Alternate History Thread II...
- Thread starter Xen
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You really shouldn't put cities on Anticosti island by the way - its just not a nice place 
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It has rocky coasts and only two very small places where ships can easily reach the shore. Its soil is infertile and its heavily forested and rocky, which is why dispite being larger than some provinces in canada it has a population less than 300. Pretty though
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Lord_Iggy said:
Well that's hardly difficult
- I mean theres 10 times the number of people than Yukon within 2 miles of where I'm sitting right now.North King
blech
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Eh, my Peninsula has at least 10x the Yukon's population, though that's a deal larger in area than Dis' place. 
But Iggy, I though PEI had about 100,000, and the Yukon around 30,000. That would be 3x, not 10x...
But Iggy, I though PEI had about 100,000, and the Yukon around 30,000. That would be 3x, not 10x...
das
Regeneration In Process
First of all, let us decide on terms. For this multi-named war I thereby officially christen War of the Second Coalition - started, if you forgot already, officially over the issue of American assistance to the Mirandinista rebels against Spanish colonial rule, but in fact a result of many years - nay, entire two decades - of tensions between the two great alliance systems of the Talleyrandian age. At the heart of the first alliance system - the so-called "Basel Pact" (name coming from the peace treaty of Basel that was the first step towards the creation of this alliance) - was a pact between Prussia and France, both being mortal enemies of Austria and both having been, perceptedly or trully, frustrated in their time by the meddling of the Perfidious Albion. The other key members of this alliance were Spain, a mere satellite of France incapable of independent policies by this moment due to high domestic dissent and economic failure, and Bavaria, fearful of Austrian power and hopeful for the conquest of south Germany. There were also the Ottomans and the Swedes, brought together by old allegiences with France and the fear of Russia, an Austrian ally which was breathing down their necks. Finally, there was Sardinia-Piedmont, seeking conquest of Italy, and a few minor German principalities (though most German statelings aligned with Austria and Hannover).
On the other side, the Second Coalition, formed around the axis of London-Vienna, the wreck of the First Coalition that tried and failed to prevent a French resurgency, largely due to Prime Minister Talleyrand's cunning alliance with Prussia. Both great anti-French empires brought along more allies - the British reconciled with their mutinous American colonies that had set their eyes on Spanish colonies turning away from Canada, and Austria not only forced plentiful German and Italian lesser states into the Coalition using its position of power and the prestige of the otherwise-nonexistant Holy Roman Empire, but also swallowed its pride and more importantly its fear and confirmed the alliance with Pavel I's Russia. Finally, Britain half-bribed, half-threatened the Atlantic powers of Denmark-Norway and Portugal into alliance as reinforcers of British naval might and counters to Sweden and Spain respectively.
Both sides made extensive plans, of which I have talked in the previous installments. I will not recap them all, apart from the singlemost important consideration of both Britain and France, as the naval leaders of their respective alliance. Both powers needed a victory at sea badly, as a victory at sea would mean a victory in the war. If Britain won, it would be able to do as it pleased - to reinforce its allies on the Continent, to capture isolated Franco-Spanish holdings, and mostly importantly, even if its allies lost on the land, starve and commercially-strangle France into submission. If France won, it wuld be able to threaten the British colonial and commercial empire, and its very homeland too. Even if Britain refused to quickly give up and go out of the war, it would be unable to do much against France and would be destroyed altogether - but Talleyrand entertained hopes that his British counterpart Castlereagh would be reasonable and thus remove the strongest link out of the Second Coalition. Everybody else would fall in due time; USA would probably give up soon after the loss of British support, as on that support the safety of its precious young frail trade network lied, not to mention other, more short-term considerations. Austria would be easily hammered down by concentrated Franco-Prussian efforts. Russia alone wasn't nearly powerful enough to defeat an united Europe...
Thus 1820 in truth went on indecisively - even as the Federal Army and the Mexican rebels proceeded with their triumphant march to Mexico City only to be defeated badly in the Second Battle at Queretaro by Bernadotte's well-positioned forces, even as the Portuguese fought loyalist guerrilas in the Banda Oriental (Uruguay), even as Spanish forces skirmished with the Portuguese around Elvas, even as Russians stormed into Poland, Austrians into Silesia and Prussians, rather foolhardily, into Bohemia after defeating an Austrian invasion force at Reichenberg. Nor were the more important events - such as the hard-fought Swedish victories at Vyborg and at Kolari (where the Russian Baltic Fleet was suddenly destroyed), or the sneaky French invasion of Switzerland and the resulting "Hannibalic" maneuver into the Po Valley with the resulting link-up with other Franco-Sardinian forces at Pavia and the rout of the Austrians there - trully crucial. The only event of true long-term importance was then the destruction of a large, but generally useless and outdated portion of the Spanish fleet at Trafalgar by Admiral John Jervis, but even then, France retained its own fleet cunningly and reinforced it with the more modern portion of the Spanish one, wisely moved to Brest a few months before the war begun.
In 1821, very, very surprising news came in. The one development nobody was ready for happened.
Let us first compare the two fleets, though without going into great detail. Certainly, the British one had the advantage of an old naval military tradition; it had good sailors and the best British officers, being far more prestigious than the land forces. The Royal Navy also had vast numbers, having been reinforced for the crucial Battle at Lizard Point (in Cornwall) by some of the Danish and Portuguese naval squadrons and being very numerous in and of itself. Numerical superiority was achieved, but, alas, the French were not really lagging too far behind, having for much of the previous decade concentrated on the construction of a fleet capable of challenging the British one in a fight that was almost nearly close to being considered virtually fair (okay, in a fight that wasn't fair at all, but the British fleet was none the less powerful and its admirals - cunning). Still, they were outnumbered, even with the remnants of the Spanish fleet with them. The French had a minor advantage in initiative - by threatening Cornwall instead of more obvious Dover or Ireland, they caused a minor panic and their landings there, though merely diversionary, served to intensify the panic and force the British to hastily concentrate their naval power, as opposed to making thorough preparations. But the British officers were competent enough to handle all this. French naval cadre was better than before, ofcourse - Talleyrand, Louis-Philippe I and Augereau all agreed on the need for naval reform if Britain was to be challengeable. While the British fleet was headed by Horatio Nelson, the French fleet was led by Louis-Rene Levassor de Latouche-Treville - perhaps not Nelson's better, but definitely an equal or about so. Coincidentally, though not present in the battle itself another great French naval leader was influencing the events - Robert Surcouf, king of the corsairs, France's foremost privateer was taking John Jervis' fleet - one of Britain's strongest - on a wild goose chase in the Bay of Biscay.
But even without that fleet, Britain was obviously stronger. Despite the surprise of the move towards Cornwall, it also placed France's fleet in disadvantage as the British were able to - how ever hastily - organize forces to attack it from the north and the east. They were numerous enough to do so even without Jervis. Already then, Horatio Nelson's heart was beginning to be overcome with doubts. The aging admiral knew that the French clearly had an ace up their sleeves... but orders were orders, and there was no time to take many precautions. So he attacked, and died half an hour later as an admiral should, sinking with his ship, the HMS Victory, victory that suddenly didn't seem assured at all.
