The rebellion ended because the British promised responsible government, because the leaders were executed as a deterrent (soaking off all but the most radical rebels) and because most British North Americans realized they don't want to be ruled by France. And despite the enlarged populace of New France, British North America still has a far higher population in the late 18th century (2.5 million vs 500.000 or so). And lastly, the United States are indeed never formed.
In the meantime, I've concluded the final update. Sorry it took so long, but I was on vacation. I've decided not to take it to the present day, but have instead chosen to bring France to its apogee. Francophiles and Francophobes alike may speculate about the future of the Empire...
Chapter IX: The Empire, 1787-1860.
King Louis XVII came out of the war as the victor. He waged no further major wars until his death in 1801, aged 66, because of the economic crisis caused by the failed harvest and the plague outbreak. Morale was low and the country was war weary, and like his father Louis XVII also realized his dependence on the masses and their fickle nature. Besides, certain groups were clamouring for more reforms. Louis XVII’s reign had been eventful: he had waged a long but ultimately victorious war, had established France as the dominant power in India, and had continued the reforms of his father.
He was succeeded by his son King Philip VII of France, the first King since 1613 that didn’t bear the name Louis. The 29 year-old King was deeply interested in science and technology and in that regard he was living in interesting times. France’s dominance in India for one allowed the import of tremendous amounts of cotton and other textiles, which prompted advances in weaving and spinning technology in order to process these volumes: the flying shuttle, for example, doubled the output of a weaver; spinning frames with multiple spindles addressed the imbalance between spinning and weaving; eventually, in the 1790s, the cotton gin increased productivity of removing seed from cotton by a factor of fifty while the power loom increased the output of a worker by a factor of forty. In the meantime, the efficiency of steam engines increased so that they used between one-fifth and one-tenth as much fuel. The adaptation of stationary steam engines to rotary motion made them suitable for industrial uses; the high pressure engine had a high power to weight ratio, making it suitable for transportation. Steam power underwent a rapid expansion after 1800. As for metallurgy, the substitution of coke for charcoal greatly lowered the fuel cost for pig iron and wrought iron production. Using coke also allowed larger blast furnaces, resulting in economies of scale. The cast iron blowing cylinder was first used in 1760. It was later improved by making it double acting, which allowed higher furnace temperatures. The puddling process produced a structural grade iron at a lower cost than the finery forge. The rolling mill was fifteen times faster than hammering wrought iron. Hot blast (1828) greatly increased fuel efficiency in iron production in the following decades.
Philip VII actively supported these technological innovations with royal finances, in part also to surpass the innovations taking place in Great Britain at the same time. The most famous example of royal patronage was Jacques Bonné (born in 1777). Utilizing advances in metallurgy and steam power, as well as building on the examples of locomotives in Britain, he managed to miniaturize steam engines to a practical size for a transportation machine. Bonné was the son of a successful lawyer and therefore a member of the bourgeoisie, enabling him to attend the Sorbonne in Paris. Rather than attending law school, as his family wished, he pursued a degree in engineering and became an inventor, with most of his inventions not panning out. In 1802, he had the fortune of meeting the new young new King (who was of the same generation) when his father received the title of baron for his services to the crown. After that, he could use the noble prefix and call himself Jacques de Bonné. His invention was a barrel-shaped vehicle with a chimney that used steam to power pistons which in turn powered pairs of flanged wheels along two smooth metal bars called chemins de fer in French and “railways” in English. Thanks to royal support his first prototype was demonstrated in 1804 and achieved a top speed of 22 km/h; in later trails the same prototype dragged behind it wagons with a load of up to 25 tonnes of coal at a top speed of 7 km/h.
King Philip VII saw great potential, repeating De Bonné’s words against sceptics: “my machine will never suffer from fatigue or old age and it will never require sleep. Once perfected, my locomotives will replace horses as the main mode of transportation across long distances.” De Bonné was right and the King’s faith in him was not misplaced. He continued his work on his locomotive, building larger, more powerful machines capable of greater speed and able to haul heavier loads. In 1820, a rail line was opened between the Palace of Versailles and the TuileriesPalace in Paris and a royal carriage was designed for the King to transport him at a top speed of 30 km/h, covering the distance of ~ 15 kilometres in about half an hour. Jacques de Bonné, considered the father of the French railways, was given the title of viscount. By 1835, the amount of track had increases from 15 km to 480 km and by the time of De Bonné’s death at the age of 85 in 1862 it had increased to 10.000 kilometres.
