but he had underestimated just how fast the Jacobins, using their War of Lightning doctrine, could go.
Facing the destruction of all he held dear, the aged Pope Benedict XV attempted to flee the city, but was recognised in the street. The Jacobins fought a pitched street battle in the burning ruins of Rome with the Swiss Guard, and finally emerged triumphant. Benedict XV was beheaded beneath the pillars of what was left of the Temple of Vespasian in the Forum, mere hours before that too crumbled before the flames sweeping through the city. Perhaps one-third of the College of Cardinals escaped the conflagration: the Church lost not only its leader, but a large part of its administrative apparatus. In the resulting confusion, Jansenist movements such as the one in the UPSA profited from the lack of a central directing voice.
Hoche was furious when he learned of the holocaust. Nothing could have been calculated better to provoke outrage against him from all Italians and Catholics, including those in his own army. Always paranoid, he even suspected Lisieux of having engineered this on purpose. Yet, though Hoche’s army was undoubtedly weakened by the defection or desertion of parts of his Italian regiments after the Rape of Rome, we should not thus undervalue the courage of the Neapolitan-Tuscan army. Starting with the Battle of Frosinone in February 1803, the Republican armies were halted, and then driven back. An attempt by Hoche himself to drive into Neapolitan territory was defeated at Teramo, though when the Neapolitan general attempted to press his advantage, Hoche successfully withdrew his army and held his position against attack at Ascoli Piceno. He remained perhaps the finest general of his generation, even when his political position was wobbling dangerously.
Nelson approved of Hoche’s difficulties, but now had a warning for the court in Caserta. He pointed out that the French had taken Minorca from Spain under the conditions of the Peace of Cadiz, and that the steam fleet of Admiral Lepelley was in dock at the base there. Though the Neapolitans were slowly grinding on in the north, their whole army (and that of Tuscany in exile) was committed. If the French used their steam navy to transfer troops from Spain and land in Calabria or descend on Salerno, the Neapolitans would have little to stand in their way.
Nelson further pointed out that there was a way around this. The French fleet at Minorca must be…neutralised.
On the face of it, it was an absurd suggestion, even for him. The Neapolitan fleet had so far managed to remain almost undamaged throughout the Wars, but despite Nelson’s training improving the standard of the crews, it could still not stand up to the revolutionary new tactics that the French’s steam engines allowed. He would not have wanted to try that with the finest crews of the Royal Navy itself.
However, Naples did have one advantage. While the French had used their fleet to bypass the Spanish and land troops in Catalonia, they had not pressed south along the coast. Thus the Spanish fleet in Valencia had survived, and elements of it had fled upon the signing of the Peace of Cadiz. Some ships belatedly went through the Pillars of Hercules and followed Infante Charles into American exile, but others came to fellow-Bourbon Naples. They were swiftly incorporated into Nelson’s navy, but one ship in particular had caught his eye. Her name was
Cacafuego, a classically scatological Catalan name, and she was an experimental ship.[4] Her designer and captain, a Catalan who had served in the Portuguese East India Company, was named Josep Casanova i Llussà. He had been impressed by the use of war rockets by Mysore and Arcot, and upon returning home to Spain had petitioned the Spanish Admiralty to consider a new design of warship capable of firing rockets. Although the Spanish Admiralty was even more conservative than its British counterpart, Casanova was able to obtain some funding due to his family connections, and the result was the
Cacafuego.
She was based on the design of a fifth-rate frigate, but with the mizzenmast removed to allow space for the launch assembly. This was a block of parallel iron tubes, made like thin cannon barrels, with the fuses attached to a complex system that Casanova had designed himself, allowing the rockets to be fired individually or together. The rocket storage and the launcher were mounted in a segregated area of the deck, surrounded by metal and asbestos for fire safety.[5] The ship retained a gun deck, and its conventional armament was chiefly carronades for short-range defence. The ship’s intended use meant that it should only be engaging the enemy at a very long distance, and such weapons would only be used if things went badly wrong.
Though Nelson was sceptical of new technology, he had been impressed when Casanova demonstrated the rockets against an old hulk in Salerno harbour; though erratic in flight, the very unpredictability of the rockets made them an effective terror weapon, and their gunpowder warheads meant they were incendiary against the sails and varnished wood of a ship’s deck – in a way which ordinary roundshot, except hot shot, was not.
The plan was almost outrageously bold – after all, Naples was not yet actually at war with France, though they were fighting French Jacobins under Lisieux’s command. It was eventually approved reluctantly by Charles for two reasons – Nelson having the favour of his daughter, and the rumour – helped along by the Englishman himself – that if he was not given approval, he would do it anyway.
On the night 15th of June 1803, most of the Neapolitan fleet approached the Balearic Islands. Though Nelson did not know it, the people there were generally Carlista in their sympathy and resented both Philip’s victory in the civil war and the presence of the French. In any case, this helped, for the Majorcan fishing boats that spotted the Neapolitans on the horizon were not too inclined to let the authorities know anything about it.
Thus it was that when the
Cacafuego approached Mahon, site of the French naval base, the French remained blissfully unaware. Many of the steamships’ crews were ashore, enjoying the attractions of the island just as the British had a couple of generations before. Lepelley himself was in Ciutadella, on the other side of the island, for a romantic rendezvous. It was sloppy but understandable – the French had defeated Spain and scattered its fleet, and were no longer at war with Britain or Royal France. The Algerines would certainly not attack a harbour these days. Who did that leave?
It turned out that it left the Neapolitans. Nelson ordered the rockets fired after his jolly-boat scouts had confirmed the position of local landmarks: Nelson, with the command of geometry common to all British high-seas sailors, calculated the optimum position in his head based on Casanova’s information. Casanova himself personally lit the fuses, and the rockets screamed out into the night.
Perhaps a quarter of them exploded in midair – one dangerously close to the
Cacafuego’s own sails – but the rest all hit somewhere near the harbour, and with the density of French ships there, ‘somewhere near the harbour’ was almost certain to be a target. Before they knew what was happening, the French were faced with whining bolts from heaven cascading down from above, striking their ships and setting them on fire.
Only a few crews were ready to respond. In any case, Nelson did not simply sit back and let them. Giving his famous command, he took the
Siracusa into Mahon harbour itself and blasted broadsides into steamship after steamship – the small size of the Neapolitan frigate now helped it, for she did not tower uselessly over the steam-galleys as some of the Spanish ships of the line had. Nelson finally faced one of the steamships that had an alert crew and – after suffering the disablement of his left arm after a shard from a mast hit by a cannonball scored across it – led the boarding operation to take the ship. He had hoped to return it as a prize, but had no-one who understood how to operate the steam engines, and so scuttled the ship.
By the time the Neapolitan fleet – having suffered some losses, but not grievous ones – retreated from Mahon on the morning of the 16th, the position had radically changed. Admiral Lepelley’s invincible fleet was mostly lying on the bottom of the harbour, reduced to scorched timbers and melted boilers. French dominance of the Mediterranean was no longer assured.
Admiral Nelson was feted as a hero in Naples the city, and Acton pressed the conduct of the war against Hoche all the more earnestly, knowing there was no possibility of a stab in the back anymore.
Nelson had saved his adoptive country but, unbeknownst to him, he had doomed his own.
[1] In OTL, due to Charles III’s elder brother Philip being disqualified from the succession for being mentally disabled, Charles’ second son Charles became Charles IV of Spain, and his third son Ferdinand became Ferdinand III and IV of Naples and Sicily. In TTL, Philip is normal and became King Philip VI of Spain, while Charles became Charles VI and VIII of Naples and Sicily.
[2] Not until 1812 in OTL.
[3] The Venetian navy is somewhat larger than OTL’s, mainly due to butterflies.
[4] The name is usually rendered euphemistically into English as ‘Spitfire’. It
actually means ‘Fire Shitter’.
[5] Though not widely used at this point except in mining, asbestos’ fire-retardant properties were already well known.
Part #54: Der Führer und der Kleinkrieg
From – “French Strategy in the Jacobin Wars” by Åke Comstedt (1974) -
In April of 1802, Jean de Lisieux wrote a monograph. This in itself was not a remarkable occurrence, for
L’Administrateur spent most of his time writing monographs. When he was not writing himself, he was dictating to his most trusted secretaries, ever paranoid about the possibility of his words being intercepted and twisted between himself and his people. Given the tone of some of his later writings, some men suggested that Lisieux even wanted not to look upon his Republic until his declarations had converted it into the state he desired. A joke sprung up in some of the regiments – the ones farthest away from Paris and informers – to parody the old Catholic liturgy declaring Christ would come again at the end of the world, replacing his name with that of Lisieux. He was certainly rarely seen outside his own unprepossessing apartments, except on the occasions when he visited the National Legislative Assembly to perpetuate the illusion that that body still had any power.
But this monograph had a significance which outweighed most of Lisieux’s often nit-picking and self-contradictory pronouncements on the future of France. In it, he openly declared his intentions for foreign and domestic policy. The document became known as “the 25 Years paper” in reference to the most prominent date contained within it. Lisieux stated that, for the present, exporting the Revolution to other states was meaningless, counterproductive and indeed wasteful of human lives (for he always remained conscious of their value, albeit in a clinical and mathematical way). He wrote that it was absurd to do so when the Revolution had not yet produced the perfect state at home: “It is the role of the superior Latin race, and of the purest strain within that race – the French – to create the true Utopia. Only once this is complete may that Utopia be replicated elsewhere. It must also be adapted to the different and inferior characteristics of the other races upon which it is imposed. This cannot come until after the first and highest Republic has reached its truest and purest form.”
Lisieux was vague upon the subject of precisely how this truest Republic would come about, but he was clear on the requirements for this. To do so, he declared that France would require 25 years of peace to reorder herself. This would in turn require that France’s borders be secured beyond all possibility of incursion. So far, France had neutralised a number of its neighbouring regions – Spain, Swabia, and to some extent Piedmont, although Hoche could no longer be counted upon as an ally. The chief frontier that remained was that of Flanders, which had remained at peace with France since June of 1796. That had been a necessary strategy on the part of Pierre Boulanger to help preserve the young republic in its war with, at that point, practically all of Europe. Now, however, the situation had changed.
Flanders and her ally, the Dutch Republic, would not be a pushover. Not for nothing had royalist France tried and failed to conquer then-Spanish or Austrian Flanders multiple times throughout the last two centuries. And the French Republican fleet could not stand up to that of the Dutch. To that end, Lisieux pursued a strategy on several fronts. Surcouf took his frigates to La Pérouse’s Land and used it as a base to raid Dutch shipping as a privateer, attempting to goad the Dutch into a unilateral declaration of war on France. In 1800, Lisieux ordered Ney, in Swabia, to attack northwards in an attempt to establish a French presence in the Rhineland and Westphalia. The idea was to be able to invade the Dutch Republic from the east, thus avoiding both the Dutch system of flood-based defensive lines aimed at invaders from the south-west, and also war with Flanders. If the Dutch and the Flemings could be handled one at a time, the conquest would be much easier: and attacking the Flemings first would almost force a Dutch intervention on their side, whereas the reverse was not necessarily true.
Ney’s war was largely unsuccessful, securing Ansbach, Bayreuth and Nuremberg for the Swabian Germanic Republic by 1802, but ultimately failing to penetrate into the northern Rhineland and being held back by the Mainz Pact states, which eventually renamed themselves the Mittelbund or Central League. This consisted of all the various Hessian states, Würzburg and Nassau. Ney’s aggression had inadvertently triggered the formation of this alliance of small states, which provided a new rallying point for Germany in the face of French dominance, Prusso-Saxon conflict and Austrian incompetence and distraction.
The effects of the Mittelbund would not be glimpsed farther east for a while, though. For the present, Lisieux revised his plans and his “25 Years paper” instead favoured a strike from Bayreuth up through the weak and divided small Saxon duchies of Thuringia, ending up in Anhalt. Lisieux envisaged that this position could then be turned into either an encirclement of the Mittelbund, an eastward attack on the Dutch (who had occupied the imperial bishoprics between the Ems and the Weser as a pre-emptive move against the Hapsburgs, back in 1797) or an attack on Hanover if a casus belli was needed against Britain. The Republican army, and Marshal Boulanger in particular, viewed this plan with extreme scepticism. Lisieux would be sending French armies deep into territory with Saxony in the east and the Mittelbund in the west. A Prussian or Austrian revival could also not be ruled out at that stage, and sending troops through Bayreuth might bring France into conflict with Lascelles’ alleged Bavarian Germanic Republic in the Upper Palatinate – a move which Ney had so far carefully avoided. Although even at this stage Lisieux was beginning to turn into a similar figure as Robespierre, with few daring to publicly contradict him, Boulanger did manage to persuade the Administrateur that the plan was too ambitious and should at least be postponed. He noted that it would certainly require more troops than France had in the region. Lisieux responded to this by stepping up his timetable for the withdrawal of French troops from Spain, rather premature as in April 1802 they had not yet even entered Madrid and
begun their occupation yet. It was this continuous urge to pull troops out and focus on Germany that dogged Republican France’s attempts to hold down Spain from the start.
