Look to the West, part 2, chapter 66 (excerpts)

tl;dr: Jean de Lisieux, the leader of Directory-era Revolutionary France, some time ago ordered the expansion of the Burgundy Canal, which even today allows movement by water between the Mediterranean Sea and the English Channel, into a wider and deeper Canal of the Purifier (a mythological figure of the early Revolution). France has also built a large fleet of shallow-draft steam vessels on her Mediterranean coast, in preparation for a surprise attack on England if the opportunity should arise. France is in the process of attacking Flanders and the Netherlands when the Channel is becalmed, and the French meteorologists project this weather to continue for at least three days, making the wind-powered ships of the Dutch and British next to useless. Rather than sending transports to land in the Netherlands and complete the previously-planned pincer attack, Lisieux seizes the opportunity and uses France's extensive optical-telegraph system to tell the Mediterranean fleet to traverse the canal immediately, join with the smaller Channel fleet, and start an invasion of Britain.

EXCERPT 1

The stage was set. The battle plan known as Le Grand Crabe had gone like clockwork – or a steam engine. Villeneuve had won an unconvincing but adequate victory over the Dutch Republic, and the second fleet of Surcouf was ready to escort Hoche’s army in its transports – ironically largely captured by Surcouf from the Dutch – to attack the Netherlands from the north. All was ready, and soon France’s list of serious enemies would shrink from two to one.

But then Jean de Lisieux hesitated.

The speculative romances would have us believe that all great world events come down to the toss of a coin, the drop of a pin, the want of a nail. Usually this is a conceit aimed at justifying the Whiggish ‘Central Character’ [Great Man] interpretation of history and should not concern modern-thinking historians. However, there are exceptions that prove the rule, and this was certainly one of them.

Throughout his political career, Lisieux had wavered and veered between caution, slowly building up power or strategies or armies, and then launching audacious gambles with that buildup. It was, as one alienist [psychologist] has suggested, as though his mind was a boiling pressure cooker of ideas, slowly building up as he struggled to guide his Republic to the true path that only he knew, then being released in a terrific blast aimed at his enemies.

If this was truly his mental state – there is scarcely a shortage of alienists, biographers and amateur pundits speculating on the subject – then it had served the Republic fairly well thus far. Notably, it had led to the doctrine of focusing on one enemy at a time, which had led to the initially highly successful lightning campaign against Spain. Indeed it was when Lisieux deviated from this kind of thinking, ordering Ney to try and keep up a constant pressure on what would become the Mittelbund [a defensive alliance of North German states], that the French ran into problems. So one might expect a triumph here.

But the problem was that Lisieux had already embarked on an audacious gamble with this plan to begin with. Boulanger’s conventional assault across the Flemish border was not enough: Villeneuve, Surcouf and Hoche had to strike at the Netherlands from the north, and that had been far from a guaranteed success, considering the strength of the Dutch Navy (which, fortunately for the French, was now dispersed).

That gamble had paid off… and suddenly Lisieux found himself feeling cheated, inadequate. Victory was not enough. The conquest of the Low Countries was not enough. The world was not enough.

Some have traced a genuine shift in Lisieux’s mental state to that moment, trying to explain his deviating from previous behaviour. But I follow von Klung’s view in arguing that in truth Lisieux made a slow and steady progression – just as he wanted his Republic to do so – from the charismatic mob leader who rode the Tortues to crush the Paris rising sparked by Hébert’s death in 1796, to the reclusive and paranoid all-controlling dictator who now sits, the silence slowly lengthening as tension mounts, at the head of a table and listens to the Boulangerie [a weak Directory-equivalent, controlled by Lisieux] telling him of the successes of Villeneuve.

He sits there, his skin pale and his eyes red from months, years of sitting in basements and writing propaganda by candlelight, trying to remake France, the Republic, the world in his own image one pen-scratch at a time, and he sits in silence. The Boulangerie members exchange looks, very hesitantly, terrified he might call them on it. Lisieux had once pledged to end Robespierre’s policy of killing people out of hand for being ‘impure’. For the most part, he had kept that pledge…but some of the things Lisieux could find for ‘impure’ individuals to do would make them beg for Robespierre’s swift dispensal of justice in the form of phlogisticated air.

And finally he speaks. Not decisively, as some have portrayed it: the testaments of all three journals that have survived from the Boulangerie members are clear on that. Instead, he asks a question. Idly, as though it is a trivial and highly theoretical matter, a calculus problem perhaps.

“How large is Admiral Parker’s fleet [the British fleet in the Channel]?”

They were confused, but the Boulangerie was well-informed. Lisieux had insisted on that. Louis Chappe’s semaphore network had begun in the 1790s as a few early experimental towers connecting Paris to the then-front line (and now once more) on the Flemish border, but it had proved itself by communicating war information to French leaders far faster than any human messenger could. Indeed it had played its part in Lisieux’s rise to power, when he had hoarded its data and used it to prepare for events that no-one else yet knew had happened. It had meant he could lay his trap for Robespierre, knowing about British successes before anyone else did. Now, Chappe and his fellow long distance communication pioneers had benefited from a decade of investment from Paris, with the result that France had what was quite simply the strongest link between its capital and its distant provinces of any country in the world, including many smaller ones. That had worked well for Lisieux’s goals of centralisation and homogenisation to fit his mission. Now, it once more powered France’s war ambitions.

