by Tom Anderson
In the end, ironically, the colony was subject to a revolution of its own in early 1808. Lamarck had died of a snakebite the year before while leading a botanical expedition into the Montes des Martyres (the modern Montes Vertes)[OTL Blue Mountains], and the colony was under the command of acting Governor-General René Demoivre. Demoivre is remembered today chiefly by his damning epitaph by revolutionary leader Philippe Locard: “Though the old theory that the southern continent must be great enough to balance the landmasses of the north turned out to be untrue, at least one thing in the north had its equal counterpart in the south; General Lascelles.” More modern views suggest Demoivre’s policies were no worse than Lamarck’s, but the governor-general lacked the natural philosopher’s charisma which had covered this up in the eyes of the colonists. Demoivre’s increasingly ruthless approaches to rationing led to an uprising by the colony’s people, many of whom wished they had fled with La Pérouse when they had had the chance. Demoivre had his head cut off in the oldest Jacobin manner, with a knife, and most of the rest of the administrators were imprisoned. Locard took one of the few remaining ships and made contact with the Mauré once more; this time, La Pérouse agreed to help the Nouvelle-Albigensians. La Pérouse was by this point in his sixties and felt he was not long for this world in any case.
La Pérouse’s Land was completely forgotten at the Congress of Copenhagen in 1809/10 and its fate would not be settled until the separate Treaty of Paris in 1812. The matter was first raised in 1810 when Louis XVII and his government were considering which officials of the former Lisieux regime could be considered ‘unstained’ enough, not implicated directly in activities considered unacceptable, to remain in their posts under the restored monarchy. One such man was Georges Galois, Lisieux’s colonial director. This was a surprisingly senior position on paper for its occupant to be considered for retention, as most comparable officeholders were immediate candidates for trial and punishment. But then Galois had had little to do, as all of Robespierre’s and Lisieux’s schemes to take control of the Royal French colonies had failed or backfired. The sole exception had been La Pérouse’s Land.
Now, as he pleaded his case before the King and his ministers Bonaparte and Barras, Galois argued that France possessed a potentially great prize. Though on the face of it La Pérouse’s Land seemed largely barren and lacking much in the way of resources,[126] merely by holding the continent, Lisieux’s regime had already proved that it was possible to exert control over other countries’ valuable East India trade routes. Furthermore, La Pérouse’s Land provided a useful base for launching more missions into the more lucrative South Sea Islands, much as the Dutch used the Cape Colony as a springboard for their missions into the East Indies and Ceylon.
Bonaparte in particular was enthusiastic about this idea – some biographers have suggested that, like Alexander the Great, he was always searching for more worlds to conquer – and later that year, the new Kingdom launched a small flotilla under Admiral André de Foix to reassert control over the southern colonies.
The new regime in Albi surrendered readily to Foix; though Locard’s revolutionaries had never had any specific ideological underpinnings, it was justifiably logical enough to reject Linnaean misrule by returning to the Bourbons, quite apart from simple pragmatism. Saint-Malo was a different matter, putting up a serious fight, and Foix was unable to take the settlement with his small fleet. By this point, Europe had awakened to the situation and many were unwilling to let the restored French kingdom just pick up the entire continent, concerned about what Surcouf had managed with his few settlements. The Dutch in particular objected for obvious reasons, and the British – who were feeling outmanoeuvred by Vauguyon’s antics at the Congress of Copenhagen – also demanded their pound of flesh. France was still in a sufficiently weak position that King Louis was forced to concede. The continent was divided into three, using the sort of ruler-straight latitude and longitude-based borders that carve through undiscovered mountain ranges or lakes and care not for what wars they might provoke a few generations later.
Approximately the northern third of the land (the maps of the time were still rather uncertain, complicating matters) was ceded to the Dutch. The Dutch referred to the continent as ‘Nieuw Holland’ in a pointed reminder that it had been they who had first mapped much of its coastline – just managing to miss the parts even halfway welcoming to colonists. The British, meanwhile, were given Saint-Malo together with its own western corner of the continent. This was a strategically valuable position, yet the move essentially let the struggling French Kingdom throw the hot potato of Bonnaire’s resistance into Britain’s lap. All three powers immediately embarked on hurried mapping missions to establish sites for more settlements, enforcing their claims. This was observed with some scepticism by the man in the street, particularly those well-read ones who knew of the South Sea Bubble from nearly a century before. Then as now, the powers were throwing everything into the new venture because it might yield dividends, years down the line, while back at home across a war-ravaged continent, men, women and children starved. Yet the ‘Antipodean Mania’ was like a game of chicken, and none dared back down lest they show weakness.
