Page 46
Stupidity and Continental War
The Art of the Stupidity of War
As you see, I am preparing for a new career as a lecturer at Cambridge. I will hold a symposium on the subject of stupidity, of which I am a world-renowned expert. It should pay well and offer a fair number of advantages over my current occupation, which frequently involves sleeping on the ground in my greatcoat, marching for days, being shot at, being hacked at with swords, being hacked at with bludgeons, being stabbed at with knives, bad food, bad lodgings, worse generalship, and routine Channel crossings.
After a decade in the regulars working my way up to colonel on merit, I believe I can speak on the subject with true authority. I watched the stupid man first into the breach for king and country and therefore first into the grave. I have seen stupid men hang at the back like a child holding his mama’s skirt; killed because they get separated from the rest of the men; last to be buried, but just as dead. I have seen generals order up one idiotic idea after another, each of which gets dozens or hundreds of my fellow soldiers killed. The worst part is that one of those killed might be ME.
You may wonder why I hold forth on this subject, though it is possible the laudanum in my tea has something to do with it.
You see, I am currently a part of what is euphemistically called the ‘culling of the herd’. Any gamekeeper worth his salt will tell you that you must periodically weed out the sick and weak to allow your herd to flourish. Human societies have the same problem, except that stupid people are hard to get rid of.
To combat this problem, we have a moderately efficient system known as ‘war’. You gather as many stupid people as you can into a group, put them into similar clothing, and dress up their stupidity in words like ‘duty’ and ‘honour’. Then you find somebody who has not really done anything wrong to you specifically, but has his own army of stupids, and attack him. You can make up the reason: resources, trade, the wrong gods, or talking funny. In the end, it boils down to two groups of people trying desperately to cull their herds. Open battles are very efficient, but a march or siege usually works just as well, what with dysentery and starvation doing the work for you.
There is actually a little bit of genius in it. The system works exceedingly well for weeding out stupid people, but unfortunately, it also has a similar effect on unlucky people. You might argue that removing unlucky people from society has a benefit as well, but I remain unconvinced.
As you can see, I get rather voluble when I take just a touch of laudanum, much like my cousin Anne, and I take just a touch of laudanum when I am exposed to excessive stupidity.
My second-to-last true lesson concerned the Bennet sisters, in whose glorious company I spent the last fortnight of November in the year twelve. Wonderful girls, one and all. Pick one at random and happiness for life is guaranteed.
After more than a decade in the army, I thought I knew everything there possibly was to know about idiocy. During that winter, I learnt one more thing: without a doubt, I could identify the two stupidest men in England. They were, of course, my cousin Darcy and his lunkheaded friend Bingley.
I must give my evidence. For six weeks in 1811, these two dunderheads were in company with the Bennet sisters, and they LEFT. That’s right—THEY LEFT, unmarried, unengaged, just GONE. Worse yet, they did it in a very ungentlemanly manner, then ignored them for a full year.
One of these idiots has since advanced to thoroughly besotted lunkhead. Unfortunately, he got to that state too late to stop a murderous rampage in Elizabeth’s dining parlour, so now he gets the title of dispirited, nearly suicidal, besotted lunkhead. His father must be proud.
Perhaps the thought has occurred to you that I should be courting one of these lovely ladies, or possibly all of them. I will have to explain, because it is the most peculiar situation.
My cousin insisted Georgiana and I appear at an oddly specific time, in the last place in the world we generally wished to travel. We found a happy, jovial man, apparently Darcy in a different mood. We visited the parsonage with our Aunt Catherine de Bourgh and our cousin Anne, and got to know the Bennet sisters. I know you think I have been tipping the laudanum too much, but yes, those were the facts: parsonage, Darcy, Lady Catherine, Anne de Bourgh—all in the same place at once.
The first thing I noticed was that not a single one of the sisters could really be fooled by my jovial manner. A compliment that was not well thought out and accurate would be deflected with a single raised eyebrow, as if challenging my ability to construct a complete English sentence that was not half balderdash.
