Prelude:
By the end of 1794, the world was in the grips of a new conflict. Revolutionary regimes ranging from royal dictatorships such as Saxony-Poland and Russia to absolutist monarchies such as Spain and Hungary had already begun to redress what they believed were the injustices of the Congress of Frankfurt. Saxony had achieved its main objectives, seizing Silesia on 6 October 1790, and the Crown of Poland on 4 February 1791. Hungary had seized the western Balkans by the end of January 1791, and was occupying the Pelopponese and Attica. Their military force was now among the top-rated armies in Europe. The victory against the Ottomans had awakened dreams of restoring the Hungarian Empire of Matthias Corvinus. King Nikolaus I was eager above all else to conquer Vienna the way his illustrious predecessor had done. The Ottomans had been unable to prevent the Hungarians from reaching their objective because they had lost their capital, Constantinople, to the Russians in the first wave of a major Russian offensive against Islam. They had launched their second offensive while still besieging the Turkish capital and managed to break through the Caucasus range and into both Mesopotamia and northern Iran. Tsar-Emperor Konstantin I still harbored ambitions to reunify the Russian lands, and a militarily decrepit Grand Republic of Novgorod presented a tempting target. The rivalry and animosity between Novgorod and Russia would only intensify with the arrival in Novgorod of Prince Alexander, twice defeated by Konstantin I. Russia faced the restoration of a Mongol Khaganate in the eastm absorbing the remnants of the Uzbek Khanate, as well as the Manchu Qing Empire. Spain had not only conquered Morocco and removed its sultan, but had also forced the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies into a Union of the Crowns and even reduced the West African state of Jolof to vassalage. They had also installed hardliners in their various colonies, which allowed for further consolidation of their power. Charles IV was still ambitious, however, and was already looking to the remnants of the Kingdom of Portugal (or Rump Portugal) for further expansion. The return of the Nederlanden faction in the Dutch Republic-whose main objective and goal was the union of the Dutch and Flandrines under a Dutch dynasty would also present an opportunity for the Spanish king both to restore the Low Countries to Spanish rule, but also place a region in close proximity to both France and Great Britain with the opportunity to foment uprisings in Picardy and Ireland. Their only source of potential trouble remained in the Americas, with the continuing Border War with the Mayan Republic, and the existence of the new Republic of Tejas which would attain the status of an American protectorate and the invasion of which would draw America into war.
The Iberian War (15 January - 28 March 1795)
During the interval in which Spain was expanding its power across the central Mediterranean Basin and in the Americas, Portugal under its new queen Maria I, who had ascended the throne on the death in February 1777 of her father, Joseph I. Portugal, however, was a shadow of its former self, confined to Entre-Duoro-e-Minho, half of Beira and Alentejo, Estremadura and the Algarve after the Spanish victory in the Ten Years War. With reduced territory came reduced taxation and reduced manpower, and it was becoming increasingly apparent that its major colony of Brazil would have to provide the needed manpower in the event of a future war with Spain. For this reason, both the Portuguese and Spanish began a naval arms race with each other during the intervening period which saw Spain finally emerge victorious-which it would flaunt first with the cross-Mediterranean conquest of Sicily and Naples, then with the assistance it lent to Malta during the Ottoman-Maltese War. While Portugal lost the arms race, Brazil's close proximity to Maracaibo allowed Portuguese goods and munitions to be delivered in the cargo holds of British and American ships. Despite their limited manpower and an economy struggling to escape recession even with French and British subsidies, Maria I still held the dream of restoring Portugal's borders to what they had been before the war, as well as expanding Brazil's interior borders further.
For his part, Charles IV had felt anxious about a residual Portuguese presence on the Atlantic coast as it would allow a future British descent should the two countries go to war again. Further, the rapproachment with France-he believed-went against the traditional emnity between the two powers as in the past France and Portugal had often fought each other as often as they fought side-by-side against others. Lastly it was believed, especially by Godoy* that the addition of Portugal's reserve of manpower and mineral wealth would be the factors that would allow Spain to win in the Border War with the Mayans and even reconquer the Yucatan peninsula. With the end of the Second Reconquista, Charles IV and his generalissimo Joachim Murat** began to plan the third and final invasion of Portugal. Murat proposed that four armies would be needed, with three attacking and pinning down any Portuguese forces on the field, clearing the way for the fourth army to advance directly on Lisbon. Ferdinand elected to lead that fourth army himself, but he placed Murat in command of the southernmost of the remaining three armies, which would scourge the Algarve before turning north to take Estremadura. Over the remaining months of 1794 and into the first week of 1795, the king raised and trained the four armies of 75,000 in preparation for the coming war. He sent letters to Maria I advising her to abdicate the throne in exchange for attaining the Crown of Brazil and receiving favorable border adjustments there. She never replied until on the mid-morning of the 14th of January, she finally replied, stating that she'd sooner rip out her heart and impale it on a pike than yield the crown. When he received the reply late in the evening, he became resolved on punishing the queen for defying him.
At 3 am on the 15th, Maria I was roused from her sleep by a messenger who had informed her that four Spanish armies had invaded the kingdom. Immediately, she called for a force of 115,000 troops under the command of Emilio Couto, and a militia force of 80,000 under the command of Carlos Melo. Melo would hold Lisbon while Couto would attempt to delay the Spanish armies. Within hours, she announced a state of war between Portugal and Spain, making it clear that it was a response to the massive Spanish invasion. On the afternoon of the 21st, Couto's army came up against Charles IV's main army at Evora. Spreading his forces out, Couto placed his cavalry as screens on the flanks, with his artillery on a series of rises to increase their range, and four lines of 5,000 spread apart by one foot and spaced a foot apart between individual soldiers. Charles IV's army stretched their infantry formations, with artillery at the wings and cavalry at the rear as reserve. At first the battle went well for Couto as his artillery had punched a hole in the Spanish lines and sent the cavalry spreading out to avoid the blasts. Charles himself came close to being injured from an explosive shot that impacted several feet away from him, killing 20. But he rallied his men, and they held their ground just as, to the north, reinforcements from the Spanish Aemy of Navarre commanded by Captain Luis Miguel Díaz, descended on Evora. Diaz swung his army around the town and positioned themselves where Diaz could unleash his own cavalry against Couto. On the cusp of potential victory, Couto, seeing the incoming enemy cavalry at his back, made the fatal decision to turn part of his army to engage Diaz. Ferdinand VII saw his chance and pressed on Couto's flank. By the afternoon of the 17th Couto felt compelled to withdraw, falling back to the defensive line of Torres Vedras. In all, Couto lost 60,00 killed or taken prisoner while Ferdinand VII and Diaz lost a combined 4,000 killed.
Couto reformed his army with the addition of fresh troops which had been conscripted via a decree of Maria I, building his army back to 110,000 which he then marched northward to engage a Spanish army, the Army of Leon commanded by Lieutenant-General Xavier Cerecero which had taken Aviero just a day after the Battle of Evora. At mid-morning on the 21st, Couto and Cerecero met near a stream, and in six hours of fighting, Couto managed to drive Cerecero back to Aviero, but was unable to advance because of news that the Torres Vedras lines were coming under assault from Ferdinand VII's army and Melo's militia were on the verge of collapse. Marching south quickly, on the 24th Couto pushed Charles IV back but suffered heavy casualties-roughly 72,000 killed to Charles IV's 17,000 killed and 1,300 captured. Having to pull militia from Melo's regiments to restore his numbers, Couto rebuilt the defensive works, then pursued the Spanish king to Torres Novas. Charles IV arrived in the town seven days ahead of Couto and was able to receive additional reinforcements building his army to some 175,000 and clearly shifting the advantage back to the Spanish. Couto, not aware of this, reached Torres Novas on the 31st to find a Spanish army that now outnumbered his by nearly 4 to 1. Opting to fight nonetheless, Couto launched his attack on 7 February after receiving some additional militia support. Once again, Couto started well by routing an attempt by the Spanish cavalry to take his artillery, killing 900 at the cost of 1,100. At mid-afternoon, Couto attempted to follow up with a flying wedge cavalry assault on the Basque irregulars under Muzio Abio, and though he scattered their lines, he lost 1,500 cavalry and now had a significantly reduced cavalry force left, which he was forced to pull back. Abio, regrouping his surviving irregulars, rushed into the Portuguese regulars, using their bayonets. The Moroccan irregulars rushed in behind the Basques, led by their commander Ruhul Al-Aziz. The confusion caused several of the Portuguese troops to break and run, pursued by Morrocan camel archers. Couto was steadily pushed back as the Spanish poured more reinforcements from their Moroccan, Basque, and Catalan contingents. By 8 pm on the 12th, Charles IV was ready to offer conditions for the surrender of Couto's army, which included his own surrender as a POW and the condiscation of the Portuguese army's weapons and equipment in exchange for their being allowed to return home unmolested. As Couto pondered the offer, a messenger arrived from Lisbon with news that Maria I had raised a second army using her own personal wealth, numbering 130,000 and under a Portuguese of Spanish ancestry, Julio Tudela. Buoyed by the news, Couto rejected the Spanish offer and prepared to entrench his army on the road to Lisbon. For seventeen days he waited for the Portuguese 2nd Army to arrive to reinforce him. By the morning of the 27th, despairing of receiving the reinforcements, Couto decided on one last attack, sending in his Madeira Brigade and Brazilian dragoons into battle covered by what remained of his cavalry. Anticipating the attack, Charles IV's artillery, firing canister shot, mowed down the Madeirans, killing all but 20 of them as well as 100 of the dragoons and all of the surviving cavalry. Seeing the battle as lost, Couto and 5,000 surviving infantry, with their artillery as as much of their supplies as they could load into messenger bags, retreated quietly, leaving the rest of the army to finally be overrun by the Spanish. Of those who could escape, 45,000 made their way back to the Torres Vedras lines harried by Spanish and Moroccan irregular cavalry, while 20,000 were taken prisoner. The Battle of Torres Novas became the single greatest disaster in Portuguese military history, and upon his return to Lisbon, Couto was arrested, charged with desertion in the face of the enemy and treason against the crown and four days later executed by firing squad. Charles IV, meanwhile, persuaded the Portuguese captives to abandon their queen and swear allegiance to him as the new king of Portugal.