The mapping missions took somewhat longer than anticipated, and the initial settlement programme lasted well into the 1820s. The French, after repairing Albi’s relations with the natives, rebuilt Béron and then established the new colonies of Esperance[127] and Louisville Australe.[128] The Dutch scoured the more hostile northern coast before establishing a base they named Tasmanstad, another pointed reference to the fact that this land had been explored by them long before the French had claimed it.[129] The native Larrakians already had intermittent contact with the trepangers of Macassar in Celebes, a part of the East Indies already brought more or less under the control of the Dutch East India Company. This contact meant they were better adapted to deal with a new set of visitors than the Indiens elsewhere. Notably, the Larrakians reacted to Dutch attempts to conduct slave raids (to justify the colony’s expense to the Heeren XVII by providing an export) by simply withdrawing into the interior. Tasmanstad survived only on subsidies.
The British, meanwhile, mounted an expedition in 1813 to take Saint-Malo. Given the parlous state of the British economy, this was supported by two American regiments from Virginia. The battle raged throughout the end of that year (the southern hemisphere summer) but eventually Bonnaire was evicted. He and a few hardcore supporters fled into the Noungare lands, determined to carry on Kleinkrieger warfare against the new Anglo-American colonies. Saint-Malo was renamed New London and its environs the colonial province of New Kent, both in memory of Modigliani’s depredations. However, in recognition of the American contribution, in 1819 the northern part of the vast, notional claimed area was split off as the separate province of New Virginia. Name matched reality in 1823 when a group of Virginians, including some younger sons of the Confederation’s noble families, rounded Cape Horn and established the new settlement of Norfolk as its capital.[130]
For the present, there seemed enough of this vast, empty continent for everyone. But then the same had once been said about the Americas…
*
It was in 1812 that Admiral Foix visited Autiaraux and met with La Pérouse. The old explorer was gratified to find that the kingdom had been restored at home and his attainted title was ready to be returned to him. Yet Foix had reached the islands at a critical time. The two Mauré factions, the Tainui and the Touaritaux-Touaux, had finally begun to heat up their conflict. The entirety of Eahcinomawe [North Island] was now either in one camp or the other, and many on both sides possessed muskets. More to the point, the battle tactics of the Mauré, though requiring modifications to incorporate the firearms, were both advanced and adaptable. The Touaritaux-Touaux’s ally Valéry Élouard later wrote a treatise on the subject, comparing their pa-fort defensive strategies prior to European contact with the motte-and-bailey fortifications that had prevailed in Europe about eight centuries before. Éloua
rd noted how relatively advanced this was considering they were a people so isolated from outside contact, with no invaders to push back against. Élouard’s book was overshadowed by the better-known Savages and Civilised Men by his contemporary dweller with the Mauré Henri Comeau, but both helped trigger much of the vast intellectual broadside attacking Linnaean Racism that dominated European literature in the two decades of the Watchful Peace.
La Pérouse, now weary and wishing only to return home, met with his former lieutenant Élouard in parley. Between them the two rivals arranged a temporary cessation of hostilities between the Mauré sides, allowing the French to return home. Though some Mauré leaders did not want to give up their European assistants, they were overruled by those who believed it was more important to maintain peaceful relations. Regardless, some of the French decided to stay, having married Mauré wives or simply having developed a love for Autiaraux.
La Pérouse’s last great act in the islands of Autiaraux before his return home on one of Foix’s ships was to give the speech known by the Mauré as the “Appeal to Accord”, on the neutral, sparsely inhabited mouth of the Eretaunga River.[131] La Pérouse appealed to representatives from both sides, declaring that Europe had forgotten their islands while consumed with its wars; yet soon the seafaring powers would once again turn their attention to Autiaraux, just as they had to La Pérouse’s Land, the continent that – for now – bore his name (the more politically neutral geographic name of ‘Antipodea’ would not come into use until the 1850s). He urged them to try to set aside their differences, lest they become so consumed by their own conflicts that they be easy pickings for any European colonisers. La Pérouse had spent long enough with these people, who had sheltered him in his hour of need, that he genuinely cared for their fate and would even defend them against Royal French colonisers. According to eyewitnesses, some of that sincerity shone through in his speech.
It is of course an absurd romanticisation to say that this speech alone was enough to prevent the Mauré conflicts degenerating into a broader, more damaging war. It seems that the Tainui had been thinking along La Pérouse’s lines already. The confederation possessed an expansionist streak, driven by the influential leader Raouirie of the Angapoué iwi from the north.[132] Although the Angapoué had been conquered and annexed into the Tainui confederation as one of the first targets of the new musket-wielding Tainui, Raouirie had proved savvy enough to ensure his people were treated fairly. He also quietly obtained some of the new weapons and a French renegade to show him how to maintain them. Over the past decade, the Angapoué had bounced back until they now had an almost dominant position within the greater Tainui alliance, not least because of their large numbers, more than any individual iwi within the original Tainui.
