Most of the world calls the Netherlands Holland, just like most of the world call the UK England.I see it's not just the English-speaking world that thinks Holland = the Netherlands
Look to the West (Thande's first proper timeline, and it's about time!)
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
- Status
First-time poster here!
Anyway, I was just wondering how and when the Marlburgensian dictatorship will end.
Frederick allies with Leo Bone and France to arrest Churchill?
I assume it ends soon..
The posts certainly imply it lasts less than twenty years..
Or does it just collapse when Churchill dies of old age?
Anyway, I was just wondering how and when the Marlburgensian dictatorship will end.
Frederick allies with Leo Bone and France to arrest Churchill?
I assume it ends soon..
The posts certainly imply it lasts less than twenty years..
Or does it just collapse when Churchill dies of old age?
Finished reading this TL now - it's an epic read, both in content and in length! Very detailed and very plausible.
There's only one sad thing about it - I have been working on and off on a TL where the ARW doesn't happen. By weird coincidence, it has a revolutionary general called Boulanger and a French Australia. The details are different, but I think I can bin that now - it will never match LTTW and now it would look like plagiarism.
There's only one sad thing about it - I have been working on and off on a TL where the ARW doesn't happen. By weird coincidence, it has a revolutionary general called Boulanger and a French Australia. The details are different, but I think I can bin that now - it will never match LTTW and now it would look like plagiarism.
Indeed. Or near enough.
Not at all uncommon to call it 'Britain' though. Which leaves out Northern Ireland
Nobody? In Germany, "England" is still the usual way to call it - almost nobody uses "Großbritannien" or "Vereinigtes Königreich" outside of official contexts and geography lessons.
amazing
this is maybe the best timeline I have read in almost the year I have almost every week readamost this and say you "thank's Thande".
I am from Chile - because of that I dont write very well in english - so i'm a big fan of the UPSA, but is very hard see an UPSA army fighting against a butterfied Bernado O'Higgins, but very fun.
this is maybe the best timeline I have read in almost the year I have almost every week readamost this and say you "thank's Thande".
I am from Chile - because of that I dont write very well in english - so i'm a big fan of the UPSA, but is very hard see an UPSA army fighting against a butterfied Bernado O'Higgins, but very fun.
'nother newbie posting his first post in support of this TL-brings back memories.
Welcome!
Welcome!
Ya, and in addition, he is by far the board's most prolific poster - it's not just the TLs. 23k posts, followed by 20k, 18k, and then several at 14k and descending.
Considering the man is supposedly
doing a PhD thesis in is spare time, I've got to wonder if the guy sleeps.Um, that second part was the retcon.
Thande might redraft it in the future, though, but that's up to him...
Sorry, but my understanding was that Thande hadn't actually mentioned the first part when making Stuart pope, only referring to the end of the Jacobite cause mentioned earlier on. He therefore hadn't specifically said it was retconned, and it seemed he might have forgotten.
Sorry again.
Sorry again.
Thande
Donor
Interlude #10: Yes, But Is It Art?
Testing...testing...is this thing on?
Ah yes. (Indistinct static, as of a microphone being readjusted) Er...Lombardi here, Dr Bruno Lombardi, or are we supposed to use codenames in this outfit? I confess I usually leave all that stuff to Captain Nutcase...er...where’s the rewind on this thing... (Sound of tape fast-forwarding, followed by a mumble) You will remember nothing you heard... (Loudly) Hello New Cambridge, this is Dr Bruno Lombardi reporting, or you may call me Zorro the Gay Blade.
Captain Nuttall has asked me to record this short segment to explain why our data transmissions have slowed of late. As you may recall from the captain’s supplementary commentary[1] our team has been somewhat disadvantaged of late thanks to, ah, an unpleasant encounter or two with the locals – but of course that is difficult to explain in context while our compilation of this world’s history remains far removed from the present. Suffice to say that we have had to move our headquarters elsewhere lest the locals remove a quarter of our heads. (Pause) Must say, it’s fine to be able to issue such wonderful humour to a tape recorder rather than that dour Scotsman and that Greek bastard...errr... (Sound of tape fast-forwarding again)
In any case while we are halfway through moving, we naturally do not have access to the same libraries or books, and until contacts are re-established, the captain has asked me to compile what I can from what few books remain to us, most of which do not relate directly to the political or military history of TimeLine L. Nonetheless I suppose looking at social history may help illuminate how this world has diverged from our own, no matter what the Englishmen on the team say. Therefore I present the first edition of Zorro the Gay Blade’s Cultural Extravaganza. Ahem.
*
From – “Overview of European Development 1700-1900, Volume 3” by P.J. Hartley, 1940 –
The Watchful Peace is known as an era of cultural flowering in all areas of the arts, even in those countries which had descended towards authoritarian oppression of freedom of expression, such as Austria and Great Britain. This apparent paradox is resolvable if one considers the two decades of the Peace as a place in which all men would pause to catch their breath and allow their wounds to heal. Men in this case also meaning nations, notions, ideologies, and even women, as such great artistic luminaries as Madame Réjane and I. I. Ivanova demonstrate. The Peace, as Bulkeley once said, was exactly like the release valve on the steam engines which proliferated during its years, a time when all the bottled-up tensions and passions of the Jacobin Wars, now forbidden to express themselves through base conflict, now instead bled away in the form of a cultural flowering. It was as if a kettle had boiled and instead of emitting a simple whistle it had produced a symphony to bring tears to the eyes of Druschetzky himself.