Of course, there was also another frontier to consider, one which Lisieux almost deliberately forced himself to forget about most of the time. In the north-west of France, hanging insolently over Lisieux’s great Republic, was the restored remnant of the Bourbon monarchy, under the formally undeclared King Louis XVII. That would have to be dealt with eventually.
Problem: even under Charles James Fox, Britain would almost certainly respond with war if the Republic attacked Royal France. Britain, therefore, would also have to be neutralised, and that required considerable planning. This, however, was stepped up in priority after Horatio Nelson’s Neapolitan raid on Minorca in summer 1803. Lisieux and Boulanger were both landsmen by thinking and had not considered the frontiers of France that they could not control – those which looked out on the seas. Lisieux considered simply separating the coastlines of France from the Republic and turning them into a military regime, thus ensuring the Republic inside could remained unmolested. However, judging this to be an unacceptable solution – as it forced thousands of Frenchmen to live apart from their pure Republic – a different path was settled on.
Britain and Naples had both proved themselves to be capable of harrassing France from the sea. Therefore, both would have to be eliminated. And, Lisieux wrote secretly, Britain was an island. It was not like dealing with Austria or even Naples, which could be allowed to remain in a weakened state, as the French knew that they could easily send an army over land to kick them down again if they became belligerent. Britain could be defeated, yet
La Manche would be a powerful guarantor against such a punitive expedition if she decided to break the terms of a treaty. Therefore, French troops must already be in Britain, as they were in Spain. Therefore, Britain must actually be conquered rather than merely neutralised by being forced to the negotiating table. Another headache, another grand aim which the Bourbons had tried and failed to do for centuries. But then the Republic was not the Bourbons…
*
From – “Herz aus Eisen: Der Führer” by Joachim Lübke (1959) –
It is a strange and compelling fact that many national heroes were not, in fact, born in the nations that they eventually grew to symbolise. Simon de Montfort was no more English than Jean-Charles Pichegru was Meridian.[1] And then there is the man whom history knows as Der Führer: national hero of Bavaria, yet born in Austria.
There is no denying the fact, of course, that Michael Hiedler’s family was in
origins a Bavarian one: the vast majority of Hiedlers (or Hittels, or Hitlers) can still be found around Munich. But as the third son in his family, Michael had not inherited much of his father’s wealth, and had thus sought his fortune elsewhere. He moved to Lower Austria in 1785 and married into money, then joined the Austrian army and served as a cavalryman in a desultory campaign against Wallachia in 1791. During that brief and pointless war he was wounded in the leg, giving him a slight limp, and commended for bravery in the face of the enemy. He was pensioned off and given the minor title of Edler von Strones, the name of a nearby village to his home arbitrarily being picked.
Hiedler lived comfortably and unremarkably enough for the next decade, fathering a son and daughter with his wife Maria Margaretha, and it seems likely that under other circumstances he would have been unremembered by history. Events conspired, however, to turn this man into the pivot of destiny – but at a terrible cost.
Bavaria and Lower Austria were overrun by the French army of Thibault Leroux in 1798 and 1799 as part of his War of Lightning strategy against the Austrians. Initially, the country around Strones, the Waldviertel, escaped much attention by the French, who were still focused on Vienna. Hiedler recorded in his diary that a French army was seen passing through the country, but at a distance from the village, heading for Vienna. Rumours of the rapacity of
la maraude circulated, but Hiedler believed that the best way to escape such damage was to keep your head down and wait for the war to blow over.
It soon became apparent, however, that this was no ordinary war. Leroux was, at the last, defeated by Mozart before the gates of Vienna in April 1799, being killed in the process. His army broke up into two main factions: the Cougnonistes under St-Julien, who were mostly professional veterans of the ancien regime army, and who retreated into Bohemia to the north; and the larger group under Major Fabien Lascelles, who despite his low rank managed to dominate the troops. They were mostly Sans-Culotte conscripts, and Lascelles was a dynamic and manaiacal orator capable of whipping them up into an ideological frenzy. Lascelles drove off or killed all other surviving officers higher in rank than himself, then declared a Bavarian Germanic Republic and appointed himself as sole Consul. His bloodthirsty assistant and former sergeant, Nicolas Cavaignac, he appointed as Grand Marshal.
Lascelles’ Republic did not exist in any technical sense, but this was not to say that it was a paper tiger. Although the Austrians were mainly concerned with the new conflict with the Ottoman Empire that blew up in May, the new claimant Holy Roman Emperor Francis II did send some strikes into Lower Austria in an attempt to drive back Lascelles’ army, which was encamped on the Enns, near Admont. The outnumbered Austrians were bloodily repulsed: the French had regrouped and rallied around their new leader, and had regained their discipline. One Austrian officer later likened the Republic to one of the old nomad khanates that had once ruled over Asia (of whom the Khanate of the Crimea was the last remnant in Europe).[2] The army
was the country, much as Voltaire had said about Prussia.
Of course, it was inconceivable that the French could be allowed simply to retain Lower Austria, and in October 1799 a new Austrian army was drawn up under General Giuseppe Bolognesi to drive Lascelles from spitting distance of Vienna. This also meant that the Austrian armies fighting desperately in Bosnia and on the Mureş lacked reinforcements, further hampering Francis’ erratic attempts to fight a war on two fronts. Bolognesi was, however, successful: Lascelles chose not to give battle against the more numerous Austrians, but initially retreated. In the process, his armies passed through the Waldviertel. As usual, they had their standing orders to practice
la maraude to feed themselves, and Lascelles ordered them to stock up as much as possible due to the possible long retreat. Furthermore, he hoped to lay waste to Lower Austria’s food supplies and thus hamper Bolognesi’s pursuit, giving him time to set up a stronger defensive position elsewhere. This was considered by the Jacobin Sans-Culottes as a licence to let all hell break loose.
Michael Hiedler was one of thousands to suffer as a result of Lascelles’ bloody retreat through Lower Austria. However, his fate was particularly cruel. Using their War of Lightning rapid marching, the French fell on the Waldviertel so quickly that they were in and out inside a couple of hours. Hiedler was out riding, hunting to supplement his family’s table, for since Leroux’s army had been through marauding in the other direction, the harvest had been less than expected. He returned home with a brace of pheasants to find his house consumed by a funeral pyre of burning ashes and smoke. He dropped the birds in shock and attempted to force his way into the building, but it was already too late: the fires had done their worst.
There was one survivor, his servant Petra Schickelgruber. Her father, Johannes, was a blacksmith in the village of Strones. She had hidden in a cupboard in the scullery from the French soldiers who stormed the house looking for food and valuables. She later claimed that they had been led by the butcher Cavaignac himself, though that seems rather unlikely. The French had taken everything the Hiedlers owned that they could carry away: when Hiedler’s teenage son Johannes tried to stop them, they killed him – and then, out of revenge, raped and murdered his mother and sister. Setting the house on fire out of spite, they had fled not ten minutes before Michael Hiedler returned from his hunt.
Upon hearing the story from the scorched, shaking girl, Hiedler initially simply shut down, staring blankly at the burned wreckage of his house, his life. For hours he did so, until Schickelgruber came to her senses and led him, like a child, away by the hand. Down to Strones, though flames and smoke were rising there, too…
Schickelgruber had lost members of her family, too. Her father had been shot out of hand by a French grenadier who had broken into his smithy for any valuables. Her mother and siblings, though, had escaped by hiding. They did their best to care for Hiedler, who continued to remain silent, not talking, not eating, not drinking, just staring blindly at the world.
The next day, Bolognesi’s army marched through the town. The surviving people of the village, still in shock, darkly cheered them on, shouting in graphic terms what must be done to the French.
A week after that, Lascelles finally gave battle. He had not retreated as far as he had hoped – Bolognesi was well supplied, and Lascelles’ marauding strategy had not worked – but the French did find a good defensive position near Ischl. The Austrians attacked the French army in deep line, as was their wont, and the more aggressive-orientated strategies of the Sans-Culottes failed. Lascelles accepted defeat and retreated, but managed to hurt Bolognesi enough to slow the Austrian pursuit somewhat.
It was not until April 1800 that the two armies met again – this time at Rosenheim in Bavaria. This time, Lascelles’ troops won the day: they had acquired artillery from Bavarian depots, which put them on a level footing with the Austrians. Bolognesi retreated in good order to Reichenhall and sent word to Vienna, asking for more orders.
But Emperor Francis was displeased with the conduct of the war in other quarters. Lascelles was no longer in a position to threaten Vienna, and the core lands of Austria were safe. That was sufficient. Bavaria was not yet reclaimed, but then Bavaria had not been Hapsburg until 1783. It could wait. Yes, to the Hapsburg mind, the Turk was everything –
everything. It was an attitude that had cost them before in the Germanies, but never, perhaps, as much as it did on this occasion.
When word of the Bolognesi campaign reached Strones, Petra Schickelgruber tentatively told Michael Hiedler. He had ceased his catatonic state, and would eat and drink, but continued to speak only in monosyllables and stare into space. Schickelgruber had been tending to him in this state for months. When she told him that the French had been driven out of Austria, she hoped that he would be satisfied with this victory.
But then something snapped inside Michael Hiedler. He rose to his feet in anger, and damned the Emperor “down to the deepest pit of hell!”
In shock, Schickelgruber stared as Hiedler went out into the village square, stood upon a makeshift podium, and began an angry, defamatory, amateur yet passionate speech that began with a tirade against Emperor Francis II – which attracted and shocked most of the village people. Hiedler went on to speak of his family’s deaths for the first time since the event, and added that right now the French would be doing the same thing to thousands more innocent Germans – that was the word he used, ‘Germans’ – across still-occupied Bavaria. Lascelles’ army was mostly intact – the same ‘bastards’ who had ravaged their town continued to do so with impunity elsewhere. Francis was satisfied with progress so far – ‘well I am NOT!’
He concluded by stating his own aims: ‘
I will not be satisfied until we have marched all the way to Paris, strung up Robespierre’ (at this point the knowledge of Lisieux’s rule had yet to penetrate to Bavaria) ‘and hacked off the heads of every last stinking Frenchman in the world!’
The atmosphere was epic, the people drawn in by his fiery rhetoric, not that learned and polished in the college, but coming from the heart of an erratically educated and formerly unassuming man. His eyes, blank and unseeing for so long, suddenly seemed to pierce the hearts of men’s souls.
And at the last, Hiedler – in a shout that was more like a scream, coming straight from the heart that the French had torn apart – declared the battle cry that would be associated with him throughout all of history:
“If the cannon and the sword are too faint-hearted to do what must be done, then let it be
WAR UNTO THE KNIFE!”
And with that cry, the Kleinkrieg, the Little War, began.
[1] Meridian: from ‘America Meridionalis’, Latin name for South America – a common term for inhabitants of the UPSA.
[2] In OTL, of course, by this point the Crimean Khanate was gone.
Part #55: A Delicious Irony
From – “The Administration: Life and Death in Lisieux’s Republic” by Jean Daladier (1921) –
The fallout from the Rape of Rome in November 1802 was both a problem and an opportunity for Jean de Lisieux. On the one hand, the action of radical Jacobin troops – which, everyone knew, had been loaned to Hoche by France – threatened to stir up resentment and even uprisings throughout France. It soon became apparent that the attempts by Robespierre and Hébert to suppress the Catholic Church had been much less successful than had first appeared. They might, perhaps, have taken on and defeated those who were willing to violently oppose the Revolution in all its aspects on the principle of their religion; but a much larger group had lain low and accepted the Revolution, despite (or because) the bloody reign of Robespierre, but now arose in anger over the crimes committed against the Papacy.
The actual rebellions were diffuse, disorganised and quite easily defeated by Lisieux’s Garde Nationale, which was loyal to him alone. But they nonetheless pointed to a strong Catholic undercurrent in French society that could not be undone in eight years of deistic-atheist rule. A problem for Lisieux, but also an opportunity. He had been plotting, ever since his street campaign in Paris to suppress the revolts after Hébert’s death in March 1796, to undermine the Sans-Culottes. Initially this had been because they were Robespierre’s base of support, and Lisieux – who had always coveted the supreme power – wanted to supplant them with his Garde Nationale, which had made their name in the same campaign. Now Robespierre was dead and Lisieux ruled the Latin Republic, but he continued to work against the Sans-Culottes. He was afraid of their independent spirit, seeking to personally control all agencies in France himself, and also their idolisation of Le Diamant. Though Le Diamant was long dead, his ideas lived on in his great work,
La Carte de la France, which set forward a literal road map towards a free and equitable new French state.
Lisieux detested
La Carte. It was everywhere, it was bound up with the symbolism of the heady days of the initial revolution, and he could not control it. Its ideas were somewhat incompatible with his own: when Le Diamant had drawn it up, of course, ideas for reform in France had still centred around a constitutional monarchy. Few had dreamed of a Republic, and the terminology in
La Carte reflected this. Robespierre had managed to justify his hijacking of Le Diamant’s legacy by twisting the meaning of the map – he ever cast himself in the role of interpreter of Le Diamant’s dying wishes to the Sans-Culottes – but this did not appeal to Lisieux, who wanted everything to be set down unambiguously, clearly, and understood by everyone.[1] After all, if Robespierre could twist
La Carte to make it closer to his aims, so could anyone.
