Diverge and Conquer (Look to the West Book 1)

by Tom Anderson

  Cougnon’s troops, meanwhile, remained as a coherent force under Major Phillipe Saint-Julien. This smaller force turned northward, seizing the Bohemian town of Budweis[222] and establishing it as a minor military fiefdom, with only a token nod to Jacobin Republican ideology. The Austrian failure to respond to this occupation is often cited as the reason behind the growth of the Bohemian national consciousness in the first part of the nineteenth century, just as the Spanish failure to respond to the British occupation of Buenos Aires in the First Platinean War had contributed to the idea of a Platinean national consciousness. In days to come, the Austrians would have similar cause to regret this oversight, though Francis II would not live to see it.

  Austria had been set back on its heels, but the time was now ripe for a counterattack. The country retained able generals such as Archduke Ferdinand, Wurmser and Alvinczi. Austria still had plenty of armies and could call upon more levies from Hungary or Croatia. The French occupation of Swabia was new and shaky, that of Bavaria even more so. A decisive attack could shatter it and undo all the gains of the Rubicon Offensive.

  But fate did not smile upon Vienna a second time. Since Hoche had sacked and occupied Venice, ending the ancient mercantile republic, the fate of the Venetian possessions in Dalmatia had been up in the air. The land was ethnically mostly Croatian, suggesting a possible Austrian claim based on flimsy historical justifications, but this was opposed by the Ottoman Empire. November 1798 had seen the death of Sultan Abdulhamid II and he was succeeded by a dynamic nephew, who became Murad V. Murad and his vizier, Mehmed Ali Pasha, saw the fall of Venice as a significant opportunity. The Ottomans had focused on internal reorganisation under the cautious Abdulhamid’s reign, and their response to the Russian Civil War had chiefly been the soft expansion of power. Ottoman influence had increased in the Khanate of the Crimea, the Caucasus and the Danubian principalities,[223] sometimes displacing existing Russian puppets in those states’ governments. However, now Murad discerned that the Russians’ internal struggle meant that a war over Dalmatia would be restricted to conflict with the already weakened Austria. The Austrian ambassador to the Sublime Porte was summoned on 15th May 1799 and informed that a state of war now existed between Constantinople and Vienna. An Ottoman army under Damat Melek Pasha, a Bosniak, crossed over into the formerly Venetian Dalmatia on the 26th of May.

  Francis was in an unenviable position. Without the legitimacy of confirmation by the Prince-Electors, he had diminished authority in his claim to act as Holy Roman Emperor. Having defeated one great invasion, Austria now apparently faced a second – though the Ottomans’ declaration of war was largely a simple consequence of their desired annexation of Dalmatia. There were little signs that the Sublime Porte wished to attempt another wholesale invasion of the Hapsburg dominions themselves, but nonetheless Austria could hardly pursue an offensive war against the French occupying Swabia and Bavaria with the Turks sweeping up through the Balkans.

  Thus history was decided. Austrian armies were shifted south to defend Hapsburg Croatia, while Lascelles was able to escape unharried to Regensburg, and the Cougnonistes to Budweis. The German front, which had been so bitterly fought for so long, descended into an almost sinister silence – at least until the beginning of the Kleinkrieg.

  The situation in Paris was almost comically similar to that in Vienna. In both cities, the great enemy had been defeated, but an older, more traditional one had reared its ugly head. General Boulanger wanted to lead the scraped-together Revolutionary armies personally against the British and Royal French, but Jean de Lisieux dissuaded him. He would be needed here, he claimed mysteriously. Lisieux did, however, ensure Boulanger arranged matters so that most of the troops going to the Chouan-held lands would be made up of Sans-Culotte volunteers.