A little bit of dinner conversation, and we discovered we were apparently part of the culling operation in Kent, because we were attacked by a raving madman. Elizabeth and Anne, who are definitely not stupid, were badly injured. That meant those two were unlucky, which is not very pleasant at close quarters.
After the attack, I ended up putting my hands on Lydia, primarily to keep her from bashing in the head of the miserable cretin who attacked her sister. Not that I disapproved of said head-bashing, but Darcy claimed we needed him alive. Perhaps he had a quota of stupidity to be maintained.
Once I disarmed Lydia and cleaned and bandaged Anne’s horrid wound, I had a delightful fortnight sleeping in Rosings and spending my days with the Bennet sisters. It would have felt an awful lot like courting, except for one small, tiny, almost insignificant detail, aside from them all being worried sick over their sister. Almost within minutes, they effectively became my sisters. I have no idea how it happened.
Unfortunately, I had no time at all to talk to Elizabeth before the attack. Darcy assured me that not only was she not stupid, but she was alarmingly clever, which is really saying something. However, she remained in bed with an intense fever when I was called back to duty.
Amongst the other girls, you could find nearly any attribute you seek in a woman. Looking for a beautiful singing voice? Lydia will make you clap, and Catherine will make you weep. Pianoforte your passion? Mary could perform in a London theatre without embarrassment. Stick Mary with any of the other three girls, and you have a concert fit for a king (ideally one who is not mad).
Living with Lydia would be much like joining the Navy and setting up my hammock in the barrel of one of the guns. It would be the safest, calmest place in the ship. Clean, dry, and comfortable—until of course, it was fired. Sooner or later, one of those explosions would be pointed at me, and I am not sure I would survive it.
Catherine, on the other hand, would be like taking a room on a farm full of days-old piglets. Warm, charming, kind, and adorable in every way. None of them would ever do you any harm, or even think a bad thought about you. A good woman, but the life would be just too easy. She would do for Bingley if he was not such a simpleton, but not enough of a challenge for me.
Mary has an acerbic wit, and a lot more intelligence than she shows. Sometimes she takes opinions that are not actually her own just for amusement, and she can hardly resist tying me into knots. She and Darcy would sometimes cross swords over Shakespeare or something like that. I am told he is just practising for when Elizabeth returns, for she does the same thing, only better.
Now we come to Jane, the most fashionably beautiful of the sisters. She has a serene countenance, thinks the very best of everyone in the world, and is calm and reasonable under all provocations—until she is not. Then she is the combination of a charging bull and a raging demon from hell. To be honest, she frightens me just a little. If you can believe it—colonel, veteran of many campaigns, decorated for bravery—afraid of a woman.
There you have it, all perfect, all ideal women, and all permanently consigned to sisterhood. I do not repine at this turn of events. I love them dearly as sisters, much like Anne and Georgiana, and each has an attribute that would make them very worthy of becoming mistress of my—well, actually, my horse is pretty much my entire fortune, so it is hard to attract a wife anyway.
And so, you see that I am eminently qualified to discuss stupidity at some length. I can have a course lasting at least a year, with optional lectures on odd Saturdays.
Perhaps stupidity cannot be the only attraction, so I can also add a section on luck. I found myself back in Kent in the middle of January in the year thirteen, for two reasons. The first was an urgent summons from Darcy, indicating that he and Aunt Catherine had cooked up some hare-brained scheme involving me leaving the company of my fellow stupids. That was an idea I could support, even with the dubious parentage of Darcy and my aunt.
The other reason was that I had apparently consumed my entire stock of luck, as, on the last day before my departure, I was shot! By one of my own men! On English soil!
That led me to stop for fortification in the tea shop in Hunsford. It was not that I was afraid of my aunt, my cousins, and my new sisters… not precisely… I just felt some need for… fortification.
