Cinco de Mayo

[KingSweden24]

"...it is hard to overstate the impact that both the Jed Ford Uprising as well as the Tar Heel Rebellion would have on the Confederacy. The Southern newspapers were generally much more subdued when it came to criticism of the political class, for a variety of reasons, but conspiratorial musings about "Negro barbarism" and the Yankee Menace sold copies. Newspapers sympathetic to the Davis administration gleefully reveled in reports of Forrest's debauchery at the Memphis Massacre and egged on "Richmond Regulars" as they besieged Raleigh to the shock and horror of state officials from the Arizona Territory to Florida. The animosity between Jefferson Davis, with less than two years left in his single six-year term, and Zeb Vance became a blood feud after two dozen of the Tar Heelers were left dead in Raleigh as Longstreet swept through the city to clear out the ragtag but peaceful rebels. Despite political alliances being largely informal and based on antebellum connections, the two violent events in the spring of 1866 would define Confederate culture for the next half century, all the way up to and through the Great War. Elections in the CSA would from then on be politics of personality and, in many cases, violence; Nathan Forrest went overnight from being a respected but largely unknown cavalry officer to a swaggering, blood-soaked hero who had done near Memphis what his idol Andrew Jackson had done in the Seminole Wars. Similarly, Vance's ideological misgivings about the ineptitude of Davis's centralized, hostile government run essentially in absentia by slaveholders far from Richmond only hardened and memories of bodies spread across Raleigh's streets, gunned down in many cases by men who had served alongside the dead in the War of Independence, were long and not particularly forgiving..."

The Rapprochement Era in the Confederacy, 1863-1881 (Harvard University, 1967)

 

[KingSweden24]

"...as tensions rose between Berlin and Vienna, Napoleon III was left with a conundrum - he feared, emphatically, the growing power of Prussia on his borders, and was aligned in large part with the Hapsburgs. Though an Anglophile, Napoleon found Britain unamenable to his interests in an anti-Prussian alliance meant to forestall a united Germany, by now seen as an inevitability; Britain had remained skeptical of upsetting the continental balance of power since the Congress of Vienna and, with its strong Navy, was uninterested in adventurism upon the continent. And, to the same effect, many in the government of Lord Russell were still frustrated by France's decision to aggressively intervene in the War of Confederate Independence, despite their sympathy for the Southern cause, as it had endangered Britain's relationship with the United States.

Complicating matters for Paris was Napoleon's close relationship with Vienna as well as his patronage of the Papal States' independence, which made his position in a united Italy uneasy. Hoping to take advantage of what was expected to be a long, drawn-out war between Prussia and Austria - considered inevitable as relations soured between the two German hegemons - Napoleon signed a secret treaty with Austria guaranteeing territorial concessions in return for France's neutrality in a war Austria was, wrongly, expected to win."

- The Unification Wars

 

[KingSweden24]

"...at the outset of the Second Unification War, Austria would have been said to command a substantial advantage in pure numbers. However, the entry of Italy into the conflict in Venetia substantially complicated matters for Vienna, which was alarmed by the sudden advance of Prussian troops through Saxony. As von Moltke split up his armies in a daring move to bring the war to a quick end, Austria's leaders struggled to develop the right response..."

- The Unification Wars

 

[KingSweden24]

"...Austria's hopes to fight a two-front war and delay a victory by the Prussian-Italian alliance faltered with defeat at Custoza. Despite eliminating one of the split Prussian armies in Saxony - von Moltke's Folly, as it would later be called - the decisive loss on June 24 required Prince Albrecht to abandon Verona and retreat hastily towards Padua, in hopes of regrouping his forces. The surprising defeat also led France to begin to doubt the ability of her friends in Vienna to grind out a strategic victory. As the Venetian Army collapsed before Italy's throughout late June and Alfonso La Marmora's forces marched aggressively eastwards, Napoleon III began to wonder about the efficacy of playing peacemaker and finding the best possible position in the post-war order..."

- Jean -Albert Troufant, Italy Reborn (1961)

 

[KingSweden24]

"...with their superior training and tactics, Prussia could likely have won a more decisive victory at Sadowa and left the path to Vienna wide open, had one of their armies not been eliminated in the week beforehand. However, the tactically muddled result was still a long-term strategic win by Prussia. With their salient in Italy collapsing by early July and Padua and Venice under threat by advancing Italians, the Austrians began to debate a way to end the war in a face-saving manner. A second battle near Sadowa on July 6, also a tactical draw, resulted in the bloodied Austrians withdrawing southwards to better defend Prague and Vienna, and on July 10 Padua fell under siege by an Italian Army. France's neutrality was now standing to benefit Prussia more than Austria, and the likelihood of Russian intervention looked increasingly low..."

