In the 1790s, a new great European war had started, though its beginnings were slightly humble. It was a war like none before, as the combination of the agricultural revolution and the bureaucratic consolidation allowed both sides involved to conscript vast armies, and unleash them on each other. It was a destructive war which radically changed the balance of power and rewrote history.
Yet as it had started in the year 1800, it makes little sense for us discuss it before mentioning the various other events that preceded it, whether relevant or not (many events were indirectly and unobviously relevant, due to the world being intertied as it is). Though today the 1790s often seem to be a time of frightful anticipation and preparation for the final clash, though this was certainly present there was far more than this to it.
For instance, the great colonial-commercial-naval boom and the colonial-commercial-naval race continued all over the world; Britain, France, Denmark-Norway, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Russia, Prussia, Belgium, Austria and several lesser German and Italian states continued to build up their trade and war fleets. Despite a certain upsurge in Prussian, Spanish and Neapolitan sea power, Britain and France remained the two primary sea powers, by now probably equal in strenght. Likewise, both countries remained in the forefront of the competition in most of the non-European markets, and possessed great influence all over the world, sometimes transformed into outright conquest and colonization. Still, the others also had something to show for their efforts, the Spanish colonizing the Mississippi and the Ohio valleys frantically and the Prussians, the Danes and the Swedes establishing new several trade outposts in West Africa.
In North America, the sparsely-populated northwestern "half" of the continent was undergoing continued colonization, and by the end of the decade was largely divided between Britain (whose fur traders and explorers had reached Rupertsland's western boundary on the Rezanov River (OTL Mackenzie River)), Russia (which established a greater presence in Alaska, complete with penal colonies, and expanded from there to the Rezanov River in the east and the Quadra Island (OTL Vancouver Island) in the south) and ofcourse Spain (which continued colonizing and fortifying its gains on the Mississippi, the Ohio and in between, and now also increased its efforts in California, even sending a third expedition to Quadra Island, establishing a trade outpost and warding off a Russian attack there; and it too had imitated the Portuguese efforts in Angola, establishing several penal colonies in Louisiana). The Quadra Island was an area of particular conflict, due to its good strategic position and commercial potential; the Russians established several trade outposts and later a fort, in the north; to the south, Villa Quadra (named, like the island itself, for the Spanish explorer who had navigated the coastlines of northwestern America and himself led two expeditions to the island) was built by the Spanish; and in the west, the aging British war hero and explorer James Cook (in the final part of his fourth great expedition through the Pacific) established an additional British presence, at Fort Burke on Nootka Sound.
In the more developed eastern areas, trouble and tensions brewed as well after the death of King George I (formerly III) in 1793. George II rose to power, but he was inexperienced and only slightly more popular in Greater Georgia; thus, he failed to prevent a major revolt that soon took place in Virginia, although timely reforms (establishing and conceding some powers to a parliament) saved his rule elsewhere (despite his suicidal decision to refuse French assistance). After the breakdown of initial negotiations of Virginia and the proclamation of the "Jacobin Republic" (so called for River James), the Georgian forces invaded the rebellious province but were defeated by the foremost rebel general, Henry Lee - this defeat was quite demoralizing, caused the Greater Georgian parliament to demand further concessions from the king and allowed several disconnected Jacobin, Amerind and slave revolts in Greater Georgia. Soon things got bad enough for George II to invite French intervention; the rebels in the three southern provinces were defeated, although the reforms were not rescinded. In Virginia, however, things were more difficult than this; Henry Lee defeated a Franco-Georgian punitive force at Emporia. The reasons of his surprising military victories were the extremelly good use of cavalry, later replaced by an efficient combined-arms force reinforced by British volunteers, the French underestimation of his forces, the skillful use of internal communication, supply and redeployment lines (assisted by the development of the telegraph), and, perhaps even more importantly, the willingness of the Jacobins to forego the usual laws of warfare (and take the lessons of the Five Years War into consideration, most notably the British partisan war experience). When another, stronger Franco-Hispanno-Georgian force attacked in 1796, it was not given battle but instead harrased by partisans, haunted by snipers and, despite winning some skirmishes, eventually had to retreat without achieving any of its goals in order to survive.