Thus, Le Diamant and
La Carte had to go, along with the Sans-Culottes, if France was to remain on the correct course. Besides, Lisieux did not like how
La Carte enshrined such rights as regular elections and term limits for representatives. Again, Robespierre had got around that, partly by using the threat of war to justify his excesses, but Lisieux wanted it stricken permanently from the Republic’s constitution. He would need a long time in power to set France on the right path for his 25 Years’ Peace. Only, of course, so that a truly free and equitable state might result at the end. Naturally.
Lisieux surprised many commentators – though he had been planning this move for a long time – on the night of December 25th 1802, what had once been Christmas. Even as hymns rose into the night from the Vendée and Brittany, under their Royalist Catholic rule, though, the knives were being unsheathed in Paris. A chorus of an altogether different kind filled the air as Sans-Culotte leaders, many of them senior army officers, were assassinated throughout Paris, and, thanks to Lisieux’s new semaphore network,[2] many more were taken down almost simultaneously in other cities. The death toll for that night is unconfirmed, but J. J. Schröder places it at a conservative seventy-nine. Ever afterwards, it was known as La Nuit Macabre.
In the morning, Lisieux began issuing decrees in the form of direct pamphlets to the people of Paris, as was his wont – bypassing the toothless National Legislative Assembly. He finally launched the coup that he had been planning for almost a decade, declaring the Sans-Culottes to be persona non grata and their ‘organisation’ disbanded. Taking advantage of the Sans-Culottes’ confusion, deprived of most of their leaders, Lisieux’s Garde Nationale went to work. Some Sans-Culottes joined the Garde at musket-point, while the diehard radicals were battled in holdout actions by the Garde throughout Paris. There were far fewer of them than there had been just a few years ago: Lisieux’s plan, of using the Sans-Culottes as cannon fodder against Austria, Spain and Naples in order to thin their ranks and get them away from the centre of political power in France, had worked well. The Sans-Culottes fought more successfully outside Paris, which Lisieux ruled with an iron grip, but in the end were defeated. The republican civil war also served to distract attention from the slightly earlier risings of Catholics.
Some Sans-Culottes were captured alive, especially outside Paris, and were sent to Marseilles and Toulon. There, though Lisieux’s regime described their activities with a paragraph of euphemism in the official pamphlets, they were put to work as slave labour. Once upon a time, they might have become galley slaves, but no longer. Most of France’s remaining conventional galleys had been committed to the Spanish invasion, and were then lost in Nelson’s rocket attack on Minorca in June of 1803. All the new ships being built, with a great sense of urgency and hammering that resounded across the Mediterranean, were steamships. They did not need chained oarsmen, though they did need men to shovel the coal, which was almost as bad.
Mostly, though, the Sans-Culottes were employed in the shipyards, doing the simpler and more repetitive processes of shipbuilding. It was at this time that the great economist and scientist Phillipe de Coulomb[3] worked with the Boulangerie members on the project. Coulomb used his father’s works and principles to help determine the most efficient means of using unskilled workmen on a project. In doing so, he improved upon Adam Smith’s “Division of Labour” and developed process production.[4] It all sounds very bloodless set down in this manner, but the work of the effete and somewhat squeamish Coulomb was ultimately built on a mountain of men who had been worked to death, a horror as great as any African tale of the slave-days.[5]
What is also true is that the year between July 1803 and July 1804 was perhaps the most successful period of shipbuilding in French history, with countless new steam-galleys of the ‘Surcouf’ class being constructed. Their design had been much improved by Cugnot and Jouffroy over the earlier ones employed against Spain, and they were fitted with the new screw propeller, discovered by chance during the Battle of Cadaqués. The ‘Surcouf’ was a slim, narrow ship, compared by some to a Viking longboat rather than resembling a Mediterranean galley as the earlier designs had. In truth that description was not too far off. The ‘Surcouf’s were designed to be capable of traversing shallow water, including travelling upriver. They were designed around a single, large, forward-facing gun deck, with the intention that this could easily be swapped out and modified for different armaments.
The standard main armament of a ‘Surcouf’ was three super-heavy cannon, usually at least fifty-pounders, and five smaller cannonades for volley fire. This was derived from the manner in which Mediterranean galleys were armed. Unlike those, however, the ‘Surcouf’ had no oars blocking her flanks (or paddle-wheels, like some of the earlier steamers) and thus had room for a lateral armament as well. This was, however, usually an afterthought, consisting mainly of carronades for opportunistic attacks at point-blank range.
Other optional main armaments included, from the start, a mortar package designed to turn the ‘Surcouf’ into a bomb-ship,[6] as well as a shrapnel-lined powder magazine that could be fitted into the gun deck for the craft to be turned into an explosion ship. Admiral Lepelley commissioned research into investigating spar torpedoes to permit the use of a less drastic and suicidal means of ramming, but the initial results were disappointing, and spar torpedo technology would not be perfected until the late 1820s.
Later developments, which did not make their first appearance until the Conquerant offensive, included a gundeck lined with steel and asbestos, permitting the use of a forge to heat hot shot. Although hot-shot ships had been experimented with before by several navies, they had always been judged too dangerous, too likely to set fire themselves, to be of any use. The first navy that could use hot shot in the middle of a blue-water battle far from land forticiations would have a serious advantage. Another new weapon, designed according to plans sent by Leclerc out of Mysore, consisted of a rocket battery. This also required shielding the gundeck against fire, but was designed on Lepelley’s explicit orders. The Admiral was furious at Nelson’s audacious attack, and was determined to repay the Englishman in his own coin.
The ‘Surcouf’s were built on the blood of Sans-Culottes workers, but so was the Canal de l'Épurateur in which they swam. Lisieux ordered the completion, widening and deepening of the Canal de Bourgogne,[7] which had started construction in 1727 but remained unfinished eight decades later. Under Lisieux and the Boulangerie, the Canal reached its intended state at the end of 1804 (work had begun as early as 1800) albeit once more upon slave labour. The work on the canal was not merely to improve the transport of goods and troops within France, though that was certainly an aspect. The design of the ‘Surcouf’ meant that they could steam all the way through such a canal, as their Viking inspirations had once sailed up the Seine to burn Paris. And the Burgundy Canal, via the Yonne and Seine to the Saône and Rhône, ultimately connected the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. Suddenly, providing one possessed a fleet of warships capable of traversing the canal, the Pillars of Hercules no longer existed. British possession of Gibraltar meant nothing. Ships built in the Mediterranean ports could appear in the Atlantic without ever entering the Gulf of Lion. It was a novelty that other powers were slow to pick up on – to their cost.
Lisieux renamed the Burgundy Canal in honour of l'Épurateur, and for good reason. With his purge of the Sans-Culottes, he publicly disowned Le Diamant, and embarked on a surge of rewriting the history books – hence why our own handed-down knowledge of the 1794 revolutionary period is so sketchy, for Lisieux was very thorough when it came to controlling public perceptions. The Administration claimed that Le Diamant was a traitor and a faint-heart, a Royalist and a betrayer of the Revolution. This despite the fact that the Revolution was
begun by Le Diamant. Lisieux got around that problem by inventing an earlier role for l'Épurateur, the half-mythical symbolic figure of France witnessed (or made up) by Hébert flying the first Bloody Flag over the Bastille. According to the new official version of history coming out of Paris, it was l'Épurateur who had started the Revolution, and Le Diamant had almost doomed it by surrendering to the King, who had betrayed him in turn and shot him (personally, if you believed some accounts).
It was not the first time that a new regime had attempted to rewrite history, but Lisieux was remarkably successful, at least in the short term. This was largely due to the semaphore system throughout France which allowed him to coordinate the activity of his agents and Móderateurs in the distant départements. This had first been set up in 1796 by Louis Chappe, who had successfully convinced the NLA (in which his brother was a member) of the virtues of a system that would allow Paris to know of the outcomes of battles against the Austrians before they happened. The initial semaphore tower lines were modest, mainly linking the Ile-de-France to the Flemish border and Alsace (for obvious reasons). Lisieux poured more money into the system after he became Administrator, by which time crude lines extended as far as Toulon and Bordeaux. Lisieux’s funding allowed Chappe to refine and improve the system, using shutterboxes rather than simple swinging arms in order to convey much more information and faster. This meant that even Lisieux’s pamphlets, once encrypted, could be transferred across France in the form of raw data flying through the air, then reconstituted in the départements and re-printed. This miracle of modern technology was praised by the Revolutionary poet Monteferrier, who said ‘behold, our nation is the first to truly live, for the blood of words and deeds runs in her veins of light’ (at night, lamps were hung from the arms and used to illuminate the shutterboxes). However, the semaphore system was viewed with fear in other countries. Some copied it, seeking the same advantages, but the semaphore also came to symbolise Lisieux’s will to centralise power and dominate all affairs throughout his country. Because of this, in liberty-obsessed Britain in particular, the semaphore was severely restricted by an Act of Parliament, and only a token network throughout the south coast was built. Britain would later come to regret this decision.[8]
In the ironic words of Robespierre himself, Lisieux sought a ‘clean break’ with the past. Having compromised with established interests for his first two or three years in power, he now rewrote history to claim he had turned against Robespierrism and the Sans-Culottes from the start. The word ‘Jacobin’ was removed from all records after Lisieux’s takeover in the Double Revolution, and after that was used to describe Robespierre’s rule only. As far as Lisieux was concerned, ‘Jacobin’ was dangerous. It described a political faction. The fact that a description was necessary meant that there must be more than one faction. And that was intolerable in his Republic.
Lisieux also changed the Republic’s position on the Church. Instead of the Catholic Church being publicly opposed, he instead altered policy towards religious tolerance, and permitted Catholic churches as readily as those surviving Temples of Reason of the cult of Hébert, with their statues of the Goddess of Atheism. All he asked was that all of them publicly display his portrait, and swear allegiance to him – him personally – before every sermon. Thus in one swoop Lisieux assuaged the angry Catholic interests over Rome, and extended his control yet further. As for Lisieux’s own beliefs, who can say? It is generally thought now that he was not a deistic-atheist like Hébert and Robespierre, and he was certainly no Christian. Perhaps it is fair to say that all that Jean de Lisieux really believed in was Jean de Lisieux.
And of course
La Carte was banned. Lisieux eventually released his own version, but the original was publicly burned throughout France and few original copies survive. The dream of Le Diamant burned with them on that day, yet, in the end, it turned out to be a phoenix…
[1] This aspect of his personality can perhaps be held responsible for his strong support of the Rational measuring system, Thouret’s square départements, and his scheme for French spelling reform, which never really took off.
[2] See later.
[3] Son of Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, who in OTL did not marry. Coulomb the elder appeared in some previous posts about Linnaeus and Priestley.
[4] Essentially the assembly line…but as it’s coined earlier in OTL, it does not refer to quite the same thing, and tends to refer to less mechanised processes.
[5] This does not refer to African-blood slaves in the Americas (although it could), but to slave practices in Africa itself.
[6] A bomb-ship, or bomb vessel, is a ship designed to fire plunging mortar shot in order to bombard coastal fortifications or cities.
[7] Cue “Inevitable Canal of Burgundy” jokes…
[8] OTL, Revolutionary and Napoleonic France did have an extensive optical telegraph system; it is slightly more advanced here than OTL, as shutterboxes did not make an appearance until later (too late, really, as the electric telegraph was invented just a few years later and so they never caught on).
Part #56: Pin the Zion on the Eurasia
“Throughout history, many peoples, races and creeds have been persecuted; but few of them have
defined themselves by that persecution.”
- Yakov Litvinov (1875)
*
From – “WEST MEETS EAST: Russia in the reign of Paul I” by Alexei Petrovich Dalakhov, 1954 –
As the nineteenth century dawned, bloodily, across the world, Russia stood at a crossroads. She had emerged, against the odds, from her terrible civil war. The Romanovs had won, and Paul of Lithuania was Tsar. Yet this apparent triumph masked continuing deep divisions. Some of these are obvious when one considers the circumstances of Paul’s victory. The defeat of the Potemkinites and their Swedish allies were ultimately due to forces beyond Paul’s control, whether within or without Russia herself: the Danes and the Cossack revolt led by Heinz Kautzman, the ‘Bald Impostor’. In the long run, this could not be tolerated: the longstanding policy of autarchy and autocracy, inseparable from Russia’s role as the Third Rome and Heir of Byzantium, could not accommodate such forces.
Paul’s situation was made more problematic by the fact that the peace with the Potemkinites had been made on relatively good terms, and he was forced to treat the two brothers Potemkin and their allies quite well lest he risk alienating the areas of society that had supported them. These were quite diverse, reflecting the way in which the Potemkins had built up their coalition: a large part of the nobility, the Dvoryanstvo, had been aggravated by Peter III’s quixotic and Prussophile policies, or had been burned while playing the game at court (as indeed Potemkin the elder had) and been sent into disgrace and exile. Yet in their support of the Potemkinites they were joined by an equally significant portion of the serfs and peasantry, individually powerless, yet nonetheless a force to be reckoned with in terms of public opinion. The peasants resented the air of foreign rule that Peter’s tastes had suggested, along with his continuation of his namesake Peter the Great’s tendency to move Russia towards the West, introduce European practices and customs, and undermine the Orthodox Church’s more traditional powers. Autarch or not, no Russian Tsar could afford to ignore such a popular attitude, not when peasant revolts had unseated rulers before (and, indeed, had helped Paul himself to power, for many of the peasants had rallied to Kautzman).