The ace up la manche (OOC: pun unintended) francaise was a technological one. The British fleet could rely on numbers, training and simple tradition, but the French one, to effectively challenge British naval supremacy, needed something more than a conventional build-up. In a straightforward naval race France stood no chance -Britain had too good a start for a such a race to have beneficient results for the French, even though now, with industrial buildup, they could sustain it for longer than before. Instead, they had to compliment their basic naval buildup with new technology. Talleyrand had no illusions about this, he knew that it would be adapted by the British as soon as it was no longer secret, but a tactical advantage at least it could provide. So he hired and coerced, and encouraged, and rewarded, and sped up, and with the help of such men as Robert Fulton and Henri-Joseph Paixhans, not only were France's more conventional ships built with the best in naval technology and furnished with superior artillery, but also, such new vessels of war as submarines and ironclads made their first debute at Lizard Point. Neither weapons were perfect; submarines often broke down despite Fulton's rigorous work, while ironclads were vulnerable to lucky hits on their engines. But they had a surprise effect and generally managed to wreck havoc on the British fleet - the ironclads, with their largely prototypic, but already powerful Paixhans shell guns, moreso than the frail submarines, although it was actually a torpedo that sunk HMS Victory. The sudden loss of their commander and the initial confusion caused by new weapons has forced the eastern British fleet to fall back in some disarray. However, the fleet coming from the north, commanded by Sidney Smith, still needed to fight; a man of quick mind who for years had warned about the dangers of losing the technological race, he soon divined the weakness of the ironclads, and succesfully disabled or destroyed several of them. With Thomas Hardy taking control of Nelson's fleet and leading it to attack Latouche-Treville, it became clear that the battle was far from won.
Several hours later, however, it evidently was. The Franco-Spanish fleet was for all purposes equal in numbers with the British one, which also suffered from some disarray. Still, the two armades struggled into the evening, giving each other no quarter. In the end, the more united and high-spirited French fleet forces Hardy to fall back with the remnants of his fleet, and Sidney Smith also took some serious losses. It seemed to be a dark day for Britain.
Which was when in a very damn famous and dramatic action John Jervis arrived, having learned of the battle's beginning in a stroke of luck as one of the ships from there was blown off by a strong wind early on and bumped into Jervis' fleet near Brittany. His last-minute arrival made his name famous and even proverbial for last-minute reprieve (this was the origin of the verb jervis, jervising). Having jervised Smith's fleet, the newcomers, being a fresh force, managed to turn the tide altogether and force Latouche-Treville to retreat for Boulogne. Jervis pursued, as had quickly-promoted Hardy who quickly left the port. Their hopes to destroy the French fleet altogether proved ill-based; some reserve squadrons were sent out to cover the French retreat, and the coastal artillery saved Boulogne from British attack. But Britain was kinda saved.
Kinda because it failed to achieve a victory; merely a draw. The French hopes of crushing British naval supremacy were squashed, but the British casualties were horrible. Even with the American, Danish and Portuguese help, the British naval reign was badly shaken. Not fatally so ofcourse, and the British still did go on to launch their planned naval operations next year. But what was clear was that this war was not going to be a decisive victory - or, at least, it definitely wouldn't be decided on the sea. Almost immediately after the battle, the British diplomats even proposed peace, but neither the French nor Britain's allies were willing to accept it.
The Battle at Lizard Point and the rejection of the British peace overtures deprived both sides of any hopes for a quick victory or at least a quick peace. At the same time, its shock, in combination with various events on the land (as usual, pretty much all plans were proved irrelevant upon contact with the enemy), made things much less straightforward or clear, as all the combatants needed to rethink their strategies and reasses their situations in this light. Old plans were largely discarded, and new ones were made, as the war entered its second phase - after a close, yet indecisive engagement, a phase that despite all could probably be termed a one of maneuver.
On the other side, the Second Coalition, formed around the axis of London-Vienna, the wreck of the First Coalition that tried and failed to prevent a French resurgency, largely due to Prime Minister Talleyrand's cunning alliance with Prussia. Both great anti-French empires brought along more allies - the British reconciled with their mutinous American colonies that had set their eyes on Spanish colonies turning away from Canada, and Austria not only forced plentiful German and Italian lesser states into the Coalition using its position of power and the prestige of the otherwise-nonexistant Holy Roman Empire, but also swallowed its pride and more importantly its fear and confirmed the alliance with Pavel I's Russia. Finally, Britain half-bribed, half-threatened the Atlantic powers of Denmark-Norway and Portugal into alliance as reinforcers of British naval might and counters to Sweden and Spain respectively.
Both sides made extensive plans, of which I have talked in the previous installments. I will not recap them all, apart from the singlemost important consideration of both Britain and France, as the naval leaders of their respective alliance. Both powers needed a victory at sea badly, as a victory at sea would mean a victory in the war. If Britain won, it would be able to do as it pleased - to reinforce its allies on the Continent, to capture isolated Franco-Spanish holdings, and mostly importantly, even if its allies lost on the land, starve and commercially-strangle France into submission. If France won, it wuld be able to threaten the British colonial and commercial empire, and its very homeland too. Even if Britain refused to quickly give up and go out of the war, it would be unable to do much against France and would be destroyed altogether - but Talleyrand entertained hopes that his British counterpart Castlereagh would be reasonable and thus remove the strongest link out of the Second Coalition. Everybody else would fall in due time; USA would probably give up soon after the loss of British support, as on that support the safety of its precious young frail trade network lied, not to mention other, more short-term considerations. Austria would be easily hammered down by concentrated Franco-Prussian efforts. Russia alone wasn't nearly powerful enough to defeat an united Europe...
Thus 1820 in truth went on indecisively - even as the Federal Army and the Mexican rebels proceeded with their triumphant march to Mexico City only to be defeated badly in the Second Battle at Queretaro by Bernadotte's well-positioned forces, even as the Portuguese fought loyalist guerrilas in the Banda Oriental (Uruguay), even as Spanish forces skirmished with the Portuguese around Elvas, even as Russians stormed into Poland, Austrians into Silesia and Prussians, rather foolhardily, into Bohemia after defeating an Austrian invasion force at Reichenberg. Nor were the more important events - such as the hard-fought Swedish victories at Vyborg and at Kolari (where the Russian Baltic Fleet was suddenly destroyed), or the sneaky French invasion of Switzerland and the resulting "Hannibalic" maneuver into the Po Valley with the resulting link-up with other Franco-Sardinian forces at Pavia and the rout of the Austrians there - trully crucial. The only event of true long-term importance was then the destruction of a large, but generally useless and outdated portion of the Spanish fleet at Trafalgar by Admiral John Jervis, but even then, France retained its own fleet cunningly and reinforced it with the more modern portion of the Spanish one, wisely moved to Brest a few months before the war begun.
In 1821, very, very surprising news came in. The one development nobody was ready for happened.
