Diverge and Conquer (Look to the West Book 1)

by Tom Anderson

  Bone’s first victory against regular Republican troops, rather than partisans, came in August 1799. General Pallière’s army had been crushed, but not actually destroyed, by General Græme at Cholet. Some of the remnants of the leaderless army fled into Anjou, while others came into the southern Vendée, feeding themselves by the customary practice of la maraude. Recognising how unpopular this made them with the locals, Bone saw another opportunity to act. By this point he had recruited something of a small army from the local folk, using his Marines as a hard core for training purposes. He took many men who wanted to fight the Republicans for Louis XVII, but were afraid of leaving their homes to fight elsewhere, and possibly leave their families vulnerable to attack. Bone built a locally-based army that fought for local concerns, albeit in the name of the new King.

  After some early skirmishes, the ex-Pallière remnant – their leader’s name by this point is not recorded – were pinned down west of La Roche-sur-Yon by Bone’s forces. Having trapped the disorganised Republicans between two inferior forces, but ones which could stand their ground, Bone then once again unleashed his artillery. His sailors had been training hard, and by now they fought as well as any landsman in the role. The Republicans’ column attack tactics made them easy targets for artillery, even more so when they formed square – and Bone managed to scrape together enough crude cavalry from local sources to force them into that formation for defence. The enemy army, now barely worthy of the name, was virtually annihilated. And the legend of Leo Bone grew...

  By now, Bone was in touch with important locals, men who could send his reports back to England to be published in the Gazette, so that all would know of his exploits. It was a self-publicising tactic that had worked well for Julius Caesar millennia before, and it would work just as well for Leo Bone. Indeed, the popular adventures of the son were one reason why his father, the MP Charles Bone, was given a cabinet position (Paymaster of the Forces) by the Fox government at home.

  In the latter stages of the war, Bone brought his new army north on the Dauphin’s request. While Boulanger conquered in Normandy, ‘General Bonaparte’ held Angers against one of Boulanger’s armies, using a convent for cover (and incidentally capitalising on the fury that the Republicans attacking such a site roused in the pious Vendeans). He made sure that this incident too was publicised, in the nascent Royal French papers as well as their British counterparts.

  When the war finally came to an end, the Dauphin sent for Bone and ennobled him, creating the Vicomté d’Angers. (The British satirical press inevitably dubbed him ‘Lord Angry’ to go with his existing nickname of Old Boney). Bone’s ramshackle army was officially made a new Royalist regiment, the Régiment du Vendée du Sud.

  Once more, Bone’s career trajectory paralleled that of his old friend Horatio Nelson, and indeed, once peace was signed with the new Lisieux regime, the two met in a café in Nantes to discuss their futures. Nelson spoke baldly of the lack of prospects in the postwar Royal Navy, of ships laid up, crews disbanded, officers stuck ashore on half-pay for years. Bone had similar thoughts. They were both men of ambition, for though they loved the sea, they loved power even more. Both recognised that power was no longer to be found in the Royal Navy. Though Nelson had his Mirabilis still, and his rank, all that awaited him was a stuffy desk job with a guaranteed pension – a prize which some men would kill for, but which was anathema to this strange and mercurial officer. Bone told his friend of his own intentions, to resign his commission in order to pursue a military and political career in this new Royal France. He believed that the Royalists would eventually take back all of France, and thus becoming a big fish in a little pond at this point would pay high dividends later. Nelson considered this, before departing for his new Mediterranean command, thoughtful ramblings filling his diaries all the way to Malta…

  *

  From: “The Pyrenean War” by A.V. de la Costa (1924)—

  …Lisieux’s problem was not his control over France, which was rapidly becoming absolute, but control over France’s satellite states. Currently in existence were Ney’s Swabian Germanic Republic, Marat’s Swiss Republic (which did not fit neatly into one of Lisieux’s racial categories) and Hoche’s Italian Latin Republic. In addition to this, the late General Leroux’s subordinate, Fabien Lascelles, had seized control of much of Leroux’s army and now claimed a Bavarian Germanic Republic ruled from Regensburg. Those who had opposed Lascelles, led by Phillipe St-Julien (and called the Cougnonistes after their first leader) were holed up in the Bohemian city of Budweis, but had made no attempt to set up a Bohemian republic. They struggled hard enough just to survive and fight off local militia attacks, Austria being unable to spare any regular troops for this theatre thanks to the Ottoman invasion of Dalmatia.

  Most of these ‘republics’ were simply military dictatorships, whose role and policy would be determined solely by the man in charge. Lascelles, of course, was a fanatical Robespierre supporter and immediately dismissed Lisieux’s regime as illegitimate, deviationist and ‘crypto-Royalist’. He then claimed his own supposed Bavarian Germanic Republic was the only remaining example of true Jacobin revolutionary republicanism. To prove it, he immediately embarked on a Terror of purges quite equal to anything his hero Robespierre had ever done. This would, of course, have quite infamous consequences, but that is outside the scope of this work.

