An Excerpt from “Times of Steel: A Study Into the Rise of Modern France”
A Paper by Professor D.H. Camden, Cambridge University
…for in order to examine the state of modern France it is important to first examine the climate and stage set by the Great War. At the turn of the century France had ascended to what many in its higher circles of its government and military considered the apex or, at least, the cusp of an apex of its global hegemony. Losses in Mexico had been mitigated by the strength of the Franco-Confederate tradition of co-operation and the growing French navy was now linked with the traditional naval power of her British allies. However, as early as 1910 cracks had begun to show throughout the military organization and especially in the army, concern was being demonstrated by many high ranking commanders.
One such voice was that of General Stèle. Many like-minded military leaders began to discuss and propose that the French army was not equipped, well supplied or well versed in the more modern nuances of tactics necessary to confront the German army if hostilities were to arise. Further, this contingent subscribed to the traditional field of thought that Britain was too timid and concerned with the preservation of economic and strategic outposts throughout the empire to commit the ground forces necessary to deflect a German invasion in Europe.
The war has been examined extensively and the author does not find it pertinent to go into length on this particular study. What is notable is that the concerns of the French military skeptics proved correct. The British high commands strategy of distant and controlled confrontation proved disastrous as our enemies held the army down in Italy and Iberia while the German navy picked away at the British war effort. The effect was not lost on the French soldiers who were desperately holding the Germans back by 1915.
The war ended and despite its defeat, she emerged from the peace table with not much in the way of injury. Indochina had been stripped and few limitations applied to its military capabilities, but when compared to say, the CSA, France may as well have not gone to war at all.
Why then had such an extreme reactionary ideology emerged from such a moderate defeat? The factor was the sense of betrayal. Up until the war, it had been widely perceived that the will of the French state had been the extension of the Napoleonic line, that the figure of French dominance was being carried through his successors in the monarchy. However, after the defeat this illusion was shattered and the blame (in the eyes of the military) shifted to socialist and monarchist influence on the government. Especially, the perception was that those ultra-monarchist elements had sought to bring the aristocracy to dull the King’s influence into to a static state of status-quo. Where in contrary high rankers such as Stèle, believed that as Napoleon I had been the product of the French military, it was the military’s destiny to lead France toward glory, as it had at the turn of the last century and that the line of Napoleon had its place as the golden standard of the French army, not as a guiding force.
In the next chapter we will examine the beginnings of the November Coup which…
Rouen, 1923
Lucien was eight. He was wearing short pants and scratchy wool sweater knitted by his mother. The rainwater that pooled between the rough cobblestones, reflecting the dead, gray sky outside the school house soaked into the holes of his shoes and squished between his small toes with squeaking satisfaction. One of his slightly pudgy hands was thrust upward, clasped in the calloused grip of his father’s right palm while the fingers of the boy’s free hand absently pulled at his lower lip; a bad habit that his mother and father had always scolded him for carrying. However, at the moment, no such discipline was brought to the child, for as he stared absently and the tall buildings around him and waved to his passing school mates as they shuffled through the door, his father was distracted.
“What happened to Monsieur Lavette?” spoke Lucien’s father, negligently disguised concern showing through his tone. The new school master raised an eye brow from the clip board he had busied himself scratching upon. As the hard voice of his speech stole young Lucien’s attention from the wideness of the world around him, his eight-year-old eyes fixed upon the bright golden eagle pinned to the man’s jacket. He wanted to reach out and touch it, but was much too timid.
“Lavette has been assigned to a re-education facility at an undisclosed location. The administration found his methods to be in contrast to the morality and focus of imperial doctrine. They are in the process of being… corrected.”
He covered his thinly mustached lip as his uniformed chest heaved with a wheezing cough.
“When will he return?”
The school master broke fully from his clipboard now. Dark eyes rested on the balding father. “I am not at liberty to discuss such things.”
The father’s brow furrowed, he cocked his head with a quizzical sharpness which set off several alarms in the new master’s head. “Who is at liberty? Lavette was a good teacher. Monsieur Lavette had the ability to teach me. He is a decent man and I want my son Lucien to benefit from his abilities, just as I did.
“Lavette’s abilities were deemed insufficient by l’etat, which should be more than enough for you. Or have you forgotten the importance of discipline and loyalty to a true Frenchman?” he growled, pointing the tip of his pen to the empty sleeve where Lucien’s father’s arm would be, if not for a German slug. He looked back at his clipboard and ran the tip of the pen up and down horizontally. The pen paused. “Monsieur Laurent will take young- what is it again?”
Lucien could tell his father was angry as he began to talk louder and louder to the new school administrator. He saw the man with the eagle on his chest motion to a policeman across the boulevard but his attention was stolen as he began to recognize more and more faces of the other children being filed through by the second new administrator. He also had an eagle. Lucien decided the other one seemed to smile more often than the man now talking to the policeman with his father.
Then his father stopped talking to the school-master and crouched down to his son’s miniature perspective. He said he had to go now and that Lucien should study hard in the school room. He kissed Lucien on the cheek and hurried him into the class before walking away with the policeman. Lucien was in the classroom staring at the new flag which hung limply on a cold brass standard in the corner, close to the window. The light which was beginning to poke through the sky’s heavy ceiling of clouds peaked through the glass, glinting off the golden eagle which sat atop the flag pole’s top. He would never see his father again.
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To: Italy
From: Troisième Empire Français
We will be attending the anti-communist congression.
, the Russian name for it.
