Special Chapter
Rise from the Ashes - Visegrad in the 19th Century
After the end of the German Revolutionary Wars, it appeared as if Visegrad's days are numbered. This formerly great nation was turned into a battleground between Lithuania and Germania, it was heavily ruined by the fighting and the liberal rebellions and it lost it's former glory. It's no surprise that Grand Hetman Pacas even once proposed partitioning this federated state between Germania, Lithuania and the Ottomans - but his ideas did not come to fruition, and the Union of the Three Crowns was reestablished with King
Franciszek (Francis) I as the new ruler. Franciszek inherited an unstable nation - mere years before, all three of it's main pieces were separated, the economy has been turned to shreds and the country is now dominated by foreign powers. However, Franciszek was also an enlightened and educated man, he had formerly served in the Vespucian Liberty Legion and later travelled across Europe to meet with numerous high-profile figures, including Emmanuel de Tassigny, Maximilian Robespierre and even Maximilian Schwarzburg himself. This gave the people of Visegrad some hopes in his rule, however, soon after his coronation, he declared that he "is no Messiah, only a man with an idea".
Franciszek I von Luxemburg, King of Poland, Bohemia and Hungary
One of the first things the new monarch did was call Visegrad's first
Constitutional Convention to determine the nation's future, and it gathered in Prague in 1771. Franciszek I was sympathetic to Republicanism, although he did not wish to lose his crown over it, and he hoped to appease all sides in the debate. After two years of negotiations, during which the Convention was almost cancelled twice due to stiff competition between the Republicans and the Protectionist aristocracy, the biggest result of the Convention was ratified - Europe's first lasting constitution, the
Constitution of June 4th. It established Visegrad as a constitutional monarchy, with the King ruling as a figurehead (although with available emergency powers in face of political collapse), while the civilian government formed by a parliament, the so-called
Convention of Three Nations, formed out of representatives from all three constituent kingdoms. Hungary, Bohemia and Poland had their own separate parliaments, which dealt with local matters and the interests of the their kingdom in the overarching union. The Constitution guaranteed a number of liberal reforms, including the extension of suffrage to all free male citizens, the right for all citizens to take up in business and crafts, religious and cultural freedom and a number of other rights and freedoms, a mirror of the ideas of the Enlightenment. Franciszek I managed to convince both the Lithuanians and the French that the events in Visegrad are not the beginning of a revolution, but rather "reforms from above".
The political reform in Visegrad ended up carrying a huge impact in it's future development - much like in Vespucia, Republican style freedoms and rights laid the foundation for a strong and stable system that rejuvenated economic and cultural life in the nation. For outsiders, it appeared like Visegrad was rising like a phoenix - throughout the last decades of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century, it went through a massive economic and population boom, it became one of the first in Central and Eastern Europe to adopt the developments of the Industrial Revolution, and regions like Bohemia, Central Hungary and Silesia even went as far as to reach standards of living similar or even equal to that of Western European cities. The
Visegradian Industrial Revolution would have been almost impossible, however, without the discovery of the vast coal deposits in Upper Silesia during the beginning of the 19th century, followed by the beginning of the exploitation of silver, iron and copper deposits across Poland, Bohemia and Transylvania, and these resources paved the way for the creation of a strong heavy industry in the nation. Visegrad became a net steam engine exporter, it was no longer reliant on foreign coal and steel, while new "boomer towns" like Katowice, Czestochowa, Ostrava and Timisoara were rapidly cropping up. The culture of the nation also reached a new high - Visegrad became a center of Romanticism, especially Prague, which gained the nickname "Paris of the East" for it's past, gorgeou skyline and impact on the nation's culture.
Franciszek I died in 1809, leaving a legacy that would change Visegrad's future for the next 100 years, and beyond, but Visegrad's rebirth continued even after his successors took the helm of the country. As time went on, the federation was starting to stretch it's muscles in foreign affairs as well. It fought a brief war against the Ottoman Empire in 1834, which ended with Bosnia's incorporation into Visegrad and the beginning of the Ottoman Empire's agonizing decline. In this war, Visegradian technological and leadership superiority easily showed, and for some, especially for Lithuania, it was hard to believe that this divided, collapsing nation was reestablishing itself as a great power. Visegrad found an ally in the form of South Germania, an another constitutional monarchy with strong Republican tradition, but while this was taking place, the ancient Visegradian-Lithuanian rivalry for the control of Central Europe had been reinvigorated.
Like a phoenix, Visegrad rose from the ashes, but what happens when your enemies would much rather prefer you in ash?..
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The name of the next chapter will be a reference to a (somewhat) famous AH.com timeline.
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