L’Aigle Triomphant: A Napoleonic Victory TL

Surely it isn't that hard to improve on OTL Spain's 19th-century leadership?
A very low was set by Ferdinand, the worst king Spain has ever known, even worse than Carlos II.

Carlos V must pay close attention to the liberals and his brother fransico, hopefelly they'll convince him that part of his divine duty is improve the station of the criollos.
 
Here's hoping for Francisco to get the throne and put Spain back in order, things are gonna get worse before they get better so at least having someone half competent will help fair through the storm better.
 
One can only hope, but hey, religious piety does not always translate to horrid kingship. Look at Joao III of Portugal, he was known as "The Pious", his religious devotion matching Carlos and he was a good king.
 
A very low was set by Ferdinand, the worst king Spain has ever known, even worse than Carlos II.
I find it hilarious that he's remembered as both "the Desired" and "the Felon King".

I was wondering why Monroe wasn't President. And I bet Andrew Jackson's court-martialing will only make him more popular with the war-hawks... after all, all he was doing was trying to push the USA southward into Florida (in their eyes anyway).
 
Surely it isn't that hard to improve on OTL Spain's 19th-century leadership?
Remarkably low bar to clear, albeit one exacerbated by Infante Carlos.
Here's hoping for Francisco to get the throne and put Spain back in order, things are gonna get worse before they get better so at least having someone half competent will help fair through the storm better.
Francisco shared his brother’s attitudes on inheritances for the most part, so it’d require Carlos having an “accident” to get him formal power in Madrid
One can only hope, but hey, religious piety does not always translate to horrid kingship. Look at Joao III of Portugal, he was known as "The Pious", his religious devotion matching Carlos and he was a good king.
I have a more nuanced view on Carlos than most; he had a very strict moral code regarding succession which to his credit kept him at an arms length from most intrigues in the Spanish court against both his father and brother until the Pragmatic Sanction, which he viewed as illegal. Beyond that he was a fairly unexceptional man; not as dumb as Ferdinand, but hardly a talent of any kind. That said he didn’t seem to have any particularly strong political opinions on domestic or foreign policy beyond how absolute primogeniture was the best thing ever so he’d have been swayable to do all kinds of things for good or ill. Not sure if that makes him a pragmatist, since that’s not the word I’d use for someone so rigid and devoutly reactionary in many ways.

Basically I’ve never seen a Carlos V TL done well, certainly not in a Napoleonic victory POD, so I’m interested in how that would pan out.
I find it hilarious that he's remembered as both "the Desired" and "the Felon King".

I was wondering why Monroe wasn't President. And I bet Andrew Jackson's court-martialing will only make him more popular with the war-hawks... after all, all he was doing was trying to push the USA southward into Florida (in their eyes anyway).
You either die a hero or live long enough to be the villain!

There was no guarantee the caucus returns ANOTHER Virginian and Monroe enjoyed being SoS; I wanted to play with things here a bit. Crawford was tight enough with thr Dynasty and Old Republicans that he could have United them. More on this in the next update, which takes us to the US for the first time.

(While your point on Ol’ Andy is true, him lacking the notoriety of New Orleans like OTL means that he’s just another general, like so many others, not the one who is head and shoulder above all the others)
 
I have a more nuanced view on Carlos than most; he had a very strict moral code regarding succession which to his credit kept him at an arms length from most intrigues in the Spanish court against both his father and brother until the Pragmatic Sanction, which he viewed as illegal. Beyond that he was a fairly unexceptional man; not as dumb as Ferdinand, but hardly a talent of any kind. That said he didn’t seem to have any particularly strong political opinions on domestic or foreign policy beyond how absolute primogeniture was the best thing ever so he’d have been swayable to do all kinds of things for good or ill. Not sure if that makes him a pragmatist, since that’s not the word I’d use for someone so rigid and devoutly reactionary in many ways.

Basically I’ve never seen a Carlos V TL done well, certainly not in a Napoleonic victory POD, so I’m interested in how that would pan out.
The Spanish Empire does a a slim chance to hold on! specially with French support since Fernando el Patetico y Carlos el Patetico are no longer in the picture.
 
The Presidency of William Crawford
The Presidency of William Crawford

The United States had, by and large, remained tangential to the conflagrations of Europe as it got its sea legs as a young new republic. There had been the "quasi-war" with France in the late 1790s and war scares with Britain over Indian encroachment in the West and the impressment of American sailors into the Royal Navy in 1812 and 1814, but the American focus was, primarily, on settling and pacifying its frontiers to both west and south. In the second Madison administration this had been driven largely by campaigns against a confederation led by Tecumseh in the North-West Territories by General William Henry Harrison in 1812-13 (the first war scare) and then 1814, after it seemed apparent Britain would not respond, and then in the south against the Creek Indians by Generals Andrew Jackson and John Livingstone. By the election of 1816, then, this meant that hundreds of square miles of territory had been opened for American settlement even if on paper it had already been under Washington's control, and a land boom of the US economy followed.

