The First Dimensional Conversion: The Napoleonic Wars

The coach rattled along the snow-covered roads of Spain in the chill early hours of morning. The sky was lightening on the horizon, with the promise of a cold but sunny day. But Lord Jamison Douglass, Viscount Douglass of Ben Wyvis, was already awake - he had been awake all night, bounced along in the uncomfortable coach, listening absently to the occasional comments of the coachman and his companion in Spanish - a language he did not understand at all - and wondering how he could have been such a fool as to get himself in this position, trying to reach Lisbon and avoid the French, on his way home from Greece and a disastrously planned Grand Tour.

Vive l'empereur

The young Lord Douglass deemed himself a fool on several counts. One, for having allowed Lord Byron to talk him into accompanying him on his trip to Albania to meet with Ali Pasha - Bryon having sussed the notion that Spiridion Forresti, that wily Greek, wanted to take him along to distract the sensual Turkish pasha, and deciding to bring more attractive bait along on his own. The ensuing encounter had been an eye-opener for the young man, used to the straight-laced ways of Scotland, and as yet unsure of himself.


Two, Jamison figured he was a fool for becoming involved in the disastrous political scheme being hatched by the British, who as usual had little understanding of the mentality of the people they were dealing with. In attempting to enlist the aid of the Greeks in the British takeover of the Ionians from Napoleon, they had reckoned without the fact that the Greeks hated the Turks with a passion fueled by almost 400 years of Ottoman oppression, and would side with anyone who would defeat the aims of their oppressors.

Finally, disgusted with Byron and his coterie of idiot friends - who seemed to do nothing but spout poetry and grandiose theories, in between bouts of drinking and whoring, Jamison had parted company with his fellow Scotsman and determined to make his own way home, taking a boat to Brindisi and a coach to Naples. There, failing to find passage through the Straits of Gibraltor due to French naval activity, and oncoming winter making a crossing of the Alps impractical - not to mention the ever-present danger of bandits there - he had allowed himself to be persuaded that a journey overland from Barcelona to Lisbon was practicable - the ongoing Peninsular Wars notwithstanding.

Jamison reckoned himself a fool for doing this. Why hadn't he just stayed in Italy? But news from home had spurred him into undertaking this last leg of the journey - which, he sourly reflected, might be indeed his last, if reports of French skirmishers and the sight of the smoking ruin of the last village he had passed were anything to go by. He cursed Byron, he cursed the French, and he cursed his own insouciance in believing that a British nobleman had the right to go anywhere he pleased in this Year of Our Lord 1809.

His fears were soon realised in the form of a French scouting party, which spotted the coach and attempted to stop it. The coachman, attempting to outrun the foreign dragoons, was dispatched with a well-placed musket shot, and his companion, who valiantly leapt over the side and clear of the coach, ran into the underbrush, where he was picked off by the scouting party and died quickly from a cavalryman's sword thrust. The driverless coach, pulled by panicked horses, careered to a bend in the road, where it failed to negotiate the curve and overturned, the desperate horses whinnying and struggling to get free.

Jamison climbed out of the carriage, pulling out his sword and ready to fight for his life. He suspected the struggle would be short-lived - there was a reason he wasn't in the army. He'd had years of sword drill - he could do it with the best of them. But he couldn't kill, and he knew it. So here, on this snowy road, he would either die or be taken hostage by the French. But something in him made him want to put up at least a show of resistance, and so he faced the cavalry with as much defiance as he was capable of.

As the leader of the scouting party, a dragoon officer, saw Jamison standing by the coach with drawn sword, he charged, sabre at the ready for a passing stroke. Jamison stood transfixed. He had no experience of such things, did not know what to do, and did not even have the presence of mind to dodge the coming blow.

Suddenly a shot rang out, and the dragoon officer fell from his horse, his back arching as he tumbled to the snowy ground. Then a volley of rifle fire erupted from the bushes, and two others were unhorsed. The remainder of the party, realising that they were in ambush from a British patrol, deemed discretion the better part of valour and beat a hasty retreat, leaving the riflemen - tough-looking fighters in green jackets - to come out of hiding and take the field, as it were - an overturned coach, five dead bodies, and a scared-looking young man with a sword in his hand.

While a couple of the riflemen attended to the panicked horses, uncoupling them from the coach and letting them run until they calmed down, the leader of the group, a sergeant by his stripes, walked up to Jamison and said in a soothing voice:

'It's all right, sir, the nasty Frogs are gone now, you can put away that pig-sticker and come with us.'

Jamison recovered sufficiently to take in the situation, and put his sword away, blushing.

'I'm much obliged to you and your men, Sergeant. I'm afraid I've really blundered in where I don't belong.'

The sergeant laughed. 'It's a scandal when the roads are unsafe for gentlefolk such as yourself, sir. Come along of us and see our Captain. He'll see you right, for sure.'

And so Jamison went along with the sergeant and the other riflemen to meet their captain.