Hello! I've been lurking here for... over a year now, but had resolved not to post anything until I had something to contribute. Or, at least, something to contribute that wasn't ridiculously guided and with a pre-determined outcome - though I suppose I might do one of those for fun, at some point (Venetian Republic wank, anyone)? Having not been able to find an introductions or welcome thread - possibly because I'm stupid - I've thought that this was as good a first post as any.
I've come up with several future-histories before, and played around with alternative histories, but this will be my first attempt to do one properly, for major 'public consumption'. However, there is the caveat that I'm also presently finishing my second degree this year; and so updates and continuations are likely to be sporadic - I really shouldn't be spending time on this at all, at the moment, but the procrastination instinct is strong, and I have my time-wasting skills honed to an art.
I will try to avoid this being a 'wank' for anything in particular, as I simply came up with the point of divergence earlier this evening during a time of inaction. This first post(s), in particular, will most likely look like Wellesleywank, but please do persevere, as this impression should hopefully be averted in subsequent updates. I will, however, see where it goes from here: I have a few ideas in mind, but I'm very much open to comment, criticism, and suggestions. My apologies if this has been done before – I haven’t exhaustively searched the boards – but I think I may well be taking it in a different direction from previous efforts anyhow, and my thoughts on possibilities - which are all mutable at the moment - extent up to the mid-20th century.
I make no claims for its absolute plausibility, being more in the line of a story than an attempt at serious analysis, though the ‘laws of reality’ will be obeyed throughout. Our point of divergence is a relatively small one, and takes place almost entirely inside the mind of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, with a slightly different character interpretation; both on my part and on that of his contemporaries. Just a few little tweaks, here and there, to individuals’ minds…
With that, I give you:
”The Iron Duke and the Star-Spangled Banner”
Part I: The Duke Diverges
“The idea which has presented itself to our minds is that you should be appointed to the chief command in America, and that you should go out with full powers to make peace, or to continue the war, if peace should be impracticable, with renewed vigour…”
–Lord Liverpool, Prime Minister of Great Britain, in a letter to Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, November 4th, 1814 (OTL)
“It was suggested that [Wellington] might be given supreme command in America. The Regent was in favour of this plan, since ‘his name alone [would] reconcile the whole view & opinion of the Country’; and the Duke himself was not altogether averse to the idea, provided he were given authority to carry out negotiations when appropriate and bring the war to an end.”
-Christopher Hibbert, Wellington: A Personal History, 1997 (OTL)
“At first, the Iron Duke expressed a preference for America over Vienna, solely because it provided a better excuse for leaving Paris. On second thought, he had misgivings, communicated at length to Liverpool… the Duke began by asking to remain in Paris but agreed to leave if the cabinet insisted, as indeed it did. He proposed that the government recall him to serve on courts-martial, leaving a decision on the American mission to a later date. ‘Should Paris or Vienna break into flame’, Wellington wrote with characteristic self-assurance, ‘there is nobody but myself in whom either yourselves or the country, or your Allies, would feel any confidence.’ Departure for America was out of the question for some months. Although Wellington did not say so, the delay would mean that he probably would not arrive in the New World soon enough to negotiate peace before spring campaigns began.”
-Bradford Perkins, Castlereagh and Adams – England and the United States, 1812-1823, 1964 (OTL)
[1]
- - -
Paris, November 9th, 1814
Residence of the British Ambassador
This is ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous, in fact. Some whispers of a Bonapartist plot to kill me, and Liverpool wants me to go now, tail between my legs, as if I have been frightened away?
The Duke sighed, glancing down at the reply to the Prime Minister that lay half-written on the desk of the British Ambassador to France.
Arthur Wellesley did not think that the title suited him, very much. Duke, certainly. Ambassador? Certainly not. He was a soldier. A general. A leader of men. And he had not spent six years fighting the French in Iberia, taking his beloved ‘scum of the Earth’ and making them into the instruments of victory, to now be content to sit and talk with them, and make complaints about the seating arrangements at supper… and it seemed that even that would not remain long. The government had suggested that he might replace Viscount Castlereagh in the Congress at Vienna. Liverpool had asked him, too, what he thought of peace with America.
