Uncharted Territory (Look to the West Book 2)

by Tom Anderson

  Castelli was disappointed with progress so far. He had envisaged a dramatic fall of all that remained of Lower Peru within a single campaign season, the people rallying to the Meridian banner of liberty and thus forming new cadres as they marched on Santa Fe. As it was, it seemed as though the war would drag on for years and the UPSA would probably only obtain all of New Granada at best. That was insufficient; the Partido Solidaridad’s mission would not be complete until all of Spanish-speaking America was under republican rule. To that end, he prepared a knockout blow according to the doctrine of the French Jacobins he admired. The Armada de las Provincias Unidas was under the command of Admiral Gervasio Ramírez, who had been the most successful captain of the UPSA’s small experimental naval force during the Second Platinean War. Since independence, the Armada had expanded considerably, chiefly by the purchase of obsolete ships from European navies, but also by some limited native construction. It outnumbered by two to one the ships loyal to King-Emperor Charles in the City of Mexico, consisting of a hodgepodge of Carlista vessels from Spain and those that had been attached to the viceregal squadrons.

  Despite the inconclusive action at Paita, Castelli was therefore convinced that the Meridians could dominate the seas, which meant an obvious solution to the war presented itself. A large army force, loaded onto commandeered merchant ships and protected by Ramírez’ Armada, could be landed at a Mexican port such as Acapulco and then march inland to take the City of Mexico. The whole new Empire of the Indies could thus be brought down in one blow, strangled in the cradle. This strategy showed obvious influence from those of Jean de Lisieux – ‘to hold the heart is to hold the nation’. Whether it would work in this case, given the highly decentralised nature of the new Empire, was a question raised in the Cortes Nacionales – including by some members of Castelli’s own Partido Solidaridad. But Castelli shouted them down and accused them of treachery. The plan would go ahead.

  Even with the UPSA’s superiority in numbers, Castelli ordered that all available ships be seized to guarantee a large number of troops could be sent. As fate would have it, a young captain named Alejandro Mendez had a notion along those lines: he proposed that the Armada attack the pirates nesting in the Islas Malvinas and obtain their ships as transports. This idea appealed to Ramírez, who saw it as killing two birds with one stone. Ever since the Second Platinean War in the 1780s, the Islas Malvinas (originally claimed as part of the Viceroyalty of Peru) had been claimed by Britain as a possession. The original intent of the Rockingham government had been to turn Falkland’s Islands, as the British called them, into a minor naval base in order to control the southern Atlantic trade routes. However, the initial survey missions sent there had concluded that the islands were too barren to make the expense worthwhile, and thus the islands had simply been left alone. Some politicians in the UPSA had talked about approaching Britain to purchase the islands, but nothing had so far materialised.

  As it was, the uninhabited isles had become the haunt of pirates and privateers. A base at Port Louis (on East Falkland or Isla Soledad) was the chief town, a wretched hive of scum and villainy which was also used as a home port by some legitimate traders and fishermen. In particular, the whalers of Nantucket, an island of the Confederation of New England, used Port Louis as a base for their excursions into the South Seas. Some of the pirates were from the UPSA themselves originally, while others were British or American and a smaller number were French or from the Spanish colonies. Like most pirate settlements – like those in the West Indies during the heyday of piracy before the British gained control of the Caribbean Sea – Port Louis was a ramshackle but arguably quite egalitarian assembly, with black Africans enjoying an equal status to whites, Indians and mestizos that they did not possess even in the UPSA itself.

  Regardless, though the pirates rarely preyed upon Meridian shipping – not wanting to whack the beehive next door – it would be an obvious advantage to deal with them and in so doing gain more shipping for Castelli’s planned descent on Acapulco. To that end, Mendez was given the temporary rank of commodore and led a force of five ships up the Strait of San Carlos (or Falkland Sound as the British called it) for a descent upon the town.

