Part #228: Decisions
The country’s official name is: RUSSIAN EMPIRE or EMPIRE OF ALL RUSSIAS.
The people are known as: RUSSIANS.
Capital: St Petersburg (also called Petrograd), St Petersburg Guberniya
Largest city: Moscow, Moscow Guberniya (1.6 million)
Flag: A horizontal tricolour of white, blue and red. Following a flag reform in 1870, use of the standard flag is only permitted by imperial government authorities (including the military) while civilians are permitted to fly a version defaced with the blue St Andrew’s cross of the navy on a white disc.
Population: 155 million (approx. – Imperial census does not currently extend to all the reaches of the Empire)
Land area: ca. 1,400,000 lcf. Largest country in the world.
Economic ranking: Presently ranked 3rd in the world, having risen rapidly through the ranks as railway building continues to link the country together and facilitate the exploitation of resources – overtook Germany in 1890 and the UPSA in 1893.
Form of government: Theoretically an absolute monarchy with the Emperor (frequently, but technically incorrectly, referred to as the Tsar in English) wielding total power. In practice court intrigue has always undermined this aspiration and nineteenth century reforms have begun to introduce a more representative element. The Imperial Soviet in practice often wields power in the Emperor’s name as well as advising him. Its members theoretically chosen by the Emperor but in practice this involves horse-trading between the Emperor, various established aristocratic and corporate interests, and the increasingly important, indirectly-elected Imperial Duma (created by a reform of 1869 by Theodore IV following an earlier failed attempt by his brother Peter IV). The Emperor remains in power by successfully balancing these interests.
Foreign relations: Since the Russian Civil War, Russian foreign policy has in part been driven by the ‘Slavicist’ ideology which rejects foreign (especially German-speaking) influence and regards other Slavic (and to a lesser extent Orthodox) peoples as subordinate partners to be protected. However, the traditional Russian goal of seeking to reclaim Constantinople from the Ottomans has been thwarted by Wallachia becoming part of the Austria and then the Danubian Confederation, and the Euxine War of 1861-1863 did not represent significant progress towards this goal. Russian influence has expanded in the Caucasus and Tartary [Central Asia] where Persia represents the chief rival for influence. Finland, Courland and Lithuania are all effective vassals of Russia (ironically all non-Slavic), with some Slavicists expressing a desire for Russia to intervene in the affairs of Slavic and Orthodox peoples farther west. Russian interest in Africa has existed for a while, with direct control over Baravakhul in south-west Africa and Erythrea in the Horn of Africa, and the Abyssinian Empire an Orthodox ally of Russia (its Emperor choosing to regard the Russians as having a ‘temporary lease’ on Erythrea as a polite political fiction). Most significantly, however, the Far East has been a major area for Russian expansion for two centuries, with of late most of Japan being brought under Russian domination and Beiqing China subject to strong Russian influence. Corea has grown more independent however and is less subject to Russian influence than the past. Finally, Russo-Lithuanian Pacific Company ships have also planted colonies and vassals in north-western North America and the Pacific (in particular the Kingdom of Gavaji) but Russian attempts to gain sole influence over California have always been thwarted.
Military: The Russian Army modernised in a series of phases throughout the nineteenth century and is now considered first-tier on a good day though it is not homogenous and remains somewhat reliant on conscripts. Specialised troops are recruited from the far reaches of the Empire, including Yapon, as well as from vassal states. The Russian Navy is an oceanic [blue-water] force to be reckoned with but has struggled against the Ottomans’ own modernised fleet in Black Sea and other riverine operations. Unlike some nations the Russians have not created a separate aeroforce and instead operate their steerables and dromes as part of the Navy. The Russo-Lithuanian Pacific Company also continues to operate its own armed forces under the direct control of the Director (who in practice is now always also the Governor-General of Yapon).
Current head of state: Emperor Peter V (House of Romanov) (since 1885)
Current head of government: Knyaz Fyodor Pavlovich Gagarin (Chairman of the Imperial Soviet).
