Part #310: Dusk of Lilies, Dawn of Rainbows
“SUPPORT THE ACTION
FAIR PAY AND NO TO PENSION ‘REFORM’ FOR POLICE AND FIRE OFFICERS
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Professionals Not Conscripts
Back Our Boys And Girls
VIRGINIA POLICE AND FIRE UNION – VPFU
Write to your Burgess today!”
- Political poster seen on Foxbury Street, Fredericksburg, ENA.
Photographed and transcribed by Sgt Bob Mumby, December 2020
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(Dr Wostyn’s note)
After those…unfortunate interludes, I can now present my opus, without false modesty. Yes, it is a transcript scrapbook of others’ words, but as we have not been fortunate enough to find a single lecture that captures the entire narrative of this vital historical process, I have been forced to combine extracts from multiple lectures. These include two, or three I suppose, speakers we have already heard from, as well as a new lecture on women in politics. I hope the narrative flows without disjointed transitions and my work is appreciated. Now read on…
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Extract from recorded lecture “A Century of Cytherean Progress” by Dx Jane Lacklin, recorded November 22nd, 2020—
As I’ve said, there have been many names in the history of just the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that every little girl – and boy – should know, the women who blazed the trail for us today. As well as the countless anonymous workers and strivers behind them, of course. I’ve talked about Lydia Taft, Liberty Grey, LG Manders, Dame Eleanor Cross, just from our own fair shores. Elsewhere, Lady Rachel Russell, Horatie Bonaparte, Emilia Mendoza, Archqueen Henrietta Eugenie,[1] from a handful of other countries. I could speak of others in China, or those whose fight was much longer and harder in Germany or Italy, those who never realised their dreams in the old UPSA before the fall.
But there is one name that everyone knows. Even a child who knows almost nothing else about France will recognise the name of Madame Héloïse Mercier, née Rouvier. (A little applause) Madame Mercier would have been a great trailblazer for Cythereanism even if her career had ‘only’ reached the heights of serving as Controller-General or Foreign Ministress. But she did far more than that. She was an elected female head of government in an age when that was unthinkable in most nations. Nor was she notable only because of her gender, because she shepherded France through a period of peril and change unlike any other. And, of course, she was instrumental in building the world order that we take for granted today.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though, but start at the beginning. Héloïse Rouvier was born in 1868, two years later than her longtime nemesis Tsar Paul of Russia, whom she would long outlive. She was born into a political family, albeit not a major one, aligned to the National Party or ‘Verts’ who, at the time, were the major party on the doradist end of French politics. When Héloïse was growing up, the Verts were also the dominant party in the Grand-Parlement. The last government by their rival Diamantine or ‘Rouge’ party had ended in 1878, when she was ten. While she was studying for her university degree – another recent innovation for women in France – and helping her parents campaign, the Verts governed France under Prime Minister Jean Charpentier and then Charles de Saboulin.
Growing up, Héloïse’s political heroine and icon was Horatie Bonaparte, daughter of Napoleon Bonaparte – or Leo Bone as we often call him – and mother of a son named in his honour, Napoleon Leclerc, who was already a rising figure in the Verts. Horatie, as we’ve discussed, had been a great force fighting for Cytherean rights in France, and had been elected as a femme de robe to the Paris Parlement-Provincial, the highest office for which women could stand at the time (1870). Recognising this inspiration, Héloïse’s father Gabriel envisaged his daughter directly following in Horatie’s footsteps to become a femme de robe herself, but Héloïse had loftier ambitions. In 1891, de Saboulin’s government passed legislation that allowed women to be elected to the Grand-Parlement for the first time, as well as expanding the very limited female suffrage that had formerly existed.
The first woman elected to the Grand-Parlement was Fabienne de Gontaut in a by-election in 1892, followed by six more – five Verts and one Rouge – at the 1893 general election. Héloïse missed out then, being rejected for her youth, but then had an unexpected turn of luck when Rouge parlementaire Thierry Anciaux resigned only months later. Anciaux’s circonscription (we would say constituency) was the small city of Sens, Champagne Province.[2] Few among the Verts thought the seat was winnable, as Anciaux had run a strong Rouge electoral machine there and de Sabolin’s government had just passed some unpopular tax laws. There was thus little appetite for prospective candidates to try for the race, leaving it open to the ambitious Héloïse.
Héloïse only had any campaign resources at all because of her parents’ influence, with the party organisation in Champagne Province seeing it as a lost cause. She was dismissed by Anciaux’s presumed Rouge successor, Pierre Lespiau, as ‘une jolie petite fille dans la robe de sa grand-mère’, referring to Héloïse’s practice of wearing the now-outdated ballon juppe dress in honour of Horatie Bonaparte.[3] She retaliated by a broadsheet campaign using the slogan ‘Sens ou Non-sens?’ in which she attacked Lespiau’s lack of local connections and accused his policy positions of being against the economic interests of the people of Sens.
