tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71830097662550304302024-03-28T17:49:02.283-04:00An Age of Steam, Steel and IronIt is the year 1889 A.D., an age of enlightened discovery, of unrivaled and often fantastic scientific and technological progress: powered by coal, steam and electricity. It is also an age of empires and empire building, of fierce and often complex competition for wealth and material resources by both governments, corporations and private individuals. The Nations of Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia vie for power, prestige and prosperity on the world stage and across the solar system.
Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.comBlogger131125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-574622145685085652024-03-28T15:49:00.011-04:002024-03-28T17:48:30.613-04:00Fragments from East Asia (Part III)<b>The Imperial City, the City of Peking, China, the Great Qing Empire, January 1889.</b>
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The young emperor took another long sip of his tea, then reached for another document before him. This concerned the security of the Paracel islands and the Pratas island, know to the Great Qing Empire as the Xisha islands and Tungsha island respectively. They were little more then collections of sand, coral and rock. In and of themselves, they were hardly very attractive or even valuable territory, unless one considered their relative positions in the South China Sea, then they became very important as outposts for both military and commercial purposes for whatever power possessed them.
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The French had, in point of fact, made serious attempts to seize these islands during the Sino-French War of 1884-85, though they had been sufficiently fortified and garrisoned by both the Ming and Qing Dynasties over the last two centuries to fend off any attempt to take them short of a full scale invasion. The French <i>Marine Nationale</i> squadrons based in French Indo-China had not been able to attempt this given their considerable committments to operations in the Gulf of Tonkin, the invasion of the island of Hainan and their wide-ranging coastal or airel bombardments of the provinces of Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan. French naval deployments had been further constrained by their intensive efforts to contain or bring to action, the two southern most of the four seagoing Qing Imperial Fleets, the <i>Fukien</i> and <i>Kwangtung</i> Fleets and the <i>Vampire</i> Riverine Fleet which had acted in a supporting coastal defense role during the war.
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That was not to say, that the French had not tried to take them, even with limited forces. Both islands had been heavily bombarded by air and by sea, several times during the war, to try rendering them unusable by Qing Naval forces. Two serious attempts to take the Xisha Islands had been mounted although both failed by the narrowest of margins. While at least one attempt had been made on Tungsha island, which had ended in complete disaster for the French.
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When the next Sino-French War came, the French would make a much more practical effort to seize the Xisha and Tungsha islands to secure their naval flank against operations by the rebuilt <i>Fukien</i> and <i>Kwangtung</i> fleets (which had both been largely destroyed by the French during the 1884-85 war). This, it was felt by the Qing Imperial Admiralty and by both Qing military and diplomatic intelligence services, would be the French naval prelude to actual going to war. Whether the French military forces in Indo-China would then turn their main effort to invading Laos and Siam or against China, was hotly debated however.
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Few believed that the French would be mad or arrogant enough to attempt offensive wars against both Siam, Laos and China at the same time. It was reasonable to assume that they would go on the offensive on single front rather then three, while holding to the defensive on the others. Once, the offensive front had been decided satisfactorially, then and only then, would the French assume an offensive posture on the defensive fronts. The prevailing wisdom in both Siam and Laos and in the Qing Empire, was the French would strike on their western front first and concentrate it's initial effort on Laos and render the kingdom <i>hors de combat</i> as the French military expression went, as quickly as possible before China or Siam had time to intervene.
Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-61856757736340963862024-03-25T15:48:00.018-04:002024-03-27T11:51:49.570-04:00Fragments from East Asia (Part II)<b>The Winter Palace, the City of Peking, China, the Great Qing Empire, January 1889.</b>
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The foreign ministers, diplomats and other technical or governmental experts and officials intended to have a final meeting in Nagasaki in Febuary to finalize all the details and have the principal articles of the association treaty ready for signature by the eight governments. With the permanent chairman, already selected and the finances of the association partially settled, the main issue was the formation of the other association committees that were deemed necessary.
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The Permanent Security Committee had been provisionally worked out with both China and Japan, as the senior co-chairs, with Siam as the Deputy Chair. While both the two empires had the largest air, naval and ground forces of the eight nations, Siam was a significant regional military power, in it's own right, in all three areas. Laos, was also significant as a land and air power but unlike all the other nations in the proposed association, it was completely land-locked and only had a small but useful riverine navy, rather then a seagoing one. Hawai'i, like Siam had a good mix of air, naval and land strength to add to the association's overall military power, while Tonga, Brunei and Samoa had decent sized air and naval power for their respective sizes and resources with adequate but not overly large land forces, which in fairness they had not needed before now.
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The other committees deemed important enought to be formered were, the Directing Committee composed of the eight heads-of-states, their senior governmental ministers (or their designated representatives) which would decide the association's general policies; The Trade and Tariffs Committee, which would determine and regulate trade agreements between the eight states. The Legal and Legislative Committee, which would work out the legal or administrative frame works of policies set by the Directing Committee and the Trade and Tariffs Committee. The Intelligence Committee, which was to pool, evaluate and share civil and military intelligence and espionage or counter-espionage information between the eight states. The last committee deemed essential was, the Financial Committee, which would handle the association bank and work with existing financial cartels and banking institutions within each state with a view to collabrotive financial exchanges and projects.
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The two emperors, the sultan, and the five kings were scheduled to meet in Nagasaki and sign the Treaty of Nagasaki into fact, in April, if the association's political, administrative, economic and military details were tidied up and finished as quickly as was expected. He had to confess that he was actually looked forward to the trip, which would be his first outside the territorial boundaries of the Qing Empire. The meeting was to be an important but relatively low key affair, as the emphasis was on the treaty and effecting better relations between the eight states not on an excess of pomp and ceremony, which would only be a needless distraction. It would also only draw unwelcome and unwanted foreign attention especially from the various consulates in Nagasaki upon the event, which would undoubtablely ring violent alarm bells in all the governments and chancellories of the Great Powers, with the exception of Austria-Hungary.
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The young emperor had to admit, that the likely aghast expressions of the governments and diplomatic corps of Great Britain, France and Russia especially amused him, when he considered the matter. Though he also soberly realized that the announcement of the Treaty of Nagasaki, would have serious political (and perhaps military) repercussions as well, which was not amusing to dwell upon. It was not to be doubted that the eight nations would recieve a barrage of diplomatic notes and questions, the moment the Great Powers heard about the treaty.
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As far as any of the diplomatic or intelligence services of the eight nations had been able to determine, none of the Great Powers were in fact aware of the association discussions, save Austria-Hungary. The Austrians had been quietly sounded out about the idea, as they had a wealth of historical experience on dealing with various political, economic and administrative systems under the roof of one agency. The Austrians had been most helpful and played their involvement in the discussions close to their chest throughout, not even discussing the matter with their German or Italian allies. When the idea of an association bank had been raised with them, the Austrians had offered to find, very quietly, a suitable candidate to act as the bank's first director, they had felt a qualified person either in the Swiss or Austrian financial institutions could be found that would suit the future association's needs.
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The post would require someone of high personal integrity, political neutrality, diplomatic finese, adminstrative ability and a thorough knowledge of international banking systems and proceedures. An alternative candidate from perhaps one of the more prominent New York financial institutions might also suffice as, the United States held (for the present anyway), a generally very neutral, business like attitude to most of the eight nations involved. The Samoans and Hawaiians however were unlikely to agree to this, later option, given the United States's previous involvement in their national affairs in the past, usually to the two kingdoms detriment and with a view to the Americans sole advantage.
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As there were few currently amoung the finacial institutions of the eight nations, who had this kind of experience on the scale required for the Bank of the Association, it was felt that a qualified and capabable foreigner was essential to establish the bank's smooth internal operations and public creditablity. It would also head off arguments between the eight states if one of their own, was to hold the position, which would immediately cause problems and claims of one nation being favoured over the others when it came to bank services and loans. The Austrian legation minister to the Empire of Japan, had promised to locate, evaluate and bring any career and personal files conserning possible candidates to the next meeting in Nagasaki, so that the Association members could examine them and properly debate the merits of a final choice in the matter, which had been welcomed by all eight nations representatives.
Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-58350453374432574862024-03-20T19:11:00.019-04:002024-03-26T11:30:15.357-04:00Fragments from East Asia (Part I)<b>The Winter Palace, the City of Peking, China, the Great Qing Empire, January 1889.</b>
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The Guangxu Emperor, His Imperial Majesty, the Son of Heaven, Prince Zaitian of the Imperial Manchu <i>Aisin-Gioro</i> Clan, and the 10th Emperor of the Qing Dynasty; sat at his desk within the complex of private apartments, chambers and rooms reserved solely for the imperial master of the Great Qing Empire, inside the <i>Forbidden City</i>, the Imperial Winter Palace and Residence of the Emperors of China. The massive palace complex akin to a city within a city, encircled within it's own massive compound of walls and gates, called the <i>Imperial City</i>, which sprawled across and dominated the center of the city of Peking. He reached for the cup of green tea, that rested near at hand, as he studied the various documents that lay before him, and made notations in his diary.
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His primary concern at the moment, was foreign intervention in Chinese affairs, particularly interventions by France, with it's considerable colonial possessions in French Indo-china. The last significant wars between China and France had been in 1882 and 1884-85, in which France had secured it's hold over the tributary states of Tonkin, Annam and Cochin china and consolidated them with Cambodia, to augment their considerable East Asian colonial empire. A massive anti-French revolt in 1886 in Annam had not significantly altered this situation, however much it had alarmed the French adminstration at the time. Another war between China and France was, in and of it self only a matter of time, and probably it would happen sooner rather then later. France, rebuilding after the disasters of the Franco-German War of 1881-82 and desperate for colonial or economic successes to restore it's damaged pride, was putting enormous pressure upon the Kingdom of Laos to accept a French protectorate, which would effectively annex them into the Republic of France's colonial domains.
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The Kingdom of Siam would immediately declare war upon France, if this happened. Siam was caught in a stratgic vice formed by the British and French empires pressure to come within their respective spheres of influence and if Laos fell, Siam's freedom to manover both politically and economically as well as militarily between and separately of the two Great Powers, would be severely compromised. Brunei and Tonga, were under the same steady pressure from Great Britain to accept protectorates, though they had so far stood firm and maintained their own soveriegnty, but the pressure was still there, and Brunei might in the future fall. They had at least the advantage that the Austrian and German Empire's who both had territory in the island of Borneo regarded this development with considerable distrust and had moved to quitely support the Sultan in resisting, British economic and political pressure. Samoa, still in the throes of a civil war was stabalizing but with several Great Powers interested in the outcome, preferably to their exclusive benefit, that could not be expected to continue in a reasonable way for Samoa.
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Along the long border ranging between China and British India and Burma, stood the independent nations of Tibet, Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan. To the Imperial Qing Dynasty, the four nations were an irritant, especially their continued independence which was intolerable to the imperial government. The young emperor <i>chose</i> however to see them differently, and that was as a most effective barrier against further British encroachment from that direction, as their fierce independence and their considerable success in crushing <i>any</i> military expeditions mounted upon them from either side of their borders, made them even bigger irritants to the British Vice-Roys of India and the British government in London!
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The Russian Empire's aspirations in East Asia, had for the time being been forstalled, especially in regard to China's western and northern most provinces and for the present, they accepted the semi-independence of Outer Mongolia as a useful if nominal buffer state rather then moving to annex it outright, which would provoke a war the Russians did not need at present with both China and Japan. With Russian attention elsewhere for the time being, China could breath for a bit in that direction, although not restfully, the eighteen year old emperor reflected silently. Russian eyes and aspirations were for the moment turned to their western and southwestern borders, and the majority of the European Great Powers were welcome to it, as far as the emperor and his officials were concerned.
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Similarly, Great Britain and Portugal were satisfied with their enclaves in Macao and Hong Kong, as were the other Great Powers with equal access to establishing trade concessions within the Treaty Ports of Tientsin and Shanghai and conducting a vigourous and prosperous trade with China. Portugal, in point of fact, while not adverse to colonial expansionism at any time in it's history of trade and exploration, was not in a position to do so. Portugal, had sufficient problems just holding on to what they already had in the Atlantic, India and the East Indies against some of the other European Great Powers. Great Britain, was more worrying to his mind, as historically it was not adverse to acquiring territory anywhere it could to secure either it's economic dominance in a region or to protect territory it had already seized or otherwise obtained. Both he and his immediate predecessor, the Tongzhi Emperor, had carried out a steady policy of extensive reforms and internal improvements that had greatly benefitted China, and also allowed his government to reverse or discard many of the detested <i>Unequal</i> Treaties, that the Qing Dynasty's previous emperors had been forced to agree to following various unsuccessful wars or conflicts of interest with the various Great Powers.
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Of the Great Powers, only Austria could be considered a geniune friend by China or indeed many of the other seven states. The Austrians were purely interested in trade with China, their own colonial ambitions were very modest compared to the other Great Powers and they had what they both needed for purposes of trade and status and had little desire or even interest to acquire more. Further the Austrians were as a rule willing to work together with the Chinese governemt on trade and economic terms that were generally acceptable to both parties and profitable for both in the long term, as well as the short term. This was most unlike many of the other Great Powers, which desired to control trade with China to their exclusive benefit. The Emperor suspected that the Austrians felt a good deal of sympathy for the Qing, the Habsburgs themselves had once ruled an empire, that covered a great deal of the known world which had reached it's zenith under the Holy Roman Emperor Charles Vth and then watched other Great Powers steadily chip away at it, til it was little more then a memory of better days.
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He considered again the idea, that had been put forth by the King of Hawai'i, of forming an east asian/pacific association or league of nations, which excluded of the Western colonial powers. Principally, the Empires of China and Japan, the Kingdoms of Hawai'i, Siam, Laos, Tonga and Samoa, and the Sultanate of Brunei. All eight nations were under the threat of political, economic or territorial encroachment by one or more of the European Great Powers, so pooling their military and economic resources to counter the outsider encroachment in a constructive way could only be beneficial to all of them. The foreign ministers and embassy officials of the various countries he had just named had begun serious if unoffical discussion of the idea early last year. The King of Hawai'i had actually originally prosposed the idea some twenty years earlier but because of real conflicts of interest and fierce competition between some of the nations necessary to make it a functioning reality, as well as the hostile reaction of many of the Great Powers, the idea had to be dropped. That said, the idea had never entirely been abandoned, either by the Hawaiian king or by supporters within the other seven nations, for it made good sense whatever the practical difficulties.
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It had been decided in a series of highly unoffical and secret "round table" meetings, after much discussion and considerable argument it had to be said, to make the association of east asian nations into an economic and political block, with the King of Hawai'i as the permanent chairman. This dealt with concerns that had been raised, that China or Japan would use the position of chairman to dominate the association for their own sole benefit and in effect make the other member states effectively political and economic vassals of one or the other empires. China and Japan as the two most significant military powers amoung the eight nations, it was agreed would co-chair the Permanent Security Committee of the association with one of the other nations holding the deputy chair on a rotary basis every four years, their primary concern was checking or halting Great Power encroachments on the member states territories and fighting the various seagoing or airel pirate or rogue privateering groups that were still a significant problem for all of them (and even the Europeans for that matter) in Asian and the wider Pacific waters.
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There had been much and not unreasonable debate on where to set up a headquarters and permanent meeting place for the association, which would be acceptable to all eight members. Honolulu many felt, including many Hawaiians, was too far away from many of the other members and there would be a significant time lag in dealing with routine or emergency situations even with the web like network of submarine telegraphic cables that criss crossed much of the Pacific Ocean or via even the speediest nautical or airel mail or despatch boats. The Japanese port city of Nagasaki had finally been settled upon after some lively debate, it was a well established trade port with a history of carrying out international trade and had prosperous commerical links and connections all over the world, which would be very advantageous to all eight of the association's member states. Further it was better placed for many of the nations, particular Siam, Laos, Brunei to reach in a convient time for meetings, true it was distant from Hawai'i, Samoa and Tonga, but that would have been true of almost any other port or city agreed upon, in any case.
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Once Nagasaki had been decided upon, the idea had been put forward of forming a special monetary fund or bank of the association, that all eight members could access and use, which would useful for commerical or economic projects that were of benefit not only to the individual nations but also for interconnected projects that affected several members equally. Such a financial organization would also make it easier for member states to obtain funds via low interest loans and not have to rely on the financial institutions of the Great Powers, such as the Bank of France or the Bank of England to which they would normally have to turn.
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Putting such a Bank on a working footing, from scratch would have been a considerable problem, both in organizing and providing with funds to make it a working concern. However, the idea had been so persuasive to the officials involved in the association negotiations that, they had worked hard to overcome the difficulties. The young emperor had even offered to place some of his own vast personal wealth at the bank's disposal which had surprised but pleased everyone involved in the negotiations. This offer had been matched by the Emperor of Japan, and by the Sultan of Brunei, easily the richest of the monarchs involved aside from himself. The Kings of Siam, Laos, Hawai'i and Tonga had also agreed to make a sizeable contribution within their respective means. The King of Samoa, had offered to assist but expressed concerns that the ongoing civil war and the post-war recovery ment, his both personal and governmental disposable funds were regretably at a premium for purely Samoan use. It was agreed that they would contribute to the bank as circumstances allowed, in due course. With the monarchial funds provided, in addition to the funds put forth by seven of the eight nations, the Bank of the East Asian Association would be placed on a firm financial footing. Bonds sales to private individuals within each of the nations were also expected to add to the working capital of the Bank in due course.
Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-31070606347049017712024-03-18T16:17:00.002-04:002024-03-18T23:19:47.052-04:00Memories of Past Conventions 2024A nice view of the CN Tower, Toronto Convention Center, Toronto Comic Con.
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The floor of the North Building of the Toronto Convention Center, Toronto Comic Con.
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Myself and Actor Denis Lawson, Toronto Comic Con.
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Lord Hood and Professional Cosplayer Bamzy Cosplay, Toronto Comic Con.
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Lord Hood and Professional Cosplayer Candy Cosplay, Toronto Comic Con..
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Lord Hood in the custody of the Mandalorian Mercs (we will see how long this lasts...), Toronto Comic Con.
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Lord Hood making his escape in the Tardis, Toronto Comic Con.
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Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-18846123325121513162024-03-01T13:16:00.011-05:002024-03-01T16:50:33.730-05:00Memories of Past Conventions 2023Sir Leo Worthing-Topper and Lord Hood, Fan Expo Toronto Convention.
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A fantastic Steampunk costume, Fan Expo Toronto Convention.
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Lord Hood and the Mandalorian Mercs, Fan Expo Toronto Convention.
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Lord Hood and Professional Cosplayer LuckyGrim, Fan Expo Toronto Convention.
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Sir Leo Worthing-Topper and Professional Cosplayer LuckyGrim, Fan Expo Toronto Convention.
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Sir Leo Worthing-Topper and Professional Cosplayer Artyfakes (Tabitha Lyons), Fan Expo Toronto Convention.
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEindlQwadO1lyjyF-F1-oeEBIpPt3xDkvuiJKGmvMm4qIiMZ4iB__o-DuImSxaAJZl7T1JVsaepO4O_G5pmT5gCY0djHXLIWLi_-x-rk38jT1-nT44Q2ONrSrEFBa_GJzZxbCWHq6jZ0f-iqSdyuJAEJAYTSxO028cosszWkY0Kkh_856PotTDgbPDp8dY/s1600/IMG_20230829_162815.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEindlQwadO1lyjyF-F1-oeEBIpPt3xDkvuiJKGmvMm4qIiMZ4iB__o-DuImSxaAJZl7T1JVsaepO4O_G5pmT5gCY0djHXLIWLi_-x-rk38jT1-nT44Q2ONrSrEFBa_GJzZxbCWHq6jZ0f-iqSdyuJAEJAYTSxO028cosszWkY0Kkh_856PotTDgbPDp8dY/s320/IMG_20230829_162815.jpg"/></a></div>
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Lord Hood with Professional Cosplayer Artyfakes (Tabitha Lyons), Fan Expo Toronto Convention.
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBMrwPIHlM1oIv_ZN-IhoTHFmq79QSE7ybG-lkA4tIy1C2R4s4ZpEm8XX8nZxx7-uquX8u8fe7sKTVi0MvYHhQqTMJXvQHKp3HIPNFkxApXrd03wZuGqKsdr7haF7nFyxeH_v8SPDP4lvyREApR9f5bzFnohhGjBgnwokZRqXfENw6zfHLtXSxUmdoy4A/s1500/IMG_20230827_230524_897.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBMrwPIHlM1oIv_ZN-IhoTHFmq79QSE7ybG-lkA4tIy1C2R4s4ZpEm8XX8nZxx7-uquX8u8fe7sKTVi0MvYHhQqTMJXvQHKp3HIPNFkxApXrd03wZuGqKsdr7haF7nFyxeH_v8SPDP4lvyREApR9f5bzFnohhGjBgnwokZRqXfENw6zfHLtXSxUmdoy4A/s320/IMG_20230827_230524_897.jpg"/></a></div>Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-88464862928930961232024-02-22T22:30:00.001-05:002024-02-23T17:12:52.516-05:00An Ending and A Beginning (Part II)<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnVo2TzVzY4iYpv0ffBu4jd3L-eOlvSu3BZj766EBhyphenhyphenp-1NNGaVuS3Q5aKhXMfDy1CX0udPqgpKEqfFA-JYX8t76c1kz2Z1-zJf4evYaEcuqWOBTc-2Q8xIsZJwkliX1ErCx6Dhbu6gOcxJ_5bShuLE5VcT7llSiPMLMMNypL5TZhMHe1y_7NB0S1hU10/s540/Death%20at%20Leipzig2.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="403" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnVo2TzVzY4iYpv0ffBu4jd3L-eOlvSu3BZj766EBhyphenhyphenp-1NNGaVuS3Q5aKhXMfDy1CX0udPqgpKEqfFA-JYX8t76c1kz2Z1-zJf4evYaEcuqWOBTc-2Q8xIsZJwkliX1ErCx6Dhbu6gOcxJ_5bShuLE5VcT7llSiPMLMMNypL5TZhMHe1y_7NB0S1hU10/s320/Death%20at%20Leipzig2.jpg"/></a></div>
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Artwork by Pelycosaur24
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<i>“Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her; but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.” ― Voltaire</i>
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Hardly waiting to reload, the pioneer lunged over her prone form, slashing with his musket's fixed socket bayonet, at the now hideously shrieking wraith, which had caught the fired ball which had blazed from the weapon's muzzle like a flaming star much like her own pistol had previously done, to strike the creature just below what she figured was it's collar bone. Half rising, she lunged with her own sword in hand, and ran the creature nearly halfway through it's body. The pioneer stabbed his palely glittering bayonet home as well, into the wraith's hulking shoulder, seemingly killing it. It gave an eerie, wailing cry that sounded to Marie Luise like a soul being blasted into torment, and then it's body began to dissolve into what seemed to be clouds of smoke and sparkling, evil looking flecks of light before her astonished eyes.
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Pausing only long enough to assist Marie Luise to her feet, the pioneer looked around quickly, finding no more of the wraiths immediate in sight, he then gestured for her to follow him. She needed no inducement to continue her hurried exit from the confines of the dangerous woods. The Ravens suddenly appeared and swooped protectively around her as she ran.
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As the two dodged through the trees, both hurriedly worked to reload their firearms. The pioneer after what seemed like hours suddenly signaled her to halt, she listened but could hear nothing in the silent wood. Cautiously, he motioned to her to follow him towards and through a patch of glittering moonlight, that blazed through the dark forest canopy. She saw four human figures emerge from the woods beyond it, one of whom waved in greeting to the pioneer who nodded back affably.
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Of the four approaching men, she realized, one was a soldier of antiquity, an ancient Greek hoplite armed with a great bronze shield and a long spear, the other was a heavily bearded Moscow Streltsy, armed with a saber, matchlock arquebus and bardiche of the reign of Ivan IV Grozny, known to the rest of Europe as Ivan the Terrible. The third and four figures that emerged into the clearing were also soldiers but their uniforms were utterly unfamiliar to Marie Luise, though the taller of the two, seemed to her to be from some eastern nation, the long beard and smart turban and a uniform of a light earth tone almost like the fawn brown once worn by the Austrian artillerymen, with brown leather equipment and a strange rifle of a design she had never seen before although it was fitted with a wickedly long sword bayonet. His dusky skin and fierce hawk like face and soldierly, disciplined air made her think of the fabulously wealthy and exotic Indian princes, that one of her more traveled relations had mentioned to her. The other was nearly her own height and grabbed in highly decorative armour, made of over lapping, lamellar plates with a broad helmet with an elaborate crest, his face half hidden by a leering demon mask suggested one of the kingdoms of still further distant Asia, though she wasn't sure enough to say which. He was armed with two gently curved swords on different lengths and a great bow of a style not found in Europe.
