The Red River Expedition

On this day, one-hundred and fifty years ago, the Red River Expedition reached Fort Garry. In what was one of the longest treks through wild country to assert national sovereignty, Garnet Wolseley led over 1,200 men to put down what was called the Red River Rebellion, but may more accurately be known as the Red River Resistance. 

From wikimediacommons

The catalyst for this incredible cross country trek was a series of poorly thought out land negotiations by the nascent Dominion of Canada. For decades men in what became Ontario had covetously eyed the vast, empty lands to the west Rupert's Land in what was controlled by the Hudson's Bay Company. Of course, these lands weren't really empty, but were home to many distinct and mostly thriving Indigenous cultures which had left their mark across the Great Plains for centuries.

One of these groups were the Métis. The Métis are a group of mixed ancestry, having been born from the union of various fur trappers with Indigenous women from across many tribes. They eventually formed their own distinct culture and community, many settling in the Red River Settlement, along the banks of the Red River between the Hudson's Bay trading posts of Upper and Lower Fort Garry. There they began to settle, mixing between sedentary farming and the great buffalo hunts which kept them fed when crops failed and harvests failed to materialize.

Along the banks of the Red River was also where the only sizable contingent of purely European settlers dwelled on the Plains north of the 49th Parallel. These were descendants of the colonists Lord Selkirk had brought in the 1810s to try and establish a more permanent presence on Hudson's Bay Company land. From there others, Americans, British subjects and French Catholics, traveled overland or the long arduous route from the sea to settle and farm. It was a mixing pot of peoples, multilingual and multicultural. Catholics and Protestants, Europeans, Métis and the Indigenous.

By the time Canada had obtained the Hundson's Bay Territory, the population was over 13,000, over half of them Métis. When the government had obtained the vast territory stretching from the Lake of the Woods to the Rockies, the people living in it were not consulted. They had no deed to their land and would be, under Canadian law, considered squatters. And so they were rightly terrified of this new development.

Anticipating the transfer, the government of Canada sent surveyors to Fort Garry in order to survey the land for settlement. The local representatives all said this was a poorly thought out idea which would cause unrest, but in typical form, the government went ahead and did it anyways. The surveyors, led by Colonel John Stoughton Dennis (one of the most singular cowards in Canadian history whose only previous claim to fame was bravely running away from the Battle of Fort Erie and having many high placed friends) was sent to command the surveyors. None of the surveyors spoke French, and they ignored all efforts by the locals to communicate. The local settlers, rightly irked by this development, coalesced around the son of a former prominent Métis leader, Louis Riel. 

He swiftly formed a Provisional government, disrupted the survey work, turned back the governor sent by Canada and seized Fort Garry at the head of 400 men. In doing so he took effective control of the colony. The local Anglophones tried to rally around Colonel Dennis, but in the face of adversity he bravely dressed as an old Indigenous woman and ran away after other Anglophone leaders were arrested.

The Provisional Government (Riel in the center)

From wikimedia commons

The Provisional Government then set about trying to negotiate a settlement with Canada. In doing so they established effective authority, managed to create Manitoba, and seemed to be on the path to effectively integrating into the new Dominion. However, the resistance of the Anglophone community was not yet done, and so some men continued to agitate. Though Riel had before pardoned men who had worked against him, he chose to make an example of one infamous trouble maker, Thomas Scott. Scott was an out and out racist who chose to quarrel with his guards and held the Métis in contempt. In order to demonstrate he was serious, Riel ordered his execution. 

This set off a firestorm of condemnation in Ontario. The people were convinced that Riel meant to install a French Catholic government in the new Manitoba. They demonstrated, demanding vengeance for the death of Thomas Scott. Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, who had until then been of the opinion that negotiation was the best option, could not let this go unanswered. He therefore ordered a military expedition be put together to assert Canadian sovereignty in the far flung province.