  Mendez’ two ships of the line and three frigates were quite sufficient to break through the pirates’ defences and land marines in the town, seizing it. Most importantly, though, they needed prize ships. Seven pirate or privateer vessels were taken, along with two Nantucket whalers. One of them was the Phoenix, commanded by Joseph Peirce. Peirce reacted with fury when the U.P. Marines boarded his ship and attempted to fight them off with a cutlass – he had his hand taken off for his pains. Perhaps in some other world ‘Peirce’s Hand’ would have become as famous as Jenkins’ Ear; but this was to prove a sideshow.

  For some of the privateer craft escaped, and Mendez ordered his three frigates to pursue. Two of them, between them, captured another three pirate ships, all of them useful for Castelli’s plan. The third, however, was the Concepcíon, under the command of Captain Eduardo Alvarez.

  Alvarez pursued a particularly large and promising-looking pirate craft – whose identity has never been proved – for a full day, until one of the South Atlantic mists descended. His crew despaired that they had lost their quarry, but Alvarez stubbornly pressed on, until his hope seemed rewarded: a silhouette emerged from the mists, about the right size.

  What happened next has been debated furiously by sailors, nationalists and academics alike for decades, but the facts are that the Concepcíon fired a warning shot, the other ship replied, and a full-scale battle emerged. But the larger frigate was victorious, brought down the enemy’s mainmast, and boarded her with her Marines. A bloody fight ensued.

  It was not until the red mist had faded from the eyes of her crew that Alvarez and his men realised that the ‘privateer’ had not simply been flying the Blue Ensign as a false flag, as many ships even of legitimate navies did in that period as a ruse de guerre. They had, in fact, lost their quarry – and instead had found His Majesty’s Brig Cherry, fifty-two days out of Norfolk, Virginia, under the command of the American Lieutenant Jeremy Hayward, now ten minutes dead beneath the blade of a Meridian Marine.

  Alvarez immediately saw the implications and did his best to cover the incident up, repainting the brig’s name, throwing those Americans and Britons who had surrendered overboard so that the story would not get out, hoping the Royal Navy would believe that the Cherry had simply foundered at sea. But it was not to be. The story got out, who knows how? Perhaps one of Alvarez’ men was haunted by the killing of the prisoners, turned to the bottle, and spoke.

  What is known is that by January 1806, both Fredericksburg and London knew of the ‘Cherry Massacre’ and their people, outraged by the stories appearing in their newspapers, bayed for their governments to act…

  Chapter #59: Pope, Austrians and Neapolitans Knot…

  “Four hundred years before Christ, the Gauls of Brennus decided it would be a good idea to invade Italy, then weak and divided. Within a few generations, their descendants would bitterly rue bringing themselves to the attention of the Romans as they united the peninsula into the foundations of the greatest empire of the classical world. This would not be the last time a great general made a similar mistake…”

  - George Spencer-Churchill the Younger, Commentary on Gibbons’ “History of the Roman Empire” (1935)

  *

  From: “The Rise of Naples” by James Cuthbertson (1940)—

  The winter of 1803 saw the total disintegration of Lazare Hoche’s position in central Italy. The fallout from the Rape of Rome can scarcely be exaggerated. In France, Lisieux used it as an excuse to launch La Nuit Macabre and thus redirect Catholic anger against his Jacobin political enemies, allowing him to consolidate the rule of his own personality cult. However, while Hoche had a far greater appreciation of military realities than Lisieux could ever hope to have (as the French Republican armies would later learn to their cost), equally he was a political amateu
r beside Lisieux’s artistry. Though the troops that had torched Rome and killed the Pope had been French Jacobin volunteers, it was Lazare Hoche’s green and red banner of the Italian Latin Republic that became stained by that blood. The desertion of Hoche’s Italian volunteers began as soon as the news spread, and is doubtless partially responsible for his defeat at Teramo by the Neapolitan and exilic Tuscan army under Prince Mario Pignatelli Strongoli.

