Thread 2 of https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=239300 (Ten Naval Battles)
TEN GREAT LEADERS
A Study in Leadership and Vision
Count Laurent Simon
University of Missouri, Baton Rouge
Copyright 1910, MSU Press
1. THE DUKE OF ANDORRA, 1785
Part 1 - Introduction
Louis de Mortin was an illegitimate son of King Louis XVII, one of many it must be said, but a man who had the advantage of having as his mother the vivacious courtesan Marie de Montpelier, the Countess of Andorra as she was created in 1780, just four years before her death from a wasting disease of the lower parts. Louis thus inherited her title, and to most observers it was clear that the young man also had her looks, and her charm, for one year later at the tender age of twenty (tender, as far as diplomatic missions go) he was sent to Missouri as the personal representative of the king.
At this time, French America was in crisis. The 1750 war had ended in a stalemate, Suffren's victory erasing the possibility of a British sweep across the Northern territories, but the subsequent Peace of Amsterdam reversing French gains made in the early part of the war at the expense of Britain's Indian allies. The quid-pro-quo of course, was a reversal of French losses on the other side of the world, in the Indian sub-continent, but for North America it meant that France's two zones of settlement would continue to remain separate. Louisiana and the Mississippi colonies were united as the Viceroyalty of Missouri in 1770 after the War of Spanish Succession had resulted in the Treaty of Taragonna, defining Britain and Spain's spheres of influence. France was able to claim for itself a sphere extending far North and West of its actual holdings, and to emerge from the peace with some semblance of victory.
In all other ways, Taragonna had been a disaster. True, the spectre of a Habsburg reunion had been averted, but since Vienna did not desire this in any way, it was a hollow call. The elevation of the Duke of Lorraine to the Spanish throne had cemented Spain firmly in the Habsburg camp, and Vienna for its support had subsumed Lorraine into its own empire, whilst the new king had made his new domain secure. In North America, things had threatened to be as bad for Paris, with the Anglo-Spanish agreement threatening to squeeze Louisiana until hardly any viable coastline existed. Posturing and sabre-rattling had managed to reduce the rival claims, and the subsequent French agreement had rescued most of what Paris considered to be rightfully theirs, but the British-Spanish-Austrian axis that the war had resulted in left France bereft of friends at a crucial time.
The fourth king of the eighteenth century, Louis XVII had inherited a fragmented political structure, and an increasingly strained financial one, one made worse by the exigencies of the Spanish war. The hoped for great gains had not come in 1770, and his ministers had instead had to try to find ways to balance the books, on the one hand, and raise additional revenues on the other. The formation of a united viceroyalty for Missouri had seemed to be a sensible way to place the North American colonies on a more sustainable footing, and a way to attract immigrants, if not in the numbers that Arcadia had always done so, and neither of them anywhere close to the numbers that British America managed to achieve.
There were many by 1785 who would say that this latter policy had been too successful, and this would lie at the heart of the Duke of Andorra's mission. With a unified vice-regal government, based at New Orleans, and advantageous land settlements in the Mississippi valley, Missouri began to attract the type of immigrant who had always been reluctant to come before - the educated, enterprising businessman, the established commercial factor, and the ambitious social reformer.
In 1782, Missourians had petitioned the Viceroy, the veteran Marshal Andres Maury, for greater rights of self-rule, and specifically for a parlement, similar to the Grand Assembly that King William V had recently granted Philadelphia. Maury, however, had orders from the ageing and dying Louis XVII to resist anything that seemed to undermine the royal perogative, and rejected the petition. The petitioners, seeing the success of their rivals in British America, organised themselves into a League of Representation, and sent to Paris a young emissary, the twenty-five year old Raymond Simon, son of a Mississippi factor.
Simon received a polite obfuscation from official channels, but was received privately and in secret by the Dauphin, the Duc de Bretagne not sharing the views of his father, but concerned to reveal his colours in case he caught a broadside from the cantankerous Louis XVII. Bretagne promised Simon that as soon as he had the power of government in his hands (he was not so crass to say as soon as his father the king was dead) he would send out a personal representative to bring matters to a mutually agreeable conclusion.