– Taken from APPENDIX: GUIDE TO THE WORLD’S NATIONS AT THE EVE OF THE PANDORIC WAR, OCTOBER 1896, from
The World At War: From The Pages of The Discerner VOLUME I: THE GATHERING STORM (1981)
*
From: The World At War: From The Pages of The Discerner VOLUME I: THE GATHERING STORM (1981):
North of Brunswick, Africa Nova Province, Empire of North America[1]
December 22nd 1896
Philip Hamilton Griffin surveyed the scene before him. On the face of it, this looked like a typical coastal part of what had once been the colonial Province of North Carolina. It might be midwinter, but the warm subtropical climate meant that some yellow leaves were still clinging optimistically to the silverbells and they and their deciduous allies would not surrender the field absolutely to the evergreen hollies and cedars, a stark contrast to Philip’s home in Amsterdam Province, New York. A vest was all the additional protection he felt in this weather, though some of the locals complained in all seriousness that it was freezing.
Not that there were many locals left in what was now named Africa Nova Province. The Empire of North America had been looking for a solution to the ‘Negro Problem’ for decades and one had appeared almost by itself. Negroes fleeing Carolina—and there were still quite a few, despite their better position their these days—would regularly risk a dangerous trip for a chance at a better life. Some stowed away on ships trading along the coast or smaller vessels going down the Pee Dee, Lumber or Waccamaw Rivers. Others tried bolder attempts at forcing the land border, which despite the cooling of relations in recent years remained less tied-up than one might imagine. Cross-border trade had made many people in America, Carolina and the UPSA rich, after all. Regardless, many of the Negroes had found themselves in what had formerly been Raleigh Province, either crossing the border at that point or being encouraged to move eastwards by Imperial laws which protected their rights in that land. The result had been inevitable: Negroes, not only escapees from Carolina but from all over the ENA as well, had moved to Raleigh and effectively drowned out the small number of white revanchists who still thought of this land as part of Carolina. Many had fled to Charlotte as Raleigh became Africa Nova, a chunk of Freedonia on the wrong side of the Atlantic as some Carolinian Burdenist pamphlets opined.
One consequence which few had foreseen was that Africa Nova, like Haiti, would naturally elect black MCPs to Fredericksburg and black Burgesses to Williamsburg. The staid Virginian establishment, so used to being able to block the political ambitions of Negroes when they had been a disparate minority, were still getting used to that one. Philip was aware that a growing force in the House of Burgesses wanted to try to separate those two Provinces from Virginia altogether, though it was hard to see where else they would go. As for himself, he had no truck with Linnaeans and Burdenists. As far as he was concerned the old abolitionists who had not merely argued that slavery was a moral evil but that all men were God’s children had been right. Sadly, even here on the dawn of the twentieth century, he rarely felt safe to say as much.
He shook himself back to the here and now. The events of the last few days and weeks had shown that every writer’s confident predictions of what that century would look like were wrong. War was beginning. The twentieth century would be born in fire.
And that birth would begin today.
Major John Bradleigh appeared beside Philip, giving him a respectful nod. Though Philip was young for an MCP, only just having celebrated his thirtieth birthday, his voice in Parliament was well known to many people. It was all the more remarkable concerning he was a member of what many regarded as the useless rump of a party that had been a historical anachronism before Philip was even born. At his lapel was a pin showing the fifteen golden bezants of Cornwall in an inverted triangle, against a background not of Cornish black but of Virginian blue circled in red. Philip’s party did not forget the Empire’s origins. “Mr. Griffin. I thought you had best be aware that we will...commence shortly.”
Philip fished his fob watch out of his pocket and consulted it, then snapped it closed in a well-practiced motion and returned it. “Right on schedule. My compliments to General Knight and his men.
