The Continental Union of Free Republics
Unión Continental de Repúblicas Libres
Aontas Mór-Roinn Poblachtaí na Saor
ᎠᎩᎡᏆᎦᏙᎯ ᏗᏌᏊᎤᎾᎵᎪᎯ ᎠᏎᏊᎢ ᎢᎩᎠᏰᎵᎤᏙᏢ
Most would say that the War of Continental Freedom (called the War of Continental Secession in Britannia) was inevitable, due to the distance, increasing political differences, and growing population disparity between the American Colonies and the British Isles. However, it can be safely said that the Irish Rebellion of 1721 accelerated the process by a good deal. Facing a large revolt of Irish Catholics over the excessive use of the Declaratory Act, the British government, while crushing the main rebel army, felt panicked after the brief Second Irish Invasion into Wales, which the rebels hoped would draw troops away from the Emerald Isle, a tactic that almost succeeded in the Williamite War a decades prior. Thus began the Emerald Exodus, in which Irishmen at all suspected of being "Traitors to the Crown" (and thus the vast majority of single Catholic males) was shipped off to the Colonies. Many landed in Maryland, known for a history of Catholic tolerance, but those who had actively served were often sent to the newly established penal colony of New Anglia, situated between Florida and Carolina. Combined with the nearly acquired colonies of Florida and Annesland (formerly Cuba) the British America was seemingly a powder keg of ethnic tension. Except, however, that much the opposite began to occur. A failed slave revolt and a terrible hurricane resulted in the dispersal of Spanish colonists throughout the British holdings, especially to the more industrialized North, where the damaged finances of Spanish landowners could be used to found and invest in a variety of businesses, and where stigma against the Spanish was far lessened due to a lack of contact during the war. In many cases, despite a language barrier, many Spaniards integrated themselves with relative ease into their new communities, and in places like Maryland they moved into areas near the recently arrived Irish, Catholicism providing a common bond, resulting in the Irish speaking well of the Spanish to the English, and vice versa. Perhaps one of the biggest impact of this influx of Catholics to British America was the development of Continental Deism. Catholics, disconnected from the Pope even normally in the Americas, were further so by living under an Anglican regime. Furthermore, the roughness of the American frontier and conversations with a variety of Deists and Enlightenment thinkers brought a sort of Lollardism to the mind of many Catholics, and over time this became Continental Deism, which contended that no central authority was needed to understand God, but that through education and science, one could come to understand the Universe as God made it, and thus have a deeper connection and deeper understanding with God. Disconnected Catholics and Anglicans alike began converting to the new belief, especially with unpopularity of King Robert II & IV, who, unlike his father William IV & III, both loathed nature and was deeply religious, creating ridiculous decrees, such as making friendly association with a Catholic a sinful act for an Anglican. In the British Isles, such acts were easily accepted, but in the colonies it was seen as ridiculous, and Anglicans enjoyed the idea of a Christian faith that had no head, be that the King or the Pope. Due to the rise in Continental Deism, Continental as an adjective surpassed American in the British Lexicon. Due to their isolation, many viewed the Colonies similarly to Europe, in which they were involved but ultimately detached and protected from, while in the colonies themselves, as the Spanish colonists often still referred to the land as
Colombia or
Nueva Espana, out of habit, having a neutral term became a common practice, especially as distinction between Continentals and Europeans became more obvious. Over time, the idea became that while they were English, Spanish, and Irish, they were
Continental English, Spanish, and Irish, not European.
The first issue to truly generate independence, however, came with first the Fishermen's War in 1746, in which French and English fishermen near the mouth of the St. Lawrence river bickered over fishing rights, eventually resorting to mobilizing militias to attack each other's small settlements. The French already had little care for their colonies besides the fur trade, but the British colonists expected at least a small response from the government over the matter when word was sent to the proper authorities. Instead, British Regulars were told to remain where they were, allowing the militias to sort things out as the incident was a "Continental Affair". This story spread quickly, to no small amount of outrage as many colonists wondered what next issue would be ignored by the Crown. While rather hyperbolic, some wondered if native raids, border disputes, or even piracy would be tossed aside as a "Continental Affair". Of course, when the highly Euro-centric Robert involved the United Kingdom into war against the French alongside the Austrians, the inverse began to occur. As Robert led a delusion campaign to reclaim the sacred land of Normandy, in the colonies, opportunistic governors proposed attempts to seize French colonial holdings. This attempt failed, mostly due to a lack of cooperation between colonial militias and the British regulars, with the former having a better relationship with British-aligned natives, resulting in a lack of coordination on that front as well. When asked why the militias were only acting defensively and not offensively attacking the French, one notable response that was supposedly given was that the war was a "Non-Continental Affair". While the quote may only be part of legend and national myth, the fact remained that the campaign in the Americas failed to a large degree, with gains only being made south of the Ohio river to the Mississippi. Colonists, however, did die, especially as French-allied natives attacked frontier-towns, but when the war was over, while land was gained for the British Crown, punishment was demanded by Robert, and Parliament sought taxes to not only rebuild damaged territory, but to aid with administration of new territory. At the same time, after another scare of Irish rebellion via French-backed arms nearly making their way to Ireland during the war, the Catholic Investigation Act was passed, allowing the search and seizure of property possessed by Catholics suspected of treason. While in the Isles, this was used against actual Irish agitators, in the Americas, it was used by governors to seize the property of wealthy Spanish and Irish settlers. In Maryland and New Anglia, with a sizeable enfranchised Catholic population, their local legislatures began to oppose this, angering the King. With protests in Colonial ports growing, it was when Catholic and Protestant colonists alike dumped tea into the Chesapeake in the so-called Baltimore Tea Party, with one occurring in Savannah a month or so later, that drastic measures were taken. The charters of both Maryland and New Anglia were revoked, the areas handed over to the more conservative and Anglican governments in Delaware and South Carolina respectively. Unrest was common, and an organization known as the Scions of Liberty was growing everyday in the colonies, who viewed independence as more and more desirable.