He must leave Paris – the government insisted on that. And these were his two options. America or Vienna. The peace negotiations with the United States in Ghent had been getting nowhere for months, as neither side wished to back down from their mutually incompatible demands. He might not enjoy being here in Paris – even though he felt that it was the best place to ensure no further complications happened, and keep the new French government stable – but he was settled now, damn it. And Liverpool wanted him to flee, leave his wife behind yet again, on the basis of nothing but vague phantasms of plots against his life.
The Duke had been keeping a close eye on the progress of the war against the Americans since it had broken out, in fact, and so Wellington had a great many opinions on it. He peered down at his letter, and began to write them down. At great - and scornful – length, mentally imbuing the flowing ink with vitriol.
London, November 13th, 1814
No. 10, Downing Street
The Prime Minister had had to read the Duke’s letter three times before he could bring himself to quote it aloud to the other members of the Cabinet. Wellington had… some nerve, to say the least. No subordinate would ever risk using language like this. A man who thought of himself as a new Nelson, on land, rather than at sea… a national hero, and one with the loyalty of most of the Army, at that. He considered himself indispensable to the country, and felt so secure in his position that he could criticise the government so viciously and blatantly.
The worst part was that Wellesley was correct in his assumptions.
Lord Liverpool took a long drink from his glass, and began to read the worst of it to the assembled gentlemen.
“He’s soft!” exclaimed Henry Bathurst, Secretary of State for War and for the Colonies, breaching the silence like the report of a pistol. “His judgement is gone thanks to his wanting of it. When has such a man ever written like that unless he desired peace and surrender to an enemy?”
“You cannot be right, sir,” said the Earl of Eldon, the Lord Chancellor, quivering slightly with the shock of it all. “The Duke is a man we have honoured many times most recently. You cannot say now that he has become a base coward in less than six months.”
The impressive figure of Henry Addington, the Viscount Sidmouth and former Prime Minister, rose his body and his voice. “My honourable friend must have misinterpreted the Duke’s words entirely. Surely, he means to criticise us for our own cowardice, in seeking peace before victory? The man explains it himself, in his own words. As things stand, he feels he could not give us a peace with honour. At Amiens, we were exhausted, and needed time to catch our breath until the next year, and so then I was architect of peace with France – but now, when we stand over our defeated enemy, will we now simply let another go?”
Liverpool cast his eyes around the room, though not before pouring himself another glass.
“I think that you may be correct, sir. And I do not need to mention the consequences for this government if the Duke makes these criticisms of our policies publicly. We might lose the confidence of the people – or worse, of Parliament! And we cannot know what would happen after that, without our guiding hands overseeing the establishment of peace in Europe as well as in the New World.”
The Prime Minister then looked to the two men whom had perhaps felt less indignation and more thought than most on the matter of the Duke’s letter. The Lords Melville and Musgrave – First Lord of the Admiralty, and Master-General of the Ordnance. “What do our honourable friends think – can Wellington do as he says, and win this war with honour?”
“The sea is already free of danger, but for a few American privateers.” First Lord Melville said, shortly and with great confidence. “Their coastal waters are practically ours as we speak.”
“With the end of the war with France, we will be able to shift our resources to further efforts. If the Treasury will provide, that is?” Master-General Musgrave raised a querying eyebrow to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Nicholas Vansittart closed his eyes. “We will have to take on more debts and continue taxation at current levels. The people expect their duties to return to normal now that Bonaparte is beaten – it will not be easy, my honourable friends. We have been at war almost constantly for more than twenty years.”
“So we must either face Wellington or face the debt, gentlemen...”
London, November 20th, 1814
No. 10, Downing Street
Wearing his full uniform once again – the first time since he had sat for his portrait in Paris - Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was ushered through the front door of the residence with a great deal of reverence. The Cabinet had given him his own choice of excuse for why he had left Paris in a hurry and rushed across the Channel on a frigate out of Calais, and he had chosen to say that he was, in fact, headed to England to sit on courts-martial, despite the heavy hinting from the Prime Minister that it was to do with America.
He could not say he was displeased, if he had cowed the entire Cabinet into acceding to his wishes and making peace immediately through him. Admittedly, the Duke had never expected it – indeed, he had felt it far more likely that they would send him off to Vienna, to get him as far away from London and any possibility of directing the attention of Parliament towards his complaints as possible. The Cabinet Room was full of expectant faces as he arrived, the gold lace catching the watery November sunlight from the window as he moved automatically to near the head of the table with the Prime Minister. He made sure that his hook-nosed figure dominated the commanding end of the table, not wishing to reduce the effect of his presence. [3]
“The honourable gentlemen of the cabinet have summoned me?” he asked, curtly, cutting straight to the point.
