Episode 120: Toward the Rhine (3)
Episode 120: Toward the Rhine (3)
“…So, you’re saying France currently has no naval power it can send into the Mediterranean…”
“Yes. None at all. If you’re truly curious, you can visit the Port of Toulon yourself and confirm it. My hometown is right next to Toulon, so you can even sleep over at my family home while you’re at it.”
“J-just a moment, Your Excellency. Let me… think…”
“Of course.”
I may not have had my nose pierced and I wasn’t a shaved-head monk either, but I was plenty generous.
Arms crossed, I sat and watched in real time as the British ambassador’s face—so relaxed just moments ago—turned red from sheer fluster.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. If you want some benefit, you pay the corresponding cost.
Kid, if something comes to you, something has to go back out. That’s how it works.
No, Mr. So-and-so. It’s a group project, and you vanish until presentation day? Are you kidding me right now…
Comrade. Everyone else went to work at the collective farm—why are you still here? Don’t tell me you’ve got another stomachache. What, a stomachache for a full week? You bastard—want to go to the Aoji coal mine?
From the famous economist Milton Friedman, to our ancestors, to ordinary college students, and even illegal armed groups that worship North Korea—if all humanity shares one value across age, gender, and ideology, it’s this: people hate freeloaders.
And you British want to lift a finger for nothing? No. Absolutely not.
If we’re busting our asses on land, you should be busting your asses at sea too, shouldn’t you? You’ve got money coming out of your ears—where do you get off eating for free and acting smug about it?
“Duke. Your mind must already be complicated enough right now, but may I, despite my rudeness, make a proposal?”
“…What proposal, Your Excellency?”
The Duke of Sutherland leaned toward me as he asked.
“First, let me ask you one thing. In my view, if Russia enters the Mediterranean, that won’t be comfortable for Britain either. Am I wrong?”
“Mm…”
The duke only let out a wordless groan.
Come on. We’ve already seen everything there is to see—why pretend? Even a child knows this.
France is a continental power. To France, the sea is merely a route where money comes and goes. If you blockade the sea, you can damage France’s economy, but you can’t choke it to death.
But if the sea routes of a maritime nation like Britain were blocked? For Britain, the sea is a lifeline tied to the nation’s survival. Britain would be getting strangled by a rope.
And in the first place, Britain’s power to shake Europe—its navy and its economy—both come from the sea.
By means of overwhelming naval power across the Atlantic and North Sea, the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, Britain secures stable trade; through that stable trade, the financial industry of the City of London develops; with that developed finance, Britain invests across the world to cement hegemony—this is Britain’s foreign policy itself.
Of course, if that were all, there’d be no reason for France, Spain, Germany, and even Russia to despise Britain as uncultured pirate bastards.
The British navy becomes a warship when it passes next to its own merchant ships—and a pirate ship when it passes next to someone else’s.
Filthy bastards. The fact that one Nations of Isaac cargo ship never returned to the Port of Le Havre—your doing too, wasn’t it?
Anyway, for Britain the sea is basically an umbilical cord—a strategic point among strategic points. Something that must not be taken, and must not be cut.
So if a Russian navy might enter the Mediterranean? If I were British, I’d lose my mind.
“Duke. Let’s be blunt—the Mediterranean is already cramped even with the countries that each have their seat at the table, isn’t it? The Ottomans in the east, Italy and France in the center, Spain in the west.”
“…I won’t deny it, Your Excellency.”
“Then perhaps we don’t need any new participants at all.”
The Duke of Sutherland’s eyes wavered for a moment.
Time to throw the winning hand. The customer looked jittery—no way I’d let that slip.
“Advance-deploy Britain’s Mediterranean Fleet as far as Malta.”
“…I must have misheard, Your Excellency?”
“You’re looking at me like I’m insane.”
“…My apologies. It’s the nature of the proposal…”
Malta.
A huge island planted in the middle of the Mediterranean, and a strategic point of strategic points—capable of projecting influence across the entire sea.
“…From France’s standpoint, an increase in British naval presence in the Mediterranean can’t be beneficial, Your Excellency.”
“The Mediterranean? Well… wouldn’t you need a way to stop it before you can fume or grind your teeth about it?”
I shrugged and spoke casually.
We might have ships, but training and educating the people to operate them would take forever. And even if we rebuilt, the skill level wouldn’t be what it once was—at least not at first.
They say when a person runs into something impossible, they reach enlightenment.
The Mediterranean? Who knows. We don’t. You block them or you don’t. The thirsty one digs the well.
“…Is this proposal yours personally, or is it France’s official proposal?”
“Either way, I don’t think it matters to you.”
“….”
At my words, the Duke of Sutherland shut his mouth.