Equally, of course, great wars by their very nature move men and ideas across continents, forcing them to flee their hometowns, conscripting them into armies, exposing them to those very horrors that often inspire the most poignant and moving pieces. The Jacobin Wars are no exception, indeed the effect was even more pronounced, for the conflict had itself been ignited over a clash of ideas. The core concepts of both the Revolution and its opponents would help inform the productions of the years following the conflict they had created...
From – “A Beginner’s Guide to European Architectural Styles from the Fall of Rome to the Present Day” by John Atkinson and Genevieve Delormé, 1970 –
The eighteenth century had been dominated by several schools of architecture, primarily the Versaillaise[2] which began in France in the twilight of Louis XIV’s reign. Characterised by the expression of rich decoration, gilding and the use of (then-expensive) mirrors, Versaillaise architecture was perfectly emblematic of the glories and excesses of the ancien régime. Throughout most of the eighteenth century, the whole of Europe culturally revolved around France, the legacy of the Sun King being an ironic model of Galilean heliocentrism.
Because it was France, and more specifically Paris, that began and defined cultural trends, the Versaillaise style naturally proliferated elsewhere, particularly in the Germanies and Russia. In Naples it displaced the existing Baroque school, which nonetheless held on in the northern Italies and in Spain, whose own Baroque style can be considered almost to be a separate mode altogether due to its deep-seeted Islamic influences. Only in Great Britain was Versaillaise definitively rejected thanks to the ideological conflict between the two countries over systems of government, the style being associated with the kind of absolutism that had been anathema to the British since the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Glorious Revolution. Instead, as English Baroque faded away, Britain embraced the Classical Revival style, a transition heralded by Sir Christopher Wren’s daring design for St Paul’s Cathedral following the First Great Fire of London. Also known as Neoclassicism, this school sought to replicate the style and achievements of Greek and Roman architecture from the classical period, hence the name. While European architecture had always been somewhat informed by that of its civilisation’s cultural predecessors, the Neoclassicists emphasised those elements which stood in opposition to what they perceived as the gaudiness and excess of the Versaillaise, focusing on geometric aesthetics, plain, understated designs, and in particular the use of pillars dervied from both the Greek and Roman style. As many later critics observed, in many ways Neoclassicism was the dream of a Nostalgic,[3] attempting to replicate a style which had never truly existed: the spare plainness of Neoclassical buildings was inspired by the ruins of the former civilisations, whereas in antiquity they would have been brightly painted.
One trend which began during this period, though not reaching its peak for many years, was the Orientalist school, which took its inspiration from the exotic architecture of India and China. Initially considered daring and vulgar, it was initially associated primarily with Portugal and the Netherlands, although as the eastern trading interests of France, Britain and eventually Denmark became more prominent, it proliferated to other nations. Naming Orientalism a school is somewhat disingenuous as it was a grab-bag of influences from across a vast area of Asia, largely depending on which regions the country in question was trading – and therefore conducting improntu cultural exchange – with. For example, Bisgana Hindoo architecture was popular in France and Portugal due to their trade with the former Bisgana states.[4] In particular Bisgana temple pillars were adapted for European usage, their Hindoo designs being replaced with either Christian iconography (mainly in the case of the Portuguese) or icons of great contemporary heroes (in the case of the French) but with the overall Indian sculptural style being maintained. The British on the other hand were influenced by the Islamo-Indian mode common to Haidarabad and Bengal, which itself was largely derived from Persian influence. There was cross-pollination between this and Britain’s own Neoclassical style, which reached its climax with the rebuilding of London after the Second Great Fire. Just as Wren’s version of St Paul’s Cathedral had been shocking in its day for evoking an Orthodox church, Sir Ralph Reynolds’ replacement did the same for the fact that it resembled a Mogul mosque. However, as with the Neoclassical style, what would have been brightly coloured under the Muslims was left white and understated by the British.
Chinese influence also increased during the Watchful Peace thanks to the gates being thrown open to trade by the nascent Feng Dynasty. The Feng’s seat of power in Canton meant that Cantonese style predominated, and indeed the casual European student to this day has a tendency to forget the northern architectural schools of China. While in Denmark a craze for pagodas began around the time of the death of Johannes II, in Britain it was the tuloo of the Haccahans[5] that was introduced by the East India Company. The tuloo was a circular structure with only one entrance, designed to be defensibe and ultimately informed by the sensibilities of a people who had had a bloody history, and in the aftermath of the French invasion and under the Marleburgensian dictatorship, that was an attitude most Britons could well sympathise with. Larger ones were sometimes compared to the Norman motte-and-bailey castles that had dotted England seven centuries before.
Naturally, the Orientalist school reached its peak during the Watchful Peace, when it was the riches brought to Europe by the eastern trading companies that paid for the repairs to the ruinous damage wrought by the Jacobin Wars. Given the number of cities to be rebuilt, it is scarcely surprising that many surviving Orientalist buildings were constructed at this time. European interest in the exotic east was piqued not only by the opening of parts of China and Japan but out of an (entirely misplaced) popular romantic belief that those lands were free of the ideological bloody warfare that had wreaked havoc with their own countries. It is commonly thought that Pablo Sanchez’s own decision to join the Portuguese East India Company as a young clerk at this time was informed by this very perception.