  Meanwhile, Ney – after some consideration – accepted Lisieux’s legitimacy. He had appointed himself First Consul of his Republic, and his second-in-command General Nicolas Ranier as the Second. However, Ney made a local sympathiser, Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, the Third Consul.[287] Schiller, a man of the liberal Enlightenment both politically and artistically, had enjoyed patronage under the previous Duke, Karl II Ludwig. On his succession, however, Karl’s son had dismissed him from court, and now Schiller seized the opportunity to return to a position of power. Ney also created a copied National Legislative Assembly of local Badenese, Württembergers and others: in reality it had little power, but its existence helped smooth and placate local opinion – an example much quoted by the later school of Grevillite Reactivist thought.

  Hoche, on the other hand, rejected Lisieux utterly; not on principle as Lascelles did, but because he saw this as his moment to achieve his own personal fiefdom, fully independent from France. Although more of a megalomaniac than Ney, he also created new institutions in Italy, trying to centralise powers and to create an identity out of formerly disparate states. This would have important consequences for the Italian Peninsula later on.

  Lisieux hesitated over what to do with these truculent republics. His Robespierriste leanings told him that conflicting Revolutionary messages must be purged to leave only the true one. On the other hand, he was loath to spill the blood of fellow Republicans, while reactionaries prospered from the dispute. While agonising over the question with the Boulangerie, it was partly decided for him. On hearing of Robespierre’s death, the Swiss rose up and overthrew Marat. It is said that the Consul of the Republic was assassinated out of the blue as he was walking down the Aarstrasse of Bern with an armed guard, though some have claimed it was a pure accident. Two men in a nearby house threw a tin bath out of the upper window, which hit Marat a sharp blow on the head and plunged him into a coma from which he never awoke. Regardless of whether this had been an intentional strike or not, the ensuing Swiss rising was certainly well coordinated, with Republican troops being divided, isolated and hammered by Swiss irregulars. Confusion prevailed in the aftermath, though – the French had executed so many important men of the old Confederation, and the rebel leaders had no real coherent vision for a Switzerland after the French. The united front swiftly fractured.

  This was, of course, a disaster for Lisieux – holding Switzerland was vital to the French position in Germany. Therefore, he grudgingly accepted Boulanger’s advice to engage with Hoche. By the Treaty of Savoy, France, Swabia and Italy divided Switzerland between them roughly on linguistic lines (thanks to Lisieux�
�s racial policies). Hoche still refused to acknowledge Lisieux, but sent in his troops, and Lisieux bought his services for future operations with supplies and ammunition, treating him as a mercenary. The more loyal Ney was ordered to continue offensive operations against minor German states from his power base in Swabia. Although Ney was concerned about overstretch, as he struggled to administer German-speaking Switzerland as well as his existing lands, he obeyed. Franco-Swabian troops wheeled around the neutral Palatinate – Lisieux unwilling to venture war with Charles Theodore of Flanders – and overran much of Ansbach and Würzburger Mainz, before being halted by a joint Hessian-Würzburger army at Erbuch. Ney was forced to retreat from all Würzburger lands and signed the Treaty of Stuttgart in November 1801, which set down firm boundaries for the Swabian Republic. One consequence of this affair was that the Hessians and Würzburgers, along with Nassau, formed a united front in the ensuing chaos of the Mediatisation—in which they opposed the Dutch-Flemish and the Saxons and broadly supported the Hapsburgs.

  With the situation stabilised in the Germanies, priority number one for France now became Spain. Aside from Royal France, the only foreign troops still standing on French soil were Spanish. Although General Custine had ejected the Spanish General Cuesta (two similar names which have confused generations of schoolboys) from Bordeaux in 1799, the French army in the south had been too poorly supplied, too low-priority, to beat the Spanish back any further. What reinforcements had been earmarked for that army had instead gone to attack the British and Royal French in the west as that front opened up. But now that theatre too was quiet, and the full might of Republican France could be turned on the Spanish.

  Lisieux let Boulanger mastermind the attacks, with some political provisos: Firstly, that what Sans-Culottes regiments remained in France (more were with Lascelles in Bavaria) should form the core of the attacks and be at the forefront. Secondly that new regiments from Sans-Culotte demographic backgrounds should be raised, by deliberate skewing of the conscription process if necessary. Boulanger was too used to Lisieux by now to ask why. The Marshal defined his plan as having three broad stages: to cleanse the Spanish from France herself; to use the War of Lightning strategy once more in an invasion; and to hold Madrid, bringing Spain to terms. Both Boulanger and Lisieux were privately sceptical about the possibility of a Spanish Latin Republic, but Spain must be brought under some sort of control or influence if France was to prosper. Boulanger said that each of his three points required one year’s campaign season.

  Lisieux gave him everything he asked for. All the Republic’s best innovations, the Cugnot fardier steam tractors, the chars and the tortues, balloons and vast conscript armies, were focused in the south, at Bordeaux and Montpellier. Both cities had been taken by the Spanish, only for them to be ejected in turn. Yet the Spanish held on doggedly to the south of France throughout the campaign season of 1799. This only changed when Boulanger launched his offensive, in 1800.

