Dewey Lambdin - A Jester’s Fortune

Admiral Sir John Jervis did send a squadron of six frigates into the Adriatic in early 1796, under a Captain Taylor. And yes, the authorities at Trieste supplied a major portion of the Imperial Austrian Navy its seagoing budget. They did reduce it, 'round the time I cited, and Captain Tay-lors squadron was there, probably doing their work for them. After all, why buy the cow when you can get the milk free? That Major Simpson, by the way, was a real person, with a thankless chore, and abysmal career prospects. I reduced the number to four, to make the task assigned even harder to accomplish; and it's easier to deal with three other captain characters than five, especially characters who have been saddled with Commander Alan Lewrie s antics for more than a Dog-Watch.

Venice and the Serene Republic went under soon after this novel ends. The Silver Age of Venice by Maurice Rowdon depicts a state gone numb, feeble, toothless, and self-absorbedly sybaritic, depending on its past glories, the hollow shells of naval supremacy and their thoroughly professional army. In later years, Venice hired its armies from the Dutch, at exorbitant costs, which had already bankrupted the Republic. It was as if everyone in Venice was stumbling round on Prozac or Ecstasy.

The garrison at Corfu with its two officers, their servants and a sergeant or two was fact; as was the shoddy state of the islands' governor when Lewrie was dined in. Those anecdotes were in Martin Young's The Traveller's Guide to Corfu. The useless state of the once powerful Venetian Navy, the conditions at the Arsenal, the laid-up ships on foreign stations, were also true.

Through late 1796 and early 1797, Napoleon had defeated Wurmser a third and last time, conquering all of Austrian Italy. He then beat the stuffing out of another "brilliant" Austrian General, Alvinscy, got through the Alpine passes in December, marched through Leoben and got to Semmering, right on the outskirts of Vienna, which was helpless with her main armies still on the Rhine. His back was covered, just as he'd covered his rear before this offensive, by reducing the Papal States one more time, and destroying the only army left below the Adige River.

Napoleon marched into mainland Venetian territories. Citizens in Verona rose up and rioted, killing French troops. Napoleon sent ships to the port of Quieto, to attack a few timidly sheltering Austrian vessels, violating Venetian neutrality. The Venetians were still comatose, and didn't even make a peep of complaint. Mainland citizens, and nobles who hated the French, offered to raise thousands of eager volunteers if given arms. The Senate, the Council of Three, and the poor last Doge refused them. Finally, Napoleon sent a frigate into the Lagoon itself, behind the Lido where foreign warships were banned. The Venetians, at last, opened fire on her and took her, killing her captain among others. And Napoleon had his "legitimate" casus belli to march in and take over.

The Doge's ornate gilded barge, Bucintoro, from which he married the city to the sea each year, was hauled into St. Mark's and torched, along with that ancient roll of aristocratic lineages, the Golden Book. The nobles complained but were helpless. For a city-state that declared itself a republic, it wasn't very republican. Rich men made the rules, nobles held all offices, and the common folk had sunk into non-voting, "bread-and-circuses" sloth long before. Within days of the French takeover, and the later cession of Venice to Austria in the Treaty of Campo Formio, the rtdottos were just as gay, the musicians just as dulcet, the gondoliers just as busy serenading lovers, and the love affairs just as tedious. Ruled by their own nobility, or by foreign overlords, most Venetians probably didn't even take notice of a change. They still had their operas, comedies, balls, festas, their carnivals; still had their mythic history of greatness for consolation. There were left their musicians, poets, painters, sculptors, singers or actors, their masks and wine. And, of course, they were already used to hordes of foreign tourists!

Austria got mainland Venice and the city itself as a sop for the loss of Milan and Lombardy. France took Venetian Dalmatia and the Ionian Islands; a stretch from Hungarian Fiume at the Istrian Peninsula down as far south as Ragusa and Cattaro. In point of fact, after he'd dealt with Italians for over a year, Napoleon wrote that the Ionian Islands were his best bargain, and that all the rest of Italy wasn't worth the life of a single French grenadier!

The Directory in Paris was in its "classical hero" mania, aping Rome and Greece, so they called their new conquests in the Balkans the II-lyrian Provinces, in the old Roman style. What Napoleon made of having to squat on all those termagant Croats, Serbs, Bosnians and such is not recorded. He sent engineers to build them some roads, but sooner or later they turned ungrateful, naturally. Good roads made it easier for enemies to trundle over and give their enemies a good bash-or vice versa.

There are no true, continual villains in the Balkans, the former Yugoslavia. Equally stupid would be to think that there are true, perpetual and long-suffering victims with clean hands deserving of sympathy, either. Allow me to recommend Balkan Ghosts by Robert D. Kaplan, now in paperback (Vintage Press). It was there I found the tortures and unique methods of murder which Dragan Mlavic employed during his "games." Kaplan traveled the entire region, as well as Romania, Bulgaria, Moldovia, Macedonia, and Greece. Talleyrand, Metternich, Bismarck… they all called it "the powder keg of Europe." Still is, have you noticed? It was ruled in large part by every ethnic or religious contender at one time, its every potato-patch squabbled over by the descendants of somebody's umpteenth great-grandfather, back when "we had an empire," 'til those (fill in the blank) bastards come an' stole it! The peoples of the area have quite cheerfully despised their neighbours, time out of mind, and have delighted in taking a holy whack at 'em whenever they thought they could get away with it. And I doubt a millennium of U.N. overseeing, a thousand years of "sweetness, light and Jeffersonian Democracy" lectures will change things. The only times the strife is at a low simmer is when they've been sat upon (rather brutally, too!) by a king who took as little guff as a Vlad the Impaler, Ottoman Turk generalissimos like Sultan Murad or his successor after Kossovo, the one known as Bayezit "The Thunderer"-a Marshal Tito or a would-be Stalin.

