AH Challenge: San Marino unites Italy

Here's the challenge: Have the Republic of San Marino united the Italian peninsula. Your POD must be after the fall of the Roman Empire in 476, and San Marino must remain a Republic throughout it's entire history. Can you do it?
 
The most likely possibility is somebody similar to Alexander the Great, who didn't exist or died young in OTL.

Around 800, he is either born in San Marino or emigrates there and has some religious compulsion, and persuades the San Marinese to join him in his cause.

He is every bit as bright, handsome, popular and skillful as Alexander was.

Around the same time, a plague breaks out among the Lombards, leaving the kingdom of Lombardy weak and leaderless. So this San Marinese leader takes over.

He gives priveleges to the Pope's favorite causes and gets the Pope's blessing to annex various regions of Italy.

This is part of a timeline where Charlemagne died young, so German states take over the region of OTL France and the Basques eventually take over the Iberian peninsula over the course of the next few hundred years.

The only legitimate emperor is in Constantinople, and San Marino agrees not to try to expand eastward, allowing the Byzantines to hold onto the Balkans and Greece. In return, Constantinople lets San Marino live.

Around 1000 Vikings unsuccessfully try to colonize Vinland.

Around 1200, an effort to annex Sicily ends in a small disaster and the San Marinese decide to let them have their independence in exchange for a trade and military alliance. (A "small" disaster means one where the leaders of San Marino keep their positions.)

By this time, San Marino's borders are the same as OTL present-day Italy. Individual cities, Venice, Florence and Ravenna among them, become major economic centers, almost becoming independent city-states. Their representatives are very influential in the government, forming a proto-Parliament.

Around 1400 religious dissidents are making trouble in Germany, and San Marino is in danger of being invaded, and the king puts pressure on the Pope to make some reforms and concessions. The papacy is fairly weak, but the concessions are enough to thwart the Protestant Reformation and its attendant events, and the Church endures, though dissident groups still form.

Constantinople falls on schedule.

Around 1500, a Russian navigator is living in Rome. His family had been part of the Verangian Guard before the fall of Constantinople. He has been studying old Viking maps, and he persuades the rulers of San Marino to fund an expedition to China, sailing west.

He sails through the Straits of Gibraltar and lands on the Yucatan Peninsula, immediately realizing that he has not reached China.

Is this good enough so far?
 
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Well, San Marino never had a King, if I remember correctly it was established as a Republic in the early 300s. Otherwise, it makes sense.
 
Thanks. I edited my post to get rid of the references to kings of San Marino.

1501 The Basques send ships to explore the New World, and encounter the Aztecs, and start trading.

Other nations join in, and San Marino is at a sudden disadvantage, since their only route is through the Straits of Gibraltar, and the Basques don't want the competition.

England still colonizes N. America, the Basques colonize Mexico, Thuringia gets S. America, Holland gets the Caribbean. San Marino, not wanting to be left out, and being blocked by the other Europeans and the Ottomans, simply makes friendly agreements and alliances with everybody from the Basques to the Russians. They also stay on good terms with the Ottomans, Egyptians, Sicilians and Moors.

The Basque and Thuringian economies zoom upward due to the influx of Aztec and Inca gold, then zoom downward when the gold runs out. But the San Marinese aren't so affected, and they take advantage of the situation to start expanding their borders in Europe. This gets the attention of the English king, and the San Marino-English War lasts a few years in the early seventeenth century. It ends with the European kings being divided between the two powers.

England is allied with/controls
Holland, Thuringia, Saxony, Danzig, Hungaria, Czeckia, Bohemia, Pomerania.

San Marino is allied with/has power over
Catalonia (Basques), Sicily, Bulgaria, Greece, Balkans

This situation lasts for about ten years after the war. Then more, smaller wars ensue and by 1700 everybody in Europe has more or less equal power. But then religious dissident colonials in the Americas are agitating for independence. San Marino offers its services as a neutral intermediary in some disputes. This is accepted, but then their honesty makes them lots of enemies, and Europe erupts in revolutionary wars in the 1780s. San Marino suddenly becomes isolationist and neutral and survives the wars intact.

By 1820 the continent is at peace, but poor, tired, backward, ripe for San Marinese expansion again. But the San Marinese army and navy are really not prepared for that, and the other countries aren't really welcoming the San Marinese, who are becoming like OTL US, patronizing and annoying.

San Marino's influence is limited to propaganda, play-writing, poetry and opera, which is quickly imitated and parodied in other countries.

Britains erstwhile N. American colony, the United Republic of Avalon (independent since 1799), is expanding and becoming stronger, and eventually becomes dominant in the New World, though without the Manifest Destiny.

An economic downturn in the 1890s brings about a rise in fascist philosophies in Europe, and a fascist dictator comes to power in San Marino. He goes to visit the fascist ruler of Thuringia, and both are assassinated...
 
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