Chapter 180: Corsica (3)
Chapter 180: Corsica (3)
August 1793.
The day after Napoleon’s speech.
On Monday morning, the Port of Toulon was already packed with people.
“3rd Company, 1st Platoon—assemble!”
“From now on gather in front of the platoon leader and unpack your gear. …If any bastard packed it half-assed, I’ll give you exactly ten minutes. Form up in full combat gear immediately. Move!”
“Because of the moisture when we cross the sea, the chamber could have problems. Stuff cloth into the muzzle beforehand. Understood?”
Infantrymen gripping their muskets as they prepared to board the ships.
“Field guns this way! Howitzers to that warship!”
“One, two, three—heave!”
“Strip the ammunition depot of every spare supply!”
Artillerymen tying ropes to cannons weighing hundreds of kilograms, pushing and pulling them into place.
“Sergeant! What about the horses?”
“Horses? What horses? Didn’t we load all of ours already?”
“I mean the horses these Poles will ride.”
“Proszę, dbaj o nasze słowa.”
“Damn it, what the hell are they saying? Can’t you speak French?”
“Przepraszam?”
“…This is driving me insane.”
Even the cavalry struggled somewhat… with communication.
More than twenty thousand people gathered together like this. It was quite a spectacle.
The only painful part was that everything these people would use starting today would come out of the national treasury.
I had worked so hard patching up those ragged warehouses!
Cannonballs and bullets were the basics. Powder to fire them. And since soldiers could not fight on empty stomachs, food as well.
Ugh. Just thinking about it made my head, chest, and stomach ache.
Were the four years I spent as Finance Minister ordinary time?
The administrative departments begged for money like baby birds crying for food from their mother.
And the economic idiots in the legislature spouted nonsense about how printing money would magically create wealth.
At least Deputy Robespierre was the only one in the legislature whose brain worked properly when it came to economics. It was fortunate I had crammed economic knowledge into his head for several months earlier.
If that had not happened, some insane policy like a “maximum price law” might have passed the assembly, and I would probably have already hanged myself with a rope in the Finance Minister’s office.
Sob.
If soldiers on the battlefield heard me complaining like this, they would probably find it ridiculous.
But if anyone were locked in that Finance Minister’s office in Versailles for just a week and forced to wrestle with numbers, they would understand my feelings at least a little.
“The more bullets we fire, the fewer of our soldiers die. Right?”
“That’s why I’m only complaining out loud. Sigh… this cigarette tastes bitter.”
“Cigarettes are supposed to be bitter.”
“Damn it. I’m really miserable.”
I flicked the half-smoked cigarette toward the sea.
Napoleon looked so cold.
Was he sulking because I had made him do some work? But encouraging troops was supposed to be his job as the commander anyway.
Besides, was it really so wrong for someone to say honestly that things were hard?
Anyone listening would think I had told Napoleon we lacked bullets and should launch banzai charges or march forward eating grass by the roadside.
…Still, money—money was desperately necessary.
If we had mountains of money, we could pour bullets endlessly into the battlefield.
Everyone would kneel at my feet begging for the blessings of wealth.
Ah! Why was my second life in eighteenth-century France instead of the cheat-code United States of the twenty-first century?
Grinding my teeth as I cursed the endless hell of finance I was trapped in, Napoleon—who had been as cold as an ice bird in a canyon just moments earlier—rolled his eyes and tapped my shoulder.
Maybe he had some sense of guilt.
“Well… money comes and goes, doesn’t it? Don’t worry about it too much.”
“Hearing that from you feels strangely unsettling.”
“Wait, are you sulking?”
…Sulking? Me?
Guillaume de Toulon, the sole rational being in this chaotic eighteenth century?
No. Not sulking at all.
“Brat, you’re definitely sulking. Does it bother you that there’s no source of money?”
“Hah. Just wait until you retire. I’ll appoint you Deputy Finance Minister and drag you into the office.”
“Try it if you can. I’ll just stay in uniform until I die.”
A man with shining stars on his shoulders and the title of general—how could he be this childish?
His mind was clearly still stuck in 1784 when we first met.
I silently vowed that at the next assembly session I would propose a mandatory retirement age for soldiers.
Napoleon then brought a chessboard from the corner and placed it in front of me.
“What’s this, chess?”
“Come on. Let’s play a game and cheer you up.”
First the poison, then the antidote. He was like a classic tsundere.
“What? Want to lose again like old times?”
“What nonsense? You were the one who lost.”
“Sure, sure.”
I glanced at Napoleon skeptically.
Because Napoleon, frankly, was terrible at games.
You know those players in strategy games who always try cheesy rush tactics?
