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Part Fifty-Six: Tipping the Balance

France On the Rebound:
After the setbacks in 1867, France redoubled its efforts in the Belgian front of the Second Napoleonic War. More Frenchmen poured into the trenches and forced the Coalition forces back inch by inch. The year of 1868 in the Belgium was dominated by the Battle of the Sambre[1], a campaign that lasted almost the entire summer and was a decisive struggle over southeastern Belgium. The fighting began in June when British and Belgian troops surged south from Charleroi and captured territory as far as Philippeville along with intense fighting in the trenches just north of Namur. The next months saw the French armies organize quickly to meet the attack and several assaults were launched by the French on Valenciennes, Mons, and recapturing Philippeville. After three grueling months, those three cities had fallen to France, and in November the Coalition forces in Charleroi were surrounded and surrendered. France would hold Charleroi and Namur, the two largest cities in Wallonia, for the rest of the Second Napoleonic War.

In Spain, the French armies were still on the attack as the Spanish forces grew weary of the constant defending. The Irish Foreign Legion was able to help Spain continue holding off any attacks on Bilbao or Vitoria, but France massed further forces in Catalonia and Aragon and moved the front further into Spain in those areas. A new army that had arrived in Pamplona moved south into Spanish territory, capturing the cities of Jaca, Estella, and Carcastillo before a Spanish counterattack was launched. Spain retook Carcastillo, but the capital of ancient Aragon and the city of the Carlist Court had fallen into French hands.

During 1868, the French armies were also continuing their advance on Barcelona. France massed a large offensive on the main road from the central Pyrenees toward the Catalan city that took the towns of Solsona and Manresa by the end of the year. In the trenches of eastern Catalonia, the French were able to overwhelm many of the Spanish positions with the aid of the French navy. By August, French forces had reached the coastal town of Mataro, within twenty miles of Barcelona. For much of the remainder of the year, the French Aerostatic Corps launched balloon raids on Barcelona using the larger capacity baskets and tapered explosives that had been developed since the shelling of Guernica two years earlier. This bombing was much more effective than at Guernica, but the bigger gasbags required for the larger payloads made the Aerostatic Corps an easier target for Spanish artillery and three balloons were lost that year in the skies over Barcelona.


The Fall of the House of Habsburg:
By 1868, Austria was experiencing external attacks from two fronts as well as the beginnings of crippling domestic revolts. The Prussian army in Bohemia was able to close off Prague by May and after a week long bombardment of the city, Prague fell to the Prussian forces. After the fall of Prague, general Steffen Osisek split the armies in Bohemia into two groups. The first, smaller group marched east and captured Krakow in August and put down a Polish uprising. The larger group under Osisek's leadership headed south toward Austria itself and Vienna. They were accompanied by a Bavarian force following the Danube as it flowed east. With the threat of the Prussians and Bavarians on Vienna, Emperor Franz Karl I[2] and rest of the Habsburg royal family fled to Budapest.

In the Alps, the news of a march on Vienna and troubles in the rest of the Empire devastated the morale of many of the soldiers fighting for Austria. Taking advantage of this, Bavaria launched several ambitious offensives in that year, taking Vorarlberg, Gastein, and most of all, Innsbruck in 1868. Italy also did well in the Alpine front, making advances into southern Tirol and further into Venetia. While Italian armies did not reach Venice itself, Cialdini did lead the Italian armies to victory over the Austrians at Vicenza and Padua. Italy also won a battle against the Austrian navy in the Adriatic as many ships were tied up enforcing a quarantine of the island of Venice after a severe cholera outbreak in the city[3].

Further east, the Austrian Empire was beset by political struggles and rebellions. More areas of the Adriatic coast went into open revolt as Croatian, Dalmatian, and Slovenian nationalist groups encouraged their people to move for independence. The rebels in Galizien consolidated and continued to lessen the Austrian influence in the region. In the capital itself and other major cities in Austria and Hungary, socialists, republicans, and all other manner of political advocates held protests and riots against the government offices. The entire country was beginning to fall into a state of complete chaos, as the last remaining Habsburg rule came to its end.

[1] One of the few rivers in Belgium that run east-west, much to my annoyance when trying to name general campaigns. Also, apparently this was the name of an OTL WWI offensive.
[2] Brother of OTL Emperor Ferdinand I. He died in the 1850s leaving no heir ITTL so his brother inherited the throne. Franz Karl in OTL was father to Emperor Franz Joseph and Emperor Maximilian of Mexico.
[3] Approximately 75,000 people would die in Venice during the cholera outbreak of 1868-1869, almost half the city's total population.