But it was not by a mere clever slogan, or by family connections, that Héloïse succeeded, but hard work, patience, leadership, and refusal to give up. She had luck and good fortune on her side, yes, when it began to emerge that Anciaux had not retired for health reasons, as he had implied, but to escape prosecution before an embezzlement scandal emerged. But that would not have been enough for the Verts to win the seat, if they had not already had a campaign infrastructure and fired-up volunteers in place to take advantage of the sudden, unexpected Rouge weakness. In the end, Héloïse was elected in a shock upset, at the age of just twenty-five. She had won over the people of Sens, and would continue to receive their support for the remainder of her long political career, despite party changes along the way. Remember that only one woman in five had the vote at the time, too, so she had been elected off the back of winning support from more male voters than female.
Three years later, the Pandoric War broke out. We are privileged that Héloïse was an inveterate diarist, and captured a record of her impressions throughout much of a chaotic century. Those diaries have now been released in an – almost – unexpurgated form. Of course, she has also exposed herself unintentionally to ridicule by doing so, by preserving the same misconceptions and poor predictions which we all make, recognisable only in hindsight. Her first impressions of her future husband were negative – of course they were, he was a senior figure in the opposing party, and would soon rise to lead it! Who could have truly predicted how the Pandoric War would have gone in those early days of madness? Let us not get sidetracked by such nonsense.
As you’ll be aware, France adopted a policy of armed neutrality during the war. Prime Minister Leclerc brought the opposition Rouges into a coalition government and appointed their aforementioned leader, Robert Mercier, as Foreign Minister. Héloïse, who had proved herself with tireless work on parliamentary committees, was effectively appointed as his deputy to keep an eye on him for Leclerc. When Mercier fell ill during the ‘Peace Flu’ at the end of the war, Héloïse had to negotiate directly with then-Tsarevich Paul, and the two became nemeses thereafter – though Paul seemed to think about Héloïse much more than the reverse. Héloïse also had to negotiate with the equally misogynistic Lodewijk de Spoelberch of Belgium.[4] She held her own and proved herself, and for that reason alone, became a target of jealousy and innuendo by men of lesser vision – and a few women. Invented rumours of an affair between her and Mercier circulated, and worse.
After the war, the coalition government broke and Prime Minister Leclerc needed a new Foreign Minister. Héloïse had impressed him enough that he wanted to promote her to the office, whose duties she had effectively already carried out when Mercier was indisposed. But prejudice and pressure led Leclerc to appoint Philippe Soisson instead, a lesser man whose tenure led, in part, to the failure of the IEF, which could have strangled Societism in its cradle.[5] Angered and distressed by the lack of support from her party, Héloïse semi-retired from politics, crossed the floor to the Diamantines and began a relationship with Robert Mercier. Some have said she did so out of spite alone, but that, again, represents the words of her envious rivals. Sens re-elected her despite her party switch and marriage – at the time, it was considered an unspoken rule that while women could have jobs, married women were expected to terminate their careers to focus on their families.
Robert Mercier was a successful Prime Minister, but also prone to repeated bouts of illness, and – once again – Héloïse would often informally deputise for him. It was a similar arrangement, in some ways, to what we’d later see here in the Empire with Lilian Marley. Héloïse was certainly part of the ‘Mercier Mitigation’ policy that helped shore up French finances in the aftermath of the Panic of 1917, but also ended up hurting Pérousie and Bisnaga. She always retained some popularity in Pérousie, though, because she accompanied King Charles XI on a visit there in 1908 and made an impression the Pérousien people, inspiring women there to fight for representation too. Along with her husband, she had been instrumental in pushing through the 1914 settlement that gave representation to Pérousie in the Grand-Parlement.[6]
When Robert finally passed away in 1918, leaving Héloïse a widow with two children, Renée and Valéry, the King was so impressed by her that he encouraged the Diamantines to make her the first Prime Ministress then and there. However, aside from prejudice because of her gender, the Diamantine caucus was also rather suspicious of her as a former Vert who still remained on the doradist end of the new party. Instead, Camille Rouillard became Prime Minister, but Héloïse did rise to become the first female Controller-General. It is remarkable that this is technically the first ministerial office she officially held – everything prior to it had been informal deputising!
The Verts returned to power under Cazeneuve in 1920. When the first phase of the Black Twenties conflict broke out in 1922, Cazeneuve approached Héloïse in opposition and asked her to be his Foreign Ministress as part of a war coalition. Héloïse saw it as a potentially poisoned chalice, knowing that Rouillard and Vincent Pichereau would not follow her and it would split the Diamantines. She would also be painted as a serial traitor. However, both a desire to do the right thing and an ambition to finally be recognised for her work at the Tuilleries inspired her to agree.[7] By doing so, she inadvertently set the first pebbles of the avalanche in motion that would lead to the destruction of a French party system that had endured for more than seven decades.
At the end of the war in Europe, that party system crumbled. Politics in France had become defined by one’s support or opposition to the continuation of the war in the midst of the plague pandemic, with formerly defining economic questions falling by the wayside. Héloïse was effectively the leader of the pro-war Rouge faction in coalition with Cazeneuve’s dwindling pro-war Vert faction, while on the opposite side, Vincent Pichereau of the anti-war Rouges now plotted to team up with Roger Marin’s anti-war Verts.[8] Both sides adopted a coupon election strategy in which selected candidates would be endorsed on the basis of their war positioning, regardless of their pre-war party membership. With Cazeneuve caught offguard – and this being presented by Héloïse’s enemies as another example of her alleged ‘serial backstabbing’ – French politics would now be dominated by the division between the pro-war Saphirs, as they became known, and the anti-war Rubis. This would become an ancestral distinction important long after the war itself retreated into memory.