The kind who ignore the “no rush for ten minutes” rule and charge in with some cheap trick—and then collapse if the trick fails.
That was Napoleon.
Worse, he only knew one trick.
Whenever we played chess, he insisted on taking the white pieces every time.
Pathetic.
“Checkmate.”
“W-what? How did this happen?”
“How? Because you’re terrible.”
My bishop struck down Napoleon’s king.
Napoleon’s face twisted, while mine brightened.
I had spent four years at the academy learning how to block his cheesy tactics.
If I still lost after that, I wouldn’t be human.
“Damn broken game.”
“Then why do you keep playing it?”
“Oh yes, our great teacher Guillaume is always right.”
Ah, this was the best part.
Watching the loser grumble was half the fun of playing.
But as soon as my mood improved after crushing Napoleon completely, the thought of the treasury draining in real time made me gloomy again.
Damn it.
Even if I didn’t want to think about it, I couldn’t stop once I sat in this seat.
Eventually I leaned back into my chair and asked Napoleon.
“Seriously, isn’t there any way to bring in money?”
“…If you’re going to worry about something useless, play another game. If not chess, what about cards?”
“Games, huh…”
I suddenly stood up.
“If you were an ordinary citizen, what would you say if taxes increased?”
“Do you want to go to the guillotine?”
“Right? I’d go to the guillotine.”
“Of course.”
“But what if it were an indirect tax?”
“…What’s that?”
“Instead of collecting taxes directly, the state takes a small cut whenever someone buys certain goods. Not essential goods, of course.”
“Hm.”
Napoleon rubbed his chin.
“I don’t think the backlash would be that big.”
“And what if the state also produced those goods?”
“Then you’d collect revenue twice.”
“Actually, when I was in Britain, I designed a few board games. Someone in that industry told me they could make serious money.”
“…Oh.”
People might starve without bread.
But no one starves because they’re bad at games.
The poor struggling to survive would never buy board games.
The taxes would instead be paid by people wealthy enough to enjoy entertainment.
All that remained was creating addictive games that could steadily generate money.
Fortunately, I still vaguely remembered the card games that drained our childhood allowances and the board games we always brought to university trips.
Napoleon went to meet with his staff to prepare for tomorrow’s landing operation.
My temporary office grew quiet, filled only with the scratching sound of my pen.
After reviewing calculations and finishing a month-long logistics plan for our army, a soldier who had been standing silently near the door approached.
“Ahem… Your Excellency? Do you have a moment?”
“Captain Villeneuve? What is it?”
Pierre-Charles Villeneuve, acting rear admiral of the navy.
Commander Tréville of the Naval Defense Force had scraped together the last remaining strength of the French navy and sent the ship of the line Guillaume Tell from Marseille under his command.
Apparently, aside from Commander Tréville himself, Villeneuve was the only officer in France who had actually commanded a ship in battle.
Guillaume Tell.
Why Tréville chose a ship whose name overlapped with mine among so many vessels, I had no idea.
Maybe it was a subtle attempt to pressure me for naval funding.
Look, Your Excellency! A ship with the same name as you is fighting gloriously! Doesn’t that make you want to pour money into the navy?
Well, sorry—but in about a hundred years iron-clad warships with massive engines would appear.
Within twenty or thirty years there would probably be steam-powered warships.
I had no intention of pouring money into ships that would soon be obsolete.
But what Villeneuve said was not a request for funding.
“Um… must the French navy participate in this battle?”
“…What?”
“With only a single ship of the line and no supporting vessels, what can we accomplish? Preserving our strength might be wiser…”
What was this man talking about?
Even a small contribution to battle made a huge difference.
Right now our soldiers were fired up and did not care whether they rode British ships or French ones.
But once that enthusiasm cooled, complaints would surely arise.
The French were famous for their pride.
“I refuse your request. Return and inspect your sailors until departure.”
“But—”
“Rear Admiral Villeneuve.”
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
I set my pen down loudly.
“Let me ask one thing. Are you truly a French soldier?”
“…I misspoke.”
Villeneuve lowered his head.
I waved him away without another word.
Fortunately, he quickly fled the room.
Strange.
At the military academy I learned to advance without fear before the enemy—not to develop some strange defeatist mentality.
Did naval academies teach something different from ours?
No matter how I thought about it, that British naval officer Nelson seemed like a political soldier obsessed with pleasing superiors.
And the man representing the French navy was saying, “We’re weak anyway, so maybe we shouldn’t fight.”
Napoleon would command on land, so we probably wouldn’t lose there.
But at sea…
Could we really defeat the Russians?
All I could do was sigh.