However, the death of King Robert made many relax, hoping his son Malcolm I & V, who greatly disagreed with his father, would prove more reasonable. Unfortunately, the young monarch became sick and died mere months into his reign, and so the crown was passed to Robert's daughter Matilda, who had been the apple of his eye and perhaps even more radical than her father, using her youth, beauty, and connection with political elite to control Parliament via blackmail and intimidation. Crowned controversially as Queen Matilda II & I, she would be better known in history as Matilda the Mad. Continentals were thoroughly worried about how they may be treated, especially given the woman's reactionary view of the Enlightenment and absolutist leanings, which, while nearly impossible to truly implement in England, could be done in the colonies, giving the young Queen a playground to play tyrant in. And indeed, a year into her reign, as she undid none of her father's acts, in fact tightening trade in the colonies to be restricted purely to crown-approved monopolies and companies, protests and even riots broke out in the colonies. More than a few became violent, and when three soldiers were killed by a mob in Virginia, Matilda struck. She declared martial law on all of the north American colonies, even in Rhode Island, where only one peaceful protest had been held before her reign. Justifying that the colonies required a harsh hand to uproot the groups agitating them, she indeed became an almost absolute monarch over the continent, placing her friends and allies as governors and declaring the local legislatures to be unlawful gatherings of sedition. And so, in 1789, a meeting of intellectuals from every colony was gathered in secret. Among them were Englishmen, Spaniards, Irishmen, Germans from Annesland, and several Cherokee and Iroquois ambassadors, who had faced increased removal from trade since Robert took the throne in 1744. The vast majority of its membership were a part of the Scions of Liberty. In the cellar beneath the Red Lion Pub in Belhaven, Virginia, the First Continental Congress gathered and drafted a document known as the Declaration of Sovereignty, supposed written by a "Continental Union of Free Republics established from formerly British Colonies", which listed numerous abuses of the Crown before declaring that henceforth, the nation was free. Perhaps the most famous line is in reference to the Catholic Investigations Act: "We have watched as friends and neighbors were treated as criminals, their livelihoods given to criminals, before were locked away and branded criminals. But let it be known that this land shall always and forever be a land of the free, where no voice can be silence, and where all stand as equals."
Sending the document out to a variety of sources, it is said Matilda the Mad went on a tirade before declaring a total hunt against the Scions of Liberty, and all signers of the Declaration. Prepared for such an event, colonists in Virginia used hidden caches of weaponry, outlawed under martial law, to fire upon British regulars that had come to seize a Mr. Thomas Jefferson. The Battle of Monticello was the first of many as the so called Continental Union began its fight for freedom. The war would be long, lasting until 1798 when the Danubian Revolution saw a disruption of European affairs. With most troops driven out, a treaty was signed with the United Kingdom on September 8th, 1798, ending the war. Ironically, the fight to keep the Americas had cost so much and brought so many radical thoughts to the forefront of British consciousness, that it would only be a few short years later when the British Revolution saw Parliament burned and Queen Matilda drawn and quartered. But that is a different story.
The Continental Union is a nation formed in the chaos of war. It's government shows this, being a hodge-podge of a variety of compromises made with the belief that a better system would be made later. However, Continental culture and several admendments to the written Consitution have made the original government last into the modern age. It is led by an Executive Triumvirate of the legislatively-elected Presiding Officer of Congress, directly-elected Popular Consul, and the militarily-promoted and Congress-approved Commander-in-Chief; even the Congress itself is seemingly a mess, being unicameral with a states receiving a base two votes (and thus representative), and gaining one more for every 100,000 people; this strangeness extends too to the judiciary, in which the High Court has a single legistlatively-elected judge per state, and containing the power to review and strike down laws for based on their Constitutionality.
The flag of the CUFR (commonly the CU or even Continentia) came in a similarly chaotic fashion. Initially, people began to cover the Cross of St. George on the British flag as a protest to the Monarchy, and when the war began this became a standard, though soon enough the blue was changed to red both to distance from Scotland (the Queen's other domain) and to symbolize the blood of Continentals being spilled. At the same time, many armies had begun using a golden flag with a rattlesnake on it; this Rattler Flag was a common symbol of CU, still existing as the flag of the Army, and with the rattlesnake being the national animal (the respected Jefferson loving the symbolism of a creature that rattled and warned its enemies, and struck only when left no choice). Ultimately, however, numerous golden flags became used, and soon was associated with the revolution equally as much as the "Red Jack" (as the defaced Union Flag was often called). Looking to gain greater credibility, the Continental Congress of 1794 standardized the flag of the nation, putting the Red Jack in the canton of a gold banner, creating the "Golden Ensign". This design was to be edited with the inclusion of 13 stars for the 13 original rebelling colonies, but following the fusing of New Anglia and South Carolina into Robertia and Maryland and Delaware into Chesapeake, an action that was undone post-war, the number of stars became hotly debated and thus the fly was left undefaced.