Tudelo had been delayed by the Army of Navarre commanded by Diaz, who had pushed him all the way back to the Torres Vedras before Melo's force attacking his flank forced Diaz to retreat to Oporto. But by the time Tudelo was able to advance to Torres Novas to join with Couto, he had already been defeated by the Spanish king and forced to retreat. Though he missed the commander by three days, he was able to catch up with the 45,000 who had fled, incorporating them into his own army and bringing his numbers to 175,000-which now gave him equal numbers to Charles IV (who sent his reinforcements to the other armies and thus sacrificed his own advantage, though this would ultimately prove temporary). Instead of marching out to meet the Spanish king, however, Tudelo advocated a policy of luring the Spanish toward the Torres Vedras and using the numerically superior Portuguese artillery to reduce his numbers as a prelude to a counteroffensive. However, the king was fully aware of the improvements made to the fortified line and had decided on a scorched-earth offensive to starve the capital city into submission. For her part, seeing that she likely faced the very real prospects of encirclement, Maria i chose to escape and set up her court in Brasilia, Brazil. Enlisting the aid of British and French privateers, she, her royal court, and several ministers were able to leave Lisbon on 3 March. A messenger from Madrid brought the news of the escape of the queen to Charles IV four days later. He ordered the Spanish South Atlamtic Fleet to pursue the privateers and capture Maria I, while himself pushing deep into Portugal laying waste to as much of the countryside as he could and shattering what little resistance the hapless Portuguese could offer. On the 14th, Ferdinand VII finally appeared before the line of Torres Vedras, joined by the Army of Navarre under Diaz and the Army of Navarre under the command of Alfonso Jurado. Tudelo, facing them from behind the line, repulsed seven attempts by both Diaz and Jurado to breach it. The Portuguese Royal Navy may have been able to supply the capital and Tudelo's army had they been given the financial support they needed to construct more ships, but as the British and French subsidies were increasingly directed to the land forces in their desperate struggle to keep Rump Portugal from military collapse, they had no ships they could use, and such of their fleet as existed had been divided up and sent to their Brazilian, Mozambique and Sao Tome ports to defend them from Spanish privateers. Thus when the Spanish Mediterranean Fleet arrived off the coast of Lisbon and began to bombard the port, demoralization set in among the inhabitants. Lisbon's city council, left in charge of the war-effort in the name of the queen, now urged Tudelo and Melo to break their encirclement and give battle. On the morning of 21st March, Melo formed his militia into a makeshift army and the two commanders decided on a simultaneous attack using the artillery and bastions of the line to keep the Spanish pinned down. At 11:30 am, both armies pushed around the Line and engaged Diaz and Jurado. Charles IV had not expected the sudden offensive but lost no time, sending in small units of Catalan irregulars and Basque sharpshooters to attack the bastions. Managing to avoid the sentries, the Catalans and Basque slipped in and killed the garrisons, then turned the guns on the sentries forcing many to flee before then attacking the flanks of Tudelo's and Jurado's armies. Charles bided his time, dividing his army and sending it to bolster the two other Spanish armies. Only when a fourth Spanish army commanded by Antonio Jesus Cuellar arrived to join the battle did it become apparent that the Portuguese would lose. Melo was killed by a Catalan sniper on 23rd March attempting to rally the remnants of his militia who had broken and were retreating. None of the fleeing men even cared that their leader had been killed as they fled to Lisbon hoping to grab any seaworthy ship and escape. Tudelo, having lost 130,000 men and with no other recourse, finally sent a messenger under a flag of truce to seek terms for surrender. After 5 days of discussion with his minister, Godoy, Charles IV demanded nothing less than unconditional surrender. Tudelo anguished over the demand, finally accepting it reluctantly on the 28th.
Meanwhile in Brazil, Maria I had set up her court in Brasilia, where she proclaimed defiance. Spanish efforts to invade Montevideo were repulsed with heavy losses to the Spanish and a naval battle between the Portuguese Brazilian fleet and the Spanish South Atlantic Fleet on the 30th led to a major defeat for the Spanish as they lost all but three ships-of-the-line to the Portuguese-who lost only 3 frigates in the battle. This naval battle is considered the last battle of the Iberian War only because of the relocation of the Portuguese royal court to Brazil. The fact that the battle took place 3 days after the Capitulation of Lisbon only meant that the Spanish would be unable to invade Brazil. in the overall scheme, Portugal had lost the Iberian War, and Ferdinand VII speedily took advantage. With a captive Tudelo in Barcelona representing the Portuguese Crown, Charles IV imposed the Treaty of Barcelona. Its terms were as follows:
- Portugal to be fully integrated into the greater Spanish Empire, including the islands of Madeira, the Azores and Cape Verde.
- Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Goa and Timor to be administered by the newly created Spanish Colonial Council
- All Portuguese troops who fail to swear allegiance to the Spanish Crown to be arrested for treason, tried, and executed
- As Lisbon is no longer the capital of Portugal, all ministers and members of the royal family are to be considered outlaws and subject to arrest.
Two days before the treaty could go into effect, Maria I proclaimed herself Empress-Queen of Brazil, the African Lands and Portugal, though her claim to the Portuguese crown was only titular as she was not in Lisbon. Charles IV now added the title King of Portugal and even toyed with the idea of reforming the old Iberian Union of Charles I (Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire) but ultimately decided against it, wishing to punish the Portuguese for their stubborn resistance. He imposed on them as Royal Governor his Finance Minister, Godoy. Though Maria I would rremain defiant in her assertion that she never surrendered the royal title or the crown, for the time being, the Spanish now ruled in Portugal.
Russo-Islamic War (10 June - 13 October 1795)^ ^ongoing since March 1791
Throughout the period from February 1791 to May 1794, the Russian advance moved slowly south from the Caucasus Mountains into the fertile valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Their progress had been slowed down by the seasonal and climatic changes which took place during the period. But it was also due to the expansive nature of the front in which the Russians were advancing. Tsar-Emperor Konstantin gad achieved the Great Dream of being the first Christian Emperor of Constantinople since his Byzantine namesake in 1453, but he knew his hold on 'the City of the World's Desire' was tenuous due to the fact Sultan Selim III had escaped to Angora, where he was well-defended. In May 1792, Konstantin I began a policy whereby Russian Cossack forces would raid into the interior of Anatolia for the dual purpose of reconnoitering the region and keeping pressure on the Turks, never knowing when a Russian army would invade the interior of Turkey. Meanwhile, he seized Varna and began a major fortress-building program, determined to hold his new prize. He contemplated moving the Imperial capital to Constantinople, but after receiving sound advice from the aging Count Alexei Orlov, decided against it. Nonetheless, he named the territory of the capital Byzantium in deference to the medieval Byzantine Empire and as a way to snub the Ottomans who had been occupying the city since 1453, crowning himself king on the very day that, back in 330 his namesake had founded the city. Their disastrous defeat in the Indian Ocean at the hands of the Ottomans' vassal Kilwa had ended any further Russian ambitions in that region and at the same time accelerated the birth of a southern African power with repercussions for the future. But even as they advanced into Mesopotamia, the Russians had also advanced into Persia, taking Tabriz on 28 April 1793, followed by Isfahan on 7 May. Konstantin I relied on his general, Suvorov, for many of the victories but as his army of 220.000 advanced toward the classical capital of Persepolis, he was met by an army of 200,000 under the command of Mohammad Reza Momeni They clashed just 30 miles north of the classical ruins on 16 May and the Persians finally inflicted a defeat on Suvorov's army, killing 120.000 for the cost of 129,000 Persians. Suvorov withdrew his army to Isfahan to restock his water supply and await reinforcements from over the Caucasus range. He would remain there for nearly the next two years.
By the late spring of 1795, Suvorov had replenished his supplies and rebuilt his army. He began his new offensive by seizing Rasht in Gilan on 10 June, massacring its 3,000 defenders in a two-hour bloodbath. On 14 June, Arak was conquered after a three-hour battle with a Persian force of 5,000. Momeni, his own army rebuilt, now marched south toward Ilam, following reports that Suvorov was marching there. At Eivan on 20 June, the two armies clashed. Momeni used the Arab camel archers to harry the Russians, but ultimately lost 600 of them to cannon fire when the Russian artillery were brought into range. As the Afghan irregulars laid down cover fire for the Arabs, the Cossacks in their turn charged into their ranks, killing 4,500 of them and sending the rest fleeing northward. Momeni, having lost 1/3 of his force now risked everything in an all-out frontal attack which surprised the Russians and even worried Suvorov himself. Rallying his men, Suvorov led a battalion of Russian dragoons into the front ranks of the Persians, taking a bullet to the shin, but nevertheless killing 900 Persians. Momeni, with little hope of defeating his opponent, began a withdrawal from Eivan, Suvorov, recognizing his opponent's valour, chose not to pursue, instead pillaging Eivan once the Persians had left, then proceeded to Mehran, which after a four-day siege capitulated om the 25th. A second Russian army under the command of Smolin Larionovich had advanced from Baku, defeated a Persian army of 11,000 and taken Qazvim. Agha Mphammad Shah of the Qajar dynasty-who had seized power in 1784, was becoming hard-pressed as two more Russian armies had invaded the northeastern lands and conquered Bukara, Merv and Samarkand, He formed two more Persian armies numbering 130,000 each and placed under the command of generals Jahangir Rastkar and Saeed Khaledi. Rastkar would be tasked with liberating Bukara while Khaledi would liberate Samarkand. Both would then converge on Merv.