Let us first compare the two fleets, though without going into great detail. Certainly, the British one had the advantage of an old naval military tradition; it had good sailors and the best British officers, being far more prestigious than the land forces. The Royal Navy also had vast numbers, having been reinforced for the crucial Battle at Lizard Point (in Cornwall) by some of the Danish and Portuguese naval squadrons and being very numerous in and of itself. Numerical superiority was achieved, but, alas, the French were not really lagging too far behind, having for much of the previous decade concentrated on the construction of a fleet capable of challenging the British one in a fight that was almost nearly close to being considered virtually fair (okay, in a fight that wasn't fair at all, but the British fleet was none the less powerful and its admirals - cunning). Still, they were outnumbered, even with the remnants of the Spanish fleet with them. The French had a minor advantage in initiative - by threatening Cornwall instead of more obvious Dover or Ireland, they caused a minor panic and their landings there, though merely diversionary, served to intensify the panic and force the British to hastily concentrate their naval power, as opposed to making thorough preparations. But the British officers were competent enough to handle all this. French naval cadre was better than before, ofcourse - Talleyrand, Louis-Philippe I and Augereau all agreed on the need for naval reform if Britain was to be challengeable. While the British fleet was headed by Horatio Nelson, the French fleet was led by Louis-Rene Levassor de Latouche-Treville - perhaps not Nelson's better, but definitely an equal or about so. Coincidentally, though not present in the battle itself another great French naval leader was influencing the events - Robert Surcouf, king of the corsairs, France's foremost privateer was taking John Jervis' fleet - one of Britain's strongest - on a wild goose chase in the Bay of Biscay.
But even without that fleet, Britain was obviously stronger. Despite the surprise of the move towards Cornwall, it also placed France's fleet in disadvantage as the British were able to - how ever hastily - organize forces to attack it from the north and the east. They were numerous enough to do so even without Jervis. Already then, Horatio Nelson's heart was beginning to be overcome with doubts. The aging admiral knew that the French clearly had an ace up their sleeves... but orders were orders, and there was no time to take many precautions. So he attacked, and died half an hour later as an admiral should, sinking with his ship, the HMS Victory, victory that suddenly didn't seem assured at all.
The ace up la manche (OOC: pun unintended) francaise was a technological one. The British fleet could rely on numbers, training and simple tradition, but the French one, to effectively challenge British naval supremacy, needed something more than a conventional build-up. In a straightforward naval race France stood no chance -Britain had too good a start for a such a race to have beneficient results for the French, even though now, with industrial buildup, they could sustain it for longer than before. Instead, they had to compliment their basic naval buildup with new technology. Talleyrand had no illusions about this, he knew that it would be adapted by the British as soon as it was no longer secret, but a tactical advantage at least it could provide. So he hired and coerced, and encouraged, and rewarded, and sped up, and with the help of such men as Robert Fulton and Henri-Joseph Paixhans, not only were France's more conventional ships built with the best in naval technology and furnished with superior artillery, but also, such new vessels of war as submarines and ironclads made their first debute at Lizard Point. Neither weapons were perfect; submarines often broke down despite Fulton's rigorous work, while ironclads were vulnerable to lucky hits on their engines. But they had a surprise effect and generally managed to wreck havoc on the British fleet - the ironclads, with their largely prototypic, but already powerful Paixhans shell guns, moreso than the frail submarines, although it was actually a torpedo that sunk HMS Victory. The sudden loss of their commander and the initial confusion caused by new weapons has forced the eastern British fleet to fall back in some disarray. However, the fleet coming from the north, commanded by Sidney Smith, still needed to fight; a man of quick mind who for years had warned about the dangers of losing the technological race, he soon divined the weakness of the ironclads, and succesfully disabled or destroyed several of them. With Thomas Hardy taking control of Nelson's fleet and leading it to attack Latouche-Treville, it became clear that the battle was far from won.
Several hours later, however, it evidently was. The Franco-Spanish fleet was for all purposes equal in numbers with the British one, which also suffered from some disarray. Still, the two armades struggled into the evening, giving each other no quarter. In the end, the more united and high-spirited French fleet forces Hardy to fall back with the remnants of his fleet, and Sidney Smith also took some serious losses. It seemed to be a dark day for Britain.
Which was when in a very damn famous and dramatic action John Jervis arrived, having learned of the battle's beginning in a stroke of luck as one of the ships from there was blown off by a strong wind early on and bumped into Jervis' fleet near Brittany. His last-minute arrival made his name famous and even proverbial for last-minute reprieve (this was the origin of the verb jervis, jervising). Having jervised Smith's fleet, the newcomers, being a fresh force, managed to turn the tide altogether and force Latouche-Treville to retreat for Boulogne. Jervis pursued, as had quickly-promoted Hardy who quickly left the port. Their hopes to destroy the French fleet altogether proved ill-based; some reserve squadrons were sent out to cover the French retreat, and the coastal artillery saved Boulogne from British attack. But Britain was kinda saved.
Kinda because it failed to achieve a victory; merely a draw. The French hopes of crushing British naval supremacy were squashed, but the British casualties were horrible. Even with the American, Danish and Portuguese help, the British naval reign was badly shaken. Not fatally so ofcourse, and the British still did go on to launch their planned naval operations next year. But what was clear was that this war was not going to be a decisive victory - or, at least, it definitely wouldn't be decided on the sea. Almost immediately after the battle, the British diplomats even proposed peace, but neither the French nor Britain's allies were willing to accept it.
The Battle at Lizard Point and the rejection of the British peace overtures deprived both sides of any hopes for a quick victory or at least a quick peace. At the same time, its shock, in combination with various events on the land (as usual, pretty much all plans were proved irrelevant upon contact with the enemy), made things much less straightforward or clear, as all the combatants needed to rethink their strategies and reasses their situations in this light. Old plans were largely discarded, and new ones were made, as the war entered its second phase - after a close, yet indecisive engagement, a phase that despite all could probably be termed a one of maneuver.
das
Regeneration In Process
The rest of 1821 and 1822 saw several key campaigns in all theatres - both the old ones and the new ones opened to no small extent as a result of the Battle at Lizard Point after which the French felt slightly freer and the British - more uncertain. While the British were busy reestablishing their naval supremacy and blockade, then, the French felt free enough to send more reinforcements to Bernadotte and to the Buenos Aires garrison, to dispatch a small expeditionary corps to Ireland where a rebellion commenced, to recapture ill-guarded Minorca and most importantly and least probably, send advisors, agents and some say even troops to India, smuggling them there cunningly and thus working to organize a great rising. It was coordinated with a sudden Burmese invasion of Bengal, no doubt also incited by the French somewhat.
And thus when the British DID reclaim naval supremacy for good and defeated the French fleet at North Charcot Seamount in early 1822, they had their work cut out for them. Despite French assistance, the Irish rebellion was nipped in the bud by powerful British intervention and betrayal (the high tide of Anglophobia in Ireland having temporarily receded). Several seaborne operations (cooperated with the Americans) resulted in the conquest of Cuba and much of the Carribean, though with terrifying casualties and costs. Buenos Aires was attacked in full force, and with the help of nearby rebels and the traitors within was captured at last, albeit the casualties were heavy here as well. The invasion of Gascony had failed due to the lack of expected popular support, but the British weren't really counting on it to be a success. Sarabhoji Bhonsle's neo-Maratha rebellion was harder to subdue, with the neo-Maratha victory at Amravati, but Arthur Wellesley defeated the Burmese at Dacca, while his brother Richard negotiated an alliance with Ranjit Singh's Sikhs, who, in exchange for a recognized empire on the Indus, entered a war with the Muslim rebels of the north and routed them at Nawabshah, as previously at Peshawar which Singh had made his capital. Finally, British expeditionary forces were commited to a variety of fronts where they had decisive results.