  Cuesta’s armies suffered three major defeats, at the Siege of Toulouse, the Battle of Pau and the Battle of Carcassonne (the latter actually fought quite a long distance away from the town of Carcassonne). The Spanish, like the British before them, struggled to counter the French’s revolutionary new war machines and tactics, and their morale was not high. The war aims of the conflict had always been vague – initially some sort of hotblooded revenge for the King’s execution and anti-Catholic policies, thrown into confusion by the establishment of Royal France and its open negotiations with the Republicans; then shifting to an attempt to annex historically Spanish lands, confused and discredited as Cuesta tried to hold onto lands far beyond those with any realistic claim.

  There was no secret that King Philip VI was ill, though whether from a simple fever or syphilis depended on which faction at court you asked. His capable prime minister, the conde de Floridablanca, had died just two years before, and been succeeded by Francisco Saavedra de Sangronis—who had fought in the Second Platinean War[288] and been finance minister for some years, as well as serving as governor of several of the American possessions in turn. But Saavedra, though a worthy successor to Floridablanca, had only been in the job for two years, and only for six months before the King began to fall ill. His position at court looked ever shakier, and he was opposed by the Prince of Asturias, Charles, who had support from Saavedra’s political enemy, Miguel Pedro Alcántara Abarca de Bolea, the Count of Aranda.[289] The situation was such that the Spanish government was paralysed and unable to respond as Boulanger and his lieutenants coolly rolled up Cuesta’s army in the autumn of 1800.

  What would follow would determine the fates, not merely of France and Spain, but ultimately of the whole world…

  MAP OF EUROPE IN 1800

  Chapter 49: La Disparition de l’Espagne

  Tall ships and tall Dons,

  Three times three,

  What brought they from the conquered land

  To the New World over the Sea?

  Five crowns and five kings

  and one hope for the free.

  – Johannes Reuel Tollkühn, Der Untergang von Spanien, 1941

  *

  From: “The Pyrenean War” by A.V. de la Costa (1924)—

  The campaign season of 1800 saw French forces push the Spanish armies back almost to the pre-war border, although the only place the French actually crossed the border was at the far eastern end, taking Llançà in Catalonia. Although one of Boulanger’s armies attempted to force the pass of Col d’Ares, the Spanish successfully repulsed the attack. While the armies of Generals Cuesta and Blake were pressed back against the Pyrenees, the Spanish entrenched themselves in defensive positions over the winter and prepared to fight off a French mass attack. Although the Spanish government remained paralysed due to Philip VI’s illness, there remained a general determination to keep hold of the formerly French Navarre, and troop deployments reflected this goal.

  The campaign of 1800 provided important lessons for the French side. Boulanger had lost most of his most skilled generals in the previous few years’ worth of fighting: Leroux had been slain before Vienna, Hoche had gone rogue, Ney was busy pacifying Swabia, Vignon and Pallière had been killed during the response to the Seigneur offensive. Analysing the war against Spain now exposed those commanders who deserved promotion, and Boulanger, as Marshal of the Republican Army, enacted such promotions and weeded out the less capable generals. In accordance with Lisieux’s “No (wasteful) killing” policy, less competent but loyal generals were usually relegated to garrison duty, although some of them ended up in more dangerous areas such as French-Switzerland or Swabia.

  Some of the men Boulanger promoted are household names even to those ignorant of history: Claude Drouet, Etienne Devilliers, Olivier Bourcier. Some were from formerly aristocratic backgrounds, Lisieux being more amenable to accepting them than Robespierre had been, while others were commoners like Boulanger himself. While the Spanish dug in over the winter of 1800, Boulanger was, typically, planning a yet more ambitious offensive. It was at this time that Hoche began publishing self-aggrandising accounts of his own battles, easy considering his rule over northern Italian university cities with their endless supply of printing presses. Lisieux quickly banned such accounts in France, but Boulanger was able to obtain a copy illegally and spent some time studying them, reading between the biased lines to extract useful information. He travelled up and down the whole Franco-Spanish border, studying the problem his men had to face, and also read the accounts of the Bourbon generals from the campaign of a century earlier, during the First War of Supremacy.

  In January 1801, Boulanger returned to Paris to discuss the forthcoming campaign with Lisieux and the Boulangerie. He learned of the interest that the return of La Pérouse had sparked, and how Lisieux was writing propaganda day and night to incorporate Lamarck’s ideas of environmental breeding into Linnaean Racism. He was disappointed to learn that Vice-Admiral Surcouf was committed to privateering against the Dutch, but also discovered that Surcouf had pro
moted one of his subordinates, Fabien Lepelley, to counter-admiral and had turned over control of the Cugnot ship project to him. Lepelley was just as enthusiastic as Surcouf for the new innovations, which suited Boulanger fine…

  It was some time before Lisieux could spare a few hours to talk over the campaign. Michel Chanson, Boulanger’s adjutant, records that Boulanger spoke of Lisieux looking tired and having visibly aged. The Administrateur now cloistered himself in his room for hours at a time, continuously writing pamphlets and propaganda. He barely went out to look at the Republic he ruled, instead using his pen and ink to scratch at the paper as though gradually wearing down reality until it resembled what he believed it should look like.