When you read about this in history books, the writers often act as though the parties had just transformed overnight. That’s not the case. Both sides were still extremely loose alliances of people who had been in bitterly-opposed, mutually incompatible factions before the war. Héloïse was a good manager of her party, especially with help from her right-hand man Alain Orliac, but both she and Pichereau could not rely on a solid majority in the way that the pre-war parties had. A government in a seemingly-comfortable position could unexpectedly fall when certain factions withdrew their support over a crucial bill without warning. It is important to understand this when seeing how volatile and unstable French politics were in the Electric Circus era, with governments rarely lasting a full term before fresh elections were called.
Pichereau managed to lead a Rubis government from 1926 to 1929, at which point it collapsed and Héloïse was swept to power – helped, according to some, by a certain Cytherean incident at the Paris Technological Expo just before the election. France’s first female Controller-General, her first Foreign Ministress, had now become her first Prime Ministress. It was an extraordinary rise. Some say Héloïse is not a good role model for girls because she came from a privileged family with political connections. But that is, as she might say, Non-sens. Yes, those advantages helped give her a shot at the Grand-Parlement, but everything else was her own work. She certainly faced more opposition than a male politician from a poor background in this era would have. Her success and popularity survived multiple occasions of burning bridges with her original party and all the connections it brought. Nor was her rise meteoric; it required years of patient hard work, and being unrecognised for much of it, before she reached the highest elected office in the land. At the age of sixty-one, she was the first elected female head of government of a major country in the history of the world.
Nor was her first term in power an easy one. Héloïse inherited a growing crisis in both Pérousie and Bisnaga…
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(Dr Wostyn’s note)
After that introduction, I will avoid repeating sections covering events in those countries during Madame Mercier’s first term, and instead quote the parts describing what followed on from the end of that term.
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Extract from recorded lecture “Revolt and Ramification” by Dr Adrian Radley, recorded November 24th, 2020—
…before I go on, I should try to give a fair hearing to Loïc Caouissin. In France, and certainly in Bisnaga and Pérousie, he is popularly known simply as ‘the man who lost the Empire’. It is inarguably true that his policies, at the very least, hastened the split between France and her erstwhile colonies. Nonetheless, M. Caouissin has seen some attempts to rehabilitate his legacy of late. There are a number of comparisons to be made to our own President Faulkner. (Audience murmurs)
Caouissin was a member of the Breton minority within France, born outside the city of Nantes. Although the region has been politically stereotyped as being on the ultra doradist end due to the number of politicians who run on its Chouan loyalist history during the Jacobin Wars, there are also plenty of cobrist Bretons, and Caoussin had been a moderate Diamantine. He was born in 1874 and served in the IEF as a medic, coming from a medical family – his father and brother were both qualified doctors and his sister was a leading nurse. After the intervention in South America was over, Caouissin studied economics at the University of Bordeaux, then worked for Caisse Française before deciding to enter politics in the aftermath of the Panic of 1917.[9] Ironically, he was partly inspired to do so due to being impressed by the ‘Mercier Mitigation’ policies of Robert and Héloïse Mercier, and feeling the Diamantine Party needed economically literate voices to defend those decisions against populist attacks. Of course, the primary disadvantage of the Mitigation had been that it had allowed the hammer to fall on Bisnaga and Pérousie rather than France herself, and Caouissin’s approval hinted at his own legislative priorities.
Like many doctor’s sons, Caouissin was morally opposed to war, and his experiences in South America had only sharpened that resolve. In the Grand-Parlement, he found himself opposing Héloïse Mercier when she joined Cazeneuve’s war government. Caouissin became a prominent speaker during the Black Twenties, arguing that it was inhumane to continue war while the plague was ravaging Europe. He faced many attacks, verbal and occasionally physical, for supposedly being a crypto-Societist as a consequence. But he also volunteered to help with the plague-fighting efforts, efforts which would rob his brother Arnaud of his life, like those of so many doctors and nurses who put their own safety on the line to save others.
As the end of the war loomed, Caouissin worked with Vincent Pichereau to forge the new Rubis alliance with Roger Marin. He served as Controller-General in Pichereau’s post-war Rubis cabinet from 1926 to 1929. When Pichereau lost power, most expected Marin to be his successor as party leader, but Caouissin was able to outmanoeuvre him and secure more support from the diverse, chaotic party caucus. During his time in opposition, Caouissin became noted for a critical style of holding the government to account, often praising the intentions and efforts of Madame Mercier and her government whilst critiquing the details. Le Courrier Français famously described his approach as ‘cold, precise, examining, like a coroner pronouncing a policy deceased’.[10]
That sums up both Caouissin’s advantages and problems as a politician. His intelligence and knowledge were obvious and widely respected, with most opposing ministers dreading to go up against his cross-examination. But he could also seem cold, emotionless, unfeeling, despite all his compassion during the plague years. Marin disparagingly nicknamed him ‘Le docteur anglais’.