The resulting Russian policy was very much a compromise between different interests. Paul could not appease the peasants by rolling back his father’s Germanophile policies, because that would alienate the Volga German colonists who followed Kautzman and his Cossacks. It was fortuitous that Revolutionary France provided a convenient bogeyman, ideologically inimical to Russian autarchy (yet, from the point of few of the peasant tilling the field, the two were little different). France was also conveniently far away, and despite French successes in Germany, it was unlikely that the Russians would actually have to fight her. This meant that Paul’s propagandists could paint France in whatever terms they liked, turning it into the cause of all the world’s ills, Tchernobog personified as a nation. It gave Paul a lever to appease the peasants’ anti-foreign agenda, and he first spoke out against and then actually legislated against the use of French as the first language of the Russian aristocracy, as had been the case since the days of Louis XIV, when France had been held to be the shining example of European civilisation and worthy of emulation. In fact most of Paul’s compromises gave the short end of the stick to the Dvoryanstvo, despite the power many of them held: the Tsar was no less petty than his father when it came to grievances, and many of the nobles had sided with the Potemkinites. Now Alexander Potemkin was Duke of Courland and his brother Ivan was safely a long way away supervising the development of Yakutia, Paul could take action against their supporters on at least an individual basis.
The slow removal of French as a fashionable language in Russia left a gulf that was sometimes filled by German, reflecting Paul following his father’s tastes and the power of Kautzman’s Volga Germans in Russia, but Paul also encouraged the widespread adoption of the Russian language itself. Previously scorned as the tongue of serfs, Russian was celebrated through poetry and plays funded by the Institute of Cultural Patriotism, set up by Paul in Moscow. His policy towards the former capital again spoke of rapproachment, for Moscow’s support of the Potemkinites had been born of a double resentment of Peter’s regime: the fact that St Petersburg had stolen Moscow’s place as centre of power, and the implications behind that fact, the idea that Moscow was a part of the old, Asian, Slavic Russia, to be discarded in favour of the new and shiny European Russia of St Petersburg. Paul rolled back these policies, even learning Russian himself, though many alleged that his own preferred tongue in private was Lithuanian.
The gradual introduction of freedom for serfs, starting in Ruthenia and the Caucasus and slowly spreading northwards, was met with alarm by the Russian nobles and landowners. Paul was not too happy about the idea himself, but it had been one of the requirements of Kautzman for his support, and it was essential to maintain the loyalty of the Cossacks. Although there were widespread complaints and mutterings about the emancipation, open violence did not break out until it spread as far as Voronezh in November 1803. There, nobles led by Count Kirill Klimentov refused the orders of the Tsar’s messenger and horsewhipped the man out of the city. The rebellion rapidly spread to other cities in the region.
It was met with alarm by Paul and his supporters, who had only just managed to stabilise the country, and was particularly a matter of concern for the Russian foreign ministry. Paul’s maverick foreign minister, Count Grigory Rostopshchin, had successfully bluffed the Ottomans into withdrawing their forces from Georgia a year earlier, fulfilling Paul’s debt of gratitude to Bagration and ensuring that Georgian forces would also remain on side. Yet this internal rebellion betrayed that move for the bluff it was, and in the Sublime Porte, the Sultan began to wonder if even that limited withdrawal had really been necessary. Russia continued to look weak, and the war with Austria would not last forever…
It was immediately obvious that the rebellion had to be nipped in the bud. In order to do so, Paul raised an army organised according to Kautzman’s carefully considered doctrine. He put non-Great Russian troops at the fore, including Volga Germans, Georgians, Cossacks and Lithuanians, and left the larger main Russian army as the reserve, without ever actually using those terms. The campaign was a tricky propaganda balancing act; Paul was somewhat justifiably paranoid about his Great Russian troops – led by aristocrat officers, of course – going over to the enemy’s side, yet the more reliable foreign soldiers could not be seen to have achieved the victory, lest this undermine his policy of proclaiming the superiority of Russian and Slavic culture. Kautzman’s strategy was to deliberately engage first with the foreign troops and then let the Russians sweep in and take all the glory. This met with success, cementing Kautzman’s strong position at the Russian court, and the rebels were defeated at Somovo in February 1804. The propaganda side of the operation was handled by Rostopshchin, who had a vested interest in its success, and though not up to the far more all-encompassing programmes of Lisieux in France, it did the trick. Voronezh was ‘liberated by Russian arms’, the serfs were emancipated, and Kirill Klimentov was executed in Red Square as Paul looked on.
The campaign had been well handled, and the perception of Russian weakness faded in the eyes of the Ottomans and others. However, Paul’s shaky coalition continued to grapple with further problems. Despite making an example of Klimentov and his supporters, class warfare continued to rage throughout Russia, particularly in the regions due to be emancipated in the near future.
Paul needed to unite all Russians of all classes, forge a distinct national identity to rally around, both for the strength of his own position and the success of his country. The Institute of Cultural Patriotism and its like could only do so much towards this goal. He needed an enemy that he could unite ‘both Russias’, Slavic and European, common and noble, against. Revolutionary France was too much of a paper tiger, already witnessing reversals against the Mittelbund at this time and unlikely to threaten Russia for the forseeable future. No; he needed a more immediate, more present enemy – and one which, unlike the Ottomans, could not fight back.
Fortunately for Paul, such an enemy existed, and indeed had been used for this purpose by many tsars before him. Yet what would result from Paul’s new strategy went far beyond what anyone could have predicted…
*
From – “Israel: Birth of a Nation” by Moshe Galentz (English translation, 1944)
Yitzhak Volynov was born the son of a jeweller in Krementchuk in 1787. His life is a lesson in the fact that history springs from nowhere, and the most unlikely figures can go on to have great roles. Yet remembrance is seldom for wholly sweet reasons, and Volynov would doubtless have given up his fame for a life less hard.
There was nothing particularly remarkable about the Volynovs. They were a typical family of Ashkenazim, albeit towards the eastern end of the Pale, and had a skilled trade handed down from father to son, in this case the cutting and shaping of gemstones. That naturally made them fairly rich, and the target of some envy, yet like all the Jews of the town, they lived in the cramped quarters of the ghetto and their entrance and exit to that quarter was strictly regulated. They spoke Russian as well as Yiddish, but they were a people apart, forever under suspicion.
Things were never very fine for the Jews of Russia, but matters got progressively worse as the eighteenth century wore on and gave way to the nineteenth. Krementchuk, like much of Ruthenia, supported Paul from the start in the Civil War, and that conflict did not touch the town. It was Kirill Klimentov’s rebellion, and Paul’s response to it, which set the town ablaze.
Krementchuk was occupied by Lithuanian troops before the local nobles could think about joining Klimentov, and sat out the remainder of the rebellion, yet those nobles continued to seethe, knowing that emancipation and the undermining of their powers and privileges could only be around the corner. But then Paul’s plan came into play. A distraction, an event that would prevent nobles and peasants from warring, at least for a while – perhaps long enough to reach a consensus on the matter of emancipation.
A pogrom against Russia’s Jews.
Special cadres of veteran Russian soldiers were raised in Moscow and spurred on by the Patriarch, to ignite violence across the country. It was the first time that such public feeling had been deliberately stoked in such a way, and perhaps reflects the lessons that other nations were learning from Jean de Lisieux, for the Russian campaign was just as universal as Lisieux’s overnight excision of Le Diamant from the history books. It was not so simultaneous, of course, but Russia was a much larger and less technologically advanced country, and as yet lacked any form of message system faster than a man on horseback.
The pogrom was rather successful from Tsar Paul’s point of view, at least at first. Both Russian nobles and peasants had reasons to dislike the Jews, for their wealth (some of them), their secrecy, their mere existence outside the normal run of being. Many saw the opportunity for plunder as the ghettoes were invaded, looted and burned, and the fighting over emancipation was momentarily abandoned. Young boys, whether from dacha or trushbyy, took up weapons and went into battle as though driving some new, alien invaders from the land, not turning around and attacking men, women and children who had lived alongside them for years.
All across Russia the pogrom had a severe effect on the economy, upsetting the industry of many towns in which the Jews had made a disproportionate contribution to skilled work, as they so often did. This was considered an acceptable cost for the brief period of fellow-feeling that had been achieved, a new Russian identity, Slavic, Orthodox, Eastern, yet not looking so backward that it would not reject new ideas. Paul’s plan had succeeded.
Yet in Krementchuk, events happened that would upset world history forever. Young Yitzhak Volynov, only eighteen and still learning his trade from his father, was caught up in the violence. Like many other young Jewish men, and against the advice of the elders to take refuge and hope it blew over, Volynov fought in the streets against the Russians and killed at least three boys of his own age. Eventually, though, he was overwhelmed by the sheer press, the madness of the crowd, baying for blood.
He was knocked out and awoke hours later, aching all over. What meagre possessions he had had on him had been stolen, and there was a nick at his throat where a rioter had thought to cut his throat when he was robbed, yet had evidently not looked to check he had done it properly. In the coming years, many Russians would curse that unknown knifeman for this negligence.
By that point it was dark and the ghetto was quiet once more. Slowly, he walked home. All around him were bodies, debris, battered homes, the remnants of furniture that had been carried out yet then judged too cumbersome to be worth stealing.
When he came to his house, he saw the whole street had been burned down. His mother, father and sister, all following the advice of the rabbi, had taken refuge – but the Russians had burned them to death in their home. The fire had probably not been started deliberately, for the looters would have wanted to steal the gold and jewels in the house – as it was, with the fire, the house had been left untouched.
Volynov stared at the catastrophe for minutes before falling to his knees and crying out to Adonai, like Job, for why this should happen to him.
And then, like Job – as he always maintained, right unto his death – to him Adonai replied.
Yitzhak Volynov got to his feet once more. He had fallen as a boy; he arose as a man, or something more than a man. His eyes were cold, all emotion burned from them. Heedless of his wounds, he climbed into the house. The remains of his family he gave a cursory burial, but he took all the gems, all the precious metals from the house that the looters had so unwisely missed. Then he went around the ghetto, talking to the survivors, some of them young men like himself who had managed to escape death by fighting with the Russians in the street. There was something in his new voice, his cold, hard voice, that made him impossible to refuse.
Volynov gathered them in a square that had not been a square until today – such a thing would be unknown in the press of the ghetto – it was empty because all that had stood there had been burned even more thoroughly than his house. And when they had gathered there, he turned to them and preached a great and fiery speech, which was not written down at the time, yet was preserved in oral history no less than the Torah itself had been.
The Job connection still dwelt in his mind, for he quoted that book: “Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Can you loose the belt of Orion?” he asked, while sweeping his hand up to the sky. It was a cold, clear night, save where the smoke from the burning ghetto obscured the sky, and that constellation burned clear and bright in the blackness. “No,” he continued, “we cannot. But nor can the Tsar. He is but a mortal man, for all his earthly power, and all shall come to dust in the face of Adonai. Let us follow Moses, follow Ezra, and take our people out of this place unto a better land. Let us not wait, not care to ask his permission. He will let my people go, or he will suffer the consequences.”
It was a grand speech, and such was Volynov’s sudden presence, in one so young, that few questioned how on earth so few Jews could pull off such a strategy, when against them were thousands, millions of Russians. Yet almost all the surviving Jews of Krementchuk followed him. They marched across the countryside, living off the land as best they could, indeed like the Twelve Tribes wandering in the desert of the Sinai, but potato and cabbage was their manna. Volynov’s money allowed him to buy off numerous companies of mercenaries who made up the garrison troops in that area, and even hire some of them in turn to defend the Jews from roving Russians.
It did not take long before the word spread like wildfire, and by the time that great mass of tired, hungry people finally reached its destination, it had been joined by columns from several other Ruthenian towns – nor would that first migration be the last. Not everyone had made it, of course, and the surviving Jews of some towns had been trapped enroute and slaughtered by Cossacks - but thousands had, and now finally looked upon the Promised Land that Volynov had chosen.
He had known of it from his uncle, a trader. He knew that, for a time, the Russians had practically vassalised it; yet, with the weakness caused by the Civil War, it had once more fallen back into its old position as a close ally of the Ottoman Empire, enemy of Russia and friend of the Jews – or at least those Jews that were useful to it.
None of the Ottoman borders with Russia were close to Ruthenia, but this one was. On Febuary 5th 1807, the Jews crossed the Dnieper and into the Khanate of the Crimea. The reigning Khan, Devlet V of the House of Giray, viewed the influx of Jews as an advantage. He had long heard of their exodus as it approached, and had prepared his small and often embattled country for their entry. Crimea had always been an eclectic place, and despite the Russians’ temporary weakness, he was under no illusions that the Romanovs would not rest until his old realm, like all the other little khanates that had once ruled European Russia, was brought under their boot. Likewise he knew how Volynov and many others had fought hard to defend themselves. The Jews would be the ultimate fighters for Crimea, for if the Russians indeed won, they would be doomed: the best motivation possible to defend unto the death.