The American and rebel forces in Mexico had to retreat to Rio Panuco and beyond, while Franco-Spanish forces took the initiative, defeating the rebellion in the south and now threatening to quash it in the north as well. However, things didn't go well for Bernadotte in 1822, when a British expeditionary force landed in Veracruz, while the Spanish commander Iturbide attempted to double-cross him. When he was apprehended and beheaded, most of the Spanish forces in Mexico - apart from two-three battered divisions of peninsulares - mutinied. Fortunately Bernadotte's regular French forces were equal in number to the rebels and, beign far superior to them in martial skills and disciplinne, easily routed them when they tried to capture Ciudad Mexico and destroyed the "Secunda Armada Guerrila" completely but for a few sodliers that went away to wage a real, and utterly inefficient guerrila war in the countryside. But all this forced Bernadotte to establish French military administration over the entire colony, as the Spanish viceroy himself was a) a suspect and b) bereft of any real authority whatsoever. While Bernadotte consolidated his power, the rebellions in Central America recommenced, though the French did deal the weary British corps a major defeat at Jalapa and force them to withdraw from Mexico altogether in disarray. All this gave Juan Aldama, Mexican leader, time to regroup his forces and prepare for a new campaign. This was helped by the Anglo-American victory in the Carribean and the subsequent redeployments of more American forces both to Mexico and to Yucatan where a second front was opened with the help of local insurgents.
Further south, with some British assistance and a swelling force of domestic and foreign volunteers, Miranda and his Platine lieutenant Bernardo O'Higgins were winning victory after victory. By 1823, the Spanish presence in South America was limited to parts of Peru, as all of Rio de la Plata was in Portuguese, British or rebel hands, while Miranda had triumphantly advanced across the Andes and into Cuzco. Really, this was a walkover; the last vestige of Spanish power, Lima, was guarded by some low-morale semifeudal levies and fanatical, but ill-trained ranceros.
In Europe, the Spanish invasion of Portugal went from succesful (when early in 1821 Elvas was captured and several Portuguese divisions surrendered) to disastrous (when in 1822 John Moore's British forces reinforced the Portuguese at Lisbon and routed the Spanish army; when Fernando VII personally tried to organize a defense at Elvas he barely got away with his life as the soldiers mutinied and a revolution swept across the southwestern and central parts of Spain, with the loyal northeast holding out with French assistance). The Prussians were barely holding out; throughout 1821 and 1822, they suffered defeat after defeat, throwing vast numbers of ill-led conscripts to the effect of only barely stemming the tide and stopping the Austrian progress through Silesia at Bunzlau, whilst Russians under Nikolai Raevsky plugged on with blood to the ankles through the Polish and East Prussian fortifications, taking them one-by-one with Pavel I harrying them persistantly. A revolt in Poland sped things up; last-moment Prussian attempts to reconcile with their Slavic subjects have failed, and Tadeusz Bulgarin formed a Polish volunteer army under Russian banners. Soon the Prussians lost Posen and Elbing as well, and were facing total collapse. But while France's primary allies performed poorly, Augereau and his "new marshalls", veterans of the War of the First Coalition, won victory after victory. Newly-promoted marechal Nicolas Chauvin was dispatched to subdue the Spanish revolution; carrying out brutal reprisals that won him the hatred of French liberal circles and pretty much all the Spanairds but the deihard reactionary "Fernandists", "Nicolas the Bloody" captured Madrid and guillotined the rebel leadership, but the country remained unstable with the British assisting the rebellion in Seville and La Corunna and helping the rebels organize. Still, collapse was avoided. Marechal Jean-Victor-Marie Moreau and the Army of Hannover not only occupied said principality, but forced all other North German states - except Danish Holstein - to leave the alliance with Austria. His forces along with the newest waves of the Prussian Landswehr soon defeated the Austrians badly at Freital near Dresden. The Austrians did achieve much success in another theatre - despite the best French efforts, they had overran Bavaria, and defeated marechal Louis Bonaparte (a relative of Napoleon's) sent to rescue his namesake. But in Italy, it was a nightmare. Marechal Pierre-Francois-Charles Augereau personally commanded the earlier invasion of Switzerland, and managed to impose a puppet government there quickly, then move through the Alpes into the rear of the Austrian Italian forces, succeeding where Napoleon had failed and taking Mantua in a shock assault. Between him and the Franco-Piedmontese Army of Italy under marechal Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, the Austrians were completely crushed, the King of Naples promptly declared his neutrality, while the Pope scarcely defeated a coup attempt against him.
Though France succesfully fought America, Britain and Austria, giving all three wounds of varying griveousness, Russia seemed to be an unstoppable juggernaught. For these two years, Pavel's forces not only occupied Poland, but also counterstruck in Finland and overwhelmed the Swedes on the Vanda River, soon taking Helsingfors. As if that wasn't bad enough, the Anglo-Danish fleet tore the seemingly-triumphant Swedish navy into pieces at Gotska Sandon and bombarded Stockholm, making the elderly, ailing, marasmatic King Karl XIII die altogether. Not that he held any real power by now, but the fear of incoming defeat made the Swedish Ståndsriksdagen accept that as a sign from above and a welcome opportunity to roll over. So it did, and King Frederik VI of Denmark-Norway now took Sweden's crown as well, immediately evacuating Finland as per the agreement with Russia. Some Swedish officers tried to disobey, but were simply overran by their own war-weary troops and the incoming Russian hordes. Meanwhile, as already said, the Russians had conquered East Prussia and Prussian Poland. The Ottoman Empire was getting the worst of it all in the meantime - having failed to stop the Russians in the Shipka Pass, Turkey was shaken by Slavic, Greek and Arabic rebellions as its armies, despite Selim's best efforts and preparations, begun to crumble. Admiral Pavel Chichagov destroyed the Turkish fleet at the Bosporus, although the attempt to capture Istanbul had failed. But nonetheless, the Russians were soon in Adrianople; while Austro-Serbian forces marched into Nish and Skopje. Anglo-Greek forces chased the Turks from that corner of the Balkans, and the Aegean islands was at British mercy, the Greeks there rebelling unstoppably. The Mamlukes of Egypt, under Ibrahim-Beg, declared independence, slaughtered Ottoman administrators and French merchants, and babbled incessantly about the return of their true greatness. Technically the old, corrupt, incompetent Mamluke guard wasn't capable of much even against the ragtag Turkish forces sent against them, but iin the Battle at Jaffa, the Egyptians had prevailed with British assistance. In that battle, the great future Egyptian leader Rostom Razmadze first showed his talent, holding out against superior Ottoman numbers...
The Ottoman Empire was doomed, or seemed to be such until the French managd to strike at Russia as well; a coup d'etat against Pavel I was launched by Russian republicans. The coup in St. Petersburg was thwarted, however; graf Aleksandr von Benckendorff betrayed the conspiracy, and it was easily defeated. HOWEVER, the reserve officers in Chernigov - the key Russian southern garrison city - were likewise disposed to rebellion. With the assistance of French agents, they led their forces to a mutiny and declared the "Republic of Yugorossia". The rebellion spread fast; Aleksandr Ypsilanti, vassal ruler of Romania, saw it as his big chance to break free of Pavel's grasp and supported the rising, as did Pavel Pestel, a key conspirator and a popular officer within the Izmail garrison who led it to rebellion as well. Forcefully taking command of the Russian forces in the Danubean Principalities, Pestel assisted Ypsilanti (who had declared himself a Byzantine Emperor) in defeating Miloradovich's forces that had to pull back from Bulgaria.