The advances in technology all came together in the province of Liège (the former Prince-Bishopric annexed in 1787). The areas around the cities of Liège and Charleroi were very rich in coal and by the 1820s they were dotted with coke blast furnaces as well as puddling and rolling mills. The region of Wallonia (roughly comprising Artois, Walloon Flanders, Cambrai, Hainaut, Namur, Liège, and Luxembourg) experienced a huge industrial development based on coal-mining and steel industry. Zinc factories, textile industry, glass industry and weapons manufacturing also emerged here as secondary industries. A second area that saw major industrialization in the early 19th century was the area around Briey and Longwy, where reserves of coal and iron ore were to be found. French industry engaged in a fierce competitive struggle with British industry.
In 1822, a war erupted when King Edward of Hanover died in an unfortunate riding accident and left the throne to his younger brother Ernest Augustus I, which provoked a Prussian response again. Queen Charlotte of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland had no children and, given that she was almost 56, was never going to have any at this point. This meant the throne would fall to Ernest Augustus I and restore the personal union between Great Britain and Hanover. King Frederick William III demanded that Ernest Augustus I renounced his rights to the British throne or that Hanover changed its electoral laws to allow Edward’s infant daughter Victoria to ascend the throne. It was rather hypocritical since the last time they went to war was to ensure Hanover left its succession laws unaltered. King of Prussia Frederick William III, the successor of Frederick William II, was a post-Enlightenment era romantic German nationalist and didn’t care about the hypocrisy if it brought German unification closer.
A parallel war took place in the Balkans where Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bavaria Maximilian VI and Tsar Paul I had joined forces against the Ottoman Empire. Bavaria only had a very tiny outlet into the Adriatic Sea and could easily be cut off from naval commerce, which was much more profitable than overland trade due to all the tariffs of the larger and smaller states in the Holy Roman Empire. Russia’s war goal was to conquer Wallachia and Moldova, and more if at all possible. France supported the Ottomans, making Britain a cobelligerent of Russia and Bavaria.
The alliance of Britain, Bavaria and Russia against France, Prussia and the Ottoman Empire was soon shattered by a series of stunning French victories on the battlefield in Germany. The commander of the French was a military genius known as General Napoleone di Buonaparte, a Corsican who had risen through the ranks by virtue of his brilliance as a commander rather than his birth. His father Carlo Buonaparte had assisted the French in squashing Corsican opposition to their rule and had been raised to minor nobility in return. Napoleone was not the oldest son and would therefore not inherit his father’s title and estate, so he joined the army in the hopes of a good career there. Initially his prospects were limited since high ranks were reserved for the sons of counts and dukes, who taunted him at the military academy for his strong Italian accent and inability to properly spell in French. As a result of the taunting Napoleone withdrew and read a lot about Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne and Louis XIV as well as philosophical works ranging from Plato to Voltaire. He struggled to rise through the ranks, being forced to work hard and put in more effort than others because he lacked the fortune of having a duke or a count for a father.
In 1823, he squashed an army assembled by various north German states to resist Prussian domination in the Battle of Celle, brilliantly emulating Hannibal’s strategy at the Battle of Cannae. Using speed and surprise, several more stunning victories followed, after which the French turned south to deal with a Bavarian army advancing northward. It was defeated by Di Buonaparte in the Battle of Frankfurt, who then went to the Balkans with an army of 90.000 Frenchmen. In a seemingly superhuman feat he defeated the numerically superior Bavarian and Russian armies, which together numbered a quarter of a million men (with Ottoman auxiliaries). He did so be relying on speed and by engaging the two before their armies could converge, first routing the Bavarians at Sarajevo before halting the Russian in the Battle of Pleven. It allowed the Ottomans to squash an uprising led by the governor of Egypt.
