the Mersians, like all right-thinking Terrans, want a lasting peace;
so they would probably prefer the Pretender, Magnusson, as Emperor;
so they will not take advantage of any opportunity created for them by his rebellion.
Targovi replies:
"'Assuredly that is what learned academics would say.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER THIRTEEN, p. 328.
Wrong, Targovi! Assuredly that is what some learned academics would say! In my experience, academics are just as polarized as everyone else on controversial issues like Israel or Russia. However, Wo Lia is quoting media commentaries on Daedalus, the planet controlled by Magnusson's Navy personnel, where, of course, no anti-Merseian academics will be interviewed or even quoted.
When the Magnusson Rebellion has failed, Merseian agencies begin to plan what to feed the Imperial academies, religions and media. This sounds as if academics, clergy and journalists can be expected to swallow and regurgitate whatever propaganda is fed to them but, of course, not all of them will do so.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Well, in Targovi's defense, I would suggest he was being sardonic! An intelligent being like him would concede not all academics, clergy, journalists, etc., would fall for Merseian propaganda. In fact, Flandry mentioned to Magnusson himself how one of his companions was a hardheaded scholar not in the least deceived by the Merseians.
Sean
Napoleon Bonaparte was asked once if he wanted war. He replied: "Am I an imbecile? Of course I don't want war. I want -victory-."
Arms merchants don't want war. They want profits!
Dear Mr. Stirling,
But the only way Napoleon could achieve "victory" was thru war. Because most of Europe was profoundly, determinedly opposed to falling under French domination. No matter how many battle Napoleon won, he failed to permanently break the wills of the Spanish, British, Russians, Austrians, Prussians, etc.
Sean
Paul: Actually, what arms manufacturers like, from a profit-making point of view, is an arms race, not war. War is unpredictable, and its consequences are usually/often bad for people with large fortunes. Especially -big- wars.
Krupp didn't end up doing well out of either World War, for instance.
Large peacetime orders are best. Being on the winning side is second-best, but only likely to yield a satisfactory outcome if the war isn't too much of a strain on the country's finances and resources.
It's notable that every stock market on earth crashed in hysterical panic in 1914(*); the war took even the international bankers utterly by surprise, though they had more information than most. But they deeply, deeply didn't -want- it to be true!
The only country that did really well economically out of WW1 was Japan; but Japan managed to limit its liability sharply, making substantial gains at minimal cost, snapping up German territory, and taking over markets for textiles and other goods in the Far East which were never recovered by Britain and the other European powers.
(Only vigorous diplomatic pressure by the US and Britain prevented them from grabbing off the Russian far eastern possessions too and from making even more demands on China than they did -- I've been researching the period for my "Black Chamber" series. The ambitions that Japan tried to realize in the 1930's and 40's weren't anything new.)
-That's- the way to make a bundle off a war; let others fight, keep your investment in direct conflict with other Great Powers limited, and make off with the boodle while everyone else is otherwise engaged.
Britain managed to do that in a lot of European wars, but alas not in the 20th century.
(*) even the American exchange in NYC went down catastrophically, though it recovered. None of the European markets reached their pre-1914 levels, adjusted for inflation, for a long time afterwards.
Sean: yes, that's what Napoleon meant; that he could only have victory through war.
Actually, only the Spanish waged a determined war of popular resistance against the French, and that was done in conjunction with a British army, without which it wouldn't have come to anything.
At that, Spain was quiet enough as a French satellite kingdom as long as Napoleon left them their own (hapless, spineless) Bourbon monarch.
It was deposing him and putting his brother Joseph on the throne that queered the deal for Napoleon; that and doing it while the British command of the sea could support an army there.
Most of the rest of Europe went along with Bonaparte as long as it looked like he was winning, before the invasion of Russia. When he -did- invade Russia, it was with an army that was only about 25% French; the rest were soldiers from areas annexed to France or under puppet governments.
Only when Napoleon started losing the war did the rest of the continent turn against him to any great extent.
Talleyrand, a corrupt but extremely cunning man, was once asked why he turned on Napoleon and replied: "He did not know how and when to stop."
Poul did a good alternate history story where Talleyrand talked him out of the Egyptian expedition and he ended up winning the Napoleonic Wars, and the US is left as the only genuinely independent power in a world dominated by France's pan-European empire.
"Deux ennemis, le Czar, le Nord;
"Le Nord est pire."
"Two enemies, the Czar, the North;
"The North is worse."
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I agree with your comments about Spain and Napoleon's blunder in deposing the legitimate king and trying to install his brother as a puppet. Napoleon probably want to oust the Spanish Bourbons because, altho Charles IV was weak and ineffectual, there was no guaranteeing that a successor would not be so submissive to France.
Yes, I agree that by about 1809 most of Europe outside the UK and Spain seemed to be coming to terms with Napoleon. But this was grudging and reluctant, coming only after he had defeated repeated COALITIONS opposing him. And this could only last as Napoleon seemed to be winning. The Russian fiasco gave them the chance to finally break him.
And I remember that story by Poul Anderson, "When Free Men Shall Stand," about a world dominated in the 1850's by a Bonapartist French Empire. A nice touch in that story was when one of the characters commented on how Napoleon had exiled Talleyrand to St. Helena!
Sean
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