In Novorossia, Crimea and the Ukraine, the rebellion spread quickly as if a fire in a haystack. By this point Russia was, despite its seeming power, overstraiend economically; poverty and famine filled the land, and the abolition of serfdom if anything made things even worse, as the serfs were liberated from bondage and from their lands as well. So it wasn't really strange that the rebellion spread quickly, especially in the southern lands that were the most prosperous at the beginning of Pavel's reign and the hardest-hit by its economical and social woes and tensions, overpopulated as they were. Sergey Muravyov-Apostol, oen of the leaders of the initial revolt, quickly consolidated power in his hands, organized a peasant army and laid siege to the few loyal garrisons, such as the one in Rostov-na-Donu, all the while calling up for more risings.
However, at the same time, Pavel's power, though not as strong as it seemed before the rebellion, wasn't as weak as it seemed after it. If anything, it was strengthened; Arakcheyev moved quickly to liquidate all "Jacobin" sentiments within the territories still controlled by the Tsar, and the disorganized peasant rebellions that did happen were quickly defeated. General Yermolov was recalled from Caucasus, while Raevsky put the Polish campaign on hold, while Austrian forces were diverted as well to help their troubled ally. Soon the "Yugorossians" had to fight back attacks from the east, the north and the west. The attempts to get Ottoman assistance failed quickly - the Turks were too busy fighting back their various enemies, including, paradoxically, Ypsilanti and Pestel who had resolved to build a Byzantine Empire and already negotiated an alliance with some of the Greek rebel leaders. And besides, Sevastopol was still in loyalist hands, how ever barely; and the Black Sea fleet was on the Tsar's side.
So the rebellion was defeated completely by late 1823, Muravyov being simply not up to the challenge of organizing the defense of the would-be state and with counter-revolutionary uprisings commenced almost immediately after the Republic was declared. Bungled attempts to start a Reign of Terror in the last few months of the republic made things even worse. However, this rebellion did not go by without effects; the long-term ones will be spoken of later on, but the short-term ones are obvious as well. Prussia gained a temporary reprieve; not enough to retake Warsaw, but enough for Posen and Konigsberg. On the other hand, the Ottoman Empire soon surrendered completely, or nearly so; Pestel and Ypsilanti put it on the brink of total collapse, and they had to plead for Austro-Russo-British assistance against the "Byzantine Empire". The Byzantines and these of the various Balkan rebel groups that aligned with them were defeated by a combined Turkish and Coalition army at Havsa, Pestel disappearing mystiriously and Ypsilanti dying. In exchange for that and survival, the Ottomans accepted a harsh peace by the Treaty of San Stefano. The Danubean Principalities were annexed directly by Russia, Bulgaria and Serbia got full independence (the former under a Romanov, Alexander I), so did Greece (temporarily rueld by an oligarchic council), Albania was annexed by Austria (apart from the south that went to the Greeks), the Ottoman power in Europe was limited to Thrace and Constantinople, Crete was taken by the British, Egypt became an independent sultanate under Ibrahim I, who also got Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Hejaz, Tripolitania and Cyreneica. Basrah and some surrounding regions were taken by Persia, Russia took Kars and Artvin in Armenia. And, ofcourse, the Turks had to cancel their alliance with France and once more let Russian ships through the Straits.
This treaty was the beginning of the end for this war. Indeed, in several other theatres it was over as well - in Scandinavia, as already mentioned, and in Bengal where the Burmese agreed to withdraw peacefully while the British moved to defeat the Indian rebels. Though (temporarily, in his mind) frustrated in in the south, Pavel I was now able to concentrate fully on Prussia even as the last Yugorossian rebel bands were defeated and order of sorts was restored. Raevsky once more captured Warsaw, only briefly retaken by the Prussians. The Austrians, though pushed out of most of Silesia in 1823, now struck back as well, only stopping at the gates of Breslau.
For once it seemed as if victory against France was near, as several of its allies were knocked out. However, in 1824 a series of events proved this assesment wrong. Firstly, after a gradual pick-up in French privateering, the British commerce begun to take visible damage from it, the Royal Navy no longer able to protect the trade lanes as well as it used to; American commerce took a hit as well, while French agitation soon resulted in anti-war riots in New England; not only Webster, in his second term's end, was threatened, but also the Federalist party as such. And thirdly, a series of French (and Prussian) victories took place that year. Bernadotte finally defeated Juan Aldama, although Houston retreated northwards in good order. Nicolas Chauvin routed the Anglo-Portuguese force at Caceras, forced the British to wtihdraw from Seville and re-invaded Portugal. Austro-Russian forces were prevented from linking up at Kalisch by a desperate Franco-Prussian force that proceeded to chase the Austrians all the way to Ostrau. Carlo Felice of Sardinia-Piedmont had conspired with the Austrians to betray the French during an Austrian counter-invasion of Italy, but was found out and arrested, his armies disbanded and his kingdom forcefully incorporated into France. As for the Austrians, though they prevented the French capture of Venice, they themselves were defeated badly near Mantua.
But really, the most important reason for this peace was general war-weariness - and not as much that of the masses as that of the rulers, though there were many minor rebellions in that year as well. These recent French victories only proved to the Austro-British elite that even if they could win, it would be such a difficult, expensive victory that they might as well just lose. Already, the casualties and the economical wastes of the war were staggering. So a peace conference was held in London.
I will not go into descriptions of all the power-gaming, threats, ultimatums, betrayals, intrigues and so forth that took place during the conference. As always after an indecisive war, these abounded. The London Conference however was rightly judged as one of the worst such conferences in history, while the ultimate 1825 peace treaty was infamous even before it was drafted, and remains such to this day; it was particularily hated in France and America, where it was denounced as a cynical, treacherous pact. That it was indeed. Though the governments of the great powers of both sides claimed victory except in such cases where it was utterly impossible, as with the Ottoman Empire (which however merely confirmed the previous Treaty of San Stefano), the populace remained discontent on both sides, often thinking this a defeat.
Anyway. All the French colonies were returned (including eastern Madagascar briefly occupied by the Merinas, though noone consulted them). The Spanish colonial empire simply ceased to exist; Texas, Cuba and Hispaniola (except for French parts) went to the USA, the Californias were bought by the ever-more derranged Pavel I, France annexed remnants of New Spain, Britian grabbed Puerto Rico, other remaining Spanish Carribean possessions, Buenos Aires (with the surroundings) and the Phillipines (along with the other Spanish Pacific possessions), Portugal took all lands east of the Parana, Mirandinistas took over the rest of Spanish South America and declared it the "Colombian Republic". Technically Paraguay retained control over both sides of the Parana for now, but it went unrecognized (and was subsequently subject to a Portuguese-Columbian punitive expedition later on). Britain, Portugal, USA and France paid out nominal reparations to Spain (plus it did get to annex a tiny slice of land beyond the Portuguese border, and got Minorca back because the British decided it to be not really worth holding). In Europe, Prussia lost Austrian Silesia (meaning the part that it had gained after the War of the First Coalition) to Austria, and its Polish territories (NOT including Danzig and the whereabouts) to Russia (admittedly, Poland was granted some autonomy under its restored Saxon rulers). In compensation Prussia was given Mecklenburg and Munster. France annexed Sardinia-Piedmont and Geneve, and created a satellite buffer state in the rest of Switzerland - the Kingdom of Helvetia under a cadet Orlean-Bourbon branch. Austria was forced to grant independence to Milan and Tuscany, though both received Habsburg rulers and became puppet states; also, a cadet Habsburg branch was given Greece. Generally Italy - between French Piedmont and Austrian Venice - became neutral on paper, though in fact this merely meant the beginning of a vicious diplomatic struggle between France and Austria over the souls of Italian rulers. Austria got some compensation for itself by finally destroying Wittelsbach power; at last, the Austrians forced everyone to allow them to annex Bavaria completely. France withdrew all support from Indian rebels that were finished off a few years later. Former non-Indian rebels that weren't dead yet or in Russia or Spain Proper were granted amnesty. Treaty of San Stefano was confirmed, Danish annexation of Sweden and Russian - of Finland was confirmed. Everything else returned to status quo ante bellum.