Quite extraordinarily, Di Buonaparte was given the title of duke for his exceptional performance as a commander. After the war, he served as Minister of War and wrote extensively, becoming an influential military theoretician who is still read today, especially in France. He died in 1850 at the age of 81 while still in office, carrying out military reforms. He had always been excellent in his application of mathematics and applied that to the navy, though he was no navy man.
With the enemies of France smashed as well as dazed and confused over the swiftness of France’s battlefield successes, they quickly agreed to a peace treaty. The 1825 Treaty of Amiens stipulated that the few small remaining independent states in the Rhineland were annexed by France. Much more revolutionary, however, was what happened in Germany, where the Prussian-Bavarian dualism ended with a division of Germany between them. The river Main was used as the border: everything north of it was annexed by Prussia, forming a protestant north German state, and everything south of it was annexed by Bavaria, creating a Catholic south German state. As far as the Balkans went, things returned to a status quo ante bellum peace due to French support for the Sublime Porte; that support would come at a price.
The French price was North Africa. On paper Egypt was transformed from a province to an autonomous vassal under Ottoman suzerainty, but in practice Egypt now became a part of France’s sphere of influence. Ottoman suzertainty over Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia had been a fiction for much longer than that; everybody just kept up appearances. Now, however, these distant vassals of the Porte were turned over to a master that kept them at a much tighter leash and was able as well as willing to apply the lash to punish disobedience.
Slaves were not taken though: France abolished the practice in 1838, which didn’t diminish the prosperity of the predominantly Huguenot planters in New France. Its wealth only increased with industrialization in the shape of railways and the appearance of cotton mills. The French colony expanded westwards toward the Pacific coast of North America in the hopes of discovering gold, which wasn’t found in substantial quantities. Coal was present in large quantities and discoveries of silver, copper, zinc and iron were made as well, aiding in industrialization. India barely industrialized because it served as a source of resources for French industry and as a market for finished products from the motherland. Indian cotton in combination with New France’s cotton also helped make France the world’s leading cotton producer. The Indian market was shielded from the products of other countries by high tariff walls (to the point that maintaining their few trade posts cost other European countries, Britain and the Netherlands, so much money it was barely profitable). The centrepiece linking the France’s North American and Indian holdings was North Africa and particularly Egypt, where construction on a canal began in 1840. It would cut travel time from France to India from up to sixteen weeks to half that. With that France expanded its influence over Southeast Asia (Burma, Siam, Malay and Indochina) and butted heads with Qing China. In 1840 China was defeated easily and the Qing dynasty embarked on the road to modernization, learning from the lesson of Japan which had been forced to grant various concessions to France after the Franco-Japanese War (1835-1837), followed by other European powers. Telegraph lines connected the various colonies of France.
France and Great Britain were headed for one final confrontation. Philip VII’s grandson King Louis XIX, who ascended the throne after Louis XVIII’s short reign, engaged in colonial conflict. He thought France had a better claim on the Horn of Africa and Aden than the British did and decided to declare war, convinced he could win through his new ironclads. In 1842, French shipyards had launched La Gloire and La Foi, the world’s first two ironclad ships of the line and the first to be equipped with explosive projectiles rather than regular cannonballs. The French navy and the Royal Navy fought in the Battle of Cotentin Peninsula and the latter suffered a devastating defeat, enabling France to land an invasion force. With French dragoons in Kent, Great Britain surrendered in 1845 and had to accept limitations on the size of its navy and merchant fleet while surrendering Aden and the Horn of Africa to France. With Britain relegated to a secondary status, France further expanded its empire, dominating Africa down to the Congo River by the early twentieth century; by then it ruled a quarter of the world’s population and also about a quarter of the Earth’s surface. By 1860 already France’s merchant fleet was two thirds of the world’s merchant fleet, making France the most dominant economic power ever seen. Territorially it was not the largest empire the world had ever seen (not yet), but by 1860 the French Empire was so powerful that it was simply referred to as “the Empire”, being the only empire that really mattered.
