'Another fleet from the Black Sea,' Lt. Follows added, 'sailed round the Aegean, and the Med. And their Black Sea fleet has gained a lot of experience 'gainst the Turks over the years. When Catherine the Great was still alive, she knew to maintain an efficient navy… even if about half the officers were really British, or Americans.'
'Like John Paul Jones!' Midshipman-to-be Oglesby dared to contribute to an adult conversation.
'I've met some fellows who served with the Russians,' Follows told them, 'when they couldn't find a post in our Navy. Promotion is quicker in Russian service, and the rates of pay are more lucrative, though… I never heard them say much good of their ships, or their men.'
'How so, sir?' Lewrie prompted, waving for a fresh coffee.
'The way they told it, Captain Lewrie, is… when the Russians need warships, they go level several forests and set up shipyards on the banks of the nearest river to the sea. They round up just any old sort of carpenters, and put them to work in work-regiments, using green wood with no more seasoning or drying than the timbers get coming down to the banks from the woods on waggons! And they conscript their men the same way. Turn Army regiments into sailors overnight… conscript serfs from the nearest estates and drill them like parade ground soldiers on facsimiles of masts and decks ashore whilst their ships are still building. Good for part of the year, but when their northern ports freeze up, they're crammed into infantry barracks ashore, in unutterable squalor 'til they're needed again, and it's a wonder half of them don't perish. And by the time they're ready to go aboard in the Spring, it's good odds their assigned ship has already rotted and must be replaced.
'I'd expect things are better in the Black Sea, where they may sail almost year-round,' Lt. Follows allowed, 'but their fleet in the Baltic may not be all that formidable.'
'Never heard the like!' Lewrie scoffed. 'That's an insane way to care for a ship's crew, or train it to excellence.'
'Not our way, certainly, sir,' Lt. Follows agreed. 'I'm told their discipline is hellish'-He winced as he saw his uncle's deep frown-'brutal in the extreme. Russians are, so I've heard, a cruel and surly race, their peasants little better than dumb beasts rolling round in pig-stys. Illiterate, in the main, and horrid drunkards. Do they get their hands on vodka, they go as mad as Red Indians, and just as dangerous to themselves as anyone who crosses their path. With such men, I'd imagine only the cat-o'-nine-tails can keep control.'
'Hmm, like British tars with a shipload o' wine or rum?' Lewrie japed. 'Give them just enough of a vodka ration t'keep 'em mellow, do they? Devilish tipple, that. Worse for you than gin.'
Back in better days, not all that long ago during the Frost Fair on the frozen Thames, Lewrie had run across Eudoxia Durschenko in an off-moment from her role in Wigmore's Peripatetic Extravaganza and had tasted a sip of vodka… used as he was to imported Kentucky bourbon, he'd thought he'd poisoned himself! It was better ice-cold, she had told him, but he rather doubted it. At least it did not have the juniper berry taste of good old British 'Blue Ruin'!
'Malta was the problem with the Tsar,' Mr. Oglesby mused aloud. 'We took it back from the French before the Russians could get there. Admiral Nelson hoisted the flag of the Kingdom of Naples and the Two Sicilies, 'stead of our flag, or the Russians', and the Tsar most-like was mad enough to fall down and chew the carpets over it. That King Ferdinand of Naples was the real owner, in a way, after all.'
'And Lord Nelson spent a lot of time with King Ferdinand and his wife, our ambassador to his court, Sir William Hamilton,' Lewrie said (leaving Emma Hamilton unsaid!). 'They did influence him, for certain, but I was in Naples in '94 through '96, and dined with King Ferdinand several times. D'ye know he maintained a waterfront fish shop, where he did the cooking? An odd sort o' bird!… and a dab-hand cook, too! But I never heard that Naples claimed Malta. 'T wasn't Malta owned by the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem since the Crusades?'
'Ah, but King Ferdinand is the Grand Master of the Knights, sir!' Mr. Oglesby slyly returned. 'The real one, I suppose. Though I heard that the Tsar thought he was, since a few Knights in the Russian court flattered him up and held an election of their own, making him the Grand Master. Imagine what an uproar that could cause in Russia, their own Tsar, the upholder of the Orthodox Church, accepting an honourific that is usually awarded by a Catholic Pope, ha ha!'
'The Tsar had another grudge with us, too,' Lt. Follows contributed. 'During the Holland expedition, there were two prizes taken… not worth tuppence, really, a fifty-six gunner and a seventy gunner… were supposed to be Russian prizes, but we kept them.'
'My Lord, is he that petty?' Lewrie said, amazed.
