Another Small Kingdom

by Green, James

• ISBN13: 9781908262899
• ISBN10: 1908262893
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-11-23
• Publisher: Accent Pr

Summary

It is 1802, America is independent, England is at war with Napoleon Bonaparte's France.Powerful Americans feel that The USA's best chance of remaining independent is to throw in their lot with France- even if it means accepting a French king … for a while.Jim Green uses fictional characters to illuminate the real events that lead to the birth of the American Intelligence Services and culminated in the extraordinary Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the USA - at the cost of 3 cents an acre.Packed with action and fascinating historical detail, Another Small Kingdom will appeal both to those interested in the history of the USA and to aficionados of intelligent spy thrillers

Excerpts

1802

Europe is at war, tearing itself apart.  But across the Atlantic there is peace. America is flourishing, nowhere more so than Boston.  An engine of manufacture, a centre of commerce and a major international port it trades with the world.  And as trade flows so also does the news.  What happens in Europe today Boston will know in as little as eight short weeks, such is the speed of modern communications. 

The people of Boston follow with interest the self destruction taking place in Europe.  Some, proud of their own new Republic, favour France.  Others, shocked by the excesses of the French Revolution and fearful of Napoleon’s ambition, favour their late enemy, the British.

At the better sort o fBoston dinner table a Bostonian of British sympathies might remark that if the French had such a wonderful army how come had it been kicked off Hispaniola, France’s jewel of the Caribbean, by a ragged-arsed slave army? 

General laughter. 

However, a Bostonian of French sympathies might more seriously observe that with the Treaty of Luneville last year, Napoleon had at last got the Austrians out of the way and now that England stood alone he could finish off the war for good. 

All of which might lead a lady of sentiment to ask what was it all for, all that death and destruction?  Being a good Protestant herself she was sure the problem was that most of the French and too many of the British were still Papists at heart and therefore incapable of change. 

The mention of change would naturally lead a lady of no sympathies at all to demand, ‘When, gentlemen, might it all end and the latest fashion plates be got from London and Paris?  Then one wouldn’t have to go about in last year’s rags.  Assuredly, gentlemen, positively antiquated rags’. 

So it would be that as the meal ended the conversation would finally turn to the only issue of the day which everyone round the table, of whatever sympathies, considered of vital consequence - Fashion. 

All, men and women both, would agree that, as far as knowing the latest fashion was concerned, war was a terrible thing, terrible indeed.