  The Spanish were also a worry. Spain had been one of the first monarchist powers to declare war after the phlogistication of Louis XVI, and had been the first port of call for the Dauphin when he fled the country. Yet the Spanish prosecution of the war had been unenthusiastic. King Philip VI had always tried to steer the country through a path of peace since the disastrous Second Platinean War, focusing on colonial reorganisation to prevent a second breakaway like the UPSA and reforming finances in the Peninsula. His chief minister, the able Conde de Floridablanca, had favoured such policies even before Philip became King. Together they had prevented Jacobin Revolutionary ideas from gaining much purchase in Spain, even though the country had itself had several popular rebellions against the unpopular Charles III in recent history. Floridablanca’s propaganda emphasised the Revolution’s deistic-atheistic and French-supremacist principles, successfully inflaming popular (though not necessarily noble) opposition. After all, the rebellions against Charles III had partly been sparked by him being too close to French ideas.

  Therefore, in the five years since the start of the war, the Spanish armies had not advanced a great deal. Under the competent but overly cautious General Fernando de Cuesta,[224] Spain occupied those regions of French territory to which it had a historic claim, such as Rousillon (French Catalonia) and Labourd (a heavily Basque part of Aquitaine). Andorra was also annexed. The Spanish were sometimes welcomed as liberators, particularly in those lands which had been Spanish prior to the Franco-Spanish wars of the seventeenth century, but were more often sullenly opposed by the locals. Revolutionary sentiment in the southwest of France was only moderate, but the Spanish troops did not behave particularly well and it was obvious to everyone that Spain was there for pragmatique reasons rather than some sort of altruistic restoration of their fellow Bourbon monarchy.[225] A march by Spanish troops to Paris was inconceivable, not necessarily because of the state of the Spanish Army (which was still undergoing reorganisation after the lessons of the Second Platinean War) but because the Cortes refused to release the funding. No-one forgot that the French Revolution had ultimately been sparked by the expenditure of a century of war emptying the French treasury. Spain’s economy was already shaky enough after the loss of a third of the New World empire without such risky military adventures.

  The Spanish offensive did pick up after Hoche moved into Spanish Parma in October 1797 as part of his Italian campaign. Outrage at news of French atrocities was enough to spur Floridablanca into recommending a new offensive, if only for the sake of appearances. Cuesta therefore advanced into Gascony, laying siege to Bordeaux in an operation supported by amphibious descents by the Spanish Navy – the Revolution’s lack of much naval force meant that the Spanish could operate almost with impunity. However, the siege was broken in July 1798 when a small French force under Custine, the victor of Toulon, was augmented by local militiamen and managed to defeat Cuesta’s army, which was already suffering from disease. The Spanish retreated into Labourd, with the French pursuing, but a shock victory was won over Custine at the Battle of Bayonne when an outnumbered portion of the Spanish army defeated the French. The Spanish were led by a young major of Irish descent, Joaquín Blake y Joyes, who would go on to have an interesting career…

  French attempts to drive the Spanish back any further failed, as the French armies facing the Spanish were simply too few with the demands of the Italian, German, and then Vendean fronts. However, the bloody nose at Bordeaux meant that Spanish policy reverted to a cautious consolidation of their historical claims. The final showdown on that front would have to wait until the fate of the Chouannerie was decided…

  Chapter 40: The Double Revolution

  From: “The Seigneur Offensive” by Philip Rathbone (Collins and Wilston of Albany, 1972)—

  Jean-Baptiste Robespierre had been paranoid about the prospect of a British invasion of western France for many months before the Seigneur Offensive was actually launched. Although Robespierre had pushed hard for the prosecution of war against Austria, as the very successes of the Poséidon and Rubicon offensives led French armies ever deeper into Germany and Italy, he began to fear the possibility of an underdefended France falling to attack from the west.

