I'd be shocked if Native Americans were allowed in the Army, or if any indians would even want to join the army in TTL. Hispanics were probably allowed (since the Confederates allowed them to join) although there wouldn't be many, and idk about Asians, it could go either way.
TL-191: Filling the Gaps
- Thread starter Craigo
- Start date
I'd be shocked if Native Americans were allowed in the Army, or if any indians would even want to join the army in TTL. Hispanics were probably allowed (since the Confederates allowed them to join) although there wouldn't be many, and idk about Asians, it could go either way.
When they announced that they were going to start conscripting Negroes, the point was made that they were going to be taken on the same basis as Orientals and Indians.
Well, we've got biographies on Lincoln, Roosevelt, Sinclair, and Smith. Maybe something on Blackford and La Follette?
Wolfpaw
Banned
I don't see why you couldn't just have Henri, comte de Paris take "Charles XI" as his regnal name. It would actually make sense ideologically in that it would establish continuity not only with the Ancien Regime, but with the last true ultra-royalist/absolutist monarch.
Not yet, but I can't imagine it would be very interesting. Dewey was a prosecutor and then Governor of New York before being elected President. He hit the national stage just as the books ended. I'm pretty sure Craigo said he would stick to things that happened mostly during the books, and then head to things that would happen after they ended. But maybe he'll make an exception, idk.
True. If we're going for speculation, I'd still rather see one on Featherston's parents.
The one reasonwhy I like a "new" Charles best is that it allows me to create his politics - Henri was a fairly standard Orleanist, while Charles XI is clearly a reactionary. The war could have changed him, but the c. 1875 Charles let's me avoid that entirely.
Henri was also too young to participate n the Great War, which I was using to tie into Charles XI's accession - fighting in the Foreign Legion, as some royals did, would give him credibility among the French veterans. Royalism was practically a spent force after 1877, so I'm inventing reasons for such a strong revival.
(I think I have an idea for how it came about that harkens back to 1877.)
Henri was also too young to participate n the Great War, which I was using to tie into Charles XI's accession - fighting in the Foreign Legion, as some royals did, would give him credibility among the French veterans. Royalism was practically a spent force after 1877, so I'm inventing reasons for such a strong revival.
(I think I have an idea for how it came about that harkens back to 1877.)
How about Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, JP Morgan, Krupps, education in the US and CS, Scandinavia, or Persia?
Craigo, if I recall correctly, you said you had a basic idea for the Western Front for Europe during the Second Great War, and that it was the Eastern Front that you were having trouble with. Maybe you could do a post about the Western Front, and then finish it with the Eastern Front once you come up with something. Just an idea.
I wanted to do them together, because events in one theater would inevitably affect the other, and I'd probably run into problems where my idea for one scenario would conflict with what I'd written for the other a few days before.
I'll probably post something short tomorrow, subject TBD.
Charles XI, part 1
The modern history of French government is bound to confuse all but the most dedicated of students. From the Revolution on, France has seen the Bourbon Dynasty, the First Republic, the First Empire, the Bourbon Restoration, the Orleans Dynasty, the Second Republic, the Second Empire, the Third Republic, and the Orleans Restoration. (The chaos that currently prevails in France precludes the author from making any firm judgments of its current form of government.)
Charles, Prince of Orleans, was the third child of Philippe, duc d'Orleans, born in 1875, after his sister Amelie and his brother Louis Philippe. Like his brother, Charles planned to enter the French military, but in 1886 the Borubon and Orleans families were exiled by the Second Republic. The shock of being suddenly uprooted from his comfortable left in Paris left an indelible impression. As an adult he served in the Army of the Empire of Mexico, eventually becoming a military attache to Emperor Francisco Jose I. The irony that a creation of France's Second Empire had long outlived the original was not lost on Charles.
He returned to Europe in the 20th century, and lived for a time in Rome. When war broke out in 1914, he successfully entered the French Foreign Legion under the nom de guerre Charles Loire. The government was well aware of his true identity, but in the interests of of national unity chose not to press the issue. They did however insist that he serve anywhere but metropolitan France, and Charles subsequently fought in the Dardanelles, Macedonia, and Palestine.