“His Majesty’s Government…” Lord Liverpool began, carefully choosing his words, “have decided to accede to your advice and avoid the shame you set upon us.”
Wellington could only just about hold back his smirk. Had they called him here simply to apologise in person?
“You are to be appointed His Majesty’s Commander-in-Chief for the Americas. Any asset or resource that is required for you to secure an honourable victory for England that it is in our power to provide will be yours. And we trust absolutely, your grace, that you will deliver it, and more!”
- - -
[1] These quotes are, of course, taken and interpreted out of context for the purposes of this timeline. The OTL Duke believed that war with the United States was pointless, and was in favour of peace being made immediately without dragging out the negotiations – and threatened to do so were he appointed to command the Americas with the full authority he requested. As you will see in footnote #2, however, the wording of his letters to the government can be interpreted in an entirely different manner without difficulty without altering their content.
[2] I have mixed direct quotes and paraphrasing, from Perkins’ account of Wellington’s response to produce this fictionalised, simplified account of his reply to Lord Liverpool. His intention in the OTL was to promote a peace by showing how the insistence on keeping conquered territory in the negotiations at Ghent was harmful. In this timeline, however, his thoughts were just a little different, and the Cabinet’s interpretation of them was altered accordingly. The following Cabinet meetings are, of course, entirely dramatized, fictional, and probably almost nothing like how such meetings actually proceeded, but I have made them so for the entertainment and convenience of the reader.
[3] Quite a few biographies and other books featuring Arthur Wellesley portray him as, on the personal level, what we might call today a ‘colossal douchebag’, and certainly he was very domineering, vain, and self-interested – though a great and inspirational leader nevertheless. For the purposes of this timeline, I have decided that focusing this aspect of his personality suits better than a more favourable one to create a point of divergence.
I've come up with several future-histories before, and played around with alternative histories, but this will be my first attempt to do one properly, for major 'public consumption'. However, there is the caveat that I'm also presently finishing my second degree this year; and so updates and continuations are likely to be sporadic - I really shouldn't be spending time on this at all, at the moment, but the procrastination instinct is strong, and I have my time-wasting skills honed to an art.
I will try to avoid this being a 'wank' for anything in particular, as I simply came up with the point of divergence earlier this evening during a time of inaction. This first post(s), in particular, will most likely look like Wellesleywank, but please do persevere, as this impression should hopefully be averted in subsequent updates. I will, however, see where it goes from here: I have a few ideas in mind, but I'm very much open to comment, criticism, and suggestions. My apologies if this has been done before – I haven’t exhaustively searched the boards – but I think I may well be taking it in a different direction from previous efforts anyhow, and my thoughts on possibilities - which are all mutable at the moment - extent up to the mid-20th century.
I make no claims for its absolute plausibility, being more in the line of a story than an attempt at serious analysis, though the ‘laws of reality’ will be obeyed throughout. Our point of divergence is a relatively small one, and takes place almost entirely inside the mind of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, with a slightly different character interpretation; both on my part and on that of his contemporaries. Just a few little tweaks, here and there, to individuals’ minds…
With that, I give you:
”The Iron Duke and the Star-Spangled Banner”
Part I: The Duke Diverges
“The idea which has presented itself to our minds is that you should be appointed to the chief command in America, and that you should go out with full powers to make peace, or to continue the war, if peace should be impracticable, with renewed vigour…”
–Lord Liverpool, Prime Minister of Great Britain, in a letter to Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, November 4th, 1814 (OTL)
“It was suggested that [Wellington] might be given supreme command in America. The Regent was in favour of this plan, since ‘his name alone [would] reconcile the whole view & opinion of the Country’; and the Duke himself was not altogether averse to the idea, provided he were given authority to carry out negotiations when appropriate and bring the war to an end.”
-Christopher Hibbert, Wellington: A Personal History, 1997 (OTL)
“At first, the Iron Duke expressed a preference for America over Vienna, solely because it provided a better excuse for leaving Paris. On second thought, he had misgivings, communicated at length to Liverpool… the Duke began by asking to remain in Paris but agreed to leave if the cabinet insisted, as indeed it did. He proposed that the government recall him to serve on courts-martial, leaving a decision on the American mission to a later date. ‘Should Paris or Vienna break into flame’, Wellington wrote with characteristic self-assurance, ‘there is nobody but myself in whom either yourselves or the country, or your Allies, would feel any confidence.’ Departure for America was out of the question for some months. Although Wellington did not say so, the delay would mean that he probably would not arrive in the New World soon enough to negotiate peace before spring campaigns began.”