Three months later, on 8 September, Khaledi and Rastkar advanced from central Persia to the north. Rastkar arrived in Bukara within a week and began to lay seige to the city, against which the Russians could only muster 14,000. In a six-day siege culminating in a fifteen-hour battle, the Russians were driven out with heavy losses. Rastkar lost 28,000 in the siege and battle due as much to dehydration and disease as to enemy combat. After securing the city, Rastkar awaited developments while redressing his supplies. At Samarkand, Khaledi had also begun the siege against a slightly larger Russian garrison of 30,000. The city was better provisioned than Bukara, and the Russians held the advantage, but Khaledi was determined to take the city. On 27 September, he ordered sappers to dig tunnels to the walls and mine the foundation while simultaneously launching a diversionary attack. As the sappers dug their trenches, sharpshooters picked off several of the Russians on the walls. At 4:45 that afternoon, the mines were laid and exploded, tearing a section of the walls and killing 1.200 Russians. As the Persians now poured into the city, the remaining Russians fled, not wishing to be captured. Khaledi lost 700 of his best sappers and 14,000 troops to enemy combat and disease. But before he could begin to rebuild his army, messengers sent from Bukara alerted him to a Russian counterattack in which Rastkar was now outnumbered. Khaledi force-marched his army to Bukara, arriving on 3 October just as the assault on the city. The Russian commander, Karl Pavlovich, had collected the surviving troops from Bukara as well as the Merv garrison and added them to his 200,000 (giving him 270,000 troops). Rastkar had lost 42,000 in the first hours of the assault and Khaledi's 115,300 could easily tilt the battle in the Persians' favor. Deploying his troops, Khaledi brought his artillery to bear on Pavlovich and opened fire. This surprised the commander, and he was now forced to break off the attack to deal with Khaledi. Sending his Kazakh horse to flank Khaledi, Pavlovich advanced his Chechen irregulars in the face of blistering musket fire and arrows from the Persian front ranks, and with bayonets fixed. This attack lasted for 47 minutes and ended only with the rout of the Persian forward lines. Khaledi attempted to rally his troops but was hit in the neck by a musketball and forced to withdraw from the field-he'd die hours later. From within the walls, Rastkar and his surviving troops could do little more than watch as Khaledi's men, seeing their commander collapse, lost all will and began to flee, being pursued and butchered by the Kazakh horsemen. Rastkar raised the black flag announcing his intention to gp down fighting. Pavlovich, still with superior numbers and a tactical advantage, was nevertheless moved by the courage shown by his opposite and ordered a ceasefire while the two men met to discuss an honorable surrender.
In Bukara, Pavlovich and Rastkar met face to face. It was later recorded in his journal that Pavlovich's first impression of Rastkar was nothing like he had expected. "On first seeing him, I was shocked at how professionally he carried himself despite his rugged, desert-worn clothing and appearance. It was hard not to see him much like a Frederick the Great instead of a ragged Afghan chief". They discussed the terms of the honorable surrender of Bukara and agreed that once the Persians surrendered their arms, they would be granted safe-passage out of the city and be given any medical care needed before being allowed to return to their homes. Rastkar would retain his military rank and his troops would be allowed to keep their standards and banners. Rastkar agreed to release those Russians that had been captured during the previous siege. But as the two men shook hands, Pavlovich was already preparing to arrest his Persian counterpart. The moment Rastkar and his adjutant left the building (a bazaar), they were immediately seized and bound. He was forced to watch as his countrymen, now disarmed, were bound together and beheaded by the Chechens in front of Rastkar. Rastkar was led in procession through the streets of Bukara before being sent to Astrakhan. Momeni, already on his way with his army to Bukara to assist, was forced to turn back on learning of the fate of Khaledi and the capture of Rastkar. Agha Mohammad Shah, his country facing bankruptcy and internal revolts, finally sent a mission to Moscow to discuss peace. On 13 October, the Treaty of Moscow was signed between the Persian and Russian delegates. Its terms were as follows:
- The northwestern and western regions of Persia to be ceded to Russia
- Bukara, Samarkand, Merv to be ceded to Russia
- Persia to demobilize
- Persia to pay $200,000 in indemnities to Russia
For Agha Mohammad Shah, these concessions were considered lenient given the fact that the Russians had managed to march all the way to the classical capital. For Konstantin I, the conclusion of the Persian part of the greater war against Islam would allow for him to focus fully on his main enemy, Ottoman sultan Selim III. For the Ottomans, the renewed focus of the Russians meant that they would now have to face the Russian invasion alone.
The Saxon-Bahemian War (15 April 1795 - 5 January 1796)^ becomes part of the larger German War after January 5, and also the Danubian War)
Since February 1791, Frederick August I had been consolidating his personal rule over the Polish half of the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania and trying to convince the Lithuanians that their king, Adam Casimir Czartoryski had abandoned the Unions of Krewa and Lublin by fleeing Warsaw. Adam Casimir, for his part, launched his own propaganda war against the Saxon usurper, countering that as Saxony was a revolutionary absolutist monarchy and that the constitutional-absolute monarchy of the Commonwealth was superior. Skirmishes along the Polish-Lithuanian frontier had become common as both monarches continued to test the other's resolve. What kept Frederick August I from launching a full invasion of Lithuania was the fact that Adam Casimir I had signed a treaty with Gustav III making Lithuania a protectorate of the Empire of Sweden. For the time being deterred from this, Frederick August I sought other avenues for expnansion.
Karl Theodor (Charles Theodore) I, current Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bahemia (the union of the crowns of Bohemia and Bavaria), had watched the developments in Poland with apprehension. He had already witnessed the defeat and despoliation of what had been the greatest German Protestant power by the upstart Electorate. Fearful that his Saxon neighbor would cast his eyes on Bohemia, Charles Theodore I signed a treaty with King Leopold VII of Austria on 12 December 1794, guaranteeing their mutual borders and providing military assistance in the event of an attack by a third party (this would prove to be a broken reed once King Nikolaus I declared war on Austria later). Ar the same time, he reached out to his old ally, France, signing a treaty in Nancy with Louis XVI on 31 December. In the following month, he also signed treaties with Baden, Wurttemburg, Hesse and Hanover. For his part, Frederick August I, more concerned with the Bahemia-Austria Treaty of Vienna than with the other treaties, reached out to King Nikolaus I, signing a treaty with him at Poznan on 16 February which in effect partitioned both Bahemia and Austria, granting Vienna, Carinthia, Carniola, Styria and Burgenland to Hungary and Bohemia and Upper Austria to Saxony (thus effectively eliminating Austria entirely). Frederick August i raised troops and began forming five armies of 150,000 each (750,000 in total) through the late winter and into early spring. On 15 April, with no declaration of war issued, Frederick August I advanced into Bohemia from three directions-one from Saxony proper, one from Silesia and one from Occupied Poland. Karlovy Vary and Liberec were conquered in a matter of hours, Hradec was conquered a day later, on the 16th. Four of the five armies then converged on Prague, while the fifth, commanded by Baron Anton Graf, moved to engage a Bahemian army of 140,000 commanded by Count Gabriel Vítek. The battle, which occured near Jihlava, resulted in a defeat for Vitek-who lost 98,000 killed or captured to Graf's 29,000 killed. With Vitek forced to retreat into Bavaria - and Graf in pursuit, Frederick August I began the siege of Prague. Charles Theodore would attempt to raise the siege by advancing from Munich, but after two attempts were repulsed, Graf's army, which was still pursuing Vitek, finally all but annihilated the Emperor's army near Ingolstadt (21 April). Graf ravaged the lands between Bavaria and Bohemia before turning back to ravage Moravia.
As the Siege of Prague dragged on through May and June and into July, 3rd Army commanded by Janusz Bielski, a Silesian of Polish heritage, implemented a new tactic of scorching the countryside around the city. it was a bold and risky move which had every chance to impact the besieging troops as much as the defenders, and Frederick August I was unsure of the tactic at first. But as his armies were well-supplied thanks to supply routes running from both Saxony and Poland, they were able to press the siege while the townsfolk within the walls began to slowly starve. In Bavaria, Charles Theodore now raised a larger army and began to press his Hapsburg ally to send additional troops to aid in the repulse of the Saxons. But Leopold VII could not afford additional troops as his kingdom was now at war with Hungary. Using his Imperial office, he pressed the Diet to condemn the Saxon invasion of Bohemia-which they did. But when he followed up by demanding an Army of the Reich to be formed from the middling and minor principalities and Imperial Knights, they showed a greater reluctance to do so, citing the fact that the Imperial finances had still not fully returned to their pre-Ten Years War percentages. Angered but powerless to protest, Charles Theodore resolved to deal with the Saxons alone. He was thus surprised when Frederick William III of Prussia broke the treaty they had been forced to sign with Saxony and declare war. A Prussian attack on Brandenburg forced Frederick August I to send an army of 270,000 under the command of Captain Tadeusz Stepniak north to meet the Prussians, while anticipating Charles Theodore's move to take advantage of the Prussian intervention to move northeast to engage him, he sent Gtaf into Bavaria to meet him. Sure enough, on 13 July at the historic battlefield of Blenheim Graf met the Emperor. In a four-and-a-half hour battle Charles Theodore's army was all but shattered after a lightning move by Graf exposed the Emperor's flank to a devastating cavalry charge which caused panic to set in and took the lives of 55,000 Bavarians and 23,000 troops sent by Hanover to fight under the Bahemian banner. Gtaf then laid waste the village before returning to Bohemia. As Graf scoured the countryside following the battle, the army of Captain Stepniak clashed with Frederick William III's army south of Brandenburg (19 July). Here too, the Saxons managed to surprise their Prussian opponent with a flanking move which exposed their artillery and their rear infantry ranks to a major cavalry charge which broke the artillery and sent the infantry fleeing, some not even getting to shoot their rifles. Frederick William III tried to rally his troops to stand firm, but after a bullet grazed his thigh, he was forced to join the masses of his own troops trying to flee. In all the Prussians lost 49,000 out of an original 95,000 troops-mostly killed. Stepniak lost 17,400 troops in the battle. Two weeks after the battle, Frederick William III sued for peace. As punishment for breaking the treaty, Frederick August I stripped the Prussian of his electoral title and forced him to pay an indemnity of $70,000 talers. Charles Theodore, only three days from Prague, learned of the defeat and capitulation of his unexpected Prussian ally and was forced to turn back, realizing that his advantage had all but evaporated.
