Ten Great Leaders

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
 
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A very nice beginning.

It looks like we're getting closer to the POD; sometime in the early 1700s, with some kind of different British succession, perhaps?
 
Part 2 - The Mission

By all accounts, even those most sympathetic to the Viceroy and his position, the first meeting between the two men was a cold affair, marked by a shocking degree of incivility by the old Marshal. Most accounts have the young Duke bearing this with stoic calm, but one by Louis de Renieres should be considered less biased than any other - as would later emerge, some five years down the line, de Renieres was actually an agent of the British crown, well paid by masters in London (not Philadelphia as is often alleged) and required to report back on anythng that might threaten London's grip upon British America. He is on record, from the 1790s, as saying that he saw "Andorra's success as raising up a strong power to rival America" and Andorra's failure "as threatening to reignite the conflict between London and Philadelphia that we thought settled."

De Renieres reports that Andorra was so incensed by Maury's treatment of him that, after putting up with it for some twenty minutes, he turned his back on the old man and walked away, ostensibly to admire a painting by Rembrandt that hung upon the wall of the Viceroy's Palace, but a move plainly seen by those who were aware of such things as being a refusal to listen to anything more that the Viceroy was saying in the belief that his young guest could only listen to it. De Renieres states that Andorra's actions were correctly understood by those familiar with courtly etiquette, even if the Marshal himself seemed largely unaware that he had been snubbed.

They would not meet again for seven months. Having been officially received, Andorra was able to go about his business with the assumption that New Orleans accepted his mission, even if it did not approve. The arrival on the 1st June of the 74-gun ship of the line Suffren improved his position, the captain bearing letters from the Controller of Finances and the Secretary of the Navy that demanded that both of these departments, so far as they existed in the vice-regal authority, open their books to the Duc d'Andorra.

Andorra set up his headquarters in the former sugar hall, now replaced by the enormous sugar exchange, and was soon besieged by members of the League of Representation, pressing all manner of aspects of their case. He hired a large number of professional men, and even some women in the Parisienne manner, and soon the Sugar Hall was known as the centre of intellectual thought within the whole city, some would say the whole of Missouri, though the League's headquarters in Baton Rouge (where Canrobert had moved to avoid persecution) would argue this.

It should not be down-played that the forces that ranged against Andorra were strong ones. Maury as Viceroy had promoted men who lived the old king's vision, they had made up an elite which had espoused loyalty, obedience and service above anything else, and in so doing had ensured that the judiciary, the army and the professional guilds were all led by a coterie of men who saw any sign of democracy as being tountamount to evil.

Few were as extreme as Bartholemy de Saint Auban, the son of a retired factor and a man who had squandered his fortune in the flesh-pits of New Orleans, and believed that life owed him a living. One rainy night in early June, Saint Auban lay in wait for the duke and pounced on him, attempting to slit his throat. Andorra was walking in the company of Captain Seurat of the City Guard, and Lionel Cartier, a member of the League of Representation. Both men came rushing to his aid, Seurat running Saint Auban through with his sword, whilst Cartier wrestled the knife out of Saint Auban's hand, being seriously wounded as a result. The assailant died, but Seurat ordered an immediate search of his lodgings, his men coming way with fiercely anti-democratic publications, and a list of names who were rounded up over the next few days.

The Duc d'Andorra never showed in public how shaken he had been by the attack, but a letter home to his half-sister, the Countess de Fouras, opens one's eye to just how the attempted assassination had made him aware of the potential violnce within his enemy's breasts,
"O' Beloved Sister, I hope this missive finds you more hale of heart than my writing of it does, myself! A disillusioned nobody would have put a knife to my throat last night were it not for the swift action of my companions. I was too slow! Am I too dim of wits to move to save my own life? I did not even know what was happening until Msr Cartier was screaming, his arms cut by the assailant's knife.

....TO BE CONTINUED

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
A very nice beginning.

It looks like we're getting closer to the POD; sometime in the early 1700s, with some kind of different British succession, perhaps?

Thanks! Of course, we're moving forward away from it now, but will return for bits and pieces of the past as we go...

I suddenly got very sleepy last night and went to bed in the middle of the above, but thought to post it anyway as I might not be online til Monday next

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
The Duc d'Andorra never showed in public how shaken he had been by the attack, but a letter home to his half-sister, the Countess de Fouras, opens one's eye to just how the attempted assassination had made him aware of the potential violence within his enemy's breasts,
"O' Beloved Sister, I hope this missive finds you more hale of heart than my writing of it does, myself! A disillusioned nobody would have put a knife to my throat last night were it not for the swift action of my companions. I was too slow! Am I too dim of wits to move to save my own life? I did not even know what was happening until Msr Cartier was screaming, his arms cut by the assailant's knife. Even then I scarcely moved and it was Captain Seurat who did the honours of protecting me. But from whom, or from what? I have no idea why this madman thought I were at the bottom of his woes!"