And despite their poverty from having fled from looting and stealing with very little, Devlet knew that many of Volynov’s Jews were skilled workers, and that skill they carried in their heads: it could not be stolen. Crimea’s economy was based on trade, and always had been, right from the start when it had been a Greek trading colony – when the Jews had still been in Israel, warring with Sennacherib of Assyria. These Jews could be useful indeed to him…
In the final assessment it is hard to say whether Devlet was right or not, and who ultimately benefited from this Third Exodus, the Crimeans or the Jews.
One thing can be certain, however: if it is uncertain who won, the Russians definitely lost.
Part #57: Go-Nanboku-cho
From – “IMPERIUM ORIENTALE: The Rise of the Russo-Lithuanian Pacific Company” by Brivibas Goštautas (Royal Livonian Press, 1956) :
1805 saw the end of the golden period for Lebedev and Benyovsky. In those four years, ever since the conquest of Matsumae and the quiet infiltration of European trade into Japan’s
Sakoku, its closed market, a great deal had happened in the outside world. The Jacobin Wars raged on in Europe, as Jean de Lisieux sought to redraw the map with blood as his ink. War too was ignited between the exiled Infantes of Spain and their republican rivals in the UPSA. Russia, however, backed away from the brink of war with the Ottoman Empire, focusing on repairing and reuniting herself after her punishing civil war. The Pacific venture, which had run merrily along in the background while Russian fought Russian – at the end of a very trade long route, with the nearest big Russian town being Yakutsk, Lebedev’s men had no choice but to be self-sufficient – presented certain opportunities to the newly confirmed Emperor Paul I.
The Tsar was placed in the unenviable position of having to neutralise his many remaining political enemies without taking actions so harsh or drastic that they might reignite the civil war. Just as the British had discovered, transportation was a useful compromise between inflammatory executions and inconclusive imprisonment. Paul used this method to exile both General Sergei Vasilievich Saltykov and Ivan Grigorevich Potemkin to Yakutia. This was quite a clever strategy, certainly compared with his father’s more short-range exile of his wife Catherine to Yekaterinburg, where she was still close enough to the beating heart of Russia to continue influencing many important Russians, sowing the seeds that would, after her death, grow into the Civil War. By contrast, Yakutia was so distant from Moscow and St Petersburg that there was no chance of staying part of court gossip – as Lebedev’s men had already discovered. Therefore, Potemkin had no choice but to use his formidable talents for organisation to help improve the colony as Paul wished, in the hope that the Tsar might eventually recognise his achievements and let him return to more hospitable climes. Paul had no such intentions for Saltykov, who had only escaped execution because of the plea of his relative Nikolai, who had fought on Paul’s side during the Civil War. As it turned out, though, it was just as well for Russia that Nikolai’s argument had convinced the young Emperor…
Saltykov and Potemkin were only two of the many former Potemkinite leaders – and not a few common soldiers of suspect background – who were sent to Yakutia. They swelled the Russian population of the region, probably doubling it in fact. Ivan Potemkin’s position was unofficial and subordinate to the formal governor-general of the Russian Far East, but he soon established himself in the administrative structure – such as it was. Some of his early innovations included a more consistent teaching of at least basic Russian to the local allies and subjects sometimes recruited as workers or soldiers: among them the Yakuts, the Nivkhs of Sakhalin, and of course the Aynyu of Edzo.[1] This meant that anyone, regardless of ethnicity, could be shifted from one part of the region to another without requiring interpreters, and also helped cement Russian cultural dominance at a time when this was a hot topic in European Russia. It is possible, of course, that this was part of Ivan’s attempt to impress the Tsar.
Some emancipated serfs also came to Yakutia of their own accord, though many did not come the whole way and instead settled around Krasnoyarsk or Irkutsk. Even these, though, arguably helped develop the Russian Far East in that their presence led to the expansion of those midway towns and thus the improvement of the roads linking them to Yakutsk to the east and Yekaterinburg to the west. Although the climate was considerably harsher than European Russia, the former serfs came because the region was declared free and farmland was doled out to those who moved there. Some of them doubtless regretted it when the Tsar was forced to expand emancipation to a wide area of European Russia also a few years later, although a steady trickle continued, enamoured with the idea of owning land even if it was rather less fertile than that which they had farmed as serfs.
The exact status of the Lebedev-Benyovsky venture also needed clarification. Up until this point, it had had a vague definition, partly under the auspices of the Russian government in the Far East, partly under the Lithuanian government, but largely independent. Paul therefore declared the “Russo-Lithuanian Pacific Company” in 1802, modelled on the trading companies of other European powers such as the Dutch, the French and the British. The new Company had a broad umbrella and encompassed not only Lebedev and Benyovsky’s adventures in Yakutia and Edzo, but also the establishment by Aleksandr Baranov of a fur trading colony in Alyeska.[2] Although Benyovsky knew and respected Baranov, the two ventures were as yet not really that connected and continued to run their own affairs. Nonetheless, the Company charter – from both Paul and his son Peter in his role as the Grand Duke of Lithuania – granted legitimacy to what had previously been a mad scheme, and attracted more immigration and recruitment.
Of course, these processes were only just beginning by 1805, and still had a long way to run. There had nonetheless been some direct impacts. After visiting Edzo in 1803, Potemkin agreed to certain ideas of Benyovsky’s (while quietly ignoring the more far-fetched ones) in order to expand trade and stick the Russian boot in the Japanese door before it could close. In this Benyovsky was prophetic, although perhaps it could be said that his own actions brought about his prophecy.
The situation as it stood was always going to be unsustainable. Benyovsky had successfully infiltrated Japan by a combination of factors in one of those unlikely sequences of events that would sound implausible in a work of fiction, yet can be found in any history book. The conquest of Matsumae Han with the assistance of Aynyu rebels had been the easy part. The infinitely harder task was in keeping the knowledge of this conquest from the Japanese Court and Bakufu,[3] making them believe that the Matsumae had in fact defeated the Aynyu and the regent of the new young Daimyo, Matsumae Hidoshi, was in fact another Japanese and not Moritz Benyovsky. It is perhaps hard to believe that this situation persisted for even four years, but one must consider a number of factors that lay to Beyovsky’s advantage:
1. Matsumae was on the very frontiers of Japan, and its position meant that it was permitted certain privileges by the Shogun. The Han was of course permitted to trade with the Aynyu, whereas most Hans were forbidden foreign trade of any kind. It was exempt from the
sankin kotai, a system that required other Hans to send members of the ruling house as hostages to the Bakufu in order to ensure their loyalty. It was assumed that the Matsumae were no threat to the Tokugawa. Ultimately, Matsumae’s distance and isolation meant that the Emperor and Shogun were used to having little contact with that Han: it was not as if the Russians and Lithuanians had tried to take over Koromo Han.
2. A century earlier, the Matsumae had been almost overwhelmed by an earlier Aynyu rebellion, the Shakushain Revolt. That had required imperial troops to put down, and this meant that Matsumae Han had lost its special privileges for a generation and been subject to imperial inspectors poking their noses in. Even those Matsumae who despised the Russian presence were thus hesitant to appeal to the Court or Bakufu as a means of throwing them out.
3. The Court and Bakufu themselves did not want to know. Emperor Tenmei was determined to see his reign as a bright new dawn after the disasters of the 1770s (tsunamis, earthquakes, economic meltdown) and suppressed reports of any negative news throughout his empire. This was not purely a propaganda exercise, as the Japanese people were inclined to view such disasters as omens against that Emperor’s reign. The Shogun, Tokugawa Iemochi, as usual kept his network of spies alert, but in that time was chiefly concerned with reports that the Satsuma Han – the large, rich, southern, and always independent-minded domain covering a large part of the island of Kiusiu[4] – was violating trade restrictions and becoming high-minded due to the fact that the Daimyo of Satsuma possessed a full kingdom, that of the Ryukyu islands, as his vassal. Thus the eyes of suspicion were turned to the south, not the north, and anomalous reports from Edzo were initially dismissed.
4. Benyovsky pursued a deliberate policy of secrecy and employed Sugimura Goro, the disgraced and vengeful family surgeon of the Matsumae, as his guide in Japanese affairs and effective viceroy of Edzo.
This policy thus succeeded for four years. Its end has two explanations, the romantic and the economic. As usual, the latter is more probably true, but it is the former which is remembered. The economic theory simply states that sufficient goods from Matsumae were being recognised as clearly of European manufacture for the Shogun to become suspicious regardless of the suborning of his local spies. This was doubtless achieved with the assistance of the Dutch, who were Japan’s only outlet to knowledge of the West – indeed Western science was known as
Rangaku, or ‘Dutch learning’, in Japan. And the Dutch, though hamstrung by being limited to the artificial island of Deshima in Nagasaki Bay as a trade post, were nonetheless jealous of their monopoly on Western trade with Japan and were just as willing as the Japanese to help crack down on other Europeans who might violate
Sakoku.
The romantic explanation ties into the economic. It states that, at last in 1805, the young Daimyo of Matsumae came to give homage to the Emperor as he should have done upon gaining his position. Hidoshi was no longer able to realistically claim the situation was still too unstable to make the journey, and so he did. He was accompanied by an ‘Aynyu servant’, who aroused much talk in each of the towns that Hidoshi and his entourage visited enroute to Kyoto. Few Japanese had ever actually seen an Aynyu, and to many – even the educated – all barbarians were the same, a reflection of the system of isolation. Thus it was that Hidoshi indeed gave homage to the Emperor in Kyoto, though Tenmei was by that point ailing from an illness, though he was not old. It would be in a few months’ time that Tenmei would be one of the few Japanese Emperors of this period not to be forced to abdicate or deposed: he would die whilst upon the Chrysanthemum Throne.
Hidoshi then left for Edo to establish relations with the Shogun. Even at this point it seems that the Russian venture might have escaped discovery. Tokugawa Iemochi remained concerned both with the intransigence of Satsuma and a problem of imperial succession. Emperor Tenmei’s son Crown Prince Yasuhito had…dangerous ideas. He was familiar both with
Rangaku and with Chinese writings, and had developed a philosophy not unlike Bourbon absolutism, indeed possibly derived from it. He was dangerous enough for Tokugawa to consider assassination, but the fallout would be problematic. Despite his best efforts, Tenmei had no more sons, only five daughters. It might be possible for the Emperor to make a pragmatic sanction and adopt a male child from another branch of the imperial family as his son,[5] but this would first require that he had no sons of his own. Thus the business of diplomacy, the letter and the knife, went back and forth from Kyoto to Edo as the two leaders of Japan pondered the problem.
In the midst of all this came Daimyo Hidoshi and his Aynyu servant. Hidoshi met with Tokugawa and submitted to the Shogun as the system required, but it was at this point that things started to go awry. Tokugawa had a Dutch trader at the Bakufu. Bringing the Dutch out of Nagasaki was unorthodox and probably illegal, but the Shogun made his own law. The Dutchman, a trader named Pieter Roggeveen, had probably been invited there by Tokugawa so the Shogun’s agents could ask him about possible European influences on Crown Prince Yasuhito’s ideas. But this is supposition: no records survive of such subterfuge.
In any case, the Dutchman immediately recognised the ‘Aynyu servant’ of Hidoshi as a European – none other than Ulrich Münchhausen, Captain of Marines on the Lithuanian flagship
Skalvis. Roggeveen spoke out, partly in surprise and partly in outrage, and knew that someone (presumably the Russians) had indeed suborned the Matsumae.
Tokugawa immediately ordered the arrest of Hidoshi and Münchhausen, regardless of the Daimyo’s protests and attempted explanations. While they were imprisoned, he questioned Roggeveen in more detail and ascertained the Dutchman’s conclusions. Matsumae must pay, he decided, and it would start with its Daimyo.
Unfortunately for Tokugawa, when he summoned the guard to bring back Hidoshi and Münchhausen in chains, they found the cells empty. In an act of unlikely courage worthy of any of his father’s tall tales, Münchhausen had broken the two of them out of the dungeons and fled. For all Tokugawa’s spies and soldiers, they were never found. It later emerged that Hidoshi commandeered a fishing boat in Edo harbour and Münchhausen threatened its crew until they sailed all the way back to Matsumae – an epic voyage later commemorated in the Russian epic opera
Lodka (“The Boat”) by Konstantin Vereshchagin, which unusually includes some verses with Japanese lyrics.
Deprived of this prey, Tokugawa ordered the drawing up of a punishment army and the acquisition of sufficient ships to carry them across the Tsugaru Strait to Edzo. As usual, he raised a levy from each of the Hans, each contributing troops to the operation. However, Satsuma and a number of other Hans were rather late and sent fewer troops than their requirement. Tokugawa made a note to deal with this southern problem after he had crushed Matsumae and driven the barbarians out: after all, he would have an army ready to do it with.
Except, of course, it did not happen that way.
