Kings and Emperors

In another, an i

There were firing squads, there was pillage, bayonetted churchmen, abandoned crying babes sitting next to their slain parents, and any sort of brutality, there were two men in rich-looking clothing being hanged from an iron Liberty Tree, the sort that the French erected in every town they conquered since 1793, as if they were bringing freedom, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity to people crying out for relief from their former rulers.

Damned if some of the Frog soldiers don’t resemble some of Sapphire’s crew! Lewrie thought; Just filthier and more “Jack Nasty-Face.”

“Is that’un supposed to be Bosun Terrell, sir?” Fywell asked.

“I took some from life, Mister Fywell,” Westcott said with a simper. “If they all looked like apes, they wouldn’t be villainous. They’d be caricatures.”

“You do a nice looting, and good burnings, Mister Fywell,” Lewrie congratulated the Mid. “I quite like the tavern drunks, too.”

“But, none of this is strictly true, is it, sir?” Fywell had to ask. “Mean to say, we don’t know if the French are really doing these things.”

“It’s what we wish the Spanish to believe, young sir,” Lewrie told him. “They’re a proud, suddenly conquered, and sold-out people. Sooner or later, some Frenchman will be insulted, have a chamber pot dumped on his head, they’ll kill whoever did it, and these sorts of things will happen, then there’ll be general riots, to which the French will respond with exactly this sort of barbarity. Trust me that it’ll happen. And we want it to happen. Then Spain becomes a British ally, and Napoleon gets his nose tweaked.

“Hmm, best sign this’un with a Spanish-sounding name,” Lewrie instructed. “Then, I’ll take them to Mister Mountjoy.”

“Who’s he?” Fywell asked Westcott in a whisper.

“A British government official in charge of such things, my lad,” Westcott told him, “a fellow in the ‘hush-hush’ business.”

“A spy, do you mean, sir?” Fywell asked with a gulp.

Gawd, but is he young! Lewrie thought.

“The man who chose our targets last Summer,” Lewrie admitted. “And the least said of him, the better all round. Get it?”

“Aye aye, sir!” Fywell said, half-appalled, half-intrigued.

“Well, thank you both for your efforts, and your good work, sirs,” Lewrie said, signalling that the meeting in his cabins was done. Westcott stayed awhile longer than Fywell.

“I didn’t show you all of mine, sir,” Wesctott confessed. “Do you want to see these?” He had a folder in his hands.

“Utterly pornographic, are they, Geoffrey?” Lewrie asked.

“Utterly, sir,” Lt. Westcott said, smirking.

Lewrie leafed through several, finding fully de-nuded women, Frogs with their pricks showing (none too large, mind) virginal girls being taken in every possible orifice.

“By God, but you must get yourself a new mistress ashore, sir!” Lewrie said, a tad wide-eyed. “If I showed these to Mountjoy, he’d be staggered, makin’ garglin’ noises. He’s a prim sod, given his line of work.”

“Working on it, sir, working on it,” Westcott promised.

*   *   *

“Oh yes, these are excellent, Captain Lewrie,” Mountjoy said, leafing through the sketches, nodding and humming over the barbarities, then going wide-eyed over Westcott’s “specials,” and made some “my words” and “egads.”

“Think they’ll do?” Lewrie asked.

“Oh, they’ll more than do!” Mountjoy said with delight. “For the most part, I’ll claim that these events occurred up North, not in Madrid, where the French have already seized cities on false pretexts. The people at the newspaper have aided me most nicely, too. What do you think of those, there on the desk?”

Lewrie looked over a pile of what looked to be snippets from newspapers. He could not make heads or tails of them, for they were all printed in Spanish or Portuguese. “What are these?” he asked.

“Eyewitness accounts of French atrocities, allegedly from Lisbon, or Northern Spanish papers,” Mountjoy said with a hint of pride. “See on the backs, there are incomplete articles, as one would expect to see when clipping something out of a paper. I’m passing them on to Mister Viale to give to General Castaños, and read for himself. The Gibraltar Chronicle is fitting my work in between their own work, and I’ve had to dip into my funds to pay them for it … dearly, you see … but I think it’s worth it. They’ll be doing some one-sheet tracts, too. I wish I could produce entire Spanish papers to send along the coast, but that would be asking too much of the Chronicle. When the Duke of Kent was here, he wrote a three-hundred-page book of regulations and ordered them to print it. They couldn’t put out the paper for two whole months, and swear they’ll never miss an issue again.”

“Who wrote the articles?” Lewrie asked.

“Deacon and I did, in English first, then got some people here to translate them into Spanish or Portuguese,” Mountjoy told him.

“This’un here won’t do,” Lewrie pointed out, holding one up for Mountjoy to look over. “I don’t think the Spanish use the f letter to replace an s as we do, and ye might have a care with all the tildes, squiggles, and what-nots.”

“What?” Mountjoy yelped, astonished, seizing the snippet and poring over it. “Damn! Damn my eyes, just … shit!” He went to his desk and read through each article, highly agitated. “Thank God, it’s only this one that the paper got wrong, then. The rest will do.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Lewrie said.

“I’m sending some of the finished product to London, too. They may find them useful,” Mountjoy said. “Not the illustrations’ original wood-cut blocks, I’ll still need those for later printings, but maybe my superiors can hire some artists to make their own. Got to stir up people back home, to ready them for a wider war, hey? Distribute them into the rest of Europe to turn people against the French?”

“You really need a printing press of your own, Mountjoy.”

“I do, don’t I?” Mountjoy said with a wide grin. “The power of the press. Look at that radical, Thomas Paine, and what his pamphlets did for the American Revolution, how his later work prompted the French Revolution.”

“How Napoleon uses his Moniteur to lie to his own people, and the rest of the world,” Lewrie sarcastically added. “Though by now, the French people say that if someone lies to them, they say that ‘he lies like a bulletin in the Moniteur.’”

“It’s the way of the future, war by newsprint,” Mountjoy said with glee. “England must lead the way in it … even if Bonaparte got to it, first.”

“Well, if you’re happy with the results, I’ll be going, then,” Lewrie told him. “I’m going to sail over to keep an eye on Ceuta one more time. Sir Hew Dalrymple asked me to stay in harbour, but hasn’t come up with anything to do, and my people are goin’ stale.”

“But, what if he suddenly has need of you, or I do?” Mountjoy asked.

“I’m only twelve miles cross the Strait,” Lewrie laughed off. “He can send a small boat under sail, or light a beacon atop of the Rock … if the Barbary apes allow it. I don’t know. He can fire off some Congreve rockets, if he has any. I’ll send the old fart a note today, and, weather allowin’, sail tomorrow after dawn. That’s time enough t’prompt him into any request he has in mind.”

“Very well, then, Captain Lewrie,” Mountjoy agreed. “I have no pressing need of your ship and your services, for now, either.”

“Then I’ll take my leave. Enjoy your newspaper project, sir, and have joy of it,” Lewrie said, bowing himself out.