Hey guys, the last few weeks have been really crazy at work, and coupled with my return to uni and a abundance of crazy family business has left me with very little creative time. It sucks cuz I've had this update pretty much at about 90% for the last few weeks, but every time I tried to get to work on it my old buddy writer's block would barge in and tell me "haha fuck you!"
With all that said, I finally have it done!!! I'd be brimming with joy but admittedly this update isn't all that special. It's just a quick overview of what's going on in other parts of the world that I haven't been able to cover (Eastern Europe mostly, along with a peek at Australia, India and Africa). With this I pretty much have the whole world caught up to the latest point in TTL, I'll be doing one more update on South America and then it's on to the ACW.
The Post-Revolutionary Settlement in Europe and Abroad: 1852-1858
Polish Insurgents ready to fight
Europe saw dynamic changes during the early 1850’s, with calm more or less returning to the continent by around the year 1855. The order which had existed prior to 1848 was now permanently shattered. Central Europe arguably saw the most change, as the forty-odd member states of the now defunct German Confederation were nearly all divided amongst the regional powers. Despite losing the war, the Kingdom of Prussia perhaps saw the most territorial growth, primarily in the Thuringian states, Mecklenburg, Holstein and the southern reaches of the Kingdom of Hannover.
The rump Hannover also relinquished its westernmost territories to the new Kingdom of the Rhineland, which included the former Prussian provinces of the Rhine and Westphalia, as well as the Hessian territories, Oldenburg, a rump northern Baden and various other adjoining statelets. The Frankfurt National Assembly, which now functioned as the new kingdom’s legislative organ, considered for some time several candidates for a new monarch from amongst the German nobility (many of whom felt dispossessed in the aftermath of the war) before settling on Adolf, Duke of Nassau. On May 20, 1852 Adolf was crowned by the National Assembly as King of the Rhineland and Westphalia, in a grandiose ceremony in Frankfurt. The Rhinelanders by and large felt proud of their new-found independence, though some felt abashed for grudgingly supporting an allied occupational force, as per the Treaty of Paris. Composed mostly of French and British troops, the occupation army faced some opposition from the local population, though most managed to understand their role in protecting the kingdom from any potential attack from Prussia, and reconciled the indignation until the allies withdrew in 1854.
To the south in Austria, newly crowned Emperor Maximilian pressed himself to his limit in order to keep the ancient empire from total collapse. Despite the loss roughly half of its prewar territory, Vienna counted its blessings for retaining Bohemia and Venetia-Lombardy. Following the Treaty of Pressburg, Maximilian defied his conservative councilors and formally gave his royal assent for a new constitution. Among other things, the constitution established a formal parliament, called the Reichsrat, which was loosely based on its British counterpart. Bicameral in nature, the Reichsrat consisted of an upper House of Lords, or
Herrenhaus, and a lower House of Deputies.[1]
Prior to his assassination Franz Josef had recently started courting Duchess Elisabeth, daughter to Maximilian Joseph, Duke in Bavaria. It seemed rather obvious that the new Emperor would continue the courtship and ensure that the House of Wittelsbach and the House of Habsburg-Lorraine unite in holy matrimony, thus solidifying a strategic alliance with the Bavarians. To his credit, Maximilian seemingly cared for Elisabeth’s emotional well-being, and before long the two were in love and set to marry, despite misgivings from Maximilian’s mother.[2] The royal wedding was held near Hofburg Palace in the
Augustinerkirche, and the resultant extravagant festivities lit up Vienna for several days and nights.
Pál I of the House of Esterhazy, King of Hungary
Just as the Austrians celebrated the end to war and the marriage of their new Emperor, so too did the Hungarians celebrate the end to war and in it, rejoiced at their redeemed independence. Following the war Hungary was ruled by Regent-President Lajos Kossuth and an ad hoc parliament, in an arrangement informally known as the Hungarian Republic. A new constitution promulgated in 1854 formally established Hungary into a constitutional monarchy, and tasked the parliament with electing a new monarch. Kossuth was a popular choice amongst the masses for their nation’s new king, but he warmly rebuked the offer. Various foreign candidates were also fielded, but the newly elected parliament (referred to as the
Országgyűlés, or National Assembly), eventually settled on a member of the Magyar nobility. In the spring of 1855, Prince Pál III Esterházy, one of the wealthiest nobles in all of Hungary, was invested with the Crown of Saint Stephen and formally became King of Hungary, styling himself as Pál I.[3]
Across the Carpathian Mountains the flames of war and rebellion still burned intensely as ever. Roughly half a century of Russification attempts by Tsarist authorities in Congress Poland served only to antagonize the Polish population into open rebellion. Previous attempts at rebellion in 1830, 1846 and 1849 either failed before they could even manage to begin, or would swiftly meet a grizzly end at the hand of the Tsarist secret police. The Poles’ inability to regain their independence (especially in light of the successful nationalist movements in Hungary and the Rhineland) only emboldened them to rebel in any way possible against Russian influence. This was not only prevalent thought amongst militant Poles, as artists and other members of the Polish intelligentsia also demonstrated in their own ways their desire for independence. Polish composer Frédéric Chopin was famous for his distinctly Polish style and ironically all the rage in Saint Petersburg. The Romantic Movement inspired nationalist sentiment in artists all across Europe, and amongst the Poles it was all the more fervent for their denied nationhood.