“I will communicate them when time permits,” Bradleigh said dryly, his grim smile robbing the words of any sense of insubordination. He shook his head. “So this is it. Four decades of peace with the torchies, and it all comes down to this.”
“We had another choice,” Philip said quietly. “What was done in Siam was wrong, plain and simple: but why should the people of both our nations suffer for the wrongs of one maniac and his corporate backers?”
“Because the torchies voted in someone who won’t take that responsibility,” Bradleigh said promptly.
Philip sighed. “The timing of everything...the devil’s in it. Under normal circumstances Monterroso as President would be a Godsend for fixing relations between our countries. But now...this is the worst possible time.”
“Don’t worry, sir,” Bradleigh said. “We’ll whip ’em soon enough, get our way in a few of those disputes we’ve had, and then leave ’em alone to sort out their loose cannon companies. Maybe we should do something about ours while we’re at it,” he added meaningfully.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Philip laughed, “did you hear my speech on how Cabot got off that big spillage in Lake Champlain? These people need bringing to account.” He shook his head. “But I don’t know about this war being over quickly. The Meridians will fight all the harder now they have a President worth fighting for. And even if we did crush them quickly, will the Government be happy to win a few symbolic victories and then go home?”
Bradleigh shrugged. “Ours is not to reason why,” he said, quoting Sir George Tennyson’s
Thermopylae-on-the-Downs and incidentally marking himself out as more cultured than Philip had expected. “I’m afraid if we did have another choice, Mr. Griffin, it’s long past.” He hesitated. “I don’t say this myself, but given your party’s history...”
“I know all the mistakes the Patriots made, Major,” Philip said grimly, watching a grey Carolina squirrel jump from branch to branch. He could see a lot through the slit in this camouflaged observation hut. “My grandmother was Liberty Grey, she of the poisoned pen herself. But now it’s the Premmies and the Libs who are making some of those mistakes.”
Bradleigh tutted. “They’re hardly talking of peace at any cost!” he retorted.
“No,” Philip agreed, “but Lewis Faulkner’s got an obsession with bringing Carolina back into the Empire.”
The Major sucked in a breath. “That’s...”
“
Ambitious,” Philip said euphemistically. “But he’s been a rising star in the Libs for a while, first acting as the voice for Westernesse and the Territories, then getting the Arc of Power’s respect over his committee membership in that fisheries dispute with the Scandinavians two years ago. I hear he even has President Jamison’s ear, never mind he’s of the other party.”
Bradleigh twitched. “That would explain some of the propaganda I saw we were meant to distribute.”
Philip nodded. “I’ve seen it. Faulkner and his faction are convinced it can be done, that the Carolinians have suffered under Meridian rule and all we have to do is use that common enemy and target their anger on their colonial rulers.” He shook his head. “And,” he added in a harsher tone, “let them make reprisals on those who have aided and abbetted Meridian rule in their eyes by acting as an informal administrative class.”
Bradleigh winced. “In other words...”
“Negroes,” the two men said together. They paused for a long moment, as though they were two birdwatchers in a hide waiting to hear a chickadee. But winter had come.
“That’s insane, with respect,” the Major muttered. “Even if it worked, morally...”
“Off the record, I’ve heard some of Faulkner’s followers talk about letting the Carolinians reinstate slavery,” Philip said bitterly. “They say it wouldn’t matter, that all the Negroes would just come here to Africa Nova anyway, leaving the Carolinians with an institution of slavery but no slaves.”
“Very legalistic,” Bradleigh sneered. “So we just rip black folk from their homes they’ve been in for decades and drop them here, and never mind those who want to stay or who slip through the net. Let the Carolinians beat them up and put iron collars on them.” He stared at his boots. “If they go ahead with this...”
“Well, it’s about to start, Major,” Philip said, smiling thinly with gallows humour. “Weren’t you just saying?”
Bradleigh looked from the politician to the slit in the hide and back again, as though uncertain whether to grin or wince. He compromised on a grimace. “Yes. For better or for worse, here she comes...”
