Whatever, man. It's
just a story; the entire thing, like my Sci-Fi TL in the FH section, is really just the expanded setting of a story I'm writing.
You and everyone else had a chance to change my mind on the events when I posted all this in the Map Thread. Too late now. If you don't like it, then don't read it. It's that simple. Now, you'll have a chance to give me suggestions on events
after 1805.
But for now, I'm moving on.
End of discussion.
October 10, 1796. Over sixty thousand mixed Imperial troops, mostly fresh recruits from Franconia and Bavaria, crossed the Seine north of Paris and approached Saint-Denis. Arrayed against them was a French army twice the size; however, the French National Guard regiments mobilised to defend the city were poorly-led, as the best French generals were tied up in Flanders or to the south. Two veteran regiments took the small town with a few hundred casualties. Colonel August von Gneisenau and Major-General the Prince of Hohenlohe commanded cavalry detachments from these veteran regiments that harried a nearby French encampment, burning many French supplies and captured a great number of cannons and munitions.
Around noon, ten National Guard regiments organised a counter-attack, moving through the woods between Saint-Denis and Paris. They were attacked on all sides by Prussian and Austrian jägers. Several thousand men were killed while moving through the dense woodland, before walking straight into the German defensive lines. The fresh Imperial soldiers, armed with repeating air rifles, blew a swathe into the French lines, able to fire twenty successive shots without having to reload, while the Frenchmen were constrained by their muzzle-loaders. The French took approximately 7,000 casualties in that skirmish alone; the remaining regiments were forced to flee to their camp.
Colonel Gerhard von Scharnhorst spearheaded the main assault on the French camp outside of Paris. The Guard had set up a base of operations in a large farmhouse, and used the field as an encampment, to allow greater flexibility in moving regiments around the city. Around eight line regiments, plus two light infantry regiments and the battered remains of the force that assaulted through the woods lay in wait. Cannons were positioned on the hills just north of Paris. Around three o'clock, the German forces moved in.
The Imperials had taken minimal casualties, and marched in with ten regiments and attached cavalry battalions. Joachim Heinrich von Möllendorf, a Prussian field marshal, commanded the overall engagement, but left the details in the hands of Lieutenant General Hans Yorck von Wartenburg, Major General von Blücher and Colonel von Scharnhorst. Prussian light troops surrounded the French cannon emplacements while the main line stood outside the gun ranges; General Yorck personally led his light infantry attacks up the hillsides, and took out the French positions in a brave bayonet- and sword-charge. The general himself was wounded in the engagement, and a scar along his face would bear as a reminder for his sacrifices.
Imperial troops arranged their cannons on the hills, along with several captured French artillery, and rained shellfire on the French camp. After an hour-long cannonade, the infantry marched on the field, while cavalry forces flanked around the north side of the farm. A massive line engagement tore hot lead into both forces; the French lost around 20,000 men while the Germans, mostly the veterans armed with muskets, lost around 6,000. When the Prussian cavalry swooped around the rear of the French lines and began cutting into them with cold steel and pistol-fire, the battle was over. The remaining French troops surrendered after taking hundreds more casualties. Most of the wounded from the earlier skirmish had been transported to the city for medical assistance. The battle had been won; the French took 31,700 casualties, dead and wounded, with 9,500 captured or missing. The German combined forces lost about 9,300 total.
Paris was besieged on all sides when Imperial reinforcements from Franche-Comte arrived to the south of the city and set up an artillery line; the hills taken in the battle now turned French cannons against the city, shelling it for weeks. On October 31, a French courier was sent to the Imperial general to offer the surrender of the National Assembly government, who had just the day before overthrown and executed Maximilien Robespierre.
However, many French armies maintained the struggle against the Royalists and the German occupiers. On November 12, Corsican-born General Napoleon Bonaparte mutinied and declared a provisional French Republic in Poitiers, with him as "Protector of the Republic", though he was effectively a dictator; his forces managed to put down the rebellion in the Vendee and retake La Rochelle from the British after a four-month occupation. Brittany remained controlled by royalist militias, while the entirety of Toulouse and Aquitaine was still in Spanish hands.
On December 2, the French Assembly signed a peace treaty with the Empire, Britain, and Spain. The Concord of Saint-Denis gave Lorraine, Champagne, Arles, Franche-Comte, and Flanders to the Empire; Spain traded the Louisiana Territory for Haiti and Toulouse; Britain annexed French Guyana.
