Napoleon 1803 — Book II: the Wall on Mississippi (18061811): 2

What if Napoleon had never sold Louisiana? 1806. Trafalgar never happened. The combined Franco-Spanish fleet rules the Atlantic, Napoleon keeps Louisiana - and a hardened drop of wax on a map marks the border that will split a continent in two. Within five years, war ignites on both coasts of America. Tsar Alexander lands Cossacks in California, carried there by British ships. Aaron Burr and General Wilkinson conspire in the West while each one sells out the other. Andrew Jackson crosses the Mississippi without anyone's permission and plants the fifteen-star flag on the wrong bank. Marshal Lannes crosses an ocean to hold a river that refuses to obey maps. And an imperial squadron sails up the Potomac until Washington burns. Meanwhile, the other war is being fought - the war of the cabinets. Empress María Luisa governs with memoranda what armies cannot win. Talleyrand weighs eleven-gram letters capable of moving entire courts. And at an inn in Hartford, a paper ruled into two columns threatens to split the Union before the enemy can. The Mississippi Wall is the second book of Napoleon 1803, a rigorously researched alternate history that sweeps from New Orleans to Saint Petersburg, from the missions of California to the burning President's House. A novel about the price of empires: paid in men, sealed in wax - and almost never collected by the one who fired the shot.