The war was over, as was expected since 1821, with an anticlimax for an ending. Instead of Pavel's dreams coming true, or British supremacy being fortified, or a new French-dominated world order emerging, what came was an era of unclarity and mixed feeling - the Dubious Age, or the Age of Uncertainty. During it, social instability, briefly dormant, would ascend once more, and the two powerful alliance systems would come down crashing, having turned irrelevant in the new world. All this chaos would ironically prove beneficient in the long-term, as it would delay the next "world war" for quite some time, though at the price of several bloody local conflicts.
As a curious sidenote - while it initiated a naval revolution and the beginning of the Age of Steam, the land aspects of the war scarcely changed - only, the progressive military doctrines adapted by the French in the War of the First Coalition were now adapted by countries across the (western) world, with varying effects. Very interesting however is the fact that one of the foundations of this new "French doctrine" was already shaken by the French themselves in Mexico - while in Europe, the French continued to rely on mass popular armies reinforced by some elite Guard units, in Mexico this was clearly an impossibility, and instead, Bernadotte's expeditionary force became a noted early example of a comparatively small, professional, undemocratic force triumphing over a large, if rather disorganized and poorly led, popular army. However, this lesson would largely be forgotten by all but the colonial commanders; if anything, it fortified the Federalist belief in the need for a stronger Federal Army, and thus become one of the causes of army reform and consequently - the American Civil War, in turn yet another war of "people's armies".
OOC: A more thorough description of the war's ultimate effects will be in the next post along with the various post-war events, because this confusing war had a confusing, uncertain, indecisive result the immediate implications of which alone will not become clear for over a decade.
Any clarifications needed? The peace treaty isn't very well-written, I know, plus some theatres may seem rather confusing. Well, that they were supposed to be, so...
And thus when the British DID reclaim naval supremacy for good and defeated the French fleet at North Charcot Seamount in early 1822, they had their work cut out for them. Despite French assistance, the Irish rebellion was nipped in the bud by powerful British intervention and betrayal (the high tide of Anglophobia in Ireland having temporarily receded). Several seaborne operations (cooperated with the Americans) resulted in the conquest of Cuba and much of the Carribean, though with terrifying casualties and costs. Buenos Aires was attacked in full force, and with the help of nearby rebels and the traitors within was captured at last, albeit the casualties were heavy here as well. The invasion of Gascony had failed due to the lack of expected popular support, but the British weren't really counting on it to be a success. Sarabhoji Bhonsle's neo-Maratha rebellion was harder to subdue, with the neo-Maratha victory at Amravati, but Arthur Wellesley defeated the Burmese at Dacca, while his brother Richard negotiated an alliance with Ranjit Singh's Sikhs, who, in exchange for a recognized empire on the Indus, entered a war with the Muslim rebels of the north and routed them at Nawabshah, as previously at Peshawar which Singh had made his capital. Finally, British expeditionary forces were commited to a variety of fronts where they had decisive results.
The American and rebel forces in Mexico had to retreat to Rio Panuco and beyond, while Franco-Spanish forces took the initiative, defeating the rebellion in the south and now threatening to quash it in the north as well. However, things didn't go well for Bernadotte in 1822, when a British expeditionary force landed in Veracruz, while the Spanish commander Iturbide attempted to double-cross him. When he was apprehended and beheaded, most of the Spanish forces in Mexico - apart from two-three battered divisions of peninsulares - mutinied. Fortunately Bernadotte's regular French forces were equal in number to the rebels and, beign far superior to them in martial skills and disciplinne, easily routed them when they tried to capture Ciudad Mexico and destroyed the "Secunda Armada Guerrila" completely but for a few sodliers that went away to wage a real, and utterly inefficient guerrila war in the countryside. But all this forced Bernadotte to establish French military administration over the entire colony, as the Spanish viceroy himself was a) a suspect and b) bereft of any real authority whatsoever. While Bernadotte consolidated his power, the rebellions in Central America recommenced, though the French did deal the weary British corps a major defeat at Jalapa and force them to withdraw from Mexico altogether in disarray. All this gave Juan Aldama, Mexican leader, time to regroup his forces and prepare for a new campaign. This was helped by the Anglo-American victory in the Carribean and the subsequent redeployments of more American forces both to Mexico and to Yucatan where a second front was opened with the help of local insurgents.
Further south, with some British assistance and a swelling force of domestic and foreign volunteers, Miranda and his Platine lieutenant Bernardo O'Higgins were winning victory after victory. By 1823, the Spanish presence in South America was limited to parts of Peru, as all of Rio de la Plata was in Portuguese, British or rebel hands, while Miranda had triumphantly advanced across the Andes and into Cuzco. Really, this was a walkover; the last vestige of Spanish power, Lima, was guarded by some low-morale semifeudal levies and fanatical, but ill-trained ranceros.
In Europe, the Spanish invasion of Portugal went from succesful (when early in 1821 Elvas was captured and several Portuguese divisions surrendered) to disastrous (when in 1822 John Moore's British forces reinforced the Portuguese at Lisbon and routed the Spanish army; when Fernando VII personally tried to organize a defense at Elvas he barely got away with his life as the soldiers mutinied and a revolution swept across the southwestern and central parts of Spain, with the loyal northeast holding out with French assistance). The Prussians were barely holding out; throughout 1821 and 1822, they suffered defeat after defeat, throwing vast numbers of ill-led conscripts to the effect of only barely stemming the tide and stopping the Austrian progress through Silesia at Bunzlau, whilst Russians under Nikolai Raevsky plugged on with blood to the ankles through the Polish and East Prussian fortifications, taking them one-by-one with Pavel I harrying them persistantly. A revolt in Poland sped things up; last-moment Prussian attempts to reconcile with their Slavic subjects have failed, and Tadeusz Bulgarin formed a Polish volunteer army under Russian banners. Soon the Prussians lost Posen and Elbing as well, and were facing total collapse. But while France's primary allies performed poorly, Augereau and his "new marshalls", veterans of the War of the First Coalition, won victory after victory. Newly-promoted marechal Nicolas Chauvin was dispatched to subdue the Spanish revolution; carrying out brutal reprisals that won him the hatred of French liberal circles and pretty much all the Spanairds but the deihard reactionary "Fernandists", "Nicolas the Bloody" captured Madrid and guillotined the rebel leadership, but the country remained unstable with the British assisting the rebellion in Seville and La Corunna and helping the rebels organize. Still, collapse was avoided. Marechal Jean-Victor-Marie Moreau and the Army of Hannover not only occupied said principality, but forced all other North German states - except Danish Holstein - to leave the alliance with Austria. His forces along with the newest waves of the Prussian Landswehr soon defeated the Austrians badly at Freital near Dresden. The Austrians did achieve much success in another theatre - despite the best French efforts, they had overran Bavaria, and defeated marechal Louis Bonaparte (a relative of Napoleon's) sent to rescue his namesake. But in Italy, it was a nightmare. Marechal Pierre-Francois-Charles Augereau personally commanded the earlier invasion of Switzerland, and managed to impose a puppet government there quickly, then move through the Alpes into the rear of the Austrian Italian forces, succeeding where Napoleon had failed and taking Mantua in a shock assault. Between him and the Franco-Piedmontese Army of Italy under marechal Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, the Austrians were completely crushed, the King of Naples promptly declared his neutrality, while the Pope scarcely defeated a coup attempt against him.
