by Tom Anderson
Much of the fate of the world was arguably decided in those few, brief meetings. Boulanger was called away to his winter quarters in Saint-Quentin (soon to be renamed the more Revolutionarily proper Diamantville), a move welcomed by Robespierre. It emerged that Revolutionary ideas had been flowing across the border with Flanders even in the winter, brought by travellers, merchants and some French deserters. While the Flemings themselves remained fairly well-off, the Prince-Bishop of Liége played second fiddle to Charles Theodore, and francophone Liége was also more susceptible to French ideas straight from the horse’s mouth. Liége had also been a centre of French Enlightenment ideas in the decades preceding the Revolution, and so could be said to be ‘primed’ to follow France down the red path.
During the coldest and most deprived January days of the winter, Revolutionary sentiment was ignited and the people rose up, overthrowing the Prince-Bishop. A hastily-elected popular council requested entry to the French Republic. This naturally provoked alarm in the Holy Roman Empire, and Mozart promptly reacted by giving siege to Liége. The city held, but was already low on supplies and had been weakened by the damages of its private revolution. Boulanger’s deputy in Saint-Quentin, Thibault Leroux, immediately brought part of the French army out of winter quarters and marched to relieve the siege. The army was joined by Boulanger midway, the general abandoning his cosy meetings in Paris cafés.
Jean de Lisieux had not forgotten those discussions, though. It was at this time that he published La Vapeur est Républicaine (“Steam is Republican”), a pamphlet which used the Revolutionary ideology to promote Cugnot’s steam engines as being fundamentally Revolutionary in character. “The aristocrat…possesses a horse, and thus must possess the land and feed and servants to maintain that horse, and so the people know that he wishes to be known as rich and…superior…however, a Cugnot wagon cares not whether the man at the wheel was born in Versailles or the slums?” Thus, steam was ideologically correct, and steam became The Thing. In addition to Cugnot receiving additional funding, intrigued French and even foreign artisans and inventors begged apprenticeship, and soon many applications for steam engines were developed. Some of this got back, belatedly, to Britain and the Germanies, where steam engines already existed but were still mainly used for stationary applications, such as pumping water out of mines. In Britain, the new applications were masterminded by James Watt and John Wilkinson, while the young Richard Trevithick remained in the mines, but began to wonder if the Cugnot wagon concept could also be applied to a minecart on rails…
But steam technology played little part in Boulanger’s relief of the Siege of Liége. In the end, the Austrian army, having outrun its supply lines, was forced to withdraw. Boulanger had scraped together some cavalry while in Paris – riding, of course, those very improper horses – and overcame his earlier problem, harrying Mozart as he retreated. The frustrated Austrian and Imperial forces, who had been hoping for plunder, pillaged the hinterland of the Prince-Bishopric as they withdrew, and continued doing so even after crossing into Flanders proper. Mozart may have been a fine general in many ways but he could not control his men’s marauding. It is ironic that at this stage such behaviour actually worked in favour of Revolutionary France.
Flanders began to seethe with resentment at the Imperial presence. Duke Charles Theodore and his chief minister, Emmanuel Grosch, were sensitive to these undercurrents and knew that their position was tenuous. Charles Theodore had only gained Flanders a few years before thanks to the Austrian land exchange, and while he was fairly well liked, the murmured incidents of Austrian pillaging and other destructive incidents served to remind people of his origins – installed by the Holy Roman Emperor. Ferdinand IV’s name was openly defamed in the street.
And yet the Flemings were not receptive to the Revolutionary ideals pouring over the border, at least not save a few francophones. Perhaps it was simply the notion that one France is as bad as another, and memories of Marshal Saxe. Perhaps, as the Noveltist Reactivists in Britain argue, that Charles Theodore’s very sense of newness saved him from the Revolution, in contrast to the never-ending line of Louises in France. Certainly it seems a far cry of our modern picture of the Route des Larmes and the Malraux Doctrine, but in 1795 André Malraux was but a child of two years.