Madame Mercier had won the election of 1929 and, after her shaky majority fell, secured a slightly stronger minority position in 1933. However, the volatile nature of French parties at the time meant that this would not last. Late in 1934, her government fell and Caouissin was able to weld together his own coalition, then secure a narrow majority at the 1935 snap election. Mercier stepped down as leader of the Saphirs, but would return in 1937 when her successor, Jérôme Mesnard, found himself unable to hold the fractious caucus together.
Even without a divided party and the bitter Marin sulking on the backbenches, Caouissin would have had a troubled portfolio. Shortly after the 1935 general election, King Charles XI passed away and was succeeded by his son as Henri V, a regnal name that had not been used since the seventeenth century. The erstwhile Dauphin, whose more than adequate supply of middle names would have allowed him to be the more conventional Charles XII or Louis XIX if he had preferred, was sending a message. The 1930s were a time of change, new ideas, new technology. Henri had been good friends with Prince Francesco, Duke of Venice, who at the time was mostly known as a wastrel adventurer grandson of the exiled and deposed King Paolo of Sicily.[11] He had made his name in the 1920s, while the rest of the world was consumed with the Black Twenties, by exploring unsearched regions of the Pérousien Arrière-pays, and had become a popular legend in Pérousien society with both rich and poor.
So one of Caouissin’s first headaches was organising a coronation for King Henri. All sorts of controversies erupted to cast a stain on Caouissin’s overseas policies; until the King himself intervened, there would have been no recognition of Pérousie or Bisnaga in the ancient ceremony. An asimcon of Caouissin looking uncomfortable next to a Pérousien Indien tribal leader holding a spear, about to pledge allegiance to the King, was widely circulated in the Pérousien press. Caouissin also allegedly described Bisnagi banners there as ‘garish’ or ‘savage’; researchers have since found that the comments were made by one of the footmen there and misattributed to the Prime Minister. However, the fact that he found himself unable to separate himself from the accusations illustrate that Caouissin’s genius for economics did not extend to the vital skill of managing the media.
And genius he certainly was. Today, revisionist historians in France claim that Caouissin’s profound reforms to France’s tax code and state are largely responsible for its continuing reputation for economic strength to this day. Many of the economic good times of Mercier’s two premierships, they argue, are actually the fruit of policies passed by Caouissin, first as Controller-General under Pichereau and then as Prime Minister himself. While Mercier had already liberalised the voting franchise, it was Caouissin who finally made French suffrage fully universal and equal for the Grand-Parlement. He created the Crown Insurance (Assurance de la Coronne) scheme which underwrote pensions and basic free health insurance for French subjects, and formed the basis of more comprehensive institutions later.[12] Of course, England had had similar institutions for decades (lending fuel to Marin’s portrayal of Caouissin as an Englishman) but unlike England, France had a stable and widely trusted economy that could be trusted to underwrite the scheme. By contrast, Scotland, with a smaller and less stable economy than England, had already scaled back the national insurance scheme it had inherited from the People’s Kingdom, after several pension funds collapsed during the Panic of 1917. Hence all those ratiocinic stories from the 1930s and 40s involving plots where Scots try to cross the River Tweed to access English hospitals…but I’m getting off-topic.
I mentioned that Caouissin is sometimes compared to President Faulkner, and yes, some say he took inspiration from Social Americanism. (Murmurs). But though he focused much of his attention on building the foundations of what would become the modern welfare state, he has received remarkably little credit for it, until recently. No, all we know about Caouissin is that he lost the Empire. And he lost it mainly because he was not interested in it. Again, we could make comparisons to Faulkner.
A lot of the abuses and mistakes that are laid at Caouissin’s door are really an indirect result of him relying on inadequate and brutal men to cover the colonial portfolios. Remember, he was horse-trading between many factions of his fractious party, and when his own priorities were domestic, why not throw his party-balancing political sinecures at the colonial offices? While Caouissin focused on balancing France’s national debt – very ably, I might add – he was putting former Noir Party Linnaeans in charge of administering mostly non-white, mostly non-Christian Bisnaga, or having stuffy aristocratic ultraroyalistes be the ones whom Pérousien campaigners had to talk to. It is small wonder that those two countries, their patience with France already deteriorating, now began to build towards open revolt…
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Extract from recorded lecture on “Pérousie: Your Distant Next-Door Neighbour” by Dr Raoul Rouqet and Olivia Hughes, recorded November 8th, 2020—
In the mid-1930s, few among the casinos of Jersey and Pampelune would have given you good odds for a bet that a crisis was coming with Pérousie – and Bisnaga. Madame Mercier had been unable to come up with a permanent settlement, and now she had been replaced by that idiot Caouissin, who cared not for events beyond the borders of his balancesheet. Conflict seemed inevitable. And, perhaps, it was, but few could have foreseen the three triggers, the events that together ignited what became known as the Crise de ’37.
