Chapter 1513: The Great Soviet Union in the North, the Apache in the South

"Heave-ho, heave-ho"

Accompanied by waves of work chants, a lateen-rigged galley with furled sails, driven by its long oars, wound its way northward, churning up lines of white spray on the waterway of the Mississippi River, while the fleur-de-lis banner of the House of Bourbon fluttered and snapped in the autumn wind.

On both banks of the Mississippi, the green fields were as lovely as a painting.

The Marquis de Créquy, François II, had left Mexico City, capital of the Kingdom of New Spain, a month earlier and set out on the journey to New Rome. What a long journey it was! The Marquis first left Mexico City for the Caribbean coastal town of Veracruz, where he boarded a galley, then coasted slowly along the shoreline toward the mouth of the Mississippi. It took nearly half a month to cover the 1,000 nautical miles and reach the estuary of the Mississippi, the longest river in North America.

And from the mouth of the Mississippi to New Rome was another seventy or eighty nautical miles of waterway, following the winding Mississippi upstream against the current.

The mouth of the Mississippi was an alluvial plain still in the process of forming — not yet a plain, but wetlands. If the Mississippi carried a little more silt, this area might soon turn from sea into fine farmland.

But the Mississippi was no Yellow River; the soil along its banks was excellently conserved, so it could not carry great quantities of silt downstream — which was, of course, a good thing for the upper and middle reaches of the Mississippi, where the land was rich and moist, making farming and herding easy to manage, and even casual planting yielded abundant harvests. For the river's mouth, however, it was something of a problem.

It was plainly a superb site for founding a commercial city, yet because the terrain was too low-lying, no suitable spot for a settlement could ever be found. Only after Pope Clement X produced the enormous sum of 2.5 million gold louis to build, at the mouth of the Mississippi, a New Rome worthy of God's glory, did the situation change.

The Comte de Frontenac, a famed French general who had fought in the Thirty Years' War, the Franco-Spanish War, and the Franco-Dutch War, and had even defended Crete for the Venetians, was recommended to the Pope by Louis XIV in 1672 and entrusted with the weighty office of Governor-General of New Rome. After he led a joint expeditionary force of Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, and Spaniards to the mouth of the Mississippi, with the help of the local Indians, he at last found on the banks of the Mississippi a patch of high ground that was neither too large nor too small, and not too high — and that was the city of New Rome!

This city held an extremely important place in Louis XIV's grand American plan.

In Louis's conception, French colonists should begin opening up the New World from two directions, north and south, at the same time. The northern line would advance from east to west along the St. Lawrence River, centered on Quebec, relying on the fur trade to push the French colonial movement forward step by step.

On the southern line, the French colonial movement would unfold along the Mississippi, advancing step by step from south to north, centered on New Rome, relying on the plantations established along the lower Mississippi and the Caribbean coast to drive the colonial enterprise ever forward.

Quebec had appeared more than sixty years earlier, yet after more than sixty years of development it still had only two or three thousand inhabitants — far from satisfactory.

So Louis XIV's hopes for opening up and developing New France shifted to the mouth of the Mississippi in the south.

"Count, I hear you have found a patch of high ground on which New Rome can be built?" The Marquis sat in the cabin, tapping his cup of milk tea, quietly regarding the Count de Frontenac, already past fifty.

"Yes," the Count de Frontenac said with a sigh. "Though it is not ideal, truly nothing better could be found."

"What is wrong with it?" the Marquis asked.

"It is still too low and too damp, easily flooded." The Count de Frontenac paused. "And there are no mountains around to block wind and rain, so the winters are cold, and the summer winds are likely to be very strong. But we could find nothing better."

This chosen land was not perfect in every way, for it lacked great east-west mountain ranges to block the cold currents, so the North American plains and the eastern regions were often swept by cold waves in winter, with temperatures plunging to dozens of degrees below zero — truly dreadful!

And in summer, hurricanes from the sea swept unchecked across the central and eastern parts of the North American continent!

The very heartland of the United States of New Continent — America Bay, the Bo River Valley, the Great River Basin, and the Flood River Valley — was, by contrast, wrapped in the high-rising Rocky Mountains, so the climate there was very pleasant: not cold in winter, not hot in summer, and free of those troublesome cold waves and hurricanes. It was very well suited for immigrants from afar to rest and build their lives. The reason the population of the United States of New Continent could grow so quickly was also connected to that mild, comfortable climate.

Still, the climate at the mouth of the Mississippi was a very fine place indeed!

The galley carrying the Marquis and the Count de Frontenac, who had met him at the mouth of the Mississippi, had by now reached the foot of the high ground where the castle of New Rome was under construction.

The Count de Frontenac and the Marquis went up on deck together. The Count pointed to a wooden fort under construction and said, "Marquis, that is New Rome! Crude as it is — but Rome was not built in a day! So I believe that as long as we keep faith in God and labor unceasingly, we will surely build a city of Rome at the mouth of the Mississippi."

The Marquis nodded, then raised his telescope and began observing the wooden fort under construction. The laborers were all colonists from Europe, and there were quite a few of them — through his telescope alone the Marquis could see several hundred.

In addition, some French soldiers were patrolling near the worksite. Though they carried flintlock muskets on their backs, they still looked somewhat slack.

Suddenly, through his telescope the Marquis spotted several Indians with feathers "stuck" on their heads (in fact, it was a kind of hat).

"Where do those natives come from?" the Marquis asked. "Are they Indians from nearby?"

"No, they are Plains Apache!" the Count de Frontenac explained. "All of them quite formidable warriors. They have fought the Spaniards for over a hundred years — far stronger than that worthless lot in the Valley of Mexico, or the Mayans and Incas!"

The Indians of the Americas fell roughly into two broad categories. One category farmed the land — such as the Aztecs, the Maya, the Inca, and certain peoples of the southeastern part of the North American continent — and basically had little fighting strength. Even the mighty Aztec and Inca empires had proved utterly fragile before a handful of Spanish colonists.

The other broad category was the hunting Indians, represented by the Great Soviet Union and the Apache Alliance!

Compared with those Indians who had large populations, relatively advanced production, and had even built civilizations, cities, and empires, these buffalo-hunting Indians were far stronger in battle!

"Count," the Marquis said, lowering his telescope and turning to look at the Count de Frontenac, "how do you intend to make use of them? Hire them... or form an alliance?"

"An alliance, and also hire them." The Count de Frontenac said, "These Plains Apache were brought here by me to make contact with the Apache in the mountains... I hope that all the Apache can come to recognize that their chief threat is not New Spain, but the United States of New Continent. Then we can form an alliance with them."

The Marquis nodded. "That is also what I recommended to the King... We should unite with all forces that can be united — including, of course, the Apache... Is there any chance this can succeed?"

"Of course it can succeed!" The Count de Frontenac laughed. "They too have long felt the threat of the United States of New Continent, and even more urgently, because the central Rocky Mountains have already become the territory of the United States of New Continent. The Indians who originally lived there have met with no good end! Some of them even fled into the lands of the Apache and the Soviets, and were swallowed up by those two tribal confederations..."

(End of Chapter)