Borne In Blood Part 33

Author's Notes.

The first part of the nineteenth century in Europe was dominated by one figure: Napoleon Bonaparte, whose military campaigns took him, and his long-suffering armies, from Egypt to Moscow to Spain before he was brought to heel. The semi-exile of Napoleon to the island of Elba in 1814 ended in 1815, when he returned to France to lead a popular uprising against the Bourbon rulers. His defeat in the summer of 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo in Belgium was final, both militarily and politically; he was sent to the island of St. Helena in the south Atlantic Ocean to live out the remaining six years of his life.

His departure left scars on Europe that required more than a generation to heal, and thousands of former soldiers without jobs or prospects. There were also record numbers of refugees, widows, and orphans cast adrift in the tumultuous societal confusion that marked the end of Napoleon's ambitions, and their presence made a significant impact on every level of European communities, few of which discovered an equitable way to deal with the ruined families. To make this more difficult, women had no legal recourse to raise their own children unless specifically provided in the terms of the marriage and reiterated in the husband's will, so many families were shattered as male relatives claimed or abandoned children as suited their purposes. Almost no women owned property or controlled their own money; without male relatives to support them, widows often found themselves without means of survival, caught between penury and prost.i.tution in one form or another.

In 1816, just as the magnitude of the European disaster was beginning to be a.s.sessed, a year of severe weather took hold of most of the world as a result of the volcanic eruption in Indonesia the year before. Poor harvests, freezing conditions well into June, and outbreaks of typhus and cholera throughout Europe as well as one of ergotism in France oppressed the population as war had not been able to do. Although 1817 saw a lessening of the crisis, the winter was still colder and longer than usual, and harvests were significantly reduced throughout the temperate zones on the planet.

Yet all was not defeat and gloom: the early years of the nineteenth century saw the (re)invention of the steam engine and its immediate offspring, the steam locomotive and the paddle wheeler. The velocipede, and the Celeripede, the immediate ancestors of the bicycle, were invented to help ease the traffic congestion in the burgeoning cities. The first tentative steps toward what would become ma.s.s transit systems appeared in European and British commercial centers. Scientific experimentation was also on the rise, as were new studies in linguistics, mathematics, astronomy, antiquarian studies (called archeology after 1890), and biology. Experiments in electricity were becoming more acceptable to the scientific community. In 1817, cadmium, lithium, and selenium were all identified as elements. In 1816, Krupp steel began producing low-grade files in Essen, and by 1836 was leading the industry in high-grade cast steel. Although many universities were growing in size and influence, a significant percentage of the most active scholars were not directly a.s.sociated with universities, but were involved in independent studies sponsored by wealthy patrons on subjects that were the areas of interest for the wealthy men themselves. Beethoven, Schubert, and Rossini were among those composing for a growing audience, and Walter Scott, Byron, Sh.e.l.ley, and Keats were all writing: 1818 saw the publication of both Mary Sh.e.l.ley's Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus and John Polidori's The Vampyr. After a very long moribund period, education and literacy for the middle cla.s.s and yeomanry was on the rise; even education for women was possible for a fortunate few, with schools established especially for girls of upper-cla.s.s and upper-middle-cla.s.s backgrounds. In America, Harper and Brothers Publishers and the Harvard Law School were both founded in 1817.

Medicine, although not as haphazard as it had been in previous centuries, was still fairly primitive: surgical instruments were not washed for procedures, let alone sterilized; "bleeding" was common practice and used fairly indiscriminately; epidemics were often regarded as supernatural in origins. But the climate of scientific inquiry was making inroads in many disciplines, including the practice of medicine; vaccination had been around since 1796, and its benefits were largely accepted. Studies into the workings of the body were increasing, as were related experiments that contributed to new theories of human origins.

The map of Europe was quartered somewhat differently then than now: Germany was not yet united, nor was Italy; Prussia held several territories in Germany, which operated under a taxation union but were held together by little more than convenience. Part of what is now France south of Lake Geneva was then nominally Swiss. By 1816, between the pressure of national aggression and scarcity due to bad weather, long-running regional rivalries started up again, and only the loss of Napoleon left a military vacuum that was sufficient to slow any sudden renewal of ancient hostilities.