France dissolved into chaos in the spring of 1917, as the Army mutinied and Commander-in-Chief Ferdinand Foch, with the encouragement of President Raymond Poincare, nearly attempted a coup against Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. Foch backed down and was arrested, and later exiled from France, while Poincare resigned his office. Clemenceau himself was turned out of office in the election following the Treaty of Potsdam.
Charles, now resigned from the Legion and living in Monaco, an enclave on the French Riviera, became an active, albeit private, supporter of the royalist coalition in the legislature that inveighed against the Republic. His older brother Louis Philippe was the head of the family and the Orleans claimant, and thus Charles could not take an active political stance). His correspondence with Charles Maurras is of particular note. Maurras was the the intellectual force behind Action Francaise, an Orleanist-Catholic organization founded in 1898 during the Dreyfus affair. It is believed that Charles began to absorb Maurras' racist and religious views at this time.
Maurras, however, was a firm believer in "extra-parliamentary" action, and would not support legitimate political participation in the second Republic. The royalist coalition was forced to support right-wing republican politicians like Louis Barthou. It managed to repeal the law of exile, but accomplished little else during this time. While Louis Philippe returned to France, Charles chose to remain outside in protest of the Republic. (Philippe was a doctrinaire Orleanist, supportive of constitutional monarchy, while Charles' views were closer to the Bourbons, who despised the Republic). Without an outlet for his energy, Charles returned to Mexico to defend Maximilian III in his civil war.
Three events in the 1920s set France on the road to ruin. In 1924, Aristide Briand, the socialist who had been Prime Minister during the Great War, won the Presidency of the Republic following the death in office of Alexandre Ribot. In 1926, Philippe died and Charles became the Orleans pretender, and returned to France. And in 1929, the world economy crashed and burned.
The left and the republicans bore the brunt of public despair over the collapse, and the first election afterward returned a strong royalist minority for the first time in a decade. Briand's seven year term was set to expire in 1930, and it was expected that a conservative challenger would defeat the left's candidate.
Nobody expected that the challenger would be Charles of Orleans himself. The main conservative candidate was the Republican politician Albert Lebrun, who led with 35% of the vote in the first round, followed by Paul Doumer with 30% and Charles at 25% (several small Legitimist and Carlist parties did not support Charles on the first round, who derived most of his support from AF deputies and senators). It was the first vote in the history of the Third Republic to lack a first-ballot majority. Charles' supporters in the legislature proved more determined than their republican rivals, and he was elected President of the Republic in the third round when the Action Liberale and Federation Republicaine defected from Lebrun.
His first act as President was to ask Parliament for emergency powers to legislate - the previous governments, hamstrung by multiparty coalitions, had done little to end the crisis. Parliament, predictably, refused. Charles then dissolved it - the first time a President had done so since 1877.
That year had resulted in a thunderous defeat for the royalists. With the the Great War and the Collapse looming in voters' minds, the opposite occurred here, and a royalist majority took control of the legislature for the first time in decades. Leon Daudet, head of Action Francaise's parliamentary wing, became Prime Minister, and the new Parliament promptly gave Charles Orleans the dictatorial powers he demanded. Charles's presidency, while short, was active - he left the gold standard, closed faulty banks, ordered new public works spending, increased military expenditures, and outlawed strikes for the duration of the emergency. Only Featherston's Confederate government would see a sharper drop in unemployment.
With the six month period of emergency powers set to expire, Charles asked for an indefinite extension - an absolute majority of both houses could overturn his decrees, but they would otherwise become law. Even some members of his coalition balked at this, including Daudet. Charles, predictably, called for new elections - and aided by the women's vote, a long time goal of the otherwise conservative Maurras, won an even bigger majority. The more reactionary Philippe Henriot became Prime Minister, and Charles got his new powers. He was far from the dictator of ultraroyalist dreams, as Henriot, Maurras (party publisher), Francois de la Roque (head of the paramilitary wing) and Joseph Darnand (head of the youth wing) all were powers to reckon with as well.