&
nbsp; Other historians, more pro-Administration, have argued that Robespierre’s fear was not for the Republic but for his own position. Robespierre had masterminded the Terror for several years, and seemed unable to learn that it was impossible to kill all the enemies of the state (i.e., himself; Louis XIV would have approved), because every chirurgeoning or phlogistication only served to turn more people’s hearts against him. Enthusiasm for the Republic itself still ran high in France, but Robespierre was becoming an ever more isolated figure. His power was only the shadow of the tiger.[226] While he might be able to intimidate the masses, there remained men in France powerful enough to oppose him, men whose power lay in different arenas, who could not be cowed through the emasculated National Legislative Assembly. To keep those men on side, Robespierre had to continue the idea that French was perpetually under threat and that any word raised against his Terror was tantamount to collaboration. To that end, as Leroux, Ney and Hoche effectively removed the immediate threat from Austria, Robespierre’s propagandists talked up the threat from Spain. Some historians have even suggested that Robespierre deliberately permitted the Spanish to remain in possession of French land (until Bordeaux was attacked) in order to use that as part of his propaganda.

  But the real threat to the Republic now came not from Spain, but from Britain – Britain and Royal French exiles joining up with the Chouan rebels in Brittany and the Vendée. Villeneuve had weakened the allied force, but not fatally so. Following his defeat, the British took the Republican-held fortress of Quiberon and marched into Brittany with their Royal French allies in the lead. The British commander, Frederick George the Prince of Wales, understood his own limitations as a battlefield general, but on the other hand was skilled as portraying the invasion as a liberation. He kept his men under control, ensuring the provosts made sure that they paid for everything they requisitioned from the locals, and hanged a couple of looters as an example. The Prince also sought out Catholic troops in his army and arranged them into small elite forces which he used when securing potentially sensitive sites, such as churches. Frederick was aware that the Chouannerie was partly ultra-Catholic in character, and knew that he had to ensure no accusations of Protestant atrocities were made. Technically, there should have been no Catholics in his army due to the Test Acts, but in practice there were always ways around these. In any case, the British opinion of Catholics was slowly improving as more accurate reports of Wesley’s successes in Ireland began to leak out. This did, however, alienate some of the Huguenots who had joined the British Army, who saw it as a disgusting suck-up to the same forces who had led to their ancestors fleeing the country a hundred years before. Brittany and the Vendée still had one of the largest Huguenot populations in France – perhaps why the Catholic majority was so fervent, with an opposition to press against – and many Huguenot-descended British officers hotly wrote home to the papers concerning the Chouans’ treatment of French Protestants.

  Of course, this meant little in the face of the big picture. Everyone knew that the alliance was uneasy. England, and then Britain, had fought Bourbon France almost continuously for a hundred years, and had a long history of conflict stretching back before that. The alliance rested on the Royal French seeing the British as the lesser of two evils, and Britain putting one foot wrong could change their minds, reducing the war to another of the futile Anglo-French conflicts that had set the world alight so many times. Prince Frederick was willing to do anything to prevent that.

  In Paris, Robespierre ordered the immediate creation of new armies to ‘throw the English and the impure traitors back into the sea’. In a meeting with the two other Consuls, Boulanger opened his mouth to protest, only to find Lisieux’s foot pressing down on his beneath the table. Lisieux quickly spoke up and said that of course it would be done.

  Boulanger said nothing at the time, but after reading the operational plans that Lisieux drew up, he confronted his fellow Consul at the tavern which the ‘Boulangerie’ used as their usual meeting place. While Jean-Pierre Blanchard argued with Robert Surcouf about the possibility of flying balloons off the deck of a ship, Boulanger met Lisieux in an upper room. The exact content of the conversation is not known. Michel Chanson, Boulanger’s onetime adjutant, later claimed that the General confided in him the words that were spoken, though there is no way verify this allegation. According to Chanson, the conversation ran…

  BOULANGER. Jean, my friend, are you mad?[227] I have read your orders. They are a recipe for slaughter, nothing less!

  LISIEUX. You are right, of course. We could try to prevent Jean-Baptiste’s insane plans this time. We have succeeded before. But how long will it be before our constructive criticism becomes a sign that we are irredeemably ‘impure’ and ‘treacherous’ and we are looking at the inside of a phlogistication chamber?

  BOULANGER. Jean – you cannot be saying this.

  LISIEUX. Perhaps we may even share the same phlogistication chamber.

  BOULANGER. You know that…that it is…it cannot be said!