Philip Hamilton Griffin prided himself on being known for (as one Supremacist newspaper had caricatured him as) an old man in a young man’s body, dismissive of current fashions and capable of rhetoric that required in-depth knowledge of history both of Parliament specifically and of the country as a whole. He had a cynic’s view of warfare and, though he considered Pacifists like Mo Quedling to go too far, he believed that war could never be glorious. Because of all this, he set his face like stone and let the thrill in his heart remain between he and his Maker. For, despite everything, this was
awe-inspiring.
A railway cut through the trees and bridged the river tributaries not far from the hut. This was not in itself unusual. Much trade with Carolina was carried out by rail, albeit with switchover cranes at crossing points to move the Standard Crates from Carolinian onto American trains. The two nations’ railways were built with a slightly different gauge, a measure whose utility had been proved in the failed Guatemalan revolt of a decade before, where the rebels had been unable to break out of the part of the kingdom whose railways had been built by one Meridian company into the rest, as the carriages they had captured could not be used on the differently-gauged railways. No, there could be no straightforward capture of Carolinian railways and use of existing rolling stock. But railways, as Philip remembered from countless tedious committee meetings in Fredericksburg, could still be used for warfare in other ways.
This American railway was listed as disused on the map and seemed to go to nowhere. Even then, the part they were now seeing was a purposeless dogleg that went at ninety degrees to the main route, lying more or less parallel to the border but about six miles north of it. A seemingly useless railway, overgrown with weeds and with fallen treetrunks lying across it, and only the keenest of observers would notice that those artistic weeds and treetrunks had been strategically placed where they could be removed at short notice. This railway indeed went to nowhere, but that was because it was not intended for transport – unless it be to send the souls of the enemy to another world.
The train that now rolled slowly north-west along the railway had been assembled under cover of darkness in a number of military depots, the more innocuous components arriving from Newton where they had been in plain civilian sight. Now, for the first time, they had been linked together. Two powerful engines, one at each end, drew a giant armoured carriage with what looked like a long pipe on top. Two smaller carriages came in between the outer engines and the large central one, both covered with tarpaulins. At first glance, it might have been a complex array of mining equipment heading west for the gemstone mines in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
It was not.
Precious minutes passed while the special train reached its position, adjusting slightly to match the subtle marks which the computers had calculated with their solution engines and checked by hand, then began to raise that mysterious ‘pipe’. Bradleigh kept checking his own watch, which Philip noticed he had affixed to his wrist with a leather strap so he did not have to keep fishing it out of his fob – an intriguing idea. “Come on, come on...” he muttered.
“Worried she might be spotted?” Philip said, his eyes still on that enormous hollow cylinder as it rose ever upwards.
Bradleigh shrugged. “We’ve done all we can do. I don’t envy those agents over there,” he jerked his thumb to the south, “cutting the Lectel lines, burning any of the old Optel backups...she’s very vulnerable while she’s setting up.”
“But I think she’s ready,” Philip said quietly, watching the subtle, old-style shutterboxes mounted on the carriage flicker a ready signal to the engineers in the engines. The tarpaulins were pulled back from the smaller carriages, revealing rapid-fire three-inch guns. But they were as nothing compared to the twenty-inch monster mounted on the huge central carriage. It was the largest artillery piece Philip had ever seen. As far as he knew, it was the largest in the world.
It had an official name down in the classified military select committees Philip had attended, but not even he could remember that collection of letters and numbers. It didn’t matter. Painted down the side of the barrel in white were the words EMPEROR FRED’S RIFLE.
Despite himself, Philip must have been staring like a little boy as it took Bradleigh diplomatically nudging him to coax him out of his trance. “You might want to put these on,” the Major said, handing him a pair of padded earmuffs. Not for the cold, not in this warm state, but for...
BEOUWM!!!
