15 October 2015
The Modern Emperor
A cautionary (but true) tale
by Neil Tidmarsh
The Modern Emperor picked up his pen and signed the order with a firm hand.
It was his order to send troops to a distant foreign country. An arid and sun-baked country of deserts and mountains, of ancient civilizations and a strange religion which seemed to him to be little more than a death cult. A country of civil war and rebellion. The country’s regime was teetering on the brink of defeat, but he had promised to uphold its ruler and uphold him he would. The USA had taken its eye off the ball, so now was the time to consolidate and advance his influence in this region which the USA had traditionally considered its own. Even though it would be a huge gamble.
He had never been afraid of a gamble. His invasion of the Crimea had been a gamble, but it had turned into a victory and a triumph. Sending troops on into the Ukraine had been a gamble, but he’d got away with that one, too. Perhaps because he hadn’t pushed it too far; other voices had urged him to fight on in conquest, but he had refused to listen to them, trusting instead in his gambler’s instincts for the odds.
His very rise to power had been a gamble. Having got himself elected President by promising all things to all people, he had swiftly dismantled all constitutional restraints on his power until nothing and no-one could challenge it. He had won the army over, and the Church, and big business. He had ruthlessly suppressed all political opposition, gagged the media and firmly grasped the reins of a police state in his own hands.
And what had he done with that power? He had repaired his country. It was prosperous and great again, after decades of poverty, instability and humiliation. It hadn’t enjoyed such power, wealth and prestige since the days of its last emperor, since before its seismic revolutions. He was truly a new emperor, a Modern Emperor. He had restored the motherland’s military might; he had restored its incredible riches; he had restored order and stability; he had restored luxury and fine living. Many of his enemies accused him of restoring greed and corruption and vulgarity as well, but they were cowards and traitors who had fled the country, and he would deal with them in his own way.
He had played his cards well, winning over the people by presenting himself as their virile champion – riding horses, hunting, standing up for those who spoke the mother-tongue but found themselves on the wrong side of international borders. He had skilfully played his enemies off against each other, cultivating friends in the soft underbelly of Europe to frustrate the more obdurate northern European powers. He smiled, thinking about that fool who’d ruled Italy and who considered him his friend. A coarse, common, vain, self-indulgent, lecherous buffoon with no discipline. But the sex-mad idiot had been useful; he had been a valuable tool in frustrating the growing power of Germany in Europe.
Such was the Modern Emperor’s military might that all Europe was afraid of him. Invasion scares, real or imagined, terrified his neighbours. He had the finest army in the world. So he had nothing to worry about in plunging into this far-away conflict in a poor, battered, primitive country outside Europe. Who and what were the enemies of the ruler and regime he’d sworn to protect, anyway? A miserable and hopelessly-divided rabble of poorly-trained and poorly-equipped peasants who had never faced a proper army before. They would have no chance against his modern forces, well-trained, well-resourced and backed up by the most up-to-date technology as they were. He might even win his European enemies over onto his side; his decisive and determined intervention was shaming them, and his stance as the champion of order and stability against their common enemies of political extremism and religious fanaticism was making them re-evaluate their hostilities and loyalties.
He smiled. No, he had nothing to worry about. His intervention in Mexico would be another triumph for him, another great victory for France. “Vive l’Empereur!” his people would shout with even louder voices. “Vive l’Empereur Napoleon III!” He, Napoleon III, would live forever in history as one of the greatest French rulers of all time.
Little was he to know that his 1861 intervention in Mexico on behalf of Maximilian and his doomed regime would be a disaster. Napoleon III underestimated the logistical challenges, the huge cost of the operation, the sheer number of troops needed and the rebels themselves – their numbers, their fighting ability, their leadership, the power of their revolutionary passions. The other European powers were wise enough to stay well away from his mess. The USA had been distracted by its Civil War, but once its states were united again it demanded in no uncertain terms that he get out of its back yard or else. In 1867 he had to withdraw his army from Mexico in defeat. The revolution triumphed, the regime fell, and Maximilian – the man he had sworn to defend – was executed by a revolutionary firing squad. It was a massive humiliation for France and Napoleon III, a humiliation which led directly to the disaster of the Franco-Prussian war, the overthrow of Napoleon III, the collapse of his dynasty and another bloody revolution, civil war and republic for France in 1870/71, almost twenty years after the coup d’etat which had transformed him from President to Emperor.
Little was he to know that history, to all intents and purposes, would forget him. The only interest historians have ever really shown in his story is that it seems to have been an uncanny precursor, even a template, for the dictators which came to dominate the twentieth century. And even more uncannily, the Shaw Sheet humbly wonders, for one in the twenty-first century?