By the early 1850’s tensions flared up once more, as mass demonstrations and riots swept throughout the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Tsar Nikolai had not taken the humiliating loss of his nation to the western allies’ very well, his legacy forever tainted with the destruction of Russia’s façade of invincibility. After contracting pneumonia in early 1854, Nikolai succumbed to his illness and Tsarevich Aleksandr ascended to the throne as Aleksandr II.[4] All too aware of Russia’s failings being a consequence of its relative backwardness in relation to the rest of Europe, the new Tsar immediately moved to establish various reforms, among them enforcing universal military conscription laws. This proved to be a condition that many Poles loathed wholeheartedly. The Russian Viceroy in Warsaw, Ivan Paskevich, in an attempt to restore order introduced martial law in October 1855, but the unrest only worsened after an assembly observing the 60th anniversary of the Third Partition quickly escalated into bloody riots that left much of Warsaw engulfed in flames and smoke. Sensing that their window to act was closing, Polish diaspora across Europe tried to attract the support of the other powers against Russia in a future war. There was a great deal of popular support across much of Europe for the Polish cause, but every single power ultimately refused to pledge to any sort of binding alliance. At this point, Polish nationalists in Russia began courting the other nationalities within the former Commonwealth—the Lithuanians and Ruthenians—for a united uprising against the Russians.
The Coat of Arms of the Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth
In January 1856 various radical groups started meeting in secret in all of former Poland’s major cities, from Warsaw, to Vilnius, to Minsk, to Lviv, where plans for a provisional Polish government were organized. Their plans included a complete and total severance of ties with Russia, to be followed by the election of one from amongst the
szlachta to succeed Tsar Aleksandr II as King of Poland. The kingdom’s territory was to include all the lands held by the Commonwealth in 1772, prior to the First Partition, though there was never any meaningful attempt to assert claims to territories in Prussia. Arms and ammunition were hoarded into clandestine stockpiles for the day the revolution was to begin, the exact date itself was set for the first day of July—the anniversary of the Union of Lublin and the creation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The date was symbolic of Poland’s golden age and served as inspiration for the resurrection of the Polish state. As these things often play out however, circumstances changed in a very short period of time.
On the evening of March 25, an
Okhrana spy caught several Polish conspirators transporting weapons and gunpowder into a safe house in Sieradz, near the Prussian border, and in the ensuing conflict those same gunpowder stores ignited, taking with it the safe house, secret police, and most of the conspirators. One man somehow managed to survive the explosion, and charged with adrenaline rode on horseback 250 miles through the night in order to warn the provisional government in Warsaw. The following morning, March 26, the Provisional Government issued a manifesto calling on all of “Poland’s sons” to take a stand and fight.
Though there were years of careful preparation at play, the sudden and unplanned commencement of the uprising nearly doomed it to fail from the very start. Many insurgent cells were compromised early on either due to betrayal to the Tsarists, or failure to overcome their superior forces on the field. Saint Petersburg also called into motion a secret agreement previously made with Berlin, where Prussia would aid Russia in the event of a Polish uprising. Aid they did, crushing insurgents in western Poland before halting east of Łódź and forming a crescent-shaped front from Płock in the north down to the Silesian border. By the end of April the Polish Insurgents had managed to control a core territory around the cities of Warsaw, Radom, Lublin and Siedlce, but they were all too aware that their lives would not last long unless more aid was forthcoming.
Polish Insurgents fighting outside Radom
In May the Lithuanians formally entered the conflict, managing to inflict an amazing victory over a large Prussia and Russian force near Grodno, and subsequently linked with Warsaw and the other core territories. Several weeks later western Galicia joined the revolution on the heels of an official proclamation abolishing serfdom in this new Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth. This recent development allowed essential supplies to reach the beleaguered Polish Insurgents by way of neutral Hungary.[5] This allowed the revolution to persist for several months, as unrest perforated other parts of Russia, including non-Polish areas such as the capital and Moscow. In some cases ethnic Russians sympathetic to the Poles offered any support they could muster. Unfortunately the strong nationalist character of the rebellion alienated many Russians, and by early 1857 what little territory the new Commonwealth controlled was slowly whittled away by the Russian military onslaught. To make matters worse, the Tsar managed to undercut peasant support of the rebellion by offering a more lucrative emancipation settlement than the Polish Provisional Government had offered.