On February 23, 1931 (the anniversary of King Louis Philippe's abdication in 1848) the President was recognized as King Charles XI. The Third Republic never had a permanent constitution, and a simple act of Parliament was all that was required to kill French republicanism.
The modern history of French government is bound to confuse all but the most dedicated of students. From the Revolution on, France has seen the Bourbon Dynasty, the First Republic, the First Empire, the Bourbon Restoration, the Orleans Dynasty, the Second Republic, the Second Empire, the Third Republic, and the Orleans Restoration. (The chaos that currently prevails in France precludes the author from making any firm judgments of its current form of government.)
Charles, Prince of Orleans, was the third child of Philippe, duc d'Orleans, born in 1875, after his sister Amelie and his brother Louis Philippe. Like his brother, Charles planned to enter the French military, but in 1886 the Borubon and Orleans families were exiled by the Second Republic. The shock of being suddenly uprooted from his comfortable left in Paris left an indelible impression. As an adult he served in the Army of the Empire of Mexico, eventually becoming a military attache to Emperor Francisco Jose I. The irony that a creation of France's Second Empire had long outlived the original was not lost on Charles.
He returned to Europe in the 20th century, and lived for a time in Rome. When war broke out in 1914, he successfully entered the French Foreign Legion under the nom de guerre Charles Loire. The government was well aware of his true identity, but in the interests of of national unity chose not to press the issue. They did however insist that he serve anywhere but metropolitan France, and Charles subsequently fought in the Dardanelles, Macedonia, and Palestine.
France dissolved into chaos in the spring of 1917, as the Army mutinied and Commander-in-Chief Ferdinand Foch, with the encouragement of President Raymond Poincare, nearly attempted a coup against Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. Foch backed down and was arrested, and later exiled from France, while Poincare resigned his office. Clemenceau himself was turned out of office in the election following the Treaty of Potsdam.
Charles, now resigned from the Legion and living in Monaco, an enclave on the French Riviera, became an active, albeit private, supporter of the royalist coalition in the legislature that inveighed against the Republic. His older brother Louis Philippe was the head of the family and the Orleans claimant, and thus Charles could not take an active political stance). His correspondence with Charles Maurras is of particular note. Maurras was the the intellectual force behind Action Francaise, an Orleanist-Catholic organization founded in 1898 during the Dreyfus affair. It is believed that Charles began to absorb Maurras' racist and religious views at this time.
Maurras, however, was a firm believer in "extra-parliamentary" action, and would not support legitimate political participation in the second Republic. The royalist coalition was forced to support right-wing republican politicians like Louis Barthou. It managed to repeal the law of exile, but accomplished little else during this time. While Louis Philippe returned to France, Charles chose to remain outside in protest of the Republic. (Philippe was a doctrinaire Orleanist, supportive of constitutional monarchy, while Charles' views were closer to the Bourbons, who despised the Republic). Without an outlet for his energy, Charles returned to Mexico to defend Maximilian III in his civil war.
Three events in the 1920s set France on the road to ruin. In 1924, Aristide Briand, the socialist who had been Prime Minister during the Great War, won the Presidency of the Republic following the death in office of Alexandre Ribot. In 1926, Philippe died and Charles became the Orleans pretender, and returned to France. And in 1929, the world economy crashed and burned.
The left and the republicans bore the brunt of public despair over the collapse, and the first election afterward returned a strong royalist minority for the first time in a decade. Briand's seven year term was set to expire in 1930, and it was expected that a conservative challenger would defeat the left's candidate.
Nobody expected that the challenger would be Charles of Orleans himself. The main conservative candidate was the Republican politician Albert Lebrun, who led with 35% of the vote in the first round, followed by Paul Doumer with 30% and Charles at 25% (several small Legitimist and Carlist parties did not support Charles on the first round, who derived most of his support from AF deputies and senators). It was the first vote in the history of the Third Republic to lack a first-ballot majority. Charles' supporters in the legislature proved more determined than their republican rivals, and he was elected President of the Republic in the third round when the Action Liberale and Federation Republicaine defected from Lebrun.
