The Decisive Battles.
The first great event of this year occured on the 3rd of January, when Peter I gleefully tore his copy of the non-aggression pact with Sweden in front of the Swedish ambassador, who then had to hurry towards Riga to bring the news of the Tsar's declaration of war. Carl XII was unpleasantly surprised, but decided to go on with his plan nonetheless, in spite of Franciszek's complaints. In fact, he quite clearly told Franciszek to defend both his own and Carl's eastern borders, while Carl handles the western war. Franciszek, a fairly skilled military commander in his own right, broodingly accepted and set out with his ragtag Swedo-Franco-Polish army to Vilnius.
And in the meantime, Carl XII, frustrated by the vacillating Ottomans, pulled out of Hungary, leaving Rakoczi to his own designs and even taking a few Transylvanian regiments with him. A new western campaign was in order, but it had to be more decisive. So the Swede reasserted his control over Silesia, defeated an Austrian army at Ostrau and dove into Moravia. A large Imperial army under the command of Prinz Georg von Hessen-Darmstadt engaged the Swede at Olmutz, but in a close-ran battle the Swedes emerged victorious and entered Brunn a few weeks later thanks to some traitors inside. This couldn't have been timed better, as De Villars had recently finished fighting an intensive but inconclusive campaign with the well-fortified Austrians in Austria Proper, who had managed to bar his way to Vienna, and now marched north. With the French coming from the south and the Swedes coming from the east, Austrian Bohemia was mostly overran, and the Imperial army dealt a significant defeat at Prague; another one tried to reverse this verdict and was routed at Iglau. Meanwhile, Nicolas Catinat, put in charge of another French army and the main Bavarian forces, finally assaulted and captured Linz, advancing to victory at Sankt Polten. The Austrian situation grew increasingly dire, and so Eugen von Savoyen was redeployed west with most of his forces, especially as the Hungarians were chiefly subdued and Rakoczi himself hanged by now. Eugen and Starhemberg deployed their forces over a fairly wide area, nonetheless covering Vienna and the important surroundings quite well. But at the same time, Carl XII, Claude Louis Hector de Villars and Nicolas Catinat moved in for the kill with numerically-superior forces.
As for the eastern campaign... Well, suffice it to say that although Franciszek had a pretty big army and was a very skilled commander, and had some other such under his command, he was really doomed from the start. For he still had only one real army - whereas Peter I had five, spread out along the border from Ingria to the Ukraine. Those armies had fairly amounts of experience, were recently reorganised and armed with more-or-less modern weapons - and most crucially, they were led by a good international officer corps. Though still somewhat lacking in quality and having logistical problems, defeating these armies tactically was not going to be a walkover, or so Franciszek thought. He had even less illusions about his strategic situation, though; the relentless Russian advance was threatening to overrun Poland and the eastern Baltic Swedish holdings, and any armies that got in the way would be smashed between the Tsar's forces. The only reasonable strategy, then, was to defeat the enemy in detail and before he could develop his advance properly. Luck smiled on Franciszek early on, and he defeated Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov's army at Orsha, turning it back with serious casualties. Emboldened, he divided his forces; while Jan Kazimierz Sapieha the Younger hurried south to link up with loyal Cossacks and other Polish levies and counter the Russians in the Ukraine, Franciszek himself, with a smaller but faster and better-trained force, marched north to link up with Adam Ludwig Lewenhaupt's Swedish army. Vastly underestimating the number of Russian troops in there, Franciszek was in for a nasty surprise - Lewenhaupt was besieged in Riga by Peter's greatest general, the aging Patrick Gordon, while Peter I himself was already in Courland. The Polish army was forced to a battle at Mitau. The grueling battle saw Franciszek at his best; he rallied his men when they nearly broke, and repulsed attack after attack with large casualties, wounding Peter himself. However, the Russians too refused to give way. The reason for their persistance became apparent when Patrick Gordon's forces, including some of Peter's best New Order and elite Guard Regiments, emerged to the Polish east, in the barely-defended rear. Franciszek first tried to move his forces to halt this new threat; then, as he was increasingly overwhelmed, made a desperate effort to save what he can. But his retreat soon turned into a rout, his troops pursued and cut down by the Russian reiters. Franciszek was captured during the pursuit. Soon all the hell broke loose. Augustus II was "freed" by Polish conspirators; he was forced to accept their conditions, pledging to not attempt any reforms whatsoever and to confirm all the rights and priveleges of the szlachta and the Sejm. With him as a figurehead, the conspirators, led by the magnate Jozef Potocki, lit Poland itself aflame with rebellion, the allies of Franciszek and the Swedish garrisons barely holding out in the key cities. An Austrian army marched into Galicia, the small Polish army there defecting instantly. The Russians pressed their advance, soon seizing Minsk and Winnica (in western Ukraine); Sapieha hanged on and retreated northwestwards, but he effectively begun acting as an independent force, carving out a small empire in southern Lithuania. The Brandenburgers too entered the game, occupying Danzig.