- Francis Joseph: Emperor of Austria (1932)

 

[KingSweden24]

"Bismarck had a new crisis at hand in Berlin to extinguish, however, as Austria's armies engaged in an aggressive retreat through Bohemia: he had succeeded in his aim to win the war, for that was inevitable at this point, but he had failed in his efforts to create a decisive win that would end the war immediately. Prussia's armies continued to bleed even as they advanced, and Austria's situation became more dire even as she managed sporadic tactical victories throughout July and into early August. Italy would now clearly earn itself Venetia, that much was clear; and Vienna's position in Germany would never be paramount again. But now Bismarck struggled with a King, Wilhelm, who grew increasingly ambitious in terms of what he wanted the postwar European order to look like with each day, and pressure mounting from France for concessions in return for its continued neutrality. The dam finally broke on July 28, when an armistice was agreed upon - by Austria and Italy, brokered by Napoleon's foreign ministers. From here on out, Prussia would fight Austria and her South German allies alone..."

- Iron and Blood: The Wars of German Unification (1999)

 

[KingSweden24]

Peace of Prague (English Wikipedia Entry)

The Peace of Prague was a (German: Prager Frieden) was a peace treaty signed by the Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Empire at Prague on 2 September 1866. In combination with the treaties of Prussia and several south - and central German states it effectively ended the Second Unification War.

The treaty was lenient toward the Austrian Empire because Otto von Bismarck had persuaded Wilhelm I that maintaining Austria's place in Europe would be better in the future for Prussia than harsh terms, as Bismarck realized that without Austria, Prussia would be weakened in a relatively hostile Europe. At first, Wilhelm I had wanted to push on to Vienna and annex Austria but Bismarck stopped him, even threatening to resign, and, more drastically, to hurl himself out of the fourth story window of Nikolsburg Castle. Austria lost Veneto, ceded to Italy, and was forced to pay an indemnity to Italy as well. The Habsburgs were permanently excluded from German affairs (Kleindeutschland). The Kingdom of Prussia thus established itself as the only major power among the German states. The German Confederation was abolished. The North German Confederation had been formed as a military alliance two weeks prior to the Peace of Prague, with the north German states joining together; the Southern German states outside of the Confederation were required to pay large indemnities to Prussia.

 

[KingSweden24]

"...but what would have happened, had Benedek not eliminated the First Army before the pyrrhic holding of Sadowa? Prussian reinforcements would have dealt a decisive blow to Austrian forces, surely, not just thanks to numerical advantages but technological and tactical ones as well. By August, Prussia's logistical advantages were starting to reveal themselves. A more rapid advance by her forces would have been a disaster. We could have a seen a united Germany years earlier - it was known that Wilhelm I desired to annex Bohemia, and was only persuaded otherwise by a Bismarck who sought to maximize Prussia's geopolitical position more so than to embarrass the Hapsburgs. What would have happened, had the path to Vienna been wide open? Could Italy have taken Trieste and Dalmatia then, too? Would France have intervened to keep the balance of power fully intact? Would Russia have used this opportunity to seize Galicia and build an even greater Polish buffer on its west? Benedek's decision may[1], indeed, have rescued Austria from the ash-heaps of history... and changed the course of Europe's geography forever."

- Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria (1932)

[1] Inspired by the work of Vidal on TLs such as Simba Roars and Passkey Down, i'll start inserting footnotes to justify my decisions or discuss research I've done. It should be pointed out that Benedek did indeed not act decisively before Sadowa in OTL when he could have taken out smaller Prussian armies one by one with his numerically superior Nord-Armee. Of course, the alt-Austro-Prussian War in TTL winds up with the same strategic end result, more or less, as our own; however, Prussia suffers more battlefield losses and Italy captures Venetia straight up, rather than having to be gifted it by the French in a "plebiscite."