December 21st 1784 and the seventy-four year old King Louis XVII was celebrating the approach of Christmas with a masque at Les Tuilleries. In the midst of attempting to perform a popular dance of the day, he dropped down dead, and the Dauphin acceded the throne as King Louis XVIII. One of his first acts was to ennoble Raymond Simon as a count in the aristocracy of Missouri, and to send him back to the American continent with a promise that a high-powered French negotiator would soon be heading that way, chartered to oversee radical reform.
It is a sad irony that Simon, upon his return to New Orleans, was pilloried as a dupe of the French crown and stripped of his office; disillusioned he headed North to the Lakota conflict which had broken out between Missouri and its presumed vassal, the Lakota Indians, who refused to accept even the hint of French overlordship. The League of Representation instead elected Giles de Canrobert as its spokesman, a move which was met with immediate counter-measures in New Orleans where Marshal Maury declared Canrobert to be a criminal (which he was, albeit thirty years before as a starving youth), and a demagogue. The Viceroy banned Canrobert from attending public meetings, much less from speaking at them, and placed him under strict surveillance.
It was into this atmosphere that Andorra would sail upon the Chamois, setting foot in New Orleans on the 3rd May 1785. His half-brother, the king, had given him specific instructions, but a wide range of latitude in attempting to apply them. He had been ordered to bring peace to Missouri, but in such a way that going forward the viceroyalty would cease to be a problem, and instead become a beacon. It was made obvious to him that emulation of the British approach was to be preferred, and that as long as loyalty to France and subsumation to French interests could be assured, the people of Missouri were to be given whatever they wanted.
The Duke of Andorra resides upon our list of Great Leaders because he was an intellectual giant. Even more so than his half-brother, Louis XVIII, he understood what the people of the American colonies needed, rather than wanted, and he was determined to find the workable compromise that would tie the two realms together into the long-term.
Unfortunately for him, his mission did not start well, agents of the Viceroy arresting him for impersonating a brother of the king. As an illegitimate scion of Louis XVII, and having only recently inherited his title from his mother, the young Duke of Andorra was not a figure who was much known about in Missouri. The king had sent a ship on ahead with letters of introduction, but this had fallen prey to pirates in the Florida Straits, and it was only after the Chamois had been searched by the Viceroy's men that documents plainly bearing the seal of the Tuilleries were discovered, and Andorra was released.
Part 2 - The Mission
Best Regards
Grey Wolf
TEN GREAT LEADERS
A Study in Leadership and Vision
Count Laurent Simon
University of Missouri, Baton Rouge
Copyright 1910, MSU Press
1. THE DUKE OF ANDORRA, 1785
Part 1 - Introduction
Louis de Mortin was an illegitimate son of King Louis XVII, one of many it must be said, but a man who had the advantage of having as his mother the vivacious courtesan Marie de Montpelier, the Countess of Andorra as she was created in 1780, just four years before her death from a wasting disease of the lower parts. Louis thus inherited her title, and to most observers it was clear that the young man also had her looks, and her charm, for one year later at the tender age of twenty (tender, as far as diplomatic missions go) he was sent to Missouri as the personal representative of the king.
At this time, French America was in crisis. The 1750 war had ended in a stalemate, Suffren's victory erasing the possibility of a British sweep across the Northern territories, but the subsequent Peace of Amsterdam reversing French gains made in the early part of the war at the expense of Britain's Indian allies. The quid-pro-quo of course, was a reversal of French losses on the other side of the world, in the Indian sub-continent, but for North America it meant that France's two zones of settlement would continue to remain separate. Louisiana and the Mississippi colonies were united as the Viceroyalty of Missouri in 1770 after the War of Spanish Succession had resulted in the Treaty of Taragonna, defining Britain and Spain's spheres of influence. France was able to claim for itself a sphere extending far North and West of its actual holdings, and to emerge from the peace with some semblance of victory.
In all other ways, Taragonna had been a disaster. True, the spectre of a Habsburg reunion had been averted, but since Vienna did not desire this in any way, it was a hollow call. The elevation of the Duke of Lorraine to the Spanish throne had cemented Spain firmly in the Habsburg camp, and Vienna for its support had subsumed Lorraine into its own empire, whilst the new king had made his new domain secure. In North America, things had threatened to be as bad for Paris, with the Anglo-Spanish agreement threatening to squeeze Louisiana until hardly any viable coastline existed. Posturing and sabre-rattling had managed to reduce the rival claims, and the subsequent French agreement had rescued most of what Paris considered to be rightfully theirs, but the British-Spanish-Austrian axis that the war had resulted in left France bereft of friends at a crucial time.
