alternatehistory.com

OTL
Despite wasting fortunes and human resources building Versailles, in outrageous parties lasting several days, clothing, jewels, clocks, funrniture, uprooting and transporting huge trees across France to plant them in Versailles, in unporductive wars with the Netherlands, A-H, England,, Spain, etc, Louis IX had the strongest army and for a while the strongest navy in Europe, but he used them dismally.

His army invaded the Netherlands rapidly, completely surprising and overwhleming Dutch forces. However, he stopped in the middle of the invasion to negotiate, enabling the Dutch to rally, deploy strong forces, secure alliances, flood the fields and stop the invasion, inflicting great losses and expenses on France and forcing Pouis to sue for peace.

Although he inherited New France and received Louisiana, he did not settle or develop his huge colonies nor built a large number of shipyards to boost his navy and merchant fleet with the abundant lumber of his colonies, preferring to waste his time, ships, men and fortune in Europe and building all his ships in France, where timber was scarce, so he had to import it from Scandinavia, etc, to build the largest navy in the world in a few years, only in France.

His long and costly European wars and his alliance with the remote Ottoman Empire, ruined all Europe and fostered Muslim piracy and domination of N Africa, the Balkans, etc,

ATL
Louis IX realizes in 1660 that fighting strong armies in Europe, over crowded territories is much less productive than seizing and settling remote, sparsely populated and primitive nations.

In order to rapidly develop the colonies, he offers free passage to all European, Irish, English and Scottish settlers to his colonies, work building towns, shipyards, ships, roads, logging, clearing stumps for orchards and farmland, producing pemmican, salted cod, mining, etc, inexpensive land and strong armed forces to prevent Indian attacks.

He cancels the Ottoman alliance and urges Russia, Persia, Poland-Lithuania, Austria and Spain to form a coalition and fight the Ottomans, while he develops his colonies and expands his fleet, trade and economy. If Russia, Persia and Poland-Lithuania invade Romania, Bulgaria, Anatolia, Syria, Mesopotamia, etc, while Spain and Austria invade Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Greece, etc, piracy will be greatly reduced and the Ottoman Empire will soon collapse. France will sell cannon, munitions, etc, to Persia, Poland-Lithuania, etc, if they need them.

Louis signs 10-year non aggression pacts with England, Spain-Portugal, Russia, Austria, Poland Lithuania and Sweden.

Louis lures and hires the best ship designers and builders, wrought iron industrials, machine and gun designers, farmers, inventors, chemists, physicists, mathematicians, engineers, physicians, naturalists, etc, from the Ottoman Empire, Netherlands, England, Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Denmark, Japan, China, etc, and builds huge wind-driven sawmills and shipyards in all his territories with lumber. So that his industry, agriculture, merchant fleet and then his navy grow at an unprecedented rate and with ships of unprecedented size and speed.

By 1669, there are hundreds of thousands of Europeans in French colonies (even Spaniards, Englishmen, Portuguese and Dutch immigrants flock to French colonies with free passage and plenty of
jobs, rather than to their own colonies, having to pay expensive passage and with few jobs on arrival). Louis operates over 200 shipyards worldwide.

Louis occupies practically unpopulated Palawan and offers an alliance to the Netherlands, in order to invade together and share Formosa, Okinawa, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea and Manchuria.

The Netherlands agree to invade together valuable Formosa, which soon falls to a large Franco-Dutch fleet, transporting 15,000 French troops and 5,000 Dutch troops. However, France settled and develops his half much faster than the Netherlands do.

France then invades tiny, strategically located Okinawa, with better climate than Formosa and Japan. Then Louis invades Kyushu with a huge fleet and issues an ultimatum to Japan, whose small, obsolete fleet and army are no match for their French counterparts. Japan complies with the ultimatum and becomes a French colony, which soon thrives with shipyards, silk production, etc, for the French market.
Large numbers of Japanese recruits are trained and armed and with French officers, invade Vietnam, then Cambodia and Thailand and finally, also with Vietnamese and Thai troops, they invade coastal and riperian China.

By the time the non aggression pacts lapse, the French navy, merchant fleet, industry, agriculture and army are truly formidable.
Top