Lorraine was restored as a Duchy with Archduke Charles of Austria, Duke of Teschen, to be the sovereign Duke of Lorraine; Champagne region, centring on Troyes, was established as a Duchy with Charles Philip, the last surviving relative of the late King of the French and the former Duke of Angoulême, as its ruler. Dauphine was annexed to Piedmont-Sardinia; Flanders and Franche-Comte were annexed to the Austrian Netherlands.
The French Assembly consented to restore a monarchy, though they outright refused to restore any mainline Bourbon to the throne, nor would they let an absolutist restoration occur. The Empire suggested that Louis-Philippe, the son of the late Duke of Orleans, be made King of the French and that the Assembly restore the Constitution of 1793, which had established a parliament-based constitutional monarchy; the Breton royalists declared fealty to the Assembly within a few days. The next few weeks, Imperial regiments assisted the French Royal Army in suppressing the Bonapartist Revolt. With the fall of Tours on December 27, the Bonapartists' capital of Poitiers was the next and final target.
Meanwhile, fighting continued in Russia.
On January 2, St. Petersburg fell to the Swedish army, who had besieged and shelled it for months. For Empress Catherine II, who was ageing and and in ill health, this final stress was too much to bear. She died in the Tsarskoye Selo palatial estate as Swedish troops marched into the main hall of the baroque main palace, brutally cutting down surrendering Russian guards. She was succeeded by her grandson, the 19-year-old Alexander Pavlovich, whose father had died mere months earlier in a field engagement with the Poles at Smolensk; the Grand Duke was found in his bedroom by Swedish soldiers, who informed him of his grandmother's death. The new Emperor Alexander was forced to capitulate, literally at gunpoint, to the allies' demands. On the morning of January 3, he signed the Treaty of St. Petersburg, which ceded land to Poland and Sweden, and recognised the independence of both the Grand Duchy of Kiev and the Kingdom of Livonia. Peter von Biron, former Duke of Courland, was enthroned as King of Livonia; his kingdom was, in practice, a Polish client state.
On January 29, the city of Poitiers was taken by French and Imperial troops; the rebel Napoleon, along with his inner circle of brothers and close friends, were hanged, and many of his lieutenants were shot. The only survivors of the mass-executions were Joachim Murat, Eugene de Beauharnais, Joseph Bonaparte, and a few officers. The Napoleonic state was officially crushed. Peace could now reign in Europe. The War of 1796 was over; the Imperials had been exhausted and ravaged by the conflict, mostly in the bloodbath of Flanders. Thousands had been slain and wounded, but the Empire and her powerful allies had prevailed.
On February 1, in celebration of the war's end, Emperor Charles's 20-year-old son, Joseph Friedrich, was married to Leopold of Austria's 19-year-old daughter, Maria Clementina. Not only was it a love-match, but it solidified the alliance between the Habsburgs and the new Imperial house; much like the marriage of the Habsburgs and the Burgundians three centuries before. Charles VIII, now 40 years old, was content to reign in concord. However, throughout 1797, diplomatic events would stymie his attempts at an Imperial Peace.
In Britain, a revolt in Ireland provoked military involvement; when the Irish home army could not contain the rebellion, and when many Irish regiments mutinied to join the revolutionaries, the British Army was tasked with intervention. Irish Catholic counts and barons, refugees at the French court and the German court, spread embellished tales of "English brutality". The fact that the issue of Catholic Emancipation had yet to be implemented did not help the case of the British government in this crisis.
Further compounding the tension was the issue of Louisiana, currently in the possession of the French. On June 24, King Louis-Philippe issued an order-in-council approving a constitutional charter for Louisiana as a separate Kingdom, in union with the French crown, thus making him
King of the French and of Louisiana. This act was made with the intent to permanently connect the territory to the French crown, and thus France as a nation, rather than as a mere territory to be traded. Both Britain and the United States of America were seeking to expand into Louisiana, but this new development suddenly put a stopper on their attempts, at least officially. British and American trappers still regularly ventured into Louisiana, crossing the border illegally. Some frontier militia made sporadic raids on Indian towns under French protection. The Empire, supporting the new constitutional monarchy in France, objected to this violations of Louisianan and French sovereignty.
