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The news of Algimantas Songaila's appointment as the new Grand Hetman of Lithuania came as a surprise to many, both within the Empire and outside of it. Many nobles were aware that the Council of Lords was meant to only be an advisory institution under Hetman Chodkevičius, which is why the news of it actually flexing it's legislative muscles and choosing the successor to the dictator was quite a shock to them. Visegrad, whose King secretly hoped that Chodkevičius's death would cause a civil war in their eastern neighbour, also didn't take the news very lightly. But there was little actual dissent - after the near disaster that the Galician War and the Russian revolt were, the zeitgeist of the time in Lithuania wished for the Empire to remain stable. Emperor Algirdas III officially appoited the general as the Grand Hetman in 1713. Algimantas Songaila's dictatorial rule (what other type of rule is there?) began with a still wind.

What can be said about the man in the helm himself? A lot of things, actually. Back in his early days, Algimantas Songaila was one of the primary original supporters of Chodkevičius's coup, and his prestige across the Empire rose to tremendous heights after he successfully defended the fortress of Vawkawysk from superior Visegradian forces, preventing an enemy breakthrough into Lithuania Propria itself. In the Hetmanate government, Songaila served as the Voivode of his home region, Kiev, but was also influential in the higher reaches of the government. He was a major proponent of the construction of the Western Wall, even sometimes complaining that it might be too weak, and when he became the Grand Hetman, he ordered an additional expansion to the line of fortifications. Algimantas Songaila was a patriot to the Empire, a stern follower of where his nation will lead. He was neither very charming, nor an administrative genius, but he had one redeeming trait - his nigh-fanatical wish to improve his nation's status in Europe. While not the greatest leader that Lithuania has ever seen, he was far more than satisfactory for the position.

Songaila held a much more pragmatic view towards the Russians than his predecessor. While Chodkevičius would have wished to burn Tver to the cinders and build a statue of himself in the ashes if he could, the new Grand Hetman understood that such harshness will only incite further revolutions - what he figured, however, was that the Russians were far too united. Their culture and their religion was what unified them into one entity, and the natural response to that, in the Hetmanate's mind, would be to attempt to split the Russian nation up. Before the Lithuanian conquest of the Rus', the many East Slavic dialects in what we now call Russia were slowly beginning to split off, especially the Old Novgorod dialect, and under the Hetmanate, the attempt to "restore" and renew these linguistic differences began. Lithuania had a lot of sway in reshaping the course of language in it's territory - for one, it had control of the education system and a powerful apparatus to get things going. The ultimate goal of Songaila's government was to create two competing nationalisms in place of one Russian identity - one based around the Novgorod-Pskov area and the other around the Tver-Vladimir area. The Chronicle of Lithuania during this time was marked by a significant change in it's composition - while previously only writing about Lithuanian legends and history, it was expanded to cover the past of the entire Empire, including the artificially separated "Novgorod people" and "East Ruthenian people". Under the Hetman's orders, a vocabulary of the "Novgorodian language" and a translator book between "Novgorodian" and "East Ruthenian" were published, both composed by a Ruthenian scholar named Ivan Vinchevsky. This "divide and rule" tactic was a massive and hardly efficient task, but it set the stage for an entirely different set of Russo-Lithuanian interaction.

Never before did the government of a nation attempt to artifically destroy a nationality.

Outside of dealing with Russia in the name of the Eastern Strategy, Algimantas Songaila was also dedicated to rebuilding the imperial military. Following the example of Visegrad, military colleges were founded in Vilnius and in Kiev, and the long needed requirement of basic literacy for military officers was instituted. In addition, this was the first time in Lithuanian history that the Imperial Navy, long forgotten and neglected, received more than a fifth of the total military budget. A renovation program, replacing most of the 17th century ships with more modern versions, began. The Enlightenment had reached Lithuania by now, too, and it's echo was about to build up to something important.