For this, the Canadian government selected the most capable officer of the Victorian Age to lead the expedition, Sir Garnet Wolseley. A man who had taken bullets for the Queen in Burma, Russia and India, he was practically bred for war. Acting as Quartermaster-General to the forces in Canada at the time, he was charged with raising a brigade of troops to serve on the expedition. He was assigned the 1st Battalion of the 60th Rifles under Lt. Col. R. J. Fielden (350 men and 23 Officers) and then two provisional battalions of militia from Ontario and Quebec, the Ontario Rifles under Lt. Col. Samuel P. Jarvis (382 men and 25 Officers) and the Quebec Rifles under Lt. Col. Louis Casault (385 men and 25 officers). Alongside these he had detachments form the Royal Artillery with four six pound guns, and men from the Royal Engineers, and voyageurs and guides. It was over 1,200 men.

Wolseley in 1874

From wikimedia commons

Being his first independent command, Wolseley did much of the legwork for the planning himself. He consulted maps, other voyageurs, and many Canadians who had experience with the area. He also did all the calculations himself and tried to figure out how long exactly it would take them to reach their destination. He managed to calculate the number of supplies they would need down to the barrel, knowing they had to bring all of it with them themselves as there was no means of resupply along the route. Ammunition, food, clothing, axes and other implements would all have to go with them. Some of the tools sent by the Regular Army were considered shoddy, and so the Canadians themselves had to replace them with local made items. He recruited many useful officers from this Canadian experience, men he would rely on in later life, a Canadian, Frederick Denison who he would employ as chief of his voyageurs up the Nile trying to save Charles Gordon, Redvers Buller, who would serve as his chief of staff in many coming colonial campaigns, and William Butler whom he employed as a spy on the dangerous service of gathering information for him from Fort Garry before trekking to meet him in the wilderness.

It was a wild expedition, Fenians threatened to attack the column (they never did), the American government refused to allow the force use of the locks at the Sault Canal, and so they had to portage overland. It was a rough going, as they had to carry all they had with them past Thunder Bay along some slightly maintained roads. Christening his position Prince Arthur's Landing (though Wolseley felt it an 'ugly looking spot'), the men proceeded largely by canoe and portage. Though they were lashed at by rain, and kept up by thunderstorms, they persevered and moved on. They traversed from the new landing to Lake Shebandowan, overland again to Fort Frances and Lake of the Woods. The whole time they expected some form of attack, but their greatest enemies turned out to be the heat and the swarms of black flies and mosquitoes.

From there, after a brief misadventure where Wolseley's calculations and maps proved to be in error, they finally to the Winnipeg River and proceeded up to Lake Winnipeg, where they made camp and Wolseley mused on its picturesque appearance. After this, it was up the river to Fort Garry. They moved cautiously, expecting some form of resistance When Wolseley's brigade arrived, they found Riel had fled not long before their arrival as he had been (rightly as it turned out) told that the troops meant to hang him. Indeed, Wolseley's remarked "Personally I was glad Riel did not come out and surrender, as he at one time said he would, for I could not then have hanged him as I might have done had I taken him prisoner when in arms against his sovereign."

That being said, the expedition was a success. They successfully traversed through over 400 miles of wilderness to establish firm Canadian sovereignty over the new province of Manitoba. It was one of the largest military expeditions across the North American continent, and a feat of spectacular logistics through largely undeveloped wilderness. Not a single man got sick or was lost to disease or desertion. Despite the lack of fighting (as the whole 'rebellion' and expedition was a largely bloodless venture) it can safely be counted as one of the greatest feats of military movement of the 19th century, certainly the greatest of it's kind in Canadian history.

Route of the Red River Expedition

Much can be read about this, and Wolseley wrote extensively about it in his own memoirs The Story of a Soldier's Life (Volume 2). I would earnestly recommend reading the accounts of this adventure.

Wolseley would go on to earn laurels and undertake many successful campaigns in Africa and Asia. Riel on the other hand would flee into exile in the United States, only to return fifteen years later and lead an altogether more violent rebellion where he would be defeated, captured, and executed. 