Though France succesfully fought America, Britain and Austria, giving all three wounds of varying griveousness, Russia seemed to be an unstoppable juggernaught. For these two years, Pavel's forces not only occupied Poland, but also counterstruck in Finland and overwhelmed the Swedes on the Vanda River, soon taking Helsingfors. As if that wasn't bad enough, the Anglo-Danish fleet tore the seemingly-triumphant Swedish navy into pieces at Gotska Sandon and bombarded Stockholm, making the elderly, ailing, marasmatic King Karl XIII die altogether. Not that he held any real power by now, but the fear of incoming defeat made the Swedish Ståndsriksdagen accept that as a sign from above and a welcome opportunity to roll over. So it did, and King Frederik VI of Denmark-Norway now took Sweden's crown as well, immediately evacuating Finland as per the agreement with Russia. Some Swedish officers tried to disobey, but were simply overran by their own war-weary troops and the incoming Russian hordes. Meanwhile, as already said, the Russians had conquered East Prussia and Prussian Poland. The Ottoman Empire was getting the worst of it all in the meantime - having failed to stop the Russians in the Shipka Pass, Turkey was shaken by Slavic, Greek and Arabic rebellions as its armies, despite Selim's best efforts and preparations, begun to crumble. Admiral Pavel Chichagov destroyed the Turkish fleet at the Bosporus, although the attempt to capture Istanbul had failed. But nonetheless, the Russians were soon in Adrianople; while Austro-Serbian forces marched into Nish and Skopje. Anglo-Greek forces chased the Turks from that corner of the Balkans, and the Aegean islands was at British mercy, the Greeks there rebelling unstoppably. The Mamlukes of Egypt, under Ibrahim-Beg, declared independence, slaughtered Ottoman administrators and French merchants, and babbled incessantly about the return of their true greatness. Technically the old, corrupt, incompetent Mamluke guard wasn't capable of much even against the ragtag Turkish forces sent against them, but iin the Battle at Jaffa, the Egyptians had prevailed with British assistance. In that battle, the great future Egyptian leader Rostom Razmadze first showed his talent, holding out against superior Ottoman numbers...
The Ottoman Empire was doomed, or seemed to be such until the French managd to strike at Russia as well; a coup d'etat against Pavel I was launched by Russian republicans. The coup in St. Petersburg was thwarted, however; graf Aleksandr von Benckendorff betrayed the conspiracy, and it was easily defeated. HOWEVER, the reserve officers in Chernigov - the key Russian southern garrison city - were likewise disposed to rebellion. With the assistance of French agents, they led their forces to a mutiny and declared the "Republic of Yugorossia". The rebellion spread fast; Aleksandr Ypsilanti, vassal ruler of Romania, saw it as his big chance to break free of Pavel's grasp and supported the rising, as did Pavel Pestel, a key conspirator and a popular officer within the Izmail garrison who led it to rebellion as well. Forcefully taking command of the Russian forces in the Danubean Principalities, Pestel assisted Ypsilanti (who had declared himself a Byzantine Emperor) in defeating Miloradovich's forces that had to pull back from Bulgaria.
In Novorossia, Crimea and the Ukraine, the rebellion spread quickly as if a fire in a haystack. By this point Russia was, despite its seeming power, overstraiend economically; poverty and famine filled the land, and the abolition of serfdom if anything made things even worse, as the serfs were liberated from bondage and from their lands as well. So it wasn't really strange that the rebellion spread quickly, especially in the southern lands that were the most prosperous at the beginning of Pavel's reign and the hardest-hit by its economical and social woes and tensions, overpopulated as they were. Sergey Muravyov-Apostol, oen of the leaders of the initial revolt, quickly consolidated power in his hands, organized a peasant army and laid siege to the few loyal garrisons, such as the one in Rostov-na-Donu, all the while calling up for more risings.
However, at the same time, Pavel's power, though not as strong as it seemed before the rebellion, wasn't as weak as it seemed after it. If anything, it was strengthened; Arakcheyev moved quickly to liquidate all "Jacobin" sentiments within the territories still controlled by the Tsar, and the disorganized peasant rebellions that did happen were quickly defeated. General Yermolov was recalled from Caucasus, while Raevsky put the Polish campaign on hold, while Austrian forces were diverted as well to help their troubled ally. Soon the "Yugorossians" had to fight back attacks from the east, the north and the west. The attempts to get Ottoman assistance failed quickly - the Turks were too busy fighting back their various enemies, including, paradoxically, Ypsilanti and Pestel who had resolved to build a Byzantine Empire and already negotiated an alliance with some of the Greek rebel leaders. And besides, Sevastopol was still in loyalist hands, how ever barely; and the Black Sea fleet was on the Tsar's side.
So the rebellion was defeated completely by late 1823, Muravyov being simply not up to the challenge of organizing the defense of the would-be state and with counter-revolutionary uprisings commenced almost immediately after the Republic was declared. Bungled attempts to start a Reign of Terror in the last few months of the republic made things even worse. However, this rebellion did not go by without effects; the long-term ones will be spoken of later on, but the short-term ones are obvious as well. Prussia gained a temporary reprieve; not enough to retake Warsaw, but enough for Posen and Konigsberg. On the other hand, the Ottoman Empire soon surrendered completely, or nearly so; Pestel and Ypsilanti put it on the brink of total collapse, and they had to plead for Austro-Russo-British assistance against the "Byzantine Empire". The Byzantines and these of the various Balkan rebel groups that aligned with them were defeated by a combined Turkish and Coalition army at Havsa, Pestel disappearing mystiriously and Ypsilanti dying. In exchange for that and survival, the Ottomans accepted a harsh peace by the Treaty of San Stefano. The Danubean Principalities were annexed directly by Russia, Bulgaria and Serbia got full independence (the former under a Romanov, Alexander I), so did Greece (temporarily rueld by an oligarchic council), Albania was annexed by Austria (apart from the south that went to the Greeks), the Ottoman power in Europe was limited to Thrace and Constantinople, Crete was taken by the British, Egypt became an independent sultanate under Ibrahim I, who also got Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Hejaz, Tripolitania and Cyreneica. Basrah and some surrounding regions were taken by Persia, Russia took Kars and Artvin in Armenia. And, ofcourse, the Turks had to cancel their alliance with France and once more let Russian ships through the Straits.