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When they both entered the moonlight, Marie Luise watched as the Prussian pioneer ahead of her, suddenly rippled as the moonlight touched his body. His uniform became tattered and riddled with holes caused by bullets or shrapnel, she came to a complete stop in wordless alarm. The pioneer turned about when he noticed that she wasn't moving forward with him to join the others. His face withered under the moon's silvery light, his skin paled, became semi-transparent and flickered with pale light as if it was some sort of aurora borealis held tightly to his body. His skull, suddenly appeared as his face all but disappeared from view. Empty black eye sockets gazed at her. The pioneer realized what had happened by the stunned expression upon Marie Luise's face, and for the first time spoke aloud to her. The Pioneer was rather impressed that she hadn't screamed in fright or terror on seeing him. Made of sterner stuff then most new arrivals, this one, he thought.
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"My apologies, if my true appearance gave you are start, milady. We're all like this here, in this Land of the Dead. The moonlight shows everyone as they really are and quite as often how they died in the first place. It also drives the wraiths away, they cannot bear it's light for any length of time." His voice was little more then a whisper although it seemed to echo in her mind, though the jaw of his skeletal face hardly seemed to move as he spoke.
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Marie Luise suddenly pulled off one of her gloves, her hand trembled with horrified shock as she watched her skin and muscles of her hand fade and disappear to be replaced by a hand of moving bones. Unconsciously, her bared hand reached to her face. The Indian soldier, pulled a pocket mirror from a pale cloth satchel bag at his hip and passed it to her wordlessly, she took it and raised it to examine her own face. Marie Luise, felt horrified terror and fascination cannon through her as she gazed at the image reflected back at her, a human skull surrounded by wildly tousled, blonde hair which rose above her uniform collar.Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-42080886009090562892024-02-03T19:25:00.003-05:002024-02-03T22:49:28.275-05:00An Ending and A Beginning (Part I)<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgULI9gXo7GPQzsm1BcR3kdk3dHENW6oL-Q-u8ZOOyOg9jHHgakrGks6nvezqkW1FvWbTNf5WJdmRUPgcaG8ghKbqfICBYd-HVjtBVuHCW9UmJMHC8HnoRCxLzZk3egjDXPpJiC50ilxohtzTIxyzCcIK4-kNKNLtXuyzEV5oP158fK4Q3lmQKGXGJbajI/s540/Death%20at%20Leipzig2.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="403" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgULI9gXo7GPQzsm1BcR3kdk3dHENW6oL-Q-u8ZOOyOg9jHHgakrGks6nvezqkW1FvWbTNf5WJdmRUPgcaG8ghKbqfICBYd-HVjtBVuHCW9UmJMHC8HnoRCxLzZk3egjDXPpJiC50ilxohtzTIxyzCcIK4-kNKNLtXuyzEV5oP158fK4Q3lmQKGXGJbajI/s320/Death%20at%20Leipzig2.jpg"/></a></div>
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Artwork by Pelycosaur24
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<br />
<i>“Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her; but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.” ― Voltaire </i>
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Consciousness slowly filtered back into Marie Luise's pain and death befuddled brain. The sounds, smells and sensations of the battlefield that had previously hammered her mind and physical senses were notable by their absence, her ears had been battered by the crash of artillery and the steady rattle of musketry, the blinding, bitter smoke, the flames and stench of sweat and death, the cacophony of shouted orders, screams and curses. She was surrounded by a terrible stillness, an unnatural quiet, her eyes flickered open and she tried to make sense of her surroundings. There were only two things she was at this moment sure of: the first was that it was was night, an unnatural darkness surrounded her. The other was the equally unnatural and eerie quietude, there was no sound of anything at all in her immediate surroundings, no cry or noise made by man or animal, not even the movement of air. Was, she dead or merely dreaming, Marie Luise wondered to herself.
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Marie Luise, tried to move her limbs, she felt stiff and numbingly cold, the enveloping darkness did not help her, though she was beginning to take in her surroundings more clearly. She realized with some surprise, that she was laying in a small clearing, or rather a small gap between the trees of a considerable forest. The trees moved gently, as if possessed of some animation all their own, their leaves and branches quivered as if moved by an unseen and unheard wind, though she felt nothing. A glimmer of moon light began to slowly filter through the tree limbs and branches, dimly illuminating her surroundings. Marie Luise, realized as she sat up with some awkwardness, that she was not alone. Two pairs of black eyes, flickered at her from the branches above her head and a third set gazed intently at her from near her elbow. With a start she realized that the three dark shapes were a group of extremely large, jet black ravens.
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Marie Luise, struggled to her knees, studying the ravens, which gazed at her with unnaturally brilliant black eyes, like black diamonds. Ravens were a symbol of death and bad luck or ill omen, but they were also the ancient heraldic symbol of her house. Ravens often represent ancient wisdom, intelligence and transformation. They were spectral messengers of the gods, bearers of untold visions, dreams and prophetic whispers. In the annals of mythology and folklore, these ebony enigmas inhabited a realm where mystic symbols intertwine with human imagination. Perhaps Marie Luise, thought to herself, she was in such a realm now. The one, beside her hopped forward inquisitively, it's beak opened in a silent call. Tentatively she reached a gloved hand out towards it, the bird did not flinch or pull away when her fingers brushed it. If fact it seemed pleased to have her do so. Ravens were often harbingers or messengers in folklore, Marie Luise wondered if the ravens, were sent to welcome her to this place.
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Suddenly the raven, beneath her fingers, froze it's beak snapped open in a silent hiss, without a sound it took to the it's wings, something had spooked it. Marie Luise, turned on her knees, trying to force her stiff limbs to action to come to her feet, a presentiment of danger filled her. Something strange and evil was near at hand both her instincts and her brain screamed to her. The two ravens in the tree branches seemed to be silently screaming a warning at her, something flickered at the corner of her eye. A dark, malevolent shadow moved, this one darker then anything she had ever seen before, dominated by two ravenous and eerie eyes, two motes of hateful and malice filled light peered at her from the trees. The dark, shadowy thing came at her with stunning speed, she caught a glimpse of long limbs and terrible claw like hands, grasping for her, she barely managed to dodge out the way in time.
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An icy, choking fog followed the creature's movements, seeping across the ground and swirling around the trunks of the trees. Marie Luise, dodged two more vicious lunges by the thing, as much by instinct as anything else. Fumbling for anything she might use as a weapon against the thing that stalked her, her hand hand fell absently upon, the leather holster case at her right hip. Marie Luise realized that her sidearms was still upon her person, and drew the double-barreled dueling pistol contained within the holster, without thinking, cocked the double hammers and took deliberate aim at the shadow that stalked her, the moonlight had dimmed almost to nothingness, so she had only it's glimmering eyes to aim by, and the warning movements of the ravens which circled her.
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Marie Luise, lined up the double barrels and put the glowing eyes between the hammers and pulled the trigger, with swift but deliberate precision. She had no idea if the pistol would have the slightest effect on the shadowy creature. The pistol kicked back in her hand, the muzzle flamed into the darkness with an unearthly brilliance that almost blinded her, although to her astonishment there was no report of the discharge against her ears. The pistol ball, which glowed like a bright night time star as it left the barrel, slammed into creature, which shrieked aloud in bafflement, rage and pain as the bullet struck home against what she thought was it's chest. The creature's outcry was the first sound she had heard since awaking in this strange forest, the sound rattled off and around the black tree trunks and rustled the leaves, Marie Luise paused only long enough to fire off the second barrel, directly into the thing's face, then turned and fled as quickly as she could, the wings of the three ravens fluttered around her and their stringent cries, urged her on.
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Marie Luise needed no urging in any case, the forest was now alive with sounds, that had been for some reason suppressed, the echoing report of the two shots from her Nock pattern dueling pistol, echoed back and forth amid the trees, mixing with the frantic cries of the ravens, and the soul shuddering shrieks of agony from the wraith that lay writhing on the ground behind her. She ran pell-mell, narrowly dodging left and right to get through the trees, with the only thought of getting out of this oppressive and shadowy forest as quickly as she could driving her in headlong retreat, the ravens winged ahead of her, seeming to act as guides in the trackless shadows and darkness.
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Marie Luise had no idea how much distance she had covered, in the eternal darkness and seething cold, the forest seemed to be endless, she felt something like despair gripping her, something banged heavily against her hip as she ran, she suddenly realized it was her sword. With no time to reload her pistol, she hurriedly drew it even as she continued to run, a sudden instinct warned her she might need it before she found her way clear of the forest. Marie Luise, surprisingly felt rather more cheerful with it in her hand, it was a good blade, and had served her in victory and defeat since it had been presented her by Feldmarschall Aleksandr Vasilyevich Suvorov as a token of his and the Russian Imperial Army's respect and esteem. She had no idea what effect it would have on the wraith like creature she had just shot, but if the pistol worked with some effect she thought, then it was within the realm of the possible that the sword would also be effective, perhaps more so, as it had been twice blessed by priests of the Russian Orthodox Catholic and the Austrian Roman Catholic churches.
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The warning screams or caws of the ravens, brought her thoughts suddenly back to the present with a jolt. Two of the Ravens veered away to the left, and flew hard into the face of a new wraith, that had emerged from between two sprawling trees, their razor sharp beaks and talons, raking the creature's face and up raised arms as it tried to ward them off. A second wraith emerged from a blanket of swirling mist and fog from a shallow ravine on her left, the third raven flew at it like a black missile aiming for it's glowing eyes. She took a running slash at the evil wraith before her with her sword, as she jumped across the narrow ravine to get clear of it. The blade, which began glowing with a strange, spectral light all it's own, passed straight through the out stretched wrist and then the eyes of the wraith, which promptly blasted her ears with it's scream of agony as it lost both a clawed hand and it's sight in the same moment.
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Abruptly Marie Luise's flight came to an end, as one of her booted feet became entangled in a gnarled tree root emerging from the dark soils and scattered patches of turf. She pitched headlong into the ground in a tangle of limbs as she struggled to regain her footing. Her sword slipped and threatened to bounce from her hand as she fell, but stayed near at hand courtesy of the fist strap she had slipped over her wrist when she had first drawn it. A heavily black booted foot abruptly and without warning hit the ground before her, and she rolled to see who or what it belonged to. To her astonishment she found herself looking upwards at a Prussian pioneer, though his dress was of the Army of Friedrich der Große not that of the reign of Friedrich Wilhelm III, which she was more familiar with. In the glimmer of reflected moonlight, she caught sight of the figure's head, face wrapped in shadow, which tipped downwards to look at her with a surprised curiousity equal to her own, then the metal fronted, rounded pioneer mitre snapped upward and the Royal Prussian army flintlock musket grasped in the pioneer's hands snapped upwards toward the wielder's shoulder and blazed to life, aimed at a newly arrived wraith that was almost on top of both of them.Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-63298134034817285652023-07-27T22:52:00.064-04:002024-03-26T12:22:44.725-04:00Fragments from the Americas (Part V)<b>The White House, Washington D.C., Maryland, United States of America, January 1889.</b>
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President Hayes, thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a military aide-de-camp, from General Schofield, he silently passed the president the promised précis of the Patrick memorandum. At a polite, nod from his president, the aide left the room and made sure that the president would not be disturbed for several minutes, till he had read and had time to digest at least the broad scope of the memorandum and it's implications. The précis ran to well over fifty pages, so lord knew what the actual memorandum was like, Hayes thought absently, as he began to dive into it's contents.
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Hayes noted ruefully, that Major-General Logan Patrick, did not pull his punches with his assessments of the political and military situation in the Disputed Territories. They were blunt, hard nosed and aimed at achieving practical solutions especially those concerning overall strategies,increasing available manpower and allocations of logistical support as quickly as possible. The problem was, the very things he was advocating while they would probably solve most of the problems that were vexing both his administration and the US Army in the Disputed Territories, would cause Congress to go into convolutions! Which might not be a bad thing, Hayes thought, though his cabinet officers might disagree with him on that.
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In the first part of the précis, General Patrick detailed each of the five departments in the Disputed Territories and the particular problems confronting them.
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<i><b>The Department of the North West, General John Pope commanding, covering the Territories of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.</b></i>
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Covering some three territories, was the second largest of the five departments, and the problems facing General Pope were legion, he had to police this considerable area, establish permanent garrisons and pro-unionist administrations, providing, transport and distribute all sorts of goods and services. Pope had to pacify a collection of stubbornly independent enclave states within the region, deal with truculent ranchers, cattle rustlers and desperadoes forming virtual private armies roaming the region.
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Countering and repelling the I.S.A. advance into Idaho and providing support to The increasingly isolated Department of the Pacific were two other vitally important tasks, that General Pope had also to consider and deal with. Further, raids and skirmishes with war parties of the Lakota Nation Indians or allied or just hostile Indian tribes were endemic to the area and also had to be continously dealt with. Further Pope was expected by Congress to energetically attack the Lakota Nation in co-ordination with the Department of the Dakotas and force it's submission. Pope had repeatedly stated to Congress and his military superiors that he had enough forces to deal with only one or two problems besetting his department at a time, not the dozen or so that he was routinely confronted with.
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<i><b>The Department of the Dakotas, General Henry Beebee Carrington commanding, covering the Territories of North and South Dakota.</b></i>
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Carrington despite being an abysmal and incompetent Indian Fighter, was a magnificant organizer, disciplinarian and drillmaster and had worked with success at keeping his department protected from repeated Indian raids across the Missouri River, from the Lakota Nation and keeping open a direct land route to the Department of the North West and providing it with much needed munitions and other essential supplies, via the heavily patrolled and fortified North Dakota panhandle. Patrick, felt that Carrington, had done as well as could be expected of him, in securing the two Dakota Territories, in the circumstances. His complete lack of success in penatrating and subduing the Lakota nation along the Missouri was due to a lack of overwhelming manpower and sustained logistics to do the task being made available to him by Congress. To balance this, Carrington has been vigorously successful in stamping out any tendency to independent Enclavism, within his department, although some in Congress have accused him of rather too vigorous or heavy handed methods of accomplishing this important part of his departmental mission. Regardless, General Carrington at least does not, unlike some of his fellow departmental commanders have to continously look over their shoulder for enemies behind their lines, while dealing with the enemies to his front.
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The Department had fewer U.S. regular regiments assigned to it then perhaps any other, save perhaps the Department of the Mid West. The majority of the troops at Carrington's command were troops he had actively organized or raised himself from the two Dakotas territories: Territorial national guards, territorial militia and volunteers assisted by a small number of U.S. regular regiments or detachments and U.S. Volunteer regiments or battalions. Like Pope, Carrington had to safeguard and police various cities, towns and settlements, maintain and protect the transport of goods and services to those communities, by road, rail, air and water routes that were often contested by the Lakota. He and his troops had to repel or resist numerous raids, by Lakota war parties that had gotten over the Missouri. Meanwhile while attending to all this General Carrington was expected to assist the two territorial governors in their efforts to prepare North and South Dakota for their organization and admission into the Union as states, as well as safe-guard the preliminary elections for the two territories planned representatives and senators to the U.S. Congress.
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<i><b>The Department of the Mid West, General John Rutter Brooke, covering the States of Nebraska and Kansas.</b></i>
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Actually one of the quietest of the five departments, all things considered, due to both the states being largely loyal to the Union government. Although a large portion of Western Nebraska was and still is effectively Lakota Nation territory as well as a very small northwestern corner of Kansas. Outbreaks of independent enclavism amougst Nebraskans and Kansasians had been very minimal and easily dealt with by local pro-Union military force directly or through careful and effective civil-military negotiations early on in the Second Civil War. However a considerable portion of the western half of the state of Nebraska has fallen under the control of the Lakota Nation as well as a small corner of Northwestern Kansas, and Lakota war parties regular mad raids across the department, though in most cases, these raids have been regularly halted or driven back into Lakota held lands.
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General Brooke's hard work, careful organization, concern for logistics and good working rapport with both military and civilian subordninates and especially his concern for building a good working relation with the various pro-unionist Indian tribal factions that had stayed loyal to the Union during the first civil war (and consequently had to flee the Indian Territory, now the Confederate State of Oklahoma) and been resettled in pro-unionist Kansas. They had been stalwarts in keeping Kansas in the Union ever since. General Brooke is unusual amoungst his five departmental peers as his military administration is both respected and appreciated by local, district and state authorities and the great majority of pro-unionist inhabitants whether long established residents, new settlers or resettled Indian tribes (excepting the Lakota of course). Further he is in a personal sense generally liked and respected by both his soldiers and subordinates, although his relations with General Miles, the Commander of the Department of South West, have recently undergone a severe strain.
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The Unionist Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Choctow, Chickasaw, Muscogee/Creek, and Seminole) and other tribes that had decided to throw in their lot with the Union, had proven under Brooke's direction to be indispensable and highly effective in keeping the various postal, trade caravan and supply or settler wagon train routes as well as railroads in the area open or at least protected from Lakota war parties or other hostile groups both in Kansas and in Nebraska deployed as regiments or battalions of U.S. Indian Home Guards or Indian Scouts alongside Brooke's U.S. regular troops and Kansas and Nebraska National Guards, State Militia and Home Guards.
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Brooke's primary concern other then policing and administering to his department is maintaining and protecting the various supply lines, that pass through his department, from the logistical centers of the Union proper to the extended U.S. armies, garrisons and detachments deployed all over the Department of South West (and a lesser extent to the Departments of the Dakotas and the North West), something that Brooke and the troops under his command have done with commendable diligence and perserverence. Brooke has been largely responsible (much of it on his own incentive) for the construction of two new Central and Southern Pacific Railways from railway hubs in Kansas to better assist General Miles's field troops and garrisons and connecting the massive primary Union Army supply depots at Denver, Colorado and Sante Fe, New Mexico directly with supply and logistical depots in Kansas and the vital industrial and military support of the rest of the Union in the east.
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<i><b>The Department of the South West, General Nelson Appleton Miles commanding, covering the three territories Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and one rebelling state Utah.</b></i>
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One of the two largest departments, if not thee largest in terms of sheer land area covered, and the one that that has seen the most heavy fighting of one sort of another in recent years other then the Department of the Pacific. General Miles has enjoyed considerable if not great success in personally overseeing the surpression and pacification of the Indian tribes in the region that his department covers. His two chief subordinates, Major-Generals James Henry Carleton and Joseph Rodman West being cited as energetically assisting him in this task in Arizona and New Mexico respectively.
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Patrick felt that Miles was wasting more time on this then was politically or militarily or even ethically necessary, being more concerned to be seen as the most successful Indian Fighter (and discredit and eclipse the accomplishments of General Crook) particularly against the virtually ungovernable and skilled warriors of the Apache Tribes in Union military history by the various newspapers both in the region and back east. Fighting the I.S.A.'s advances into the Union Arizona Territory, stamping out the independent Enclaves in Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado (and in re-establishing and assisting any working pro-union administrations in the virtuly defunct Union state of Colorado or for that matter the Arizona and New Mexico territories) or dealing with the continued Mormon resistence in the state of Utah had recieved by comparison only the most peripheral of his attentions or been left in the hands of otherwise unsupervised or under supported departmental subordinates.
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With no less then five Union armies tied up (without overall direction by Miles as departmental commander) around Salt Lake City and a very real drive by the I.S.A into Union Arizona developing, all seemed incrediblely low on Miles's list of military priorities. This excessive concern on Miles's part with dealing solely with the Indians was extremely worrying. Further Miles efforts to actually subdue the fiercely independent Navajo Nation itself on the otherhand have been absolutely and consistently disasterous. The Navajo and other allied tribes within that Indian nation's well established borders that sprawled across four states or territories being well organized, extremely well armed and highly motivated to defend themselves and their families and tribes. They had consistently snapped to pieces any of the numerous expeditions lead or sent by General Miles or General West to break them. Miles's efforts against the Lakota Nation occupied section of Colorado has been marked by a dysmally similiar lack of success.
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More then one person in the General Staff and the Commanding General-in-chief's Office of the Union Army, thought, Miles had developed unhealthy political ambitions and desires for either a seat in Congress as a representative or senator or even the presidency if he could win the nomination and planned to use his anti-Indian successes for valuable political capital. Either that or he is aiming to position himself towards being the next nominee for the post of the General-in-Chief of the Union Army, given the extremely poor health of the current incumbent, the ailing General of the Armies Philip Henry Sheridan. Miles's was thought to be planning to utilize his record of military accomplishments both in the First and the early part of the Second Civil Wars, as well as being a protege of General-in-Chiefs U. S. Grant, W.T. Sherman and Sheridan, his well crafted and well publicized reputation as a successful and accomplished Indian fighter (if one omits his more recent and frequent failures against the Navajo and Lakota Nations). Further, Miles was married to a niece of General Sherman (who, although officially retired since 1884 at his own request, still wielded enormous influence within the Union government and U.S. Army High Command, while Sherman's many Ewing family relations commanded just as much policial influence in various state governments, the U.S. House of Representatives and especially the U.S. Senate) and also having impeccablely solid connections within the Republican and Radical Republican Parties, he might not be wrong in thinking that the post is his for the taking.
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Miles had further made an alarming and dangerous point of driving any tribe in the region that he couldn't subdue and place onto a government designated and controlled reservation, over the borders of the Independent States of America, the Mexican Empire, and the Confederate States of America. The immediate and long-term political and military complications of that practice were extremely unpleasant for Hayes to dwell on. Miles, also tried dismissing from service and placing the members (and their families) of the Indian Scouts raised by General George Crook onto a reservation, despite written promises from Crook and the U.S. government that they would not be so treated at the end of their service. This consequently started a bitter feud (or rather it exaserbated the bad relations existed between the two from the time Crook was Miles's superior and predessor in the department) between Crook and Miles. General Brooke, who has come to value his Indian Home Guards and Indian Scouts and was friendly to Crook, intervened personally in the affair and offered the Apaches and other members of the Indian Scouts in Miles's department, refuge and resettlement rights in Kansas for themselves and their families, if they were willing to relocate there and if they had no objections to serve in his department. The right of refuge and resettlement would be acted on by General Brooke and his administration, whether they elected to serve or not.
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<i><b>The Department of the Pacific, General George Crook commanding covering the three rebelling states of Oregon, Nevada and California, the Union state of Washington and parts of western Idaho.</b></i>
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This department, was the most critcally endangered of all the departments and had only narrowly beaten off the I.S.A.'s previous 1888 autumn and winter land offensives. It was frequently isolated from the nearest department to it, that of the North West. It's logistical support had to come either directly from the resources of the State of Washington or be delivered by the Union Governement via long nautical routes from the Union's Atlantic coast, through the Carribbean Sea via the Mexican Isthmus of Tehuantepec interoceanic ship railway lines which had been constructed and opened for business in 1884 or the Panama Canal which was due to close for improvement and repairs this year.
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The other alternative nautical route was the long trip around, South America and Cape Horn into the Pacific Ocean and up past the hostile Californian and Oregonian coasts of the Independent States. Deliveries of men and supplies via aeronautical routes using air or sky ships from Minnesota or Kansas were possible but frequently haphazard at best due to aerial raiding parties from the Lakota Nation, air pirates or sky privateers hired by the I.S.A. The most direct overland U.S. rail route, the Northern Pacific Railway was cut by the Lakota Nation, as much of it passed through territory they claimed and had some active control of and thus unworkable as a reliable transport route.
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The only sustained supply route rail or otherwise, was via the Canadian Pacific Railway, through the British North Americas, which was connected by a special railway by-pass from Minnesota into the Canadian Pairies, directly to the C.P.R. line. The British had allowed this dispite their <i>official</i> stance of studious neutrality in the Second Civil War since it had started in 1885, as a favour largely brought about by the perusasion and sustained lobbying within the British parliament by the former Liberal prime minister William Ewart Gladstone (1880-1883 and 1886-1886), though it had been unsuccessfully opposed by both the following Whig and Conservative prime ministers, the Duke of Darkmoor (1883-1885) and the Marquess of Salisbury (1885-86 and 1886 til the present). Though there were several severe conditions attached to it by the British Foreign Office to settle the nerves of both the British Empire's Canadian subjects and the British Empire's Imperial Defense General Staff.
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Military logistics could travel in secrecy along the C.P.R. to reach Seattle, Washington, but the munitions and other supplies had to travel on separate trains, covertly guarded by Royal Canadian Mounted Police and selected detachments of British troops. Union Army and Navy personel bound for Washington State had to travel, in plain dress, unarmed and on seperate trains from the weapons and munitions consignments. This route while complicated worked fairly effectively and had delivered a steady stream of much needed troops, equipement and munitions to the embattled Union forces. While the folllowing British governments had chosen not to alter the largely unwritten arrangement even though they detested it, they could at anytime they chose cancel it: with dire military and logistical implications for Washington State.
Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-34411861878582227002023-07-08T17:47:00.041-04:002023-08-03T16:44:11.881-04:00A Letter Regarding the British Empire's position<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyNs0I_TTZ41tUsAQTEG1m_IU8ahxsxKO3KIh8kxrEFld_CCvyecS90qiYpMdLAEmEIOTMypflXHTjWWmAXmtvk5NXY70Ss3VyFCHji8OeRaCGvnPGZsGEjIidnjYYxM98_XWZr0LBlCjfb8J0GQdqi818Fp4saTv2Eh93Y4J2RXCuYiZOjjzA9fG3QE8/s2560/20201113_140159.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyNs0I_TTZ41tUsAQTEG1m_IU8ahxsxKO3KIh8kxrEFld_CCvyecS90qiYpMdLAEmEIOTMypflXHTjWWmAXmtvk5NXY70Ss3VyFCHji8OeRaCGvnPGZsGEjIidnjYYxM98_XWZr0LBlCjfb8J0GQdqi818Fp4saTv2Eh93Y4J2RXCuYiZOjjzA9fG3QE8/s320/20201113_140159.jpg"/></a></div>
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<i>Dear Stephen,
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I trust this letter finds you in good spirits and health and that you and Vivian are enjoying your holiday in the highlands.
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Regarding your frustrations expressed in our last meeting and letters before you left, I can only agree that the situation of Great Britain and our sprawling empire is far less rosy then the government, the pro-establishiment or pro-governmental newspapers or the general opinion of the public at large would have anyone - who is truly acquainted with the facts - believe.
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Yes, I know you think that my prior fourteen years of extensive military service, with it's consequent many injuries and illnesses (including the loss of my left hand and fore arm) which resulted in me finally being invalided out of the service in '83, following our national misadventures in the 2nd Anglo-Ottoman war of '82, in various parts of our empire has made me into an incorrigible and absolute cynic. I do not and probably never will share the often delusional, self-aggrandizing ideas of many of my parlimentary or military collegues and peers that the Empire is either wholely belevolent in it's intentions or even it's day to day administration or for that matter wholely secure from a strictly military standing point. Then again unlike many of them, I was actually on site in various places and in various campaigns when we were building a great part of it over the last decade and a half.</i>
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<i>While our terrestial empire (I will not even get started on our stellar empire, that would take another letter by itself) is vast, and spans the globe having holdings just about anywhere one looks on a map. Our empire has been refered to as "the Empire on which the Sun never sets", with a fair amount of reason it has to be said. The very diversity of regions this implies, also means our empire is physically and geographically deeply scattered and only held together against any external threat by the power of the Royal Navy, our air and sky fleet services and our land armies. Just as importantly this collections of colonies, enclaves, dominions and protectorates is held together by a common framework of civil administration and civil law, a common financial and monetary system and our very considerable merchantile marine fleet.</i>
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<i>In a nutshell our possessions and holdings can be broken down into the following seven regional groups:
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1) British North America: the provinces of Alaska (annexed in 1867), the Yukon, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario (Lower Canada), Quebec (Upper Canada), the Northwest Territories, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, North Maine (annexed to New Brunswick in 1867), Northwest Penisular Michigan (annexed to Lower Canada in 1867)
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2) Central and South America: British Honduras (Belize), Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas islands, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the British Virgin Islands, the Leeward and Windward Islands (the Lesser Antilles Islands), Trinidad and Tobago, British Guiana
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3) Africa: the Cape Province, the Basutoland Protectorate, the Bechuanaland Protectorate, Sierra Leone, British East Africa, British Somilialand and our (very nominal if the Boers have anything to say about it) suzerainty over the Orange Free State and Transvaal Republic
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4) North and South Atlantic: Bermuda Island, Ascension Island, St Helena Island, the Falkland Islands, South Georgia island, the South Sandwich Islands, the South Shetland Islands, the South Orkney Islands, the Tristan da Gunha Islands, Gough Island and the British Channel Islands
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5) The Orient and Indian Ocean: Socotra Island, the Maldives Islands, the Chagos Archipelgago, the Seychelles Islands, the Maruritius Islands, Ceylon, the British Indian and Burmese States (excepting the Portuguese, French, Austrian and German Enclaves, Trade Concessions and Treaty ports), the Andaman Islands, the Cocos Islands, Christmas Island
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6) East Asia and the Pacific: Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, British Malaysia, Sawarak, the Singapore Enclave, the Hong Kong Enclave, the Fiji islands, the Solomon Islands Protectorate, the New Hebrides Islands, the Pitcairn Islands, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Protectorate
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7) The Mediterranean: the Gibraltar Enclave, the Maltese Islands</i>
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<i>This collection of territories would keep any of the great powers busy enough just administering to, but in season and out of season, various British governments (regardless of political stripe) are committed to adding still more to it! The fact that the administrtation of the empire is divided between three different and often ruthlessly competing governmental departments hardly helps or inspires confidence to my mind. The Colonial Office, directs and administers to our various dominions, colonies and enclaves, while all our possessions in the Orient and Indian Ocean fall under the control or oversight of the India Office. While our various African or Asian protectorates come under the control and/or direction of our Foriegn Office via their appointed minions, the Resident-Commissioners.
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In my personal experience, the officials assigned to duties in our empire can be divided into three broad categories: those from the Colonial Office are thorougly incompetent, the India Office are thoroughly corrupt and the Foreign Office are thoroughly useless! While, I will admit, that not all of these officials fall into these categories, and the last three governments have spent considerable effort (and I have to say a fair amount of success) to improve our empire's administration and clean out a great deal of the entrenched incompetence and corruption within the machinery of administration. Enough of them still do however fall into these catego to make the matter academic and explains why our empire has so frequently been troubled by rebellions, uprisings and crisises over matters which while viewed as of no importance or consequence by their political and administrative overseers are viewed rather more seriously, if not matters of life and death, by the local inhabitants!
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The Foreign Office is committed to establishing still more protectorates in the next few years, if not sooner and often in intense competion with the Colonial and India Offices which would rather annexed some of these places directly. These nations in question, are quite fully independent and automonous and quite naturally wish to remain as such. In theory much of this is supposed to assist the empire in securing many of it's overseas possessions against encroachment by other powers, and while I understand the theory, the practical difficulties this policy presents are immense and in the long run might make our empire, less secure not more so, given the rivalries and problems it will create or exacerbate.
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I refer of course to the confidencial though hardly in any way secret governmental and parlimentary discussions (given that both Number 10 and Westminister leak like sieves these days) for the long term acquisition of political and economic control over Tibet, Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan to build up a line of buffer or (very) nominally independent clientale states along our long Indian and Burmese borders with Qing China. As well as the establishment of independent, pro-British regimes in Afghanistan or even Persia to secure our Indian possessions western and northern borders with both the Russian and Ottoman Empires! In the first case, Tibet has already firmly and violently resisted attempts by the India Office to annex them, and there is no reason to expect that to change anytime soon. If the Foreign Office, expects the Tibetians to accept a protectorate, they are absolutely daft! Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan are currently friendly enough to us (despite past conflicts), that neither annexation or a protectorate is required to serve our purposes, and all three of them are quite capable of putting up a stubborn if not crippling fight against any invader, from either side of their borders.
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Quite how the Ottoman Sublime Porte will likely react to us meddling in their empire (yet again... and quite probably as unsuccessfully on all previous occassions) and having two of their most important eastern provinces detached from their empire, has as far as I know, never been properly discussed! Given our empire's past failures to do just that at various times and via various wars, and considering the Ottoman Empire's iron grip on both provinces, this is a project that in the long run will neither prosper, give us what is wanted or improve Anglo-Ottoman relations. How the Russians who have had their eyes on both Persia and Afghanistan for many long years will react has not been thoroughly discussed either, though it has entered the heads of at least some of our governmental ministers, state and under secretaries and parlimentary officials that their reaction will not be positive!
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I am begining to wonder if there are those in both the India Office and Foreign Office, who think that the second Anglo-Ottoman and proceeding first and second Afghan Wars were not sufficient trouble for one century, already! While further to the east coverteous eyes are cast at establishing protectorates over the Sultanate of Brunei, the Kingdoms of Tonga, Siam, Samoa and Hawai'i, as well as outright annexation of Noble's Isle well to the east of Australia and New Zealand. Never mind, there are other great powers with vested interests in all these places.
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While a protectorate over Tonga, might be accepted by the other powers in East Asia and the Pacific, Siam will put us at daggers drawn with France (and we have quite enough problems with them already! Africa, Europe, the Caribbeanean, the Mediterranean, Madagascar, India to name just a few places we currently have quarrels with them), which also has eyes on the Kingdom and it's neighbour Laos, to secure their Indochinese possessions. Samoa, drags us into a potential conflict with Germany, Japan, Hawai'i and France, all who eye those islands with interest and will not welcome us taking them, nor will the Samoans come to that!
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Hawai'i being of course, the other powder keg, they will not accept a protectorate or out right annexation by any of the dozen or so powers that have an interest in those prosperous and strategic islands, and will like the Siamese resist any attempt to do so, more importantly, Hawai'i can reasonable call on the politcal, economic and military assistence of both the Empire of Japan and of Austria-Hungary, both close and trusted friends to the Hawaiians to prevent any covert or overt takeover (the disasterous 1887 'Bayonet Constitution affair', that idiot, the American minister to Hawaii unsuccessfully tried to mastermind comes vividly to memory).
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Brunei is a similiar situation, it shares borders with our colonies in Sawarak, as well as German Borneo and Austro-Hungarian Borneo. Both the Germans and the Austrians are friendly to the Brunei (and all three reap considerable economic benefits from this arrangement), and have consistently worked quietly behind the scenes to give the Sultan every economic and political support in shore up his country's position against British economic and political encroachment, but the Brunei's position is beginning to get desperate (with both the Foreign Office and the India Office throwing everything they have at them, this is hardly surprising), so they may soon turn to their friends for more overt support, particularly military support or ask for protectorate status from either the German or Austro-Hungarian Empires to thwart our empire's designs upon them.
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Both the F.O. and I.O., think this scenario is unlikely, I for one do not share that optimistic appraisal of the situation. In any case, the last thing we need to do is needlessly antagonize both the Germans and the Austrians, as both countries are currently friendly for the most part and their Central Powers alliance with Italy, makes them one of the more formidble military, economic and political power blocks in Europe! Further all three countries share borders with our overseas possessions and if it comes to a war, they can cause us a great deal of havoc, particularly as we have few permanent friends in the world, a lot of rivals and the empire is still recovering from several wars over the last two decades (not all of which were successful).
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In the Americas we have quarrels enough as it is, there is the ongoing borders dispute with Venezuela and our colony, British Guiana, which shows no sign of cooling off anytime soon, particularly as the United States or rather their minister to the Venezuelan government, has made a point of egging the Venezuelans on in their claims against us. Honduras has similar claims against our Belize colony, though unlike the Venzuelans they are prepared to be reasonable about it, and have often discussed utilizing foreign arbitration in whatever venue, we would find acceptable to put an end to the matter, which has vexed both our countries for many long decades. While our relations with the United States of America, are generally cool, not surprising in view of events, particularly our participation in their civil war of 1861-67, and our annexation of parts of two of their states, principally, the part of Northern Maine, that we ceded to them to avoid a war in 1822-23, which we subsequently took back with some interest it has to be said in 1863-67, along with half of the State of Michigan.
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While I understand our tacit support of the Union government in their second civil war has gone a long way to thawing relations, there are still outstanding issues such as the Alabama Claims and the return of the portions of the two states we annexed. My knowledge of the political climate in our possessions in British North America, is that while, settling the financial and political claims of the Union government is not unwelcome, returning the annexed parts of Maine and Michigan to the Union are not, and will not win us any friends in Lower Canada especially and could turn considerable elements of the British North American provinces against us, in the long run if we do it. Our political relations with the Confederate States of America, have I am not completely sorry to say, gone to pieces, whatever economic benefits we may still reap from them (even that is distasteful in the extreme, given their failure to honour their wartime committments and treaty obligations) and if we did not need them as a political and military counterweight to the Union, I doubt we would continue any relations with them. The existance of the Independent States of America, the Mormon Republic of Utah, and the Native States of the Navajo and the Lakota complicates our troublesome relations with the United States even further, particularly as we have tacitly politically and economically acknowledged all four of them, though made no overt attempt to support any of them.
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Otherwise thankfully our relations with the other central and South America countries are stable and prosperous, on both sides. Although Argentina's continues claims to the Falkland Islands, which they insist on calling the Islas Malvinas, and their attempts to act like they physically own it, is a sore point which is going to continue to fester for some time. Unlike others in government or the military establishment, I am concerned that the Argentinian government, might if the situation allowed for it and conditions within Argentina were favourable and we are distracted by events elsewhere in the world or within our empire, might make a grab for the Falklands via military means. Both the Cabinet's and the Foreign Office's flat refusal, to even enter into political discussions or negotiations concerning the Falklands with the Argentinians, is not helping the matter from their perspective or their collective tempers.
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The fact that both Austria-Hungary, Germany and France have substancial holdings in the Carribbeanean Islands is still rather worrying from our prespective. They are so placed as to give the Royal Navy a great deal of trouble in the event of a war with any one of them protecting our colonies and commerce traffic in the region. Austria-Hungary, controls the Austro-Hungarian Virgin Islands, while the Germans hold the all the former Danish Virgin Islands as well as the Dutch colonies in the Lesser Antilles and the Dutch Antilles Islands off Venezuela (following both Denmark and the Netherlands entering the German Confederation/Empire in 1867 and 1882 respectively). The French are the most vexing as they hold Guadeloupe and Martinique, two of the most valuable islands in the Lesser Antilles, although surrounded on all sides by our islands possessions: the two French islands are heavily fortified, heavily garrisoned and well supplied with good harbours for military use and commercial traffic and well placed to allow French cruiser squadrons operating from either one of them to cause considerable havoc to our Merchantile Marine.
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I will continue this letter and discussion of our national affairs at a later date, the House of Lords (as is the House of Commons) is presently convening to vote on a new proposed bill before Parliament today even as I have been writing this letter. As the vote concerns one my own parliamentary committee chairmanships, the Special Appellate and Parliamentary Committee for the Consideration of Divorce Cases, it is rather important that I be present for this seccession.
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Yours as always very sincerely and affectionately,
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LeoSir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-57671786057971775442023-07-05T14:23:00.006-04:002023-07-08T15:41:35.981-04:00On Reaching 10,000 Pageviews<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirmtpz_Aci4kNmBOsaNzqaNuZ1GMjgiyH6a5kcYWf0BtLtMbzsOEPb0absCk51UpLD4I-bEKqxOvlI2OmCQKfEpTS_f_rzmC2814aosNgew0DgSDmuXVwQykMMLY9P5d2VG0sWdtPxbwY8rJauV6ciOzcHF4mCMplbSV3XIWe8tN9FmG1IlTsAM0JvqqY/s960/Topper%203.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirmtpz_Aci4kNmBOsaNzqaNuZ1GMjgiyH6a5kcYWf0BtLtMbzsOEPb0absCk51UpLD4I-bEKqxOvlI2OmCQKfEpTS_f_rzmC2814aosNgew0DgSDmuXVwQykMMLY9P5d2VG0sWdtPxbwY8rJauV6ciOzcHF4mCMplbSV3XIWe8tN9FmG1IlTsAM0JvqqY/s320/Topper%203.jpg"/></a></div>
<i>2016, when I started my journey into cosplaying, convention going and writing the Age of Steam, Steel and Iron Blog.</i>
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<i>2023, seven plus years on, I still working away at my cosplay and still writing articles, stories and posting whatever I think might be pertinent to the ongoing An Age of Steam, Steel and Iron background.</i>
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When I started this blog in 2016, I had a lot of time on my hands, as I had just been laid off after some sixteen years with the No Frills chain, and it was another three or four months before I was once again employed. Thus I had plenty of time to work up the blog, post some story snippets and add some cosplay pictures which I had started into when I began organizing the material for the steampunk and fictional history of the Age of Steam, Steel and Iron background which had long been in my head and existed as a series of short stories, sketches and background notes for many years previously but not had been organized into a formalized concept. The idea for the blog had been kicking around for sometime but I didn't get the firmly fixed in my head til a chance meeting and an interesting discussion, at the Hamilton Comic Convention, really caused the idea to jump from a fuzzy concept to actually doing something concrete about it.
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To be honest when I started the blog, I was not expecting a huge amount of interest, as steampunk, cosplay and historical fiction are to some extent niche markets, as not everyone is interested in them though there are considerable audiences for all three worldwide. Although I expected to get a few pageviews from people on general curiousity once they found it, if nothing else, and I worked to expand knowledge of it's existence at conventions by passing out my Sir Leo Worthing-Topper, social cards and chatting with people about my costume when they expressed interest in it. These cosplay experiences at conventions lead me to realize there was some interest in the subjects I was writing posts and articles about if I could get them out to an audience.
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One of these days I am hoping, that I will have assembled enough material to print some story anthologies books or booklets and the like and get a table at one of the conventions I attend, though that is a project very much for the future as still have a lot of work in assembling and editting material before that could be considered a possibility.
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In any event, I am happy if people have found the various stories and posts of mine, entertaining or interesting. I hope to eventually have some illustrations done for maps or the various characters appearing in the stories at some time in the future circumstances and my finances permitting, and to expand on some of the collabrative story work I have begun with the Hellfire Chronicles stories regarding the original character, Marie Luise von Eggenberg, created by Pelycosaur24.
Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-89496873915116977022023-04-14T19:55:00.006-04:002023-06-02T16:57:42.861-04:00A Visit To A Dying Emperor<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHbjhDirg0UjzOJC9yG-IQkoNd-VgaFotKMV9EAWqzDWy8Od4OsllnUOXKYECIxxC5vj5fU-I4EObaNjuTBmKXH5wMr4vg95r3sGq9LnNgmt6assDW3GqwlirkwwImWAKOocXo2CmAXUanv5Y66oZjV65Vr-FRTLzEf2B3RtaUq5MJNr1MHip65wEP/s900/how-did-napoleon-die-featured.webp" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="477" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHbjhDirg0UjzOJC9yG-IQkoNd-VgaFotKMV9EAWqzDWy8Od4OsllnUOXKYECIxxC5vj5fU-I4EObaNjuTBmKXH5wMr4vg95r3sGq9LnNgmt6assDW3GqwlirkwwImWAKOocXo2CmAXUanv5Y66oZjV65Vr-FRTLzEf2B3RtaUq5MJNr1MHip65wEP/s320/how-did-napoleon-die-featured.webp"/></a></div>
<b>The Tuileries Palace, the City of Paris, Île-de-France, the Empire of the French, 1821.</b>
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Marie Luise and her son Ferdinand Ulrich, arrived in a convoy of four carriages each drawn by a team of six splendid horses, which conveyed both them and their accompanying small staff of retainers and servants as well as their travel luggage into the grand courtyard of Napoleon's primary imperial palace. Arion the Mameluk, galloped alongside Marie Luise's carriage mounted upon his own mechanical steed, as no living horse would have been able to bear his weight without injury. Although this was a private visit at the direct invitation of Emperor Napoleon and his wife the Empress Marie Louise, and not an official state visit, both she and her son, who were therefore dressed in civilian clothes, were met with considerable courtesy and ceremony. An honour guard awaited them, drawn from the units on duty at the palace of the Garde Impériale, specifically two detachments from the Marins de la Garde Impériale and the Grenadiers-à-Pied d'Elbe respectively, stood before the steps leading into the palace's main courtyard entrance.
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Marie Luise was met as she stepped from the carriage, by the now dismounted Arion, and several postillions and imperial aide-de-camps, as well as the two detachment commanders. The postilions took charge of their travel luggage and busied themselves with transporting it into the palace. While one of the latter made a series of quick introductions, so all involved knew who they were dealing with.
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Kammer, immediately took offense at these proceedings, he took it as a matter of course, that anything involving his mistress, was his to supervise and direct, particularly her personal things and her meals and quickly let loose a stream, of violent clicks from his gears, warbling whistles and high pitched shrieks from his vents and steam pipes in protest! Marie Luise, forced herself not to smile at the antics of her utterly loyal automaton henchman, who had been with her since babyhood. It would have been unforgivable for her to openly laugh at Kammer's hilarious antics, but he could be such as fussbudget at times! The Marin detachment commander and Arion who stood beside her both exchanged glances, the officer tried to conceal his gentle amusement behind a white gloved hand. Kammer finally lapsed into a sulky silence, at a gently reproving look from his mistress.
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Although Marie Luise, was dressed in her customary civilian garments, a short grey jacket, set over a smart, high collared lace decorated white blouse and long comfortable green skirt. Her feet and legs were shod in well polished but comfortable soft black leather boots. Upon her gold and white head, she wore a smart peakless cap, with a deep band of green with a shallow grey crown in the style of Russian and Prussian service caps, which matched well with the rest of her outfit. An oval badge of metal work, coloured enamels and porcelains in the form of her family coat-of-arms decorated the center of the band. This piece of head gear and it's badge had been handmade by members of the Pavlovski Grenadiers, both as a memento and as a birthday present, of her prior service with them under Marshal Suvorov in Italy and Switzerland back in 1799. Marie Luise, despite the relative plainness of her attire, appeared as a regal, peerless beauty to her onlookers notwithstanding.
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As was her custom, she carried only her generalfeldmarschall's walking stick, the interimstab, as a mark of her high military and social rank, constructed of expensive dark ebony wood, with a straight, almost hour glass shaped white ivory handle banded with gold, engraved rings, and two gold and jet black cords each ending in a tasseled fringe, set through the base of the handle and an engraved gold metal cap protecting the lower end where it touched the ground.
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Ferdinand Ulrich, an energetic boy of eleven, with dark hair accented with light highlights and alert grey-blue eyes jumped down from the carriage with assistance from both his mother and one of the aide-de-camps. Like his mother he was dressed in clothes of grey, green and black. Immediately, his own hands, sought his mother's uncommitted free hand, as he moved to her side. His gentle features, were a mix of surprising graveness, intent curiosity and not a little apprehension. Marie Luise, squeezed her son's hand reassuringly, and moved to review the honour guard, with Ferdinand Ulrich at her side.
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At a unspoken sign from their commanders, the assembled soldiers and sailors, snapped to attention, as they approached, though it amused her to overhear - due to her keener then average hearing - the whispered speculation and observations amoung the men and women; regarding both her, but especially regarding her son. Whom they regarded with a keen and friendly interest. Comments regarding his colouring, his probably age and physical development and bearing shot back and forth amidst the ranks. This was not surprising, particularly amoung the grenadiers, as Ferdinand Ulrich was after all, their Oberst-Inhaber, or as the French called it, Colonel-en-Chef.
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Marie Luise, directed the soldiers to stand at ease, as she reviewed them with unhurried professional care and quiet calm. She addressed each soldier or sailor as she came to them, asked them something of themselves, and their general service record and about any battles they had participated in. She particularly remarked on any medals or decorations they wore or actions they mentioned, especially the latter if they coincided with her own military service. Marie Luise's simplicity of person and dress and her soldierly directness of manner as well as her stunning good looks, quickly charmed her audience.
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Ferdinand Ulrich beside her listened to their answers with the deepest attention and a visible quiet awe. Both detachments colour-bearers dipped their standards to the horizontal position so that, Ferdinand Ulrich could view them more readily, as he barely came up to many of the soldiers belt buckles. He asked questions about each of the battle honours embroidered in gold thread on each each of the 1815-pattern standards and listened with attention to the answers of each standard bearer.
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Marie Luise, noticed that while her son, listened with interest to each battle honour as it was called out and remarked upon, by the standard bearer, tracing the embroidered words, with his agile fingers. One singular battle honour caused Ferdinand Ulrich to flinch imperceptibly when he came to it. He unconsciously grasped his mother's hand to assure himself that she was still indeed there, and more importantly safe. Marie Luise was not surprised nor did she find the gesture childish, for she too shuddered inwardly at that four day battle's horrific memory, and what it had nearly cost her both physically and later personally and emotionally.
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Leipzig, the Battle of Nations. A battle which had murdered thousands with it's savagery, her own life being one of them, if not for an unexpected and unsought miracle effected by two dear friends. Not that everyone at the time, had thought that, she thought with an inwardly bitter smile. Certainly not her enemies, nor her more grasping relatives, nor for that matter one august person in the Imperial Court in Vienna.
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Ferdinand Ulrich had been been only three, when that battle had occurred and the confusion, apprehension and near despair that had swept the inhabitants of the Schloss Eggenberg, when initial reports of the battle had reached Graz and reported her mortally wounded or dead upon the field, had left Ferdinand Ulrich deeply traumatized even at that young age. Marie Luise, could say the same, the scars - both emotional and physical - of that terrible battle, she would take to her grave.
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For both of them, the frigid, terror filled moment past as suddenly as it had occurred and they continued quietly with the review, with some relief and no outward sign of the emotions that had wracked both of them however briefly.