Planetary Invasions

In science fiction the idea of our planet being invaded, or other planets being invaded, is sufficiently old enough to be a trope. It all started back when H. G. Welles imagined Martians slinging themselves towards Earth to mash us with their tripods and death gas. From there it's evolved into many different scenarios some of which still involve us on Earth, to fascinating wars between the stars of other human or alien civilizations. Recently I've been pondering on that after I watched two very interesting videos between people who examined the idea of planetary invasions.

The first is from the excellent channel Space Dock which puts together wonderful work on the spaceships and vehicles of many franchises. They themselves have a drama called the Sojourn coming soon. Definitely check it out. But for our purposes watch their brief video on Planetary Invasions.

In contrast we have one video from Isaac Arthur discussing the subject. It's a longer one and it raises many interesting points. His channel is simply amazing for an in depth look at futuristic science based concepts on how we may do things in the future. It's honestly one of the best futurist channels and series I've ever encountered, sincerely worth checking out if you're interested in that kind of thing.

Credit to Alexander Tooth, from wookiepedia

Both these videos raise very good points, and they have contrasting opinions. In the first video we do see that it is argued that a planetary invasion is basically infeasible. Some Operation Barbarossa style mass landing and invasion taking years, decades, or perhaps centuries, to fully pacify a planet through mechanized warfare from above and below. The crux of the argument is that this is a huge waste of time and resources, especially when you presumably have ships in orbit that can hammer your opponent at your leisure. Then if you have no hope of relief and no friendly ships in the area, fighting on serves no purpose. You don't need legions of soldiers, just large landing forces to take and hold the vital aspects of planetary infrastructure and then garrison forces to keep the planet yours.

The second video has a more wide ranging view. It presumes that planetary assaults or invasions are feasible. The main point is that, after all, if you're jetsetting around in space with any sort of casual interstellar travel then the mobilization of resources to invade and crush another world or system of habitats (especially if you rule over multiple star systems and have great automation) is almost trivial. That being said, it makes a very pertinent point that a planet is not necessarily a helpless target. 

It is a point worth considering as any civilization which can do travel casually at interstellar distances is probably not really having to worry about the whole issue of delta-v in a gravity well. That means that, while an opponent who does control the orbitals has an advantage, the people at the bottom of that well are not nearly so defenceless as we might assume through our lens of 21st century technology where an asteroid barreling through our gravity well is a very terrifying prospect. Your vital sites are probably ringed with powerful railguns or missile batteries which can shoot destruction at any ship foolish enough to park in orbit.

From the BBC

In fact with that view, the traditional image of a ship parking itself in orbit and blasting a planet with it's weapons seems silly. No ship could risk parking in orbit without worrying about taking crippling damage or being rendered combat ineffective. The proper image might be a vessel in the age of sail bombarding a land fortification and having to outnumber the guns of the fort to hope to overpower them before it can be rendered ineffective itself. The planet can shoot back.

What you might see instead is ships engaging in what amount to bombing runs, first moving to cripple or take any orbital defences, then moving in unpredictable patterns to try and crush the ground based defences. If that doesn't work, clearing a landing corridor to insert marines who can disable or capture those defenses so the fleet can put itself in a position to command the ultimate high ground and compel a plant's surrender would be your next best bet. In the book Tiamat's Wrath there is an interesting example of this that works very well from both a tactical and a dramatic perspective.

This is actually a point I've considered for some time. I've mused about interstellar warfare before and why it might happen. In my own, as yet unfinished Service to the State science fiction novel, I've thought about how you could make a planetary invasions feasible, so my own view actually falls somewhere between that of the two videos.

Part of that view does come from finding that in universes like those of the Honor Harrington series that if you've countered gravity to the point you're using it in your weapons, the idea you can't make some kind of planetary based weapons system which could cripple or severely damage a ship seems baffling. It does seem to me that there would need to be an invasion, but one aimed at very limited and achievable goals so your fleet could enforce the threat of death from above.