His first act as President was to ask Parliament for emergency powers to legislate - the previous governments, hamstrung by multiparty coalitions, had done little to end the crisis. Parliament, predictably, refused. Charles then dissolved it - the first time a President had done so since 1877.
That year had resulted in a thunderous defeat for the royalists. With the the Great War and the Collapse looming in voters' minds, the opposite occurred here, and a royalist majority took control of the legislature for the first time in decades. Leon Daudet, head of Action Francaise's parliamentary wing, became Prime Minister, and the new Parliament promptly gave Charles Orleans the dictatorial powers he demanded. Charles's presidency, while short, was active - he left the gold standard, closed faulty banks, ordered new public works spending, increased military expenditures, and outlawed strikes for the duration of the emergency. Only Featherston's Confederate government would see a sharper drop in unemployment.
With the six month period of emergency powers set to expire, Charles asked for an indefinite extension - an absolute majority of both houses could overturn his decrees, but they would otherwise become law. Even some members of his coalition balked at this, including Daudet. Charles, predictably, called for new elections - and aided by the women's vote, a long time goal of the otherwise conservative Maurras, won an even bigger majority. The more reactionary Philippe Henriot became Prime Minister, and Charles got his new powers. He was far from the dictator of ultraroyalist dreams, as Henriot, Maurras (party publisher), Francois de la Roque (head of the paramilitary wing) and Joseph Darnand (head of the youth wing) all were powers to reckon with as well.
On February 23, 1931 (the anniversary of King Louis Philippe's abdication in 1848) the President was recognized as King Charles XI. The Third Republic never had a permanent constitution, and a simple act of Parliament was all that was required to kill French republicanism.
Last edited:
Foch wouldn't be CINC in the spring of 1917; he was pretty much unusable without the Verdun and Somme campaigns succeeding, and was actually in command-exile in Italy around the time of the Mutinies.
EDIT: Granted, Italy isn't actually in play this time around. Still wouldn't be surprised if Joffre sacked him anyway and sent him elsewhere.
EDIT: Granted, Italy isn't actually in play this time around. Still wouldn't be surprised if Joffre sacked him anyway and sent him elsewhere.
The failure at Verdun almost certainly shifted the command structure, as Petain would have been disgraced, and Joffre removed from his post much sooner than in real life.
I left Nivelle in command from June 1916-May 1917. During that time, Foch and Fayolle would have been prominent commanders and the most likely candidates to succeed Nivelle, but I gave it to Foch mostly for storyline reasons (he's a convenient reason for why the mutinies spun out of control).
There's no evidence that Somme actually occurred when and how it did, given that Verdun ended well before Somme began. I have Fayolle in operational command during the Nivelle offensive, Gallieni and Castelnau still retired, and Sarrail stuck in Macedonia.
d'Esperey would have been another candidate I suppose.
bguy
Donor
Would there even be a Macedonian Front in TL-191? The Entente is under much greater pressure here than they were in OTL. Can they really still afford to send hundreds of thousands of troops off to a tertiary theater?
I was actually counting on that dispersal of forces to explain why the French were defeated at Verdun, and apparently relied more on colonial troops.
Explanation of post-Joffre French commanders-in-chief:
Robert Nivelle originally supported his commander Philippe Petain during Verdun, as Petain's advancement meant his own advancement. But as the situation became dire, he realized that Petain's fall almost his own advancement, and intrigued against Petain with his Joffre, who was fighting to keep his job.
Nivelle replaced Petain as Second Army commander, and was promoted to Central Army Group commander as a favor from Joffre, who counted him as an ally. But Nivelle, as a relentlessly political animal, was soon scheming with the politicians to take down Joffre, telling them how the CINC had unfairly shifted the blame for Verdun onto Petain. He did not hesitate to tell all who would listen about how he would have won the battle, and when Joffre was kicked upstairs in July 1916, he and Franchet d'Esperey were the prime candidates to replace him. Nivelle, much more ingratiating than the pompous d'Esperey, won the contest.
