Angel Schemes in Spain

Oliver Fairfax

Description

Paul's grandson, Dr Otto Brandt, visits his Aunt Alexandra in Spain where continual massacres erupt into civil war. Otto becomes entangled in the uprising led by General Prim against Spain's corrupt and incompetent government. The Spanish Queen Isabella flees to her French protectors. But France is eying an ever-strengthening German Federation with concern. If a member of the Prussian royal family accepts the vacant Spanish throne, the government of Napoleon III will react with hostility. General Prim sends Otto to Berlin via Paris. Worse, Bismarck sends him back along the same route. As the French economy totters war becomes inevitable. But Otto, a German, is trapped in Paris. Worse, he is trapped with thirty thousand other citizens of the German Federation. Elihu Washburne, the American Minister in Paris, works miracles. But where is Otto's sister?

Informations

• Publié par: Toby Heale
• Date de parution: 17 août 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783019595
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR
T HE A NGEL S CHEMES IN S PAIN
V OLUME 5 OF T HE B RANDT F AMILY C HRONICLES
By Oliver Fairfax
2016 Oliver Fairfax
Oliver Fairfax has asserted his rights in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by Toby Heale
First published in eBook format in 2016
ISBN: 9781783019595
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
All names, characters, places, organisations, businesses and events are either the product of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Paul s grandson, Dr Otto Brandt, visits his Aunt Alexandra in Spain where continual massacres erupt into civil war. Otto becomes entangled in the uprising led by General Prim against Spain s corrupt and incompetent government. The Spanish Queen Isabella flees to her French protectors. But France is eying an ever-strengthening German Federation with concern. If a member of the Prussian royal family accepts the vacant Spanish throne, the government of Napoleon III will react with hostility. General Prim sends Otto to Berlin via Paris. Worse, Bismarck sends him back along the same route. As the French economy totters war becomes inevitable. But Otto, a German, is trapped in Paris. Worse, he is trapped with thirty thousand other citizens of the German Federation. Elihu Washburne, the American Minister in Paris, works miracles. But where is Otto s sister?
Contents
Chapter One - Summer 1868 - Wounded at the Castle
Chapter Two - General Prim Arrives
Chapter Three - A Massacre
Chapter Four - The General s Resolve is aided by a Priest
Chapter Five - Alcolea and Retribution
Chapter Six - A Certain End to the Fighting
Chapter Seven - Preparations for More War and a Message
Chapter Eight - Taken for a Ride on a Train
Chapter Nine - Dining with the Enemy
Chapter Ten - Involved as in Culpable
Chapter Eleven - Not Very Good at It
Chapter Twelve - A Penalty for Failure
Chapter Thirteen - A Weak Plan is Better than None
Chapter Fourteen - The Slightest Chance We Should Modify Our Plans
Chapter fifteen - Time, Like Opportunities Flies By
Chapter Sixteen - A Spanish Doctor Establishes Himself in Paris
Chapter Seventeen - Some Leave and Some Do Not
Chapter Eighteen - Falsehoods and Spies
Chapter Nineteen - An Amazing Enterprise
Chapter Twenty - Evacuation and Defeat
Chapter One - Summer 1868 - Wounded at the Castle
Bare feet beat across the deck overhead as I finished my letter to Uncle Gregory in Paris. I heard the ship s bell ring its signals. I blotted a last sheet and read it over before glancing out of the porthole. My eyes watered even with such a small amount of sunlight. Its intensity basted the quayside. The feeble breeze baked. I folded everything away and strapped my medical bag, a graduation present from my proud Mama and emblazoned with my name: Dr Med. Otto. A. Brandt. I left my jacket on the back of the chair and stepped into the companionway, dabbing my neck. I tapped on my sister s cabin door. Amelia, we re arriving. I knocked again. No answer. She would be on deck, perhaps.
Even in the shade of the remaining sail I stood cooking. Amelia held onto a stay by the bow, staring ahead like a figurehead. At least she would benefit from some breeze there.
I shook my head. Sailing ships! We still ran a few but hardly enough to call a fleet, even a small one. They had become something of a luxury and port officials discriminated against us. They - that is, sailing ships - are slow to manoeuvre and don t carry as much cargo as their steam-powered successors. They are also, obviously, as unreliable as the wind. The authorities in Cuxhaven, where our family s shipping interests are based, are at the forefront of modernisation and their hostility to our vessels is only thinly disguised.
However, it s fun to watch a sailing ship come into port, especially when you stand beside the captain. It s not permitted to speak to him at this time so I contented myself by studying the port through the mesh of stays and sheets.