Throughout the year, the Empire had been collaborating with Prussian and Swedish admiralties, and had constructed a small but well-built force of ships, mostly frigates and small battleships, with a few First Rates. Not quite enough to rival the major navies on its own, but with allies it could be a powerful spearhead. Austrian armouries had, meanwhile, begun mass-production of a refined and more efficient version of the Girandoni repeating air rifle. It entered primary service in the Imperial regiments in late summer.
During the autumn of 1797, continuing tension over Louisiana nearly spilled out into a war. A skirmish between French militia and American frontiersmen led to reprisals across the Mississippi River, and commercial warfare overseas. Though there was bloodshed, none of it resulted in an official act of war. President John Adams managed to keep the extent of Federal involvement from going public, and so avoided a potential scandal.
When Irish rebels managed to take Dublin in September, the British soldiers reacted with violent and ruthless reprisals; against official orders to maintain a just and civilised war, the Green Dragoons regiment, led by General Banastre Tarleton, wrought havoc and murder upon Irish civilians, and publically executed rebel prisoners of war. Tarleton had been infamous for similar tactics while battling colonials in South Carolina in the 1770's, and had earned the nickname "Bloody Ban".
This outburst of bloodshed only increased international outrage at Britain's conduct of the war in Ireland, despite the fact that Parliament and the King had little real control of the situation. Droves of French volunteers made way for Ireland to fight for the Irish provisional state.
The British Parliament, in an attempt to defuse the situation, replaced Lord Camden with Lord Charles Cornwallis as Governor of Ireland; Cornwallis had liberal sympathies and supported Catholic emancipation, and so was seen as someone more palatable to the Irish populace. However, he was opposed in every endeavour by the Protestant elite in Ulster.
By January of 1798, the British managed to retake Tipperary. Where the Irish rebels had once held 2/3 of the island, now they held scarcely a quarter of Ireland. They fought just as hard as they ever had, causing a cycle of reprisals by Tarleton's dragoons.
As the months dragged on, Emperor Charles grew increasingly more sympathetic to the Irish cause, especially in light of Bloody Ban's cruel actions; and he objected to the illegal incursion of British trappers and settlers in northern Louisiana. In March, he ordered a levy in Franconia, the Rhineland, Bavaria, Swabia, and Burgundy. A total of 75,000 troops were raised and trained, officially for "the future defence of the Reich".
Other factors at the Imperial court conspired for the next series of events; the Dukes of Batavia and Brunswick had territorial ambitions; France wanted secure borders in the Americas and the Mediterranean; Irish emigres pushed for official support for their revolutionary brethren on the island; Bavaria desired an expansion of their north Rhenish holdings, particularly the Duchy of Jülich-Berg; Sardinia and Naples eyed British islands in the Aegean and Malta. Emperor Charles felt the situation slowly slipping out of his hands, and was forced to bow to pressure and intrigue at court by the numerous influences which beset him on all sides.
In April, the bulk of the freshly-raised Imperial troops were "invited" by the French government to "aid in suppressing rioters" in Normandy. Sixty thousand Imperial soldiers, twenty thousand Austrian troops, ten thousand Prussians and ten thousand Saxons were transported from the drill-grounds in Flanders to their outpost in Cherbourg. An additional "expeditionary force" from Poland, mainly cavalry regiments, also were attached to the Imperial force. Later that same month, the Reichstag approved the "re-militarisation" of the
Order of the German House of St. Mary in Jerusalem, better known as the Teutonic Order. The ranks of the order swelled with the second and third sons of many a nobleman, who saw no other recourse for their lives but fame and glory.
In early May, a cold front swept in and heavy fog spread over Britain and the English Channel. It was a bizarre and sudden weather pattern, and one of the longest periods of fog on record. British home forces were put on alert, men were ordered to patrol the shores to "watch for French ships", as if they would be seen in that weather.
On May 17, the Reichstag convened a special assembly; Emperor Charles presented an impassioned speech supporting a war on England, in order to force the British government to capitulate on the issue of Ireland, "for the sake of peace and liberty". Tacitly, he promised territorial concessions, appealing to some of the princes' ambitions on Lower Saxony. After much deliberation, the assembly voted for war; little did they know, Imperial ships had disembarked days earlier from Rostock, Hamburg, and Emden, and now waited at Cherbourg. Joined by numerous transport barges of the French fleet, they held the Imperial soldiers poised to strike.
On May 21, 1798, the dispatch arrived at Cherbourg: war.
One of the most bizarre and shocking conflicts in the history of Western Europe was about to begin.