Raouirie now believed being part of the confederation served his people and would not seize the chance to regain tribal independence even if it arose. He therefore fought to keep the unwieldy alliance together by giving it more targets for conquest to focus on. He concurred with La Pérouse that engaging in wide-scale battle with the equally armed and numerous Touaritaux-Touaux pact would only exhaust both sides and most likely cause them to break apart into individual iwis once more. Raouirie, like many at the time, took inspiration from the Mauré’s oral traditions, which stated that they were at heart one people. The stories said that their divisions originally existed solely because they had come from the half-mythical homeland of Hawaiiki in different flotillas of canoes. He ultimately saw a united Autiaraux as his goal, a strong Autiaraux that could resist the second wave of Europeans that La Pérouse warned of. But attacking the Touaritaux-Touaux was not the way to achieve this.
Instead, the Tainui initially continued their colonisation of Tavay Pocnammoo [South Island], and the conquest of the Quai Taioux people there. But in the long run, he was more ambitious. Along with a few other open-minded chiefs, his inquiries of La Pérouse and his officers had not been restricted to muskets, gunpowder and other warfare-related topics. Raouirie had been curious about the techniques the French used to build their great ships, far larger than any war canoe.
After all, if a people could come one way across the great ocean, there was nothing to say they could not return…
*
Jean-François de Galaup returned to France in October 1814, having sickened on the voyage. Nonetheless, he was brought to Paris, where he remarked sadly upon what a decade of Lisieux had done to the streets of the old city he remembered. King Louis XVII returned to him the title that had been taken from him. He was Comte de La Pérouse once more. And the King went further, founding the new – if notional – Duchy of New Gascony, and making La Pérouse its first Duc.
The great man died in a feverish sleep not three months later, to a general sense of mourning. A statue was unveiled not long afterwards – admittedly not least because the new government was looking for any excuse to tear down all the ones Lisieux had raised and replace them with more suitable ones. Nonetheless, La Pérouse remained one of the few men that all of France could look upon with admiration; the explorer who had opened up a whole new world, had tried to do his duty regardless of master, and who had, unbeknownst to all, unleashed a new power upon the world…
Map: Antipodea and Autiaraux, c. 1825
Chapter #85: Natisk na Vostok
Wer wagt, gewinnt
– short form title of the memoirs of Ulrich Münchhausen, published posthumously in 1836
Russia, historically, is not so much an Empire as an Argument.
- Dr Tarlach Óinseach, 1926
*
From: “The Great Eastern Adventure” by Pavel Nikolaiyevich Khlebnikov (1972, English translation 1984)—
“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” wrote William Shakespeare in the late sixteenth century, speaking of a king from the early fifteenth. Words which truly know no nation, no era. Indeed they transcend even systems of government, for they may be applied to many an individual who donned the Phrygian cap instead. It would, of course, be vulgar (and in violation of Haraldsson’s celebrated maxim) to bring up L’Inhumain at this point, and so I shall not.
No – instead we shall look to the head of Emperor Paul the First in the year of 1805. Certainly the Tsar had every right to be concerned. He had won back his throne from the Potemkinite rebels at the cost of numerous compromises with potential enemies. While the Klimentov rebellion had been successfully crushed two years before, and proletarian anger diverted into the Great Pogrom against the Jews soon afterwards, both were symptomatic of continuing pressure beneath the surface, slowly building. Russia, as ever, found herself at the crossroads of West and East. Ever since Peter the Great, the Tsars and Tsaritsas had tried to bring Russia closer to the European, Western, ‘civilised’ world. There were reasons for this beyond the simple chauvinism of the fact that most of the royals were themselves German in descent. Europe represented literacy, knowledge, rationalism, Enlightenment, while Russia was regarded by many as still being primarily an oriental, Asiatic power, doomed to superstition and credulousness. The tsars, and much of the upper classes (separated from their subjects by language, as the court speech was French), had sincerely believed that such a course would be of benefit to all the people of Russia, from the Emperor down to the lowest krestyanin.
Yet even with the broad acceptance of the autarkic, arbitrary power of the Imperial authority by the people, there had remained a stubbornness and resentment directed towards the attempts to bring European ‘civilisation’ to Russia. The Germanophile Peter III had encouraged the settlement of Germans in the Empire, picking up many fleeing religious persecution in the Germanies (while others of course went to the ENA and UPSA). But while such settlers, often possessing more technical skills than their Russian counterparts, might serve a national agenda well, they only provoked resentment among the Russian people. It had been programmes such as this which had allowed Alexander Potemkin, a man with a hopelessly flimsy claim to the throne, nonetheless to paint Peter and his son Paul as
“foreigners”, un-Russian, un-Slavic, seeking to remake the country in their own German image. Some have suggested that the upsurge in Slavic racialism in Russia in the late 1790s was both a mirroring of and a reaction to the French Revolution and the rise of Linnaean Racism therein. This is, however, an oversimplification; Russia had long since had its own Linnaean school of thought, probably even before France – Sweden, after all, was one of the few “European” countries with which Russia had regular close cultural contact.