New Orleans was a city on the edge - of many things. It was the furthest West of any French settlement of note, and it had spawned a culture of its own, grown up on the mouth of the Mississippi, the sugar trade, the import of slaves from Africa, and the Caribbean's own particular nuances, often more Spanish than French. It was both a gateway to French America, and an exit from there, down the length of the Mississippi. It connected the denizens of two worlds - Europeans who arrived by ship to the new world, and settlers who came down river to sell, to petition, and to buy. It was of both, but never truly of either.

The largest city up-river was Baton Rouge, and it was to here that the Viceroy had effectively exiled Canrobert, leader of the League of Representation. By making New Orleans too dangerous, and too difficult for him, Maury had effectively removed the League's headquarters, though a strong faction had already gathered round the Duc d'Andorra at the Sugar Hall. However, the duke recognised that in order to make forward movement, he would need to visit with Canrobert and his fellow League leaders, and so a week after the abortive assassination attempt, he took a river boat up stream to Baton Rouge.

Baton Rouge was at this time a very functional city, lacking any of the style of New Orleans, and the League of Representation was housed in a modern building of particularly stark construction, bare upon the city's main square - a square that boasted also the local exchange, the city bank, the gendarmerie, the jail, the post office, the stamp office, and the army store, run by the local factor, Marc Saint Clement.

The Duke of Andorra was met at the river wharves by Lucien de Mille, Canrobert's deputy within the city, and was escorted to the League's headquarters with as much dignity as a provincial city could manage. Giles de Canrobert was living in an atmosphere of suspicion and if not quite fear, then the expectation of a move against himself by the Viceroy's men. Andorra discovered that he rarely ever left the headquarters building, and then only with an armed guard provided by a local docker, Andres Bourchier. Another letter to his beloved half-sister gives an indication of how the Duc d'Andorra found the man he had come to visit:

"Giles de Canrobert had probably once been an imposing sort of man. He must have had vision and clarity of thought, in order to be elected as Simon's replacement (o' what a travesty that was!). He must have had physical presence, and force to have won out over the other candidates, of whom I would learn that Msr de Mille, and my own friend Lionel Cartier, had been strong rivals. He must have been these things, or the world does not make sense, but he was none of these things now.

He sat alone in a parlour, before a raging fire, a glass of bourbon in his hand, refusing to admit me until he had personally inspected my papers, and when he did, he pointed a loaded pistol at my head. "Good sir!" he said, "If you make one false move, I will not hesitate to pull this trigger."

Thankfully, I managed to restrain myself from false moves, and the meeting finally took on some semblance of sanity when Msr de Mille and another gentleman, by the name of Alphonse Bouvet, were permitted to join us. But never once did Canrobert put down his pistol, and never once did he make a friendly gesture towards my person."


This first meeting with the League's leadership achieved little more than an exchange of views. The Duke of Andorra was in agreement with their broad aim of establishing a Grand Assembly on the Philadelphia model, but the League leadership, and Canrobert especially, did not seem to have any realistic plan to achieve this. League houses had sprung up across Southern Missouri, but since the Marshal's actions against Canrobert, attendance had fallen dramatically. Only in New Orleans, in the Sugar Hall, were League members regularly meeting, safe in the knowledge that their attendance upon the duke, when he was there, gave them sufficient protection.

The Duc d'Andorra returned to New Orleans, accompanied by Lucien de Mille, and attempted to try to bring about some resolution from the centre. Marshal Maury did not so much refuse to grant him an audience, so much as declined to reply to any missive out of the Sugar Hall. When the duke attempted to call on him in person he was tersely informed by the Viceroy's secretary, the Comte de Robais, that his master was out.

Many a man would have known despair at this state of affairs, but the Duc d'Andorra was not a man to despair easily. But it would appear to many people that this was exactly what he had in fact done. Announcing that the political process had stalled, he hired himself a riverboat, and informed the authorities that as a representative of King Louis XVIII he was going to make a tour of the viceroyalty, something he expected would take a couple of months. He let it be known that he hoped that by the time he returned things would have normalised between the League and the Viceroy, and they could restart the political process.

Maury chose to see this as a victory, and made no secret of his views. The League leadership in Baton Rouge likewise saw it as a setback, and Canrobert of course saw it as a betrayal, threatening to shoot the duke if he should ever appear before him again.

The riverboat that the duke hired was the Saint Christophe, a modern vessel, captained by August Laval, a veteran of some twenty years trading on the river, and a man who had spent his profits investing in his business. He not only owned some substantial warehouses in New Orleans, but had a presence in every settlement up the river. The choice of Laval was no accident, the duke having asked Lionel Cartier to find him just such a person. Cartier was to accompany him North, whilst the Sugar Hall was to continue to operate under de Mille's oversight.

Part 3. - The Conclusion

It was closer to three months before the Duc d'Andorra returned.


Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
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