By the end of September, the Siege of Prague was in its final stages. Many of the townspeople had slipped out from within the doomed city and surrenderd themselves to the Saxons, reducing the garrison to some 15,000 hungry, dehydrated, exhausted troops to face 480,000 well-fed, fresh troops. On 3 October, Frederick August I, seeing the moment right, ordered a full assault on the walls. Holes were punched using the four 6-pound and 2 12-pound cannon, followed by sorties by bands of Polish irregulars which cleared the way for the main Saxon regiments to march in. Eight hours of hard fighting culminating in a final stand near the clock tower left only Hradcany Castle to be taken. At this stage, the Saxon King offered the few survivors who had fled into the castle an honorable surrender. At 9 pm that evening, as a full moon was rising over the eastern horizon, the survivors threw down their arms and accepted the offer. True to his word, Frederick August I treated them very well, providing escorts for them as they returned to assess their living situation. Frederick August I rewarded his courageous troops by allowing them to rest as he turned Hradcany Castle into his headquarters to plan the next stage in his war against the Emperor. Graf, having followed the defeated army of Charles Theodore back to Munich, decided to risk everything and attack the Bavarian capital without consulting Frederick August I. being joined on 19 October by the army of Stepniak, who had ravaged West Prussia in the wake of his victory against the Prussians, Graf surrounded Munich and put it under siege. When Frederick August learned of Graf's actions, he was compelled to take an army of 20,000 and travel to Bavaria to join them. Using a similar strategy to that used by the Saxon King-Elector in taking Prague, Graf had groups of his cavalry ravage the countryside, destroying what couldm't be seized. Throughout October and November, the Saxons tightened their siege of Munich and many thousands of townspeople began to escape only to be captured. Charles Theodore opted for one major push to break out of his encirclement and om 4 December led a small detachment of 30,000 troops from an unwatched gate, then attacked a battalion of 25,000 German and Polish troops. Easily catching them by surprise and defeating them, he then attacked another battalion and scattered them as well. Thinking he had opened a large enough gap for his troops and the civilians to escape, he signaled them via gunshot. Unfortunately, Frederick August I was alerted by the gunshot signal and ordered the bulk of his army to crush the Bahemians. Realizing his error, Charles Theodore tried to rush back into the safety of the walls, but was caught by the Saxons and forced to give battle. At the same time, a small group of Silesian dragoons seized control of the gate and with a battalion of Polish troops, seized the gatehouse. The bulk of the Saxon army now poured into the city even as regiments continued to fight Charles Theodore. As he attempted to escape, he was dragged from his horse, clasped in irons, and led to the camp of Frederick August I. He was forced to watch as his city was pillaged and his people taken into captivity. Finally, Frederick August I took his captive to Brno, where on 5 January he was compelled to sign a treaty. In the Treaty of Brno:
- Charles Theodore was forced to relinquish the Imperial title to Frederick August I pending a decision of the imperial Diet to legitimize his claim
- Bavaria and Bohemia would be separated, with Bohemia going to Saxony
- Bavaria to pay an indemnity of $200,000 talers and disband its armies
On 25 January, Frederick August I forced a measure through the Imperial Diet which formally deposed Charles Theodore and named himself Holy Roman Emperor. He did this after a demonstration against Hesse in which the city of Kassel was ravaged. He followed this up with the sack of Frankfurt, the place where the Congress of Frankfurt had ruined Saxony's dreams of martial glory just 30 years earlier. This had the desired effect of frightening the small principalities and Imperial Knights into agreeing to the edict. However, resentment among Bavaria, Austria, Hanover, Prussia, Oldenburg, and Baden would lead in a short time to a German War in which the Saxon claim to Empire would be challenged.
The Third Northern War (10 June - 20 November 1796)
Needing the time to rebuild his military after concluding peace with Persia on 13 October 1795, Konstantin I, Tsar-Emperor of Russia, began to cast his eyes on Novgorod, the independent grand republic created after the Ten Years War when the Swedes and Poles collaborated on their plan to divide Russia and weaken it. He kept Russian armies pressing on the Ottomans to insure no help would be forthcoming from them, and signed a treaty in Odessa with Frederick August i of Saxony-Poland recognizing him as legitimate King of Poland and offering subsidies to support him against Adam Casimir I in Lithuania. On 17 January 1796, on the cusp of his new campaign against Novgorod, Konstantin I was faced with an uprising in Mesopotamia-but not from the Islamic inhabitants. A group of Christians, hoping to break free of their Muslim oppressors, overthrew the Ottoman governor of Baghdad, then attacked the Beylerbey of Mosul with a force of 9,000 equipped with Russian artillery. They proclaimed an independent state, then invited Konstantin I to become their ruler as a safeguard against Ottoman retaliation. In response to their appeal and seeing a new means by which the Russians could gain access to the Persian Gulf, and hence the Indian Ocean and at the same time threaten the Ottoman vassal sultanate of Oman, The Tsar-Emperor sent Pavlovich with his army to Mesopotamia to help secure the region and accepted the royal title as King of Sumeria. Russian advisers were soon in Baghdad, drafting a new charter for the state, building churches, schools, markets and barracks, and providing poor relief for the inhabitants. They also set about driving out or executing the Muslim populace in what would later be known as a 'religious cleansing'. To further aggravate efforts by the Turks to build an effective defense, the refugees were driven to Angora, where food shortages soon became a serious issue. This would open the door in future to increasing efforts to take the city and end the Osmanli dynasty once and for all.
Observing these events from Novgorod, Prince Alexander Romanov (OTL Alexander I) grew alarmed at the running successes in the Middle East, as well as the treaties his young brother had signed with Hungary and Saxony. He petitioned the Grand Prince, Yuri Vladimirovich Dolgorukov to build an army and launch a pre-emptive attack on Moscow with the aim of forcing his younger brother to yield. in this he was joined by the Tartar general Toktamish Bogdanov and the Polish ambassador from Adam Casimir's court, Kamil Rokosz.. the Grand Prince did not accept the proposal citing the view-later revealed to be misguided-that the Russians were too focused on their southern front to show any interest in their northern regions despite the ominous warnings from the Tsar-Emperor. Not content to sit and wait for a Russian declaration of war, Alexander and Toktamish began to raise troops. They were able to raise 10 battalions of 1,000 Novgorodians, 15 squadrons of Tartar cavalry numbering 500 and a mixed assortment of Swedes, Poles, Lithuanians and even Russian defectors numbering 20,000 (for a grand total of 37,500) and prepared to march them to the Russian border. Grand Prince Yuri, furious over the actions of Prince Alexander and Toktamish, threatened to exile both but held back from doing so. He became gradually convinced of the need for a military force when his border outposts began to report on massive buildups of Russian forces close to the border. He still refused to accede to Prince Alexander's plan for a pre-emptive strike on Moscow, however, which led Toktamysh to angrily denounce the Novgorodians as cowards. Grand Prince Yuri sent a deputation to Moscow to inquire about the buildup along the border. For 20 days they were ignored by any in the Imperial Court (who were already beginning talks with Saxon ambassadors aimed at a final campaign against Poland-Lithuania's King Adam Casimir I). Finally, a minor official threatened them with immediate arrest unless they left the city within 24 hours. On 6 February the deputation returned, alarmed at the fact that Russia was about to commence their invasion and further informing the Polish ambassador of the discussions with the Saxons on the final disposition of the Commonwealth. Prince Alexander now beseeched Grand Prince Yuri to allow him to inform Adam Casimir of the Russo-Saxon discussions. Yuri was determined to keep Alexander as commander of the ragtag army he had helped assemble, opting to send Toktamysh-with whom he still harbored resentment toward for his denouncement-to Vilnius. On the day that Toktamysh left for Vilnius, 9 June, the Russians announced a state of war with Novgorod and a day later 8 Russian armies of 180,000 surged across the border and began their invasion.
By August, Nizhny Novgorod, Suzdal and Perm had fallen to the Russian advance and despite victories in open battle, Prince Alexander could not break the sieges. Forced to retreat due to disease outbreaks or supply shortages, Prince Alexander could only delay the advance. Refugees were soon filling the streets of Novgorod and even trekking to St Petersburg, in Swedish territory, in an effort to escape the brutality of the Russian invasion. It was only as Tver and Yaroslavl came under siege that Grand Prince Yuri finally committed to the defense of his republic, using his own privy purse to raise an army of 175,000 troops, with an additional 170.000 provided through subsidies from Sweden and Lithuania. Meanwhile, Prince Alexander led his 37,500 troops deep into Russia, attacking Tsaritsyn on 16 August. It had been hoped that Alexander could liberate his father Paul I from his gilded cage. But it was discovered that his father had been murdered on the orders of Konstantin I to prevent such a rescue. Forced by Cossack raiders to retreat, Alexander vowed to make his younger brother pay for the affront. On his retreat, Alexander managed to ravage the countryside, attacking Cossack siches and killing 3,000 people. This one small victory proved insufficient, as the Russians advanced to Beloozero, the second of two remaining cities remaining to the Grand Republic. The Grand Army of the Republic under the command of Victor Ivanovich marched from Novgorod and on 23 August met the main Russian army commanded by the Tsar-Emperor himself. Despite scoring a victory when the Novgorod cavalry seized the supply wagons of the Russians-which Konstantin I in his haste to engage had left lightly defended, they were driven back with sustained losses of 8,000. Ivanovich attempted to fall back to a pre-determined location to recoup, but Konstantin I, knowing where he planned to fall back to, had another army of 180,000 waiting for them 3 miles north. Ivanovich drove staight into this force and his army was all but destroyed with Ivanovich himself taken prisoner. Beloozero itself held out for another month, until it was completely cut off from its food supplies and the people began to resort to cannibalism in order to survive. Reports of a stench emerging from withiin the city began to filter back to the Tsar-Emperor, who became so sickened by the news that he finally ordered the siege broken. But in a calculated move he hoped would instill fear in Novgorod itself, he ordered his troops to set fire to Beloozero, torching not just the buildings but the half-eaten corpses and the meager survivors as well. As the city burned the two Russian armies proceeded to Novgorod, harassed by the surviving 170,000 stromg army as well as Prince Alexander's army. They put the capital under siege on 9 October and began to dig trenches to further close off the capital. Alexander made his first attempt to break the siege on 14 October, attacking the workers as they dug the trenches, but was driven back with some losses. After getting some reinforcements he made a second attempt on 19 October, this time with the assistance of the 2nd Novgorod Army commanded by Grigory Vasilievich. Vasilievich attacked the Russian 5th army commanded by an incompetent lieutenant-general, Avilov Stepanovich. Stepanovich, in trying to respond to Alexander's attack, left his supply wagons exposed and Vasilievich seized them in a daring move, then brought his army in at an angle to avoid most of the Russian artillery fire that Konstantin was now directing at Alexander and drove his cavalry straight into the flank of Stepanovich's army. In a murderous encounter, Stepanovich lost 18,000 men to Vasilievich's 4,000. This victory offered some hope to the defenders, even as Grand Prince Yuri was preparing to abandon the capital and seek asylum in Sweden. Vasilievich, seeing his victory as a sign, now prepared to repeat the attack, but Konstantin I was now prepared for him. As Vasilievich began his attack, the Russian guns unleashed all their fury and in the chaos Vasilievich would lose his own life and the lives of 100,000 of his men. Alexander, taking advantage of the distraction, attacked and put to flight a group of artillerymen, destroying their cannon by stuffing the barrels with peat from the nearby marsh. He brought his army forward to render assistance to Vasilievich when the smoke and dust cleared just enough to reveal the carnage. Seeing Vasilievich dead on the field, Alexnder was forced to call off further attacks and, taking the survivors from Vasilievich's army, retreated to the capital. Here, he urged Grand Prince Yuri to withdraw his court to the port of Archangel. Konstantin now sent orders for the remaining armies to converge on Novgorod, determined to take the city. As the siege continued and the Russians closed the noose, Yuri now saw that his situation was hopeless. He fled the city with his court, barely managing to slip past the Russian armies closing. He reached Archangel a week -and-a-half later. During that same time, the citizens reached the point they could no longer hold on. A deputation was sent to the Tsar-Emperor's camp to seek terms for a cease-fire, to which a gracious Konstantin granted for 72 hours, demanding only that Grand Prince Yuri surrender himself.. When he was informed that Yuri was no longer in the city, he flew into a rage, declaring the cease-fire null and void. He ordered his men to enter the city and search any house or building and execute anyone who resisted. For several days, the city was ransacked and thousands were killed in wanton acts of violence. Konstantin I claimed the city as his and declared the restoration of united Russia on 20 November, not bothering to demand terms from Yuri as he was now considered deposed.