 

[KingSweden24]

"Despite brokering the Peace of Prague, Napoleon III left the table in September of 1866 empty handed and outraged. His allies in Italy had succeeded in securing Venetia, and Prussia now dominated all of Northern Germany and had cowed the south German states into uneasy alliance. Austria, whom Napoleon had guaranteed neutrality to, had signed the treaty in disgust, having acquitted themselves well on the battlefields of Bohemia before their position was clear, and now shut out of both Italy and Germany, long their spheres of foreign policy interest. A weak Austria, bordering on collapse and ruined financially by the war, its losses and the indemnity it was to pay Italy, was no good for Napoleon, who now saw a decline in influence in Italy, where Victor Emanuel now had his eyes upon Rome, defended largely by French garrisons; and now Russia, cordial with the Prussians, saw opportunities in Galicia. More than anything, though, the seismic changes in Central Europe were at the whims of the Emperor's ego; he had received nothing in return for staying out of a war that now had a potential new hegemon on his borders, and his ambitions along the Rhine and in the Low Countries remained unabated. Fuming and embarrassed by Bismarck's refusal to countenance any prize [1], Napoleon's attention was already focused on making sure the next crisis - for there would surely be another - ended to his advantage."

- Consolidated History of the Second French Empire, Volume I (1945)

[1] Bismarck famously boxed out Napoleon's requests for Mayence or Luxembourg as a reward for neutrality in OTL. Despite Prussia having taken heavier losses, TTL, I don't see why he wouldn't do the same here seeing as Austria is in a weaker position, too.

 

[KingSweden24]

"The Peace of Prague may indeed have left Europe even more vulnerable to the next great war that would occur within a mere six months; France's ambitions were unsatisfied, Austria was humiliated and eager for revenge, and Prussia's longstanding goals were finally within reach. The tinder was even drier than before, needing only a little spark. Even more dangerously, Italy was left unsatisfied by the Roman Question, and with Venetia now in its hands and relations with Prussia cordial, the need for Victor Emanuel to align with France was diminishing. And in the East, Russia regarded Prussia as an ally against Polish nationalism and viewed Austria as its primary foe in her Pan-Slavic irredentism.

Prague had not brought a peace at the level of Vienna... it had merely bought Europe time."

- The Unification Wars

 

[KingSweden24]

"If one can say that Horatio Seymour had one enormous blind spot, politically, it was his belief that the American public was more satisfied with peace than stewing over anger at the humiliating terms of the Havana Conference. Popular discontent throwing out Abraham Lincoln had not led immediately to assent to his administration's agenda beyond Alaska. And a new power center had emerged following the war - an independent military. With tensions high with Britain, and fears of deepening ties between Mexico, the Confederacy and France, Seymour's push to wind down the military after the war had been blocked by the Republican Senate, which called for a standing army for the first time in the history of the Republic and to professionalize the armed forces to avoid the same embarrasments that had plagued the Union's war effort. To the shock of Seymour, the public was largely behind this effort, backed by the unlikely alliance of Northern newspapers and what became known as the "Naval lobby" - shipbuilders and merchants who viewed an enlarged Navy, particularly with ironclads, as an important bulwark in a world where the Great Powers, specifically Britain and France, no longer honored the Monroe Doctrine. The Russian Imperial Navy's wintering in the ports of San Francisco and New York gave many a close view to what a potential blue-water navy could look like, and many - including ardent abolitionist John C. Fremont - wanted to build a navy that could and would rival that of Royal Navy and defend both of America's coasts. The Naval Question came to dominate the 1866 elections, and the Republican Party had its new critical issue, in addition to abolishing slavery within the Union as well. Seymour's allies in Congress suffered defeats, as the Republicans grew their Senate majority once again, retook numerous state legislatures and came close to flipping the House of Representatives.

The era of national campaigns had arrived."

- Seymour: Profile of a Forgotten President

 

[KingSweden24]

"...in his memoirs, Longstreet expressed considerable regret regarding the Battle of Raleigh and the way it wounded the Confederacy. He would consult often with Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jackson regarding the events of 1866, and Lee encouraged him at one point to consider seeking the Presidency in 1867; both were alarmed by Nathan Forrest's meteoric rise as a figure in the debt-crippled postwar Confederacy. "It is perhaps unwise, dear James, to see such a figure come to influence in Richmond. Napoleonic in his ambitions, it will make rapprochement all the more difficult."

The Davis administration remained locked in a power struggle both with Congress and creditors in London that fall, aggressively resisting efforts to raise tariffs in order to produce enough revenue to pay its debts. By the end of the year, with essentially only twelve months left in his single term, Davis had ceased to carry any authority in Richmond; his greatest personal embarrassment occurred on November 30, 1866, when his veto of a small tariff was overridden by a coalition of both pro and anti-administration members of Congress. Davis would spend the next six months at home in Mississippi, allegedly sick for many of them, six months in which no legislation was signed and two vacancies on the Confederate Supreme Court went effectively unfilled - the Absent President became his nickname in his last year in office, and due to Alexander Stephens' often ill-health, it fell to Postmaster General John Reagan to often manage the affairs of government. His competency made him the ideal candidate for such a role, to the point that Senators would quip at social gatherings that one barely noticed that the President was missing..."