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When he came to the standard of the Grenadiers-à-Pied d'Elbe, a solid white flag, with a diagonal bar of purplish red decorated with three gold bees across it and decorated with a heavy gold fringe around it's outer edges, he paused for some moments, studying it with great attention and a decided seriousness. Which hardly surprised any of the onlookers, as it was very much his battalion, as the Hereditary Prince of Elba. With a sudden impulsiveness, that he rarely displayed, Ferdinand Ulrich gathered up the cloth of standard in one hand, and placed his other on the golden Eagle topping the standard, murmuring a prayer in clearly articulated Latin for the battalion and those that served in it. It was a simple prayer - though child like, it struck all who heard it with it's earnestness and sincerity - asking God's blessing for them both in battle and in life. Ferdinand Ulrich then touched the flag to his lips. The moment, he let go of the standard, the soldiers and their officers reacted spontaneously by snapping their weapons through the manual of arms, from their rest positions to that of a military salute. The standard likewise, shot upright, high over the unit's, raised muskets, crowned by glittering bayonets.
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Ferdinand Ulrich, momentarily taken aback by the sudden rattle of arms, stood in a frozen stillness for perhaps a moment before responded with a crisp, military salute of his own, directed to the assembled detachment, his raised and canted hand freezing at the level of his eyebrow for a full minute, until it dropped again to his side. Marie Luise, observed all this silently, a smoldering, eerily glowing green fire was sparkling through her irises and threatened to extend to the whites of her eyes, warning Ferdinand Ulrich that his mother's mood was threatening to shift violently. Marie Luise, however wordlessly reached out to put her hand on her son's shoulder, she could feel him trembling with a mixture of emotion, excitement and great unease.
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He looked up at her from the corner of his eyes, as if to say, <i>'did I do that, alright?'</i>, a cool almost wintry smile, touched her lips, and she gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze of parental affection. While, she did not wholly approve for intensely personal reasons of her son, being the Inhaber of a unit in the French Garde Impériale. She would not gainsay that they were a dignity and prerogative that were Ferdinand Ulrich's by right as the Hereditary Prince of Elba, an Imperial Prince of the House of Bonaparte and as a Royal Prince of Corsica, in the French Imperial Peerage. Certainly, the French granted those titles and their according dignities to him, ungrudgingly enough. Considering how her adored only son had been treated by his fellow Austrians since his birth by comparison, Marie Luise thought bitterly. Ferdinand Ulrich was after all, one of Emperor Napoleon I's, four sons.Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-44239815979698841302023-01-27T16:31:00.003-05:002023-01-27T16:35:37.258-05:00Memories of Past Conventions 2022Lord Hood with cosplayer OhMySophii, at the Toronto Fan Expo Convention.
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Sir Leo Worthing-Topper with cosplayer LuckyGrim, at the Toronto Fan Expo Convention.
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Lord Hood with cosplayer Cassandra Ariel, at the Toronto Fan Expo Convention.
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Sir Leo Worthing-Topper with cosplayer Cassandra Ariel, at the Toronto Fan Expo Convention.
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Sir Leo Worthing-Topper with cosplayer Holly Wolf, at the Toronto Fan Expo Convention.
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Lord Hood with cosplayer Holly Wolf, at the Toronto Fan Expo Convention.
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Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-34465146579608471072022-11-25T00:19:00.004-05:002022-12-03T22:31:40.070-05:00All Is Fair In Love and War (Part III)<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAKNxAerF_CgsXR6DGKNZ6RJ6cv04_gjfgPV4mQw9Q73nIdVzBsGjhI7F7D9tEJKJqcBVr6rSyB5wtl19Hm32dDhPC1U8miWTpGtxEwaeNqh3YnTflfaZDsAigD8AFF5cNOIUEg05hMon059JP1SkhoveLSUe_YL_OviY0g2gOM4IKTjyccVmApgEQ/s1366/ocat__pelycosaur24_by_raiinsoaked_db1ey1v-fullview.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAKNxAerF_CgsXR6DGKNZ6RJ6cv04_gjfgPV4mQw9Q73nIdVzBsGjhI7F7D9tEJKJqcBVr6rSyB5wtl19Hm32dDhPC1U8miWTpGtxEwaeNqh3YnTflfaZDsAigD8AFF5cNOIUEg05hMon059JP1SkhoveLSUe_YL_OviY0g2gOM4IKTjyccVmApgEQ/s320/ocat__pelycosaur24_by_raiinsoaked_db1ey1v-fullview.jpg"/></a></div>
Artwork/Portrait of Marie Luise von Eggenberg by raiinsoaked (DeviantArt)
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<b>The Hofburg Palace, the City of Vienna, the Austrian Empire, October 1809.</b>
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As soon as Napoleon left Kaiser Franz and their combined entourages, his massive, imposing automaton-construct, the Mameluke Arion suddenly appeared at his side. The partly mechanical, partly flesh construct was formed in the fashion of a heavily armoured and armed warrior of the Egyptian Mameluke Army standing some six feet tall, with an eclectic mix of Ottoman, Egyptian and Byzantine influences concerning the ornamentation of it's person and the gear it carried. Napoleon had picked Arion up as a most unusual personal memento, during his Egyptian campaigning. A peculiar happenstance, which Napoleon felt that he would never have cause to regret. Arion, who had first been activated as a bodyguard automaton-construct in the dying days of the Roman Empire, and had served the Empire of East Rome, and it's successors the Byzantine Empire and the Ottoman Empire, and finally the Egyptian Mamelukes with a quiet competence and uncomplaining diligence. Arion's then current master, a Mameluke general, had been killed in battle by the French in one of the earlier battles of the Napoleon's campaign against the Mamelukes, and Arion, for the first time in his existence, finding himself without purpose or without a designated inheritor for his service, immediately offered his skills and personal allegiance to Napoleon, when he encountered him.
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Napoleon for own part, had found Arion, indispensable as an accomplished aide-de-camp or orderly, a discrete confident and as a watchful and completely and professionally paranoid personal guardian and kept him close by both in peace and war ever since. He existed solely to guard Napoleon's person, and serve him in any capacity or task that suited his master. Arion had no agenda, nor did he venture his opinions unnecessarily although if asked a question, he would answer in a manner that was polite, yet forthright and studied. Nor did Arion flatter or shy away from uncomfortable truths when he answered, for he was always pertinent and candid in his words and meaning. Napoleon, for his part found, Arion's company soothing, productive and most reassuring which of course intensely annoyed some members of his personal entourage, his general headquarters and even his own Imperial Guard, who felt slighted by the favour Napoleon showed the strange artificial being. Neither Napoleon, nor Arion cared in the slightest about such petty jealousies. Ironically, the one unit in the <i>Garde Impériale</i> that did not care and in fact welcomed Arion's continued presence, was the 1st Regiment of the Chasseurs à cheval, which formed Napoleon's personal escort and body-guard on and off the battlefield. They took their protective duties as Napoleon's senior corps of elite life-guards very seriously, and were relieved and pleased that Napoleon always had someone beside him that did not tire, did not falter and would never desert him no matter the circumstances.
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Marie Luise, heard Arion's distinctive metallic tread with which she was well acquainted from her time as a prisoner of Napoleon's in Graz, behind her and know instantly that Emperor Napoleon, would be with him. Arion always made a point of never being further then arm's length of his master, especially in any sort of crowd.
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"Fürstin von Eggenberg." Napoleon said pleasantly, from behind her. Weiss, Blankenberg and Archduke Johann, grouped in a half circle around Marie Luise, turned to gaze at him and his bodyguard, their flow of conversation, slowed to a sudden stop. She turned slowly on her heel only after, Napoleon called her by her title seemingly refusing to acknowledge his presence until he actually spoke. Marie Luise's stance was anything put submissive, she took an unexpected pace forward on one foot, so that her legs were set slightly apart, one before the other rather like the stance one took before taking part in a duel with saber or épée. Her hips were canted slightly back, while her chest she thrust forward ever so slightly but definitely, which caused her uniform to go taunt over her breasts causing their curves to be sharply accented. Her hands, she clasped quietly behind her back, which just served to draw attention to the delicate curve of her waist and hips. Some onlookers would have considered her sudden stance surprisingly passive, others would have called it rather aggressive if they looked at it more closely. What it was, was deliberately provocative. Napoleon's only response was to raise one eyebrow, fractionally in an unspoken form of sardonic inquiry and the ghost of an amused smile briefly touched his lips and his eyes.
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Marie Luise, watched his expression, and particularly his eyes silently but carefully, her beautiful blond head cocked just slightly to one side, her expression quizzical as she looked on. Napoleon, surreptitiously looked Marie Luise, up and down, liking what he saw. As always she was beautiful, meeting her again in person Napoleon would actually say she was absolutely enchanting. He admired the careful skill and hard work of her tailors and her maids, they had done her justice. He noted her exquisite, tastefully chosen jewelry, her clever use of understated make-up to enhance her own very natural beauty, her various medals and decorations. Many he had of course seen before but he made careful note of the new additions.
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The four so-called 'cannon' crosses, because they were struck from bronze taken from captured french cannon, marked her participation in no less then four of the Wars of the Coalitions: in her case, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th each with an ornate, dated bar which denoted Austria's periods of participation fixed to their triangular folded black-yellow-black vertically stripped ribbons. The Medals for the Defenders of Styria and Lower Austria, and the Styrian and Lower Austrian War Merit Crosses, were also new additions, Both the defender medals, had ribbons in the colours of their respective crown lands, green and white, for Styria, and dark blue and yellow for Lower Austria, the medal itself was decorated with the crown lands particular coat-of-arms and an encircling garland of laurel leaves. The War Merit Crosses, had similar ribbons, but instead of the bronze gilt medallion of the former, they featured a metal cross, enameled black, with the enameled coat-of-arms of their respective crown lands mounted on the center medallion of the cross.
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The historic and ancient military or knightly Teutonic Order (founded in 1190, which had both Catholic and Protestant branches), the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta (founded in 1099), the Chivalric Order of Saint John of the Hospital at Jerusalem also known as the Johanniter Order or Knights Hospitaller (established also in 1099, and which had Austrian, Bohemian, Brandenburg and Dutch branches) and the Equestrian, Secular and Chapterial Order of Saint Joachim which had been founded in 1755 in the German Duchy of Saxe-Coburg, splendidly decorated her white coat.
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As did the medals and decorations of the Electorate of Hessen-Kassel (the Order of Military Merit and the Iron Helm), of the Grand Duchy of Brunswick (the House Order of Henry the Lion, and the Royal Guelphic Order which was shared with the Electorate of Hannover [later part of the Kingdom of Prussia following it's sale by King George III], the Grand Duchy of Brunswick and the Kingdom of Great Britain), the Grand Duchy of Parma (the Sacred Military Constintinian Order of Saint George), the Grand Duchy of Modena (the Order of the Eagle of Este), the Grand Duchy of Tuscany (the Orders of Saint Stephen and of Saint Joseph), the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (the Royal Order of Saint Januarius, the Sacred Military Constintinian Order of Saint George which was shared extremely grudgingly with the Grand Duchy of Parma, Napoleon noted with some amusement, and the Order of Saint Ferdinand and Merit), the Kingdom of Sardinia (the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus) as well as the exiled and now scattered French Royal House of Bourbon (the Royal and Military Order of Saint Louis, and the Order of Military Merit: originally an award solely for foreign protestants serving with the French Royal Army, but later expanded to cover foreign soldiers both Catholic and Protestant fighting alongside the <i>émigré</i> Bourbon pretenders to the throne of France and their exiled aristocratic allies as well as those directly in their service). The sight of these on someone else's person would have ordinarily seriously annoyed him, as they all belonged to ancient dynasties he had displaced or all but destroyed over the years and consequently, they could be counted amoung his bitterest enemies. Instead he recognized them for what they were: the tangible marks of the high regard and military esteem she was held in, and that she was not lacking in influential or important patrons. Not a minor consideration given Marie Luise's own and long uneasy relationship with her own sovereign.
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The Austrian Military Order of Maria Theresia, The Royal Hungarian Order of St Stephen and the Imperial Order of Leopold all naturally had pride of place upon her person. As did the Order of the Raven, her family's own princely house order founded in 1647, which she wore as a matter of course. She was after all it's grand mistress and proprietor since her father's death.
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Marie Luise also wore the decoration unique to every regiment or independent battalion in the Imperial-Royal Army of Austria. In her case, the unit crosses which were worn directly attached to the coat or tunic like the star of an order, were those of the Line Infantry Regiments, No.27 'Graf Strassoldo' now titled Regiment 'Chastler', Line Infantry Regiment No.4 'Hoch-und-Deutschmeister' in which she held a much prized <i>à la suite</i>commission, and No.45 'Freiherr De Vaux', now Regiment 'Fürstin von Eggenberg' of which she was now Oberst-Inhaber or colonel-proprietor as the Austrians called it, or Colonel-en-chef (colonel-in-chief) as the French Armée Impériale would term the same special and highly prized appointment.
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As a common soldier and non-commissioned officer she had won the Austrian Gold, Silver, Iron and Bronze Decorations of Honour for Bravery. In effect the soldiers equivalent of the Military Order Of Maria Theresia. She also wore the similar Civil Medals of Honour, as well as the Emperor Joseph II military medal which was solely awarded to soldiers regardless of their social status or rank for the highest valour, often being wounded in the process. It could also be awarded to those who had carried out their military duties in a thoroughly competent or exemplary fashion such as company, battalion and regimental commanders, as well as generals commanding brigades, divisions, corps or armies or naval officers commanding individual ships, squadrons or fleets. Marie Luise had unusually won this highly prized though sparingly given award, an unheard of four times, once as a common fusilier, as an non-commissioned officer, and again as a commissioned officer and as a general officer!
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"Emperor Napoleon." Marie Luise, mimicked him in tone and brevity of words, before bowing with studied politeness and formality. If she had been wearing one of the low cut civilian dresses now in fashion, the depth of her bow, would have given Napoleon an eye full of Marie Luise's quite comely décolletage. Her tightly buttoned uniform closed up to her neck however prevented that. This not so subtle but teasing hint, actually amused and excited Napoleon. He knew what Marie Luise looked like gloriously naked well enough, and was certainly not adverse to it. In point of fact he hungered for the chance to do so again.
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Marie Luise, fluidly made introductions for her party of companions, Napoleon know most of them by name if not by prior acquaintance already, but Marie Luise was careful to follow established custom and protocols for such social events. She would give her own Emperor no unjustified cause for criticism of her conduct, Napoleon noted carefully. Napoleon acknowledged each introduction, in a polite, diplomatic manner even exchanging a friendly, bantering remark with each of them.
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Napoleon who had heard parts of their previous exchanges on a wide range of subjects, as he had approached them, immediately reignited the conversation by added some comments on his own experiences in Egypt, on the peculiarities of the region's weather and climate, the interesting topography and particularly of the fascinating new study of Egyptology, the ancient pharaohs, the pyramids and the mix of cultures and religions that had created them which still gripped much of intellectual Europe today despite the fact that the French Egyptian campaign of 1798 had ultimately ended somewhat ingloriously if not disastrously in 1801, with the final retreat of the French forces from the region. They all relaxed a little and soon the conversation resumed it's former animation and interest, as remarks and ideas about that ancient world, it's culture, it's languages, literature and it's marvels of engineering and architecture were freely exchanged.
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Archduke Johann, remarked after some several long minutes of pleasant and vigourous discussion that he as one of the hosts of the evening, he should be circulating as it would do someone a positive social if not a physical injury, if his or Emperor Napoleon or the Fürstin von Eggenberg's attention was too long claimed by stimulating conversation, rather then the dull politics and vicious court gossip at the moment currently in vogue. Weiss and Blankenberg immediately took the subtle hint, and also took their leave of Marie Luise and Emperor Napoleon's company, leaving the two of them completely alone for the first time this evening.
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Napoleon immediately turned to Marie Luise, once the others were safely out of earshot.
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"Could I talk to you Mademoiselle, in <i>private</i>."
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Marie Luise, considered him and his question for a moment in silence then nodded coolly but politely, gesturing with her one good hand for Napoleon to accompany her, as she knew the Hofburg and it's intricate and elaborate halls, rooms, galleries and passages, rather better then he did. Arion, regarded both his master, Napoleon and the Fürstin von Eggenberg, intensely with his amber yellow eyes, which glowed deep within the visor sockets of his helmeted head as he fell into step behind them. The Emperor was playing with more then just ordinary fire with this woman, not only could he wind up being rather badly burned physically if not emotionally but the overly confident hunter could quickly turn into the hunted themselves if they were not too careful.
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In point of fact, Arion, was actually rather inclined to like Marie Luise, far more then he was with regards some of Napoleon's other choices of mistresses or his choice of wife for that matter. He liked anyone who gave a damn, as a matter of general principal. Arion actually found Marie Luise quite as fascinating as his master, she had deep lights, greys and shadows that few people had ever explored much less discovered. Her remarks about her own long, close friendship with the strange automaton-construct, Eisen from her native Styria had deeply interested him, because the two of them were so alike, although it was clear to Arion, that the mysterious Eisen was actually the older of the two of them. If Napoleon's relationship continued to prosper with Marie Luise, Arion looked forward to finding out a bit more about the Old Eisen and perhaps one day meeting him.
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Archduke Johann, walked over to join his brother, Archduke Karl, who stood completely alone and largely out of earshot of anyone in a mercifully quiet corner away from many of the people gathered in the great hall. Karl stood silently wrapped in his own thoughts, seemingly brooding over a drink. Johann had noticed their brother Archduke Ludwig, a serving feldmarschalleutnant as well as their older brother Franz's eyes and ears within the army and the Imperial Court where he was a well established figure and blindly loyal stalwart of Kaiser Franz's, and Karl's chief-of-staff Generalmajor Maximilian Alexander <i>Freiherr</i> von Wimpffen had been in deep and serious conversation with Karl for some minutes, before Johann moved to join him. This probably half explained Karl's current dark mood.
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Both of them, followed Napoleon's path alongside Marie Luise to one of the outer galleries of the Hofburg. Karl moodily took a long draught on his nearly full drink, but appeared to neither notice what he was drinking or to enjoy it much in any event. Johann, pursed his lips meditatively, then ventured a remark as they watched the two pass through the archway into the privacy of the gallery, trailed by Napoleon's frightening Mameluke body-guard.
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"A florin for your thoughts, Karl?"
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Karl, said absolutely nothing, and refused to be drawn into conversation by this opening gambit. So Johann, tried another tack, this one a lot less whimsical and certainly a lot less subtle or polite.
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"It is as much your own fault, Karl. If you had done better in the battles of this blasted war, Hell if I had done a bit better in my own battles, Marie Luise would not have to resort to what she is contemplating." Johann's softly spoken words, so only Karl could hear him, had all the subtly of a sharp knife suddenly delivered unexpectedly to the underside of someone's ribs. Marie Luise had not bothered to explain her plans in great detail with Karl and Johann, only that she was going to do something to try and bend Napoleon's will in Austria's favour by any means at her disposal. Both were intelligent enough and worldly enough and knew Marie Luise quite well enough to figure out what she was thinking: without it being openly explained to either of them. Neither of them had liked it, but Marie Luise had not asked them, especially Karl for permission, she had told them solely so if they saw a political or military opening created by her appear either in private or in diplomatic negotiations with Napoleon, they would know to take advantage of it or direct Kaiser Franz's cabinet ministers and secretaries of state to do so.
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Karl, snapped his grey eyed gaze upon his impertinent younger brother. The distinct note of reproach, as much as the sharp note of biting sarcasm in his brother Johann's voice had roused him from his own glum thoughts. Not that he entirely disagreed with Johann, if <i>he</i> and the <i>Haupt-armee</i> had done better, things might not have come to their current pass. Hell if he had been able to steer his stubborn, imperious brother Franz and his war hawk ministers -- all of them besotted with Britain's promised financial subsidies and their own delusions of grandeur -- and their sycophantic courtiers clear of even getting involved in another war with France, before Austria was actually ready to even attempt such a thing on it's own much less without the effective support of it's potential allies Prussia and Russia. Or if Franz, the Imperial Court and the <i>Hofkriegsrat</i> had let him concentrate the <i>Haupt-armee</i> in Bohemia as he and his general staff had originally wanted, behind the mountain passes instead of directly on the Danube, he would have been in a position to have quickly smashed the Saxon Army and over run Saxony itself, which would have cleared his northern and then allowed him to go after Bavaria on both sides of the Danube without hindrance. This would have galvanized the Prussian and Russian war hawks and made it possible for both of them to actually move against Poland or alternatively join him in Bohemia, this would have made the independent attacks made by the Kur-Hessian Legion and the Brunswick Corps into Westphalia all the more effective alongside the rebel Prussian cavalry Major Ferdinand von Schill's independent North German rebellion.
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Britain's practical military aid, which Franz had had such high and quite unrealistic hopes for, during the war had amounted to little in what had been essentially an European continental conflict. Other then a thoroughly bungled attempt to invade Holland, which had been effectively contained by purely local French or Dutch units without materially effecting the balance of the armies engaged in the main theaters of war in northeastern Italy, southern and eastern Bavaria, Westphalia and in Austria itself.
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Karl closed his eyes in pained self-reflection and not a little bitter self-recrimination, at the way things had actually progressed despite his best efforts. There are times he thought, <i>when I should have just handed in my resignation when I had the chance, let the consequences be damned!</i> His strong sense of duty to his country, his dynasty and his army had prevented that of course. They needed him, there was no one else in Austria to take his place, as <i>generalissimus</i>, after all. All three, now needed him now more then ever to help them to recoup, to rebuild and to retrain and save whatever could be saved out of the wreck and smoldering embers of this latest infernal and unsuccessful war with Napoleon Bonaparte. Johann watched the silent play of emotions across, Karl's face, said nothing.
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"You are saying I owe, Marie Luise a heart felt apology, when this is over, Johann." Said Karl finally after regarding his brother for some moments in utter silence.
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"<i>Yes</i>." Johann, remarked flatly.
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"Any suggestions, where I start..." Karl asked with a trace of something like dry humour in his still serious and grieved expression.
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"Two dozen red roses, and a box of the most expensive and delicious chocolates you can buy every day, for the rest of her life." Johann said promptly and without ceremony.
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"That would not even count as a down payment, Johann." Karl said with a snort of derision.
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"True." Johann, said reflectively, then a twinkle of his all too usual mischief sparkled in his own grey eyes. Which immediately put Karl on his guard, as he knew his younger brother, all too well. Johann, was up to something.
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"A <i>wedding ring</i>, though would <i>count</i>, Karl." Johann, remarked with studied and remarkable verbal blandness, which did nothing to banish the mischievous devilry that glittered in his grey eyes. Karl who was in the middle of a second long draught from his wine glass, immediately started sputtering, as Johann non sequitur caught Karl completely off guard.
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Marie Luise, quickly, lead Napoleon and Arion, to a side gallery which features a deep nook or recess set into a colonnaded wall. Anyone within the nook was not visible to anyone passing through the gallery's passage way. Arion immediately stationed himself in a position that allowed him to guard their privacy, but also to observe and intercept anyone entering or leaving the gallery.
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Marie Luise, turned and looked at Napoleon with an expression of inquiry. Napoleon considered for several minutes how to handle what he wanted to say, and the best way to say it. After several moments, Napoleon decided that a certain degree of honesty was his best policy.
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"I confess, I wanted your company solely for myself, tonight."
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"You would not be the first." Marie Luise, remarked tartly. "Or, the last."
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That did not surprise, Napoleon on reflection. It was highly unlikely there was any man or woman for that matter, present in the Hofburg who did not find Marie Luise highly desirable for any number of reasons, at any time.
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"I have a proposition I would like to put to you. Several actually, if you would entertain to hear them."
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Marie Luise, looked at Napoleon appraisingly for several long moments. Her face was absolutely still, giving nothing away. Napoleon found himself suddenly envying her detached focus and coolness. She would make an very accomplished card player at any high stakes gambling table or diplomat at any critical conference, he thought. Then, she nodded ever so slightly, one hand raised, her fingers extended palm uppermost towards him, as if to say, go on.
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Napoleon put his hands behind his back, took a deep breath and collected his thoughts carefully. This was going to require some skill and tact on his part.
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"Would you be interested in a command within the Grande Armée? specifically with the troops of the Confederation of the Rhine?" Napoleon finally said without flowery preamble or unnecessary ceremony. Marie Luise, raised one elegant blonde eyebrow at this fractionally, then silently considered the matter.
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"A divisional command, drawn from the armies of the smaller German States, I pressume?"
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"Yes, the formation would consist of regimental or battalion sized contingents from all the member states of the Confederation."