The Jacobin Revolution brought its own architectural styles to France. Revolutionary architects such as Bruant and his pupil Perrault (who took over after his master was phlogisticated by the Robespierre regime) pioneered the Linnaean school, later renamed the Taxonomic Mode to avoid being tainted by association. The Taxonomic style sought to design each individual building according to its purpose and needs, and further to do the same to each room within. Just as Linnaeus argued that each creature was designed to fit its role in the broader design of creation, so the habitat of a human being should be designed to fit that human’s role in service of the state and the revolution. Although emblematic of the controlling nature of even the early French Latin Republic, it was nonetheless somewhat informed by the existing Versaillaise and Baroque styles and therefore retained decoration albeit of a more restrained kind. Further, such decorations and engravings were designed to evoke a building or a room’s purpose. Some of this arguably drew upon earlier ideas – the use of designs including dolphins, fish and shells for rooms intended for ablutions went back at least a hundred years earlier. The Taxonomic Mode was displaced by Utilitarianism when Lisieux seized power in the Double Revolution, and therefore escaped so many negative connotations, proving somewhat popular in post-war Iberia and Italy. In the more paranoid Austria and Russia, on the other hand, the formerly prevailing Versaillaise school was tainted by its association with the Taxonomic Mode rather than the other way around. Russia at this point adopted Neoslavicism, a movement playing to the nativist policies of Tsar Paul I due to the forces unleashed by the Russian Civil War, in which the traditional primitive architecture of pre-Christian Russia was revived and reconstructed in a modern style. Austria on the other hand clung to a mixture of Gothic Revival – a school which proved less popular in most other parts of Europe except Scandinavia[6] – and the Magyar School, which applied a similar approach as Neoslavicism to the traditional architecture of Hungary. “Emperor” Francis II is known to have vacillated over whether to condemn this, in the end deciding instead to support it as a way of spiting the northern German states which he saw as betrayers of the Holy Roman Empire. Arguably this decision significantly influenced the outcome of the Popular Wars in the Hapsburg lands.
The Utilitarian style which Lisieux favoured was influenced by Thouret’s ideas but mostly enacted by architects such as Deneuve and Queneau. As the name implied, the idea behind it was that buildings should have no extraneous decoration, no features that were not strictly necessary, no waste. Lisieux disapproved of imagination; it made it harder to adjust reality to the way it should be. Utilitarian architecture mostly used brickwork. Utilitarian buildings were often deliberately designed to be easy to demolish, the intention being that central city planning committees would plan out the entire lifespan of a building over say 50 years and not waste any resources making it last beyond that. There was an emphasis on squares and rectangles and sharp edges.[7] Utilitarian buildings were almost invariably ugly, although occasional examples of more inspired uses of the style survive, most notably L’Aiguille in Paris and many of the old Chappe Optel towers whose network it serviced. Most Utilitarian buildings were either demolished by counter-revolutionaries after the Restoration or decayed out of their own planned obsolescence, but Paris, which Lisieux had had his hands on for the longest and had always been at the core of his schemes, sustained a lasting mark from the style.
Royal France, cut off from all this, favoured nostalgic Versaillaise combined with strong Orientalist influence as trade funds from the Carnatic kept the statelet afloat, and it was this style which would define the Restoration period...
*
From – “From Rembrandt to Reiss: Painting Since the Seventeenth Century” by Dr. A.J. Anderson, 1949 –
...not an exaggeration to say that the two decades of the Watchful Peace are more cherished to the true patron than the five that preceded them...it is here that the sense of loss, of senselessness, of weariness evoked by the bloody conflict of an entire generation lost in sound and fury comes to life upon the canvas.
The period is dominated by the German Explosion, as regions formerly not at the forefront of the art were catapulted into the eye of the conoisseur. A two-part effect is necessary to explain this: firstly and most obviously, the Germanies took the brunt of the ruin and horror of the wars and thus the grief and anger of their people found its expression through art; secondly, the upheavals of the conflict caused many German artists to flee elsewhere. Many southern Germans of the craft came to Hanover or Saxony or Denmark, where they found employment initially doing work as mean as engravings for the ubiquitous propaganda leaflets. As the years passed and the war gave way to the Watchful Peace, however, many such men found themselves able to finally express the passions that the devastation had brought upon them.
Gerhardt Stauch first became a household name thanks to his The Tenth Circle (an allusion to Dante’s nine circles of Hell) in which he portrays via allegory and artistic licence the entirety of the German conflicts, from the Second War of the Polish Succession to the Great Baltic War to the French invasion, the rapacious reign of Lascelles and the Cougnonistes, Ney in Swabia, the formation of the Mittelbund, Boulanger’s attack on Flanders – all of it, all in one enormous oversized painting, exploding with violent colours. Appearing like chaos from a distance, a closer look reveals that each tiny figure is rendered in perfect detail, from Emperor Ferdinand stamping on his crown as his son Francis clutches at his own bare head in disbelief, to John George of Saxony and Frederick William III of Brandenburg strangling each other over an empty treasure chest labelled ‘Poland’ while a group of bloody-coated Frenchmen massacre their own people in the background, to Michael Hiedler shown as a wild barbarian stripped to the waste, bearing a great scimitar and surrounded by the butchered bodies of countless Frenchmen. The enormous painting initially provoked shock and controversy by the way it presented each and every person depicted as a demonic figure with distorted eyes, but this only served to increase its renown. After suffering numerous death threats Stauch eventually fled to the United Provinces where he continued his work, though he never matched The Tenth Circle’s height of genius. Nonetheless he is fondly remembered by the Meridians chiefly for his portrait of President-General Mateovarón.
Stauch was only one among many Germans to depict the narrative of the war, but more artists focused on specific incidents. The Death of Cavaignac is a graphic depiction of the end of Fabien Lascelles’ chief bully-boy by Bavarian artist Georg Kruger, which remains famous even among the historically ignorant for the titular figure’s wide, staring eyes filled with horrified realisation as the girl he seeks to rape slashes him with her poisoned needle, his recoil presented as the supine movement of a coward, his fellow rapists mere blurs and shadows around him symbolising the darkness of the Lascelles regime. A line popularised by Alan Carmain sums up the impact of the painting on public culture – “those eyes follow you into your nightmares”.