That was the sound Emperor Fred’s Rifle made, if Philip had been asked to write it down. It wasn’t just ‘boom’, it needed more vowels than that. It echoed far across the flat landscape of the coastal region. He wondered if it would reach as far as the mountains. Regardless, any chance of keeping the great gun secret had now been blown out of the water.
But that didn’t matter. More than twenty-five miles south lay the coastal Carolinian town of Waccamaw Strand.[2] Once a sparsely populated region, it had become home to a significant Meridian naval base, its ostensible purpose to police the traders heading north into America and to deter piracy and smuggling. A similar corresponding base lay north over the border in Shallotteburg[3] from which the Imperial Preventive Cutter Service operated, and if Imperial Navy warships called there as well, why, that was just a cost-saving measure.
It was time to sweep away all of those polite fictions. As flames belched once again from the barrel of Emperor Fred’s Rifle, a second two-ton shell arced through the atmosphere in the direction of Waccamaw Strand. Philip remembered from those select committee meetings that the distances were so great that the ballistic calculations had to take the Ehlers Force into account from the Earth’s rotation.[4] He hoped those calculations had been good. He did not relish those shells detonating amid Meridian sailors and their vessels, but he much preferred that to them going off-course and annihilating innocent civilian Carolinian villages in a flash. Some Mentian fire-breathers might talk of every Carolinian being implicitly guilty in their nation’s historic crimes against Negroes, but Philip had no stomach for such rationalisations of murder.
“This is amazing,” Bradleigh breathed. “We’re almost thirty miles away and we’re hitting them! We’ve not even crossed the border yet! Minefields, walls...they mean nothing to us!”
“Yes,” Philip said, “but don’t forget that if we can do it, so can they.”
Bradleigh nodded. “Right you are, Mr. Griffin, which is why we have to push them back as fast as we can – if they have these railway guns too, we can’t let them bring them up to the border. They’ll never threaten Fredericksburg again,” he said resolutely.
Philip glanced at him out of the corner of his eye while keeping the main focus of his attention on the big gun as it reloaded, slowly, painstakingly, with the use of a crane. “That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?” he said quietly. “I’m a New Yorker, and you’re from—Ohio?” he guessed, looking at the badges on Bradleigh’s grey-green uniform.
Bradleigh nodded. “That’s right. Shippingport, Transylvania Province. Born and bred.”
“Right...but both of us have a, a, the alienists would call it a compulsion...we don’t want to see a foe get close to Fredericksburg again. It’s not our homes, but it’s our capital.”
The Major shrugged and nodded at the same time. “I suppose so. Want some coffee, by the way? It’ll be a while before we get access to the Hermandad markets again, and I wouldn’t fancy the chances of ships coming from Guinea after what happened to those poor saps on the
Conqueror.”
“Sure, thank you,” Philip said politely, although he preferred tea. He was intrigued to see that Bradleigh had one of the new vacuum flasks to keep his coffee hot, and it even seemed to work, as he found when he sipped it from a small metal cup that looked suspiciously like it had been made from a repurposed shell casing. “What I was saying was—we think that because of what happened in the Great War. But the Meridians think that way as well—we had our troops in Buenos Aires a couple of times years before that, and that’s why—”
“And we’ll do it again!” Bradleigh interrupted, raising his cup in a toast. Giving up, Philip clinked his own cup to Bradleigh’s and they both drank.
He was about to try a different conversational tack when he spotted something and frowned. “What’s that?”
Bradleigh followed his gaze and swore. The skies were clear enough on this winter’s day aside from one treacherous area to the south where low-lying clouds concealed the blue from view. Now long cigar-shaped objects were emerging from that cloud, painted a light grey that lent them some camouflage. This seemed pointless, however, considering it was interrupted by brightly coloured identification flashes on their tail fins: gold palmetto trees on red stars for Carolina, red torches on gold suns for the UPSA. Each cigar had a deceptively small gondola below it with a pair of bulky engine nacelles trailing steam. “Steerables!”
