Chapter 1: The Failure of the Republican Experiment.
Part 1: A Bad Wind.
June, 1798. Malta.
It is unknown what day it occurred. It was in all likeliness a day just like any other, on an island barely different from any other in the central Mediterranean. The year was not much different than any of the others in the decade or so preceding it. The War of the First Coalition had ended in Europe, and only Great Britain remained hostile to the young French Republic. A stroke had been prepared against ‘Perfidious Albion,’ and the chosen place for the landing of the blow was Egypt, a vital link in the British communication chain to the vital colony of India.
The army that sailed was no more remarkable than any of the others raised by the Republic over the course of the previous wars, a ‘mere’ 40,000 strong. The fleet, too, was unremarkable: 22 warships and 120 transports, a capable fleet, not an unstoppable one.
On the small island of Malta, occupied by the French after a brief siege, was an insect, likely a mosquito, one more bug like billions and billions of others. It carried in it a parasite of the plasmodium variety, more commonly known as Malaria a name derived from bad air, which the ancients believed was the cause of the disease that struck them down in the wetlands and on the coasts. The insect searched for a mammal from which to draw blood for sustenance, just like any other. But its choice in who to bite would change the course of human history.
For the man the mosquito bit was not unremarkable. The man the mosquito bit was rather the opposite. The man was a conqueror of nations, a man who, in one world, would have brought a continent to its knees. The man was a master of strategy of tactics and strategy, beloved by his men and his people. A man who’s name, in one life, would echo throughout all of history.
The mosquito bit a man named Napoleon Bonaparte.