  Hoche was able to limit the damage for a time by rallying his Italian levies with his personal charisma and blaming Lisieux. But this only worked so long as they were fighting and campaigning, and he could appear to his men on the battlefield. It certainly meant that he was able to hold the field of Ascoli Piceno against Pignatelli’s armies – which outnumbered his by two to one – to cover his retreat from Teramo. Hoche successfully retreated to Rome in the hope that he would be able to make suitable amends for the destruction in some symbolic act there. However, this plan backfired and many more of his men deserted when they saw that the rumours of destruction and horror, far from being exaggerated, were if anything an understatement. Rome was a burnt, dead city inhabited only by the remnants of the poor. The nobles and churchmen had either fled the city or been summarily executed by the Jacobins. The effect was so damaging that Hoche was forced to move his camp yet again in November to Viterbo, even though this made him look indecisive and uncertain.

  He left only a small garrison in Rome itself and they proved unreliable. Based on the urging of the “Unholy English Trinity” that the native Neapolitan politicians sourly (and accurately) accused of dominating the court – Admiral Horatio Nelson, Sir Richard Hamilton and Sir John Acton – King Charles of Naples and Sicily sent Pignatelli’s army to retake the city in March of 1804. This was not his only act at this time, however. Throughout the winter, Charles and his ministers had been calculating how to use Hoche’s terrible faux pas to their advantage. Most of the cardinals who had fled the Rape of Rome – about a third of the College – came to Naples the city, and ultimately to the Caserta Palace, the royal court. The cardinals were led, unofficially, by one of the oldest of the survivors, the Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia and Velletri, aged seventy-nine and one of the highest-ranking Church officials to have survived the Jacobin holocaust. He was held in respect by most of the other cardinals who had lived and had sacrificed much of his family’s holdings in France by condemning the Revolution and supporting Benedict XV.

  This cardinal thus had many qualities making him a suitable candidate to be elected as exilic Pope, despite the questions of the legality of such an action when the exact number of cardinals to have survived was unknown. But what immediately attracted attention was the fact that this cardinal was Henry Benedict Maria Clement Thomas Francis Xavier Stuart – and the controversy he provoked went on for even longer than his name.

  The ‘English Trinity’ was understandably appalled by this, especially the nationalistic Nelson. The Jacobite pretenders had been the bogeyman to Britain for a hundred years and more. The death of Henry Benedict’s brother, Charles Edward, on the field of battle in Ireland in 1751, was still celebrated as a national holiday in many parts of Great Britain and Ireland. The unofficial British national anthem, God Save the King, was about the defeat of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715. In a country which defined itself by opposition to Catholicism and the Stuarts who had cleaved to the Romish church, making the claimant King Henry IX (doubly confusing now Britain had a Hanoverian Henry IX on the throne) into the Bishop of Rome was an act of base treachery and a Popish Plot of Satanic proportions.

  However, it was much easier for the Englishmen to rave about the evils of the Jacobites when they were not there to argue their case, and even Nelson found it hard to condemn this gentle, clever old man who was nonetheless incandescent at the actions of the French in Rome and determined to achieve a suitable vengeance for the Church. Therefore, regardless of what the English thought, Henry Benedict Stuart was duly elected Pope by the conclave of the surviving Cardinals on November 17th 1803. He took the papal name Urban IX, not merely because it matched the number of his claimant royal name (as Nelson darkly suspected) but as a reference to one of the earlier holders of that name – Urban II. It was this predecessor who was on his mind as he released his first papal bull, in December.

  This, without actually calling for a crusade (which would have been considered somewhat archaic in 1803), made reference to Urban II’s great speech which had ignited the First Crusade, including the phrase: ”The Lord beseeches you as Christ's heralds to publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. I say this to those who are present, it meant also for those who are absent.”

  Yet Urban IX also moderated his message in a way Urban II had not. He made reference to the Prodigal Son and quoted Christ from the Gospel of Luke: “ Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.” His intention was partially political. He knew that Hoche would not be overthrown simply by introducing a fiery fervour into the Neapolitan and allied armies; in order to overcome that brilliant general and his run of luck, his own army would have to turn against him. Pope Urban thus pointed the finger at Hoche’s Italian-levied troops with one hand, accusing them of being complicit in horrors like the Rape of Rome, yet beckoned with the other and offered them forgiveness if they would turn against Hoche. Once more he quoted Scripture, this time the Book of Acts: “To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.”