Grand Prince Yuri, safe in Archangel thanks to the arrival of a Swedish army of 200,000, met with Gustav III in Helsingbors/Helsink on 3 December in which it was agreed that a Swedish army of 380,000 would march south to liberate Novgorod in the Spring of 1797. Grand Prince Yuri agreed to pay Gustav III $100K talers to subsidize the army. In addition, he also signed a treaty with Adam Casimir I of Poland-Lithuania agreeing to support his restoration to the Polish Crown. While Konstantin I would soon divert troops to Central Asia for the coming war against the Mongol Khaganate for control of northeast Asia and the Bering Strait, for all intents and purposes he was in effective control of Novgorod and all but the port of Archamgel.
The German War (5 May 1797 - 10 April 1798)
The Saxon Wettins had managed not only to seize the crown of Poland, but also the crown of Bohemia. They then followed this up with the deposition of Charles Theodore of the Bavarian house of Wittelsbach as Holy Roman Emperor and, in the person of King Frederick August I, attain the Imperial title after a series of military actions in which both Kassel and Frankfurt were devastated frightening the minor principalities and Imperial Knights into endorsing the coup. But the military bullying of Saxony-Poland had created resentment among the states of Bavaria, Austria, Hanover, Prussia, Baden, Oldenburg and Wurttemburg. In the months since the usurpation, Frederick August I-now Emperor-King-focused on securing his claim to the Polish crown by pursuing a cold war with the legitimate king, Adam Casimir I of the House of Czartoryski. Despite having a peace treaty with Saxony which was the resulted of an ill-fated Prussian attempt to intervene in the Saxon-Bahemian conflict which limited the size of the Prussian army, by March 1797, the Prussians were already close to their former strength. Austria too, had a full compliment, but due to concerns about the Hungarians were hamstrung in what they could do. Bavaria had lost nearly a quarter of its fighting men with the conquest of Bohemia by the Saxons, while Baden and Wurttemburg were at odds with one another since reaching the second-rank standing in the Empire. Hanover, still bound by dynastic union to Great Britain, could also do little so long as their Electors remained in London. It wouldn't be until the following month when the Opposition would finally begin to stir.
King Christian VII of Denmark-Norway had grown anxious at the sudden rise of the Saxons in the Empire. As ruler of the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein, which were within the boundaries of the Empire (hence giving him some leeway in Imperial affairs), he was especially concerned about the fate of his ally Prussia, which had been driven out of the Empire altogether with the conquests of Brandenburg, Berlin, Magdeburg and Silesia by the Saxon Wettins. In a meeting in Bornholm on 7 April, Christian VII agreed to provide subsidies to Frederick William III to train new armies. In a second agreement-added to the Concordat of Bornholm-the Danes and Prussians agreed on a joint military initiative to drive the Saxons from Brandenburg and restore Frederick William III to his capital, Berlin. On the 11th, Frederick William III met with King Leopold I of Austria (Emperor Leopold II OTL) and King Adam Casimir I of Poland-Lithuania to build a military alliance. Leopold remained uncertain as to what he could contribute as the Hungarian threat was growing on his border and Adam Casimir was watching the events in Novgorod with alarm at the successes of Tsar-Emperor Konstantin I. Christian VII met with the rulers of Baden and Wurttemburg in Bonn on the same day, getting them to agree the terms of the Convention of Bonn in which they settled their differences and forged a mutual assistance agreement. On 20 April, the Danish king met with George III-acting only as Elector of Hanover- in Hanover and agreed to a treaty of alliance. In their final meeting of 23 April in Bonn, it was agreed that the German Alliance would make their move while Frederick August was tied down in Poland against Adam Casimir. Their combined offensives would-they hoped-force the Saxon king to submit and concede all the territories he had conquered. But thanks to a spy planted at the summit, Frederick August I became aware of the plot against him. Drafting four Polish armies in addition to the six armies he had begun recruiting in Bohemia through forced conscription, he vowed to make the first strike before they could organize.
His first offensive was more diplomatic than military. On 30 April he stunned everyone by signing a Truce in Brest-Litovsk with Adam Casimir essentially dividing the Commonwealth between them. Adam Casimir was recognized as King of Lithuania in exchange for Frederick August I being given the same accord with Poland. While both men knew this to be a temporary expedient which would allow them to ready themselves for the final conflict over the fate of Poland-Lithuania, it also removed a potential partner from the German Alliance and place Prussia and Austria in a difficult position. Then on 5 May, Frederick August I launched his preemptive invasions. At the battles of Schweinfurt and Ingolstadt-fought within hours of each other, he crushed the Bavaro-Badenese army and the Austro-Bavarian army respectively. He sent one army against Munich and another against Bayreuth. At the same time, he sent two of his four Polish armies into Prussia and ravaged the country so thoroughly that Frederick William III refrained from any military campaigning, choosing to hole himself up in Konigsberg while his subjects were forced to endure rapine, pillage, murder and forced conscription into the Royal armies. Frederick August refrained from besieging Konisgberg for the time being, though he often sent cavalry toward the city as a means of reminding his Prussian foe that he could still attack the capital. Throughout the summer of 1797, Saxon-Imperial and Saxon-Polish armies ran amuck across Germany, sacking Cologne (3 June), Heidelberg (17 June) and Osnabruck (11 July). Christian VII, meanwhile, marched his army south to Luneberg in an effort to assist the Hanoverians gathering their mixed Hanoverian-Hessian-Dutch-British-French army of 39,000 for the relief of Osnabruck. Frederick August I, having sacked the city and conscripted the surviving men into his army, marched northward to meet the Hanoverian-Danish allied armies near Meunster. On the morning of 21 July, the Saxons, with their loyal Imperial and Polish auxiliaries set up camp 4 miles from Christian VII's camp and at 3 pm attacked the Danes with a charge of the Polish hussars. Christian VII only barely managed to order his troops to tighten their formations into defensive squares, and though he lost 1,900 in the initial attack, had managed to inflict losses of 2,400 on the Saxons. However, when the Danish king attempted to follow up with a charge of the Hessian dragoons, Frederick August I brought forward his pike-armed Landsknecht and the counter-charge failed with devastating losses of 3,000. Meanwhile a Polish flotilla which had slipped through the Danish Sound by flying Danish flags, appeared off the coast of Verden, within range of the Danish camp and began a bombardment. Christian VII now faced the likelihood that his men were now cut off and were about to be eliminated by the naval bombardment. Choosing to make his final stand, he led his troops straight into the fire of the Saxons in an all-out offensive launched out of desperation. As the full moon began to rise over the battle-only to be soon after obscured by the thick smoke from the cannons, the full fury of the Saxons was thrown upon the Danes and their Hanoverian allies and in five hours of slaughter finally broke the morale of the Danes, forcing them to disengage and withdraw. This became a rout when the Hessians capitulated to the Saxons, exposing the Hanoverians who soon after panicked and began to flee. Christian VII attempted to rally his forces but was unhorsed and captured by Polish hussars, and led to the camp of the Saxon Emperor. At first he was accorded all the honors due as a royal, but when the question of Schleswig-Holstein brought up, Christian VII refused to concede either duchy. Frederick August I, determined now on punishing the Danish king, sent two Polish armies into Jutland with the objective of pillaging, sacking, and so devastating the country that popular support for their king would drop away and he'd be forced either to concede defeat or face rebellion. After 11 days in which Christian VII was forced to listen as the reports of the actions in Jutland arrived, he finally bowed to the inevitable and accepted the terms. The Treaty of Verden of 10 August 1797 forced Denmark-Norway to:
- Surrender Schleswig-Holstein to the Empire and renounce future claims to the two duchies
- Terminate their alliance with Adam Casimir I and acknowledge Frederick August as King of Poland
- Surrender 2/3 of their navy to the Empire
- Pay an indemnity of 250K talers to the Empire and another 150K to Saxony-Poland
Christian VII was released two days after the signing of the treaty and allowed to return to his kingdom, which was-as Frederick August i had intended-now in the throes of rebellion against the king thanks in no small part to the devastation inflicted by the Emperor's Polish auxiliaries. But before the Saxon Emperor could rest on his laurels, he received news that Ravensberg had been conquered by yet another party to the German War: The Dutch Republic.