All sound is drowned by the shrieking, cackling seagulls. Either you like them or you do not like them. I do not like them. They like sailing ships, though. Sailing ships offer seagulls a vast choice of perches and the mess they leave is testimony to their numbers.
Sailing ships also require large crews and entering port is when any observer can see why. To raise just one of those mighty sails takes twelve men pulling together. This ship wears six major sails and a host of lesser ones. Most are already furled for our approach, but to lose way the remainder must progressively be clewed up. Once hauled to their spar, they must be lashed home. Six more men accomplish this by scampering across the ratlines that hang below the spars to tie or clew the furled sails in place.
I was in favour of pensioning off this and our other remaining vessels, but my mother and father had voted against it. Instead, we managed a decline by transferring crews between fewer ships. Older crew members we pensioned off. The ships themselves had no residual value except as scrap timber. We had kept them too long. We were no longer in the forefront of German shipping and didn t deserve to be.
Having disembarked and transferred to the hotel, I set out to spend the late afternoon with our agents in Cadiz. I sat in his hot, dim, office with the breeze hardly disturbing the rattan blind that occasionally tapped lazily against a glass jar.
We drank red wine as I listened. I came to have an understanding of how things stood in Spain. Andres, the younger brother of our agent, told me there had been some economic progress and a little investment, but not nearly as much as elsewhere in Europe. The terms and conditions were not conducive. In Spain, corruption in government and official incompetence stifled all initiative. I asked for my respects to be sent to his elder brother, who ran the agency, and concluded he spent his time with more modern-minded customers.
I left Andres with the understanding that there was little trading business to be had in Spain and such as there was, was better given to shippers properly equipped to handle it. He did not say it in those terms but the message was clear enough. I walked slowly to our hotel to seek out my sister and ensure she understood there must be no delay to our departure the next morning.
Amelia had singularly failed to comprehend the need for our prompt departure and we set out for the ride to Auntie Sasha s shambolic home in the heat of the morning. I must explain before I continue that Aunt Alexandra was always known in the family as Auntie Sasha and that is how I shall refer to her. As I waited for Amelia, I had ample time to consider all I had learned and also to conclude I had also been warned off investing in Queen Isabella s homeland.
By mid-afternoon, even as we reached the vicinity of our estate, we were already exhausted. The heat and the poor roads made travel slow. We rode gently and kept to such shade as the ancient olive trees bestowed. We wore wide-brimmed straw hats that wilted, just as we did. Our stained linen jackets flopped but they kept some dust off: dust propelled directly from the furnace mouth. I insisted that we all drank copious amounts of water to prevent the effects of dehydration, a subject I had studied at length at medical school in Leipzig.
We inhaled wild scents, mixed for us in ever-changing concoctions: from lemon to cypress and pine to rosemary. Sometimes, pungent waves rose from the trampled undergrowth as our horses crushed the plants under their hooves. We turned onto a deserted track and headed higher into the hills. Particularly strong were the aromas of sage and cistus, with occasionally thyme too. Often, there was wild garlic.
As we rode higher the breeze became cooler, but it was still high summer. Hawks mewed, hooves clicked and insects buzzed. The giant sun cooked us to our limit and the cool blue sky could do nothing to quell it. Is it far? I called to Antonio, our guide.
No, not far.
How far?
Not far.
Conversations with Antonio are unlikely to prosper. He was content to lead the string of pack horses that progressed at the pace of the slowest. And Antonio was the slowest. The horses didn t object. It was hot.
Aunt Sasha had sent a wonderful packed lunch, but we d eaten too much and started to ride again too soon afterwards.
Amelia wanted to stop. I could sympathise but if we did, I would have the problem of starting again. We certainly would never make up lost time. My sister would prefer to progress at her own pace. That meant other people fitted in with her plans.
I would like to rest, Otto dear.
I noted the dear and the implied bribe of truce, if not friendship, it represented. Antonio says it s not far, I replied. We should keep going to make sure of the best daylight.
But that means it s a long way. We should rest now.
I don t think so, dear. We have four horsemen for protection. I don t think they want to stop either.
I do need to rest.
I m sure the horses do, too. The horses can carry us on, so we arrive when it is convenient for Auntie Sasha to receive us. We mustn t stop now.
I think you re unreasonable.
Then you must tell Auntie so.
We fell into silence. The land became more rugged and the track, not just deserted, but abandoned.