-Bradford Perkins, Castlereagh and Adams – England and the United States, 1812-1823, 1964 (OTL)
[1]
- - -
Paris, November 9th, 1814
Residence of the British Ambassador
This is ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous, in fact. Some whispers of a Bonapartist plot to kill me, and Liverpool wants me to go now, tail between my legs, as if I have been frightened away?
The Duke sighed, glancing down at the reply to the Prime Minister that lay half-written on the desk of the British Ambassador to France.
Arthur Wellesley did not think that the title suited him, very much. Duke, certainly. Ambassador? Certainly not. He was a soldier. A general. A leader of men. And he had not spent six years fighting the French in Iberia, taking his beloved ‘scum of the Earth’ and making them into the instruments of victory, to now be content to sit and talk with them, and make complaints about the seating arrangements at supper… and it seemed that even that would not remain long. The government had suggested that he might replace Viscount Castlereagh in the Congress at Vienna. Liverpool had asked him, too, what he thought of peace with America.
He must leave Paris – the government insisted on that. And these were his two options. America or Vienna. The peace negotiations with the United States in Ghent had been getting nowhere for months, as neither side wished to back down from their mutually incompatible demands. He might not enjoy being here in Paris – even though he felt that it was the best place to ensure no further complications happened, and keep the new French government stable – but he was settled now, damn it. And Liverpool wanted him to flee, leave his wife behind yet again, on the basis of nothing but vague phantasms of plots against his life.
The Duke had been keeping a close eye on the progress of the war against the Americans since it had broken out, in fact, and so Wellington had a great many opinions on it. He peered down at his letter, and began to write them down. At great - and scornful – length, mentally imbuing the flowing ink with vitriol.
London, November 13th, 1814
No. 10, Downing Street
The Prime Minister had had to read the Duke’s letter three times before he could bring himself to quote it aloud to the other members of the Cabinet. Wellington had… some nerve, to say the least. No subordinate would ever risk using language like this. A man who thought of himself as a new Nelson, on land, rather than at sea… a national hero, and one with the loyalty of most of the Army, at that. He considered himself indispensable to the country, and felt so secure in his position that he could criticise the government so viciously and blatantly.
The worst part was that Wellesley was correct in his assumptions.
Lord Liverpool took a long drink from his glass, and began to read the worst of it to the assembled gentlemen.
“I am willing to go to America, though I don’t promise myself much success there. We cannot prevent American incursions into Canada, nor press any offensive southward, until we have regained naval superiority on the lakes. Without this, I shall do you but little good in America; and I shall go there only to prove the truth of Prevost’s defence, and to sign a peace which might as well be signed now. My signature on a treaty of peace would reconcile England to terms of which they would not now approve. American forces still hold Canadian territory, and Sherbrooke might as well claim the ground on which his piquets stand, or over which his patrols pass. At the moment, you have no right to claim a concession of territory – why stipulate for the uti possidetis? You can get no territory, and you only afford the Americans a popular and creditable ground to avoid to make peace. I only wish to make sure you understand my position before you send me to America.” [2]
The cabinet room was silent for a long while, each minister and secretary mulling over what the Duke, hero of the Peninsula, might mean.
“He’s soft!” exclaimed Henry Bathurst, Secretary of State for War and for the Colonies, breaching the silence like the report of a pistol. “His judgement is gone thanks to his wanting of it. When has such a man ever written like that unless he desired peace and surrender to an enemy?”
“You cannot be right, sir,” said the Earl of Eldon, the Lord Chancellor, quivering slightly with the shock of it all. “The Duke is a man we have honoured many times most recently. You cannot say now that he has become a base coward in less than six months.”
The impressive figure of Henry Addington, the Viscount Sidmouth and former Prime Minister, rose his body and his voice. “My honourable friend must have misinterpreted the Duke’s words entirely. Surely, he means to criticise us for our own cowardice, in seeking peace before victory? The man explains it himself, in his own words. As things stand, he feels he could not give us a peace with honour. At Amiens, we were exhausted, and needed time to catch our breath until the next year, and so then I was architect of peace with France – but now, when we stand over our defeated enemy, will we now simply let another go?”