Firstly: the one closest to home for you Americans. As you know – hopefully (Audience chuckles) – during and after the Pandoric War, the exilic Irish people living in what were then the Mexican provinces of Nueva Irland, formerly Norte Nuevo Santander, and Tejas y Luisiana, were encouraged to break away and fight for the ENA in return for independence. The ENA government kept their promise – it does happen occasionally (Audience laughter) – and the independent Kingdom of Nueva Irlanda, or New Ireland, was created. At first it was in personal union with the Empire, but later switched to being in personal union with old Ireland. The Irish abroad could finally travel freely home, to find that the ‘Auld Sod’ was not always what they had expected. Perhaps more importantly, the old Irish discovered the joys of cheap holidays to sun, sea and sand, and promptly got badly sunburnt. (Audience murmurs of agreement)
The unforeseen problem at the time was that, while the old province of Nueva Irlanda had had most of the Irish-descended people of Mexico, a substantial minority were in Tejas y Luisiana. But the majority of the people there were Canadiens, or Canajuns as you call them, descendants of the people expelled or…‘encouraged’ to leave Quebec, Cubwick as you call it, after the Wars of Supremacy.[13] Some American politicians wanted to annex these lands to the Empire, but in the end, as one of the compromises at the peace table, they ended up being appended to the independence Kingdom of Nueva Irlanda. This left Nouvelle-Orléans as a separated part of Westernesse, and soon the problems of trying to include Nouvelle-Orléans in Westernesse and Imperial politics – though they would eventually be resolved after the Black Twenties – discouraged further attempts from taking these lands for the Empire.
In the early years after the Pandoric War, the large Canajun minority in the new, expanded Nueva Irlanda were largely content. They had allied with the New Irish in the past against what they saw as Mexican government tyranny. They were both Catholic peoples and had most feared being ruled by Protestant-supremacist Americans, as well as including some black and Tortolian blood which could potentially run afoul of the American prejudices of the day. Nueva Irlanda seemed a pluralistic state in which both Canajun and New Irish could live in harmony. Then came the War of Tongues, as it was known.
Nueva Irlanda’s lingua franca had always been Spanish, the language of Mexico, New Spain, and the Hermandad. When the New Irish had arrived, they had come speaking English or Gaelic, but had largely forgotten both, especially the latter. The Canajuns continued speaking French…their form of French within their community, but conducted outward-facing business in Spanish.
In 1936, a new government was elected in the capital of Laredo, led by Patrick O’Flaherty Hernández. Hernández felt that Nueva Irlanda needed a new, forward-looking identity to seize the opportunities of the future, and not simply being subsumed beneath the economic giant of the ENA within the Philadelphia Bloc. Though he had grown up in a Spanish-speaking family, he found that Spanish was an increasingly less relevant language on the world stage when conducting business. The Societists were busy trying to eradicate it within the territory they controlled, which coincided with most of the areas in which Spanish had ever been spoken. Only Mexico, Guatemala and a few other nations remained free, and were a global irrelevance compared to other powers like the ENA, France or Russia. Hernández argued that in order to be able to compete globally, Nueva Irlanda needed to adopt English as its lingua franca, which would also bring it into line with old Ireland.[14] In other words, from now on all schools would teach primarily or exclusively in English.
This was received with little controversy among the New Irish, who had had sufficient contact with the old Irish by now not to associate English with the English people or the ENA, especially as Hernández intended to use an official version of English that at least paid lip service to the unique dialects and usagees within old Ireland. However, it was seen as an existential threat by the Canajuns and radicalised them into high-level protest and a violent campaign of terrorism led by future political leader René Perrault. Shocked by the response, Hernández called on help from the ENA to subdue the uprising, which led to outrage in turn among the people of France. Opposition leader Jérôme Mesnard called upon the government to invoke the Malraux Doctrine and fight for French-speakers under foreign oppression. Open conflict between those erstwhile allies of the Black Twenties, France and the ENA, seemed possible. (Audience murmurs)
The second trigger of La Crise came in Poland. The old Duc de Berry, who had led France as Dictateur during the Black Twenties, had been installed as King Louis II of Greater Poland after the war. In 1937 he passed away unexpectedly, leading to a diplomatic crisis. Succession to the throne was electoral, and even though the French had the Election Sejm in their pocket, they still needed to provide a credible candidate. Berry’s own son was not interested and was considered unsuitable. Caouissin’s government scrabbled around desperately trying to dig up a Polish king, and they were fortunate that the Russians were too busy blaming each other after the Pendzhab debacle to take advantage of the situation. After King Henri suggested his friend the Duke of Venice, and was quietly told non (Audience laughter) the Election Sejm was eventually persuaded to pick the Duc de Broglie, who you may remember as France’s ambassador here in Fredericksburg during the Black Twenties, and he became King Victor.
The third trigger was perhaps the biggest and most significant. None of the ones I’ve mentioned so far came in Pérousie, or Bisnaga. And, technically, nor was this. The third trigger was the Mauré War of Independence.
Now I am a Pérousien and I would not claim to speak for our Mauré brethren. So I will not discuss this conflict in detail. Of course, on paper Autiaraux was already independent; but since the Pandoric War, the nation had become a subordinate vassal of France for protection against Russia, fearful of revenge for Wehihimana’s attack on Gavaji. As I said, I won’t go into detail about the economic and other factors that provoked resentment among the Mauré people and united their fractious iwis into a coherent response. Suffice to say that they did, expelling French residents and troops, cutting Lectel lines, defying orders from Paris.
Caouissin’s response – or I should say, his government’s response – was to send in the fleet. The fleet in question was commanded by Admiral François Guibal. He was the younger brother of Alain Guibal, a politician, who had served as Controller-General under Cazeneuve.[15] Guibal had fought in the Pacific in the Black Twenties and had served under that fool Chambord, so he was well aware of how we Pérousiens might react to a new French fleet in our back yard.