Now that he knew France’s navy was a hollow shell, Britain couldn’t just sit and watch Russia’s navy come out into the Mediterranean.
Sometimes ignorance is bliss, isn’t it?
“Should I give you time to think, Duke?”
“If you could give me a little… I’d be grateful, Your Excellency.”
“I’ll smoke for a moment. Think while I do.”
I took out my pipe and matches and lit it.
One draw.
Then another.
As I drew nicotine again and again, the office where the two of us sat became so quiet that if someone were eavesdropping outside, they might hear the tobacco in my pipe crackling as it burned.
“…Duke, are you still not done?”
The leaves were already burned through—was he still thinking?
“Whew… I can’t guarantee it, but…”
“Then don’t do it, Duke. I want a ‘categorical yes,’ not ‘maybe I can.’”
What Talleyrand said: when a diplomat says “yes,” it means “I’ll consider it.” And “I’ll consider it” means “no.”
You barged into a business and now you want to walk out without paying a single coin? I heard once it costs a hundred million won to have one meal with Warren Buffett—so hand over something equivalent.
“…Categorically, we will accept Your Excellency’s proposal.”
“Good, Duke.”
We clasped hands.
[June 27, 1791. The weather is quite fine today. Clouds occasionally cover the blazing summer sun, so it’s fortunate that both the soldiers and I can move relatively well.
In the afternoon, under orders from headquarters, I went to a village where some French civilians live and served as an interpreter. The French said our allied force was defeated near Amiens by Colonel Napoleon Bonaparte and Finance Minister Guillaume de Toulon.
It is good that we pushed Lafayette back and took Valmy, but at this rate, the direction of the war’s outcome is uncertain.]
[June 30, 1791. The sun beat down all day. Because I suffered a light injury, Sergeant Havert—assigned as my escort—walked with me, and we had no choice but to sweat buckets in the heat for the entire day as we pushed onward.
It feels as though it took months to come from Metz to here, and yet now we must retrace that path. It gives me much to think about.
Did the Faust in my writing also walk such a road in purgatory? Though the Elector and I failed under oppressors, the French still seem to have succeeded in driving those oppressors back.
Thinking that way, it seems not I, but that Finance Minister Guillaume, is the one like Faust.]
[July 4, 1791. Enemies surge at us from all sides as we retreat. There are soldiers in uniform, of course, but it seems there are also militia in civilian clothing, clutching rifles and charging at us.
The road to Metz is not far now, but this resistance appears to have been unexpected. Duke of Brunswick seems deeply worried.]
[July 24, 1791. The weather is tolerable. More importantly, the Prussian army yielded Metz and withdrew into the territory of its ally, the Holy Roman Empire. The French likely cannot pursue further. If the French cross the border, it would be a grave provocation.
In one sense, I cannot suppress my regret.
They are French, yes, but if these German oppressors and tyrants are defeated by them, then perhaps the ending of this novel may be, in its own way, an acceptable one.]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the Prussian army’s war correspondent, ended his diary there and laid down his pen.
But once Goethe stopped writing, the tent—where only his scratching pen had been heard—fell quiet again, and an unpleasant stillness settled over it.
Was the stillness unpleasant in itself, or was stillness born of defeat always unpleasant?
The soldiers did nothing all day but mindlessly clean their muskets, and no one wanted to break the silence.
The officers were worse. Officers who had rushed out driven by heroic zeal to inherit Frederick the Great’s achievements all suffered injuries—each one somewhere—from French militia bullets or blades, and they inevitably grew quiet in the face of a reality unlike what they had dreamed.
The worst atmosphere belonged to the mercenaries.
Everyone knew Prussia’s finances were ruined by wars of conquest, but the mercenaries joined this war because if they attacked France—the fattest land in the world—and won, they could gain immense wealth.
Yet as they passed village after village they couldn’t even loot, retreating again and again after successive defeats, their eyes grew colder.
Probably because they were thinking they might not get paid.
Goethe shifted his gaze and stared steadily at the headquarters, where the lights still had not gone out.
Since withdrawing into the Holy Roman Empire’s territory, Duke of Brunswick kept gathering officers at headquarters and pressing them about the delay of Russian intervention.
Can Russia even come all the way here?
When will the Russian army arrive?
The French army will soon come crashing in.
Only the young company-grade officers were left to suffer.
“Mm.”
Goethe swallowed a groan.
It looked pitiable—yet on the other hand, perhaps it was also for the best.
Though Goethe himself and Elector Maximilian had failed, if it was Guillaume, perhaps he truly could gift the Germans freedom, equality, and fraternity.
The next day, Goethe added one more line to his diary.
[July 25, 1791. The French army crossed the border.]