Most commentators have attributed the Russian victory to technological superiority, which is at best an oversimplification and at worst utter nonsense. Even with regards to the direct armed clashes, training played as big a part as the presence of firearms. The Japanese knew of muskets, but had deliberately banned them from the islands in the 17th century as part of the
Sakoku policy, with the justification that the impersonal nature of firearms destroyed the honour and chivalry of the samurai. This was quite a reasonable claim, as guns indeed led to the end of the knight in Europe. But back when the early Tokugawa Shogunate had banned muskets, they had been imprecise, slow-loading matchlocks that could still be matched in destructive power by skilled longbowmen. Thus the ban had been realistic: it was possible to enforce it, defeating a small number of musket-armed men with the gunless regular army. However, the Russian infantry, though not the best-trained in the world, could fire one or two rounds a minute from comparatively far more accurate weapons – and a few of their elite snipers bore rifles, the very antithesis of a chivalrous view of warfare.[6]
The “Russian” force on Edzo of course included many others. There were many Lithuanians, and German mercenaries in the service of both Russians and Lithuanians, and there were Benyovsky’s Aynyu cadres (who were highly motivated to prevent Japanese rule coming over Edzo again), some of them trained in European warfare. There were even a few Matsumae sympathisers who took up arms against the Shogun’s army, either because they held grudges like Sugimura, or because they genuinely believed the Russians would be a lighter hand than Tokugawa’s.
However, if all or most of the large Japanese force had actually landed in Edzo, it is likely that the numerically inferior Russian force would still have been swept away, swamped by the horde of well-disciplined if technologically inferior soldiers. The Russians were saved by the same factor that had saved England from Spain in the sixteenth century, and Japan herself from the Mongols in the thirteenth: Edzo was an island. The strait of Tsugaru separated it from the island of Niphon[7] and this meant that the army needed a fleet to cross. Tokugawa assembled pressed boats from all over Japan, but these were mostly little ships, fishing craft and the like. After all, Japan had little need of trade ships or armed escorts for them.
This would have sufficed if the Strait had been uncontested; but it was not. Benyovsky learned from Sugimura’s agents in Niphon that the Shogun’s army was approaching the ports, and summoned all the warships that the Company had at its command – by this point, fourteen frigates and obsolete ships of the line, and perhaps twenty smaller brigs and sloops. It was a force that would have been wiped out even by Admiral Villeneuve’s battered Republican French sailfleet, yet to the Japanese it was death.
It is hard perhaps to explain the metamorphosis that those ships underwent in the Japanese consciousness. The inhabitants of Nagasaki had seen Dutch ships docked at Deshima and the occasional other European ship passing through, such as one of the expeditions of La Pérouse. They even made drawings of those ships and learned some theory of shipbuilding via
Rangaku. Yet they were otherworldly, remote, barbarian affairs. Once upon a time – the Russians later tried to suppress knowledge of this – before the Tokugawa Shogunate, the Japanese had built quite serviceable galleons to Spanish plans and sailed them around the world, as well as smaller ocean-voyaging trade ships to travel throughout the East Indies. Now, though, that knowledge was long gone. Suddenly, those distant barbarian ships were wooden dragons blazing with fire and iron. Few living Japanese had ever seen a cannon fire. Many saw it on that day, but few of them were lived to tell the tale.
Of course, the Russians were still limited by their numbers. At least a quarter of the Japanese ships made it through the Russian blockade and landed their troops in Edzo. They even won some battles, especially against undisciplined Aynyu irregulars, and retook some towns for a while. Yet in the end the Russians carried the war. This was indeed partly due to their superiority in firearms, training and above all artillery (borrowed from one of the ships) but there was also a mundane factor at work. The Tokugawa Shogunate had kept the peace in Japan through political manipulation, assassination and repression for two centuries. The last major war in Japan had been the Shimabara Rebellion of the 1630s, which had come about in response to the creation of
Sakoku itself. Thus it was that no matter how disciplined the Japanese armies were, no matter how many stories of heroic samurai their officers had been raised upon, they were a mass of green recruits. That factor would have been a great disadvantage even if they had had the same weapons as their enemies.
The Russians, by contrast, included not only veterans of the recent conflict on Edzo, but at least half a regiment’s worth of troops who had fought for years in the Russian Civil War on the side of the Potemkinites. Paul had exiled them to Yakutia, and Benyovsky had found a use for them. Destroying Japanese armies.
Many commentators, not least Benyovsky himself, wrote of that war. The impression one receives from reading their accounts is that the Japanese were very impressive fighters, strongly disciplined and motivated, and rarely surrendering, usually fighting to the death. Yet one cannot escape the fact that this history was written by the victors. The great army that Tokugawa had compiled had been almost completely annihilated: some volleyed down on Edzo, far more drowned in the Strait of Tsugaru. It was the greatest disaster in Japanese naval history since the Battle of Myeongnyang against the Coreans, two centuries before, when a Corean force outnumbered ten to one had wiped out a Japanese fleet. In fact the situations were similar: the Coreans had won partly because of the leadership of Admiral Yi Sun-sin and partly because of technological superiority, for their timberclad Panokseon ships had been impervious to the attacks of the Japanese Atakebunes.
And yet, many historically-aware Japanese writers pointed out acidly, that fleet at Myeongnyang would have stood a better chance against the Russians if it had somehow been brought to the here and now. After all, it had consisted of real warships, and they had been armed with cannon – which was more than one could say for anything Tokugawa could field.
The institution of
Sakoku had been partly due to Japan’s defeat in the Imjin War with the Coreans and Chinese, not least due to that battle. Now it was openly asked whether that isolation had been the right course of action. Murmurs against Tokugawa spread throughout the islands, and nowhere were they stronger than Kiusiu, where the Satsuma fanned the flames. Sikoke[8] too came out as a hotbed of anti-Shogunate feeling, doubtless because its Hans had realised that Tokugawa must have little means of attacking any other island. More significantly, the Choshu Han of southern Niphon, another large and powerful Han, declared an alliance with the Satsuma. The Choshu had had a grudge against the Shogunate ever since a Shogun had deported them to their present remote domain from a previous position of power nearer the centre of Niphon.
These murmurs of discontent needed a cause to rally around, and they soon had one. Emperor Tenmei died – if one believes the poets, upon hearing the news of the disaster of the Tsugaru Straits. Tokugawa, struggling to cope with the repeated setbacks, immediately produced documents claiming that Tenmei had adopted Kojimo, a noble from one of the Sesshu Shinnoke (the Four Cadet Branches of the Imperial House of Japan) as his son on his deathbed. It is almost certain that this was falsified, but Kojimo was presented with the Three Sacred Treasures in Kyoto and thus coronated. However, from the start his reign was hollow. Two of his predecessor’s four chief ministers, his Naidaijin (Minister of the Centre) and Udaijin (Minister of the Right) refused to recognise Kojimo as emperor, and fled into the south.
Kojimo quickly installed new men in those posts, but his credibility took a blow when it transpired that Crown Prince Yasuhito was indeed claiming the Chrysanthemum Throne from exile in the south (having escaped the Shogun’s assassins) and was backed by the rebellious armies of Satsuma, Choshu, and others. They had sent few soldiers to turn the Strait of Tsugaru red with their blood, while Tokugawa’s allies had sent many. Thus, while the supporters of Yasuhito were outnumbered, they were able to hold their own against Kojimo and Tokugawa.
Therefore, Matsumae was forgotten. The Russians had sustained losses in the battles, but now they emerged in a strong position. Though the official trade routes to Japan were closed, the civil war meant that the Pacific Company was soon doing record business. After the defeat, all the Japanese factions wanted European firearms. The southern alliance soon found itself in control of Nagasaki and the Dutch learning that flowed through it, and – with that Japanese knack for duplication that has astonished many Europeans through the ages – were soon building their own advanced European muskets, if not necessarily always matching them with the appropriate training.
Deprived of this, the Shogun’s forces turned to the only alternative source they had, no matter how ironic it was: initially without Tokugawa’s knowledge, they purchased weapons and plans from Moritz Benyovsky.
So, while Japan tore itself apart and the Russians and Lithuanians grew fat on the proceeds, all seemed well for Benyovsky’s mad venture in the East. Yet Japan was one thing. China was quite another. And all those Russians settling in the Amur valley had been brought to the attention of the Guangzhong Emperor…
[1] Recall – the Ainu of Edo (Hokkaido), to use OTL spelling.
[2] Pretty much as OTL except Baranov started a few years earlier (1795 rather than 1799).
[3] Shogunate, or the Shogun’s ‘court’.
[4] Old spelling of Kyushu, retained in TTL.
[5] Indeed this happened in OTL a generation earlier, when Emperor Go-Momozono had no sons and adopted an heir descended from an earlier Emperor’s daughter. However, this did not happen in TTL as Go-Momozono had a son (Tenmei).
[6] Yet another legacy of European interest in rifles after Frederick’s use of them in the assassination of his brother back in 1749.
[7] Honshu – not to be confused with ‘Nippon’.
[8] Shikoku.
Part #58: The Sons of Inti
From – “The Third Platinean War” by Dr Thierry Gaston de Connarceux (1945 – English translation) :
On July 24th 1804, the Cortes Nacionales of the United Provinces of South America, incited by the governing Partido Solidaridad and President-General Juan José Castelli, declared war upon the Carlista regime in the City of Mexico. Castelli had always urged an expansionist policy, an attempt to spread the UPSA’s principles of republican liberty to the other Spanish colonies in South America, and the collapse of Spain presented a perfect opportunity. The exiled King Charles IV’s declaration of an Empire of the Indies muddied the waters more than Castelli had hoped, but nonetheless this was the best chance that the Meridians[1] would have.
This would not be a simple conflict. The chief front was between the northern edge of UP territory in what had once been the Viceroyalty of Peru, just north of Lima, and the new Kingdom of New Granada. Much of the territory near Lima was in fact the property of the restored Tahuantinsuya Empire, which by 1804 was ruled by Hipolito Condorcanqui, the son of Tupac Amaru II, under the name Tupac Amaru III. Although he was competent enough, this Inca lacked the fire of his father and did not have the steel to stand up to Castelli’s demands. Tupac Amaru II could, perhaps, have played New Granada off against the UPSA; but Tupac Amaru III acceded to everything Castelli wanted, and agreed to allow the UPSA to stage their invasion from Tahuantinsuya territory.
The invasion followed the declaration of war rather more rapidly than one might think, considering the difficulty of the terrain. This was expedited partly because the document was brought to Marshal-General Pichegru by sea for most of its journey and offloaded at Lima, but also because the bulk of the Fuerzas Armadas had already been concentrated in the northern provinces by the Partido Solidaridad government. They had known that this moment was coming ever since Spain fell to the French.
Thus the first Meridian troops crossed the debated border on September 3rd 1804 into the declared Kingdom of New Granada. The latter had not been idle, either. After the death of Viceroy Ambrosio O’Higgins in 1801, he had been succeeded by Manuel Mendinueta y Múzquiz, another former military man. Mendinueta’s chief experience had been in raising colonial militias to resist foreign encroachment and put down rebellions. He had served in Cuba in the 1780s, and although the island had eventually fallen to the British and Americans, the remnants of his militiamen continued to plague the Carolinian authorities there well into the nineteenth century. Since taking office as Viceroy in Santa Fe, he had raised further regiments of militia, initially with the object of finishing off the remnants of the Comunero rebels, the Meridians’ republican fellow travellers in New Granada. Mendinueta’s efforts not to rest on his laurels after the Comuneros’ initial defeat by Viceroy Caballero in the 1780s is the chief reason why the Comuneros were of much less assistance to the invading Meridians than Pichegru had hoped.
Mendinueta also confirmed his predecessor’s son Bernardo O’Higgins as a general commanding the regular army regiments stationed in the viceroyalty. Like many of the viceroys, he supported scientific exploration of the region’s flora and fauna, not least because of the Linnaean theories centring around those animals and plants that could be economically important. Chief among the natural philosophers working in New Granada was José Celestino Mutis, a Peninsulare and noted Linnaean who explored much of the New Granadine interior. Although he failed to find anything that would revolutionise the viceroyalty’s economy as Mendinueta had hoped, his expeditions incidentally made very detailed maps of previously unexplored regions. These would prove invaluable to the New Granadine authorities in the coming conflict, granting them a considerable intelligence advantage over the Meridians.
The rule of Mendinueta in New Granada was turned upside down in February of 1804 when the entourage of Infante John of Spain arrived in the port of Maracaibo. The Infante entered Santa Fe in April accompanied by mass processions (secretly arranged by his retainers who had gone ahead) and informed the thunderstruck Mendinueta that the Viceroyalty (and Viceroy) was abolished, and instead there was a new Kingdom of New Granada, part of the Empire of the Indies – and John was King. However, he then immediately reappointed Mendineuta to Secretary of the Council of State (i.e., prime minister) of the new Kingdom. Although John was only twenty-five years of age, his legendary oratory abilities helped win over not only the veteran Mendineuta but also the people of the capital city. His dissemination of Charles’ plans, including the setting up of a regional Cortes in Sante Fe and the sending of representatives to a centralised Grand Cortes in the City of Mexico, helped confuse the Meridians’ propaganda which itself called for similar reforms.
Nonetheless, when Pichegru’s armies hit New Granada in September, the young country was struck hard. The combined Fuerzas Armadas of the UPSA were both more numerous and better trained than anything the Kingdom could muster, even after Mendineuta’s militia reforms. Faced with a battle at Huánuco, General O’Higgins controversially chose to withdraw his inferior forces and concede the Pillco Valley to the Meridians. O’Higgins then converted his army mostly into small bands of mountain warriors designed to wear down the armies of Pichegru as they advanced northwards through the Andes and along the coast. He knew that the Meridians had to be held south of Trujillo, or they would be able to break out into the broad coastal plains of Piura and the northern remnants of Lower Peru – all that remained in Spanish hands after the Second Platinean War – would follow the rest of the old viceroyalty into Meridian shackles.