What made it such a crisis, in French eyes, was that opposition forces were now working together. Striking workers and revolting sepoys in Bisnaga teamed up with the Wodeyars and other aristocracy there, and secretly sabotaged elements of the fleet when it refuelled and rearmed in Bisnagi ports. The same happened with our own workers in Pérousie, and French sailors on shore leave…well, let’s not get into that. Guibal took on board some Pérousien troops to subdue the Mauré uprising. I must be quite frank and say that there have often been…tensions between we Pérousiens and the Mauré, and there had been race riots in Mauréville when news of the rebellion arrived. I am not proud of that. I say it only to explain why, despite the fact that most Pérousiens increasingly hated the idea of a French fleet visiting, Guibal nonetheless got plenty of troops ready to kill Mauré rebels.
To be honest, though, all that sabotage was more symbolic than anything. Guibal was a good commander with good captains under him, capable of managing problems, and by the time his flagship – the ill-named Amiral Chambord – reached Autiaraux, most of those sabotages had been found and undone. What happened at Waitemata Bay was not thanks to the work of those saboteurs, brave and principled though it was to show solidarity with the Mauré, but thanks to the decisions made by one man. Guibal is a complex figure, but at the end of the day, he was a good man who believed in French honour, and there were lines he would not cross...
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Extract from recorded lecture “Revolt and Ramification” by Dr Adrian Radley, recorded November 24th, 2020—
“Admiral Guibal’s Non”, as it became known, has entered the founding mythos of both Bisnaga and Pérousie, and arguably marks the beginnings of modern France as well. I shouldn’t need to describe it to you, as it’s been depicted in film many times – albeit often with a slant on how it is presented, of course. Diversitarian interpretations aside, I wince at how the 1978 version of L’Affrontement portrays the Mauré fleet lining the bay as being composed of old armourclads with sailing masts! The Mauré were certainly at a profound disadvantage, but their ships were 1890s post-Liaodong coal-fired sub-lionhearts and protected frigates, many of them sold to them by the Siamese when they had updated their own fleet after the Pandoric War.[16] They were certainly not helpless lambs to the slaughter, and the world had already seen what even outnumbered and outgunned Mauré could achieve when Wehihimana took Gavaji from the Russians.
But I will avoid nitpicking. Guibal defied his orders from Caouissin, or rather, Caouissin’s rather brutal and unreconstructed war minister, Olivier Fiquet, and refused to open fire on the Mauré fleet protecting the capital of Tetaitocquerau [Auckland]. Pérousien troops had already been landed on the peninsula, and a pernicious rumour spread that Guibal had abandoned them there to the mercies of the Mauré – keen to take revenge, doubtless, for the race riots directed at their compatriots in Pérousie. In fact, Guibal had retrieved the Pérousien troops under cover of darkness, but the secrecy of the operation meant that, as they say, a lie can run around the world before the truth can get its boots on.
It is important to distinguish between specific incidents and the broad tides of history. Bisnaga and Pérousie did not seek to break away from France because of the Crisis of 1937. It merely brought to a head the resentment that had been boiling beneath the surface for years, growing more organised and united. Various disparate groups were being brought together, both in Pérousie and especially in Bisnaga. A little earlier, in 1936, what became known to history as the Concert of Bangalore united travailliste – sorry, ‘worker-ist’ – lower-caste movements, discontented aristocrats, sepoys, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, even a number of Métis, or Franco-Bisnagis as they are known today. Figures from Maharajah Chamaraja Wodeyar XII, to Thomas Mathieu, to Haider Arshad and Ram Mahesh, now stood shoulder to shoulder. A fresh rolling wave of strikes had already begun to cripple Bisnaga before Guibal’s fleet called in for supplies and received a rude awakening. Governor-General de Fontenoy and the FEIC, through their pocket sympathetic parlementaires in Paris, clamoured for a resolution. Pérousien-recruited police and militia switched sides to join the Concert themselves.
In another era, especially in a less chaotic political landscape, perhaps there might have been a climate in Paris whereby a Prime Minister could rally the people’s anger to subdue these upstart colonies by force. Some certainly tried...
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Extract from recorded lecture “A Century of Cytherean Progress” by Dx Jane Lacklin, recorded November 22nd, 2020—
...as I said, when Héloïse took power for the first time, Pérousie and Bisnaga were already drifting away from the old united French Empire that some crusty old aristocrats and businessmen in the Grand-Parlement dreamed of. Héloïse did what she could to stem the bleeding, but she could not work miracles. And whatever one might say of his domestic achievements, Caouissin had thrown away what progress she had made. Bisnaga and Pérousie were now both, in very different ways, in open revolt against Parisian rule.
Olivier Fiquet resigned his post for failing to subdue the Mauré uprising. There were calls from conservatives to recall Admiral Guibal and subject him to a court-martial. This naturally angered his brother Alain, who shifted from a neutral back-bench position to support Héloïse. Her new coalition became known as ‘Les Deux Alains’ because she had always been supported by Alain Orliac in addition. The aged Admiral Chambord, who had been elected to the Grand-Parlement largely as a sinecure, made an impassioned speech. To his credit, he expressed regret that his actions during the war had poisoned relations with Pérousie, stating that in Opération Quiberon the Pérousiens had ‘fought so bravely that men should compare the Spartans to them, and not the other way around’. He also praised the Mauré, albeit with the rather left-handed compliment that ‘there are no finer warriors in the world, when under French leadership’.