The fourth king of the eighteenth century, Louis XVII had inherited a fragmented political structure, and an increasingly strained financial one, one made worse by the exigencies of the Spanish war. The hoped for great gains had not come in 1770, and his ministers had instead had to try to find ways to balance the books, on the one hand, and raise additional revenues on the other. The formation of a united viceroyalty for Missouri had seemed to be a sensible way to place the North American colonies on a more sustainable footing, and a way to attract immigrants, if not in the numbers that Arcadia had always done so, and neither of them anywhere close to the numbers that British America managed to achieve.
There were many by 1785 who would say that this latter policy had been too successful, and this would lie at the heart of the Duke of Andorra's mission. With a unified vice-regal government, based at New Orleans, and advantageous land settlements in the Mississippi valley, Missouri began to attract the type of immigrant who had always been reluctant to come before - the educated, enterprising businessman, the established commercial factor, and the ambitious social reformer.
In 1782, Missourians had petitioned the Viceroy, the veteran Marshal Andres Maury, for greater rights of self-rule, and specifically for a parlement, similar to the Grand Assembly that King William V had recently granted Philadelphia. Maury, however, had orders from the ageing and dying Louis XVII to resist anything that seemed to undermine the royal perogative, and rejected the petition. The petitioners, seeing the success of their rivals in British America, organised themselves into a League of Representation, and sent to Paris a young emissary, the twenty-five year old Raymond Simon, son of a Mississippi factor.
Simon received a polite obfuscation from official channels, but was received privately and in secret by the Dauphin, the Duc de Bretagne not sharing the views of his father, but concerned to reveal his colours in case he caught a broadside from the cantankerous Louis XVII. Bretagne promised Simon that as soon as he had the power of government in his hands (he was not so crass to say as soon as his father the king was dead) he would send out a personal representative to bring matters to a mutually agreeable conclusion.
December 21st 1784 and the seventy-four year old King Louis XVII was celebrating the approach of Christmas with a masque at Les Tuilleries. In the midst of attempting to perform a popular dance of the day, he dropped down dead, and the Dauphin acceded the throne as King Louis XVIII. One of his first acts was to ennoble Raymond Simon as a count in the aristocracy of Missouri, and to send him back to the American continent with a promise that a high-powered French negotiator would soon be heading that way, chartered to oversee radical reform.
It is a sad irony that Simon, upon his return to New Orleans, was pilloried as a dupe of the French crown and stripped of his office; disillusioned he headed North to the Lakota conflict which had broken out between Missouri and its presumed vassal, the Lakota Indians, who refused to accept even the hint of French overlordship. The League of Representation instead elected Giles de Canrobert as its spokesman, a move which was met with immediate counter-measures in New Orleans where Marshal Maury declared Canrobert to be a criminal (which he was, albeit thirty years before as a starving youth), and a demagogue. The Viceroy banned Canrobert from attending public meetings, much less from speaking at them, and placed him under strict surveillance.
It was into this atmosphere that Andorra would sail upon the Chamois, setting foot in New Orleans on the 3rd May 1785. His half-brother, the king, had given him specific instructions, but a wide range of latitude in attempting to apply them. He had been ordered to bring peace to Missouri, but in such a way that going forward the viceroyalty would cease to be a problem, and instead become a beacon. It was made obvious to him that emulation of the British approach was to be preferred, and that as long as loyalty to France and subsumation to French interests could be assured, the people of Missouri were to be given whatever they wanted.
The Duke of Andorra resides upon our list of Great Leaders because he was an intellectual giant. Even more so than his half-brother, Louis XVIII, he understood what the people of the American colonies needed, rather than wanted, and he was determined to find the workable compromise that would tie the two realms together into the long-term.
Unfortunately for him, his mission did not start well, agents of the Viceroy arresting him for impersonating a brother of the king. As an illegitimate scion of Louis XVII, and having only recently inherited his title from his mother, the young Duke of Andorra was not a figure who was much known about in Missouri. The king had sent a ship on ahead with letters of introduction, but this had fallen prey to pirates in the Florida Straits, and it was only after the Chamois had been searched by the Viceroy's men that documents plainly bearing the seal of the Tuilleries were discovered, and Andorra was released.
Part 2 - The Mission
Best Regards
Grey Wolf
Last edited: