In 1782, when Kaleiopuu died, his son Kiwalao succeeded him, with Kamehameha as keeper of the war god: offering humans to the war god was the royal prerogative, but Kamehameha sacrificed a rebellious nobleman to the god himself. When Kiwalao tried to stop him, Kamehameha captured and sacrificed him, and then made himself
THE INTERVENTION: ANTOINETTE AND FERSEN
Louis sent a contingent under the comte de Rochambeau to America in 1780; and to stop the gossip and seek adventure, Fersen joined him. Yet this intervention in America was too little, too slow. Louis had also dispatched a Franco-Spanish armada of sixty-five ships-of-the-line bearing 30,000 troops to invade Britain, an enterprise that narrowly failed thanks mainly to the weather. Necker had borrowed massively to pay for it. It was the murkiness of the royal finances that made French borrowing so expensive: British finances were much more transparent, allowing the British government to borrow at a full 2 per cent less than France. Necker produced a false budget that concealed the desperate financial crisis now exacerbated by war, then resigned in a sulk.
Not until two years into the war did Louis order his full fleet under Admiral de Grasse to back the Americans. In September 1780, Washington and Lafayette met Rochambeau and Fersen to coordinate. As the toughest British general, Charles Cornwallis, marched his 9,000 troops into Virginia, Washington and the French, supported now by the formidable fleet under Grasse, gave chase.
In early 1781, Cornwallis dispatched units to hunt down Governor Jefferson of Virginia. Jefferson abandoned the capital, Richmond, to British predations, and fled to his western plantation. Twenty-three of his slaves escaped – as Jefferson put it, ‘joined the enemy’ – as did fourteen of Washington’s.
Jefferson was no warlord. His delicate wife Martha gave birth to six children, though only two daughters survived their childhood; each time her health had declined.* Now he devotedly nursed her.
Suddenly the war accelerated. Washington, Rochambeau and Grasse converged on Virginia, where Cornwallis confidently fortified his camp at Yorktown.
In November 1780, as Antoinette awaited news from America, her mother Maria Theresa, aged sixty-three, lay dying at the Hofburg in Joseph’s arms.
‘Is Your Majesty uncomfortable?’ asked Joseph.
‘Yes,’ replied the queen-empress, ‘but in a good enough position to die.’ Now Joseph could patronize his beloved musicians, Salieri and Mozart, and reform the monarchy with ideas that even Jefferson would approve of. ‘All men,’ Joseph declared, ‘are equal at birth.’
MOZART, JOSEPH AND HIS CONTINUAL ERECTIONS
Joseph, now forty, far from being a long-jawed, slathering Joseph Habsburg, was slim, handsome, informal, witty and self-deprecating, the most extraordinary of his family – a radical visionary: ‘We inherit from our parents no more than animal life, hence there’s not the slightest difference between king, count, bourgeois and peasant.’ He embarked on endless tours and inspections, with a tiny entourage, eschewing ceremony, enjoying his incognito as Count von Falkenstein, dressed plainly in military coat and boots, and indulging in sexual adventures which he complained were a ‘choice between ugly peasants and falconers’ wives’. Visiting Paris, he was randomly recruited to stand godfather at a christening where the priest asked his name:
‘Joseph.’
‘Surname?’
‘Second.’
‘Occupation?’
‘Emperor.’*
When the American revolution was discussed, Jefferson claimed Joseph joked, ‘I’m a royalist by trade.’ But he was also obsessional, tactless and in a hurry. ‘As a prince he’ll have continual erections,’ his dear friend, the prince de Ligne, predicted, ‘and never be satisfied. His reign will be a continual priapism.’ Believing reform was possible only from above, Joseph was an indefatigable legislomaniac, promulgating 6,206 mostly admirable laws: his