  LISIEUX. Precisely, old friend. It cannot be said. Friend Robespierre had spies everywhere. Is this the Republic we all sought to build when we pulled down the old regime? Is this liberty?

  BOULANGER. I – I cannot say.

  LISIEUX. You have commanded vast armies in the face of cannonballs flying about your head, yet you fear to say it. Such is the hold his Terror has on all of us. We must break it, for the sake of France. If Jean-Baptiste continues in his destructive regime, men will begin to think of him and the Republic as one. Then when he falls – for he must, before he reduces himself to the last man in France, everyone else executed as ‘impure’ – the Republic will fall with him. We cannot allow that.

  BOULANGER. (Long pause) No. We cannot…what do you intend to gain by this madness?

  LISIEUX. You will note that the new armies are drawn largely from the remaining Sans-Culotte militias.

  BOULANGER. Those not yet part of your Gardes Nationales, of course…ah. You seek to…?

  LISIEUX. Quite so. A new era is about to dawn, Pierre. We do not belong in the shadows.

  It is not the place of the author to speak of the plausibility of this account. In any case, Boulanger approved Lisieux’s plans, and new armies were formed up, drawn almost entirely from the Sans-Culottes and with inexperienced generals in command. They marched out of Paris in May 1799 and divided into two main forces, led by Paul Vignon and Jacques Pallière. Vignon’s northern army assembled at Le Mans and then marched westward into Brittany, while Pallière’s southern force was sent on to Poitiers and then wheeled to enter the Vendée.

  By the time the two Republican armies attacked, at the end of June, the British were well established. The remaining Republican holdouts at Lannion and Cherbourg were taken by British amphibious descents, securing control over all Brittany. A force moved into the Vendée under Sir Thomas Græme – though the politically aware Prince Frederick made sure to give it a Catholic and French vanguard – and cleared out the remaining Revolutionary strongholds that the Chouans had been unable to take, lacking artillery. All of the province of Brittany, and the western half of Poitou (which consisted of the Vendée) were now under Allied control. The Dauphin went to Nantes and was hailed as Louis XVII. He was blessed by the Bishop of Nantes (who had escaped the purge of the Second Estate) in his Cathedral, one step short of a full coronation. The two redeemed regions now had almost no supporters of the Revolution, as those who had backed it had fled eastward when the Chouannerie threw out the Republican occupiers.

  Against this background, the two Republican forces attacked. Vignon’s army met the main Anglo-French force, with Prince Frederick and Louis XVII present, near Laval. The Republicans were outnumbered and inexperienced, and were slaughtered by the Royalists and their British allies. Tellingly, the Republicans had also lacked any of the Cugnot toys that had been so useful against Austria. This was not because they did not exist. But Boulanger and Lisieux controlled their supply through the Boulangerie, and had ens
ured that none would be supplied. They wouldn’t want that large group of Sans-Culottes to win, after all…

  The southern battle, at Cholet, was less decisive. Græme met Pallière with a force only two-thirds as large, and part of that made up of Royal French, less reliable without their King there to steady them. The fact that it was Frenchman fighting Frenchman was never far away from the minds of either side. Nonetheless, Lisieux and Boulanger had not failed at deliberately engineering failure there, either. Though Græme did not actually destroy Pallière’s army as thoroughly as Vignon’s at Laval, Riflemen skirmishers attached to the 69th (South Lincolnshire) Foot did manage to kill Pallière himself. With little of a trained officer corps in command, the army simply disintegrated. The contrast with the orderly withdrawal of Leroux’s army from Vienna after his death is telling. Boulanger had ensured that the best of the Republic’s army had gone into Germany. According to Lisieux’s plan, he now deliberately sent its worst against the British.

  Pallière’s army scattered over the countryside, some fleeing to Anjou and Aunice provinces. La maraude only served to turn more undecided locals to the Royalist cause. In truth, though, a bigger surge of support was the two victories themselves, trumpeted to the skies by British and Royalist propaganda. The Republic, seemingly invincible for so long, now appeared anything but.