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"A bit complicated to manage within the confines of a single division, even a large one, would you not agree." Marie Luise said after a few moments consideration. A divisional command would have been appropriate to offer her, Marie Luise thought, considering much of her previous military experience was at that level for several years, although her recent promotion to the rank of Feldzeugmeister or what the French called a Général de corps d'armée would normally by right of prestige, protocal and military etiquette require a higher level of assignment. This Marie Luise considered unlikely for a number of reasons.
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"Oh, I agree but I was not thinking in terms of you commanding a just a single division, but rather a full corps d'armée of at least three, probably five divisions of infantry and two of cavalry along with the necessary supporting units, staffs and logistical elements."
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Napoleon watched with a mixture of pleasure and not a little excitement, as both of Marie Luise's eyebrows shot upwards in response. He could well understand why, given her prior military service, a command suitable for a Général de division would not have been unreasonable thing for him to actually offer her. Particularly as his own generals and even his marshals of the <i>Grande Armée</i> were a prickly, contentious lot and would have been unwilling or reluctant to take orders for an outsider, let alone an Austrian general, even one of her professional accomplishments, battle hardened competence and proven bravery.
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The German states of the Confederation of the Rhine, the Grand Duchies of Nassau, Kleve-Berg, Hessen-Darmstadt, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Baden, the Free City states of Bremen, Hamburg, Lübeck and Frankfurt-am-Main, and the Kingdoms of Württemberg, Westphalia, Saxony, and Bavaria however would have no such difficulty, nor would there be a language barrier as German was Marie Luise's native language as it was of the German States and she was just as accomplished in the written and spoken languages of ltalian, Polish and French so adding in contingents for The Grand Duchy of Warsaw, the Kingdoms of Italy and of Naples did not present a problem or units and subordinate officers from France, for that matter. Nor was Marie Luise really a stranger to that level of command, as she had in fact organized and commanded what amounted to an ad hoc corps during the siege of Graz.
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"It would be an excellent way of cementing the new alliance and relationship between France and Austria, you would agree?" Napoleon said quietly and with surprising sincerity. Although, Marie Luise did not think that was the reason for offering it, that was uppermost in his mind.
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<i>It would, and be an even more excellent way to entangle Austria still further into your own dynastic and military ambitions in the ongoing wars in Portugal and Spain. Marie Luise thought to herself. Still the proposal had merit, and could even be used in Austria's interest as well as France's. If the new relationship was carefully handled it might be used to evade, rewrite or even discard some of the more militarily damaging articles of the Second Treaty of Schönbrunn in Austria's favour</i>. Marie Luise, was fairly certain that Kaiser Franz would refuse such a request by Napoleon to him and the <i>Hofkriegsrat</i> to borrow her services, point blank. She simply was not counted amoung his special favourites or those who at least enjoyed his favour, rather she was counted amoug his most passionately hated enemies. As Marie Luise, had realized her actions both in the past and especially during the Siege of Graz, had especially embarrassed her sovereign, personally or politically. It was highly unlikely she would receive any important military assignments hereafter, even baring another war, of course.
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Marie Luise had privately decided after the peace had been signed to retire to her estates and take time to recuperate, devote herself anew to her family's businesses, enterprises and various properties and lands and their inhabitants. The idea of hurling herself into harms way in yet another war, half a continent away for a master and a cause that was not her own and one that she did not in the least sympathize with was distasteful in the extreme.
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"His Majesty, would likely refuse such an idea." Marie Luise said aloud. Napoleon nodded he had been thinking much the same thing.
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"He, might be persuaded." Napoleon responded cryptically.
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"That would be a neat trick if you could pull it off. Habsburgs are not easily persuaded into or out of anything." Marie Luise smile was touched with sardonic humour and just a hint of sarcasm. Marie Luise had made the acquaintance, one rather more intimately then others, of several Habsburgs ranging from the emperor to the various archdukes and archduchesses, and they were all of them: good, bad or indifferent as they might be as human beings, they were to a man or woman willful, imperiously proud and stubborn past the point of mere obstinance!
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"Very true." Napoleon observed equally laconically. "Still there is no harm in my asking him, with your permission of course?"
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Marie Luise, responded with another silent almost imperceptible nod. Napoleon visibly relaxed a bit, he had obviously been prepared for a blunt refusal on her part. Marie Luise, noted this, then decided to verify, a suspicion that had been long in her mind about Napoleon's intentions towards her.
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"If your offer of a military command, fails to get me to Paris and the Tuileries, what then, Your Majesty?" Marie Luise asked quietly, her head tilted slightly sideways, as she looked at him once again with an appraising glance. There was something teasing, even inviting in the tilt of her head and the poise of her attractively full lipped, mouth. Her large, spectacularly jewel like green eyes sparkled alluringly at him
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"I would request, that Kaiser Franz send you as a special envoy, to assist in working out the remaining military details of the peace treaty and such other negotiations that might concern both our countries in due course. I do not imagine that he would object to that request quite so strongly, in fact he might, I think welcome it." Napoleon said flatly, almost without thinking or realising what he had just been quietly trapped into saying aloud.
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"He, might at that". Marie Luise, said aloud, although what she thought to herself was rather another matter. <i>Karl would object to it, and I even understand why, and his reasons would have nothing to do with Austria losing my military services. Karl, would be desperately worried that he was losing... me.</i>
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"So what you really want.... is." Marie Luise, remarked candidly. "<i>Me</i>." She suddenly took a step forward and Napoleon found himself with Marie Luise so close to him, that her breasts brushed the front of his own green, red piped Chasseurs à cheval tunic. Napoleon felt his face uncontrollably heat, with desire for her, she noticed it, just as much as he did. Her pale yellow gloved hands suddenly came up, and clamped firmly around both his face and neck. With a strength that both surprised and alarmed him, she pulled him forward and towards her. Marie Luise's sweet mouth swiftly closed over his.Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-27162529822325455372022-11-08T14:39:00.000-05:002022-11-08T14:39:01.627-05:00A Lonely Traveler (Part I)<b>Schloss Eggenberg, Graz, the Crownland of Styria, the Austrian Empire, 1810.</b>
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The carriage rumbled down the roads towards the estate of the Princes of Eggenberg, the mistress of the palace was coming home after a long absence. Marie Luise, returned to her family seat, not in triumph but in disgrace, for she was now an exile, a pariah within her own country. The sky was dark and brooding, as night covered the land while the road and forests were lashed by a torrential downpour, her mother had once commented that God was in the rain, if that was so, at least he seemed to spare her his tears, as no one else in Vienna seemed so inclined. The Kaiser, the Imperial Court, the Roman Catholic Church and it seemed just about everyone else within the boundaries of the Austrian Empire, had collectively turned their back on her, her prior service, her personal valour and accomplishments seemed to count for nothing.
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She touched her stomach, she was at least three months pregnant. It had happened in Paris, while she was attached as a special military advisor to the Austrian Diplomatic Legation. She was thirty years of age, unmarried and carried the unborn child of a man who was neither her husband nor her fiance. He was Napoleon I, Emperor of the French. Napoleon had taken her as one of his mistresses and their dalliance had both personal and political consequences. The uproar that had caused when word reached Vienna had been almost as frightening as it had been swift, almost overnight her high reputation amoung her fellow Austrians had tumbled to ruin and vanished, then news of her pregnancy had followed with the effect of a exploding bombshell.
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Marie Luise had found herself ruthlessly castigated, pilloried and calumnied both in public and in private, even before she had returned to Vienna from Paris. She had surprised and baffled many with her icy silence, her refusal to beg for forgiveness or bow to the public scorn and spite that was heaped upon her head. She had made it clear without saying so much as a word, to anyone who challenged her and her conduct, that she was answerable to no one but herself and her own conscience. Without prospects of appointment or preferment within the Imperial Court or the <i>Hofkriegsrat</i>, following her recall from Paris, Marie Luise had decided to retire quietly to her family estates and possessions. Not to rest, await events and recoup, but to hide, there was no gainsaying it. Behind the front of implacable iron she presented to the world she felt desperately alone, inwardly broken and emotionally exhausted. She was not even sure of her welcome in her family's ancestral home, she had been absent for a long time and news of the scandal that ensnared her had reached even to the quiet forests, hills and villages of the district her family had long called home. So she had come back, almost in secret, without pomp or accustomed ceremony.
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Marie Luise, felt no resentment for the child she carried, did any child have a say in the matter of it's parents or the timing of it's conception or arrival? Whether it turned out to be a girl or a boy, was a decision very much in God's hands not her's. Part of her wished for it to be a son, for the sake of the House of Eggenberg, which desperately needed an heir, illegitimate or not. Ironically, Napoleon would welcome a male heir too, for an illegitimate son could be legitimized at a later date, his dynasty, the House of Bonaparte, needed as many as it could produce if it was to endure into an uncertain future. He would welcome a son, no matter the circumstances, though she would welcome a daughter just as readily, as she hoped that Napoleon would be less inclined to try and take the child from her. I really need to give some thought as to names in either event, she thought idly although it was by no means assured that either she or the child would survive the pregnancy, much less her giving birth. Her mother had given birth to just two children in her lifetime, herself and a stillborn son who did not live long enough to be even named. Her mother had subsequently died from health complications that had attended that fatal pregnancy. That murderous, tragic double blow, had all but killed her father, as well. Marie Luise, suppressed a shudder of mourning and despair, that threatened to vibrate through her whole frame. She sternly brought herself firmly in hand, with the hard won emotional control and iron discipline of a lifetime of dealing with tragedies and anguish.<i>A set of hurdles to be passed when she came to them and not before</i>, she thought, <i>there was no sense wasting time, thought or nervous energy upon them unnecessarily.</i>
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Marie Luise, had never expected recompense or reward for her military or diplomatic services or for the blood and treasure that she had sacrificed or spent, nor would she ever have apologized for using whatever tools came her way to serve her Kaiser and her Fatherland. She had not always been successful, but nor had she entirely failed. She had through trying to win, Napoleon's heart and bend his will, at least saved her home city of Graz from destruction, and the Austrian Empire, still endured rather then being arbitrarily dismembered whatever the current treaties, indemnities, territorial compensations and economies that now shackled it. If public disgrace and ridicule was the price she had to pay, then she would pay it, not happily admittedly but with quiet fortitude and humility. Marie Luise had long ago given up any false pride she might had felt, she had seen too much of the world, to expect it to be fair.
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The only regret she had was that this whole miserable affair had probably cost her the one man on this whole planet, who she loved completely and adored with all her heart and given her devotion, that man being the Archduke Karl. More then once the two of them, over the years of their intensely personal and deeply intimate relationship, had discussed a morganatic marriage between the Houses of Habsburg and Eggenberg. Her great enemy, Kaiser Franz I of Austria, would never have permitted it, especially now, the scandal and disgrace that surrounding her was too great, even if the Kaiser had even been prepared to consider such a match. Which he was not, as matters stood. In the past the Kaiser, who had long since realize that she was not his tool to use as he willed, had worked behind the scenes to deny her military appointments, stall her promotions and prevent her service and gallantry being properly awarded. Not, it had to be said with the success he had expected, as Marie Luise had found time and again, to her surprise that she had powerful allies and patrons within the Imperial Court, the Hofkriegsrat and even within the Chanceries of the Great Chivalric and Military Orders of the Empire, who had their own ideas of what was due the heroes and heroines in the service of the House of Austria.
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Not for the first time, tears streamed silently down her pale cheeks.
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The other occupant of the carriage, watched her from the virtual twilight that enveloped it's interior. Neither had said a word to each other, for much of the journey. Each had been wrapped in their own thoughts. Graf Sonder, shifted his masked head fractionally, even in the darkness he could see the gentle flow of tears that shimmered and dropped from Marie Luise's green eyes. He too had been recalled in some official disfavour from Paris, though to his native Prussia, rather then Austria and so had accompanied her home at her invitation. She needed a friend, if she needed anything at all, at this time and Sonder was happy to offer her whatever emotional or medical support she required.
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Sonder reflected carefully for several minutes on Marie Luise's silent agony, then made a decision to act. He carefully withdrew a letter concealed in one of his coat pockets, that he had received from the hands of a special courier at the last village they had stopped at to have the carriage team watered and fed. The rider had evidently been instructed to intercept them short of Graz, and by a mixture of luck, good judgement and fine equestrian skills had caught them short of their final destination. Sonder had recognized the young man immediately but had said nothing aloud and had allowed himself to be taken aside. The courier had in turn said little to him, only that the messages he bore were for Sonder himself, and the Fürstin von Eggenberg. Sonder had agreed to deliver the letter to Marie Luise, at an appropriate moment and to keep it's existence secret from all others, save her. The courier had thanked him, then rode off with all dispatch, to report to his master that his errand had been completed.
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Wordlessly he passed both the letter to her, and a fresh silk handkerchief, she looked at Sonder puzzled by the sealed letter but gratefully for the handkerchief. He turned in his seat and set alight one of the interior side lamps, so that she could read the document properly. Marie Luise turned the letter over in one hand, while dabbing at her eyes with the other to clear them of tears. Her face froze, as Sonder watched, as the import of the heavy wax seal on the letter's flap hit her, the co-joined heraldry of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine and the Duchy of Saxe-Teschen. Her hands trembled as they gripped the letter tightly, desperately trying not to sudden crush or tear it, a torrent of tears glittered in her eyes again. Somehow she kept them in check. Sonder withdrew an unfolding letter opener from another of his pockets and wordlessly handed it to her, Sonder had some idea of her letter's contents, if not the exact wording from his own letter.
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She slit open the envelope hurriedly and tried to stop her hands from shaking as she read the letter.
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<i>Dearest Marie,</i>
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<i>I will not trouble you with solicitations of cheap sympathy, trivial social or political advice or other such trite nonsense as you have undoubtedly already received from fair weather friends and fawning sycophants who seek to make capital out of your current distress. They would be as useless as they would unwelcome in the terrible circumstances you have lately had the misfortune to find yourself in. </i>
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<i>I only wish to impart two things, as I write this document in some haste to put into the hands of my waiting adjutant. The first and foremost is that I love you, never more so then now. While I disagreed with your decision to effect a romantic liaison with Napoleon Bonaparte, I also understood your reasons and the actions that you took both in Vienna and Paris were taken to benefit Austria. In time and with a pause for serious reflection, I think people will recognize that, not all of them perhaps but enough of them. The second thing, is that whether it seems so or not, you still have genuine friends who have not deserted you in this moment of direst distress, and a great number of them. Many have unfortunately been forced to effect a discrete silence at present, but that is only so they can rally themselves, coordinate and muster whatever supports and weapons they can for the coming fray. The obstacles we face will not stop them or myself from supporting you in any way we can and as importantly working in season and out of season to effect your rehabilitation and it is to be trusted, your vindication in the public's esteem.</i>
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<i>Johann, has of course already made it very clear in his usual blunt and impertinent manner I might add, that he will call upon you personally at his first opportunity and has already made his personal and professional support for you crystal clear and as rudely as possible, whenever one of your detractors or enemies is in the vicinity! Franz is of course incandescent with rage, with Johann. Which as you would imagine leaves, Johann totally unmoved. For myself, I am now well past all caring what view my brother takes of the matter or indeed any other at this point. I shall myself do the same, as soon as I can win clear of the ensnaring coils of the Imperial Court and the Hofkriegsrat. If I cannot, I will write to you as often as time and opportunity allows.</i>
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<i>My dearest, I wish you god speed, and good luck in this moment of stern trial.</i>
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<i>With all my love and adoration.</i>
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<i>Karl</i>
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Marie Luise felt the hot tears roll down her cheeks, completely unchecked, her emotions a chaotic welter of impulses, half formed thoughts and feelings. She pressed the letter to her mouth, kissing the wax seal ever so gently with trembling lips. Her cheeks flushed red with strong emotion, she found herself struggling to regain her sense of balance or any semblance of composure.
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Sonder slipped from his seat opposite to join her on her own seat. Without a word, he put his arms around her and hugged her. Marie Luise felt that Sonder was embracing her for all her friends and supporters. She badly needed it, it meant a great deal to her, to know that she was not completely alone and to have it so forceful put to her.
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Her beloved <i>Arch-Karl</i>, as she had half teasingly, half joking called him as a play on both his name and his aristocratic rank when their relationship had first become genuinely intimate, still loved her! That meant everything to her, the world could do to her what it liked and be damned! She had not lost him!
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"Come now, child." Sonder said softly as he picked up the discarded handkerchief and worked to dry her tear filled eyes as she started to sob uncontrollably. "You will be at the great hall of your sires, shortly. It will not do, for the regnant Fürstin von Eggenberg to be in such a state when she arrives." He chided her ever so gently. It sounded odd to her to be called a child at her age but then again, Sonder was some three hundred years old, if she remembered correctly so to him, anyone under at least the age of a hundred really was a child as far as he was concerned. Marie Luise startled herself with a soft, slightly hoarse chuckle, and nodded choppily several times in agreement. Holding the letter close to heart, she tried hard to restrain and master her wild, exultant emotions.Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-50159593081142991722022-11-08T14:32:00.002-05:002022-11-08T14:32:34.689-05:00A Ghost Amid Ghosts (Part III)<b>Schlossberg Fortress, Graz, Crownland of Styria, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, January 1866.</b>
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After a few long minutes the woman, finished her religious observances and stood, before looking about herself and began walking slowly deeper into the memorial chapel proper, in a silent, unhurried way, examining the various memorials, memento mori that decorated the chapel, literally from floor to ceiling. Again, both the Chapel master and the Dean, caught a flash of luminous green eyes, as her gaze wandered about her surrounding, abruptly the whole chapel shook as a particularly violent roll of thunder crashed against the immense stony solidity of Schlossberg. The harsh glare and flicker flash of lightning illuminated the memorial chapel, through the open doors, which were always keep open to admit visitors regardless of the hour.
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The woman suddenly grabbed both hands to her head as if suddenly stricken with terrible pain, her eyes blazed with an intense green light that engulfed the pupils, iris and sclera, in a searing illumination, before her eye lids snapped tighly shut with the next lightning flash. Both the Dean and Chapel master exchanged a quick glance, then rushed to the woman's assistance. She was in serious discomfort that was obvious. The Dean, quickly dragged shut the inner doors of the entrance way, to cut out the crashing flashes of light and noise that raged outside, a considerable winter storm was in the offing, falling snow mixed with the rattle of hail striking the Schlossberg, that too was obvious despite the pitch black night that reigned beyond the doors of the chapel. There would be other few visitors tonight, the Dean thought as he dogged the doors shut.
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The Chapel master guided the woman towards one of the benches that stood nearest the Siege of Graz memorial. It had been donated to the Chapel a great many years ago, and many found it a particularly comfortable and restful spot to contemplate the memorial. It was certainly one of the finest pieces of ornate woodwork, he had ever seen, carved from the most beautiful and expensive African Ebony, with magnificent gold leaf decorations and plush, wine dark red velvet covered the seating and back rest. Even with massive doors closed tight, the woman reacted to every following rumble of thunder and lightning strike, as if they were physical blows, her arms curled tightly about her as she sat silently, her strained breathing being the only sound in the cavernous memorial chapel.
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"Are you all right, Madam?" The Chapel master finally said, after watching her for several long minutes. Her harsh breathing seemed to have eased a bit, to both his and the Dean's surprise the woman, actually smiled, even laughed though her eyes were still closed shut.
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"I am not in pain, thank you gentlemen. This just happens to me, when I am caught in storms..." she gave an unexpectedly soft, earthy chuckle before continuing. "In truth, I actually find it... bracing, even exciting. It reminds me I am still...<i>Alive</i>." She said, finally drawing aside her hood and face concealing scarf. A shock of soft hair, pure white shot with gold blonde streaks tumbled down around her neck and shoulders. Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-15423792305261148382022-11-08T14:25:00.005-05:002022-11-08T14:29:48.820-05:00All Is Fair In Love and War (Part II)<b>The Hofburg Palace, the City of Vienna, the Austrian Empire, October 1809.</b>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHVO0fbhMIw7Derk-BCfnJIZBThqILrLj5jAzUVLi-sJRFsx2fyKWqw2hklJc1KBMxzaQJfcvZ2TrJNjVJOVanB1pG97QDjGXHgGIUTq7qXHgF_611a2RLDUkUiT4yOlME-v9ASoiVJBTQ7D3mqajKaibmqTikHDlV0kBmkSS3YL73oiGliEurhW7r/s1366/ocat__pelycosaur24_by_raiinsoaked_db1ey1v-fullview.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHVO0fbhMIw7Derk-BCfnJIZBThqILrLj5jAzUVLi-sJRFsx2fyKWqw2hklJc1KBMxzaQJfcvZ2TrJNjVJOVanB1pG97QDjGXHgGIUTq7qXHgF_611a2RLDUkUiT4yOlME-v9ASoiVJBTQ7D3mqajKaibmqTikHDlV0kBmkSS3YL73oiGliEurhW7r/s320/ocat__pelycosaur24_by_raiinsoaked_db1ey1v-fullview.jpg"/></a></div>
Artwork/Portrait of Marie Luise von Eggenberg by raiinsoaked (DeviantArt)
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Archduke Johann, dressed in his own neat and well tailored uniform of an Austrian <i>feldzeugmeister</i> joined, Marie Luise and her coterie, their congenial company appealed to him rather more then the assembly of vapid courtiers and irksome notables who surround virtually every member of the Habsburg family present in the vast room. For their part, Marie Luise, Weiss and Blankenberg were delighted to see him and immediately made him welcome in their informal circle of pleasant, free flowing conversation on a variety of subjects and topics that interested them. It was certainly more interesting then the usual rounds of dull politics, vicious court gossip and petty intrigue, that was all to frequently the norm within the halls of the Hofburg, as far as Johann was concerned.
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Johann, who had known, Marie Luise for many years, was struck by how suave and poised she was, especially here in the heart of the Austrian Imperial Court, a place where she had never been either entirely welcome or comfortable, and that was even before she had decided to throw in her lot with his brother Karl (she had also given her heart to Karl, which Johann was alright with, the good lord knew Karl needed it, being something of a loner due to his ill health, his frequent bouts of epilepsy and had largely remained a life-long bachelor. Besides, they made a very touchingly devoted and charming couple as far as Johann was concerned). Actually the more Johann, thought about it, it well past time for Karl and Marie Luise to approach, Franz about arranging a marriage between them, they had been discrete lovers long enough to salute the social conventions! Franz would, Johann was dismally certain, probably flatly refuse permission for a dynastic marriage, as Karl and Marie Luise were of unequal dynastic and aristocratic rank. Still, brother Franz would have been hard pressed to refuse them on purely morganatic grounds, especially with both of them being so popular in the public esteem at present. That, an being the acknowledged and adopted heir of the extremely wealthy and childless Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen, Karl had much more room to negotiate his options of who was suitable as his wife, then most other Habsburgs who were tightly bound by the dictates of the Habsburg family house laws. Certainly some fresh blood in the Habsburg family, would do it no harm, considering it's frankly idiotic fixation on both partners of a Imperial marriage be of the proper dynastic degrees on both sides for at least twenty generations back, especially when most candidates had enough trouble managing eight, which nearly always resulted in various Habsburgs being either imbeciles or epileptics!
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Marie Luise's recent promotion to the rank of <i>feldzeugmeister</i>, her appointment to a regimental inhaber-ship and the various military awards she had been granted, had been well merited by her military skill, often stupefying personal valour and ironclad loyalty, to the House of Austria and was long over due in his opinion. It also represented her raising prestige and presence within the Imperial Court, whether brother Franz liked it or not! Marie Luise, seemed to have grown in subtle ways he couldn't explain as he stood happily chatting about music, geology, mathematics and the natural sciences with her and her companions. He supposed her fifteen years of military service and her sometimes unhappy if not tragic life experiences had been akin to the hammering, molding and tempering process that occurred when a sword was steadily fashioned from a simple ingot of metal into a deadly, razor sharp and precise weapon.
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It grieved and angered him to see, that she still held herself very still and carefully, to control the pain of her various injuries sustained in the recent war. She had taken a musket ball in her shoulder, a saber cut and a bayonet thrust into her side and had been grievously struck several times in the head and neck by shrapnel throw up by artillery fire during the battles in and around Graz, and especially in defense of it's fortress, the <i>Schlossberg</i>. She would bear these injuries and others she had earned over the years, both physical and emotional to her grave. She held herself very stiffly though with surprising grace, to avoid unnecessary movements of either her shoulder or her arm, and was more apt to pivot on her heel rather, then turn her head to look at someone to avoid moving either her head or her neck unduly.
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Marie Luise realized some of what was going on, quietly and unsaid, behind Johann's cool grey blue eyes, and gently touched his arm, giving him a pat of gentle reassurance. Her eyes sparkled with a shared understanding of what he was thinking, a touch of fatalistic soldier's black humour and the hint of one of the saddest of smiles he had ever seen touched her mouth. Johann allowed himself a soft, rueful chuckle at her expression and placed his gloved hand over her's with equal gentleness for a moment. There was, and never would be any self pity in Marie Luise's mental make up, and she had more then fair reason enough to feel a bit put upon in her life. Marie Luise, would soldier on taking the good with the bad, and keep moving forward to whatever end, life finally had in store for her. Little wonder, Johann thought that some of her soldiers, had taken to calling her <i>Marie the Implacable</i>.