Some blame might come from Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers which, though an excellent novel I recommend everyone read, did draw it's inspiration pretty heavily from the work of paratroopers in WWII and the island hopping campaign in the Pacific theater. In the Pacific the small Japanese garrisons which held out across numerous little islands with their coastal batteries and then fighting to the last man against the power of the American gun line and the overwhelming firepower of Marine divisions set the course for the campaign. The Japanese might have inflicted casualties, but they had only the small resources of their islands to call upon and no hope of resupply. This has, I think, colored interpretation of how planetary assaults might go. A planet doesn't generally have that problem unless you wreck the infrastructure so thoroughly that further resistance is simply futile.

In Isaac's video he makes a very good point about the resources of a planet, and how future technology might make it possible to basically weaponize an entire planet's population, or make them know no fear. However, even with fantastic automation or fearless soldiers, there is a point where your offensive options and economic support would be so ground down that your ability to resist is functionally irrelevant as the invading power could zap you whenever they felt like it and destroy or immobilize your remaining assets. At that point, it's either guerrilla resistance or surrender.

That's why in my mind I think a planetary invasion might fall somewhere between these extremes of Honor Harrington and Starship Troopers. A planet isn't defenceless unless it has no real orbital defences or ground based weapons, and even with those ships can work to attire them, and then send in the marines to seize and hold them until the fleet in orbit can establish an advantageous position. Unless you know you have a relief fleet coming, there's no reason to keep fighting.

Of course, this is all just speculation and trying to harmonize the plausible with the realistic and make compelling story telling. Future warfare is liable to be so destructive it's unimaginable to today's soldiers or civilians. It does make for interesting reading or musings though.

The Color Out of Space (2020)

Recently, thanks to Covid-19, a film was released digitally which would otherwise have been cruising for a decent premier as a very interesting horror film. That film is The Color Out of Space! I have been anticipating this movie for a while now, having been a fan of the original 1927 Lovecraft short story, I was looking forward to seeing a modern adaptation of it. It had some interesting promotional art, and most importantly, to me, one of the big names was going to be Nicholas Cage.

From wikimediacommons

The original story is set in 1882, with the movie instead moving forward to the 21st century sometime in the 2010s in a small place in the sticks, just a while outside the town of Arkham. Normally I don't like this kind of setting change, but the film does it really well I think, and quite deftly neutralizes the problems of modern technology in horror movies besides.

We begin with some opening narration, quoted directly from the original short story. It then moves on to establish the Gardener family. Their daughter, Livinia (Madeleine Arthur) is out practicing spells in the woods when she is stumbled upon by hydrologist Ward Phillips (Elliot Knight) who is out testing the water table for a proposed reservoir. Then we get some establishing shots of the family, and the film actually spends a very good amount of time establishing why we should care about these people. Nathan Gardener (Nicholas Cage) has moved his family to the remote farm his father owned as a way to save costs after his wife Theresea's (Joey Richardson) bout with breast cancer. His two sons, elder Benny (Brenden Meyer) and youngest Jack (Julian Phillips) are typical adolescent and youthful males besides. Jack is always scared of something while Benny likes to smoke pot with the land's resident squatter Ezra (Tommy Chong) who lives in a remote 'off grid' cabin on the property.

It's a loving family which has its issues. Nathan has taken up alpaca farming because he believes it's the future while his wife is a remote worker who takes clients over the web. The physical and social distance puts strain on the family, a lack of reliable wifi and worries over their kids getting to school or medical care are all typical problems in the 21st century. It's all laid out well in the opening scenes and I really appreciated that the film took time to make me care about these people.

Then the comet hits and all hell breaks loose.

Seeing the titular crash landing from outer space was fun. It was done in a bit of a hokey way (an eerie purplish light filling the whole area but for some reason only one person looks at it) and a spectacularly creepy landing leading to more outlandish results. Little Jack finds a new imaginary friend and the crops start to taste weird, while time seems to flow...differently for the Gardeners. Things spiral steadily downhill from there as Phillips tests out the stuff he found in the meteor and comes to the conclusion there's something undeniably alien about it.

