That is true, though on the other side of the spectrum, invading Egypt, as much a strategic benefit it would be, would still be harder because of its proximity to the Ottoman heartland. While later down the road, taking Egypt would be a necessity for geostrategic purposes. I feel right now and why I keep saying no to Napoleon doing it, is because the focus for the remainder of the Corsican's reign should be spent purely on consolidating France's gains and propping up his puppet regimes. I see no reason for Spain or Naples to get involved in adventures in Algeria, and I feel that would be an interesting take on the idea, but not France.
L’Aigle Triomphant: A Napoleonic Victory TL
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
I think France would be best off making Egypt a protectorate and only gaining direct control over the land needed for the canal rather than ruling Egypt directly. Basically, they should take the route the British did IOTL.
Shame they can't go the "sister republic" root now France is an Empire
A New Decade in a New Europe
A New Decade in a New Europe
The deep breath of quiet in the interregnum between 1809 and 1814 had never truly been seen as an age of peace; statesmen and soldiers alike across Europe sensed that another shoe was about to drop, as it did with the dawn of the Fifth Coalition and then the Peace of Aix in early 1815. As the "Year Without Summer" and its commensurate agricultural depression drew to an end with the return of more typical crop yields in 1817, though, the spirit of optimism in Europe was perhaps the highest it had been in decades. The Revolutionary and subsequent Napoleonic wars were at an end; crop yields were improving again after the calamity of 1816-17 ended, and the upside of growing urban demographics that it had produced now left a large pool of workers to be employed in growing businesses and public works alongside demobilized soldiers. The Peace of Aix was producing, perhaps a few years late, a real peace dividend for the first time, and this had reverberating effects across Europe.
The economic triumphs of the period 1818-23, or thereabouts, were felt fairly unevenly across Europe. With British blockades ended and at the only entrance to the Baltic, Denmark-Norway's economy flourished, with Copenhagen regaining lost population and wealth to quickly reemerge as the entrepot of Baltic trade, linking northern Germany, Russia, Warsaw and Britain together through its docks on the Kattegat. Northeastern France, thanks to the strategic Channel port of Anvers, boomed as the early industrial revolution took root, with factories popping up across the Seine, Escaut and Meuse basins, regions that before long would become known as the workshops of the Empire and part of a sillon industriel with the highest industrial concentration in the world outside of Britain's Black Country, rich with riverine transport networks, coal and iron deposits, and cities and financing. The capable administration of Giuseppe I of Naples, Napoleon's closest brother personally and politically, continued its tremendous progress of the previous fifteen years in building new roads, schools, colleges, and other public works; Napoleon, certainly for the most part well-liked in France personally, remarked that his brother "has made himself not just the model enlightened monarch but the most popular sovereign in the whole of Europe and the world." So impressive was his transformation of Naples from a feudal, Bourbonist backwater to one of the most modernizing states in Europe that the "Neapolitan Model" soon became one of his kingdom's chief exports, particularly to Italy, Etruria, the liberal-Bourbon kingdom in Portugal, and even Warsaw and Saxony.
Of course, this continental boom that marked the early Pax Napoleonica was hardly evenly distributed. The uneven governorship of the Rhine Confederation - general competence in Hieronymus Bonaparte's Westphalia and Wettin Saxony, less enlightened rule in Bavaria, Berg and Oldenburg - and the polarized nature of the union left each member state largely to its own devices and left some parts of Germany approaching French standards of living while others were poorer than they had been under the HRE. Holland was perhaps more depressed than anywhere else in Europe, without the return of the East Indies and its substantial revenues to fill its tax coffers which the Cape Colony could not come close to replacing; by 1823, the Dutch were essentially at the tail end of essentially a quarter-century economic crisis and destruction of the economic prestige they had enjoyed the previous two centuries, having been stripped of much of the southern Netherlands and their crown jewel colony. This, more than anything, explains the mass exodus of Dutchmen from their impoverished homeland to the New World, particularly the United States, throughout the end of the 19th century. Sweden was in similar economic dire straits, having lost Finland and laden heavily with debt, subservient now to Denmark-Norway and Russia alike and a effectively a commercial satrapy of the Baltic League as a whole.