But Charles Theodore knew he and his fragile young country were being squeezed in a vise. If the French won the spring campaign, all was lost. And if they lost, then Flanders would be forced to supply the vast Austrian army, which might spark public feeling into an attempted coup. The example of Liége was there, though its specific sentiments perhaps not widely shared.
Grosch had visited the battlefield of Liége and knew that Boulanger was honourable, whatever his proletarian origins. He advised Charles Theodore that here was a man they could negotiate with. Boulanger, for his part, was nervous. He was confident that his newly reformed French armies could blunt the spearhead of the Austrian advance, but for once the Austrians had managed to pull most of the powerful states within the Empire into the war. Counter-revolutionism had finally, shakily united Saxony and what was left of Brandenburg with the Austrians, who now also commanded the former Bavarian army. Separately, Badenese and Württemberger forces were marching into Lorraine, despite now-General Ney’s best efforts. With the Austrians also allied with the Kingdom of Sardinia whose armies were poised to strike at Provence and the Dauphiné, France was fighting a war on too many fronts. The French were fortunate only in that the abortive Spanish advance had glided to an unenthusiastic halt after the seizing of Navarre. Not unconnectedly, the disconsolate Dauphin would switch his exile to Britain soon afterwards. Boulanger knew what was needed was to reduce the number of contact points with the enemy, to give France to expand its army and concentrate it where it was needed best. So Grosch’s proposal came heaven-sent to him, or whatever proper Revolutionaries were supposed to believe in this week.
Indeed, the winter of 1795 also saw the development of many more classically Revolutionary ideas, such as the decimalised calendar and Thouret’s departmental system, but the outrageous compromise of the Boulanger-Grosch agreement was perhaps the most significant. Strangely, at first glance at least, Robespierre approved the deal. It might seem contradictory with his own ideas about spreading the Revolution and defiance against the idea of compromise, but he saw it as a way of undermining Boulanger – which, in the short term, it did…
The spring 1796 campaign included the deployment of a small number of British troops to Flanders under Prince Frederick George the Prince of Wales (grandson of his namesake), while both Britain and the Empire of North America continued to raise and train new regiments for the coming war. Ironically perhaps, it was the Americans who had a greater number of skilled troops on hand, if not for this kind of warfare. Since 1759, America had fought several wars of expansion with the Indians on its borders: the Iroquois/Howden and the Cherokee had remained allied with the Empire, but the Lenapa, Creek and many others had been driven westward or even wiped out. Notably, the French-backed Huron were decisively smashed by an American army and only two remnant groups survived. One petitioned for entry into their old enemies the Howden Confederacy as a Seventh Nation, and was eventually accepted with reduced rights compared to the older members. The second fled westward, but remained a more coherent group than most, and would eventually play a part in the genesis of Superia. But that is another aside.
In spring 1796, Mozart decided to leave a small besieging force at Liége and press on into France itself, trying once more for his elusive decisive battle. The French remained dispersed, forcing Mozart’s armies to match their positioning, but Boulanger implemented a new strategy of pinprick raids by Cugnot artillery supported by cavalry. Mozart brought his army back together in reaction and was faced by a far larger French army under Boulanger at Cambrai. Mozart won a pyrrhic victory, proving that the old-fashioned Austrian deep line tactics could still triumph against the conscript columns and Cugnot artillery. However, the Austrian-Imper
ial army had lost sufficient numbers and supplies that the cautious Mozart decided to retreat back to Flanders in order to bring up the numbers from newly arrived Bavarian levies. And this was when Grosch’s plan came into play.