Italian and Spanish artists also depicted the devastations of their countries, but were more restrained by state control. For example, while Miguel Fidalgo is well known for The Cradle Robber, a piece showing the French General Drouet holding a pistol to the head of Philip VII to symbolise his absolute control over Spain (and perhaps to imply his suspected role in the king’s eventual death), it is less well known that originally in the background was a subtle hint to Fidalgo’s opinion of the Portuguese who now exercised equal influence over his country: where today there is a blank wall in the painting, originally there was the infant who would become Alfonso XII holding a toy to his head as though copying the gun on his father’s. The implication of course was that Peter IV of Portugal was no better than Drouet. The Portuguese authorities caught this and forced Fidalgo to repaint the picture, then kept him under house arrest for a decade afterwards.
Britain also produced many painters who depicted the French invasion of their country, but probably the best-known are by an artist who had already been active many years before, James Constable. His work Thermopylae, showing the suicidal actions of the 52nd West Kent upon the Downs, is thought to be the first to compare the sacrifice of those three hundred to the Spartan battle. Younger artists tended to be subject to more state censorship and produced less memorable work, including many rather vulgarly gory depictions that were used to illustrate many London memorials – the implication obviously being to remind the British people of what they had suffered, what Churchill had saved them from, and what they might suffer again if they thought to question his rule...
From – “Sculpture in the Nineteenth Century” by Ann Woodward, 1980:
...undoubtedly the best expression of the Watchful Peace period’s attempt to place the incidents of the last two decades into context was Global Revolution, the masterpiece of Anthony Beaumarchaise, who had lived through the entirety of the Revolutionary regimes in Paris, observing much of Lisieux’s schemes along the way. The title is a pun, as the work depicts both the world physically revolving and also the revolution Lisieux sought to bring to it. Rather than going with the Neoclassicist simplicity of much of his contemporaries, Beaumarchaise used intricate design and colour to get across his ideas. The globe of the world, five feet across, is half shown in the typically complex style of eighteenth-century maps, while the other half consists of a simple gridwork of black and white squares, filled in to vaguely suggest a squosaiced[8] version of the map of the world – a clear reference to Thouret’s perfectly square départments and the folk belief that Lisieux planned to physically change the world to be so neatly arranged.
Impressive as the globe is, it is but the pedestal for the statue of Lisieux himself, presented as human rather than demonic, yet his eyes are fixed with inhuman intent upon the pile of papers worked beautifully in marble that sits before him, ignoring the world he is changing, refusing to set eyes upon it until it has completely changed to the stark, hard-edged, black and white version he seeks to make. One hand goes to his side to clutch tightly at the belt of his breeches – which is often interpreted as an uncharacteristically vulgar attack suggesting Lisieux is breaking wind upon the world, but a more likely interpretation is that it represents Lisieux’s rejection and betrayal of the Sans-Culottes by showing him firmly holding on to his own trousers.
The work is impressive from the front, but one only realises its true meaning from the back, where Lisieux’s head and back end in an abrupt flat plane rather than competing themselves. Originally the sculpture was painted by Beaumarchaise’s friend Pierre Gaudin to resemble the opposing wall of the Nouvelle Salon[9], meaning if it was carefully aligned, Lisieux would seem to become invisible, obviously evoking his own mysterious disappeance. However since the sculpture was damaged in the bombing of 1962 this was lost and instead we are now presented by the blank marble itself. In a way this is even more thought-provoking as one is challenged by that blankness to try and explain just what went on in the head of L’Inhumaine...
*
From – “Music in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries” by Paul van der Groot, 1978 –
Under Lisieux the Revolutionary French cared little for music, with the rousing songs of the early Republic suppressed as supposedly being triggers for emotional excess. While they were maintained by Hoche’s Italy and to a lesser extent Ney’s Swabia and Lascelles’ Bavaria, the Jacobins left little direct musical legacy. However, the conflicts they unleashed inspired much indirectly. Friedrich Wilhelm Bach, Michel Auteil, Girolamo Maffei, Andrew Philips, many composers that remain household names drew their inspiration from the blood and fire and the clash of ideas that dominated Europe in this time.
Nonetheless, in hindsight among these composers one man stood out, one man whose remembrance of the Jacobin Wars traced a thread to the start of the next round of conflict, highlighting how the Popular Wars were sparked by disillusionment over how the Jacobin Wars had ended. That man was, of course, Wenzel Druschetzky, also known in his native Bohemian as Wenceslaus Druzheckj...[10]
[1] Although this is the first of several references Dr Lombardi makes to supplementary transmissions from Cpt. C. G. Nuttall (refer to file #25723-Charlie-Delta) no record of any such addendums to the TimeLine L data has been found in the archives of the Thande Institute. Investigations are ongoing.
[2] In-timeline name for Rococo. Although Rococo itself obviously predates the POD, the name itself only dates back to the 19th century in OTL and was first applied in a disparaging retrospective way. ‘Versaillaise’ as a name reflects the fact that the Palais de Versailles was perhaps the style’s most famous execution, as well as the more nostalgic attitude to it in TTL (not least due to Lisieux’s demolition of the Palais).
[3] In OTL ‘nostalgia’ was classed as a mental disorder until relatively recently, and in LTTW the word continues to carry that meaning – a disorder in which someone is obsessed with the past and cares nothing for the present.