William V had watched the events in the Rhineland and northern Germany with concern and the spectacular defeat of the Danes and Hanoverians had finally shocked him into action. Raising an army of 30,000 troops under the command of Major Lennerd de Waard, William V ordered them to march for Ravensberg with the primary aim of securing the duchy for Prussia-but also to put them close to the Danes. When Christain VII was taken prisoner in the Battle of Verden, de Waard marched east and southeast, meeting an advance unit of Saxons in julich on 28 August, de Waard scattered them, taking 700 POWs and killing or injuring 800 others. De Waard then took the bold decision to march across Germany, picking up a few allies from among the duchies of Goslar, Wurzburg, Ansbach-Bayreuth and Coburg, and struck directly at the Saxons. Passing just north of Dresden, the Dutch raided and burned Cottbus before being forced to withdraw by the timely arrival of a Polish army of 45,000. Deciding that any further strikes could cost them, de Waard marched his army back across Germany, engaging and destroying small Saxon forces along their route. Frederick August i, concerned that the Dutch could persuade Christian VII to repudiate the terms of Verden and bring Denmark-Norway back into the war, now sought a means of getting the Dutch out of the war. He began to plot with surviving members of the Nederlanden movement and at the same time opened negotiations with Charles IV of Spain. In due course, the Nederlanden would once more gain considerable influence in the States-General and the coincidental death of the Grand Duke of Flanders would give William V a second chance, making Dutch withdrawal from the German War easier. Having successfully ravaged northern Germany and Jutland, Frederick August I marched his main Saxon-Imperial armies into winter quarters in Zollern Castle (from where the Hohenzollern dynasty hailed from. This was likely meant to be an insult to the hapless Prussian king). But even as he took the time to relax and issues edicts as Holy Roman Emperor, he still had enemies on the field.
In September, the Austrians and Prussians signed a subsidy treaty which granted 125K talers to the Prussians to rebuild their economy and their armies. Frederick William III was no doubt further incensed with the news that his opponent was desecrating his ancestral castle. Receiving additional financial support from both Sweden and Lithuania, he planned a winter offensive designed to reclaim Berlin. Unknown to him, Frederick August I had already West (Royal) Prussia to his Polish magnatial supporters, who had already sent armies in to establish their rights. On 8 November, Frederick William III advanced with his army of 180,000 troops to Gdansk/Danzig, where he still managed to take the Poles by surprise. Claiming the port, he then moved southwest to Tuchela, destroying a Polish army of 150,000 by utilizing only 20,000 of his own men in a manuever which the Poles did not count on. Outraged by the news of the Poles' defeat, Frederick August I ordered his two best generals Bielski and Graf to prepare the defenses around Berlin and raise an army to drive the Prussians back. As the Prussians advanced through West Prussia and reached the borders of Brandenburg, Bielski was able to raise an army of 225,000 while Graf force-conscripted 30,000 townspeople-overseen by a Saxon 'police force' of 95,000 within the city itself. The two commanders decided on a strategy which would allow the Prussians to think the road to Berlin was open. Once they marched in and began their siege, Bielski would close the escape behind them and between the city defenses and Bielski's overwhelming numbers crush the Prussians once and for all. On 19 November, the Prussian army reached the outskirts of Berlin, setting their artillery in place to begin the siege while trenches were prepared. It was at this moment that Bielski chose his moment to launch his attack, charging into the ranks of the Prussian engineers with his Polish hussars. At the same time, the guns on the walls of Berlin opened fire, pinning down the infantry in their half-completed trenches with the resulting loss of 4,000 men. The Hussars drove into the ranks of engineers, then pulled back. This convinced Frederick William III that Bielski was short of manpower-despite the warnings of his scouts to the contrary-and he formed up five brigades of irregulars to take on Bielski. This had the unfortunate effect of leavng the artillery undefended. Quick to take advantage, Bielski ordered his crack Saxon infantry to take out the Prussian guns, sending a screen of Saxon dragoons as a screen. He brought his own force of Polish irregulars forward to turn the flank of the Prussian irregulars and make it easier for the hussars to finish them off. Frederick William III, seeing what Bielski was doing, attempted to hold the Poles while sending his dragoons against the advancing Saxons but failed to fully pin down the Polish troops who were able to turn the flank of the Prussians. As the hussars now charged in and began to scatter and slaughter the helpless Prussians, the king gathered the few thousand who had managed to stand their ground in the hope of rallying the rest, but failed to offer support to the forces trying to defend the artillery positions and once they broke and fled, the artillery easily fell into Saxon possession-and they were quick to turn the guns on the Prussians. Frederick William III bowed to the iminent and ordered a retreat back into West Prussia. Of the 180,000 that went into battle expecting to liberate Berlin from the Saxon occupiers, only 71,000 were able to reach the temporary safety of West Prussia-the bulk of which were support cavalry which were ineffective as the primary fighting force. Within Berlin itself, Graf had implemented martial law, resulting in the arrest and execution of some 20,000 of the inhabitants and so cowing the rest that no future uprisings occured for the rest of 1798 and into 1799. Bielski chased the stragglers among the fleeing Prussians and on 3 December came upon the remnants of the army and the king. In a four hour battle near Gdansk/Danzig, Bielski inflicted another 20,000 casualties on the Prussians and almost captured Frederick William III as he dodged cavalrymen who were being picked off by Saxon sharpshooters. He reached the castle of Konigsberg on 12 December and three days later the countryside around the port city was laid waste by Bielski, who then put the city under siege from both the land and the sea-thanks to the recently captured former Danish frigates now under the Imperial banner Frederick August I followed up this success by pushing through an Imperial Edict placing the Ban of the Empire on Frederick William III, stripping him of his remaining Rhenish principalities and even his royal title, reducing him to a mere duke, but he was now determined to take Konigsberg and place the former King of Prussia in irons. Austria, which had at the beginning of the Prussian offensive had been placed to render assistance to its former adversary was, by the time of the Second Battle of Gdansk now facing the Hungarian invasion of King Nikolaus I, thus removing one more potential adversary and forcing the other would-be enemies to rethink their entire plan of resistance.
One final military action did, however, take place. In late March of 1798, Baden and Wurttemburg formed a minor alliance against the Saxon Emperor with some encouragement from France and Denmark-Norway. A Badenese army under the command of Richard Brahms and numbering 45,000 advanced into the Saxon Aargau, briefly taking the ancestral Castle Hapsburg as well as Freiburg. Frederick August I, from his bastion in Zollern Castle, marched an army of 95,000 south and at the Battle of Saarlouis, near the French border, inflicted a crushing defeat on Brahms, forcing him to seek refuge in French territory. The army continued south and razed Baden to the ground with the massacre of all but 3,000 of its inhabitants. Wurttemburg surrendered the next day. It was the capitulation of Wurttemburg and the protests of the Badenese emigres which would fuel the awakening of Germany and in time, the intervention of France and Great Britain.
Austro-Hungarian War (1 April - 5 June 1798)
King Leopold I had been unable to render much assistance to the Prussians, Badenese or Bavarians because of the slow mobilization of the Austrian armies so many years after the Ten Years War. Faced with the prospects of a Hungarian invasion, moreover, Leopold I could ill afford to send needed troops to northern Germany. In the months leading up to April, he sent Kaunitz to Budapest to try and convince King Nikolaus I to refrain from any military action against the kingdom in exchange for a trade agreement. King Nikolaus I had already received overtures from Frederick August I but decided to keep the Austrian emissary waiting with vague pledges of a full treaty. Meanwhile, as Nikolaus I had finally withdrawn the last of the Hungarian garrisons from the Pelopponese and Thessaly, he now had roughly 80,000 troops available. On 30 March, he finally called Kaunitz to his throne room and in the presence of his ministers and nobles issued a demand which amounted to an ultimatum: Relinquish the Adriatic Coast, Burgenland and Vienna or face war. With only three days for the Austrian government to respond, Kaunitz found that his mission had failed. He managed to return to Vienna with 24 hours to spare, reporting to Leopold I that Nikolaus I intended to invade-but never fully bringing himself to tell of the ultimatum. It would be this failure that would taint Kaunitz for the rest of his life.
As part of the negotiations with the Saxon Emperor, Nikolaus I agreed to lend a force of 14,000 troops to his army as additional auxiliaries. In exchange, Frederick August I agreed to send his army close enough to the Austrian frontier to force Leopold to divert troops. Several villages and farms were ravaged by this force, which brought about the intended result of diverting Austrian troops. Seeing his chance, Nikolaus I issued a manifesto in which he announced that because the Austrian king had refused to concede the lands demanded, a state of war now existed. On 1 April, three Hungarian armies invaded the Austrian kingdom along the Adriatic coast, in Burgenland and from Hungarian Galicia. Leopold, realizing almost too late that the Saxon raids had been merely a distraction, recalled his troops and rushed them to Burgenland. Under the command of an obscure Tyrolese of Austrian ancestry, Wilhelm Mann, the 50,000 troops of the Austrian 1st army managed to repulse the Hungarian 2nd army under the command of Biró Gyula (8 April). They barely had time to celebrate before they had to rush to Moravia to fight the 3rd Hungarian army under the command of Orsós Péter. Peter's army of 70,000 inflicted two defeats on Mann, but by a stroke of luck, Mann turned Peter's flank and drove them back into the Carpathians (13th). Meanwhile, 1st Royal Army under the command of Leopold I himself marched south into Slavonia, ravaging Zagreb before being driven back by a Hungarian army commanded by Nikolaus I. Nikolaus pursued Leopold into Carinthia, forcing him to battle at Gorz (22nd), where he destroyed Leopold's army. Leopold fled to Vienna, where he gathered 120,000 of the town militia and 20,000 conscripted troops for the city's defense. Gyula's army of 90,000 rebuilt after their defeat in Burgenland now advanced into the region again, while Peter's army of 55,000 veteran/survivors advanced into Moravia where they received the additional support of 20,000 Saxon irregulars.
