In addition, the incident – whatever its truthfulness - involving a young Quebecois woman and Lt. Col. Valentine Baker, a Hussars officer sent to Lower Canada in April with one of the cavalry regiments, inflamed passions across the spectrum of Francophone society; that was rapidly followed by another report, that Gen. George Augustus Wetherall, who had commanded in Lower Canada in 1837-38, was to be sent out to take over from Williams. This was patently ridiculous; the general was 73 and holding down a sinecure command in England, but it shows the sort of rhetoric that led to the Place d’ Armes riots in May.
This is part of the chapter dealing with the fall of Montreal, and clearly takes place in April or May.
Not only is this an odd rumor, but it's also impossible. Due to TFSmith's obsession with minimizing the number of troops who can reach Canada, Lt. Col. Valentine Baker does not arrive in Canada in time to commit his indiscretion; he is not in the country, in fact, until June:
2nd Cavalry Brigade – Col. Henry D. Griffiths, 2nd Dragoons – arrives in June
10th Hussars, 13th Hussars, 18th Hussars; Royal Horse Artillery Battery
The use of Baker is probably because the man was, in fact, convicted of indecent assault of a woman on a railway in 1875; in keeping with the brief at the start of the TL, this renders it fair game as part of the "everything that went wrong in forty years" concept.
Indeed, in his effort to present the British as lacking any kind of competent officer, Baker (an experienced man and well respected leader) has two appearances in the TL - one of them is a sexual assault on a young woman, and the other is being shot leading a fruitless charge:
Despite being in command of three regiments of light cavalry, Griffiths was a dragoon, and generally held his troopers back from fruitless charges. Baker led his Hussars in one, however, and was shot down at the head of his regiment.
In truth, Baker was distinctly not a caricature, but an innovator and expert in all manner of fields:
'As a peace-time soldier Baker established his reputation as a brilliant cavalry officer, a perfectionist devoted to his troops, and a theorist. In 1858 he produced The British Cavalry, an extension of Lewis Nolan's work: his practical recommendations on equipment, uniform, and stud farms were later in part adopted... As background to his studies he travelled in Europe, inspecting military establishments, and was present as an observer during the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars. In his writing Baker expressed himself clearly and incisively, "always jolting the establishment, questioning the status quo or challenging the fashionable" (Anglesey, 3.117).
As colonel of the 10th hussars Baker made his regiment smart, efficient, and dynamic, and won the devotion of his officers and men. He was prepared to make changes and experiment, and he had the gift of communicating his ideas and enthusiasms. He was the first to experiment with railway transport of troops (July 1860), and his regiment was among the first to learn the new system of signalling... . From 1863 to 1867, while the 10th hussars were stationed in Ireland, Baker was able, at relative distance from the War Office, to work on various reforms, including his new "non-pivot drill".' (Dorothy Anderson, ‘Baker, Valentine [Baker Pasha] (1827–1887)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
Needless to say, Brig.Gen. Turchin (a Union general who supposedly allowed his men to run wild in Athens, AL) appears in the TL, but the only comments made for him are on his professionalism and the achievements of his troops:
Brig. Gen. John B. Turchin, a Russian émigré who had spent two decades in the Czar’s army, rising to the rank of colonel of the Imperial Guard and including active service on the Baltic against the British and French
There is, perhaps, somewhat of a double standard between the capable general with no characterization, and the monster who somehow raped a woman from 3,000 miles away.
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