[4] Bisgana is a Portuguese rendition of “Vijayanagara”, the Hindu empire which ruled southern India from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. Although the book here does not mention it due to its focus on Europe, Bisgana architecture itself underwent a revival in India due to the French’s tolerant attitude towards Hindus which led to them being placed at odds in the public imagination with the British who mainly ruled over Muslim states (see part #87). Prior to this Mughal and other Muslim rule had led to elements of Bisgana architecture being suppressed due to the fact that it commonly depicted living creatures, forbidden in Islam.
[5] In OTL’s transliteration, the Tulou of the Hakka people, or ‘Hakka Han’.
[6] Unlike OTL. The failure of Gothic Revival in TTL is largely due to the fact that Neoclassicism is not discredited in conservative eyes by being associated with the French Revolution and Napoleon (the “Empire Style”).
[7] Utilitarianism can be thought of as “Brutalism if it had been invented before the usage of concrete became popular”.
[8] “Pixellated”, in OTL terms.
[9] The Nouvelle Salon is Restoration France’s chief art museum – Lisieux had the Louvre demolished of course.
[10] Czech, or “Bohemian” in TTL, has a different transliteration scheme to OTL.
Testing...testing...is this thing on?
Ah yes. (Indistinct static, as of a microphone being readjusted) Er...Lombardi here, Dr Bruno Lombardi, or are we supposed to use codenames in this outfit? I confess I usually leave all that stuff to Captain Nutcase...er...where’s the rewind on this thing... (Sound of tape fast-forwarding, followed by a mumble) You will remember nothing you heard... (Loudly) Hello New Cambridge, this is Dr Bruno Lombardi reporting, or you may call me Zorro the Gay Blade.
Captain Nuttall has asked me to record this short segment to explain why our data transmissions have slowed of late. As you may recall from the captain’s supplementary commentary[1] our team has been somewhat disadvantaged of late thanks to, ah, an unpleasant encounter or two with the locals – but of course that is difficult to explain in context while our compilation of this world’s history remains far removed from the present. Suffice to say that we have had to move our headquarters elsewhere lest the locals remove a quarter of our heads. (Pause) Must say, it’s fine to be able to issue such wonderful humour to a tape recorder rather than that dour Scotsman and that Greek bastard...errr... (Sound of tape fast-forwarding again)
In any case while we are halfway through moving, we naturally do not have access to the same libraries or books, and until contacts are re-established, the captain has asked me to compile what I can from what few books remain to us, most of which do not relate directly to the political or military history of TimeLine L. Nonetheless I suppose looking at social history may help illuminate how this world has diverged from our own, no matter what the Englishmen on the team say. Therefore I present the first edition of Zorro the Gay Blade’s Cultural Extravaganza. Ahem.
*
From – “Overview of European Development 1700-1900, Volume 3” by P.J. Hartley, 1940 –
The Watchful Peace is known as an era of cultural flowering in all areas of the arts, even in those countries which had descended towards authoritarian oppression of freedom of expression, such as Austria and Great Britain. This apparent paradox is resolvable if one considers the two decades of the Peace as a place in which all men would pause to catch their breath and allow their wounds to heal. Men in this case also meaning nations, notions, ideologies, and even women, as such great artistic luminaries as Madame Réjane and I. I. Ivanova demonstrate. The Peace, as Bulkeley once said, was exactly like the release valve on the steam engines which proliferated during its years, a time when all the bottled-up tensions and passions of the Jacobin Wars, now forbidden to express themselves through base conflict, now instead bled away in the form of a cultural flowering. It was as if a kettle had boiled and instead of emitting a simple whistle it had produced a symphony to bring tears to the eyes of Druschetzky himself.
Equally, of course, great wars by their very nature move men and ideas across continents, forcing them to flee their hometowns, conscripting them into armies, exposing them to those very horrors that often inspire the most poignant and moving pieces. The Jacobin Wars are no exception, indeed the effect was even more pronounced, for the conflict had itself been ignited over a clash of ideas. The core concepts of both the Revolution and its opponents would help inform the productions of the years following the conflict they had created...
From – “A Beginner’s Guide to European Architectural Styles from the Fall of Rome to the Present Day” by John Atkinson and Genevieve Delormé, 1970 –
The eighteenth century had been dominated by several schools of architecture, primarily the Versaillaise[2] which began in France in the twilight of Louis XIV’s reign. Characterised by the expression of rich decoration, gilding and the use of (then-expensive) mirrors, Versaillaise architecture was perfectly emblematic of the glories and excesses of the ancien régime. Throughout most of the eighteenth century, the whole of Europe culturally revolved around France, the legacy of the Sun King being an ironic model of Galilean heliocentrism.
Because it was France, and more specifically Paris, that began and defined cultural trends, the Versaillaise style naturally proliferated elsewhere, particularly in the Germanies and Russia. In Naples it displaced the existing Baroque school, which nonetheless held on in the northern Italies and in Spain, whose own Baroque style can be considered almost to be a separate mode altogether due to its deep-seeted Islamic influences. Only in Great Britain was Versaillaise definitively rejected thanks to the ideological conflict between the two countries over systems of government, the style being associated with the kind of absolutism that had been anathema to the British since the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Glorious Revolution. Instead, as English Baroque faded away, Britain embraced the Classical Revival style, a transition heralded by Sir Christopher Wren’s daring design for St Paul’s Cathedral following the First Great Fire of London. Also known as Neoclassicism, this school sought to replicate the style and achievements of Greek and Roman architecture from the classical period, hence the name. While European architecture had always been somewhat informed by that of its civilisation’s cultural predecessors, the Neoclassicists emphasised those elements which stood in opposition to what they perceived as the gaudiness and excess of the Versaillaise, focusing on geometric aesthetics, plain, understated designs, and in particular the use of pillars dervied from both the Greek and Roman style. As many later critics observed, in many ways Neoclassicism was the dream of a Nostalgic,[3] attempting to replicate a style which had never truly existed: the spare plainness of Neoclassical buildings was inspired by the ruins of the former civilisations, whereas in antiquity they would have been brightly painted.