Visually, the movie is great at leaving you in suspense. There's no in your face examples of the color (beyond well, the color) and it builds suspense over the course of the film to some of it's more genuinely horrifying moments. People and animals beginning to change, and I found this approach to be very well done, with some similarities to The Thing which I found to be very well adapted. The steady descent into madness these circumstances bring is delightfully creepy as characters at first just try to adjust to weird, but not otherworldly, experiences. The actors brought out the Lovecraftian themes beautifully, with Nicholas Cage bringing his world class ham to the screen making his descent spectacularly terrifying! The man can still deliver!

Stand out performances do go to Madeleine Arthur and Elliot Knight for their roles. Arthur plays Livinia who is, after all, a teenager caught up in a horrible experience to a tee, and Knight plays the poor hydrologist sucked into an otherworldly circumstance very well. I really thought he was going to die halfway through the film! Their little subplot crush on each other makes for some cruelly tense moments later in the film, and I really felt for both of them as things spiraled out of control.

There were some excellent nods to Lovecraft in the film. From Livinia reaching for the Necronomicon in desperation as her world falls apart, to Ward being a graduate of Miskatonic University, the film made itself broad in appeal to the general public, but also having enough nods to keep Lovecraft fans enraptured by how well it did the original material.

Now there were some small errors I felt. There were a few character tics and subplots which were not well explored. The Garderner family is supposed to have some kind of feud with the mayor over their property and the construction of the resevoir, but nothing ever comes from that or is explained. Then there's something about the resevoir supposed to provide water to 'half the East Coast' which also drops with nary a whisper. Then the color itself is... well it's basically purple. I know we can't have an actual alien color within this medium and it works much better in your head, but having the color shift more would have been more visually appealing to me at least.

However, this is a genuinely thrilling horror film. If you know the original story you're in for some surprises, which is good. Then if you're used to regular horror films you're also going to be surprised for how well it handles older material and makes it accessible in the modern age. It is a movie I would definitely recommend watching and is sure to at least make you think twice about where your water comes from!

Best Served Cold

What happens when you combine Quintin Tarantino with Guy Gavriel Kay and Alexander Dumas? You get a low fantasy story of rip roaring revenge across a continent! We find these blended together in Joe Abercrombie's amazing Best Served Cold! This is hands down my absolute favorite book of Abercrombie's. I'm not exaggerating when I say it is possibly one of my favorite novels of all time either. 

From the First Law Wiki, Best Served Cold

I originally read this work back in the summer of 2017, and I immediately fell in love with it. By the time I had already read the First Law trilogy for the first time, and the book The Heroes so I happily jumped in to the events in this far off land of Styria. Naturally this is part of the 2020 re-read.

What is fabulous is that you don't necessarily have to know the First Law trilogy to read and enjoy this book. There's references to the former plot, the former cast (with one even showing up in the flesh) but the mentions are vague enough and with little real association to the former series that it really just serves as interesting background information to the story while informing readers well caught up on the meta-plot about things going on since the end of the original trilogy. It's nice and ambitious that way, but also won't turn off casual readers.

The new cast is largely fresh. We do have two characters we've seen before, namely Caul Shivers of the North and the infamous soldier of fortune Nicomo Cosca who was first introduced at the Siege of Dagoska in Before They Are Hanged. Both of them were sufficiently deep secondary characters they they manage to become wonderfully enmeshed in this story. 