Duke Charles Theodore, speaking in Brussels’ Grand Place to the people in the Revolutionary manner, made a public declaration of independence from the Holy Roman Empire. “The destiny of the Low Countries lies not with the Empire, nor with the Republic, but with our own path.” The Duke proclaimed neutrality and barred the entry of armed forces loyal to either the Consulate or the Emperor to Flemish territory. Those forces already there were asked to leave. It was a ridiculous boast in the abstract, for Flanders’ own army remained small, but Grosch’s trump card was a shock declaration of support for Charles Theodore from the Flemings’ traditional enemy—the Stadtholder-General of the United Netherlands, William V of Orange. William knew that, to the Jacobins, oligarchic republics like his own were just as objectionable as absolute monarchies. The fate of Genoa would be a telling example. There was a strong undercurrent of Revolutionary sentiment among the Dutch, who typically did not equate such sentiment with French conquest as the Flemings did, and William was aware his position was tenuous.[156]
Despite rivalries between the two halves of the Low Countries since the conclusion of the Eighty Years’ War in 1648, the Dutch already had some agreements with the Flemings, such as using their troops to man the forts on the Franco-Flemish border. It was primarily Dutchmen who fired the warning shots to repel Mozart’s army when he attempted to retreat into Flanders. Likewise, the Dutch Navy – second in Europe only to Britain’s – offered to transport Prince Frederick’s untried little army back to Britain free of charge, and warned that any attempt to prosecute the war further would result in naval clashes. This was shamefacedly accepted by the Duke of Portland’s government, and this humiliation was one reason behind that government’s fall in July 1796.
The more important reason was that Edmund Burke had died the week before, and without his presence as an éminence grise, Portland had no hope of retaining the House’s confidence. Portland resigned, but George III asked the Marquess of Rockingham to form a new Liberal Whig government with court party support. Rockingham was still unpopular over the Africa Bubble scandal, but he was known to have experience as a wartime Prime Minister during the Second Platinean War, and was therefore broadly welcomed. The new Rockinghamite government advocated the prosecution of a naval war and supported rapproachment with the Dauphin’s exilic Royalist government. However, it would shed supporters as the war went on with little progress in sight. One of them was Richard Burke, Edmund’s son,[157] who rejected the pragmatic Rockinghamite approach (“how can this situation benefit Britain?”) and essentially argued that an ideological problem (the French Revolution) required an ideological solution. It is notable that Burke, though considered too young to be a minister at the time, was commonly to be seen in Blanche’s, a new London club opened for exiled French royalists to congregate, speaking with the Dauphin himself…
As for Mozart’s army, after failing to force the Dutch-manned border forts and being repulsed by French-held Liége, it was led on a long southern retreat down to the border of Trier, where the remnants of the army could finally cross back into the Empire. All along the way the Austrian-Imperial was harried by French Cugnot-artillery, cavalry and even peasant partisans. Though Mozart had won a victory, by the time his tired army glimpsed the towers of Trier’s cathedral, it was a shadow of its former self. Meanwhile, the Bavarian army in Flanders had been decisively defeated by the Dutch and turncoat Flemish and had also retreated into the Empire. Bavaria was still unenthusiastic about Austrian rule and its troops remained low on morale in such a conflict, in which their homeland was clearly not threatened (yet).
So it was that Grosch’s and Charles Theodore’s shocking gamble paid off, astonishing the world. By the Treaty of Liége, the Republic of France kept that city but Flanders took the northern hinterland of the former archbishopric, helping to join up Charles Theodore’s scattered territories. The Netherlands signed a formal treaty with Flanders on August 4th 1796, the treaty that became the Maastricht Pact. Some minor territorial exchanges were carried out for similar reasons, and the Dutch recognised the Flemish claim to Trier, which Charles Theodore could use to combine Flanders and his Palatinate into a single functioning state. In turn, Flemish forces helped crush an attempted Dutch revolution in Amsterdam and Den Haag around October 1796, with the result that William V kept his position as Stadtholder, and his head. The Dutch Navy continued to be enough warning to prevent Britain from intervening, while the Austrians soon had too much on their plate to pay back the Flemings for their betrayal…just as Boulanger had planned.