'It would appear so, Captain Lewrie,' Mr. Oglesby said, nodding. 'What's worse, when his mother, Catherine the Great, was still with us, in 1787, Turkey declared war on Russia, for the umpteenth time, and we… Great Britain and Prussia… egged the Swedes to invade Russian-owned Finland, so Tsar Paul… Crown Prince Paul, then… naturally despised us for meddling, and distrusts us to this very day. The only reason Russia became our ally in '98 was because he thought that Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion in Egypt's final aim was against Russia, not our possessions in India! Why else would he ally himself with his worst enemy, the Ottoman Turks, against the French?' Oglesby said with a mystified shrug. 'Perhaps only the madness of kings may explain why the Tsar now is so enamoured of Bonaparte, and the French.'
'Napoleon told the Tsar he'd surrender Malta to the Russians, Lt. Follows stuck in. 'Only the Russians. And Napoleon had captured thousands of Russian soldiers when he conquered Switzerland. To make the deal sweeter, he returned them, in new uniforms, boots, and kits, with all their colours, as a gesture of good will.'
'Hmmph,' Lewrie commented. 'I s'pose that would be enough for the Russians to say 'thankee kindly' and stand aloof from now on, but… to cozy up to the Frogs? Surely their aristocracy should be quaking in their boots, lest all that Jacobin French insanity take root in their country. 'Libertй, Йgalitй, Fraternitй,' and bloody revolution, would be the end of 'em. Whish… chop!' he said, miming the drop of the guillotine's blade with one hand, 'I've an… acquaintance who's Russian, who's told me how they use their serfs so cruelly. Let the landless, powerless slave- peasants get a whiff of freedom and rise up, and it'd be the Terror all over again, with the slave revolt on Saint Domingue thrown in, to boot!'
'Factor in, Captain Lewrie, the atheism of the French Jacobites,' Mr. Oglesby sagely pointed out, in full agreement with him. 'Russia is a deeply religious country, though its Orthodox Church is even more of a mystery to me than Popery. I'd imagine their theologians and lords spiritual would consider the French the very imps of Hell, and their First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, the Anti-Christ revealed.'
'Indeed, uncle,' Lt. Follows chimed in. 'One of the fellows who took service in their navy told me that the peasant conscript sailors 'board his ship took the authority of their priests as solemn as their officers', and that the only reason there weren't more revolts by serfs out in the countryside was deathly fear of condemnation and excommunication by the local priests. Even nobles walk wary round them. After a thousand years of servitude, with the threat of abandonment by their church, and the coming of the Cossacks to hack them to pieces should they turn on their masters, abject subservience and resignation to a life of misery is common.
'Mind, he said your average Russian sailor or soldier is a marvellous fighter, if decently led, and treated,' Lt. Follows said on with a grin, 'but, dull as oxen, in the main. Superstitious, un-educated, and easily controlled… so long as one doesn't act too much the tyrant.'
'Push 'em into a corner, whip 'em for no reason?' Lewrie mused aloud. 'You bully and beat a puppy, you end up with a wolf who'd tear your throat out. Sounds t'me as if all Russia is teeterin' on a thin razor's edge, with nothing but the fear of Hell and Cossack sabres to keep it from exploding.'
'A grievous social system,' Mr. Oglesby sadly commented, 'much like our own West Indies colonies, or the American South, with so many restive slaves. I doubt any rich or titled, and landed, Russian dares sleep too sound of a night. Surely, the Tsar knows, as does his court nobles and church leaders, how dangerous this new friendship with the French can be.'
'Well, you mentioned the madness of kings,' Lewrie japed. 'But as you say, surely those who have the Tsar's ear could advise him not to run the risk.'
'Fellow's a Nero, a Caligula,' Mr. Oglesby said with a sniff of disdain. 'Emperor of All the Russias, reputed to be as mad as a hatter, and, unlike our parliamentary system, he's a total autocrat, as powerful as any Roman emperor, with nothing and no one able to rein him in. And, like a Caligula, the Tsar is indeed mad. Cruel, sadistic, and is rumoured to be… perverted. Cover your ears, Roger, there is evil coming,' he told his youngest son, who had been sitting gape-jawed to be allowed to hear adults talking of such worldly things. 'The man is said to have the morals of a wild beast, such that no woman, from the highest to the lowest palace servant, is safe. Some also say that no man is safe, either,' Mr. Oglesby added with a grimace of distaste of such practices. 'Does he take a dislike to someone… noble, valet, or stableman… because he didn't like the wine, the temperature of the soup, someone's