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An Automaton servant appeared beside them, politely offering either each of them a drink or other such refreshment as took their fancy from the trays and dispensers it carried. Weiss and Johann each selected an light alcoholic beverage, while, Blankenberg and Marie Luise selected a simple fruit punch, given the strong medications they were both on, to assist with healing their injuries and pain management, that was wise of them, Johann noted.
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Napoleon as he approached the small group, tried to analysis why he found, the <i>Fürstin</i> Marie Luise von Eggenberg so attractive, even fascinating. The first reason was abundantly obvious to any onlooker, who was not either an eunuch or an imbecile. She was stunningly, dangerously beautiful. Golden blonde hair, delicate aristocratic features, with a surprisingly clean complexion considering her many years service in the Austrian Army. A warm full lipped mouth, and alluring green eyes, which could flash fire when she was angry, sparkle beautifully when she was amused, happy or pleased, or freeze you to the marrow, when they bored into you, if she was displeased or dispassionate. Her smile could light up a room, like a sparkling sunbeam, while her merest frown could cut an onlooker like the blade of a razor sharp knife.
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Marie Luise, looked stunning in her uniform and skirt, adorned with both medals, decorations and jewelry which emphasized both the feminine and military aspects of her character. While not a tall person, she always seemed to dominate the people around her, not in a harsh, loud or arrogant way, more she had a subtle way of captivating her audience with both her beauty and her spiritual power. Her physical charms he was already well acquainted with inspiring both adoration and lust in equal measure in him. Marie Luise, possessed an alluring body, intensely fit even muscular from long years of training and a moderate, well balanced diet she had a certain very appealing sleekness of form and figure, while having quite generous curves in all the right places. She carried herself very well, her motions precise, and controlled but unaffected without the jerkiness or affected showiness that long military service sometimes imparted to a person.
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Nor was she a loud or intemperate speaker (well not unless she was swearing, in which case she could out do even veteran light cavalrymen or make even hardened teamsters blush! He thought with some wry amusement), quite the contrary, she spoke as a rule, only moderately to very little though her words were always spoken tersely, articulate and clear. She listened, he found a great deal more then most people in positions of authority at least in Napoleon's own experience, and paid close attention to everything going on around her both in what was said and unsaid. She certainly had no patience with false flattery, and rather less for anyone she regarded as a fool.
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The second reason was, she was fabulously wealthy, having many diverse and profitable land holdings, businesses and enterprises in several Austrian crown lands and even reaching as far away as Hungary and Bavaria, which gave her an enviable private income. It was rumoured not inaccurately as he had learned that she could recruit, equip and maintain whole armies or at least several large Austrian Frei-Corps and substantial parts of the Austrian and Hungarian feudal levy, the Insurrection, with what was accumulated in her personal privy purse, alone. She came of a family which while of modest but respectable middle-class origins, enjoyed a high social standing, high aristocratic titled rank and not inconsiderable accumulated family prestige. The Eggenbergs had served the Habsburgs loyally and ably for centuries as bankers, coin-minters, soldiers, administrators, councilors and statesmen, with all the accumulated connections and associations in many political, military and economical spheres, that had given them.
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Marie Luise, would have in the strictly physical and material sense of the word made any man, lucky enough to win her hand, a very splendid wife. Winning her heart, was a rather more difficult feat for any would be suitor or paramour. That challenge rather enticed and intrigued, Napoleon, rather then putting him off as it might have for so many other men. While Marie Luise, was emotional, impulsive and incautious, she carefully hid this beneath a cool, detached and highly controlled persona. Both these complicated sides of her personality, the fire and the ice, were as much as part of her character as breathing. What she was not in the least, was indecisive or equivocating by nature.
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Marie Luise had acquired various nicknames or monikers over the years, the more printable ones were, the <i>Prinzessin Höllenfeuer</i> (Princess Hellfire), as she was known for many years be many of her fellow Austrians. To many Italians in both French and Austrian service, she was <i>Principessa o contessa di ferro</i> (the Princess or Countess of Iron). To his own fellow french men, she was <i>L'ange maléfique</i> (the Evil Angel). During the Siege of Graz, she had been called the <i>Löwin von Graz</i>(the Lioness of Graz) by it's defenders, and the <i>Jeune fille / dame de la colline du château</i> (the Maiden or the Lady of the Castle Hill) by those french troops tasked with trying to take the place.
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Napoleon realized he was so drawn to Marie Luise because his own married life was so increasingly strained. Joséphine, his beloved empress, could not through any real fault of her own provide him with the heirs his dynastic ambitions required. The fact one of his longtime mistresses, Eléonore Denuelle de La Plaigne, had given him an illegitimate son, Charles Léon Denuelle de la Plaigne, who he had created the Count Léon in 1806 and his other mistress Countess Marie Walewska (who was here with him in Vienna) was now several months pregnant with his child, had increasingly convinced him that Joséphine was infertile if not actually barren after having already had two children by her previous marriage, his step son Eugene de Beauharnais and step daughter Hortense de Beauharnais.
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Napoleon, found himself in the extremely unhappy situation of having to contemplate a divorce from Joséphine for the sake of dynastic considerations and contemplate a second marriage with one of the younger daughters of the more established royal or imperial houses of Europe. His current political preferences and needs were causing him to lean towards the Romanovs of Russia. He needed Russian military, political and economic support and a marriage alliance would help cement that. Tsar Alexander had expressed some guarded interest in the idea, though he had not committed himself especially when Napoleon had broached the idea of him marrying one of Alexander's younger sisters. The Habsburgs presented another potential dynastic possibility, especially Kaiser Franz's young daughter, Marie Louise. Though again there was no firm commitment on either side for such a potential match as he had yet to even broach the delicate subject with Franz or his diplomatic officials.
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Marie Luise offered him a potential third marriage option outside the problems of more regular dynastic channels, he suddenly thought. She was of an illustrious family with connections to royalty, specifically the Franconian branch of the Hohenzollerns, the Margraves of Kulmbach, Ansbach and Bayreuth. Further they had held high princely rank in the Holy Roman Empire, as the Princely Counts of Gradisca from 1647 - 1792 and could thus be counted amoung the sovereign houses of Europe. As such she would make a quite suitable Bonaparte dynastic bride, if no other offered and would in his opinion make a splendid empress. His French subjects would probably object to another Austrian consort, the late and unlamented Marie Antoinette came forcefully to mind. Marie Luise however had some counter veiling advantages to offer. Her family while noble and very aristocratic had come originally from respectable Austrian middle-class stock and worked their way up in the world by sustained hard work and application. That would appeal to many of his natural supporters in the French Empire's working and middle-class, she was also entrancingly beautiful, courageous, warm hearted, conscientious in attending to her duties and obligations, she was commendably stylish but not extravagant and lived on her own terms free of any outstanding financial debts or obligations. True, at the age of twenty-nine, some would judge her as rather mature for marriage but in her favour were the facts, that she was fit, healthy and strong and came from a family which was generally prolific in producing offspring.Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-12087164926669006742022-10-16T16:47:00.009-04:002022-10-17T01:34:56.446-04:00All Is Fair in Love and War (Part I)<b>The Hofburg Palace, the City of Vienna, the Austrian Empire, October 1809.</b>
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Artwork/Portrait of Marie Luise von Eggenberg by raiinsoaked (DeviantArt)
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<i>Feldzeugmeister</i> and Fürstin Marie Luise von Eggenberg, stood talking quietly with two of her fellow Austrian <i>kriegherren</i>, in the great hall, amidst the stifling masses of courtiers, court and governmental officials, diplomats and military officers of both Kaiser Franz I of Austria's and Emperor Napoleon I of France's entourages in addition to various other civilian or political luminaries and persons of importance. Her two conversational companions, being Feldmarschalleutnant Ortwin <i>Freiherr</i> Weiss von Tannhauser and Oberst Gustav Johann <i>Vizegraf</i> von Blankenberg, the commandant of the Graz Garnison Korps, and commandant of the 18th Grenzer Infantry Regiment respectively. both veterans, like her of the battles and Siege of Graz.
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The ball, had so far gone off well, they all thought, despite the tension that sizzled barely concealed in the air of the rooms of the great imperial palace, which was hardly surprising given the aftermath of the recently ended Franco-Austrian War. The fourteen course dinner prepared by the kitchens of the Imperial Palace had been excellent, as had the selection of fine wines, spirits, brandies and liqueurs. People were taking a few, leisurely minutes to enjoy good after dinner coffee or a strong alcoholic cordial and fine conversations, while the hall was prepared for the music, dancing and other evening's entertainments that were to follow in another half hour.
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Marie Luise had dressed with particular care for this evening's affair. Most people had not been prepared for the sensation she created in her audience, upon being announced when she had joined the gathering in the Hofburg's enormous reception room. One member of Napoleon's entourage had actually dropped a full glass of champagne in stunned surprise. Even the Austrian courtiers and officials were astonished. In the first place, this was the first time in over a decade that she had worn something like a dress or even remotely civilian styled attire, and not appeared as a grim faced, military hellion or martinet or some equally wild, blond haired valkyrie out of legend covered in black powder, smoke, mud and not infrequently either her own or someone else's blood. This evening she was the picture of refined elegance, head turning beauty and understated good style, dressed in the stark white, single breasted general's tunic of the Austrian Imperial-Royal Army.
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Her high military collar was decorated with a thick bar of zig-zag lace, set with two glittering six pointed silver stars, the emblems of her rank of feldzeugmeister, overlayed on to the bright red facings of the collar. Her shoulders were decorated with thin, gold lace shoulder cords or straps, the distinctive Austrian <i>Schlinge</i>, which were worn by all Austrian officers of company, regimental and general rank, were themselves decorated with small black and yellow chevrons. The tunic cuffs, shared the same red facings as her collar, while being decorated with two broad bars of gold zig-zag lace and one narrow one, again the traditional Austrian emblem of her specific rank. Her skirt, which was not standard wear with this order of dress, was her own tailor's and seamstress's creation, being the same red as her collar and cuffs, It wrapped around her lower torso and legs, and was clasped shut on the left side by a series of hooks and eyes, concealed by the gold zig-zag lace that ran down the side of the dress and along the hem of the skirt. Highly polished, long black leather boots which covered her feet were visible below the lace covered hem of the dress. Marie Luise's delicate and shapely waist was accentuated by the black and yellow sash of the Habsburg officer corps, the <i>feldbinde</i>.
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Her shoulder was decorated with a special pattern aiguillette, marked with an Imperial Austrian crown and crossed marshal's batons, that denoted her appointment as one of the twenty-five General-Adjutants, general rank officers attached to the Military Suite of the Austrian <i>Generalissimus</i>, Archduke Karl. The same emblem also decorated her narrow shoulder straps. The rest of her white tunic was decorated with the numerous military orders and decorations to which her fifteen years of service to the Imperial and Royal House of Austria as a common soldier, non-commissioned and commissioned officer entitled her.
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The jewelry she had decided to wear had all been selected from pieces that she had inherited from her mother. Marie Luise's ears were decorated with delicate gold filigreed ear rings, each ending in a single, large, lustrous tear drop shaped pear. She wore a beautiful gold tiara, decorated with the insignia and heraldry of her high social and aristocratic rank, that of the regnant Fürstin von Eggenberg and it's numerous ancillary titles, to hold her beautifully coiffed, braided and carefully dressed golden blonde hair in place, to the left side of which was clipped a curious but stunning piece of family jewelry. Her father Hans Ulrich had evidently paid a small fortune for it (she had never been able to find out who the talented gem smith or jeweler who had created it had been, nor to her surprise did anyone else know and not for want of trying, she had discovered), as a wedding gift to his young wife, Sophia Reichsgrafin von Finkenstein.
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Her mother had always worn it for good luck whenever her husband had been away campaigning in the various wars he had been engaged in during the years of their marriage. It was a naturally occurring completely black diamond, beautifully cut and shaped into an oval pattern roughly the size of a small hen's egg, surrounded by a ring of equally brilliant topaz gems, the result resembled an Austrian casquet or shako cockade. Surmounting the gem stone oval were three oak leaves formed from intricate gold work, set with delicate but superb quality green jade stone leaves. A sprig of oak leaves being of course, the traditional military <i>feldzeichen</i> (field-sign) used in the Holy Roman Reich-Armee and it's successor, the Austrian Imperial-Royal Army. Marie Luise had decided to wear it for this evening for several reasons: because it was beautiful, because of it's military connotations and because she felt she needed all the good luck she could muster for what she was contemplating for this evening.
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Marie Luise had always been a little self conscious about her figure, or rather her figure as it compared to her stunningly beautiful and buxom mother and her identical sister, her Aunt Nathalia. Her own body had always been fit, and well formed due to an early interest and encouragement in intensive physical exercise and a moderate, balanced diet, something both her parents had insisted upon during her childhood and early teens. While she had obvious inherited her mother's good looks and pretty eyes in full measure, her bosom had to her despair at times, had been off to a slower start, although that had in retrospect turned out to be something of an asset when at age fifteen, she had pretended to be a young boy volunteer, one Johann Schweiger, in order to join Infantry Regiment No.27 back in 1794. It had not been till she was more formally of age in her late teens and early twenties before her curves had really started to catch up with her, and her distinctly feminine charms had really started to bloom, which had made maintaining the fiction that she was a male soldier and officer all but impossible, even if her fellow soldiers and officers had not figured it out already, any way.
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As one of her officer tent mate and often military tutor and mentor in Regiment No.27 -- Alfred Lloyd <i>Freiherr</i> Baird von Auchmeddan -- in those days had observed mildly when she had made a few rueful observations about her figure after her feminine status had become public knowledge, "true it, was not yet a bosom to repose upon, but a capital bosom to hang jewels or decorations upon." That particular circumstance no longer applied, as her bosom now cleaved very deeply and very nicely, she thought, though she still was not in either in mother or her aunt's class. That said, though her well cut curves now drew quite as many admiring glances as any other beautiful, well endowed woman in the vast room.
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Her mood darkened when she thought about her old comrade, military teacher and sometime social guardian from the 27th, though she strove to hide it from those around her. Alfred Lloyd had been and still was a dear and true friend, luck had not followed him when he had reached general rank about the same time she had. Though truth be said, the stubborn and some would say almost hereditary bad habit of the Bairds de Auchmeddan, regardless of the branch of that very extended family or the country they served, of always being where the fighting was at it's most ferocious and of leading from the front with basket hilted claymore firmly in hand, might have had just as much to do with it.
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As a divisional commander in many of the battles of 1809 he had been wounded or injured, until he had been practically shot to pieces at the Battle of Wagram, and had to be strapped into his saddle to even command his division, at the Battle of Znaim. At Znaim, Alfred had helped lead a counter-attack so sudden and violent that the Bavarians and French troops under Marshal Marmont, had nearly been forced to quit the field. Unfortunately, at the height of the action he had had one of his arms nearly ripped off by a cannon ball, and narrowly survived long enough after being captured to be dragged to a french field hospital.
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The french doctors and surgeons had somehow managed to save his life, at the cost of amputating what was left of his arm at the shoulder, but it was a matter of much doubtful speculation in the Hofkriegsrat on whether he would recover his health sufficiently to ever rejoin the Austrian Army again, following his parole and release by the French. The last she had heard, Alfred was still resident in a military hospital desperately weak and ill. Marie Luise shook herself and brought herself firmly to task, she could not allow herself to be distracted this evening.
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The reigning influences at the Imperial Court in Vienna, were still very much the baroque and rococo styles, although the neo-classical style pioneered in France and elsewhere had begun to make head way amoungst the fashionable set in Vienna. The new school of attire stressed, comfortable and simplified designs based on ancient Greek or Roman clothes, and a more understated and natural appearance with a minimal use of makeup. Marie Luise, had never much been a follower of court fashion, even before she had joined the army, so she was more used to military conventions of style and attire. Consequently, her complexion was shocking to most of the more staid, old fashioned Austrian courtiers, although Marie Luise normally had quite pale peaches and cream skin, her rugged and very outdoors military service had given her a stunningly sun bronzed complexion, which when taken together with her equally striking blond hair and sparkling gem like green eyes combined to devastating effect.
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The resultant ensemble, of her uniform, her jewelry and her awards and decorations, and her good looks made clear that she was a military heroine, a woman of some considerable status and means and beyond any doubt, extremely and alarmingly attractive. She immediately had the attention of just about every male and female in the vast ball room. Though if Marie Luise was honest about it, she only really desired the attention of two very special men in the room. The first being the Archduke Karl, whom she craved, loved and adored with every fiber of her being and not incidentally he felt the same way about her. The Second one, being Napoleon Bonaparte, a man who fascinated her, appalled her and enjoyed her most earnest feelings of absolute loathing and hatred in equal measure.
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What exactly Emperor Napoleon felt for her was rather more difficult for Marie Luise to fathom. Physical Attraction certainly, lust almost certainly: if his conduct in bed was anything to go by, genuine love and affection quite possibly given the content of some of his rather more intimate letters to her, but that could be equally said about a lot of beautiful and stimulating French, Italian, Polish and German women in various stations of life both in and outside the French Imperial Court who had come into Napoleon's personal orbit. He did after all have several mistresses. And like it or not, as Marie Luise had discovered, Napoleon could be beguilingly charming, subtly persuasive and very very charismatic when he wished to be. Napoleon was her target for this evening and every other day and evening thereafter til she got out of him, whatever she could get for Austria and her home city of Graz.
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She had already started the process of her seduction of Emperor Napoleon, while a prisoner of his following the surrender of the trapped garrison within Graz and the Schlossberg fortress, after the Armistice of Znaim. They had spent time in each other's company, shared meals and developed something of a romantic relationship, to the extent of even sharing time in bed several times. She had managed with considerable difficulty to talk him out of simply blasting apart Graz's formidable fortifications with gunpowder and razing the rest of the city to the ground with incendiaries, which had been his first military impulse. She had bought Austrian diplomats time to work out other long term solutions for neutralizing Graz as a seeming military threat to the French military that did not involve destroying the city entirely. The sudden peace between Austria and France, that had shortly followed and Napoleon's temporary residence in Vienna gave her another chance to continue the process, which she was determined to take cost her, what it may. Marie Luise realized that she had bought, Graz a temporary and very fragile reprieve not safety.
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The three of them stood somehow apart from those around them, in Marie Luise, her striking beauty was easy enough to account for it to a perhaps or vaguely puzzled onlooker, while Weiss stood a good deal taller then either of his companions, that and the strange gold metal work that covered much of his face and the upper part of his head and ears like a Greek helmet. Two artificial, solidly jet black eyes glittered out of their deep set metal sockets, with silver white iris and pupils. Only his lower lip and jaw with a smart, short cut beard emerged from the lower edge of the mask. The beard which was dark almost black, was ribbed with streaks of white and not a little grey, which indicated there were extensive scars beneath the white hair, some of which showed even upon his lips. Both his hands were mechanical constructions, which emerged from the cuffs of his splendid white uniform, made of gold metal, silver and a strange, black leather like material.
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Blankenberg, grey haired and pale faced stood beside the two of them as they amiably and animatedly conversed, his head leaned carefully and thoughtfully to one side, as he listened. One hand rested, his right, neatly behind his back, the other sleeve which was pinned by a short cord to his brown grenz-infanterie regimental tunic front, stood starkly empty, the limb or rather much of what had been left of it recently amputated due to wounds received -- he had lost two left fingers, his left wrist had been all but shot away, and his left fore arm riddled and broken with shrapnel --in the battles for and around Graz. To a veteran soldier their seeming distance from all around them, was easily explained in a way, few civilians could conceptualize, they had been through the fires of war together, the three of them, even if they had not known each other before the siege of Graz, the trials, tribulations and heartaches they had faced both singularly and together had bound them together as few other things could.
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Kaiser Franz and Emperor Napoleon stood in the midst of the glittering throng of officials, ministers and marshals as well as the Austrian empress and several of the more senior Habsburg rchdukes and various sundry archduchesses. Napoleon listened to the flow of military and diplomatic discussion around him with studied but only partial attention, with his phenomenal memory and grasp for facts and figures he could remember any part of it he wished, when he needed it. The main focus of his attention was not upon the people immediately aro und him, but the singularly beautiful and lively woman, some distance from him, out of earshot, but still plainly visible in animated discussion with two brother military officers, both of whom he recognized from the surrender of Graz, both had been present and played a part in the incident that occurred when the icily controlled, seriously wounded Fürstin von Eggenberg had violently smashed the hilt of her sword over the head of one of Marshal Berthier's hard drinking, hard riding, hard nosed and insufferable arrogant aides-de-camp, when he had insultingly demanded she surrender her sword to him. Moments later, Marie Luise had abruptly and wordlessly collapsed, the violence of the blow she had struck had reopened her shoulder wounds, causing the injuries to bleed copiously. The grey coat, worn over her white tunic had concealed what had happened until both the tunic and the coat were saturated with blood. Her fingers and palms were found to have been lacerated by the how tightly she had gripped the razor sharp blade, despite the heavy leather gloves she wore.
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"You smile, Your Majesty, something strikes you as funny, this evening?" Someone said beside him. Napoleon took a moment to reflect before answering the remark. The person in question just happened to be His Imperial Majesty, Kaiser Franz of Austria, himself.
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"No, not funny, strictly speaking, just an interesting memory concerning the differences in French and Austrian ideas of proper surrender ediquette, that I happened to witness in Graz."
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Kaiser Franz, followed Napoleon's gaze towards, the Fürstin von Eggenberg who stood to his surprise relatively nearby chatting with two officers, one a general, the other a regimental officer. Franz said nothing, his face a still and expressionless mask, his internal thoughts and emotions were however far less still or subtle. Napoleon said nothing but was not fooled or even amused by Franz's charade of calm. He was well appraised of the details of the often tense and poisonous relationship that existed between Marie Luise and Kaiser Franz by his own military and civil intelligence services and diplomatic officials and from casual remarks that Marie Luise had let drop in conversation, she for one had no reason to hide her real feelings for her Kaiser, nor disguise that he in turn hated her and ludicrously suspected her of harbouring treasonous or seditious designs, though she had been guarded in her words all the same, to protect not so much herself but others: subordinates, friends and extended family. Napoleon could understand that, he had found himself on the wrong side of a revolutionary tribunal more then once, and escaped with just a hairs breath separating him from vindication or disaster, during the Revolutionary Wars!
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What Kaiser Franz stupidly missed because he was too narrow-minded and suspicious and too surrounded by people who flattered his every move or exploited his biases for their own ends, to see anything else, was the truth. Marie Luise was exactly what she appeared to be, a good and loyal patriot of the Austrian Empire who gave her all for her emperor, her country and the army she had served in for much of her adult life.
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Kaiser Franz, rather depressingly in Napoleon's considered opinion, understood loyalty in only one manner: that was loyalty to him, everyone else including his own family were servants to and for his will, and his will alone; it never occurred to him, that to gain such loyalty and keep it, one had to be tangible as well as intangible in showing loyalty back to others. Out of the corner of his eye, Napoleon noticed a general officer approach the trio and be welcomed warmly and cordially by them. The man, had the look of one of the younger Habsburgs who served in the Austrian Imperial-Royal Army and wore the same uniform and much the same rank insignia as Marie Luise.
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Napoleon recalled the name that went with that face, Archduke Johann. Which made him smile still further despite himself, when he saw the painfully flat frown, that the sight of the younger archduke caused to appear on the by now completely frozen face of Kaiser Franz. For Archduke Johann, was the much younger, highly opinionated and well nigh insubordinate and impossible younger brother of Kaiser Franz and incidentally one of Marie Luise's most devoted friends and determined military patrons. Not surprising really for a man who rejoiced in the popular nickname of the "<i>Styrian Prince</i>", the particular province of Austria, where, Marie Luise had been born and raised. A place that both of them had a high regard, even devotion for. That too he well could understand, he had similar feelings for France, and especially his native Corsica.
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Napoleon knew it would be the height of rudeness to invite, the Fürstin von Eggenberg, to join them, he did have to be mindful of future diplomatic relations between Austria and France after all, and Kaiser Franz could be one of the most prickly individuals Napoleon had ever met when he felt his Imperial and personal dignity was being affronted. That said, Napoleon also felt no particular desire to pander to Franz's own quite frankly idiotic biases or prejudices when it was of absolutely no political or military use to him. So he excused himself with a parting remark, that he knew would get Franz's back up regardless. It occurred to Napoleon that he might some how be able to perhaps entice Marie Luise into France's Imperial service, given the right circumstances and timing, it was something that suggested itself to him, more then once when he had first met her.