Nikolaus I laid siege to Vienna on 3 May, after ravaging the countryside around the city. Peter and Gyula joined him on the 11th, demoralizing the inhabitants with the near-constant connan fire from the Kalhenberg Heights. Leopold I organized the first attempt at a breakout on the night of the 16th, during a lull in the bombardment. After initially getting 5,000 people to freedom he was attacked by Gyula's army and lost 8,000 killed or captured. Undaunted, on the night of the 22nd, Leopold tried again to break out of the trap. Sending 15,000 to engage Peter's battalion of 11,000. They overwhelmed the battalion but were then attacked by Nikolaus's army. Leopold lost an additional 9,000 men in this second attempt. One noteworthy event during this second attempt was the evacuation of the royal family to Innsbruck. The siege tightened as a result of both failures of Leopold to break out and on 4 June, seeing his people starving and growing exhausted, made one final bid to break out. Rallying the surviving militias and townspeople for one last stand, Leopold issued a challenge to Nikolaus I to try and take the city before sunset on the 5th. The respomse came immediately, in the form of a massive bombardment of the city walls which killed 4,000. From mid-morning into the night the defenders managed to hold off efforts by the Hungarians to breach the walls. By midnight on the 5th, however, a lucky hit near the powder magazine destroyed part of the walls. Immediately, Peter sent his army into the breach where furious hand-to-hand battles raged on nearly every street. Nikolaus sent his troops in a effort to find the Austrian king, but the wily Leopold had taken a disguise as a Hungarian soldier and managed to slip out with the wounded who were being taken to safety. Once he was at the Kahlenberg, Leopold doffed his disguise and made his way to Innsbruck. By sunrise, the Hungarians had pushed the Austrians to the center of the city. Nikolaus I offered the people tax exemption and freedom of religion as the price for their voluntary submission, but as the inhabitants had come to love and respect their Hapsburg rulers, they felt no compunction about transferring loyalties to a foreign king. As a result they made their last stand and all but 12,000 mostly women, children and infirm were killed to the last man. Nikolaus I now proclaimed himself Emperor of Danubia*, moving his seat of power to Vienna as a final insult to the "petty Hapsburgs" who were now in exile in Bavaria. No formal treaty was ever signed between the two states, though it was clear that for the time being, Austria had lost.
Dutch-Spanish War and the Return of the Nederlanden (30 August 1797 - 15 December 1798)
Guiilame de Tourcy had been the first Flandrine to occupy the Grand Ducal throne, having acquired it thanks to the defeat of the Nederlanden by a combined Anglo-French expedition which even forced William V to renounce his own intention to claim the title for the House of Orange. De Tourcy was, however, a weak man who suffered from various ailments including bronchitis which kept him bedridden more often than not. As a result, his sudden death on 10 July came as a shock to both London and Versailles as they had hoped he would name a successor (as was his right) and as a result, division began to appear. At the same time several members of the Nederlanden who had managed to go into hiding now emerged and began to call for the union of Flanders and Holland, and once again several ministers who were Nederlanden began to work to convince William V to take up their cause once more. At the same time and persuaded by Frederick August I - in the midst of his War of Consolidation in the Empire, Charles IV of Spain began offering William V substantial subsidies to allow him to expand the army under de Waard which was returning from the Republic's only police action in the German War. The Nederlanden movement gained a public face with the chairmanship of Hubert van der Klis, a prominent Fleming from Ostend who had been the man responsible for the Flemish West India Company's development. Van der Klis became the Nederlanden liason to William V purely because of the fact he hd many connections in Amsterdam. It was through van der Klis that William V began to consider unification. Realizing he would need a strong ally, William V traveled south to Barcelona to meet with Charles IV and on 24 July signed the Treaty of Barcelona which granted $400k ducats to the Dutch, as well as place a Spanish army of 300,000 and a fleet of 300 transports escorted by a fleet of 17 ships-of-the-line, 13 frigates, 8 sloops and 4 Man-of-Wars at the disposal of the Dutch king (though in reality they would answer only to Charles IV) in exchange for abandoning the convetions they had signed with Britain and France. The treaty was ratified by both parties on 27 July.
On the 30th, a massive Nederlanden-dominated Dutch army commanded by van der Klis marched into Flanders, in clear violation of the treaty which the Republic had signed with Britain and France. Van der Klis moved cautiously, unsure of what the French response would be to such a violation. But Charles IV, feeling no such reservations given that he still regarded the French 'betrayal' as a blemish on Bourbon family relations, showed little hesitation in sailing his fleet to the English Channel. Utilizing Dutch flags given to him by the Nederlanden, the Spanish fleet anchored off the coast at Ostend, and the troops under the command of Alejandro Castrillón began to besiege Antwerp. The Dutch army - numbering 270,000 men - advanced toward the Walloon frontier, but refrains from advancing further. The inhabitants of Antwerp remain steadfast in their determination to fight off the Spanish, but as the days turned into weeks,, the townspeople began to realize that they were running out of hope as well as food. To further demoralize them, the Nederlanden army reached Antwerp and joined the Spanish siege, but this move would have an unforseen consequence that would spell the end of Dutch independence.
In France, the reaction to the Spanish attack on Flanders and the return of the Nederlanden sent alarms through the Royal Court. Louis XVI sent a letter to Charles IV demanding to know why a Spanish army was in Flanders, but received no reply. The next day, he learned of the Nederlanden-Dutch Army massing on the Walloon frontier near Brussels. He ordered Dumouriez to mobilise 290,000 troops to march to Wallonia for the purpose of blocking any Dutch efforts to attack Brussels, but with no orders to go further. When they arrived on the 2nd of August, the Dutch army had already withdrawn to support the Spanish siege of Antwerp. Dumouriez pressed the king to allow him to cross into Flanders to break the siege. Louis XVI was unwilling to commit to such an endeavor without the support of Britain, which because of their concerns over Russian actions in the Baltic and Middle East, could not be given. Castrillon, not wanting to face a French attack while he was close to winning the siege, broke off 220,000 troops, joining 70,000 Nederlanden Dutch troops to them and sending them into Wallonia to face the French. On 7 August, the two armies met near Waterloo and in a seven-hour engagement the French were driven back to their defensive bastion of Lille. Meanwhile, a French squadron of 19 ships-of-the-line blockaded the Spanish fleet but thanks to the placement of gun batteries around Ostend, the Spanish drove the French fleet away with losses of 6 ships-of-the-line sunk and 2 so badly damaged they were abandoned and sunk shortly after. Dumouriez regrouped his army at Lille and advanced again into Wallonia, but at the Second Battle of Waterloo ( 15 August) were again defeated and driven back. This time the Hispano-Dutch army pursued them and laid siege to the great fort.
By the time of the Second Battle of Waterloo, Antwerp was collapsing as the inhabitants had been reduced to eating cats, dogs, rats, and sometimes even their own children. Castrillon now ordered an all-out attack on the city and after three days of intense fighting, on 18 August the city was occupied by the Spanish and Nederlanden Dutch armies. William V entered Antwerp on the 22nd and proclaimed the Union of Antwerp, placing the House of Orange as the new Grand Dukes and starting the process of unification between them. He also outlined his objective of forcing France to relinquish Wallonia. But even as he began to lay down the groundwork toward that goal, his ally Charles IV was already negotiating with Emperor Frederick August for a joint Imperial-Spanish invasion of the Dutch Republic with the twin goals of resturning the Low Countries to Imperial suzerainty and reestablishing Spanish administration in the region and thus reclaiming another portion of the old Spanish Empire. As the negotiations progressed, van der Klis was invited to Madrid to meet with the Spanish king-while in the presence of the Imperial ambassador-and pledged to him the governorship of the Low Countries under Spanish hegemony if he agreed to submit to Catholicism. He agreed and the Treaty of Toledo was signed on 28 August. Two days later, Castrillon betrayed William V.
William V had already begun to suspect the Spanish of ulterior motives even as he accepted their help in taking control of Flanders. Van der Klis had managed to assuage his concerns about the Spanish at the very moment when he was also receiving overtures from Frederick August I to bring both the Dutch Republic and Flanders back into the Empire as a guarantee against French retaliation. Behind the scenes, the Emperor and Spanish king had already decided the fate of both states. But as the Dutch Stadholder watched the increased activity on the border with the Empire and also watched the Spanish fortifying Flanders, he soon began to realize that he had been played by both parties. In vain he tried to convince van der Klis of the need to persuade Castrillon to leave Flanders to the Nederlanden garrisons already in place in Ostend and Antwerp. Before he could do so, at 5:30 am on the 30th, the Spanish army attacked the Nederlanden garrison in Ostend, inflcting casualties of up to 45,000 and driving out the rest. William V now readied his army, commanded once again by de Waard to march south to take on Castrillon's army. Van der Klis led his own army of Nederlanden from Antwerp to engage the Spanish, but soon found themselves facing de Waard's army of 145,000 four miles from Ostend. It was at this meeting that it soon became clear that van der Klis had in fact been paid by the Emperor to act independently of both the Spanish and William V, Castrillon had a larger army and was thus able to easily defeat van der Klis on several occasions. Van der Klis surrendered to Castrillon on 2 September after another defeat in which the Nederlanden army lost 15,000 killed and 13,900 captured. Castrillon spared van der Klis with the proviso that he swear allegiance to the King of Spain and convert to Catholicism-which he duly did. Meanwhile Frederick August I sent Bielski with his army to Friesland to threaten William V from the flank. He rushed to block Bielski, and in the Battle of the Frisian Isles (8 September), Bielski defeated William V's army and forced him to retreat to The Hague. Meanwhile, Castrillon marched his army north to Utrecht, and on 14 September defeated de Waard's army of 145,000 capturing 55,000 and killing 70,000. In an act of treachery, van der Klis managed to persuade the 55,000 POWs to switch sides with the aid of Spanish gold, and from this he began to rebuild his personal army. He also used the gold to convince many of the Nederlanden that their best hope of securing Flanders and Holland as Imperial fiefs was through a Spanish governer-general. Joining 90,000 of the most compliant Nederlanden with the 55,000 former POWs, van der Klis marched in parallel with Castrillon and put Amsterdam under siege. De Waard, rushing with the remnants of his army-60,000 in total-to the Hague to join William V's army of 175,000 for an attempt to break the siege and push the Spanish back. William V hoped to then either persuade van der Klis to renounce his Spanish collaboration or arrest the Nederlanden leader. The 235,000 strong army, receiving munitions and provisions from France and Denmark-Norway as a result of treaties signed on 24th and 27th September respectively marched on the 30th, seizing supply wagons bound for the Spanish army besieging Amsterdam. Van der Klis, reacting to this, marched to engage William V but was defeated on 3 October after attempting a nighttime attack which nonetheless killed 20,000 Dutch troops. He fell back on the Hague and called for Bieski to march in to destroy the Dutch army. Bielski marched across Friesland and began to hammer William V from the flank as he continued seizing the supplies from the Spanish. William V inflicted more defeats on van der Klis but could never bring him to end his collaborations with the Empire or Spain, and faced with Bielski pressing hard on his rear, he was forced to commit to the breaking of the siege of Amsterdam.