Chambord stated that no man should relish the prospect of war, and that if brother slew brother it would be a heinous shame. But, he said, with a heavy heart, war was necessary to subdue these rebels in Bisnaga, Pérousie and Autiaraux. All three shared historical links to France, the French language and culture, in different ways; and if France allowed them to go their separate way without a fight, she would be called weak, helpless. She would become the target of expansionist powers closer to home, and those countries that lived free because of French protection would no longer feel protected. ‘A brief and bitter war now or a never-ending one later’ was how he summed up his view.
Naturally, the significant number of Pérousien parlementaires in the Grand-Parlement – though some had become abstentionist in protest – reacted violently to Chambord’s words. Héloïse, however, rose and called for calm. She acknowledged Chambord’s war service and that he had not shied away from the costs of war. She made two counter-arguments, which have become known as ‘the Price of Peace’ and ‘the Freedom to Be’.
Firstly, she referred to an itemised economic analysis completed by Alain Guibal, which looked at state revenue from Bisnaga (in particular) measured against the estimated costs of a bloody campaign to subdue the Concert. Héloïse showed that the vast trade wealth of the early years of colonialism in India had tapered off; though Bisnaga had been largely spared the Jihad, the costs of recovering from the Jihad was not the only reason why other colonial powers had begun retreating from India. Even if Bisnaga magically returned to quiescence after only six months of conflict, Héloïse demonstrated, the current economic model showed that it would take the French treasury decades for postwar Bisnagi trade and tax revenues to outweigh the cost of that war. A similar argument applied elsewhere. This argument is less often referred to, but had an important short-term impact, as we’ll see.
Secondly, and more importantly for world history, Héloïse argued for the freedom of nations to choose their own identity and path. Surprisingly, considering this speech’s importance for the genesis of mainstream political Diversitarianism, Héloïse recorded in her diaries that she only came across that term for the first time in 1926, and initially found the Diversitarians of that day rather strange people.[17] However, like many politicians, she had become more and more concerned about Societism, especially after spending much of her first term attempting to shore up the ‘Spanish March’ against the Societist regime growing to the south. The Societists, Héloïse argued, tried to suppress differences for their own ends. In order to fight them, then, nations should embrace diversity and freedom of expression. A land should not simply be regarded as a slice of the French state transplanted to a far corner of the globe, but as a rainbow shard in which French language and culture would merge with other elements to produce something new. So long as Paris tried to declare how Pérousie should think, Pérousie could only ever be an inferior copy of France; but if Pérousie was allowed to embrace its own identity, a new nation was born – and every unique nation was another bullet in the magazine of the global struggle against Societism.
There was more to it than that, of course. At the time, the exchange most publicised was quite different to what has been remembered. The former Noir politician Thierry Vachaud, who had been uncomfortable partners with Héloïse in the Duc de Berry’s war government, stated that unless the unity of the French Empire could be saved, Héloïse’s ‘new nations’ would be ‘no more friendly to France or French interests than Abyssinia or Corea...a newly painted part of the world map, with our historical connections forgotten, all the Frenchmen who lived and died to build those lands wiped from history’. Héloïse retorted that ‘unity through bondage is no unity at all... better fair-weather friends than sworn enemies...if we fight for unity at any cost, as the gentleman advocates,[18] the cost of our treasury, our boys’ lives, our honour and reputation...we will succeed only in creating another UPSA to our Spain. Ask the Spaniards today whether they regret that decision!’
Her words struck home in part because she was drawing attention to the failures of the French to prevent Spain from being taken over by the Societists. The implication was not only that the UPSA had risen in opposition to Spanish colonial rule, but it had eventually fallen to an ideology that now was in the process of destroying Spanish history and culture itself. Héloïse went on to argue that the French crown could not invoke the Malraux Doctrine to argue for the freedom of the Canajuns in New Ireland, whilst simultaneously suppressing Bisnagi culture, enforcing the use of French as a language of administration, and depriving Pérousiens of the freedom to choose their own destiny. Why did the mostly European-descended French-speakers of New Ireland deserve the right to rule themselves – no-one was advocating bringing them back under the rule of Paris – and the Pérousiens, from a similar background, did not?
It would be understating the case to say that not everyone agreed with her, of course. The debate over the Crisis of ’37 split France, not simply in geographical or socio-economic terms, but in a way that divided families and villages against themselves. For decades later, to call someone a trente-septard or “37er” implied that they had been a radicalised firebrand for one side or the other at the time, and that had influenced their politics ever since. The term is even used today, though it no longer literally means someone who had their formative political years at the time, as few of those are still with us.