The Polish-Lithuanian forces in the north were finally defeated one year later after a bloody war of attrition that left much of Lithuania a smoldering ruin. Congress Poland met a similar fate several months later. The Insurgent forces gave up Warsaw rather than fight on in order to spare its populace the worst of the fighting, but upon the realization by the Russians that several members of the Commonwealth’s provisional government had escaped into Hungary, proceeded to sack the Polish capital. Tsar Aleksandr II spared little mercy on the Polish people and on the
szlachta in particular for its role in spearheading the rebellion. Russian was made the sole official language of the empire, and to solidify the notion that Poland was to forever be nothing more than a historical footnote, the Congress Kingdom was formally dissolved and incorporated into Russia proper as the “western provinces.”
The rest of Europe was by and large quite, with the occasional rumble. The Italian peninsula inched closer to unification with the creation of the Italian League in 1857, which included the leading Italian powers of Piedmont-Sardinia and Naples, as well as other minor duchies and even the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia within the Austrian Empire.[6] In Spain, all was well for once. Despite some unrest in 1848 caused by disenchanted workers in Catalonia, Spain under King Juan III experienced unparalleled peace for the first time in decades.[7] Under the directive of various moderate and progressive governments, Spain finally began to industrialize and reform, and with newfound resolve it formally entered the colonization game with claims made on the north-western corner of Australia in the late 1850’s. This created tension with the French Empire, as the territory in question was also claimed by them, though French control extended little outside the ports of Duperrey and Blosseville.[8]
Kharak Singh, Maharajah of the Punjab
Dynamic events reverberated throughout the Indian Ocean basin as well. After a century of uninterrupted territorial expansion in India, the British were set back for the first time by the
Khalsa of the Punjab. Fears that the Sikh Empire built up by Ranjit Singh would collapse following his death in 1841 proved to be unfounded. After a short period of political uncertainty, the new Maharajah Kharak Singh managed to successfully unite the various court factions under his rule and cement it all with a glorious victory against a mismanaged British-Bengali invasion of his kingdom.[9] Kharak Singh also managed to sow the seeds for the Punjab’s industrialization by inviting foreign investors in the early 1850’s. Across the sea another kingdom mirrored some of the reforms and initiatives pursued by the Sikhs. King Radama of Madagascar continued the course of his own reform program, even in the face of an attempted coup d’état against his rule in 1829. A notorious alcoholic, Radama nearly succumbed to alcoholic poisoning, and in light of his presumed death a royal wife by the name of Ramavo attempted to kill the heir presumptive and claim the crown for herself. Radama recovered however and had the usurper executed, after which there was little opposition to Merina rule throughout Madagascar, save for independent pockets in the south and west of the island.[10]
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Notes:
[1] This is no October Diploma, and while it's not a democrat's wet dream either Max has managed to bring Austria closer to constitutional monarchy.
[2] Max's momma was never all that nice to Sisi, but unlike FJ I imagine Max would connect with her more, it may make her stay at the Hofburg a little better.
[3] Credit for this to Noblesse Oblige and his knowledge of Hungarian nobility, thanks so much!!!
Indeed this is the same Pal III Esterhazy that served as the Hungarian Foreign Minister in OTL 1848.
[4] In OTL Nicolas I died during the Crimean War, here he dies several years after its conclusion...though here in TTL he dies about a year early.
[5] The Hungarian government officially holds a neutral position in the Polish war for independence, though popular support for the Poles runs high. So high most Hungarians don't mind having arms and supplies traverse their territory to reach the Polish insurgents. This vital lfeline to the outside world allows the Poles to hold out for as long as they managed.
[6] Yup, pretty much an Italian version of the German Confederation.
[7] I never really got to explaining what happens in Spain during the 1840's. Basically Juan III grows increasingly liberal after the regency council splits in 1840. In 1847 Prime Minister Espartero is outsted by the Moderates with support from the King, and these same Moderate governments have been busy fixing the Spanish economy in a manner similar to the uplift Spain got in the 1850's OTL, but on a greater scale.
[8] Duperrey is more or less OTL Perth, Blosseville is Albany.
[9] The Sikhs in TTL avoid the internal turmoil that arose in the wake of Ranjit Singh's death (aided here by his two extra years at life), so when the British invade just like they did OTL the Sikh's skilled army (the
Khalsa) will make quick work of the invasion force.
[10] Ranavalona fails this time, and with her out of the way Radama gets the hint and takes it easy on the drink. He get's another 15 years for it, where he holds the kingdom together while also preparing his heir Rakotobe for the rigors of ruling.