Liverpool cast his eyes around the room, though not before pouring himself another glass.
“I think that you may be correct, sir. And I do not need to mention the consequences for this government if the Duke makes these criticisms of our policies publicly. We might lose the confidence of the people – or worse, of Parliament! And we cannot know what would happen after that, without our guiding hands overseeing the establishment of peace in Europe as well as in the New World.”
The Prime Minister then looked to the two men whom had perhaps felt less indignation and more thought than most on the matter of the Duke’s letter. The Lords Melville and Musgrave – First Lord of the Admiralty, and Master-General of the Ordnance. “What do our honourable friends think – can Wellington do as he says, and win this war with honour?”
“The sea is already free of danger, but for a few American privateers.” First Lord Melville said, shortly and with great confidence. “Their coastal waters are practically ours as we speak.”
“With the end of the war with France, we will be able to shift our resources to further efforts. If the Treasury will provide, that is?” Master-General Musgrave raised a querying eyebrow to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Nicholas Vansittart closed his eyes. “We will have to take on more debts and continue taxation at current levels. The people expect their duties to return to normal now that Bonaparte is beaten – it will not be easy, my honourable friends. We have been at war almost constantly for more than twenty years.”
“So we must either face Wellington or face the debt, gentlemen...”
London, November 20th, 1814
No. 10, Downing Street
Wearing his full uniform once again – the first time since he had sat for his portrait in Paris - Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was ushered through the front door of the residence with a great deal of reverence. The Cabinet had given him his own choice of excuse for why he had left Paris in a hurry and rushed across the Channel on a frigate out of Calais, and he had chosen to say that he was, in fact, headed to England to sit on courts-martial, despite the heavy hinting from the Prime Minister that it was to do with America.
He could not say he was displeased, if he had cowed the entire Cabinet into acceding to his wishes and making peace immediately through him. Admittedly, the Duke had never expected it – indeed, he had felt it far more likely that they would send him off to Vienna, to get him as far away from London and any possibility of directing the attention of Parliament towards his complaints as possible. The Cabinet Room was full of expectant faces as he arrived, the gold lace catching the watery November sunlight from the window as he moved automatically to near the head of the table with the Prime Minister. He made sure that his hook-nosed figure dominated the commanding end of the table, not wishing to reduce the effect of his presence. [3]
“The honourable gentlemen of the cabinet have summoned me?” he asked, curtly, cutting straight to the point.
“His Majesty’s Government…” Lord Liverpool began, carefully choosing his words, “have decided to accede to your advice and avoid the shame you set upon us.”
Wellington could only just about hold back his smirk. Had they called him here simply to apologise in person?
“You are to be appointed His Majesty’s Commander-in-Chief for the Americas. Any asset or resource that is required for you to secure an honourable victory for England that it is in our power to provide will be yours. And we trust absolutely, your grace, that you will deliver it, and more!”
- - -
[1] These quotes are, of course, taken and interpreted out of context for the purposes of this timeline. The OTL Duke believed that war with the United States was pointless, and was in favour of peace being made immediately without dragging out the negotiations – and threatened to do so were he appointed to command the Americas with the full authority he requested. As you will see in footnote #2, however, the wording of his letters to the government can be interpreted in an entirely different manner without difficulty without altering their content.
[2] I have mixed direct quotes and paraphrasing, from Perkins’ account of Wellington’s response to produce this fictionalised, simplified account of his reply to Lord Liverpool. His intention in the OTL was to promote a peace by showing how the insistence on keeping conquered territory in the negotiations at Ghent was harmful. In this timeline, however, his thoughts were just a little different, and the Cabinet’s interpretation of them was altered accordingly. The following Cabinet meetings are, of course, entirely dramatized, fictional, and probably almost nothing like how such meetings actually proceeded, but I have made them so for the entertainment and convenience of the reader.
[3] Quite a few biographies and other books featuring Arthur Wellesley portray him as, on the personal level, what we might call today a ‘colossal douchebag’, and certainly he was very domineering, vain, and self-interested – though a great and inspirational leader nevertheless. For the purposes of this timeline, I have decided that focusing this aspect of his personality suits better than a more favourable one to create a point of divergence.
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