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Napoleon frankly admitted to himself that his reasoning was motivated by rather more personal, romantic motives then purely military ones. Put plainly he absolutely adored and ardently desired, Marie Luise. Perhaps, he could interest her in taking command of a corp composed of troops from the Confederation of the Rhine. Or perhaps he might be able to contrive some sort of military diplomatic posting to Paris for her, Kaiser Franz might be convinced or perhaps manipulated to allow it, he thought. It was certainly worth considering he mused thoughtfully.
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"It is not often one gets to meet a genuine hero, much less a genuine heroine in person, so if the ladies and gentlemen will excuse me, I am going to take the opportunity to reacquaint myself with Austria's own <i>Pucelle d'Orléans</i>."
Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-42303386561160170202022-09-29T16:49:00.022-04:002024-03-26T12:22:24.877-04:00Fragments from the Americas (Part IV)<b>The White House, Washington D.C., Maryland, United States of America, January 1889.</b>
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President Rutherford Birchard Hayes stood in front of his desk in the Oval Office, in the White House gazing meditatively at the maps spread across it's cluttered surface. He spent most of his days, since his election to the job, poring over maps and documents, memorandums and reports, dealling with ongoing economic, political and military crises or scandals which seemed to be his lot practically every day. He had had his successes and his failures, though on reflection he felt future historians might remember his achievements in various governmental and administrative spheres more favourable then his own party, the Republicans. Though Hayes could not claim this as exclusive to his own term of office as president, Presidents Abraham Lincoln (4 terms, 1861-1872), Ulysses Simpson Grant (2 terms, 1873-77 and 1883-1887), James Abram Garfield (1 term, 1878-1882) had all had to grapple with much the same problems to greater or lesser extents during their tenures of the presidency.
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His fingers traced the borders of the American Union and it's states, it's core members and the boundaries of several new states which were due to join throughout this year as they reorganized from Territorial governments into state governments with proper state constitutions and congressional representatives and senators recognized and accepted by the U.S. Congress. Four political parties, grappled for dominance within the U.S. Congress, the Republican Party (his own party), the Radical Republican Party (mercifully leaderless at the moment, as several candidates were locked in a bitter power struggle for control of the party), the Liberal Party (Carl Schurz), and the Democratic Party (Stephen Grover Cleveland). At the moment, the Republicans held the balance of power in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, but it was a knife edge balance because, the opposition parties could block legislation in both houses, if they desired or even pass it with a slender majority if they voted together and if enough Republicans could be convinced to vote in accord with them. Given that the majority of Hayes's reforms had cost him virtually the whole of his own party's support, he was in the extremely awkward position of depending on the opposition parties to help him push through his programs. He was counting to some extent on the new senators and represenatatives that would join congress this year to help swing the delicate internal balance within Congress in his own political favour.
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Five military departments controlled or rather attempted to control and police the disputed Mid and Far Western territories while at the same time wage a difficult and tediously long drawn out civil war and numerous Indian wars in the region. The Department of the North West commanded by General John Pope, oversaw the territories of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. The Department of the South West, commanded by General Nelson Appleton Miles, covered the rebel state of Utah, and the Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico Territories. The Department of the Dakotas, commanded by General Henry Beebee Carrington, covered the North and South Dakota Territories (shortly to enter the Union in a few months as the states of North and South Dakota) east of the Missouri River. The Department of the Mid West, commanded by General John Rutter Brooke covered the Nebraska Territory (due to submit it's formal application to the Union, this month) and the Union State of Kansas. While finally the last Department, that of the Pacific,commanded by General George Crook covered the imperiled Union State of Washington.
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The worst trouble spots for his administration was the long, highly militarized border with the C.S.A., the ongoing military rule and pacification of the Union State of Missouri, which was still plagued with fighting between Union Loyalists and pro-secessionist bandits and partisans. Further to the West, was the ongoing Lakota Nation war, a brutal struggle between the plains Indians and the U.S. Regulars and assorted volunteers and militiamen over some seven territories: North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas and Montana. The ongoing war with the Navajo Nation sprawled over peripheral parts of Utah and Colorado, and much larger portions of the Arizona and the New Mexico Territories.
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Finally of course was the ongoing attempt to suppress the rebelling Independent States of America, formed by the former Union States of Oregon, California and Nevada, along side their associated rebel state Utah. Hayes, glanced absently at his watch, General John McAllister Schofield, the Army Chief-of-Staff and the Secretary of War Alexander Ramsey were due in shortly for their usual twice weekly conference with the President. Ironically, the I.S.A, which had been in existence for some four years had finally elected it's first provisional president. A man, that Hayes knew principally nothing about, other then he was a local born Californian man, and of some political prominence. He hoped that Schofield and Ramsey would be able to fill in some of the gaps for him, as it was always desireable to have an understanding of one's potential enemies. While, Hayes and Schofield had a good working relationship, Hayes would have much preferred having his old civil war comrade and former commanding officer George Crook in the office of Chief-of-Staff of the Army. Crook had however demured, while flattered at the offer, Crook had felt he was needed where he currently was, where he had enough problems and headaches with his departmental command as it was, without adding still more to it. Schofield also had a lot more tact and diplomatic aplomb then Crook felt he possessed, which was important for a job, that placed him square in the middle of what many Union military officers called <i>The Snake Pit</i>, i.e. Washington, D.C.
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The other two members of his cabinet due to join them for the conference, one of whom was a man, that Hayes had come to intensely dislike and distrust, as had just about every other president who had held this office had learned to, Lafayette Curry Baker, the head of the National Detectives, the Union's uniformed military and political secret police force. The other of course, was Allen Pinkerton, head of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, which functioned as the Union's senior plain clothes federal and civil policing and investigating and criminal police force. There was a considerable degree of overlap and intense competition between the National Detectives, the Pinkerton Detectives and the Foriegn Affairs branch of the government, due to all three handling similar policing, investigating and intelligence functions.
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Technically, all foriegn espionage and counter-espionage duties were the preserve of the Foriegn Office if they occured outside the continential United States of America. The ongoing Second Civil War tended to blur the lines between what consituted foriegn and domestic however. Particularly where, the Indepentant States of America were concerned as it was both "foriegn" and "domestic", and that put the Foreign Office squarely in conflict with the National Detectives who generally handled all internal espionage and counter-espionage duties, and who regarded both the I.S.A. and the Disputed Western territories as squarely and solely in their field. The Pinkertons' did not help the situation by also claiming a role in those areas, which put them in conflict with the National Detectives as well. Hayes tugged at his beard angrily, as he thought over dealling with this Gordian Knot, which made his presidency more difficult at times then he wanted it to be, he had enough problems without playing referee between governmental departments and bodies, just because they got their collective noses out of joint, over jurisdictional issues!
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Schofield had given him a warning that this would likely come up at today's conference, as well as when, the Secretary of State, William Maxwell Evarts joined the meeting later in the afternoon. Evart was tied up in an important meeting at the moment with the Legation Ministers of France and Great Britain. From the hints that Evart had dropped him early yesterday, Hayes was as hopeful as Evart was that the diplomatic meeting would be fruitful and of advantage to the United States. U.S. and French relations had been steadily thawing since the First Civil War, and had taken a distinctly warmer and more productive turn over the last couple of years. Relations with Great Britain were still however distinctly frosty, which was not altogether unexpected, on either side. However the fridge relationship had shown some signs of undergoing a thaw, When Gladstone's Liberals had taken over, although the temperature had remained lukewarm with the following British Whig and Conservative governments. Still Evart, felt that things might take a more positive political and economic swing, as the British had begun to resume a more friendly policy as their own relationship with the Confederate States of America had steadily cooled since 1867.
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The other warning, that Schofield had dropped him, however did have Hayes, rather more concerned. One of Schofield's chief operations officers, Major-General Logan Patrick, had dropped a bombshell in the Union Army's High Command, when he had put forth a top secret internal paper analysising the current conduct of the current Civil War and Indian Wars and what steps might have to be taken to wrap the ongoing wars up more sucessfully. Schofield had promised to bring a précis of the memorandum, so Hayes could familiarize himself with it's contents before anyone in the Cabinet, Congress or god help them the newpapers got wind of the matter. That warning had put Hayes on guard, If Schofield was worried enough to bring the matter up, then it had to be important that he know about it. More Importantly, it was a matter that Schofield felt, that Hayes as Commander-in-Chief of the Union Armed Forces might have to make a decision on, that would have both military and political dimensions.
Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-14322821734961511122022-09-19T17:08:00.007-04:002024-03-26T12:22:02.353-04:00Fragments from the Americas (Part III)<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVw-zZjAgQ0lTxLvsfdh4cs3eE3Jokmol9kYRoy2mpgIWuYEteZ8tTH1QfsEYUKemdDYpUH7wTQ1m1Us9IU12QM_itCnmfGiEooOODgVYAfEeiBCbwnq8meWASCGH6VQcqu3m28_MH426J_iduC3-J1Z6bvgrtBpYFEOtSw2TchzbfPYBpcdGzl_Ut/s545/carter-admiral.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="389" data-original-width="545" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVw-zZjAgQ0lTxLvsfdh4cs3eE3Jokmol9kYRoy2mpgIWuYEteZ8tTH1QfsEYUKemdDYpUH7wTQ1m1Us9IU12QM_itCnmfGiEooOODgVYAfEeiBCbwnq8meWASCGH6VQcqu3m28_MH426J_iduC3-J1Z6bvgrtBpYFEOtSw2TchzbfPYBpcdGzl_Ut/s320/carter-admiral.jpg"/></a></div>
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<b>Puget Sound, Washington State, United States of America, Jan 1889.</b>
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Admiral Samuel Perry "Powhatan" Carter, sat at his desk in his day cabin aboard the gunboat turned Admiralty yacht and fleet dispatch vessel, the USS <i>Monocacy</i>, a ship he had formerly commanded as a much younger naval officer. At present Carter used it as his administrative headquarters for the Union Pacific Fleet. His newly arrive battleship flagship was in dockyard hands, refitting it's flagship, staffing and communications facilities. It's installations while previously adequate for divisional and squadron commands it had formerly held, were he had found somewhat inadequate for managing and directing a gathering fleet of well over a hundred warships and auxiliaries, with even more on the way. The Naval Dockyard, however had the matter well in hand and he and his staff could resume use of the fleet flagship in another two weeks.
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Carter was working his way through a desk covered in routine correspondence, he had just finished the most important letter on the table, a long letter from his wife of twelve years, Martha. Her picture was always the most prominent object on his desk. They had married in 1877, and Carter felt it was one of the best decisions he had ever undertaken, in both the personal and professional senses. Martha was a descendant of Martha Custis Washington. It certainly had not hurt his career progress or his personal (which was rather more important to him in many ways) and social life. Political connections were of course of some importance in a military, where all promotions to flag rank were governed by connections in the right circles and especially in the United States Senate and being an officer of well established professionalism and impeccable loyalty to the Union. Through his service on land and sea, as well as he connections to the Washington family and his own Carter relations, and being a member of several elite military and civil fraternities, had allowed him a steady if not spectacular rise in the ranks.
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A Tennessean by birth, Carter had joined the navy directly as a midshipman in 1840, with active service on the Great Lakes and the Pacific later graduating from the US Naval Academy in 1846 and seeing service in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. His following service had been varied staff and scientific duties at the United States Naval Observatory for several years followed by an appointment as an assistant professor of mathematics at the Naval Academy 1850-53. Carter had then served with competence with the Pacific and Brazilian squadrons of the Union Navy., unit he had been reappointed to a staff position with the Naval Academy.
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His civil war service had been both distinctly unusual and distinguished by important staff work, intelligence and spy and raiding duties as well as combat assignments at various levels up to and including brigade and divisional command with the Union armies in the Western Theater of the Civil War. Very briefly he had even exercised corps level commands until he had been mustered out of the Union Army in 1866 to resume his interrupted naval career. Carter had resumed assignment to the Union Pacific Squadron, with steady promotions and a progression of ship duties, commands and eventually assignment to the post of commandant of cadets at the Naval Academy, followed by another bout of sea and diplomatic duties with the Navy's European Squadron. In 1877 he had been appointed to the United States Lighthouse Board in light of his previous scientific and active sea service. He had seriously considered retiring in 1881 and 1882, as he had only then just reached the substantive rank of rear-admiral. The out break of the Second American Civil War in 1885, had revived his career prospects and resulted in his rapid promotion to vice-admiral and admiral, although he personally would have preferred that not be the case, considering the political and military disaster that had unfolded for his country for the second time this century. Swiftly resuming a mix of army and naval duties he had played a critical role in keeping Washington State in the Union and protecting the vital naval base in Puget Sound and assisting Admiral David Dixon Porter is taking the fight to the rebels of the Independent States of America.
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Unfortunately, both he and Admiral Porter had come into conflict over the conduct of the war in the Pacific, both over general tactics and especially over the overall strategy. Porter advocated a containment strategy, and extended blockade, while husbanding major naval units for more decisive actions. This was of course a sound idea, which Carter did not object to in the slightest, what he did object to was the complete and increasing absence of any offensive action in Admiral Porter's plans. This had made a certain sense, in the first months of the new civil war, when the blockade of the Oregon and California coasts had been established and was still firming up. The tense relations between Porter and himself had eventually reached a head, and Porter had sacked him in mid 1887 and sent him back to Washington, D.C. to await orders, this had turned out to be an unwise move on Porter's part, as his enemies in the government and the navy had used it as an excuse to sack Porter in turn.
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Carter had wound up much to his surprise being sent back to command, the Pacific Fleet in Porter's place. He had flat orders to ginger up, the Pacific Fleet's up til then lackluster and pedestrian performance and take a more activist approach to win the war in the Pacific, or at least turn it in a more favourable direction for the Union. Carter had immediately lead the Pacific Fleet on a series of raids and feints against the rebel coastline, attacking several major harbours, including San Francisco, to the I.S.A's shock and alarm. The naval blockade both on the sea and in the air had been intensified by his and his subordinates efforts and the strategy of attack had slowly brought the war on the coasts to a successful turn. Carter did not think the matter was in the bag however. He had recently broached the subject of a large scale naval landing on the Oregon or California coast to open a second front against, the Army and Navy staffs had been interested, although the difficulties of such an operation, particularly sustaining it with the heavy demands of other fronts concerned both him and his own command staff.
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The President had officially ordered him, to conduct a series of operations and bombardments of the Oregon coast, to draw out the I.S.A's main fleet and destroy it in detail before trying any landings. A sensible precaution in both Carter's and the various staffs involved in planning this new phase in the civil war. President Hayes had also given permission for Carter to make a second sortie into San Francisco or against the alternative targets of Los Angeles or San Diego if in his considered judgement that it was practical and likely to lead to the desired results. Both Carter's naval subordinates and his army colleagues in Washington State had worked over the winter to put together the necessary assets for an extended naval and land campaign and it had been agreed by himself and his army opposite number, General George Crook, that a serious offensive attack into Oregon by Union land forces was essential to the overall campaign, particular to secure crossings over the Columbia River so attacks could be mounted against rebel held Portland and the rebel state capital of Salem.
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While both, he and Crook felt a joint naval-army offensive should be launched at the same time, but given the distances and terrain many army units would have to cross, this was unlikely to work in practice. For one thing, any land offensive was complicated by the aftermath of the I.S.A.'s Autumn-Winter Offensive of 1888. This assault had been narrowly beaten off as it had crashed across the Columbia River at several points. Rebel troops from California and Oregon had almost reached Seattle, getting as far as Tacoma before they had been forced back. After much conductive discussion both he and Crook had decide to launch their combined air efforts at the same time, while the navy hit the rebel coasts soon after this got underway. The remaining Rebel forces dug in on the river at Longview, had to be reduced as quickly as possible before Crook and his staff would consider large scale crossings of the Columbia themselves.
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Some 150 miles to the east the rebel troops had driven in a massive bulge some 100 miles wide by 200 miles deep into Washington State between Pasco, Washington and Lewiston, Idaho. Crook's subordinate commanders were still trying to reduce this enemy held bulge but it looked like it was going to require a sustained effort, as the I.S.A army had dug in with considerable vigor and was bring in reinforcements from wherever it could procure them. Considerable discussions by telegraphy and air couriers with General of the Army John McAllistair Schofield had concerned this particularly troublesome and delicate point.
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Which had resulted in General John Pope, the Commander of the Department of the North West, comming into the planning of a co-ordinated response to this problem from both the Department of the Pacific and the North West. Pope was putting together an Army of the Salmon, to pressure the rebels from the Idaho side the rebel lodgement, being dubbed the Walla Walla Bulge. Unfortunately, it would take approximately four or five months for Pope to assemble this force, as he had his hands full just policing his department against bandits, rustlers and roving bands of Indians, while engaging in ongoing operations against the Lakota Nation and independent enclaves in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, as well as an ongoing campaign against the emergent, independent and thoroughly troublesome Big Horn Basin Republic in Wyoming. Neither Crook, nor Carter were surprised at this but both were assured that Pope would honour his committment to lauching his part in a counter-offensive the moment it was logistically feasible for his department to do so.
Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-66927572963507280402022-08-28T21:18:00.007-04:002023-08-03T15:11:48.716-04:00A War Minister's Reflections (Part I)<b>French Ministry of War, City of Paris, Île-de-France, the Republic of France, January 1889.</b>
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<i>Général de division</i> Georges Ernest Jean-Marie Boulanger, sat at his desk, working through the last of his day's despatch boxes and the mountain of files he had to review and sign each day, which required his attention as the French Minister of War. He had been appointed to the job in 1886 to assist the Cabinet and the Supreme War Council in reforming the Third Republic's army and navy. He had inherited the colossual mess that the French military found itself in, in the wake of the various wars and internal and external traumas that France had experienced throughtout the early and mid 1880s. While, Boulanger felt that he and his service and political collegues had made considerable progress in various structural and administrative reforms within the military, a great deal still remained to be done, especially in the areas of staffing, issue of equipments, long term recruitment and training.
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The French record in the various colonial and European conflicts had been at best mixed, the Franco-German War of 1881-1882 had been a catastrophe of epic proportions in which, France had lost much in military prestige, territory and even more in terms of lives and treasure. The German Empire, had snapped up French Guiana in South America, the French islands of Saint Martin and Saint Barthélemy in the Carribbean, and French Guinea, the Gabon and the French Congo in Africa. In Metropolitian France itself, the departments that formed the whole of the region of Alsace, Lorraine and Bar had been absorbed into the special Franco-German border Reichland, and were even now being reorganized as the German Grand Duchy of Elsass-Lothringen. The departments that formed much of the Artois, Picardy and Champagne regions of North-eastern France had been annexed into the Kingdom of Belgium, which was now a member state of the German Empire. Boulanger shuddered involuntarily at the memory of that war, now eight years gone, although the physical, emotional and societal marks it had left on France had yet to fully heal.
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Further military and political frustrations were to follow, as France had endevoured to build upon it's remaining colonial empire in Africa. While the borders of French Algeria, Mauretania and Senegal had generally been pushed forward successfully, they had been brutally rebuffed by the Wassoulou and Tukolor Empires of Western Africa when french colonial columns had attempted to bull their way through their respective territories. One of the few bright spots in the African record had been achieved in Senegal and a valuable political success at that, with France finally acquiring the the British colony irritatingly embeded within it, the Gambia, by extended negotiations that had started in 1887. For the time being, France was stalemated in it's ambitions in Northern Africa. French colonial adventures in East Asia had generally been more successful, from the 1880s onwards, gradually gobbling up Cochinchina, Annam and Tonkin, although not without sometimes bitter local opposition, particularly by the Armies of the Yellow and Black Flags in 1881 and 1883. An undeclared war had erupted between China and France in 1884-1885, over Tonkin, and things had further been complicated by a massive uprising in Annam which had lasted well into 1886. Unfortunately this had caused the smoldering Sino-French war to flare up again will into 1886 with disasterous consequences, particularly for France, when two invading french armies were destroyed in Southern and Northern China, after making initially spectacular advances deep into Chinese territory respectively.
Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-9948184265904953992022-08-03T14:59:00.002-04:002022-08-03T14:59:20.287-04:00An Unexpected Visitor (Part I)<b>Schloss Eggenberg, City of Graz, Crownland of Styria, the Holy Roman Empire, December 1792.</b>
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The Reichsgraf von Finkenstein's great coach rattled towards the Schloss Eggenberg from Graz, the ice covering the cobble stone road crunching under it's well sprung wheels and the steady percussion like drum of it's horse team's hooves. Christoph von Finkenstein sat in his comfortable seat wrapped deeply in his own thoughts quite as thickly as the blankets that enshrouded him to keep out the winter's cold. None of them were particularly cheerful, this year had been a bad one as far as he was concerned and particularly for one sad young girl of whom he was inordinately fond, his niece by his now late younger sister, Sophia. The fact that he had only just managed to talk, his sister Nathalia, Sophia's identical twin, out of accompanying him on this trip, put him in even a fouler mood then he had thought possible. Marie Luise did not need her aunt -- who had the same face and colouring as her dead mother -- going on about her future and the responsibilities attendant to that, when she was grappling with the loss of both her parents, she was having enough problems just taking hold of the reins of her family estates!
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Nathalia had for years been pressuring both himself, Sophia and his brother-in-law, Hans Ulrich to arrange a match between Marie Luise and Christoph's eldest son, Karl Alexander. Such a match would strengthen the ties between the Eggenberg and Finkenstein families, and help solve the Eggenberg's desperate need for an heir to see the House of Eggenberg into the next century. It would mean the dynastic possessions, wealth and titles of both families would be combined into a stronger and more prosperous whole and a stronger dynastic succession could be arranged, or at least that was the way Nathalia had worded it whenever she broached the idea to him and Hans Ulrich. Sophia might have half-believed that but neither Christoph nor to a lesser extent Hans Ulrich had been entirely convinced that had been the real reason behind Nathalia's persistent advocacy of the dynastic match.
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If Karl Alexander married Marie Luise, he would inherit the title of Princely Count of Gradisca, when Hans Ulrich died, rather then it going back to the Habsburgs. Any son begotten by them would also inherit that title and it's important princely delegate seat in the Holy Roman Empire's Reichsstand and Reichstag (or the Reichsversammlung as it was sometimes called), as well as all the accumulated titles, lands, possessions and businesses owned by both the Eggenbergs and Finkensteins in Inner Austria, Upper Austria, Hungary and Bohemia and Bavaria. Christoph felt that the raise in Nathalia's own personal status this would effect and the fact she had a great deal of influence with and over Marie Luise and Karl Alexander figured rather more prominently with his sister, then strictly dynastic considerations.
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Christoph had previously objected to the idea for several reasons, first, Marie Luise and Karl Alexander were first cousins. Thus far both the Eggenbergs and the Finkensteins had avoided the problems of accumulated bad heredity, being fairly judicious in balancing their respective family needs with regards to personal, political, economical and dynastic advantage with their choice of marriages. The Roman Catholic church had a prohibition against families that were too interrelated marrying, a wise one if one thought of the amount inbreeding that sometimes all too often afflicted the oldest royal and aristocratic families. Unfortunately the Roman Catholic church had all too frequently ignored it's own rules when dynastic considerations and the need to maintain their influence with said dynasties came up. He suspected that the Bishop in Graz, Joseph Adam Graf Arco, would do just that, given the circumstances.
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More importantly Christoph knew both the principals, and he knew that while a dynastic match between them would work in principal, it would not work in practice, particularly on a personal level. Christoph had rather more experience in the differences between a good marriage and a bad marriage in the personal sense, then he cared to have. His own married life had generally been a happy and harmonious one, for which he was eternally grateful. His own parents marriage had been an extremely unpleasant emotional and personal disaster for all concerned. Neither Karl Alexander or Marie Luise had much in common with each other either in terms of their personalities or their interests or hobbies. Nathalia was of the opinion, when he sarcastically pointed out this snag to her, that a long betrothal period would help smooth out any such trivial personality problems and the marriage could be carried out and consummated when, Marie Luise turned eighteen at the earliest. Christoph did not share that optimistic appraisal of the situation either.
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Hans Ulrich's sudden death had thrown a spoke quite literally amidst Nathalia's wheels however. In the first place, the Princely County title entailed back to the Habsburgs as previously agreed in 1647. Any child of Marie Luise's would only inherit her baronial, county, princely and ducal titles as the Princely County of Gradisca seat and dignities connected with it in the Reichstand and Reichstag were denied to her, by Salic and Agnatic inheritance law. Secondly, Marie Luise, was now answerable to herself on who she was or was not to marry, she was most definitely not subject to the decree or whim of her parents, as she was now the sole heiress and Fürstin of Eggenberg. Her regents and trustees could advise her until she reached her legal majority but they would be absolute fools to think they could make her do anything she was not already prepared to consider.