This treaty was the beginning of the end for this war. Indeed, in several other theatres it was over as well - in Scandinavia, as already mentioned, and in Bengal where the Burmese agreed to withdraw peacefully while the British moved to defeat the Indian rebels. Though (temporarily, in his mind) frustrated in in the south, Pavel I was now able to concentrate fully on Prussia even as the last Yugorossian rebel bands were defeated and order of sorts was restored. Raevsky once more captured Warsaw, only briefly retaken by the Prussians. The Austrians, though pushed out of most of Silesia in 1823, now struck back as well, only stopping at the gates of Breslau.
For once it seemed as if victory against France was near, as several of its allies were knocked out. However, in 1824 a series of events proved this assesment wrong. Firstly, after a gradual pick-up in French privateering, the British commerce begun to take visible damage from it, the Royal Navy no longer able to protect the trade lanes as well as it used to; American commerce took a hit as well, while French agitation soon resulted in anti-war riots in New England; not only Webster, in his second term's end, was threatened, but also the Federalist party as such. And thirdly, a series of French (and Prussian) victories took place that year. Bernadotte finally defeated Juan Aldama, although Houston retreated northwards in good order. Nicolas Chauvin routed the Anglo-Portuguese force at Caceras, forced the British to wtihdraw from Seville and re-invaded Portugal. Austro-Russian forces were prevented from linking up at Kalisch by a desperate Franco-Prussian force that proceeded to chase the Austrians all the way to Ostrau. Carlo Felice of Sardinia-Piedmont had conspired with the Austrians to betray the French during an Austrian counter-invasion of Italy, but was found out and arrested, his armies disbanded and his kingdom forcefully incorporated into France. As for the Austrians, though they prevented the French capture of Venice, they themselves were defeated badly near Mantua.
But really, the most important reason for this peace was general war-weariness - and not as much that of the masses as that of the rulers, though there were many minor rebellions in that year as well. These recent French victories only proved to the Austro-British elite that even if they could win, it would be such a difficult, expensive victory that they might as well just lose. Already, the casualties and the economical wastes of the war were staggering. So a peace conference was held in London.
I will not go into descriptions of all the power-gaming, threats, ultimatums, betrayals, intrigues and so forth that took place during the conference. As always after an indecisive war, these abounded. The London Conference however was rightly judged as one of the worst such conferences in history, while the ultimate 1825 peace treaty was infamous even before it was drafted, and remains such to this day; it was particularily hated in France and America, where it was denounced as a cynical, treacherous pact. That it was indeed. Though the governments of the great powers of both sides claimed victory except in such cases where it was utterly impossible, as with the Ottoman Empire (which however merely confirmed the previous Treaty of San Stefano), the populace remained discontent on both sides, often thinking this a defeat.
Anyway. All the French colonies were returned (including eastern Madagascar briefly occupied by the Merinas, though noone consulted them). The Spanish colonial empire simply ceased to exist; Texas, Cuba and Hispaniola (except for French parts) went to the USA, the Californias were bought by the ever-more derranged Pavel I, France annexed remnants of New Spain, Britian grabbed Puerto Rico, other remaining Spanish Carribean possessions, Buenos Aires (with the surroundings) and the Phillipines (along with the other Spanish Pacific possessions), Portugal took all lands east of the Parana, Mirandinistas took over the rest of Spanish South America and declared it the "Colombian Republic". Technically Paraguay retained control over both sides of the Parana for now, but it went unrecognized (and was subsequently subject to a Portuguese-Columbian punitive expedition later on). Britain, Portugal, USA and France paid out nominal reparations to Spain (plus it did get to annex a tiny slice of land beyond the Portuguese border, and got Minorca back because the British decided it to be not really worth holding). In Europe, Prussia lost Austrian Silesia (meaning the part that it had gained after the War of the First Coalition) to Austria, and its Polish territories (NOT including Danzig and the whereabouts) to Russia (admittedly, Poland was granted some autonomy under its restored Saxon rulers). In compensation Prussia was given Mecklenburg and Munster. France annexed Sardinia-Piedmont and Geneve, and created a satellite buffer state in the rest of Switzerland - the Kingdom of Helvetia under a cadet Orlean-Bourbon branch. Austria was forced to grant independence to Milan and Tuscany, though both received Habsburg rulers and became puppet states; also, a cadet Habsburg branch was given Greece. Generally Italy - between French Piedmont and Austrian Venice - became neutral on paper, though in fact this merely meant the beginning of a vicious diplomatic struggle between France and Austria over the souls of Italian rulers. Austria got some compensation for itself by finally destroying Wittelsbach power; at last, the Austrians forced everyone to allow them to annex Bavaria completely. France withdrew all support from Indian rebels that were finished off a few years later. Former non-Indian rebels that weren't dead yet or in Russia or Spain Proper were granted amnesty. Treaty of San Stefano was confirmed, Danish annexation of Sweden and Russian - of Finland was confirmed. Everything else returned to status quo ante bellum.
The war was over, as was expected since 1821, with an anticlimax for an ending. Instead of Pavel's dreams coming true, or British supremacy being fortified, or a new French-dominated world order emerging, what came was an era of unclarity and mixed feeling - the Dubious Age, or the Age of Uncertainty. During it, social instability, briefly dormant, would ascend once more, and the two powerful alliance systems would come down crashing, having turned irrelevant in the new world. All this chaos would ironically prove beneficient in the long-term, as it would delay the next "world war" for quite some time, though at the price of several bloody local conflicts.
As a curious sidenote - while it initiated a naval revolution and the beginning of the Age of Steam, the land aspects of the war scarcely changed - only, the progressive military doctrines adapted by the French in the War of the First Coalition were now adapted by countries across the (western) world, with varying effects. Very interesting however is the fact that one of the foundations of this new "French doctrine" was already shaken by the French themselves in Mexico - while in Europe, the French continued to rely on mass popular armies reinforced by some elite Guard units, in Mexico this was clearly an impossibility, and instead, Bernadotte's expeditionary force became a noted early example of a comparatively small, professional, undemocratic force triumphing over a large, if rather disorganized and poorly led, popular army. However, this lesson would largely be forgotten by all but the colonial commanders; if anything, it fortified the Federalist belief in the need for a stronger Federal Army, and thus become one of the causes of army reform and consequently - the American Civil War, in turn yet another war of "people's armies".
OOC: A more thorough description of the war's ultimate effects will be in the next post along with the various post-war events, because this confusing war had a confusing, uncertain, indecisive result the immediate implications of which alone will not become clear for over a decade.
Any clarifications needed? The peace treaty isn't very well-written, I know, plus some theatres may seem rather confusing. Well, that they were supposed to be, so...
das
Regeneration In Process
Portugal gained lands east of the Parana River. OTL Uruguay and northeasternmost Argentina... As said, remnants of Mexico went to France; USA gained lands north of the Rio Grande, the Californias (Alta and Baja) were gained by Russia... on paper at least.
Insane_Panda
Deity
Wonderful read. I am abit sad that there was no French victory, but alas, it was a great update nonetheless
das
Regeneration In Process
France wins in pretty much all of my althists lately. Here's to variety, then.
Drake Rlugia
....
It was quite nice to read. I don't think I could ever imagine so much action in the 1820s, but action is never a bad thing IMO.
Can we expect a map soon?
Can we expect a map soon?
North King
blech
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2004
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Azale said:
BURN HIM!
das
Regeneration In Process
Its a compensation for comparatively quiet 1810s. As for the map, it may come later, possibly after the next installment.
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