One trend which began during this period, though not reaching its peak for many years, was the Orientalist school, which took its inspiration from the exotic architecture of India and China. Initially considered daring and vulgar, it was initially associated primarily with Portugal and the Netherlands, although as the eastern trading interests of France, Britain and eventually Denmark became more prominent, it proliferated to other nations. Naming Orientalism a school is somewhat disingenuous as it was a grab-bag of influences from across a vast area of Asia, largely depending on which regions the country in question was trading – and therefore conducting improntu cultural exchange – with. For example, Bisgana Hindoo architecture was popular in France and Portugal due to their trade with the former Bisgana states.[4] In particular Bisgana temple pillars were adapted for European usage, their Hindoo designs being replaced with either Christian iconography (mainly in the case of the Portuguese) or icons of great contemporary heroes (in the case of the French) but with the overall Indian sculptural style being maintained. The British on the other hand were influenced by the Islamo-Indian mode common to Haidarabad and Bengal, which itself was largely derived from Persian influence. There was cross-pollination between this and Britain’s own Neoclassical style, which reached its climax with the rebuilding of London after the Second Great Fire. Just as Wren’s version of St Paul’s Cathedral had been shocking in its day for evoking an Orthodox church, Sir Ralph Reynolds’ replacement did the same for the fact that it resembled a Mogul mosque. However, as with the Neoclassical style, what would have been brightly coloured under the Muslims was left white and understated by the British.
Chinese influence also increased during the Watchful Peace thanks to the gates being thrown open to trade by the nascent Feng Dynasty. The Feng’s seat of power in Canton meant that Cantonese style predominated, and indeed the casual European student to this day has a tendency to forget the northern architectural schools of China. While in Denmark a craze for pagodas began around the time of the death of Johannes II, in Britain it was the tuloo of the Haccahans[5] that was introduced by the East India Company. The tuloo was a circular structure with only one entrance, designed to be defensibe and ultimately informed by the sensibilities of a people who had had a bloody history, and in the aftermath of the French invasion and under the Marleburgensian dictatorship, that was an attitude most Britons could well sympathise with. Larger ones were sometimes compared to the Norman motte-and-bailey castles that had dotted England seven centuries before.
Naturally, the Orientalist school reached its peak during the Watchful Peace, when it was the riches brought to Europe by the eastern trading companies that paid for the repairs to the ruinous damage wrought by the Jacobin Wars. Given the number of cities to be rebuilt, it is scarcely surprising that many surviving Orientalist buildings were constructed at this time. European interest in the exotic east was piqued not only by the opening of parts of China and Japan but out of an (entirely misplaced) popular romantic belief that those lands were free of the ideological bloody warfare that had wreaked havoc with their own countries. It is commonly thought that Pablo Sanchez’s own decision to join the Portuguese East India Company as a young clerk at this time was informed by this very perception.
The Jacobin Revolution brought its own architectural styles to France. Revolutionary architects such as Bruant and his pupil Perrault (who took over after his master was phlogisticated by the Robespierre regime) pioneered the Linnaean school, later renamed the Taxonomic Mode to avoid being tainted by association. The Taxonomic style sought to design each individual building according to its purpose and needs, and further to do the same to each room within. Just as Linnaeus argued that each creature was designed to fit its role in the broader design of creation, so the habitat of a human being should be designed to fit that human’s role in service of the state and the revolution. Although emblematic of the controlling nature of even the early French Latin Republic, it was nonetheless somewhat informed by the existing Versaillaise and Baroque styles and therefore retained decoration albeit of a more restrained kind. Further, such decorations and engravings were designed to evoke a building or a room’s purpose. Some of this arguably drew upon earlier ideas – the use of designs including dolphins, fish and shells for rooms intended for ablutions went back at least a hundred years earlier. The Taxonomic Mode was displaced by Utilitarianism when Lisieux seized power in the Double Revolution, and therefore escaped so many negative connotations, proving somewhat popular in post-war Iberia and Italy. In the more paranoid Austria and Russia, on the other hand, the formerly prevailing Versaillaise school was tainted by its association with the Taxonomic Mode rather than the other way around. Russia at this point adopted Neoslavicism, a movement playing to the nativist policies of Tsar Paul I due to the forces unleashed by the Russian Civil War, in which the traditional primitive architecture of pre-Christian Russia was revived and reconstructed in a modern style. Austria on the other hand clung to a mixture of Gothic Revival – a school which proved less popular in most other parts of Europe except Scandinavia[6] – and the Magyar School, which applied a similar approach as Neoslavicism to the traditional architecture of Hungary. “Emperor” Francis II is known to have vacillated over whether to condemn this, in the end deciding instead to support it as a way of spiting the northern German states which he saw as betrayers of the Holy Roman Empire. Arguably this decision significantly influenced the outcome of the Popular Wars in the Hapsburg lands.