The Rapprochement Era in the Confederacy, 1863-1881 (Harvard University, 1967)

 

[KingSweden24]

"...efforts to abolish slavery had faltered at the national level with the losses of 1862, but the advantage to the suddenly resurgent Republicans - having reinvented themselves as a party dedicated to "defending the Union" from foreign interference as opposed to the laissez-faire Democrats still stuck in the Jacksonian Era - flowed from the admission of West Virginia, Nevada and Nebraska between 1863 and 1866, all three states returning Republican Senators to Congress and delegations favorable to the party. Another victory was scored in Missouri, where an abolitionist government dominated by German Republicans passed a new constitution in 1866 that formally abolished slavery, leaving Maryland and Delaware as the only slave states left - and Delaware, of course, had a large majority of its black population out of bondage. Despite a large wave of lynchings in Missouri in early 1867 as Confederate sympathizers who had not yet fled south fomented a minor rebellion, the stage was largely set for the de facto elimination of slavery in the United States, a mere four years after the Havana Conference had made the setback to the abolition movement seem nearly permanent..."

- Slavery in the United States (Yale University, 1972)

 

[KingSweden24]

"...of strong interested to those who formed the Dominion of Canada - both its signatories such as John MacDonald as well as a Parliament that would pass the British North America Act in 1867, was a concern that the United States would have future revanchist designs on much of British North America, particularly her Western colonies. Confederation, as it came to be known, was not without controversy. The Maritime Provinces would come to be dominated by interests in Montreal and Ottawa; thriving shipbuilding industries in Halifax would collapse, and access to the American market would sharply decline as Canada's Parliament came to be as protectionist as America's Congress. Ill will over the intervention by London in the War of Southern Independence remained, too. Americans, once pursuing business opportunities in Montreal as a matter of course, ceased to do so; forts were established in Northern New York; and though a Canadian Militia existed to defend against a third American invasion, the British Army expanded its presence in a move of geopolitical realism, to the dismay of an establishment in London that preferred to keep peacetime armies small. By the end of the decade, hostilities between Britain and America would begin bubbling again to the point that the Royal Navy had to base a substantial squadron out of Halifax to protect shipping interests from the buildup of the United States' own naval forces..."

- Canadian Confederation: A History

 

[KingSweden24]

"...Lord Russell's ministry continued to be favourably [1] disposed to the Confederate States, most prominently the aging Prime Minister's likeliest successor, William Gladstone. The Liberals, the party of British capitalism arrayed against the aristocracy, saw in the Americas - now bereft of the constrictions of the Monroe Doctrine - an opportunity for the continued advancement of British interests, and in the Confederacy sat a remarkable market for British goods previously unavailable to them due to the protective tariffs insisted upon by US industrialists. It helped, too, that the aristocracy, personified in the Tories, viewed the Confederacy's plantation economy favorably as a continuation of the old Anglo-Protestant world order in the New World. By the late 1860s - long after Russell had stepped aside in Gladstone's favour - it was Britain, not France, that stood as the main benefactor of the Confederacy. It was British merchants who in the ports of Charleston and Savannah established trade house, London banks that invested in railroads winding westwards, and British textile mills that eagerly accepted bales upon bales of Confederate cotton..."

- Gladstone, A Life (Oxford University, 1950)

[1] British source, British spelling

 

[KingSweden24]

"...having narrowly survived an assassination attempt in 1866, Alexander became considerably more conservative over the remainder of his reign. Nevertheless, the mid-1860s would serve as a time of profound change in Russia, possibly matched only by the aging Tsar's efforts to pursue a codified constitution twenty years later or his return of attention towards European matters towards the end of his life near the end of the century. Alexander pursued reforms of the judicial system, devolved authority to zemstvo (local councils) throughout Russia, and having successfully sold what he considered the "baggage" of Alaska to a United States licking its wound, began to turn his eyes both eastwards towards Central Asia. The defeat of Austria in 1866 changed his calculation somewhat, though. Harboring deep resentments towards Francis Joseph over Austria's role in the Crimean War and viewing Galicia as a "cannon of Polish nationhood" aimed at Orthodox Russia and Protestant Prussia by a Catholic Vienna, Alexander came to see Austria's postwar financial and political crisis as an opportunity to expand his western domains and reassert himself on the European sphere, a marked shift from his otherwise pacifist foreign policy..."