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Christoph sighed, the gate of the Eggenberg estate opened by it's automaton attendants as his coach approached. Christoph ordered the coach to halt, and had a brief exchange with the gate warden, Old Deitrich Scheffschik, had been opening and closing these gates for well on forty years. He had served almost three generations of the Eggenberg family, Marie Luise would be his fourth and was damned proud of it. Marie Luise, herself thought of Old Deitrich as a much loved crusty, sometimes stuffy and sometimes mischievous old uncle, well grand uncle in his case, as Scheffschik had to be at least seventy if not older, if he was a day. The two exchanged a few words, Scheffschik was usually guarded and abrupt in speech, especially when dealing with outsiders and doubly so if it concerned young Marie Luise. Christoph knew, that Old Deitrich thought of Marie Luise as a surrogate niece, of which he was particularly fond and cherished as if she was one of his own family.
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Scheffschik looked worn, the strain he was under was showing, his long beard and moustache had more white and grey then dark chestnut hairs now while his sharp brown eyes were tired, red rimmed and blood shot. He was beaten down and aggrieved by the unexpected loss of the esteemed, respected, and even loved Hans Ulrich and Sophia von Eggenberg. The terrible silent grief and icy solitude of their only child, Marie Luise, weighed heavily on the staff of the Schloss Eggenberg, human, construct and automaton alike. They wanted desperately to reach out and help her though her sadness and grief, but they did not know how, there was a distance between her and them now, that was not there before and they had not yet quite figured out how to breach it. Marie Luise, was the reigning, Fürstin von Eggenberg now and not the curious, delightful, and sometimes impulsive young tomboy that she had been.
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Christoph, nodded goodbye, and thanked Scheffschik for what information he had let slip to him, though nearly clinched teeth, such was his own grief for the family he served. Perhaps I can let a little more light into this darkened house or at least I damn well mean to try, Christoph thought as his driver whipped the team up into a gallop, making for the palace itself.
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Reichsgraf Christoph von Finkenstein was always a welcome visitor at the Schloss Eggenberg, as far as the Eggenbergs and their Palace Staff had been concerned but doubly so, today, as it was Marie Luise's twelfth birthday and his arrival caused a stir amoungst the staff when he was announced at the palace's front door. What should have been a festive and pleasant day had been afflicted by the deep gloom that had engulfed the Schloss and the palace's young heiress, following the deaths of her parents, both from lingering illness earlier in the year. Uncle Christoph, ambled into the great study, that had been Hans Ulrich II's, the last male Fürst von Eggenberg of the Graz Line or indeed any other of the cadet Eggenberg Lines. It was now Fürstin Maria Ludovika I's for the rest of her life, and that thought depressed the young girl beyond any words she could put together as she sat reading in the great comfortable, velvet covered armchair her father had installed along with the huge, polished dark wood desk with it's many drawers and cabinets all decorated with ornate gold carvings and etchings. Her mother's own equally magnificent and spacious desk and comfortable chair stood nearby at right angles to her father's, they had worked side by side in the interests and administration of House Eggenberg and it's varied estates and possessions, at her father's insistence, since the day they had married in 1778.
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Marie Luise, the moment she saw him bounced out of the arm chair and came running towards her uncle, her green eyes sparkling with delight. To his niece, her Uncle Christoph, had always resembled nothing so much as a vast, hoary old tree stump. Of an cheerful, pleasant disposition, and built like a great barrel, Christoph looked much shorter and stouter and often more ill tempered then he was. He had the same sparkling green eyes that both she and her mother possessed, as well as the same wild blond hair. In Christoph's case it framed his head like a wild lion's mane, with great sideburns and mutton chop side whiskers framing his craggy face, with it's straight cut nose and wide mouth and strong jaw. Marie Luise, had known him all of her short life and simply adored him for his generosity, sense of fun and playful good humour, his unexpected but welcome presence was a tonic to her feelings of dark depression and malaise. Christoph, immediately caught her up in both arms and swung her round and round in a circle about him and then put her into a huge but gentle hug, as he always did when, he came to see his favourite niece. Hugging her uncle tightly back, she whispered into his ear softly.
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"Uncle Chris, you have to act with more decorum, I am a great feudal lady now."
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Christoph considered her for a long solemn moment. "Yes, Yes you are that now. I wish you were not, and had more time to grow into the role, but life is what happens when one has other plans, and there is nothing to be done about it." Then he grinned, his own green eyes twinkling with merriment before continuing. "But you are still my beloved niece, and I am still your Uncle Chris, and that is not changing!" Both laughed and hugged each other even more tightly. After some moments, he put his niece down, and she ushered him to one of the chairs, in the room set around a low coffee table while calling for her automaton attendant Speisekammer, who appeared immediately when called, with a soft warble from the steam pipes and whistles that allowed him to vocalize. Kammer, as she had always called him, was her personal pantry attendant, and had been assigned to that role, the day she had been born and alongside her mother had prepared all her food and drink and assisted in serving her all her meals. As always Kammer was dressed in long buff coloured waist coat worn over a stiff laced collar and cuffed shirt, black breeches and tall black boots echoing the black, yellow and white in the Eggenberg heraldry. The full Eggenberg coat-of-arms in the form of a decorative badge was pinned to the black stock that covered his mechanical neck.
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"Tea or coffee, Uncle?" She asked with a newly accomplished and prim courtesy. Uncle Christoph indicated that coffee would be most welcome, to chase away the winter's cold. Kammer's single eye, or what appeared to be a single eye, guarded by a cage of three dark metal bars, as it dominated virtually the entire front of his tall, barrel shaped copper plated head flashed with a flickering amber light. His warbling voice sounded out phonetically and musically the words.
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'Sandwiches or cakes?'
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Both, Marie Luise and Uncle Christoph, said "Yes and Yes." at the same time, then looked at each other and suddenly burst out into peals of laughter. The automaton, waggled one of his pale gloved copper fingers at them in a wry gesture of admonishment, although he too was amused and pleased to see his mistress in something like a better mood then the glum or sullen silences that marked her temperament over the previous weeks. With a warble and hiss, and sundry clicks of his gears Kammer withdrew into his pantry domain and began preparing or assembling the requested items.Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-76931770656071166552022-08-03T14:56:00.005-04:002022-08-03T14:56:57.419-04:00A Ghost Amid Ghosts (Part II)<b>Schlossberg Fortress, Graz, Crownland of Styria, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, January 1866. </b>
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The Chapel master was a well preserved, fit seventy, having been born in 1796 into an Austro-Slovenian farming and merchant family from Marburg. He had joined the Imperial-Royal Army in 1814 as a common infantryman in Infantry Regiment "Fürstin von Eggenberg" Nr.45, and seen action in the 1813, 1814 and 1815-16 campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars. He had stayed in the army after his initial term of service, largely because he cheerfully admitted, he had nothing better to do and fought in the campaigns in Italy from the 1820s and 1830s on wards, and in the suppression of the Galician Polish Nobles and the Peasants Revolts of 1846. Following service in the suppression of the various Insurrections and revolts of 1848-49, the Chapel master had decided he was done with the life of a soldier. He had resolved to do something more productive or at least peaceful with the remainder of his life, so he retired from the Imperial and Royal Army in 1850 with the rank of major and decided to seek service in the Roman Catholic church as a professed priest. He had been fifty-four at the time, and while it was a surprise decision to his friends and family, it was not an unusual or rash one once they thought about it. He had recently become a widower, after many happy and devoted years of marriage, all of his children had grown up and were well on finding their own ways in the world. An idle, purposeless retirement did not attract or suit him and would put him into an early grave faster then anything else he might have considered.
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The Roman Catholic Seminary he had directed to had been a trifle surprised at him arriving on their door step to apply as a novitiate, but he had excelled at his studies and taken service as a parish priest in his native Marburg and in Graz were he had often served or resided during his army career. That had been his clerical career for a some years, before he had found himself, once again drafted into the Imperial and Royal Army, assigned to duty as an army chaplain with the Schlossburg garrison. Last year he had been assigned to take over the Memorial Chapel, after the previous incumbent had died unexpectedly.
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He observed the Dean coming towards him as he continued to water the roses and made sure each vase of flowers was presentable. The florists had done an excellent job with them, as they did with all the chapel's floral adornments. The Dean, shook his head and remarked inaudibly but sourly as the Deacon left the presence of the stranger at the chapel entrance in something of a huff, which was not all that unusual for him. The Deacon was a pompous, self-important ass, in the Dean's considered opinion. The Dean had trained many novice priests in his time in the Roman Catholic Church and did not miss much, despite his failing eyesight and partial deafness.
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The stranger went to the altar and made their reverences, placing a beautiful bouquet of flowers upon the steps, along with a multitude of bouquets and wreaths laid there by other visitors and knelt and prayed for a few minutes. Then they rose, with the aid of an ivory handled stick and turned to light a votive candle near the altar, he could see that it was a woman, by certain details of her clothing and movements. Neither he nor the Dean could make out her features, as they were shrouded by a scarf and hood, placing her face in darkness, except for the brief flare of light when she struck the candle alight. Her eyes flickered with a strange, luminous and unnatural inner light.Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-2887059727270722862022-06-24T14:24:00.003-04:002023-06-02T16:53:56.696-04:00Storm Clouds 1866 (Part IV)<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlKY1jOqONeLr3RSV35BwRNYn4bndGJGlUljFQi6tHRDoiIiaeSYAiCR2E6dA4mczV69G3_bgvXbsZCJ8kEhD6VFB7F2l1J1P6dHqoX8y5Qkcy-IJGsampU6k_WbupMjVuxOyQtdH771ZhwzUpHuetdmr1Gw8b8QcoShvrAccSRtA6X9ITUkPoufrC/s1024/AustroPrussianWar.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlKY1jOqONeLr3RSV35BwRNYn4bndGJGlUljFQi6tHRDoiIiaeSYAiCR2E6dA4mczV69G3_bgvXbsZCJ8kEhD6VFB7F2l1J1P6dHqoX8y5Qkcy-IJGsampU6k_WbupMjVuxOyQtdH771ZhwzUpHuetdmr1Gw8b8QcoShvrAccSRtA6X9ITUkPoufrC/s320/AustroPrussianWar.jpg"/></a></div>
<b>The Hofburg, City of Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire, January 1866.</b>
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Marie Luise, shifted her stance to one of attention, when a door hissed open behind the throne on it's raised platform. An ornately decorated automaton, emerged. It's armoured body was covered in jet black plating decorated with elaborate gold and silver filigree and etchings and baroque decorations and the full coat of arms of the Imperial and Royal Court. A hiss of surprise slipped from her lips, it was the Grand Marshall of the Mechanicals, Constructs and Automata of the Imperial and Royal Court! This automaton had served the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, for generations being set in place within the court of Charles the Great, known as Charlemagne to later generations. It has watched over many generations of emperors and empresses and their families: the Carolingian, Franconian, Saxon, Salian, Hohenstaufen, the Separate Emperors, Luxemburg, Habsburg , Wittelsbach and Habsburg-Lorraine dynasties, and if any single being could be said to totally and completely embody the grandeur, prestige and living history of the Imperial and Royal Court, the Grand Marshall was it.
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Even the human officials carried out it's merest instruction or order with a promptness bordering on sheer terror. Nothing that happened in the Imperial and Royal Court happened without the Grand Marshall, being made aware of it, no action could be taken on anything without it's carefully considered direction. An court official who dared challenge it, was ruthlessly dismissed, disgraced or removed, the Grand Marshall was omniscient, all knowing on all matters of court or ceremonial edict and protocol, and to be obeyed immediately without any question. Despite it's ominous reputation as the "eminence grise" of the Imperial and Royal Court, the Grand Marshall was actually universally esteemed and respected by the majority of the court staff and lower officials, who found the automaton to be courteous, and considered in thought and action. Only the higher human court officials, particularly the more stuffy and officious ones, who thought they were actually in charge, tended to run afoul of him, much to the rest of the court staff's gleeful if carefully concealed amusement.
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Marie Luise had heard all this from Archduke Karl and Archduke Johann, over the years of their long friendship, but she always felt just a little off balance, even awed, when meeting the ancient automaton. "He" was in many ways the stuff of legend and the ages, as few living things could be in these times. The Grand Marshall, was eternal, as no mere human was, he would go on forever unless felled by some freak accident or malfunction, like some living avatar, as did his fellow court automatons.
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"I bid you welcome to the Imperial and Royal Court, Your Serene Highness." His mechanical constructed voice was surprisingly soft but intensely clear, almost musical in tone. It was recorded that at least one attempt to assassinate an emperor in his present had been thwarted when, the Grand Marshall had screamed at him with such vehemence that the man's eardrums had explosively ruptured, allowing the emperor's attendants to seize the would be assassin.
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Marie Luise, bowed deeply in respect. The Grand Marshall's glowing eyes, seemed to twinkle at her from their darkened slots, one of it's gauntlet like hands reached out and touched the ivory handle of her interimstab and spoke.
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"There is no need for such ceremony, in private. We are equals here, you and I, Fürstin von Eggenberg. We are both dedicated servants of the Emperor."
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Suddenly, the Grand Marshall, straightened and swerved to his right his eyes flashing in response to some internal alarm or message sent to him through the special communications system built into the very walls of the palace, that the automatons used to communicate, a door opened to the side of the audience room adjacent to the throne. Two automatons entered almost as ornately decorated in snarling scarlet, gold and black as the Grand Marshall. They were we part of the Imperial Trabant Guard, the bodyguards of the Imperial family.
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A moment later, his Imperial, Royal and Apostolic Majesty Francis Joseph the First, Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, King of Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia and Lodomeria and Illyria, King of Venetia and Lombardia, King of Serbia and of Montenegro; King of Jerusalem etc., Archduke of Austria; Grand Duke of Tuscany and Cracow, Duke of Lorraine, of Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and of Bukovina; Grand Prince of Transylvania; Margrave of Moravia; Duke of Upper and Lower Silesia, of Modena, Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla, of Oświęcim, Zator and Ćeszyn, Friuli, Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and Zara (Zadar); Princely Count of Habsburg and Tyrol, of Kyburg, Gorizia and Gradisca; Prince of Trent (Trento) and Brixen; Margrave of Upper and Lower Lusatia and in Istria; Count of Hohenems, Feldkirch, Bregenz, Sonnenberg, etc.; Lord of Trieste, of Cattaro (Kotor), and over the Windic march; Grand Voivode of the Voivodship of Serbia, entered the room alone save for two more of his automaton Trabant Guards.
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Marie Luise, came to rigid attention beside the Grand Marshall, both bowed deeply to their master. Franz Josef, accepted their courtesy with quiet deliberation, then gestured for them to rise and join him. Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-30394580357358184502022-06-13T17:46:00.002-04:002022-06-16T12:21:42.519-04:00A Changing of the Guard (Part I)<b>City of Vienna, Austrian Empire, October 1809.</b>
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Oberst Freiherr von Bach, looked on with carefully concealed agitation, as the battalions of Line Infantry Regiment Nr.45 assembled in the parade square. He had taken command of the regiment back in 1806, when it's <i>inhabers</i> had in succession been, Feldmarschalleutnant Franz <i>Freiherr</i> von Lattermann and Feldmarschalleutnant Thierry <i>Freiherr</i> de Vaux. Now the regiment had a new inhaber, appointed by the Hofkriegsrat, and Bach was extremely anxious that the regiment, should make a good showing and impress it's new colonel-proprietor with it's professionalism. This inhaber-investiture and inspection, would after all take place under the eyes of the <i>Generalissimus</i>, the Generalfeldmarschall Archduke Karl himself.
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Four immaculately dressed and equipped infantry battalions, each of six fusilier companies were drawn up before him in the approved linear order formation, with the Leib-(demi) battalion of two companies of fusiliers and the regimental colour guard and band standing in the center of the line. With them also stood the entire regimental staff and the regimental gun company. The regimental companies of Grenadiers were drawn up on the right flank of the regiment, while the regiment's Freiwillige Jäger and Schützen companies were drawn up on the left. Behind these formations stood the regiment's two Reserve and two Ersatz battalions. Bach felt, despite his sense of apprehension, nothing but pride in his regiment, their wartime service and conduct had always been a credit to them and Bach for one felt fortunate to have command of them. That fact that this investiture would also save the regiment from the oblivion of being prematurely disbanded was another plus as far as he was concerned.
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Infantry Regiment Nr.45 had originally called Lower Austrian it's home recruiting ground but over time it had been shifted to Styria. Many of the soldiers currently in regiment were native to the city of Graz or it's adjacent administrative districts, although there were still a great many Lower Austrians within the ranks. Before the Second Treaty of Schönbrunn had been settled it had been decided by the Hofkriegsrat to switch the regiment's recruiting ground to one of the Italian speaking provinces of the empire. The regiment had even received two drafts of Italian recruits from the Austrian Adriatic coastal possessions to make up for war casualties. The preliminaries articles of the treaty had put paid to that however and Regiment Nr.45 had been one of several infantry regiments slated to be disbanded for reasons of national economy. Then there had come an unexpected and very much last minute reprieve.
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Von Bach ran his eyes over the serried ranks of his regiment again for the hundredth time looking for faults or imperfections. No, the men and women of the regiment had everything in order and had made a commendable effort to make sure not only their equipment and uniforms were smart and presentable but also their own persons. They looked splendid, von Bach thought approvingly. The only thing that put von Bach's and his regimental field officers teeth on edge was their soldiers headgear, or rather it's lack of uniformity. The fusiliers in the Leib-battalion, 1st and 2nd battalion still wore the 1789 pattern crested helmets, while the 3rd and 4th battalions wore the new 1806 pattern double peaked <i>shakos</i>. The reservists and pensioners of the reserve battalions wore the army's small, round fatigue cap with its double rows of piping and a yellow and black cockade on the front, while the regiment's two depot battalions still wore the pre-1798 <i>Casquet</i>! The grenadiers of course wore their tall and impressive bearskin mitre caps with engraved yellow metal front plates and the Jäger and Schützen had equipped themselves at their own expense with the new <i>Korsehut</i>, that had been prescribed to replace the green crested helmet or <i>casquets</i> for most light infantry units. Well, at least their appearance was uniform by companies and battalion, von Bach thought wryly.
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At least the other details of their uniforms and kit conformed to army regulations, although as was usual in any army it had taken months and years to catch up to the authorized decrees, regulations and statutes. All buttons and lace was in yellow or gold as rank required, while the new rank stars with six points, set into the front edges of their collars were in white bone, metal or embroidered celluloid again depending on rank. Regiment Nr.45 had originally had poppy red collars and cuffs with yellow buttons when it had been originally formed but gradually <i>Graf</i> Sonder had from 1770 on wards had issued a series of instructions to harmonize the facing colours to conform to specific branch of service colours within the Holy Roman Empire's multitude of military contingents. These made sense from a standing point of ease of unit identification and economy of materials for uniforms. Many units had been stubborn about adopting the decrees and statutes of course, regimental traditions died hard as always. <i>Graf</i> Sonder had won out over the opposition by sheer persistence and pervasiveness, and had cannily allowed the various units within the Reich-Armee to design their own regimental or battalion badges that reflected their traditions and past unit colours or lace patterns and some variation of the collar facings was still allowed as well to reflect this. Like most Austrian infantry regiments, Regiment Nr.45 had adopted green as their base facing colour for their uniforms collars, cuff and piping.
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The clatter of a great many iron shod hoofs on the pavement caused Oberst von Bach to swing around to see, the new arrivals. Archduke Karl, came through the parade ground's ornate stone and iron gates, flanked and trailed by his personal staff of generals, aides-de-camp, adjutants-generals and officer orderlies. Two mounted standard bearers rode close behind him, bearing the Archduke's ornate <i>Generalissimus</i> pattern command flag and his Arch ducal pattern House flag.
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The new <i>inhaber</i> to be, the Fürstin von Eggenberg rode on a splendid black charger beside Archduke Karl, as they approached the Oberst at a swift canter. She was accompanied by an aide-de-camp, a standard bearer who carried a carefully sheathed unit standard (their new Leibfahne, which would bear the Eggenberg family's full coat-of-arms, he surmised) and an automaton attendent-postilion. She wore the white coat, with the ornate red and gold collar and cuffs of her newly appointed rank of feldzeugmeister, with her tunic decorated with the medals and decorations of past and present conflicts. Both Archduke Karl and the Fürstin wore the relatively plain but smart grey <i>oberrock</i> coats over their white uniforms. Von Bach, brought himself sternly to task, as they slowed to a stop before him and his deputy officer and his regimental adjutant and his senior <i>Moniteur-Bureau</i> officer. All four regimental officers saluted crisply the man who was their military commander-in-chief and the woman, who was very shortly to be come their honorary commander and colonel-proprietor. Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7183009766255030430.post-13561908288748666832022-06-09T18:11:00.005-04:002023-06-02T16:53:25.137-04:00Storm Clouds 1866 (Part III)<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgptngK7ORB6uSTGuoqgNUMrT8cclFAr510Y1r-03KkaR_v63KQT0HSSusq2p8ZGEioHV1zHJS1DrrTDlBBaBvXyoy1AbBJsp89TnPu57YjahGVpnPhJwKK9GGVB07-L7zzzcPP8oLe00A8bs8kUTWLaS98fIb5ebV3uhFLXLMEauu8PQD-6q6VvP3/s1024/AustroPrussianWar.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgptngK7ORB6uSTGuoqgNUMrT8cclFAr510Y1r-03KkaR_v63KQT0HSSusq2p8ZGEioHV1zHJS1DrrTDlBBaBvXyoy1AbBJsp89TnPu57YjahGVpnPhJwKK9GGVB07-L7zzzcPP8oLe00A8bs8kUTWLaS98fIb5ebV3uhFLXLMEauu8PQD-6q6VvP3/s320/AustroPrussianWar.jpg"/></a></div>
<b>The Hofburg, City of Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Jan 1866.</b>
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Marie Luise, stood alone in the audience chamber of the Hofburg, the enormous collection of palace-residences, libraries, treasuries, chapels, theaters, ball rooms, barracks, offices, chanceries, and galleries, riding schools and mews which stood at the center of the city of Vienna, and formed the literal and figurative center of the Imperial and Royal Court. It had stood and grown with the centuries serving as the official capital and administrative center of the Holy Roman Empire, and it's successors the Austria and later Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was the official winter residence and workplace of her sovereign and master, the Kaiser Franz Josef I.
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She wore the full dress tunic of a generalfeldmarshall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A long white tunic, trimmed at collar, cuff and lapels with scarlet facings and it's unique wavy patterned and oak leafed gold lace. Her lower torso and upper legs were sheathed in scarlet pants with broad gold zig-zag pattern lace Lampassen. Tall black riding boots, polished to a mirror like finish, covered her lower legs and feet. The Feldbinde -- the gold yellow and black sash -- of an Imperial and Royal officer surrounded her delicate waist.
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A decoratively embellished military sword with and ornate semi-basket hilt hung at her left hip, while an interimstab of polished wood with a ivory handle , the everyday version of her more elaborate red velvet covered field marshal's baton, was clasped in her hands. It served as both a symbol of her high office and as a useful walking stick. The gold and black cords of a Habsburg officer's fist strap, used to secure the bearer's weapon to their wrist, were fixed to the base of the Ivory handle. To any onlooker she would have presented a striking figure.
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Her tunic bore a colourful array of military orders and decorations from over a dozen countries, not just those of her native Austria-Hungary, for her service had been a long and distinguished one, although not devoid of controversy either in her personal life or her professional one. While Marie Luise, had had many friends, and not a few admirers, she had also acquired in her life, the typical legion of detractors, professional or mortal personal enemies, as well as self-serving hangers-on and sycophants that surrounded anyone who possessed either wealth, substantive political power or success in this life.
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The Kaiser, had asked to see her privately through her friend, Baird de Auchmeddan, he wished to discuss the tense relations between Austria and Prussia and get her personal views directly, away from the interference of his various staffs, advisors and cabinets. He also wanted to question her about the possibility of taking a senior if not the most senior military command in the event, that the unstable situation within the German Confederation did actually come to a violent breech.
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She had come to Vienna, shortly after receiving her guests in her palace in Graz, to gauge the situation for herself at the political and administrative center of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. What she had discovered since arriving and taking part in the social and court life of the capital, had not left her particularly reassured. Marie Luise, chided herself sternly, pessimism was as much a part of Austrian national character as anything else these days.
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Marie Luise, stifled the impulse, to tap her stick against the floor. Her other hand was preoccupied, with holding her green feather topped bicorne hat. Patience had never come to her easily at any stage in her long life. She however did not anticipate being kept waiting for long, Franz Josef, was one of the most courteous and punctual of monarchs, an amused smiled touched her lips, and he hated wasting time, even more then she did.Sir Leo Stanley Worthing-Topperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758775870129153245noreply@blogger.com0