The Utilitarian style which Lisieux favoured was influenced by Thouret’s ideas but mostly enacted by architects such as Deneuve and Queneau. As the name implied, the idea behind it was that buildings should have no extraneous decoration, no features that were not strictly necessary, no waste. Lisieux disapproved of imagination; it made it harder to adjust reality to the way it should be. Utilitarian architecture mostly used brickwork. Utilitarian buildings were often deliberately designed to be easy to demolish, the intention being that central city planning committees would plan out the entire lifespan of a building over say 50 years and not waste any resources making it last beyond that. There was an emphasis on squares and rectangles and sharp edges.[7] Utilitarian buildings were almost invariably ugly, although occasional examples of more inspired uses of the style survive, most notably L’Aiguille in Paris and many of the old Chappe Optel towers whose network it serviced. Most Utilitarian buildings were either demolished by counter-revolutionaries after the Restoration or decayed out of their own planned obsolescence, but Paris, which Lisieux had had his hands on for the longest and had always been at the core of his schemes, sustained a lasting mark from the style.
Royal France, cut off from all this, favoured nostalgic Versaillaise combined with strong Orientalist influence as trade funds from the Carnatic kept the statelet afloat, and it was this style which would define the Restoration period...
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From – “From Rembrandt to Reiss: Painting Since the Seventeenth Century” by Dr. A.J. Anderson, 1949 –
...not an exaggeration to say that the two decades of the Watchful Peace are more cherished to the true patron than the five that preceded them...it is here that the sense of loss, of senselessness, of weariness evoked by the bloody conflict of an entire generation lost in sound and fury comes to life upon the canvas.
The period is dominated by the German Explosion, as regions formerly not at the forefront of the art were catapulted into the eye of the conoisseur. A two-part effect is necessary to explain this: firstly and most obviously, the Germanies took the brunt of the ruin and horror of the wars and thus the grief and anger of their people found its expression through art; secondly, the upheavals of the conflict caused many German artists to flee elsewhere. Many southern Germans of the craft came to Hanover or Saxony or Denmark, where they found employment initially doing work as mean as engravings for the ubiquitous propaganda leaflets. As the years passed and the war gave way to the Watchful Peace, however, many such men found themselves able to finally express the passions that the devastation had brought upon them.
Gerhardt Stauch first became a household name thanks to his The Tenth Circle (an allusion to Dante’s nine circles of Hell) in which he portrays via allegory and artistic licence the entirety of the German conflicts, from the Second War of the Polish Succession to the Great Baltic War to the French invasion, the rapacious reign of Lascelles and the Cougnonistes, Ney in Swabia, the formation of the Mittelbund, Boulanger’s attack on Flanders – all of it, all in one enormous oversized painting, exploding with violent colours. Appearing like chaos from a distance, a closer look reveals that each tiny figure is rendered in perfect detail, from Emperor Ferdinand stamping on his crown as his son Francis clutches at his own bare head in disbelief, to John George of Saxony and Frederick William III of Brandenburg strangling each other over an empty treasure chest labelled ‘Poland’ while a group of bloody-coated Frenchmen massacre their own people in the background, to Michael Hiedler shown as a wild barbarian stripped to the waste, bearing a great scimitar and surrounded by the butchered bodies of countless Frenchmen. The enormous painting initially provoked shock and controversy by the way it presented each and every person depicted as a demonic figure with distorted eyes, but this only served to increase its renown. After suffering numerous death threats Stauch eventually fled to the United Provinces where he continued his work, though he never matched The Tenth Circle’s height of genius. Nonetheless he is fondly remembered by the Meridians chiefly for his portrait of President-General Mateovarón.
Stauch was only one among many Germans to depict the narrative of the war, but more artists focused on specific incidents. The Death of Cavaignac is a graphic depiction of the end of Fabien Lascelles’ chief bully-boy by Bavarian artist Georg Kruger, which remains famous even among the historically ignorant for the titular figure’s wide, staring eyes filled with horrified realisation as the girl he seeks to rape slashes him with her poisoned needle, his recoil presented as the supine movement of a coward, his fellow rapists mere blurs and shadows around him symbolising the darkness of the Lascelles regime. A line popularised by Alan Carmain sums up the impact of the painting on public culture – “those eyes follow you into your nightmares”.
Italian and Spanish artists also depicted the devastations of their countries, but were more restrained by state control. For example, while Miguel Fidalgo is well known for The Cradle Robber, a piece showing the French General Drouet holding a pistol to the head of Philip VII to symbolise his absolute control over Spain (and perhaps to imply his suspected role in the king’s eventual death), it is less well known that originally in the background was a subtle hint to Fidalgo’s opinion of the Portuguese who now exercised equal influence over his country: where today there is a blank wall in the painting, originally there was the infant who would become Alfonso XII holding a toy to his head as though copying the gun on his father’s. The implication of course was that Peter IV of Portugal was no better than Drouet. The Portuguese authorities caught this and forced Fidalgo to repaint the picture, then kept him under house arrest for a decade afterwards.
Britain also produced many painters who depicted the French invasion of their country, but probably the best-known are by an artist who had already been active many years before, James Constable. His work Thermopylae, showing the suicidal actions of the 52nd West Kent upon the Downs, is thought to be the first to compare the sacrifice of those three hundred to the Spartan battle. Younger artists tended to be subject to more state censorship and produced less memorable work, including many rather vulgarly gory depictions that were used to illustrate many London memorials – the implication obviously being to remind the British people of what they had suffered, what Churchill had saved them from, and what they might suffer again if they thought to question his rule...