At first the British were jubilant, but the Moderate government was increasingly suspicious of the Jacobin radicalism and Thomas Jefferson's provisional government's increasingly-independent line in world politics; things got even worse when in 1797 Pennsylvania, after some more crises, finally seceded and immediately was recognized by the Jacobin Republic; the two soon signed an alliance and as by then the warfare in Virginian territory had died down numerous Virginian units participated in resisting the British attack at Allentown; eventually the Pennsylvanians had repulsed or contained all British advances, and established closer ties with Virginia; eventually it was decided by both governments to create the united Republic of Washington (so called for the 1770s Virginian national hero, who was also quite popular in Pennsylvania); the integration was gradual and incomplete, but a greater amount of cooperation was achieved. As European volunteers begun to arrive and the famous Pennsylvanian manufacturies produced brand new weapons, the Washingtonians repulsed several new invasions in 1799 and struck back to occupy Maryland, Delaware, Philadelphia (held by the British forces since the beginning of the Pennsylvanian revolt) and even New Jersey, with the help of local sympathisers; here, certainly, the surprise effect was important; the British never expected this kind of daring, and their garrisons were insufficient to hold ground here. In 1800, New Jersey was recaptured by an expedition supported by local Moderates, but further advance was defeated, and soon, bad news came; Greater Georgia and France gave up and signed a cease-fire with the Washingtonians, though still not giving them a formal recognition; both sides managed to overcome their mutual hatred for realpolitik concerns - the Washingtonians wanted to close the southern theatre, and were willing to sacrifice their western and southern opportunities for now; as for the French, they killed two birds with one arrow - their hands were untied, while the British were tied down by this insurgency. The French crown really, really needed free hands now...
To sum up, as of 1800 the Washington Republic, presently a loosely-knit federation of the Jacobin Republic, Pennsylvania and some rebel organizations in the captured territories, was united by the War Council (where the various governments sent their representatives for coordination's sake), based in the city of Wilkes-Barre. Initial political and social reforms were already enacted, an efficient modern fighting force was created and professionalized. Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware were in rebel hands, and an unlikely truce with France was achieved; but the war with Britain was far from won, a larger British force was assembling in New Jersey, and internal divisions within the Republic were growing alarmingly.
In Latin America, little of note took place; this was a quiet, peaceful time of development, prosperity - and quietly simmering social and political tensions. Ideas of Enlightenment and republicanism had only increased the present problems; already, the first secret societies formed. But superficially, all was well.
After the death of Edmund Burke in 1795 and the previous retirement of his archenemy Charles James Fox, the British Commonwealth endured something of a power vacuum, but other great leaders soon rose to prominence - the Radicals were headed by John Cartwright, while the Moderates were led by William Pitt the Younger (although Charles Cornwallis was also prominent, and became the British foreign minister when Pitt's Moderates came to power in 1798). Some constitutional reforms for greater suffrage took place, the laws were codified, the government - rationalized. Britain continued to undergo rapid industrialization, while Ireland was increasingly assimilated through a well-planned cultural and economic policy there. By now the British fleet had recovered its strenght, but the government in London didn't think that the time was ripe yet to go to war with France; further preparations were needed, not to mention a casus belli. Still, things were moving towards a clash between the two sea powers...