When the messangers reached Carl XII, he was vexed. After his initial victories, it came as quite a shock. Everything was falling apart. Poland was in anarchy, and the path back to Sweden might as well have been cut off. The Danes had given up on Scania - instead, they landed in Malmo. That accursed Patkul was with Peter I, and with his help the Russians had overran Livonia. And what news came from Stockholm? Arvid Bernhard Horn and the Riksdag of the Estates practically demanded (though under a somewhat thin veil of politeness and fealty) that the King abandon his foreign adventure and return to defend his empire while it was still there. Carl XII was put before a difficult choice. The Austrian campaign was in full swing, and his troops could make the difference between victory and defeat there - or back in Livonia and Scania. Carl XII had to choose between fighting to the victorious end here and saving the empire; between his obligations as an ally of France and as the monarch of Sweden. Finally, he made a choice.
The Swedish army, already some 30 miles away from Vienna, requested a local truce and disengaged from the Austrians; it turned around and set out north, Carl XII brooding but also filled with a newfound determination. De Villars was miffed to say the least. Still, he pressed on towards Vienna, overcoming cordon after cordon. In the culminative winter battle at the village of Ottakring, full of reverses for both sides, the Franco-Bavarians were ultimately repulsed despite reaching the very walls of Vienna at a certain point. Both forces were considerably drained by the battle, though - the winners even moreso than the "vanquished", having squandered much manpower in their intricate counterattacks. De Villars' army retired to Tulln an der Donau for the winter. This was not over yet...
The Provencal Campaign was rather anticlimatic. Louis Joseph de Bourbon, duc de Vendôme, had rallied the divided French forces in the region, laid siege to Toulon and defeated the invading Austro-Savoyard army at Draguignan and in some subsequent battles. After that, the French tightened the noose around Toulon, gradually bombarding it into submission. Judging their position untenable, the British eventually withdrew, torching the city and its docks.
In Spain, developments were somewhat more dramatic, as Castillian guerrilas landed a series of humiliating defeats on the Habsburg forces, while the Duke of Berwick bypassed Barcelona and captured Tortosa and Valencia, severing the main Habsburg reinforcement path. The Anglo-Portuguese forces still did defeat Charles d'Berry's ragtag army at Valladolid, but too suffered a serious "setback" during the botched attempt to secure the Pyrenean passes - the Basques had chosen to side with the Bourbons and harrased the Allied army until the French and another Castillian force were able to converge on it at Andoain, annihilating or capturing the entirety of this army. Thus the Allies had strong positions in western and southern Spain, while the Bourbons had established themselves in the north; they nonetheless also made efforts to secure the centre later in the year, defeating a badly outnumbered (thanks in part to Castillian attrition) Habsburg force at Siguenza and eventually laying siege to Madrid.
The British conducted raids against the French coast, with uneven and ultimately inconsequential results. Trade was also stiffled, ofcourse. Of greater long-term import and lesser predictability were the events in the Americas, where the British went on the offensive, primarily in the Carribean and in Canada. First Lord of the Admiralty, Edward Russel, had personally supervised the campaign in the former region. In the name of Prinz Karl, the British occupied Trinidad, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola (both French and Spanish), as well as seized the local French possessions in a more explicit landgrab. The campaign on Cuba had stalemated due to disease and eventually had to be aborted, though, while the attacks on Caracas and Panama were repulsed by local militias. Meanwhile, in North America, the British operated rather unevenly. Though managing to get the Iroquois to restart their war with the French and helping them sack several forts and trade outposts, as well as occupying Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island, the British were humiliatingly routed by local militiamen in continental Acadia and at Quebec itself. Still, with the latest reverses in Europe taken into consideration, the British had decided to give greater priority to North America in the coming years. Consequently, forces were redeployed and colonial militias were marshalled.
The Endgame.
