Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War: An Alternate History Read Online Free PDF

an outraged old eagle. Bowles had served as colonel in the Second Indiana Volunteers during the Mexican War. To him was attributed the disgraceful retreat at Buena Vista.” He promised Hines he “could command ten thousand men in twenty-four hours.” 4
    Captain Hines’s report had been the trigger that set General Morgan in motion. So secret was the mission that Jefferson Davis gave the orders directly to Morgan, pointedly bypassing Bragg. As brilliant a raider as Morgan was, he could not plan beyond the raid. Accounts of the depredations of his brigade flew ahead on the telegraph wires to every townin three states during his three-week raid on Indiana and Ohio. The many homes that displayed the single star flag of the Knights of the Golden Circle were looted just as thoroughly as those of their pro-Union neighbors. Adding insult to outrage, Morgan’s men seemed to key on such homes, laughing that the occupants should “give for the cause you love so well!” 5
    The Copperheads stayed home, while the loyal men of Indiana and Ohio rushed to join their militia and home guard units reinforced by Union Army cavalry and infantry. Now Morgan was the hunted. They harried him from place to place, closing in tighter and tighter until they trapped him on the banks of the Ohio. On July 26, he was captured along with seven hundred of his men.
    Fragments of his command eluded the disaster. The captain of an Ohio River tugboat, tied up at small wharf, was startled out of his sleep by the click of a Colt Dragoon pistol being cocked by his head. Captain Hines apologized for his lack of manners but would appreciate if the good captain could get his boat away to the Kentucky shore. An hour later Hines and twenty-three men stepped back onto a friendlier territory.
KRONSTADT NAVAL BASE, ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA, 9:20 AM , JULY 15, 1863
    Midshipman Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was excited about the possibilities of this new cruise aboard the frigate
Aleksandr Nevsky
, as the flagship of both the Baltic Squadron and the Russian Imperial Navy swung out of the naval base harbor. The excitement even took his mind away from the symphony he was composing in his head. This nineteen-year-old from Novgorod had just graduated from the Naval Academy eager to serve Czar and empire. The ships of the squadron were slipping out under the cover of an elaborate deception of an extended cruise in the Mediterranean. Maximum stores were taken aboard, and the captains were issued funds and warrants to obtain fresh provisions, coal, and repairs in neutral ports. Six ships would leave Kronstadt in staggered succession. A similar expedition was leaving from the Pacific Fleet’s base at Vladivostock. These were new ships, all steam and propeller driven, the products of the post–Crimean War shipbuilding program, all launched between 1859 and 1861. 6
    The midshipman’s berth had learned the real destination easily enough; rumor floated through the ship—New York! America! Thereason was not hard to guess for any reasonably astute person. War with Britain and France over control of Poland was expected any day now. The two powers had been the guarantors of the kingdom of Poland in the 1815 Treaty of Vienna. The Russian Czar had just abolished the kingdom as a response to the Polish rising and incorporated it as a mere province into the empire. Now the powers Britain and France threatened war to rescue Poland. Nikolai stood on deck, wondering why anyone would fight over a pledge to Poland.
    If war came, the Russian Navy was determined not be caught in its bases again by the Royal Navy. That had happened in the Crimean War and resulted in the fleet’s shameful impotence in that war. It would not happen again. The Czar wanted the fleet to be at sea when the war came, able to savage British and French commerce around the world. But unless it was going to be a one-way suicide mission, the Russian ships would need a secure and friendly base. There were few ports