By current standards, travel was slow: a four-horse coach could expect to travel an average of ten leagues (thirty miles) a day in good weather on good roads. Well-sprung coaches could sometimes manage eleven to twelve leagues (thirty-three to thirty-six miles) in optimal conditions. A man on horseback, with regular remounts, could double that. Private courier services were used by merchants, scholars, and lawyers with increasing regularity, and generally moved at about fifteen leagues (forty-five miles) on good roads in good weather. A few men and companies maintained their own messengers, which also meant maintaining a system of remounts. As the ravages of war diminished, commerce and the notion of progress rushed in to take up the slack left by the military, leading to improved communications and the promotion of railroads within a decade of this story. Commerce with the Americas was expanding steadily, with the result that many East Coast port cities such as Baltimore and Savannah doubled their European trade in less than ten years. Explorations of the Pacific Islands continued to produce increased trade from Tahiti to j.a.pan, which fed a rediscovered European hunger for the exotic. Trade in Chinese ceramics became a major industry for the European markets, as did Indian bra.s.ses and textiles, screens and wood-block prints from j.a.pan, and precious woods and gems from southeast Asia. The first, tentative steps toward genuine world trade had been taken.

Fashion had abandoned the wedding-cake excesses of the Louis XVI court, along with aristocratic decadence supposedly stamped out during the French Revolution, in favor of a more cla.s.sical line, based on Greek and Roman statuary bought or pilfered by ambitious travelers. It worked rather better in women's clothes than men's; the high-waisted, gauzy ensembles of the Empire (French), Regency (English), and Jacksonian (American) periods were a significant departure from the elaborate, broad-skirted costumes of the Louis XVI period. By the end of the 1700s men's coats were narrow, the unmentionables (trousers) ankle-length instead of britches gartered at the knee, and the lower leg booted or silk-stockinged. Elegant austerity rather than gaudy superfluity was fashionable, except for those going to the extremes of fashion: this group of men, called Macaronis in England and America, were known for their colorful and exaggerated clothing and effete manners.

Most prosperous households required a fair number of servants to man them, but the conditions of service were changing. In Europe, slavery was being made illegal in most countries, and bonded-servitude was on the way out. Experiments in electricity would lead to the end of domestic service as it had existed; however, the scientists exploring electricity in this time did not antic.i.p.ate the vacuum cleaner and air conditioner when they undertook their studies in galvanism. What the social revolutions of the end of the eighteenth century could not accomplish, the technological developments during the nineteenth century did, and set the stage for the vast transitions of the twentieth century-transitions that continue to this day.

Many thanks are due to six friends of Swiss descent who allowed me to borrow family names for many of my secondary characters: Gina, Harry, Loren, Matthew, Serena, and Willis, your generosity is much appreciated; any error I have made in the names you have provided is on my head, not yours. Thanks-in no particular order-are also due to Edward Milner for information on European roads and travel in the early nineteenth century; to Susan Altermaat for information on publishing in Amsterdam during this period; to Emily Burge for her references on the fate of Napoleonic soldiers after their defeat; to J. P. Keel for providing maps and charts on the Napoleonic aftermath, as well as for pa.s.sing on a number of links to related Web sites; to Doroteo Tordellos for access to her collection of early-nineteenth-century travel guide-books; to Howard Leibermann for information on clothing and textiles in Europe from 1810 to 1825; to Nathan M. Parriser for his material on the state of early-nineteenth-century science and medicine; to Melinda Tapuy for references on Swiss and Austrian law of the period; and to Philippa Veuier for some insights on language-drift present in Switzerland at that time.

At the other end of the process, thanks are due to Irene Kraas, my agent; to Wiley Saichek, who does so much to get my work out on the Internet; to Paula Guran, Web master and designer of my Web site www.ChelseaQuinnYarbro.net; to Lindig Harris for her Yclept Yarbro newsletter available ; to Samuella Gonsalves, Pat Derringer, and Doris Seikama, who read the ma.n.u.script for clarity; to Libba Campbell, who read it for accuracy; to the www.Yahoo.com group; to Peggy, Charlie, Megan, Gaye, Steve, Lori, Marc, Bill, Brian, and Patrick just because; to Maureen Kelly, Sharon Russell, Stephanie Moss, and Alice Horst; and to Paolo deCrescenzo and his Gargoyle Books for the grand time in Italy on Saint-Germain's behalf; to the Lord Ruthven a.s.sembly and the International Conference for Fantasy in the Arts; to the Canadian chapter of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula and Elizabeth Miller; to the International Horror Guild, for the honor, which surely belongs as much to the Count as to me; to Melissa Singer at Tor, and to Tor itself; to the bookstores and readers who have kept this series going for twenty books so far, and counting.

CHELSEA QUINN YARBRO.

Berkeley, California.

July 2007.

By Chelsea Quinn Yarbro from Tom Doherty a.s.sociates.

Ariosto.

Better in the Dark.

Blood Games.

Blood Roses.

Borne in Blood.

A Candle for D'Artagnan

Come Twilight.

Communion Blood

Crusader's Torch

Dark of the Sun

Darker Jewels

A Feast in Exile.

A Flame in Byzantium

Hotel Transylvania.

Mansions of Darkness

Out of the House of Life.

The Palace

Path of the Eclipse.

Roman Dusk.

States of Grace.

Writ in Blood.

end.