The other sea power was again in turmoil; just when the Third Estate finally became content and attained supremacy after a parliamentary crisis granted both the Parlement and the bourgoise greater power, the "Fourth Estate" - as the French proletariate was called by many - begun to rise up as well. Despite some Physiocratic opposition, France did participate in the Industrial Revolution; it soon became one of Europe's greatest industrial powers, somewhat behind Britain but ahead of Belgium and Prussia, but as far as the workers were concerned that wasn't really all that good - the working (and living) conditions were simply terrible, and the radical politicians, dismayed at their rapid loss of popularity with the bourgoise (now that it was in power), soon found an excellent soil amongst the poors of Paris and Lyon. In 1792, riots in those key manufacturing centers degenerated into armed fighting; a radical coup was thwarted in 1794; Premier Anthoine Barnave was assassinated later in the same year; anti-industrialist machine-smashing rebellions occured in the Vendee and in the southeast, though these never did become very important. The new Premier, Joseph Fouche, had managed to restore order in 1797; instead of simply massacring rioters with cavalry charges as was done before, he used the national police, the marechaussee, which he had personally overhauled and expanded; this police apparatus was probably the most perfect in the world, with a wide network of agents, assassins and informants. Several conspiracies were crushed, the radical leaders were bribed, blackmailed, compromised, arrested or assassinated. At the same time, the carrot of curbed excesses and token social reforms was added. Order in France was restored.
Industries aside, France entered a minor economic stagnation now as the initial impetus granted by the reforms wore out; still, the flourishing middle class flourished further, and French commerce reached out all over the world, penetrating further and further. The French colonial empire also expanded considerably, but more on that a bit later. In Europe, France maintained neutraltiy even as war brewed in East Europe; yet clearly, the French and their allies were preparing for something. Major military reforms and reorganizations took place, a young generation of military officers, many of them commoners and provincials (hell, there even were a few Corsicans!), emerged. France, apparently, did not really plan ahead for the interesting times about to dawn upon Europe; it, however, intended to win as much as possible from whatever was about to happen.
After the death of Carlos III, Spain, alas, had stagnated; while Carlos III was a strong, independent-minded king that consistantly supported and promoted meritous reformers, his son Carlos IV was the opposite - he was dominated by his wife Maria Luisa and she, in turn, trusted her lover Manuel de Godoy most of the affairs of state. De Godoy suppressed the reformer Jose Mocino y Redondo, conde de Floridablanca, exiling him to Louisiana, and defeated a conspiracy by the French-inspired liberal officerdom; although he wasn't all that reactionary, he had failed to introduce any reforms neither, and likewise proved unable to fight the incrasing corruption and inflation; the tariff wars with Britain in the last few years of the decade had contributed to Spain's economic decline and the increase of the social tensions in Spain itself and in Latin America; a French-style compromise was attempted, but the Cortes soon became the breeding ground of even more conspiracies, and so had to be purged, remaining impotent. As in France, the momentum of the renaissance had ran out, and though Spain did survive as a great power, it now turned into "the Sick Man of Europe" (as the famous French man of letters, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, put it a few years later). This decay was however partially masked, with French assistance, by the events in the Mediterranean Sea...
Portugal was little better, in fact it was probably even worse, but things were more quiet there as the country languished and Maria got completely out of touch with reality. The country and the queen alike were senile, ailing and quietly dying, while neighbours still traded with her some, pretended that she was just fine to avoid angering her needlessly in her last days and nevertheless already begun stealing the silverware (the British had all but usurped Macao by now, while the Spanish had claimed some minor Brazilian borderlands while nobody else was looking).
United Provinces of Holland got worse and worse with the years until a pro-French government briefly overthrew the stadholder in 1792. It had failed to hold on to power, and all authority soon collapsed, with yet another Anglo-Prussian intervention restoring some semblance of order; after that, some reforms were finally undertaken, the Kingdom of Holland was proclaimed and a Prussian-style centralized bureaucratic absolutism was imposed (the weak-willed, ailing, insane Willem V had by now become nearly irrelevant; the true ruler was his Prussian queen, Wilhelmina, and it showed); corruption and liberalism were purged; a powerful police apparatus was created. These reforms did, at the price of many deaths, rejuvinate Holland; but for the Dutch colonial empire it was already too late, Sudafrika had declared independence and VOC was crippled by bankrupcy and native revolts, to eventually be disbanded in 1797. By then the Dutch East Indies were lost, probably irreversably so as all sorts of foreign merchants took up the Dutch niche there; consequentially, the Hollanders had now concentrated on building up a colonial empire in Africa, especially West and Central Africas, with mixed results.