  Urban’s bull was widely circulated throughout the whole of Italy, including those portions under Hoche’s rule, and this was largely facilitated by a movement begun by the maverick Calabrian cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo. Despite having entered the College by rather corrupt means and never actually having been ordained as a priest, Ruffo successfully organised a massive underground movement which undercut Hoche’s rule, passing copies of Urban’s bull through secret meetings in churches, homes and even the catacombs under the burnt wreck of Rome. In this Ruffo partially sought to use the Revolution’s methods against it, but whereas Revolutionary thought spread through intellectual salons, Ruffo’s counter-revolutionary ‘Army of the Faith’ did so through mostly through the gathering places of the poor. It also linked up with the Neapolitan Kleinkrieger[26] underground led by Michele Pezza, nicknamed Fra Diavolo (Brother Devil), assisting the Kleinkriegers with intelligence and helping them make hit-and-run raids on isolated Republican garrisons and supply trains. The rumours of the Kleinkriegers’ cruelty towards captured Republican soldiers helped accelerate the rate of the desertions Hoche was desperately trying to halt. However, this successful execution of a conspiracy to undermine and overthrow a state by the Romish church did nothing to calm the paranoia of Nelson, who saw the fears of political popery drilled into him since boyhood suddenly realised.

  1804 marked the collapse of the Italian Latin Republic. It is unlikely that the Neapolitans and their allies alone could have rolled up Hoche’s domain, even with the serious problems he was suffering, but at this point the Austrians intervened. The war with the Ottoman Empire had gone badly, with Francis II’s gamble of attacking Wallachia in a bid to draw Russia into the war having fallen flat. Alexandru Morusi had successfully defended the Wallachian interior against General Alvinczi’s army and the Hungarian had been forced to command an embarrassing retreat over the Carpathians after being narrowly defeated north of Bucharest.

  In 1802 the Austrians’ fortunes had gradually turned around, with Zagreb being defended by the army of General Pál Kray de Krajova et Topolya,[27] another Hungarian, now in his sixties but still fighting the Turks as well as he had in his youth. Francis released Archduke Ferdinand’s army and the Ottomans were beaten back to the gates
of Sarajevo, but there the Austrians outran their supply lines and were once more defeated in March 1803. Soon afterwards the Sublime Porte offered a peace treaty and Francis grudgingly accepted it, belatedly recognising that he could not continue to unnecessarily prolong a war against the Turks when vast swathes of Hapsburg territory to the west were under tyrannical republican occupation. The Treaty of Bucharest saw all the former Venetian possessions in Dalmatia, save a few islands in the north and the southern tip of the cape of Istria, going to the Ottomans; the paltry remains becoming Austrian. Also, the Military Frontier border in Bosnia shifted slightly northwards, giving the Ottomans footholds on the northern bank of the Sava River. The Ottomans handed over some of the islands they had obtained to the Republic of Ragusa, a small mercantile republic on Venetian lines in the south of Dalmatia that had been an Ottoman vassal for many years.[28]

  The effects of this Austro-Turkish War were manifold. In the Ottoman Empire there was a mood of national euphoria stoked by the court party of the Grand Vizier, Mehmet Ali Pasha, and exaggerated in order to brand his political enemies as unpatriotic traitors. The Ottoman navy, the Donanmasi, was somewhat expanded in order to cover the new coastal holdings on the Adriatic. However, the army ultimately suffered, having contracted victory disease from the campaign in Bosnia and victories that were more due to factors such as the generalship of Damat Melek Pasha, Austrian indecision and incompetence, and Turkish superiority of numbers than any broader quality. Thus the memories of this war were sufficient to set in a conservative culture, just as countless naval victories had done to the British Royal Navy, and vital reforms were delayed or dismissed. Sultan Murad V’s descendants would ultimately regret this victory.