This tactic was initially fairly successful. Pichegru advanced at a relatively rapid northward pace, and by the winter of 1804 had captured the city of Caraz. The entirety of the Callejón de Huaylas, that great valley from Caraz to Lima, thus now lay in Meridian hands. However, at this point Pichegru was forced to halt. His large army had accordingly large logistical requirements, and the Lower Peruvian interior was too poor for French
maraude tactics to work, even ignoring the fact that the Meridians were trying to portray this as a liberation. What supply trains did come up from Lima were often set upon by O’Higgins’ irregular bands; they enjoyed much more success in attacking the convoys than direct assaults on groups of Pichegru’s infantry.
Because of the problem of his starving men, Pichegru led the bulk of his army over the mountains to the coast, though they suffered losses from O’Higgins’ fighters due to having to split up into many small bands for the mountain passes. The settlements on the coast were mostly poor fishing villages, but Pichegru was able to obtain resupply from the UPSA by sea from Lima. The Meridian army thus escaped its logistical problem, at least temporarily, but O’Higgins took advantage of the fact that Pichegru had only left a few thousand men as the garrison of Caraz. O’Higgins reconstituted his army and attacked Caraz in Feburary of 1805, a surprise assault given that the weather was still inclement. Caraz was small enough that it offered little defensibility, and Pichegru’s garrison was half wiped out. The remaining troops retreated in good order to Yungay. O’Higgins thus regained his name in the court of King John in Santa Fe, where his previous retreat had led some to brand him as a coward.
Pichegru’s response to this was to send reinforcements to Yungay and thus repel O’Higgins’ follow-up assault in April. However, as he reconfigured his own forces for further operations in the mountains, he also sent his lieutenant Francisco Lopez y Lucía to request assistance from Tupac Amaru III. Pichegru had discerned the utility of O’Higgins’ irregular mountain troops and saw that the best way to fight against them was to recruit his own corps of Tahuantinsuya, who were even more skilled at mountain warfare than anyone O’Higgins could call upon. The campaign season of 1805 thus went rather worse for O’Higgins, with Caraz falling again in June and O’Higgins pushed back to the defence of Trujillo by September. There the two sides finally fought a pitched battle, which the outnumbered New Granadine forces lost. O’Higgins and about half of his surviving troops were evacuated by ship from Trujillo: the new navy of the Empire of the Indies had fought a battle against the U.P. Armada a month before off the coast at Paita, and thus the seas were not dominated by the Meridians so much as they were for the early part fo the war.
The Meridians thus broke out into the coastal plain as O’Higgins had feared, and the industrial production of quinine by the Noailles plantations ensured that Meridian troops retained an advantage as they laid claim to the tropical interior on the east side of the mountains. Although King John and his allies continued to amass new forces, it seemed as though the war was definitely going the Meridians’ way. And it seems quite likely that it would have ended in a U.P. victory, had it not been for the impatience of President-General Castelli.
Castelli was disappointed with progress so far. He had envisaged a dramatic fall of all that remained of Lower Peru within a single campaign season, the people rallying to the Meridian banner of liberty and thus forming new cadres as they marched on Santa Fe. As it was, it seemed as though the war would drag on for years and the UPSA would probably only obtain all of New Granada at best. That was insufficient: the Partido Solidaridad’s mission would not be complete until all of Spanish-speaking America was under republican rule. To that end, he prepared a knockout blow. The Armada de las Provincias Unidas was under the command of Admiral Gervasio Ramírez, who had been the most successful captain of the UPSA’s small experimental naval force during the Second Platinean War. Since independence, the Armada had expanded considerably, chiefly by the purchase of obsolete ships from European navies, but also by some limited native construction. It outnumbered the ships loyal to King-Emperor Charles in the City of Mexico, consisting of a hodgepodge of Carlista vessels from Spain and those that had been attached to the viceroyal squadrons, by two to one.
Despite the inconclusive action at Paita, Castelli was therefore convinced that the Meridians could dominate the seas, which meant an obvious solution to the war presented itself. A large army force, loaded onto commandeered merchant ships and protected by Ramírez’ Armada, could be landed at a Mexican port such as Acapulco and then march inland to take the City of Mexico. The whole new Empire of the Indies could thus be brought down in one blow, strangled in the cradle. This strategy showed obvious influence from those of Jean de Lisieux – ‘to hold the heart is to hold the nation’. Whether it would work in this case, given the highly decentralised nature of the new Empire, was a question raised in the Cortes Nacionales – including by some members of Castelli’s own Partido Solidaridad. But Castelli shouted them down and accused them of treachery. The plan would go ahead.
Even with the UPSA’s superiority in numbers, Castelli ordered that all available ships be seized to guarantee a large number of troops could be sent. As fate would have it, a young captain named Alejandro Mendez had a notion along those lines: he proposed that the Armada attack the pirates nesting in the Islas Malvinas and obtain their ships as transports. This idea appealed to Ramírez, who saw it as killing two birds with one stone. Ever since the Second Platinean War in the 1780s, the Islas Malvinas (originally claimed as part of the Viceroyalty of Peru)[2] had been claimed by Britain as a possession. The original intent of the Rockingham government had been to turn Falkland’s Islands, as the British called them, into a minor naval base in order to control the southern Atlantic trade routes. However, the initial survey missions sent there had concluded that the islands were too barren to make the expense worthwhile, and thus the islands had simply been left alone. Some politicians in the UPSA had talked about approaching Britain to purchase the islands, but nothing had so far materialised.
As it was, the uninhabited isles had become the haunt of pirates and privateers. A base at Port Louis (on East Falkland or Isla Soledad) was the chief town, a wretched hive of scum and villainy which was also used as a home port by some legitimate traders and fishermen. In particular, the whalers of Nantucket, an island part of the Confederation of New England, used Port Louis as a base for their excursions into the South Seas. Some of the pirates were from the UPSA themselves originally, while others were British or American and a smaller number were French or from the Spanish colonies. Like most pirate settlements – like those in the West Indies during the heyday of piracy before the British gained control of the Caribbean Sea – Port Louis was a ramshackle but arguably quite egalitarian assembly, with black Africans enjoying an equal status to whites, Indians and mestizos that they did not possess even in the UPSA itself.
Regardless, though the pirates rarely preyed upon U.P. shipping – not wanting to whack the beehive next door – it would be an obvious advantage to deal with them and in so doing gain more shipping for Castelli’s planned descent on Acapulco. To that end, Mendez was given the temporary rank of commodore and led a force of five ships up the Strait of San Carlos (or Falkland Sound as the British called it) for a descent upon the town.
Mendez’ ships – two ships of the line and three frigates – were quite sufficient to break through the pirates’ defences and land marines in the town, seizing it. Most importantly, though, they needed prize ships. Seven pirate or privateer vessels were taken, along with two Nantucket whalers. One of them was the
Phoenix, commanded by Joseph Peirce. Peirce reacted with fury when the U.P. Marines boarded his ship and attempted to fight them off with a cutlass – he had his hand taken off for his pains. Perhaps in some other world ‘Peirce’s Hand’ would have become as famous as Jenkins’ Ear; but this was to prove a sideshow.
For some of the privateer craft escaped, and Mendez ordered his three frigates to pursue. Two of them, between them, captured another three pirate ships, all of them useful for Castelli’s plan. The third, however, was the
Concepcíon, under the command of Captain Eduardo Alvarez.
Alvarez pursued a particularly large and promising-looking pirate craft – whose identity has never been proved – for a full day, until one of the South Atlantic mists had descended. His crew despaired that they had lost their quarry, but Alvarez stubbornly pressed on, until his hope seemed rewarded: a silhouette emerged from the mists, about the right size.
What happened next has been debated furiously by sailors, nationalists and academics alike for decades, but the facts are that the
Concepcíon fired a warning shot, the other ship replied, and a full-scale battle emerged. But the larger frigate was victorious, brought down the enemy’s mainmast, and boarded her with her Marines. A bloody fight ensued.
It was not until the red mist had faded from the eyes of her crew that Alvarez and his men realised that the ‘privateer’ had not simply been flying the Blue Ensign as a false flag, as many ships even of legitimate navies did in that period as a ruse de guerre. They had, in fact, lost their quarry – and instead had found His Majesty’s Brig
Cherry, fifty-two days out of Norfolk, Virginia, under the command of the American Lieutenant Jeremy Hayward, now ten minutes dead beneath the blade of a Meridian Marine.
Alvarez immediately saw the implications and did his best to cover the incident up, repainting the brig’s name, throwing those Americans and Britons who had surrendered overboard so that the story would not get out, hoping the Royal Navy would believe that the
Cherry had simply foundered at sea. But it was not to be. The story got out, who knows how? Perhaps one of Alvarez’ men was haunted by the killing of the prisoners, turned to the bottle, and spoke.
What is known is that by January 1806, both Fredericksburg and London knew of the ‘Cherry Massacre’ and their people, outraged by the stories appearing in their newspapers, bayed for their governments to act…
[1] “Meridian”, derived from
America Meridionalis (South America) is, by the 20th century, the most common demonym for someone from the UPSA in the English-speaking world. Technically the term Septentrian could be used analogously for someone from the Empire of North America, but most Anglophones simply say ‘American’.
[2] Recall in TTL that there never was a Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata, so ‘Viceroyalty of Peru’ included everything south of New Granada.
Part #59: Pope, Austrians and Neapolitans Knot…
“Four hundred years before Christ, the Gauls of Brennus decided it would be a good idea to invade Italy, then weak and divided. Within a few generations, their descendants would bitterly rue bringing themselves to the attention of the Romans as they united the peninsula into the foundations of the greatest empire of the classical world. This would not be the last time a great general made this mistake…”
- George Spencer-Churchill, Commentary on Gibbons’ “History of the Roman Empire” (1935)
*
From – “The Rise of Naples” by James Cuthbertson (1940) –
The winter of 1803 saw the total disintegration of Lazare Hoche’s position in central Italy. The fallout from the Rape of Rome can scarcely be exaggerated. In France, Lisieux used it as an excuse to launch La Nuit Macabre and thus redirect Catholic anger against his Jacobin political enemies, allowing him to consolidate the rule of his own personality cult. However, while Hoche had a far greater appreciation of military realities than Lisieux could ever hope to have (as the French Republican armies would later learn to their cost), equally he was a political amateur beside Lisieux’s skill. Though the troops that had torched Rome and killed the Pope had been French Jacobin volunteers, it was Lazare Hoche’s green and red banner of the Italian Latin Republic that became stained by that blood. The desertion of Hoche’s Italian volunteers began as soon as the news spread, and is doubtless partially responsible for his defeat at Teramo by the Neapolitan and exilic Tuscan army under Prince Mario Pignatelli Strongoli.
Hoche was able to limit the damage for a time by rallying his Italian levies with his personal charisma and blaming Lisieux. But this only worked so long as they were fighting and campaigning, and he could appear to his men on the battlefield. It certainly meant that he was able to hold the field of Ascoli Piceno against Pignatelli’s armies – which outnumbered his by two to one – to cover his retreat from Teramo. Hoche thus successfully retreated to Rome in the hope that he would be able to make suitable amends for the destruction in some symbolic act there. However, this plan backfired and many more of his men deserted when they saw that the rumours of destruction and horror, far from being exaggerated, were if anything euphemistic. Rome was a burnt, dead city inhabited only by the remnants of the poor. The nobles and churchmen had either fled the city or been summarily executed by the Jacobins. The effect was so damaging that Hoche was forced to move his camp yet again in November to Viterbo, even though this made him look indecisive and uncertain.
He left only a small garrison in Rome itself and they proved unreliable. Based on the urging of the “Unholy English Trinity” that the native Neapolitan politicians sourly (and accurately) accused of dominating the court – Admiral Horatio Nelson, Sir Richard Hamilton and Sir John Acton – King Charles of Naples and Sicily sent Pignatelli’s army to retake the city in March of 1804. This was not his only act, however. Throughout the winter, Charles and his ministers had been calculating how to use Hoche’s terrible faux pas to their advantage. Most of the cardinals who had fled the Rape of Rome – about a third of the College – came to Naples the city, and ultimately to the Caserta Palace, the royal court. The cardinals were led, unofficially, by one of the oldest of the survivors – the Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia and Velletri, aged seventy-nine and one of the highest-ranking Church officials to have survived the Jacobin holocaust. He was held in respect by most of the other cardinals who had lived and had sacrificed much of his family’s holdings in France by condemning the Revolution and supporting Benedict XV.
This cardinal thus had many qualities making him a suitable candidate to be elected as exilic Pope, despite the questions of the legality of such an action when the exact number of cardinals to have survived was unknown. But what immediately attracted attention was the fact that this cardinal was Henry Benedict Maria Clement Thomas Francis Xavier Stuart – and the controversy he provoked went on for even longer than his name.