From – “Sculpture in the Nineteenth Century” by Ann Woodward, 1980:
...undoubtedly the best expression of the Watchful Peace period’s attempt to place the incidents of the last two decades into context was Global Revolution, the masterpiece of Anthony Beaumarchaise, who had lived through the entirety of the Revolutionary regimes in Paris, observing much of Lisieux’s schemes along the way. The title is a pun, as the work depicts both the world physically revolving and also the revolution Lisieux sought to bring to it. Rather than going with the Neoclassicist simplicity of much of his contemporaries, Beaumarchaise used intricate design and colour to get across his ideas. The globe of the world, five feet across, is half shown in the typically complex style of eighteenth-century maps, while the other half consists of a simple gridwork of black and white squares, filled in to vaguely suggest a squosaiced[8] version of the map of the world – a clear reference to Thouret’s perfectly square départments and the folk belief that Lisieux planned to physically change the world to be so neatly arranged.
Impressive as the globe is, it is but the pedestal for the statue of Lisieux himself, presented as human rather than demonic, yet his eyes are fixed with inhuman intent upon the pile of papers worked beautifully in marble that sits before him, ignoring the world he is changing, refusing to set eyes upon it until it has completely changed to the stark, hard-edged, black and white version he seeks to make. One hand goes to his side to clutch tightly at the belt of his breeches – which is often interpreted as an uncharacteristically vulgar attack suggesting Lisieux is breaking wind upon the world, but a more likely interpretation is that it represents Lisieux’s rejection and betrayal of the Sans-Culottes by showing him firmly holding on to his own trousers.
The work is impressive from the front, but one only realises its true meaning from the back, where Lisieux’s head and back end in an abrupt flat plane rather than competing themselves. Originally the sculpture was painted by Beaumarchaise’s friend Pierre Gaudin to resemble the opposing wall of the Nouvelle Salon[9], meaning if it was carefully aligned, Lisieux would seem to become invisible, obviously evoking his own mysterious disappeance. However since the sculpture was damaged in the bombing of 1962 this was lost and instead we are now presented by the blank marble itself. In a way this is even more thought-provoking as one is challenged by that blankness to try and explain just what went on in the head of L’Inhumaine...
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From – “Music in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries” by Paul van der Groot, 1978 –
Under Lisieux the Revolutionary French cared little for music, with the rousing songs of the early Republic suppressed as supposedly being triggers for emotional excess. While they were maintained by Hoche’s Italy and to a lesser extent Ney’s Swabia and Lascelles’ Bavaria, the Jacobins left little direct musical legacy. However, the conflicts they unleashed inspired much indirectly. Friedrich Wilhelm Bach, Michel Auteil, Girolamo Maffei, Andrew Philips, many composers that remain household names drew their inspiration from the blood and fire and the clash of ideas that dominated Europe in this time.
Nonetheless, in hindsight among these composers one man stood out, one man whose remembrance of the Jacobin Wars traced a thread to the start of the next round of conflict, highlighting how the Popular Wars were sparked by disillusionment over how the Jacobin Wars had ended. That man was, of course, Wenzel Druschetzky, also known in his native Bohemian as Wenceslaus Druzheckj...[10]
[1] Although this is the first of several references Dr Lombardi makes to supplementary transmissions from Cpt. C. G. Nuttall (refer to file #25723-Charlie-Delta) no record of any such addendums to the TimeLine L data has been found in the archives of the Thande Institute. Investigations are ongoing.
[2] In-timeline name for Rococo. Although Rococo itself obviously predates the POD, the name itself only dates back to the 19th century in OTL and was first applied in a disparaging retrospective way. ‘Versaillaise’ as a name reflects the fact that the Palais de Versailles was perhaps the style’s most famous execution, as well as the more nostalgic attitude to it in TTL (not least due to Lisieux’s demolition of the Palais).
[3] In OTL ‘nostalgia’ was classed as a mental disorder until relatively recently, and in LTTW the word continues to carry that meaning – a disorder in which someone is obsessed with the past and cares nothing for the present.
[4] Bisgana is a Portuguese rendition of “Vijayanagara”, the Hindu empire which ruled southern India from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. Although the book here does not mention it due to its focus on Europe, Bisgana architecture itself underwent a revival in India due to the French’s tolerant attitude towards Hindus which led to them being placed at odds in the public imagination with the British who mainly ruled over Muslim states (see part #87). Prior to this Mughal and other Muslim rule had led to elements of Bisgana architecture being suppressed due to the fact that it commonly depicted living creatures, forbidden in Islam.
[5] In OTL’s transliteration, the Tulou of the Hakka people, or ‘Hakka Han’.
[6] Unlike OTL. The failure of Gothic Revival in TTL is largely due to the fact that Neoclassicism is not discredited in conservative eyes by being associated with the French Revolution and Napoleon (the “Empire Style”).
[7] Utilitarianism can be thought of as “Brutalism if it had been invented before the usage of concrete became popular”.
[8] “Pixellated”, in OTL terms.
[9] The Nouvelle Salon is Restoration France’s chief art museum – Lisieux had the Louvre demolished of course.
[10] Czech, or “Bohemian” in TTL, has a different transliteration scheme to OTL.
MrP
Banned
I don't know art, but I know what I like.
Nice filling in of some of the blanks around the fighting, old boy. This Druzhetsky fellow sounds as though he is more important than one might suspect. I am quite intrigued by the reference to the '62 bombing, as well. Nice to see Nostalgic. Do I recall correctly that ITTL Alienist and its relatives also survived? I've a Bob Hope film in which a character believes another's mad.
Nice filling in of some of the blanks around the fighting, old boy. This Druzhetsky fellow sounds as though he is more important than one might suspect. I am quite intrigued by the reference to the '62 bombing, as well. Nice to see Nostalgic. Do I recall correctly that ITTL Alienist and its relatives also survived? I've a Bob Hope film in which a character believes another's mad.
Oh, I was hoping for a post like this. Always interesting to see alternate culture. Huzzah for the continuance of Neoclassicism!
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