Nivelle immediately ceased strategic offensives to allow a buildup of forces, preferring to let Britain's new conscript army take the lead (which led to disastrous results at Ypres. He did, however, order d'Esperey's Eastern Army Group to make several fruitless assaults in order to take his rival down a peg. He planned to launch his offensive in late September, but delays in preparation by both the French and British armies postponed it to April.
That offensive resulted in disaster and mutiny, and Nivelle was sacked in May. He had, ironically, taken the opprtunity that winter to give operational command to Fayolle, who was seen as less ambitious than Foch. The failure of the spring offensive destroyed both Nivelle's and Fayolle's reputations and made was for Foch, now the least-blemished senior commander, to become commander-in-chief. His appointment coincided with the mutinies, to which he responded with mass arrests and executions. The disorder snowballed and eliminated the French Army as an offensive weapon, similar to what had happened to the Russians in the east a few months before.
Aristide Briand's government fell, and he was replaced by Georges Clemenceau. The new prime minister was told that the price of continued support from several socialist parties was the removal of Foch and the appointment of Sarrail, an outspokenly socialist general then in military exile in Macedonia. Clemenceau, who was personal friends with Foch, wrongly he believed that he could persuade the general to step down.
Instead Douglas Haig offered British support to Foch for a "march on Paris" to install a pro-war government under Raymond Poincare. Foch nearly went through with it, but releneted at the last minute and conceded the CINC's post to the newly-arrived Sarrail, who was the last wartime commander.
Sarrail, who spent more time on politics than any other matter, was relieved of duty when the fall elections brought a conservative government to power, which recalled Castelanau to the post. Castelnau presided over the shrinking of the French military, and then retired.
Robert Nivelle originally supported his commander Philippe Petain during Verdun, as Petain's advancement meant his own advancement. But as the situation became dire, he realized that Petain's fall almost his own advancement, and intrigued against Petain with his Joffre, who was fighting to keep his job.
Nivelle replaced Petain as Second Army commander, and was promoted to Central Army Group commander as a favor from Joffre, who counted him as an ally. But Nivelle, as a relentlessly political animal, was soon scheming with the politicians to take down Joffre, telling them how the CINC had unfairly shifted the blame for Verdun onto Petain. He did not hesitate to tell all who would listen about how he would have won the battle, and when Joffre was kicked upstairs in July 1916, he and Franchet d'Esperey were the prime candidates to replace him. Nivelle, much more ingratiating than the pompous d'Esperey, won the contest.
Nivelle immediately ceased strategic offensives to allow a buildup of forces, preferring to let Britain's new conscript army take the lead (which led to disastrous results at Ypres. He did, however, order d'Esperey's Eastern Army Group to make several fruitless assaults in order to take his rival down a peg. He planned to launch his offensive in late September, but delays in preparation by both the French and British armies postponed it to April.
That offensive resulted in disaster and mutiny, and Nivelle was sacked in May. He had, ironically, taken the opprtunity that winter to give operational command to Fayolle, who was seen as less ambitious than Foch. The failure of the spring offensive destroyed both Nivelle's and Fayolle's reputations and made was for Foch, now the least-blemished senior commander, to become commander-in-chief. His appointment coincided with the mutinies, to which he responded with mass arrests and executions. The disorder snowballed and eliminated the French Army as an offensive weapon, similar to what had happened to the Russians in the east a few months before.
Aristide Briand's government fell, and he was replaced by Georges Clemenceau. The new prime minister was told that the price of continued support from several socialist parties was the removal of Foch and the appointment of Sarrail, an outspokenly socialist general then in military exile in Macedonia. Clemenceau, who was personal friends with Foch, wrongly he believed that he could persuade the general to step down.
Instead Douglas Haig offered British support to Foch for a "march on Paris" to install a pro-war government under Raymond Poincare. Foch nearly went through with it, but releneted at the last minute and conceded the CINC's post to the newly-arrived Sarrail, who was the last wartime commander.
Sarrail, who spent more time on politics than any other matter, was relieved of duty when the fall elections brought a conservative government to power, which recalled Castelanau to the post. Castelnau presided over the shrinking of the French military, and then retired.