1709 was a deeply-frustrating year for France and Sweden, with virtually none of their objectives reached and numerous positions lost. However, the jubilations of their enemies were premature. The two empires remained military powerhouses, each in its own right, and still had many forces to commit. The Swedes had abandoned their grander ambitions, and instead concentrated on defending their homeland; that allowed them to use their smaller, but stronger units more efficiently, especially having attained some degree of naval supremacy in the Baltic. As for the French, they merely brought out some more of their extensive reserves, and renewed the campaign to bring Austria to its knees.
From 1710 on, the war was increasingly diverging into two conflicts - a Swedish one and a French one. Nonetheless, they still were interconnected, both because of the French efforts to get the Swedes to invade Germany and because the antagonists of both wars were mostly the same. Obviously, events in one of the wars influenced those in the other; realising this, France and Sweden continued coordinating their efforts to a certain extent, despite their falling out after Carl XII's withdrawal from Moravia. Speaking of which...
The harsh winter of 1709 caught Carl XII's army near Warsaw. After pondering the situation, Carl XII decided that there was nothing left to seek here, at least at present. So he picked up the Swedish troops garrisoned there and withdrew with them, leaving his disunited Polish allies at the mercy of the revolting peasants and of Potocki's konfederacja. Effectively he withdrew Bourbon Poland's backbone, causing what little order remained in its core regions to disappear. Carl XII hurried northeastwards with his troops, withstanding severe punishment from "General Winter". In early 1710 he evacuated himself and most of his army from Danzig (which he had recaptured in a trully desperate battle), arriving in Stockholm just in time to reassert his power and levy more troops. As a sign of the turning fortunes, he landed a major defeat on the Danes at Goteborg, though leaving the business of sieging the last remaining Danish forces in Malmo to Horn. In the meantime he took command of the formidable Swedish fleet and sailed east, to confront the Russian fleet. Nonexistant a few years ago, it had been constructed under Peter I's supervision, and was very vast indeed; however, the Tsar was bedridden after Mitau, and the fleet was commanded by Fyodor Matveyevich Apraksin instead. Although large in number, the Russian fleet consisted of smaller and inferior-quality ships, mostly; the speed with which they were assembled and the deficit of experienced labour naturally meant that there were many oversights in the design. Also, although Apraksin himself was doubtless a man of much gift, though more civil than military, his subordinates, even if talented, rarely had any naval fighting experience at all, forcing Apraksin to coerce captured Swedish officers into helping out. In the 1711 Battle of Nargo, all those flaws showed themselves quite clearly as the powerful Swedish ship cannons sunk much of the Russian fleet early in the battle. The Swedish officers and crews on some of the Russian ships mutineed, increasing the panic. The battle was soon over, Russian naval might was eliminated and the Swedes were secure in their domination of the Baltic. An invasion of Estonia was launched, and luck, once again, was with the Swedes; Patrick Gordon had recently died of old age, while Tsar Peter was, as already mentioned, bed-ridden in Ivangorod. The defense of Revel was thus handled by Charles Eugene de Croy, a man of many enemies and little skill. The Swedes bombarded the city from the sea and captured it with the help from local Swedes and loyalists. After pondering his situation, Carl XII decided to leave the well-fortified Ingria to the Russians for now, and instead marched south, to relieve the long-suffering Lewenhaupt (who barely lingered on in Riga, saved only by the longer range of Swedish artillery). Livonia fell swiftly, with only a few battles, and Riga was indeed relieved; the Swedes advanced into Lithuania and were joined there by Jan Kazimierz Sapieha, fleeing from the south with a handful of retainers. Sapieha decided to throw his lot with the Swedes themselves; in return, Carl XII promised him kingship in Poland, which was formalised in 1712, after the Swedish victories at Dunaburg and Wilna (in the latter city, some more Polish nobles joined Carl XII with their levies, and they immediately recognised "Jan IV" as their king). Seeking to secure the southern Baltic coast, Carl XII marched westwards.