So they answered. It was six ships of the line, eight frigates, and a couple of brigs or gunboats from the coastal flotilla. Not very large. Smaller than a British Channel Fleet had been for years. Of course, that was a very temporary situation, it was only because a large part of the Royal Navy had been sent to the Americas and the Mediterranean, and Parker had detached part of his own fleet to shadow Villeneuve. Still, it was unlikely that Surcouf’s force could beat it under balanced conditions.

Lisieux asked a second question: “What does the weather hold?”

Another Revolutionary innovation. Louis Chappe had rigged his semaphore towers to transmit a local weather report along with each message. Originally this had simply been due to the fact that the towers had to prepare for darkening weather conditions by lighting the night-lamps on their signal paddles, but a bright spark had realised that it could be used for constructing weather maps across France. The great mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace had headed the effort to compile them, and now L’Académie de la Peuple published weekly maps showing the weather across France in symbols and Cocteau degrees [a Revolutionary temperature measure]. It had not taken the Boulangerie long to work out that this also might be of use in war.

So, based on the latest projections, they answered: “Low wind strength for at least three days, perhaps a week.” Information the British did not have, though their savvier captains might hazard a guess.

Lisieux meditated on that for a moment. “Lepelley’s [the French admiral in charge of the Mediterranean fleet] status?” he asked his third and final question.

For that one, the Boulangerie had to send a runner to L’Aiguille, the Needle, the largest semaphore tower in the world. It stood in the centre of Lisieux’s remodelled Paris, at the centre of the radial street network he had cut through the old higgledy-piggledy mediaeval city, on the Île de la Cité where the cathedral of Notre Dame had once stood. It was the central locus of the French semaphore network and a symbol of Lisieux’s power looming over the city.

The runner, whose name is not recorded, collected the latest report and returned it to his Administrator. One might perhaps expect Lisieux to be impatient: instead, most accounts say that he was calm, emotionless. He repeated the question.

The runner answered: Seventy percent of Lepelley’s ships had arrived.

Lisieux sat in silence for minutes more. Of all the men in France, only Pierre Boulanger would have dared interrupt his meditation, and Boulanger was away, leading the attack into Flanders, facing Charles Theodore’s armies with his patent steam-artillery tactics. If he had been there, if he had been consulted by semaphore even, things might have been different. But he was not.

And Lisieux spoke:

“Military conquest. It is a poor measure of the worth of a country, the purity and righteousness of its mode of governance, to my mind. Yet many disagree, and we cannot afford to ignore such things. What have we achieved in that field?” He ticked things off on his fingers. “We have conquered Spain. Louis XIV’s armies did that a century ago. We conquered most of Italy. So did Francis I. We have bogged down fighting wars in Germany, and I cannot name enough monarchs who managed that. Even the late and unlamented Louis XV managed to conquer the Low Countries, though he foolishly returned them at the peace, uncaring of the blood of the soldiers that had been shed to win them.

“I ask you, are we not greater than those kings? Are we not more enlightened than those monarchical regimes, the same ones that we rose up in triumph to overthrow thirteen years ago? Yet we have not surpassed their martial triumphs, and that is something that the world watches.

“There is one goal those kings never achieved. One that no Frenchman has ever achieved. One which brought those kings’ dreams crashing down to earth perhaps even to a greater extent than their own corruption and hubris.

“Perfidious Albion. The English sit on their island, protected by the Sleeve[5] and their navy, fat and content, knowing that no foe can ever harm them directly. They have the leisure to intervene in our affairs at will, and their goal is always to set us back, to maintain a balance of power, to prevent any country growing powerful enough to threaten them.

“Well they have failed. They just don’t know it yet. England must be dealt with if France is to reign supreme as the Ultimate Purity. England must be put to fire and the sword.

“We have the ships. We have the men. We have the weather. Fortes fortuna adiuvat. Let us seize the day, and end our problems forever! An end to Albion and her perfidy! An end! An end!”

EXCERPT 2

As a lucky shot from the Vengeur removed the Mirabilis’ figurehead and scattered the entrails of an ensign across the deck, Parker fiddled with his telescope, struggling to focus. That ship… another cursed steamcraft… but the pennant, he recognised that!

But it was impossible.

Pennants could be faked, of course. Ships sailed under false colours all the time, though attacking under them was considered close to blasphemy. But for what reason would they fake it? And you couldn’t fake that huge, impossible second fleet following it.

Impossible, perhaps…but it would explain a lot.

Parker had seen the pennant of Admiral Lepelley, who – as he knew well – was stationed in the South of France, at Toulon, commanding a steamfleet which everyone suspected might be aimed at Corsica in the current uncertain climate. That was why Jervis was there with his fleet, to warn them off. Or perhaps it might go to Italy, or Spain…what it would not do is somehow show up in the Channel without at any point passing through the Straits of Gibraltar and thus being spotted by the Royal Navy.

But it had. Parker would never know why. It was a closely kept secret in France, barely suspected even among the Unnumbered [Britain's spy agency]. But Lisieux’s [leader of the post-Robespierre Directory-equivalent] extensive canal-building project, turning the old Canal de Bourgogne into the Canal de l'Épurateur: completed, wider, deeper. The steam-galleys had a shallow draft. The Canal had made it possible to move them, and similar ships, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. From Marseilles and Toulon [southern France], up the Rhône to the Saône and then to the Yonne and finally the Seine, and the Seine spilled into the Atlantic near Le Havre [northern France]. Suddenly, Britain’s grasp on Gibraltar, the Key to the Mediterranean, had been made superfluous. The fleet was here.