The ‘English Trinity’ was understandably appalled by this, especially the nationalistic Nelson. The Jacobite pretenders had been the bogeyman to Britain for a hundred years and more. The death of Henry Benedict’s brother, Charles Edward, on the field of battle in Ireland in 1751, was still celebrated as a national holiday in many parts of Great Britain and Ireland. The unofficial British national anthem,
God Save the King, was about the defeat of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715. In a country which defined itself by opposition to Catholicism and the Stuarts who had cleaved to the Romish church, making the claimant King Henry IX (doubly confusing now Britain had a Hanoverian Henry IX on the throne) into the Bishop of Rome was an act of base treachery and a Popish Plot of Satanic proportions.
However, it was much easier for the Englishmen to rave about the evils of the Jacobites when they were not there to argue their case, and even Nelson found it hard to condemn this gentle, clever old man who was nonetheless incandescent at the actions of the French in Rome and determined to achieve a suitable vengeance for the Church. Therefore, regardless of what the English thought, Henry Benedict Stuart was duly elected Pope by the conclave of the surviving Cardinals on November 17th 1803. He took the papal name Urban IX, not merely because it matched the number of his claimant royal name (as Nelson darkly suspected) but as a reference to one of the earlier holders of that name – Urban II. It was this predecessor who was on his mind as he released his first papal bull, in December.
This, without actually calling for a
crusade (which would have been considered somewhat archaic in 1803) made reference to Urban II’s great speech which had ignited the First Crusade, including the phrase:
”The Lord beseeches you as Christ's heralds to publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. I say this to those who are present, it meant also for those who are absent.”
Yet Urban IX also moderated his message in a way Urban II had not. He made reference to the Prodigal Son and quoted Christ from the Gospel of Luke:
“ Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.” His intention was partially political. He knew that Hoche would not be overthrown simply by introducing a fiery fervour into the Neapolitan and allied armies: in order to overcome that brilliant general and his run of luck, his own army would have to turn against him. Pope Urban thus pointed the finger at Hoche’s Italian-levied troops with one hand, accusing them of being complicit in horrors like the Rape of Rome, yet beckoned with the other and offered them forgiveness if they would turn against Hoche. Once more he quoted Scripture, this time the Book of Acts: “
To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.
Urban’s bull was widely circulated throughout the whole of Italy, including those portions under Hoche’s rule, and this was largely facilitated by a movement begun by the maverick Calabrian cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo. Despite having entered the College by rather corrupt means and never actually having been ordained as a priest, Ruffo successfully organised a massive underground movement which undercut Hoche’s rule, passing copies of Urban’s bull through secret meetings in churches, homes and even the catacombs under the burnt wreck of Rome. In this Ruffo partially sought to use the Revolution’s methods against it, but whereas Revolutionary thought spread through intellectual salons, Ruffo’s counter-revolutionary ‘Army of the Faith’ did so through mostly through the gathering places of the poor. It also linked up with the Neapolitan Kleinkrieger[1] underground led by Michele Pezza, nicknamed Fra Diavolo (Brother Devil), assisting the Kleinkriegers with intelligence and helping them make hit-and-run raids on isolated Republican garrisons and supply trains. The rumours of the Kleinkriegers’ cruelty towards captured Republican soldiers helped accelerate the rate of the desertions Hoche was desperately trying to halt. However, this successful execution of a conspiracy to undermine and overthrow a state by the Romish church did nothing to calm the paranoia of Nelson, who saw the fears of political popery drilled into him since boyhood suddenly realised.
1804 marked the collapse of the Italian Latin Republic. It is unlikely that the Neapolitans and their allies alone could have rolled up Hoche’s domain, even with the serious problems he was suffering, but at this point the Austrians intervened. The war with the Ottoman Empire had gone badly, with Francis II’s gamble of attacking Wallachia in a bid to draw Russia into the war having fallen flat. Alexandru Morusi had successfully defended the Wallachian interior against General Alvinczi’s army and the Hungarian had been forced to command an embarrassing retreat over the Carpathians after being narrowly defeated north of Bucharest.
In 1802 the Austrians’ fortunes had gradually turned around, with Zagreb being defended by the army of General Pál Kray de Krajova et Topolya, another Hungarian, now in his sixties but still fighting the Turks as well as he had in his youth. Francis released Archduke Ferdinand’s army and the Ottomans were beaten back to the gates of Sarajevo, but there the Austrians outran their supply lines and were once more defeated in March 1803. Soon afterwards the Sublime Porte offered a peace treaty and Francis grudgingly accepted it, by now recognising that he could not continue to unnecessarily prolong a war against the Turks when vast swathes of Hapsburg territory to the west were under tyrannical republican occupation. The Treaty of Bucharest saw all the former Venetian possessions in Dalmatia, save a few islands in the north and the southern tip of the cape of Istria, going to the Ottomans; the paltry remains becoming Austrian. Also, the border in Bosnia was moved slightly northwards. The Ottomans handed over some of the islands they had obtained to the Republic of Ragusa, a small mercantile republic on Venetian lines in the south of Dalmatia that had been an Ottoman vassal for many years.
The effects of this Austro-Turkish War were manifold. In the Ottoman Empire there was a mood of national euphoria stoked by the court party of the Grand Vizier, Mehmet Ali Pasha, and exaggerated in order to brand his political enemies as unpatriotic traitors. The Ottoman navy, the Donanmasi, was somewhat expanded in order to cover the new coastal holdings on the Adriatic. However, the army ultimately suffered, having contracted victory disease from the campaign in Bosnia and victories that were more due to factors such as the generalship of Dalmat Melek Pasha, Austrian indecision and incompetence, and Turkish superiority of numbers than any broader quality. Thus the memories of this war were sufficient to set in a conservative culture, just as countless naval victories had done to the British Royal Navy, and vital reforms were delayed or dismissed. Sultan Murad V’s descendants would ultimately regret this victory.
The Austrians, on the other hand, were smarting from the defeat and their sense of triumph at the repulse of Leroux from Vienna had been tarnished. Francis II’s indecision did not help. Though he claimed the throne of the Holy Roman Empire his father had declared ended, he feared to strike directly into Bavaria in case this antagonised Lisieux, despite the fact that Lascelles had broken with Lisieux and the French armies in Swabia had begun to face defeats in the face of the Mittelbund. This ultimately served to irreparably damage Austrian influence in Germany, particularly given the atrocities committed by Lascelles’ troops in Bavaria while Francis dithered.
Italy was a different matter. Intervention there was strongly argued for by Archduke Ferdinand, and his influence at his nephew’s court served to ensure at least a token force was sent over the Alps in both 1802 and 1803 in an attempt to occupy Venice and ultimately relieve Hapsburg Tuscany. However, in both those years the Austrians were beaten back by Hoche’s troops holding the passes – mostly levied Italians, for at that point Hoche’s charisma served to rally many to his cause, and the Austrians were a traditional enemy anyway.
However, the situation had now changed. Besides, the Hapsburgs were suspicious of the rise of Naples. They had the Pope in their pocket – if Vienna recognised Urban IX as the Pope, and they could scarcely do otherwise without sparking damaging schisms and civil wars that would undermine Hapsburg authority – and they were achieving victories against Hoche. More to the point, they also had the support of the exiled governments of both Venice and Tuscany, and Tuscany was Hapsburg. Yet Grand Duke Carlo, quite understandably given Austria’s inaction, had thrown in his lot with the Bourbons of Naples and Sicily.
Thus if they did not act now, the Austrians ran the risk of losing their influence in Italy altogether. Swathes of formerly Hapsburg territory in the north of Italy were also under Hoche’s occupation, besides. To that end, Ferdinand led a much larger army, enhanced by the seasoned veterans of the war with Turkey, over the Alps in April 1804, and this time the passes were scarcely contested. Mountain warfare was brutal work, and most of the Italians still willing to serve Hoche were of the sort who fought as a lifestyle, for plunder and convenience. They would not die hard on cold stone for Hoche or his Republic. Only Hoche’s French troops, and the few Italians who were true believers in French Republicanism, fought hard – and died.
It was a fantastic turnaround in a matter of months. Hoche continued to fight brilliantly and won almost every battle he fought, but he could not be everywhere. Fra Diavolo’s Kleinkriegers undermined his army’s logistics wherever they could and ambushed sentry parties in the night, slitting their throats. Soon absolutely everything had to be guarded, and there simply weren’t enough men. With Naples surging up from the south, and the Austrians sweeping down through the Venetian Terrafirma, Hoche knew his days were numbered.
Rather than trying to fight on, he reassembled the French core of his army and his Italian true believers at Genoa in August 1804. By that point the Neapolitans had retaken all the former Papal States and Urban IX had been blessed in the ruins of the Basilica of St Peter, with King Charles vowing to rebuild the city even more glorious than before. The Austrians had conquered the Venetian Terrafirma (much to the alarm of the exilic Venetians in Naples), the Hapsburg holdings in Milan – Hoche’s former capital – and were threatening Parma, Mantua and Lucca. In France Lisieux, alarmed by all this, allowed Marshal Boulanger to personally lead an army into Piedmont and secure the territory as a buffer state for the French Latin Republic under military rule. Overly fearful as before, Emperor Francis forbade his uncle from carrying the fight into Piedmont. But Ferdinand was more interested in marching south, knowing the Italian Latin Republic was now dead and that the postwar borders might well be drawn on the battlefield now.
As it transpired, the armies met in March 1805 roughly at the point where the border was drawn at the Treaty of Rome in 1806. This was a line between Ancona in the east and Orbetello in the west, partitioning the former Papal States between the two new great powers in Italy, the Hapsburgs in the north and the Bourbons in the south. Pope Urban permitted the secularisation of much of the papal lands in a move that shocked many of the other cardinals, but he was used to trading his possessions in exchange for security, and now he had the possessions of a prince. The Papal territory was reduced to Lazio, with the Neapolitans also having possession over the ‘military frontier’ in the north. Sometimes the more minor states of Italy were resurrected, as in the case of Tuscany, but these were strongly vassalised to either of the two powers – Tuscany, despite being Hapsburg, was now Bourbon in all but name, and Carlo’s heir (the future Carlo II) hastily married Princess Carlotta of Naples in order to cement the alliance. It was a loveless marriage and there persisted a rumour for many years that the future Grand Duke of Tuscany, Carlo III, was in fact the son of Horatio Nelson. Venice was not restored, being amalgamated into the Hapsburg possessions in part as a recovery of loss of face after the Ottomans having annexed the Venetian coast of Dalmatia. The presence of the exiled Venetian fleet serving the Neapolitans thus promised to be a bone of contention between the two powers in the future.
But for now Hoche gathered the remnants of his forces in Genoa along with what was left of his fleet, and sailed to the port of Mataró, north of Barcelona, in Catalonia. There, he marched overland to Barcelona and offered his army to the French occupying forces there, gambling that Lisieux was – as always – planning a big push and would not let their previous disagreements stop him from obtaining more forces.
Lisieux bit the bullet and agreed, and Hoche’s armies were reintegrated into those of France in April 1805, with Hoche retaining his general’s rank and formally recognising Lisieux as Administrateur. Of course, in private Lisieux could not forgive Hoche’s betrayal. Yet according to his notions of the value of human life, it would be criminal to execute such a brilliant general who might still serve France well. To that end, Lisieux decided on a course of action not unlike that which he had used to wipe out the Jacobins – and which had, ultimately, led to this day.
Find an enemy to set Hoche against, one that he would inflict plenty of damage upon, but would probably be killed in the process. Maximum efficiency.
Lisieux’s plans moved ahead apace. But back in Naples, Horatio Nelson led the Neapolitan fleet – including the
Cacafuego and its rockets – in pursuit of Hoche. Hoche was saved by a Mediterranean storm which interposed itself between his Genoese ships and Nelson’s mostly former Venetian ones. The storm delayed the Neapolitans sufficiently that they missed Hoche’s harbouring at Mataró. Nelson learned the Genoese ships were there and attacked by night, using the rockets once more as a prelude weapon to instil terror in his opponents, and taking many prizes. But Hoche’s forces were gone, marched overland to Barcelona, and soon would return over the Pyrenees to France.
Things had now changed. Naples had not, technically, ever been at war with France, though it had fought French Jacobins under Hoche’s command. Nelson, in his zealousness to prosecute the war against the fleeing Hoche, had attacked the French occupation troops in Catalonia. This served as an inspiration to Catalonia’s own Kleinkriegers, who had disliked Spanish rule but had an even more ingrained racial hatred of the French, and soon attacks all over the province were taking place.
The conservative King Charles was horrified and fearful at this escalation, but events were out of his hands. The Pope completely confused Nelson by praising his actions and suggesting another crusade was required to deliver Catalonia (maybe even all Spain!) out of French hands. It was a stupid, ridiculous plan considering Naples had only just escaped total annihilation due to Hoche’s miscalculation over Rome. It was absurdly audacious. Therefore, of course, it had Nelson’s unqualified support. And where the Romish Church and Englishmen agree, a mere king has little chance of stopping things.
Pignatelli’s army sailed for Spain in October 1805, at the same time when the Portuguese and their Carlista allies were beginning to turn the tide in the west…
[1] i.e., guerilla, partisan. Hiedler’s movement provides the most accepted name for it in TTL because it is most notorious.