The dawn of the 1820s then saw an emerging urban bourgeoisie taking root in many continental cities and new commercial networks being established, reinforcing for a great many that in the last fifteen years, save the hiccup of 1814-16, Napoleon's victories over the Fourth Coalition and then the Peace of Stockholm had essentially ushered in a peaceful, new innovative era that promised a transformation technologically, culturally and socially as cities bloomed and farms looked fertile again...
Nice chapter, everyone is benefiting (or barely scraping by) with the Napoleonic peace. The Pax Napoleonica won't last, I wonder who will break it? Keep up the good work.
Man poor Holland, they are basically losing everything and can not hope to keep up with the behemoths of France or Britain, makes me wonder what effect this exodus of Calvinist Dutch will have on the USA? Maybe the Midwest region around the lakes will be know as the "Dutch Lakes" due to the presence of them there, not to mention the fact the wealthy shipbuilders as well bank owners would be taking their skills and capital to the region, which would have good impacts for the USA as a whole, while being disastrous for the Dutch kingdom. Oh well, at least Naples is doing great, hopefully they can do something like occupy some parts of north Africa and start colonization on their own.
As for the New World, how is Haiti doing? Hopefully well enough that it'll be a improvement over otl, while Spain is having to deal with independence movements in their colonies and keeping guard against a expansionist Brazil who is more than happy to start picking off territories if they feel they can get away with it, especially if backed by the Royal Navy who would benefit from a strong regional ally.
As for the New World, how is Haiti doing? Hopefully well enough that it'll be a improvement over otl, while Spain is having to deal with independence movements in their colonies and keeping guard against a expansionist Brazil who is more than happy to start picking off territories if they feel they can get away with it, especially if backed by the Royal Navy who would benefit from a strong regional ally.
Those who have something to gain by upsetting the status quo, so maybe Austria and some other German states? Hard to tell because all the big powers are satisfied (more or less)
Nice to see the peace in Europe developing, shame about Holland. How’s the Land of the Tsars faring economically?
Its hard not to sympathize with Joseph, who really would have preferred to stay in Naples where he was beloved and he loved the people back. A Southern Italy that isn't treated as the Po Valley's internal colony could have achieved a great deal, too.
Thanks!
"Dutch Lakes" is an interesting idea! I definitely have had in the back of my head a much larger Dutch diaspora overseas what with the economic conditions in Holland (which are not too far off OTL, just that Amsterdam/Rotterdam with their Asian trade could compensate and offset it a decent amount). So you'll definitely see both poor as well as bourgeois/upper class Dutchmen decamping to the US and the Cape to a lesser extent, and that'll have a variety of impacts. More Reformed Church adherence in the US, for starters, which has big knock-on effects
I haven't done a whole lot of thinking on Haiti. I know there were a variety of suggestions further back twenty or so pages ago, but I'm kind of undecided on how to handle it or what's realistic. One benefit of this TL's style is I can sort of just jump around a bit and my only hard line of not going past is that I want to make sure I satisfactorily cover every country's 1820s
We'll be getting some content on Russia soon as it reforms internally under the pro-Bonaparte Constantine and starts to turn its attentions east with its western borders and spheres of influence satisfactorily settled, fear not!
The Congress of Vienna mostly held without much international conflict from about 1815-65, depending on your thoughts about the Crimean War and France's intervention in northern Italy in 1859, so the Peace of Aix could stand for about half a century before utterly collapsing, too.
Yep. And i can already his his epitheth: Giuseppe The Beloved.
Yeah! Why dont we have a TL where he does that and that leads to a Napoleonic Victory- Oh wait
Yeah, Joseph is going to be a great King of Naples, a Kingdom he probably never thought he wanted or deserved but one that is leaps and bounds better than the leadership of the Neapolito-Sicilian Bourbons by far.
Feels bad for the Netherlands though.
Feels bad for the Netherlands though.
Im not sure what Naples/Southern Italy’s natural resource situation is though so itll probably be pretty dependent on trade
I'm hoping the Dutch will recover economically at some point in time. It's been implied that they'll be poor for the whole of the 19th Century, but maybe the 20th will go better for them.