However, no matter what Lithuania was trying to do, that was not where the focus of the world was on during the decade. And the focus was on Western Europe, more specifically, France and the Holy Roman Empire. The border between France and this multi-state entity was composed of tiny principalities, margraves and Reformist republics, and more often than not, the borders between them and with the French were not very well defined. In addition, a series of diplomatic mishaps and the self-seeking actions of a particular French border general, Didier Diderot, led to a border conflict between local French forces and the small Republic of Elsass, a member of the HRE, which soon joined the tiny nation's side. This marked the beginning of a two-year long French-German War between 1721 and 1722. For many Germans and Frenchmen, this was the first war they had seen in their life, and the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles VII - a man of the Enlightenment and a patriot of his nation - was eager to put the reformed HRE to the test and turn it into the next great power of Europe, even if it meant fighting their brothers in faith. Throughout the last century, the Empire was slowly coalescing into a single state, a federation of some sorts, a hotbed of developing German nationalism. However, HRE forces were soundly and easily defeated by more disciplined and well prepared French forces, and the Germans were forced to sign a punitive peace treaty in 1722, forcing to pay reparations and cede a few border territories.

This was a humiliation for the southern Germans, and the former French-German friendship, developed during the Twenty Years' War, broke apart almost in an instant. While the Germans felt betrayed and defeated, the Director of France, Pierre-Louis Beaumont, and his government were starting to get worried. They didn't expect the HRE to unite in arms against their aggression - even if they lost in the end anyway, they have set a bad precedent for the future? A united Germany was the biggest possible threat for the Republic of France, and this cooling of relations became mutual as the French realized that the Amsterdam System must be protected at any possible cost.

It was around this time that Beaumont's Red Party, considered to be a fringe movement merely 20 years ago, began to gain popularity over the worried French population. The politics of the Republic had by then devolved into the standard two-party system, common under the so-called "winner takes all" format of election that France used in local elections - dominated by the moderate and pro-capitalist "Blue Party", calling itself "the party of De Foix", and the nativist, conservative and pro-aristocrat "Red Party", currently in control of the Republic. Beaumont, and by extension the Reds, were against any sort of compromise with Germany - it had to stay divided, forever.

In other news, a new competitor joined the race for South Vespucia. The Kingdom of Britannia, famous in Europe for being the continent's first true absolute monarchy and a haven for Christian extremism, began to spread and flap it's wings, arriving in this southern continent after a short flight. In 1715, the British established a small port and whaling base on a small group of islands southeast of South Vespucia, naming them "Charlia". A few years later, the first British colonies on the continent itself were founded, this being the cities of Jamestown and Southampthon. The territories were not far from the Inca and Portuguese Manuela, but distant and small enough to not bother them, yet. Far from the British Isles, these first islander colonies in the New World were put under the umbrella term "Virginia", basically referring to it being supposedly virgin land.

An another region lit up in action during this time, too - Sub-Saharan Africa. The forgotten region, avoided by Europeans due to the hostile environment, hosted numerous empires throughout millenia, and now, a brand new one came to light. For most of it's history, the Benin Empire was mostly locked to Benin City in the mouths of Niger, serving as a link between the Europeans in the ocean and the Africans on land due to it's strategic situation. For this reason, Benin was the first to be introduced to and adopt Western technology such as muskets and steel. In addition, throughout the years this small, but densely populated state built up a sophisticated bureacucracy and a very disciplined army, famous across Western Africa for it's effectiveness. The final spark needed for hegemony was placed by Oba (Emperor) Eweka III, a unique individual in Beninese history - he was the first Oba to be educated in the West, and who started the hegemony that Benin became. Between 1718 and 1725, this empire defeated and subjugated many of it's rivals, overpowering them with a sophisticated and disciplined army with Western weaponry, and the final achievement being the toppling and conquest of the great Songhai Empire in 1724. Most of the Niger Basin was united under the Benin Empire - the very first "gunpowder empire" in sub-Saharan Africa, - though a few states escaped it's hegemony, like Kanem Bornu and a recently restored Mali. This rapid expansion came as a surprise to local European powers, especially Portugal, who did not anticipate such a sudden birth of a new West African empire. But now it was there, and the Westerners had to reason with it.