“It’s not just big shells that can go straight over minefields and fences,” Philip said grimly. “What can we do?”
Bradleigh ran a hand through his thick blond hair. “The General’s seen it,” he said absently as the shutterbox on the central carriage began fluttering frantically away. “The guns on the two outer carriages can be used against steerables.” As he spoke, the rapid-firing three-inch guns indeed began spitting shells in the direction of the steerables as they approached. At first the defensive fire looked disciplined, but when the cingular guns began opening up with hails of bullets—which even Philip knew would be useless at this distance and just come down to kill some poor blighter a few miles down the road—he knew the soldiers were panicking.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Bradleigh hissed as he observed the battle. “We were supposed to have plenty of time to get her back under cover before they got their steerables off the ground, never mind a full flotilla of them!”
“There must have been a leak of information,” Philip said baldly.
“You think they caught one of our agents? But we only gave them limited knowledge of what was planned...”
“No,” Philip said, “I think one of the local Negro workers you recruited to move the materiel has talked to a relative he left behind over the border and has some means of keeping in touch with. The Negroes aren’t stupid, Major: they know what Faulkner’s been saying and that Jamison takes it seriously. They don’t want their brothers and sisters to be put back in irons.”
Bradleigh’s eyes widened as the biggest Meridian airship fired its first salvo of rockets. His reply, like so much else, was lost as the magazine of King Fred’s Rifle detonated.
*
Paris, Kingdom of the French
December 25th 1896
Héloïse Rouvier used one hand to press her skirt down as she hurried through the gates of the Palais de Bourcier. The Grand-Parlement’s new home, completed only two years before, still felt strange to her, born into a political family. The joke that had circulated was that the architect had submitted three possible designs to King Louis XVIII, one Neo-classical, one Orientalist and one the new-fangled Naissancist, and the distracted King had simply said “Yes, do that,” forcing him to combine all three.[5] The resulting palace, replete with colourful Doric columns and domes derived from Carnatic buildings, was not popular with the public but Héloïse suspected it would grow on them. At least it had plenty of room for deputies to work. Which was just as well, as she was one.
Her skirt caught on a bust of André Malraux as she hurried past and she wasted precious seconds pausing to right it. Then she almost immolated herself when the ballooned crinoline came too close to a gaslight placed treacherously low (only the most modern conveniences in the Palais de Bourcier; she wondered what the old Jacobin would think, having a palace named for him). Passing deputies, even the few other female ones, rolled their eyes at her struggles with a fashion that had gone out with the middle of the century. Adamantine-leaning magazines had already called her ‘the little girl who dresses up like her granny’. But it wasn’t because of her
grand-mère that Héloïse scorned the more practical fashions of the Nineties. Ever since she really
had been a little girl she had idolised Horatie Bonaparte Leclerc, the influential Cytherean daughter of Napoleon Bonaparte, named for his great friend and comrade Horatio Nelson. Horatie had fought hard for Cythereanism all her life and had risen to be a
femme du robe in the Paris Parlement, but she had not lived to see women finally win the right to vote and stand for the Grand-Parlement, only a few years ago. Héloïse still wore the
jupe ballon of Horatie’s youth in tribute to her, the dress that had been born in response to the Balloon Craze following John Byron III’s adventures in the Popular Wars.
Despite cruel opposition from the press and the establishment, Héloïse was surprised how quickly women in the Grand-Parlement had become the new normal.