In World War I, it was the Serbian Secret Service who arranged the assassination of the Austrian archduke and his wife at Sarajevo. They were rightly portrayed as villains and murderers. But, when the Serbs took the first invading Austro-Hungarian army apart like a rottweiler on a diet, they were then praised by the West as valiant, patriotic little heroes! Lately, they're villains again, neo-Nazi thugs resurrecting genocide to "ethnically cleanse" every last potato-patch they could lay claim to by any stretch of the imagination.

But it's awfully easy to forget World War II, when the Serbs were Tito's partisans, lauded in the world press as hardy mountain and forest fighters (no matter many were inconveniently Communist), and the Croatian Ustashe gleefully hunted them down, as German auxiliaries, to "kill a Commie-Serb for Christ" and eliminate all "South Slavs" not of the Catholic faith. Awfully easy to forget, too, that Himmler bent a few of his own ethnic rules and enlisted (wonder of wonders!) Slavic Muslims. There were the 13th Gebirgs (mountain) Division "Handschar," and 23rd Gebirgsdivision "Kama" made from Bosnians or Herzegovi-nians-as well as the 21st Division "Skanderberg" (Albanische #1) of Albanian Muslim stock-in the Waffen SS! While never approaching the efficiency of an Auschwitz, the concentration camps in Yugoslavia exterminated more than their fair share of men, women and children from both sides-"just so they could go to heaven"-including Jews and Gypsies, and pretty much anybody else they didn't like.

It's been said the best thing might be to fence it in and let Ted Turner sell pay-per-view on CNN- Nightly Bang-Bang in place of Larry King. Or, call it Crossfire -and really, really mean it!

Napoleon's First Italian Campaign was a shock to the world, at that time, a rude violation of all the dearly cherished Rules of War. He did the impossible, like Hannibal, like Stonewall Jackson during his Shenandoah Valley campaign, or like Nathan Bedford Forrest… well, just about everywhere and anytime Forrest fought! No one had ever demanded messages back-and-forth to be dated and timed to the hour, massed guns in huge, death-dealing batteries, scattered his army over so many approaches to spread confusion and doubt to mask his intentions, then at the last moment concentrate, out-flank, out-march and, as my old ROTC instructors used to exhort, "kick ass and take names." Trapped between three or four or five attacking columns, Napoleon whirled to whip each in turn, then rout the lot. He was never beaten, because he would not admit he was beaten, and always found a way to punch back or exploit.

For a man who never really understood the sea (though he had at one time considered a naval career before obtaining entry to a French Army school), he knew that, could he retake his beloved Corsica, that would be it for the Royal Navy in the Med. With Spain in, and her Port Mahon in the Balearics denied Jervis, with Elba and Capraia tiny isles too far from succour and easily starved out, Jervis had no choice but to retire, ceding command of the seas. It was after the first of the year, in 1797, before Commodore Nelson successfully evacuated Capraia and Elba, after he'd convinced the muleheaded senior Army officer to obey Admiral Jervis s orders, and that-specific written orders to him from Horse Guards in London or not-it was "time to trot."

There is Felix Markham's elegant little study, Napoleon, for an overview, but I much prefer Napoleon by Vincent Cronin (HarperCollins) for more small details of the man, the people around him, and all the "dish" of his personal life. Cronin shows us the boy, then the cadet; the young man, not that emperor-to-be frozen in stone; or, as Tom Hulce said as Mozart regarding tired old classical opera themes in Amadeus, not someone "shitting marble."

Napoleon really was "bat-shit" for his "incomparable" Josephine, truly unaware of her many affairs for many years, nor realising just how cold she really was. Her stay in the country, while Lieutenant Murat cooled his heels, was to recover from an abortion, so she wouldn't present Paul Barras of the Directory, or Lieutenant Hippolyte Charles, with embarrassment.

Poor bastard-Bonaparte never had a speck of luck with wives. I've had two, so I can sympathise. He never got the license plate from that coal truck that ran him over when it came to women. I've been sold too, of course- and turned down more times than a bed sheet, before, between, and after! Philosophically, we must trust that revered Southern sage of old-Gomer Pyle-who oft has said, "Surprise, surprise!"

Admiral Jervis might have fared slightly better had he received the promised reenforcement from Admiral Mann-eight ships of the line plus attendant frigates. Mann dithered so long off Portugal that he'd eaten up most of his stores, then held a hand-wringing conference with his senior captains and decided it was too late in the year to stay on-station, Jervis likely didn't need him, his ships weren't tiptop any longer, his toes most likely hurt… so off he went for England, without telling anyone! Once there, he was ordered to strike his flag; and forget about being invited to dinner on Trafalgar Day, too, most-like! But it was too late to scrape up replacements and get them to the Med.