The Madison administration had been popular and the Republican Party that dominated the United States at seemingly no-risk of collapsing, as the Hamiltonian Federalists declined in relevancy, so the questions of Madison's succession seemed likely to effectively be a matter for the Republicans themselves to decide. The choices basically boiled down to two men: James Monroe, the Secretary of State and a fellow Virginian - in other words, the profile of Madison and Jefferson, the past two Presidents - or William Crawford, a Georgian who had served in a variety of Cabinet offices but was presently the Secretary of War. The Republicans would choose their candidate from within a Congressional caucus, and that created ample opportunities for horse-trading and, as Europe seemed finally pacified at last, younger, more nationalist figures to rise in importance. In particular, the young Kentuckian Speaker - Henry Clay.

Clay, who had become Speaker in 1811 at the age of 33 in his first term as a Congressman, would emerge in time as America's most dominant political figure of the 19th century, his forty-year career marking him as perhaps the true, genuine successor to the Washingtonian tradition. It was in 1816 that he first flexed his power by denying the "Virginia Dynasty" another President, helping whip the party behind Crawford. This was not as controversial as it sounded, of course; Monroe enjoyed his job as Secretary of State and tacitly agreed to stay on for another four years, at Crawford's request. The actual election of 1816 was, like 1812, much closer than expected - the Federalists ran John Marshall of Virginia, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and a second relatively narrow win in a row for the Republicans presaged a considerably changing political scene as American democracy evolved over the 1810s out of an effective one-and-a-half party state to the great transition of the 1820s.

It had been hoped by the young wing of "National Republicans" led by Clay and South Carolina's John C. Calhoun [1] that Crawford would largely defer to Congress, but they were soon disabused of that notion. Crawford was more of a true Jeffersonian "Old Republican" than they had thought; he was staunchly committed to states' rights and strict constructionist interpretations of the Constitution, and vetoed a number of Congressional acts that encouraged a more federally-driven, nationalist approach. By 1818, it seemed like the declining Federalists had more in common with the Clay faction than Clay had with Crawford, despite them ostensibly being of one party - this split would largely define Crawford's single term in office.

The primary event of the Crawford era, of course, was the Spanish-American Transcontinental Treaty which fixed the border between New Spain and the United States while transferring control of West and East Florida entirely to Washington. The Mississippi Territory was quickly reorganized into a territory split into a north and south; West Florida between the Mississippi near New Orleans [2] all the way to the Apalichicola River, and a Missisippi Territory north of the 32nd Parallel. Both of these were, along with Illinois and Indiana, admitted as states by the end of Crawford's term.

The other major event of course, was the effective collapse of the Republican Party due to Crawford's rivalry with Clay. It became an open question to many politically active Americans during the late 1810s whether or not their democracy would be a presidential republic, or a parliamentary one, so extreme did the divide between the two power blocs become. Clay's program, backed up by Calhoun and a bloc of Northern and Western Republicans and the remaining Federalists, resembled very much the "American System" with which he would become famous for: it pressed for the recreation of a Second Bank after the initial charter for the First Bank had expired (which Crawford, a strict constructionist associated with the Jeffersonian "quids," refused, viewing it as "no longer relevant to the Treasury's economy"), the imposition of a protective tariff (significantly reduced to the point of irrelevancy), maintaining a professional army and navy, and the provision of internal improvements. The quids as led by John Randolph, more so than any other Old Republicans, stubbornly dug in their heels on constitutional grounds, helping block such measures without "dirtying the President's hands."

The polarized political atmosphere, exacerbated by a deep and damaging economic depression known as the Panic of 1818 that saw the end of the early 19th century speculative land boom and was partially triggered by economic changes in Europe after the Napoleonic Wars, finally came to a head with the dispute over Missouri's admission as a slave state. Northern Republicans and Federalists were adamant that this be, if not prevented, then paired with a general ban on the advancement of slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase; Southern Republicans were aghast at such an idea, with the implications that would carry for their advantages in the Senate. Clay was in favor of finding some sort of compromise that would at least allow Missouri (despite its moderately small slave population) to be admitted to the Union while satisfying all parties, and with that the "plain choice" of 1820 was apparent - Clay announced that he would challenge Crawford for the Presidency. He was nominated on a new, separate ticket known as the "National Republicans," and the Federalists declined to name their own nominee in order to prevent throwing the Presidency to Crawford, meaning that Clay was, in effect, the Federalist candidate himself. In an incredibly acrimonious campaign between the partisans of the Old Republicans and the National Republicans, Clay narrowly triumphed in the popular vote thanks to his sweep of the North and his victory in his home state of Kentucky, while Crawford won every other Southern state, albeit narrowly in Virginia and Delaware. It was the first true sectional split in an American election but presaged a massive change and the beginning of the Second Party System.

The Clay era had begun...

[1] Who was just as, if not more, nationalist than Clay at this point in time
[2] Florida Parishes
 
Well his name literally meant "The Lion of Naples" so perhaps you could adapt it to his current position
"The Lynx of France"
 
Awesome, and here are some names that the french people would have granted Napoleon "The Great", "Charlemagne's Heir", "The Eagle of France", "Conqueror of Europe", "Scourge of Britain, Prussia and Austria".
Maybe he's call The Second Father of Europe? Both in TTL and OTL his presence has affected Europe. This one will be more long lasting.
 
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