In the Absence of Powder: The Napoleonic Wars without Gunpowder

 

This book is available for sale via Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08CD1RMCZ/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0 

This is my second book published through Sea Lion Press: https://www.sealionpress.co.uk/ I do not even recall where I heard the quote which is attributed to Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, implying that he said he would have been better off having a corps of archers at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815, rather than more men armed with muskets. I do not even know if he actually said it. However, it was a sufficient seed for an idea about writing a story where this could have happened. The novel covers not only the fighting named after Waterloo, though occurring quite a bit further south, but also at Quatre Bras and to a lesser extent at Ligny, in the preceding days.

I also watched the Alternate History Hub podcast on the issue of a world in which gunpowder was not invented: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycEZIbQqA8A Interestingly that made me see that even with such an apparently large change to history many events would still have run as they did in our world, for example, the fall of Constantinople in 1453. This led me to see that writing a parallelist novel, i.e. one in which there was a big difference to our world, but in which people got to (roughly) the same position as in ours and followed similar if not identical policies was feasible. This parallelist approach has been challenged with people arguing that my novel is not a 'proper' alternate history story, but rather simply a 'thought experiment'. This is because it is assumed that the moment you introduce such a change there are numerous 'ripple' effects, meaning that no-one would end up doing the same thing as in our world, and indeed, many of the characters we know would not have been born. This tends to overlook the attitudes and behaviours of people in the past, and for example, in early 19th Century Britain there was a limited number of families who had opportunities to rise to power or to gain high positions in the military, something the absence of gunpowder would not have altered.

In 'Thinking of Writing Alternate History?' (2020): https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/03/thinking-of-writing-alternate-history.html I make what I feel is a legitimate case for parallelist alternate history. By only altering one aspect but maintaining the others as they were in our history, you can really test whether that change would have made a small difference, a major one or effectively no difference at all. If you begin to substitute other men for Wellington and Napoleon, let alone all their generals, you cannot be certain whether the outcome portrayed would have been the case due to there being no gunpowder or some flaw or skill in the generals and overall commanders and so on. Thus, I kept all the people who were at the battle in the situation, though the different weaponry did mean the battle ran differently and in some cases people were injured rather than killed. The battle did see a large number of deaths among high-ranking officers on both sides.

Researching both the use of what was effectively medieval weaponry and the forces and individuals at the battle, did throw up some difficulties. There is certainly no agreement, for example, on how far a medieval crossbow could throw a bolt or quarrel and the differences between effective and maximum range. People are often bemused by why onagers, which had a shorter range, replaced ballistae, neglecting that it was far easier to manufacture and repair an onager than a ballista. 

Even with individuals there is dispute over their stories. The gravestone, the portrait and other sources, imply that Lieutenant Colonel John Fremantle one of Wellington's aides-de-camp was born in 1780 or 1790 or 1792 and died in 1845 or 1847 or even 1854. If he had died in 1847 at the age of 55 as quoted, he would have joined the Coldstream Guards in 1805 at the age of 13, supposedly, according to some, having already attended both the Royal Military College and Lüneburg University already. I can accept he might have been 23 and a lieutenant colonel at the Battle of Waterloo, given ranks could be bought and a Guards captain would serve as a lieutenant colonel when seconded to other units. So far I can find no-one able to reconcile the different information. I assume he died in 1847 aged 65, rather than 55 as his gravestone (destroyed in 1944 by bombing) apparently said. His rank at death is also disputed with some saying he was a Major General and others, a rank higher, a Lieutenant General - this confusion though may be explained by the fact that he was a Guard and they generally held two ranks, a lower one among the Guards and a higher one when serving with other units. Anyway, this is a classic example of when people say you must write the 'actual' or 'true' history that it is not always easy to do!

One thing that I did enjoy was looking at the different units in the battle and seeing what the equivalent armour and weapons would be if gunpowder was not available. The Guards, as an elite unit, end up with longbows, as they need dedication over many years and distort the body. The Rifles, have arbalests, like rifles, having a long range and penetrating power, but like them too, slow to load. Napoleon's skirmishers, the voltigeurs, given Napoleon's use of Roman iconography, have become javelin-throwing velites. In our world those French cavalry wearing metal breastplates, were called cuirassiers. However, this comes from 'cuir' meaning leather after the boiled leather breastplates of the Classical world and in my alternative a lot of people are wearing them, so those in real metal breastplates have been given 'ferassiers' from the French word 'fer' for iron. One thing that has always attracted wargamers to the Napoleonic period is the wealth of different uniforms and weapons used and I hope readers will find interest in what I have substituted these with in this alternative, only a few of which I have mentioned here. I used this very useful diagram for naming different types of helmets various used.

One challenge with any war story or alternate history is being able to show different aspects of the context to the reader. Initially I thought to do something like Iain Gale's novel of the Battle of Waterloo, 'Four Days in June' (2006). He has five characters he follows. However, I was conscious of criticisms of 'Scavenged Days' (2018) which to show a range of changes that France experienced in that alternative, I used a multiplicity of characters whose eyes we see through at various stages of the novel. In contrast, readers largely want just one main character and expect that you will also write all the details of the minor characters' stories right to the end. This was, in the end, why rather than select a soldier in the line, the story is seen through the eyes of a 'galloper' one of Wellington's battlefield messengers, in this case Cornet Ruper Aske. This allowed me the opportunity for him to be sent to various parts of the battlefields and to witness what the Duke of Wellington and other commanders were doing as well as seeing how the ordinary soldiers were faring. I hope having this perspective gives readers a feel for what was going on and, for this alternative, how the absence of gunpowder weapons altered the battles. This novel is fast paced and I am optimistic that I have made an adventurous story while at the same time exploring how much of a difference changing one aspect of warfare would have made, meaning that the book is far more than simply a 'thought experiment'.