No major domestic changes took place in Denmark-Norway; as for the overseas empire, it developed without many major incidents. To the east, in Sweden, absolutism was being consolidated; finally frustrated by the parliamentarists and inspired by his Prussian allies, Gustav III introduced clearly Prussian-based administrative, military and social reforms, although his attempts to Prussianize the Swedish army and society resulted in major dissent and an attempted liberal officer coup d'etat in 1795. Nevertheless, the reforms went on, and the Swedish military was turend into a fairly efficient war machine; the fleet, meanwhile, was also modernized with British assistance. While in Sweden the opposition to Gustav III's rule was really quite mild, especially after 1795, in Finland he became hated - a violent crackdown on the separatist and Russophile societies took place, several Finnish cultural leaders were repressed, mass Swedish settlement was encouraged all over Finland, a nationalist rebellion in 1798 was put down in blood, and since then Finland had been placed under military administration to combat the partisan movement in the inlands. Voluntary civil Swedish colonies in Finland were now joined by military settlements and the lands granted to the new Swedish miltiary elite. To many of the Finns, St. Petersburg, for all of its problems, suddenly begun to seem not all that bad at all...
The death of Friedrich the Great in 1791 had immediately-noticeable effect on Prussia; the great king had personally led Prussia to greatness, he personally was reponsible for the transformation of Prussia into a great power, and his heirs were not worthy of comparison with him. Friedrich Wilhelm II had ruled for four years (1791-1794) during which he failed to do anything at all apart from patronizing art and encouraging religious tolerance; fortunately, both he and his son Friedrich Wilhelm III had able ministers and an impeccable bureaucratic apparatus. Particularily notable out of the Prussian ministers of the time was Reichsfreiherr Karl Heinrich Friedrich vom und zum Stein, the father of the peculiar ideology of "Prussian liberalism", which was actually conservative and militaristic; nevertheless, vom und zum Stein had continued Friedrich the Great's social reforms, organized the creation of a mostly-powerless Prussian Diet, encouraged trade with Britain and the growth of Prussian enterprise. But his most notable role was the one that he played in the Josefian Reorganization.
Kaiser Josef II got only more radical with age; his querrel with the Papacy worsened, and so in 1792 the secularization of Austria was brought to a logical conclusion, the church being completely separated from the state (although the Roman Empire remained Holy, ofcourse). Likewise, Josef II was increasingly annoyed by the rebellious Hungarians, and thus started a Germanization program, establishing ethnic German colonies, enforcing German language and culture (even moreso than previously) and fostering the ideas of German nationalism. Secularism and nationalism were combined in the matters of the greater Empire; seeking to bring it closer together, Josef II and other key German rulers (or at least their representatives - such as the aforementioned vom und zum Stein) met in Frankfurt am Main, to discuss the affairs of the Empire. The eventual decision created a permanent Reichskongress in Frankfurt am Main, with representatives from all German nations (to discuss the Imperial affairs and coordinate the policies); a drastic reduction of tariffs within the Holy Roman Empire; agreements for cooperation in diplomatic and military spheres; an exchange of territories; and, ofcourse, secularization reforms, many of which had been adapted to one extent or another previously. Only, it also included the partition of the Church lands in Germany between the secular states there. Vatican was outraged, and placed an interdict on the signatories, but its influence was quite limited by now, especially amongst the Protestant princes. Some Catholic revolts in the Habsburg Italian territories took place, but these rebels were soon defeated. France protested somewhat, some outbursts of genuine Catholic fanaticism took place (the scepticism predominant previously was immediately forgotten), but the French parlementaries were inwardly content - the alliance with the Papal States was assured, and the loyal servants of the Rex Christianissimus were granted an excellent opportunity to champion Catholicism in his name, increasing France's prestige.