Perhaps it was just that there were too many other things to worry about right now without fears of a ‘petticoat government’ as the brutish Noir deputy Georges Loubet had called it. The oak benches of the Grand-Parlement, arranged in the distinctive triangular arrangement which suggested the nature of the old Three Estates even though that was long past, were almost packed with deputies. The men, the vast majority, were mostly in the rather dull suits increasingly common in the homogenised Nineties, with only the odd rakish cravat to enliven them. As hats were going out of fashion, they had moved their party cockades to their lapels; some benches were seas of red and white swirls for the Adamantine Party, others the green and yellow of Héloïse’s National Party. Still others had minor parties: black for the thuggish Jacobin Party, the Noirs (no women there at least!), pink and green for the small
Partie de l’humanité who were always fighting off accusations of being nothing more than a voice for Germanic-speaking Alsatian and Flemish minorities; independents in white. One deputy, the eccentric Sancheziste Jules Degenlis, had a grey cockade, for black had already been taken in France. Every deputy also wore a white, blue and red sash with a pattern of golden fleur-de-lys down the central blue stripe, reflecting the flag of the Grand-Parlement. They were required to wear the sash and so they did, even though both the Jacobin Noirs and Degenlis looked rather uncomfortable in them.
The Prime Minister had risen to speak. Napoleon Leclerc, the son of Héloïse’s heroine Horatie, had risen to the premiership in part due to his skill as Foreign Minister. It was he more than anyone who had been responsible for ‘opening Portugal to the human race’ again and bringing the semi-reconstructed Republic into the French sphere of influence. Though he had been criticised for delegating too much domestic policy to others due to his primary interest still clearly lying in foreign affairs, he was a man Héloïse respected for reasons other than his family origin.
The Grand-Parlement chamber continued to fill with noise as every deputy discussed the day’s frantic events with his neighbour. The presiding officer called for order, but had only a limited effect. Finally, frowning, Leclerc himself intervened. Adjusting his glasses with one hand, he cried “It is I, Leclerc!” The benches finally quieted.
“
Merci beaucoup. My gentlemen – and, yes, ladies – the world faces a peril which we have not seen for decades. The peace and prosperity we have all worked to build is threatened. The Americas have been plunged into war once again, and it is a conflict which could spread across the terraqueous globe.”
Leclerc paused, letting his gaze wander around the chamber. Each and every deputy felt the Prime Minister was looking at him or her. Héloïse shivered. “Already, Tsar Peter has issued a statement criticising the Americans’ attacks on Carolina and has warned of Russian intervention. What does the Tsar care of conflicts between Americans and Meridians?” Leclerc asked rhetorically. “He cares not, of course. But he does care about the American presence in South China and the Pacific Northwest, the removal of which would greatly advance Russian interests. And so the Tsar pretends great sympathy with the poor wounded Meridians and cries crocodile tears for their sailors who have died in Carolina.”
There was a sharp intake of breath throughout the chamber. It was one thing for a man, even a deputy, to express such thoughts behind closed doors. But for the Prime Minister of France to do so in the Grand-Parlement...
“I do not speak these words lightly,” Leclerc said, as though reading their minds; Héloïse started and a ripple pattern ran down her bulbous skirt. “Nor do I condemn the Tsar in particular. The human race is a fallen race. We are all jackals beneath the flesh.” He rummaged in his jacket and pulled out a piece of paper, the distinctive yellow colour of a Lectel message. “Two hours ago I learned that Bundeskaiser Johann Georg has condemned the Tsar in turn and now the German government has warned that Russian intervention shall not be without reprisal.” He laughed, hollowly. “What does the leader of Germany, a nation whose global presence consists of some African sand and some New Guinean cannibals, care of what the Tsar does in America? He does not. But he cares what the Tsar might do in Europe, and he sees this as a moment to strike.”
Leclerc paused. “It is like watching an old man playing dominoes, only to nudge his row of pieces and watch them fall, each knocking down the next. But that is over in a moment. We are watching dominoes fall across the world, each the size of a country, in a sickeningly slow yet inevitable manner, like Monsieur Dubois’ flip-book camera. But we need not let it continue. We cannot stop those dominoes that have already fallen. But we can stretch out our hand and stop the pattern before every domino falls.”