This was, therefore, the first step down the path that would one day lead to the Kingdom of Belgium. But for now, few would have guessed how the twists and turns of history would have led to the sequence of events that would one day see the Low Countries united. For now, all that was important was that Boulanger had closed off one of France’s vulnerable fronts. He had bought the Republic time, precious time—and that would change the world.
Interlude #5: World News Roundup
Dr Bruno Lombardi: We now come to a stage where it is perhaps worth examining those divergences from our own timeline outside the Western world and those areas immediately affected by it.
Dr Theodoros Pylos: You will understand that many of these changes may not be referenced in source material –
Dr Bruno Lombardi: A historian limited to his own timeline cannot write that a civil war hasn’t happened, for example.
Dr Theodoros Pylos: Quite so.
Dr Bruno Lombardi: Therefore, though it is not a method which I personally favour, being open to misinterpretation and subjectional colouring –
Captain Christopher Nuttall: Gentlemen, please just get on with it.
Dr Theodoros Pylos: Very well. Let us begin with the Middle East…
Captain Christopher Nuttall: Excellent!
Dr Bruno Lombardi: Pardon?
Captain Christopher Nuttall: Nothing. I didn’t say anything.
*
Summary of Divergences, notes by Dr Bruno Lombardi:
Oman: As in OTL, Persia was driven from Oman in 1744 and Ahmed ibn Sayyid As-Sayyid was elected Imam. However, unlike OTL, the Qais branch of the As-Sayyid family was essentially strangled at birth…it remains unclear as to whether this was due to the deaths of important figures or simply historical ‘butterflies’ in schemes during the period of Ahmed As-Sayyid’s rule…however, what is clear is that the entire nation passed peacefully into the hands of Ahmed’s son Sayyid ibn Ahmed As-Sayyid and there was no division as OTL into Muscat and Oman. Two important consequences of this are firstly that united Oman further cultivated its East African trading colonies relative to OTL, and secondly that the port of Gwadar in Baluchistan was not ceded by the Khan of Kalat. This reduced Omani interest and influence in India relative to OTL…
Persia: Unlike OTL, Abol Fath Khan was a worthy successor to his father Karim Khan, and led Zand Persia in a successful crushing of the Qajar rebellion in Mazanderan – with the death of the Qajar leader Agha Mohammed Khan. The Zand dynasty continued to rule over an expanded but largely peaceful domain. The later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were largely a golden age for Persia, as the Ottomans remained focused on Europe and Europeans penetrated far more slowly into the neighbouring Indian states relative to OTL. Abol Fath Khan maintained his father’s title of Vakilol Ro’aya, Advocate of the People, rather than Shah, although that remained in informal use.
As with Mysore (q.v.), Persia was one of the few non-European states to take an interest in the development of the French Revolution, and some Revolutionary ideas were experimented with. Mohammed ar-Ramadi, a merchant and natural philosopher at the royal court in Shiraz, developed a new decimalised system of measurements that managed to incorporate the customary units mentioned in the Koran, but fitted
them into a more rational framework.[158]
Under the Zands, Persia retained greater territories in, and influence over the remainder of, Mesopotamia than the Ottomans relative to OTL. Some new European-inspired weapons and tactics were incorporated into the Persian army, though to a lesser extent than occurred in some of the states of India (who were witnessing the importance of those tactics themselves). Portugal remained Persia’s major European trading partner, and Portugal’s unofficial alignment with the United Provinces of South American meant that Meridian ships were soon commonly seen trading in Persian ports also. It was a Meridian navigator, José Rodriguez-Decampo, who made the first scientific survey and sounding of the Shatt al-Arab in 1803, under commission by Governor Sadiq Khan of Arabistan Province.[159]
Japan: Is difficult to judge, as few unbiased records of the relevant period survive for comparison with OTL, for reasons that will become clear…Dr Pylos and I intend to devote a fuller update to this when time permits so that we may do the subject justice.