On 8 October, William V detached de Waard with 30,000 troops to harry the Spanish forces besieging the city-and it was hoped-draw Bielski's army away from his own flank and open him to an attack. De Waard's army attacked the Spanish positions on 11 October in a series of murderous hit-and-run strikes. While this did little to hamper the siege, the casualties among the engineers forced to shelter in half-dug defensive works did convince Castrillon to detach 30,000 to defend them. William V, seeing his chance, ordered de Waard to attack the 30,000, but in a two-hour battle the Dutch suffered a defeat when the Spanish cavalry charged into their flanks as they were closing on gaining a victory. De Waard himself was killed in the battle and his loss demoralized his troops to such a degree that many of the survivors chose to surrender rather than fight or flee. At a stroke, William V lost his best general and 1/3 of his total army. Van der Klis saw his chance and rushed his troops into battle. As the battle stretched into the night-lit by the furious cannon fire exchanged by both sides-neither side achieved a decisive advantage over the other. Castrillon kept the pressure on the city, sending sappers to dig mines beneath the walls even as his 12-pound guns punched holes in them. But with each breach, the Spanish assaults were repulsed with murderous desperation. On the morning of the 13th, Van der Klis finally managed to outflank William V and with Bielski now descending upon him from behind, the Dutch stadholder found his position perrilous. He tried to lead his troops into the city but in the confusion generated both by the North Sea fog which had descended upon them, and the thick smoke from the continuing cannon fire, the defenders mistook William V's army for a wing of the Spanish army and opened fire, with the Dutch stadholder barely escaping alive. He did manage to get his troops into the city, where they were spread out along the walls. On the night of the 14th, however, Spanish mines detonated beneath a section of the walls killed 7,000 troops and left a hole large enough for the Spanish cavalry to charge in. Castrillon had planned to send them in first to clear the way for the infantry to march in behind them and spread out into the city. Meanwhile, as various demoralized defenders began streaming out from the city, Bielski's army rounded them up, taking 200,000 POWs by 5 pm that same day. William V and his surviving army fought the Spanish in furious street-by-street battles which increasingly showed that despite the best Dutch tactics the Spanish tercios were still among the best ranked in Europe. As the enemmy drew closer to the town square, William V abandoned his position at the head of his army long enough to deliver his family to a waiting schooner flying the Spanish flag so as to slip through the blockade the Spanish fleet had imposd on the port. This schooner, after receiving the family members of House Orange, slipped out and made for the British port of Dover. Finally, on 17 October, with most of the city now in Spanish hands and the port all but destroyed, William V, his surviving troops and those among the civilians determined to fight gathered in the town square and for 11 hours managed to repulse the Spanish attacks before diminishing munitions supplies, no food or water and low morale finally took their toll. William V was shot in the leg while on his horse trying to rally his men and fell from the saddle. Before he could be rescued, Spanish marines captured him and brought him back to Castrillon's camp in irons. This was the moment the Dutch broke, and in small groups, began throwing down their arms and surrendering to the Spanish. Castrillon negotiated a ceasefire which took effect on the 20th as William V was conveyed via frigate to Spain for final negotiations with Charles IV.
For the next several days, both on the frigate and in Madrid, William V was treated with some honor and respect by the Spanish. On 23 October he was brought to the Escorial to meet with Charles IV. At first the meeting went well, as Charles IV showed himself to be gracious to his defeated enemy. But as negotiations continued, Charles IV revealed that both the Republic and Flanders-now that they had been joined in personal union-would now be joined to the Spanish crown. Willian V protested, stating the Dutch would not submit to Spanish rule again, still remembering the Spanish Fury of the 1560s under Philip II. When Charles retorted that they would if William signed an abdication edict naming himself as successor and appointing both Castrillon and van der Klis as co-regents. William refused the terms and would languish for several days in a Madrid dungeon. He was starved and often subjected to ridicule by his guards before being handed to the Inquisition. After days of ceaseless torture designed to force him both to capitulate to the Spanish Empire and convert to Catholicism, William V died** on 5 November. Charles IV thus appointed himself the new stadholder and true to his word, appointed both van der Klis and Castrillon as co-regents. News of the death of their stadholder and the self-appointment of the Spanish king enraged the population with even the Nederlanden outraged their leader had handed the country to Spain so easily. On 3 December, days after the assumption of the regency, Nederlanden, Dutch and Flemish civilians in the towns and ports joined with the Archbishop of Antwerp (formerly of Liege, and with his political power greatly reduced) in an uprising against the Spanish. Van der Klis tried to reign in his Nederlanden with promises of political positions, military commissions and money, but they rejected him as a sellout to Charles IV. They denounced him, removed him from leadership in the Nederlanden and placed a bounty on him amounting to $200K ducats, forcing him to try and flee into the Holy Roman Empire for refuge. Bielski captured him and brought him back to Amsterdam, where he was stripped of his co-regal position by Castrillon. At the same time, Bielski marched his army into the province and crushed the uprising, capturing or killing every member of the Nederlanden in the process and pacifying the region. Castrillon, no longer seeing any further use for van der Klis, had him executed by firing squad on 14 December, bringing the Dutch-Spanish War and the Nederlanden to an end. While Castrillon began to consolidate Spanish administration in the Low Countries and began planning the conquest of Wallonia, however, the House of Orange continued to denounce the Spanish from their sanctuary of London, and the seeds of the Great Restoration Wars were planted, to bear fruit years later.
Phase Two: Conclusion
By the start of 1800, the revolutionary regimes in Russia, Saxony, Hungary and Spain had reached or were on the cusp of reaching their maximum territorial extent. They were aided both by the half-hearted efforts of their neighbors in trying to form coalitions to oppose them, and to the often brutal means by which their war-machines were kept fully intact. Forced conscription in Russia and Saxony allowed both nations to achieve their objectives fairly quickly, with Russia creating the Principality of Byzantium after the Fall of Constantinople and Saxony acquiring the Polish Crown and forming the Union of Saxony-Poland a short time later, as well as attaining the Imperial title usurping the Wittelsbachs in so doing. Hungary had not only restored those western Balkan lands they had briefly ruled in the last war, but had recreated the Hungarian Empire of Matthias Corvinus with the conquest of Vienna from the Hapsburgs. Prussia, which had tried to take advantage of Frederick August I's efforts to consolidate his authority in the Empire and regain Berlin and Brandenburg instead got further reduced in territory with the cession of West Prussia to Saxon-ruled Poland and the recession of the electoral dignity Frederick William III held. Adam Casimir, whose crown was usurped by the Saxons, continued to rule in Lithuania in a Commonwealth of (Poland)-Lithuania which was under the protection of Sweden. Novgorod had nearly all of its territory seized by Russia, with their capital now under siege even while Konstantin I continued his campaigns in the Middle East and began looking to open a new war against the Mongol Khaganate in the east. The Ottoman sultan, with the loss of Constantinople, Mesopotamia (to the Russian satellite state of Sumeria) and the western Balkans to Hungary, and an uncertain hold over the rest of their European territories, was already contemplating forging an entente with their other major rival Persia in an effort to better combat the Russian invasion, which was drawing closer to the new capital Ankara every other month. For the Dutch, their hopes of netting Flanders had been used against them with the result that both were now once again part of the Spanish Empire, and their colonies were now vulnerable to not only Spanish efforts to integrate them into the Greater Empire, but also to British, French, American and even Zulu efforts to seize them. Within a short period of time after the Fall of Amsterdam and the conquest of the Republic, their most prosperous southern African colony, Suidafrika, was already being eyed by both Britain and the expanding Zulu Empire (both would sign treaties dividing the Dutch colony between them), and their outpost in Taiwan would become a prize in a threeway struggle between the Dutch, the Spanish and the Manchu Empire of China-with the establishment of a Ming breakaway state adding a fourth rival for the island.
But even as Spain was working to integrate the former Dutch colonies into its empire overseas, the Second Tejas Rebellion, continuing conflicts with the Mayan Republic and the increasing imperial designs of the Kingdom of America forced Charles IV to commit on more than one front. Taxation increased in Spain which angered the various state cortes of the former kingdoms of Aragon, Catalonia, Portugal and Navarre-suppressed with increasing brutality by majority Castilian soldiers. Russia, too, faced economic shortfall brought about by the commitment of so many able-bodied men to so many fronts at once, and increasingly, they began to rely on pillaging, scavenging, and extortion of the lands they occupied to keep their economy afloat and their troops well-fed. Hungary fared somewhat better thanks to an agreement extracted from the Venetians granting them rights in all the Adriatic ports as well as freedom of navigation in the aforementioned sea. Saxony used their new Polish acquisition as a source of easy plunder, stripping the magnates of half their wealth in order to maintain their armies, being used to continue consolidating their hold on the Imperial title. Resentments continued to increase as the middle-rank states and Imperial Knights felt threatened by the Saxons, who intended to turn the Empire into a unitary empire under their rule. The period 1795-1800 was therefore the point at which the forces opposing the revanchist designs of the revolutionary powers began to coalesce, and while it would take some time until the firestorm broke loose across the Peninsula of Europe and the world at large, the match had been lit and awaited only to be tossed into the gasoline-soaked geopolitical landscape.
* The Empire of Danubia would be a title later used with the peaceful union of the kingdoms of Austria and Hungary. This would elevate the Kingdom of Austria into an empire and create roughly the same division of power between Austria and Hungary that were created IOTL with the ausgleich of 1867
** William V would abdicate as Stadholder in 1795 as a result of the French invasion and annexation as the Batavian Republic. He would remain Prince of the principality of Orange-Nassau until his death in 1806 OTL. ITTL, his death at the hands of Spanish inquisitors will allow for an early assumption of power by his young son William VI. Later he would be elevated to king when the Dutch Republic established a new constitution creating a monarchy. IOTL, William VI became William I of the Kingdom of the United Netherlands, but in this alternate timeline, the Flemmings would be too protective of their sovereignty to allow for a permanent union of Flanders and Holland, plus Wallonia would remain united with France.
Source:
Wikipedia
Europe: A History - Norman Davies
Pursuit of Glory - Tim Blanning