The full attention of the chamber, not least that of Héloïse herself, was on the Prime Minister. “There are those,” he said, “who wanted us to tie our nation to the Russians or another power, who warned that we could not stand up to the Germans alone, that in the event of any future war we would be helpless unless we could rely on allies by treaty.”
There were some murmurs at that, especially since the politician who had been the most paranoid warning of nonexistent German aggression had been the National Party’s own Alain Tourneur. But Leclerc pushed on: “We did not take that path. Alliances written in blood are poison, I have always said this and we have seen it proved today. Would one sad incident on the Siamese-Chinese border have escalated to the bloodshed we see now if Siam had not been part of the Meridian Hermandad? It is foolishness. Foolishness that could damn the world.
“So I say,
non. If the Tsar and the Bundeskaiser wish to fight a little war, then let them: France will have no part of it. Let them call us cowards; in the end, they will call us
les vautours, the Vultures, instead, for we dared to be content with our prosperity while they slew their young men for abstract notions of pride and honour, in a war begun over nothing more than a business dispute. It is France which shall inherit the world.”
He paused significantly. “France, and those who stand with her. Gentlemen – and ladies – I can reveal to you that yesterday a Treaty was signed in the city of Marseilles by myself and representatives of the following nations: the Kingdom of Spain, the Kingdom of Catalonia, the Principality of Andorra, the Bernese Republic, the Kingdom of Navarre—” Predictable so far, Héloïse thought, France and her effective vassals, “—the Portuguese Republic—” a few murmurs at
that one, “—the Kingdom of Bavaria—” but Bavaria was always neutral! “—and the United Kingdom of Italy.”
Now the chamber dissolved into shocked reactions. Despite France playing a role in Italian unification, the French government had always failed to persuade Italy into an alliance since the 1870s despite many attempts. For Leclerc to have pulled up such a coup was remarkable, and the very fact the feat was impressive would doubtless bring more waverers to support what he advocated.
“Yes, Italy too,” Leclerc said calmly, “and I hope they will not be the last nation, for the Marseilles Protocol is so written that further nations may join us in the future. The Treaty states simply that we will commit not only to peace with one another as nations, but to abominate any attempt to be drawn into this new war, this war which threatens to become a
guerre mondiale.” A Worldwide War – now there was a phrase, Héloïse thought.
“I hope and pray to the good God that Europe shall not be a battlefield as it was in the days of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers. I cannot promise that. But I will promise you that I will work to the last drop of blood in my body to ensure that France shall play no part in it. We shall use our great military power, our thousands of brave young men, merely as a warning to any power that would seek to draw us, or any of our new partners, into that bloodshed. And I ask now for your support as the representatives of the people of France, the greatest nation in Europe, the greatest nation in the world. Long may she remain so.” Leclerc raised his voice. “
Vive la Nation! Vive la Loi! Vive le Roi! VIVE LA FRANCE!”
Applause thundered in Héloïse’s ears as she rose with most of the Chamber to echo the words back at her Prime Minister. She noticed out of the corner of her eye that even Degenis the Sancheziste seemed to be considering, unprecedentedly, showing approval to a parliamentary representative of the ‘nationalistically blinded unfree zones’; in the end he decided against it.
It didn’t matter. Though some voices were raised in opposition, notably the Noirs and some of the crustier backbench Verts (an odd alliance), the Adamantine Party for once were in agreement with Leclerc and their leader, Robert Mercier, praised the new Treaty and promised to work with Leclerc towards enforcing it.
The Bill passed easily. The world might be about to fall into war, but France, the most powerful nation in Europe, had said
non, merci.
[1] Approximately in the area of OTL Grissettown, North Carolina.
[2] OTL Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
[3] Lies on the OTL Shallottee River, North Carolina, but there is no significant corresponding settlement there in OTL.
[4] The Ehlers Force is called the Coriolis Force in OTL.
[5] Using the term ‘Naissancist’ is probably anachronistic on the part of the writer as it was most probably only used in retrospect (see part #215).