Nonetheless, Héloïse got her way in part because of her first argument – today almost forgotten – her economic argument, backed up by Guibal’s analysis. Caouissin himself examined Guibal’s work, made a number of changes and corrections, and concluded that Guibal was right. It is important to remember that Caouissin himself had never been too directly involved with colonial matters, merely trusting in the men of little ability that he had thrown in the relevant ministries to shore up the balance of his divided party. Now, the Crisis had made him truly care for the first time, and Héloïse’s economic argument genuinely changed his mind, making him feel that decolonisation was inevitable. Let it be made by choice and not after a bitter, bloody and ultimately futile war.
There was probably no majority for Héloïse’s position in the Grand-Parlement, but by the sitting Prime Minister publicly switching sides, the pro-unity or ‘Chambordiste’ position disintegrated. Caouissin’s government fell and fresh elections were called, with Héloïse returning to power at the head of a still-diverse but more united Saphir party. The election had been seen as a referendum on the future course of France in the world, and the people had endorsed Héloïse’s push for negotiations over bloodily suppressing the revolts. They were also receptive to Alain Orliac’s argument that to try and fail to suppress them would hurt France’s position far worse than Chambord’s warnings about France being seen as weak for giving up.
Chambord was not entirely wrong. Here in the ENA, perceptions of France as a fading power began in part due to Héloïse’s decision to begin negotiating towards decolonisation. Traditional French allies from the Marseilles Protocol and the Bouclier became jittery about French support in the event of future wars, and likely only Russia’s internal paralysis and labour unrest at the time meant that such wars were not immediately realised. Furthermore, once begun, the decolonisation process would be long, harsh, and divisive, with much bitterness on both sides. It would not truly be completed until the 1950s, by which point Héloïse’s time in power was long over.
Nonetheless, there were also unexpected positives to the move. Through happenstance of history, other than the outpost of Arguin, France had never colonised Africa – though many of her allies had. I emphasise that this had never been a deliberate decision. Few now know that France actually possessed Dakar in Guinea before the Third War of Supremacy, or that Resnais had had ambitions of making Algiers French in the 1850s. (Audience reaction) But intentions don’t matter, reality does. France was admired by many African rulers, who had been sending their sons to the University of Paris for years.[19] Now, by choosing of its own free will (sort of) to embrace a policy of decolonisation, particularly in Bisnaga, those Africans – and others in the colonised world – began to see the French government, and Héloïse in particular, as a potential champion. Her rhetoric was an attack not only on colonialism, but also on the foe that the Africans were beginning to see as even deadlier than the European colonial powers.
A few years later would come the Toulon Conference and the beginnings of what many would call mainstream political Diversitarianism...
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(Dr Wostyn’s note)
There is much more to say about this, of course, but I am afraid I will have to cut it short there – I have just heard that there is an exhibition on Chinese aerospace history in Philadelphia! It is about to end, so I am going to travel there by train (this version of America is far more civilised in some ways). I must apologise for leaving you hanging in this manner, but I am sure that I will obtain some new insights there to bring back for a future session...au revoir.
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(Capt. MacCauley’s note)
There, I knew that would get rid of him. OK, Bobby, bring in those other transcripts.
[1] Lacklin is being inadvertently anachronistic with the title here – when Henrietta Eugenie was consort of Francis II of Austria, the title was still Empress (ostensibly Holy Roman Empress).
[2] Lacklin is using a typically American way of identifying provinces which would sound unnatural to a French-speaker.
[3] See Part #228 in Volume VI.
[4] See Parts #243 and #250 in Volume VI.
[5] See Part #253 in Volume VII. Note the common mistaken assumption that the purpose of the IEF mission was to stop the Societists, which was never the case.
[6] See Parts #270 and #275 in Volume VII.
[7] See Part #281 in Volume VIII.
[8] See Parts #291 and #297 in Volume VIII. Note that Lacklin is giving a simplified version of events, such as ignoring the Jet/Noir split or the Emerald League distinction.
[9] (La) Caisse Française is the central bank of France. The French in TTL have carried over the stigma of the word ‘bank’ (banque) in their language which it acquired after the failure of John Law’s Mississippi Company and the associated Banque Générale in 1720. In OTL Napoleon successfully cleansed the word of its negative association by establishing a new stable Bank of France in 1800, which endures to this day.
[10] Not the same as the OTL newspaper of that name published between the 1880s and 1910s.
[11] See Part #210 in Volume V. Note that Francesco’s title is just a meaningless claim; Paolo claimed the kingship of Naples or ‘the Three Sicilies’, which had never even controlled Venice.
[12] The use of the word crown here is meant in the sense of state. ‘National’ and ‘State’ adjectives for the centralised insurance are being avoided here because one of them has political partisan connotations and the other evokes Lisieux’s abuses.
[13] See Part #27 in Volume I.
[14] Irish Gaelic is effectively extinct as a living language in Ireland as of the 1930s, aside perhaps from a handful of isolated rural areas, though in a few years there will be attempts at cultural revivals and its use for signage and terminology.
[15] See Part #296 in Volume VIII.
[16] I.e. the Mauré ships, though still outdated for the 1930s, incorporated post-Lionheart protection against Boulin shells as described in Part #220 in Volume V.
[17] See Part #300 in Volume VIII.
[18] Héloïse Mercier is deliberately using the ‘gentleman’ terminology to irritate the performatively egalitarian Vachaud (see Part #296 in Volume VIII).
[19] See Part #293 in Volume VIII.
I sent it off for processing months ago but apparently there have been some delays.