"Oh - no, eighteen sixty-four. The rebellion was..." he frowns, and takes another gulp of latte. "A man named Hong Xiuquan thought he was the younger brother of god. He had a power base in the southern capital, and the surrounding provinces - perhaps thirty million people - and the Qing Emperor wanted the cult put down. It was total warfare, fields and cities burned everywhere you marched. Anything that could be used by the enemy was an acceptable target. We'd seen guns in the opium wars with the British but never in a major conflict on the mainland before. New wars for a new world."

He shakes his head. "The American civil war over African slavery was the same time, but a decade shorter. North against south, brother against brother, just like us. That was the one thing that stayed familiar, the raggedness of grief.