A Pain in the Skagerrak

TFSmith is very interested in Britain's involvement with the Schleswig-Holstein Crisis of 1864. Indeed, it forms the basis of much of his planning for BROS- from the supposed British inability to act against the Union to his plan to have Palmerston defeated in a vote of confidence in the Commons. In fact, we already know what speech he intends to plagiarise eventually:

as Palmerston said, it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference if the British had tried to intervene against the Prussians and Austrians in 1864 over freaking Denmark, which is a little closer to Portsmouth, England, than Portsmouth, England is to Portsmouth, Maine... Replace "Danes" with "Canadians" and "the Baltic" with "the Gulf of the Saint Lawrence" and "Germany" with "United States" and the numbers as appropriately, and it reads as follows:

"...I am sure every Englishman who has a heart in his breast and a feeling of justice in his mind, sympathizes with those unfortunate Canadians (cheers), and wishes that this country could have been able to draw the sword successfully in their defence (continued cheers); but I am satisfied that those who reflect on the season of the year when that war broke out, on the means which this country could have applied for deciding in one sense that issue, I am satisfied that those who make these reflections will think that we acted wisely in not embarking in that dispute. (Cheers.) To have sent a fleet in midwinter to the Saint Lawrence every sailor would tell you was an impossibility, but if it could have gone it would have been attended by no effectual result. Ships sailing on the sea cannot stop armies on land, and to have attempted to stop the progress of an army by sending a fleet to the Saint Lawrence would have been attempting to do that which it was not possible to accomplish. (Hear, hear.) If England could have sent an army, and although we all know how admirable that army is on the peace establishment, we must acknowledge that we have no means of sending out a force at all equal to cope with the 200,000 or 300,000 men whom the 20,000,000 or 30,000,000 of the United States could have pitted against us, and that such an attempt would only have insured a disgraceful discomfiture—not to the army, indeed, but to the Government which sent out an inferior force and expected it to cope successfully with a force so vastly superior. (Cheers.) ... we did not think that the Canadian cause would be considered as sufficiently British, and as sufficiently bearing on the interests and the security and the honour of England, as to make it justifiable to ask the country to make those exertions which such a war would render necessary."

The comparison is nonsense, for a number of reasons. The first is that a fleet on the Saint Lawrence can easily stop the progress of an army towards Kingston, Montreal or Quebec by making crossing the river impossible. If TFSmith does not understand which side of the river these towns are on, it may be why his description of the capture of Montreal fails to mention the Union getting across the St Lawrence.

The second is that the issues over which the Trent was fought- the honour of Britain, the protection of British commerce, support for the liberal right of dissent- were integral to mid-Victorian British politics. Indeed, one of the fundamental problems with TFSmith's timeline is that he does not understand how the mid-Victorian British thought, because he sees them as nothing but objects of contempt. He cannot comprehend why Britain would accept war over the Trent, any more than he can comprehend why the Canadians would support them.

The third reason that this comparison is nonsense is a purely mathematical one. Consider the following:

Trent War

Potential allies:

Canada: c.100,000 militia and volunteers

Maritimes: c.30,000 militia

Confederates: c.250,000 present for duty as of December 1861

Potential enemies:

Union: 425,405 present for duty as of January 1862, armed with muskets and rifles

Balance of power: -45,405

This kind of war is eminently winnable with a deployment of regulars that the British could manage, particularly when the Union is reliant on foreign imports of weapons, steel, iron, and saltpeter. But look at the Schleswig-Holstein situation:

Schleswig-Holstein

Potential allies:

Denmark: c.40,000 troops

Potential enemies:

Prussia and Austria: c.830,000 men in 1864, armed with rifles and breech-loaders

German Confederation (VII- X Corps only): 115,535 based on 1855 population levels

Balance of power: -905,535

This war is clearly unwinable, as Palmerston correctly recognised.The problem is that, based on a complete misreading of Petrie and a healthy dose of American exceptionalism, TFSmith thinks the balance of power in a Trent War looks like this:

Potential allies:

Canada: 24,119 militia and volunteers

Maritimes: 6,161 militia

Confederates: c.250,000

Potential enemies:

Union: c.1,100,000 as of spring 1862

Balance of power: -c.820,000

We've already seen how dramatically TFSmith overstates Union strength and understates that of both Britain and Canada. This is why his military calculus is flawed on a fundamental level, and why Burnished Rows of Steel just doesn't make sense.