Our main protagonist though is Monzcarro "Monza" Murcatto, Captain General of the Thousand Swords, the most feared mercenary company in all of Styria. She has fought her way to the top of the heap and is very determined to stay there. She's a new character, well actually mostly new. She's first mentioned offhandedly by Cosca in Before They Are Hanged as part of his backstory for how he fell from grace commanding the Thousand Swords. Betrayal runs deep in Styria after all. And sadly, that is precisely what happens to Monza. Despite having served loyally at the side of Grand Duke Orso of Talins for eight years, he fears her power and orders the murder of her and her brother Benna. Hurled off a mountain, crippled, and left for dead, Monza swears revenge on the seven men who were in the room when it happened.

She enlists the help of killers, mercenaries, poisoners and torturers to do this. First with Caul Shivers, and then with the numbers obsessed former prisoner the oddly named, taciturn Friendly. Padding out her merry band of assassins are the flame haired Shylo Vitari, and the preening, pseudo intellectual Master Poisoner Castor Morveer and his apprentice Day. Together they must kill seven of the most well guarded and powerful men in Styria in the middle of a war, or die trying.

The three main leads though, are Monza, Cosca, and Shivers. Shivers has set out to be a better man than what he was in the North, where he fought in wars and blood feuds. Unfortunately, he finds himself entangled in the mother of all blood feuds when Monza enlists his aid in killing her betrayers. Monza, who already had a dark reputation, has been twisted by her desire for revenge and looks at the world in a dark a cynical way. Cosca meanwhile, veers between being a genius or a madman who just loves to put himself in danger. Their different goals, becoming better, and seeking revenge, all play off one another as they attempt to change to either fit their circumstances or overcome them. Each one reaches new lows and soars to new heights. I'll leave to your imagination which that is before you read it.

At it's heart the story actually does have a pretty deep and complicated message on whether people can change, and whether revenge is worth it. As Monza leaves corpses piled up in her wake, she finds herself feeling very different, and it doesn't bring the dead back, but it makes her feel. The interplay of her conscience and that of Shivers, and Cosca's well...lack of one, is what makes this epic drama across a continent flow very smoothly and with a number of twists and turns in characters and circumstances which are deftly woven together needing to be seen to be believed.

Her foes are also interesting. Grand Duke Orso is playing for keeps across all of Styria, and that makes his role in this little drama all the more powerful. He is at the peak of his might, looking to make his sons rulers of a unified nation, and his subordinates and allies are no less powerful, but that doesn't mean their invulnerable. Our heroes, or villains depending on where you stand, go up against him and make it a very fun competition against great odds.

From the First Law Wiki, Styria

In fact, I think that the continent of Styria itself deserves to be seen as a character. It is a continent oft mentioned in the first trilogy, but never seen. Other than the land from which Grand Duke Orso and Queen Terez and a few minor characters, hail, it's only known for its wine, glass, treachery and mercenaries. If there's one thing which is not in short supply in Styria, it's treachery.

The continent has never been united, and it has been riven by the rivalries of the various city states. The greatest among them, Talins, Visserine, Ospria, and Sipani, having vied for position for centuries. In the current climate though, Talins has risen to be powerful enough to challenge them all for dominance, and in response Ospria and Visserine have declared an alliance with the other city states and formed the League of Eight to challenge the power of Talins. This has lead to the Years of Blood, two decades of continuous war. Steadily though, they've been ground down by Monza's military genius, and it seems Talins will reigns supreme over the whole continent with its first king ever.

These politics, and the changes in the world, are well woven into the plot. From comments on the old glory of Styria to commentary on printing presses, new inventions and new methods of war, the book deftly springs around any accusations of stagnation on the part of Circle of the World. Instead we find a very richly developed land in a renaissance fantasy which shows a changing world in terms of both technology and politics which our characters have to navigate. It's one which I hope more authors will follow.

I very much think that as a standalone book with a richly developed setting, characters, plots and motivations, it is hard to beat. I picked up many subtle details and plot points I missed in this reading, much like on my re-read of the original trilogy this year. It really made me love, revile, and revel in these characters and their story all the more.

Even if you don't think 'grim dark' fantasy is your thing, I would advise you to pick this one up and give it a try. Great story with a strong cast, and enough surprises that you definitely won't get bored!