By then the Brandenburgers, though failing to seize Stralsund, had managed to retake East Prussia and Danzig, as well as large parts of western Poland (together with the Saxons and Potocki). Meanwhile, Elector Georg Ludwig of Hannover occupied the Bremen-Verden. Augustus II and Potocki themselves were in fact already in Warsaw, their allies in control of Krakow, although the konfederacja was very loosely-knit and uncoordinated, suffering from much strife. The Russians had overran all of "White and Little Russias", while the Austrians controlled Galicia and parts of southern Poland. Had all those forces coordinated their efforts against the Swedes efficiently, Carl XII would have been simply crushed. But the divisions - especially in the Polish ranks - gave him a very good opportunity, especially as Potocki learned of Augustus II's intentions to renege on his promise with Austrian help. Thus a major falling out occured when Augustus II invited the Austrians into Warsaw; Potocki refused to let them in, and Augustus II had to flee for his life with his retainers. As for Potocki, he promptly recognised Jan IV as king of Poland, signing an alliance with Carl XII. That, however, alienated many of his former confederates. Chaos increased, even more so with new rebellions behind the Austrian ranks; as the Austrians had to redeploy most of their forces to defend Vienna in that crucial year, they were unable to maintain any serious degree of control over the region. The Swedes and Potocki won a new series of victories... and then, three big events happened. Firstly, seeing that the Swedes were once more getting too ambitious, the British and the Dutch sent a powerful fleet into the Baltic, where it was joined by that of Denmark-Norway. This fleet defeated the divided Swedish one in the Battles of Rugen and Gotland, and severed the Swedish naval communications. Secondly, Menshikov's Russians occupied Lublin and Bialystok, creating a serious threat to Swedo-Potockite communications. Thirdly, France signed a separate peace treaty with Austria.
While the British and the Iroquois gradually overran New France, Louis XIV went on a full offensive in Europe. The Duke of Berwick captured Madrid, though the Habsburgs held out in Barcelona and in the south (where Prinz Karl found refuge at first), and proceeded to invade Portugal as well, wrecking much havoc, torching the countryside and generally taking advantage of Marlborough's ridicilous death in 1711. Castillian guerrilas soon retook much of the central countryside, although the Austrians, for their part, were able to recapture Valencia. The Huguenot rebels were mostly stamped out back in central France. Duc de Vendôme tried to invade Italy; there, however, the Allies were much stronger and so he had to settle for the capture of Nice instead. Central Germany saw a haphazard war of maneuver, poorly-coordinated Imperial, Dutch and British commanders attempting to disrupt France's "Bavarian corridor" to no avail. Along this corridor, more and more troops were thrown into the crucible of Austria.
For Austria was the worst of it all. A brutal positional war of attrition was being waged there, both sides secure in their positions, both sides discontent with them nonetheless. From Brunn to Klagenfurt - admittedly, most intensively in a much narrower area around Vienna - fortifications were erected and siege operations were conducted. Several huge battles occured, draining both forces but barely changing the overall situation. At first. For, you see, Louis XIV and his commanders commited to this brutal mode of operations quite intentionally, secure in the knowledge that France was stronger tahn Austria both militarily and economically. A generally superior siege and artillery corps helped. Over the course of 1711, the suburbs of Vienna were captured and the Austrians forced to fall back eastwards. Although Eugen von Savoyen did recapture Prague in a daring assault later in the year, he was unable to raise the siege of Vienna. The beautiful city came under severe bombardment, and Kaiser Josef himself died in 1712. Soon after that and a failed relief attempt (by then the French had established formdiable fortifications around the city itself as well), Vienna surrendered. Austria begun to unravel, with the Hungarian lords marching their levies back to Hungary (to defend it from Turkish attack, they later claimed). First the Vienna court and then Prinz Karl himself realised how desperate the situation was. So they signed peace - the Treaty of Turin, which was also signed by the lesser Imperial princes and Italian rulers.
It was an alternatingly outrageously harsh and surprisingly generous settlement. On the harsher side was Karl having to abandon all claims to Spain (or Aragon); and the utter disownment of the Count Palatine and his entire line was one of the most controversial decisions in European history (the Palatine's lands were used to reward the victors; France annexed the Palatinate itself, reviving its old claims that had led to the War of the League of Augsburg, and Bavaria got the rest - namely, Julich, Cologne, Neuburg, Sulzbach and some other nearby territories, in exchange for guaranteeing freedom of religion and existant local laws, sweetening the pill for the predominantly-Protestant populations, who received no such treatment from the French hands). The recognition of the "Partition of Spain" was neither, really; it was to be expected (for those who don't remember - the French formally annexed Spanish Netherlands, the Austrians formally annexed Spain's Italian possessions: Milan, Naples, Sicily, Sardinia and Stato dei Presidi). As was the French annexation of Lorraine. The protectorate over Liege was kinda controversial, but the French could've just annexed the Church land in the middle of Belgium straightforwardly, so it could've been worse. Now, giving all the other lands captured (in Savoy and Austria, and in southern Germany) back was definitely generous of Louis XIV. Not barring Karl from the Imperial elections was more like savvy, as was having Carlos III (now confirmed to be the duc de Berry) renounce his rights to the French throne. Still, those moves had helped balance France's prestige here.