In the aftermath of the Josefian Reorganization, the map of Germany was redrawn. Belgium received Liege, Cologne and Trier, Brunswick-Hannover annexed Hildesheim, Prussia captured Paderborn and Munster, Austria took Salzburg, Trent, Passau, Regensburg, Augsburg, Eichstadt and others. Many other church states were annexed by one state or another, most notably Saxony had expanded to the southwest considerably in compensation for losing rights to Trier and Augsburg and resigning all rights to Poland - it had received Ansbach and Bayreuth from the Prussians in exchange for some minor border revisions in Saxony itself, and the secularized states of Wurzburg and Bamberg, becoming one of the second-rate German powers (alongside with Belgium and Brunswick-Hannover). Baden and Wurttemburg had some noticeable growth too. Several minor enclaves were traded.
Josef II died in 1796, and was succeeded by his nephew Franz II, who built up the Austrian army in preparation for something.
Generally, aside from the revolts and the Austro-Papal clash, all was quiet in Italy; nevertheless, as time went on, some changes took place - most notably, Venice's ties with Russia grew even closer, with an official alliance concluded in 1797 (worsening the Austro-Russian relations) and Naples again switched sides, reconciling with the Pope, condemning the Reorganization and officiall joining the Bourbon Family Compact; this reconciliation was preconditioned as much by the Catholic pressure as by the renewal of the Barbary Wars (termed the "Barbary Crusade" by the Catholic-themed propaganda of the Bourbons).
Potocki's regency in Poland continued... but not quietly. The 1790s saw four consecutive major rebellions of the various Polish patriotic organizations, united into confederacies and usually commanded by Polish exiles in Paris who were willing to fight the Russians and their cronies to the last patriotic Pole that didn't follow their example of fleeing to a comfortable French salon yet. However, with time leadership at least partially shifted from the Paris emigres to the Warsaw underground - tragically, however, this resulted in a schism of the Patriot movements, and Tadeusz Koshciuszko's "undergrounders" found themselves fighting the allies of the "emigres" in 1799, after the most succesful rebellion yet. The emigres, who wanted to restore a monarchy, were defeated and a Polish Republic was declared, Potocki hiding behind the Russian bayonets in Wilna - but soon enough, the main Russian forces, fresh from Persia, were thrown into the fray and the Poles once more were defeated despite a desperate levee en masse. Still, Koshciuszko and his most die-hard supporters had avoided capture, retreating westwards and fleeing from Tsar Pavel's fury...
Konstantinos X took over the Byzantine Empire, the Regent having already dropped his plans for hijacking the empire after the failure of his Egyptian adventure. Konstantinos' liberalism was combined with an unique Byzantine nationalism and contempt for the "barbaric Turks" ; major Hellenization efforts occured, and the numerous ethnic rebellions thus provoked were crushed, often with Russian assistance (however, the Byzantine army had grown quite strong by now and was able to fight for itself). At the same time, censorship was eased, and a general cultural revival occured in Constantinople and Salonika; trade ties with Venice were fostered; a representative (but powerless) Senate was assembled in Constantinople.
Things continued as they were in Russia, apart from the beginning of industrialization; Pavel I was particularily interested in railroads to transport troops and supplies all over the empire. His grant railroad-building project was too ambitious, but with the help of European and homegrown engineers several major railways were built, greatly assisting the transportation of the Russian armies. The appearence of a young guard officer corps, fanatically loyal to Pavel I to whom they owed their ascendance (admittedly, many of those new officers were quite competent - some even brilliant), had also furthered Pavel's plans. His pride in his military grew; the Pavelian army, by now no longer the indisciplinned rabble it once was but rather an efficient (if hard to supply) fighting force, stood guard on the borders, crushed rebels all over the empire and also participated in the Tsar's great enterprise of the decade - the Southern Expedition. More on that under Middle East.
I don't claim to understand how it does this, but its incredible distortion of spacetime somehow is just offensive on all levels. As a comparison, I see Orwell's 1984 world as comparatively infinitely more plausible than this scenario.
Seriously, I think I've pretty well fixed that problem of the last three installments. It's not quite done enough to post yet, but it ought be finished this weekend or early next week.