Either way, Louis XIV got his peace - a peace with honour and lots of gains. The only ones fighting him now were the Dutch Republic, Portugal and Great Britain. Queen Anne was going to have kittens (alas, figuratively; had it been literal the British dynastic situation would have been slightly less complex). Admittedly, Hannover and Denmark-Norway soon formally rejoined the war, in thanks for British assistance in the Baltic (Georg Ludwig also wanted to improve his reputation in Britain), and even sent their expeditionary forces to help defend Holland; but Louis XIV showed little intention of settling that little score at present. No, instead he revelled in the glory of elusive victory that he had captured instead, and held lavish banquets, and feasts of epic proportions, and more-or-less literally drunk himself to death later in the year. Louis XV the Huge, formerly known as le Grand Dauphin, inherited. Neither adroit at nor interested in governing, he allowed Cardinal Melchior de Polignac - Louis XIV's master diplomat, who had engineered the masterstroke of having Sweden invade Poland - to consolidate power in his hands. With the anticlimatic death of Louis XIV (then again, he died at the height of his power, so it wasn't all that bad; but I digress), combined with lack of any real hope for reversing the French victories, Queen Anne's straggling semi-Whig government negotiated the Treaty of Lisbon with France in 1713, recognising the provisions of the Treaty of Turin, but also tricking the French into making several concessions outside of Europe; the British managed to take Ceuta, Trinidad, Puerto Rico and the entirety of New France, though paying a hefty sum for the latter (future French nationalist historians would decry this deal like no other in their country's history, though back then it was hailed as a great diplomatic victory in Paris and decried as a waste of money in London). The Eleven Years War was nearly over.
As for the Imperial elections, to the dismay of the Habsburgs, these were won by Maximilian II Emanuel. The explanations here are manifold. One of them was the Habsburgs being thoroughly discredited by their backfired foreign adventure and near elimination. Another was that they also had no money left. Another still was that they were less and less interested in German affairs, instead acquiring lands in Italy, Hungary and Poland; while by the same logic, the Bavarian elector, with lands all over Germany, was definitely the best choice. As for his less savoury deeds, these were ignored with extreme prejudice.
The Swedish portion of the war continued for a while more. Although all attempts to reverse the outcome of the Baltic naval campaign of 1712 had failed, the Swedes still managed to fight on with some efficiency; Horn retook Malmo and occupied parts of Norway, also thwarting a brief British amphibious invasion attempt, while Carl XII ran around in his by now familiar style, maneuvering broadly, beating everyone up spectacularily and achieving rather limited strategic results. Though in 1713 he did manage to establish control over the Vistula basin, he was consequently forced to pull back as the Brandenburgers (soon after promoted to Prussians, as in the Kingdom of Prussia, with Friedrich Wilhelm I - who rose to power in 1713 - as its first king) captured Thorn and the Austrians hurried to reclaim Krakow. More grave still was the Russian threat. Though Carl XII won a series of victories in 1713, his attempt to recapture Orsha was a pretty disastrous defeat, the Russians having fortified the city thoroughly and Peter I having recovered sufficiently to command his main army in person. In 1714, Carl XII, on the brink of total collapse but still coping stoically and winning tactical victories, finally agreed to sign a compromise peace, his own realm as exhausted as those of his enemies. The Austrian, Prussian, Saxon, Swedish and Russian diplomats - especially the cunning Russian diplomat Pavel Ivanovich Yaguzhinsky - had managed to work out "such a treaty that would, above all, hurt Poland most" (in the words of an embittered Polish nobleman and historian a few decades later). Admittedly, it hurt Sweden as well - the Swedes had to cede Ingria to Russia and Bremen-Berden to Hannover, while the Danes annexed Holstein-Gottorp - but all the other territorial transactions involved carving up the Polish lands. The Prussians annexed Danzig and West Prussia; the Austrians annexed Galicia and Krakow; the Swedes annexed Courland; and the Russians grabbed White and Little Russias, sans Volhynia. The Poles thus not only lost some of their core lands, but also all of Lithuania apart from its very core and Volhynia (OOC: imagine, if you will, a line running south from Lithuania's OTL modern eastern border until Galicia; that is Poland's new eastern border). The Saxons entered a closer union with Poland, and, much as feared, begun introducing absolutist reforms, taking advantage of the szlachta's weakened and disoriented state. The Swedes thus kept Western Pomerania as well as many other key locations all over the Baltic Sea.
Thus Europe came to a peace of exhaustion.
. If anything going the whole hog will make things more managable than not, esp if they bring in settlers.