- The Liberator: The Reign of Alexander II 1856-1884

 

[KingSweden24]

"...the central paradox of the Confederate government in the postwar decades was the inherent weaknesses in a constitutional order designed both as a reaction to perceived encroachment on the rights of states and a government designed by and for slave power, which indulged state's rights arguments when it suited it. On the plantations in the Cotton Belt, where political and economic power in the Confederacy truly lay, one would never have known a violent war had been fought to sustain that way of life or that far away in Richmond the "confederal" government essentially existed only through the efforts of the nation's postmaster general. Here, the planter class lived as before, entertaining a romantic notion of the "chivalrous state" they had founded. Late 1866 was when the first "knighthoods" began to form across the South, secret societies that sprung up with various aims from anodyne social clubs to explicitly political. The oldest, and original, such knighthood was the Knights of the Golden Circle, an ambitiously expansionist organization that before independence had sought to project American hegemony over a "circle" of slave states to be carved out of Mexico and Central America. Those ambitions, halted by the war and simmering in the postwar debt crisis, had been a project of slave power's desire to retain its hold on the United States' government in the antebellum period... now, they were an imperial ambition, to continue to expand southwards..."

- The Knights of the South: Secret Societies in the Confederate States

 

[KingSweden24]

"...the removal of the Emperor from the political scene, leaving a boy of merely fourteen in his wake, is most opportune..." [1]

- A Diplomat in Japan, Sir Ernest Satow

[1] This is British diplomat Satow's actual quote regarding the ascension of Prince Mutsuhito, better known as Meiji Emperor, in 1867. Figured I might as well use it as-is.

 

[KingSweden24]

"...the completion of the Mexico City-Veracruz railroad in early 1867 coincided with the appointment by Maximilian of Santiago Vidaurri as First Minister of the Empire at the invocation ceremony where the "golden spike" that would mark its completion was slammed into place by the Emperor. Vidaurri was a bold choice for the Emperor as Maximilian endeavored to forge ahead with his struggling reform program; a moderate liberal turned Conservative, Vidaurri had been a decentralist during the War of Reform and had been a supporter of Benito Juarez in the 1850s. Vidaurri's value lay in being the most high-profile former Liberal amnestied by the Emperor, now brought so into the fold that Maximilian trusted him to run his government. Vidaurri had other values, too - he had been a key conduit between the Mexican regime and the Confederate government during the war, and was one of the few international figures who not only could stand Jefferson Davis, but liked the outgoing Confederate presence. Vidaurri's ten-year ministry would prove to be a period of unprecedented economic growth in Mexico, as railroads were finished, foreign investment finally flowed in, and more anti-monarchist guerillas laid down their arms.

The regime had some other problems, though, despite the calming situation. Napoleon's trusted Marshal Bazaine still maintained the French Americas Legion in Veracruz, a force of 10,000 men, and the inscrutable old marshal viewed the Franco-Mexican relationship as considerably more clientelist than Maximilian and many of his Conservative supporters did. Maximilian's reluctance to hand confiscated church property back to the clergy and undo many reform laws chafed at his base, to the point that his increasingly professional military began to grumble about the Emperor being little more than Benito Juarez by another name. So on that fateful day of February 22, 1867, asked to give an address on the occasion of the completion of the railway, Maximilian announced the appointment first of Vidaurri and then, in his still-accented and broken Spanish, unveiled the Plan Nacional, an ambitious reform program building upon the labor laws and free public education based on the German gymnasia system he had already introduced. Under this Plan, all 50 of Mexico's departments - part of his governmental reform - would elect their own prefects (governors) and councils rather than be appointed by Mexico City; new railroads would continue to be built, new banks established, an independent navy to be based out of Veracruz and Acapulco carved off from the dominant army, and Mexico would "return to its position of primacy in the Americas." It was an audacious, nationalistic document, snubbing its nose at France's intention to make Mexico a puppet state and declaring its intention to enforce a "Maximilian Doctrine" - 1867 would mark the moment in which Mexico viewed its neighbors in Central America as its own sphere of influence.

But before Maximilian could begin to enforce his grand national project, there was the matter of the still-simmering rebellion in the country's sparsely populated and anti-monarchist north..."

- Gustavo Reyes, “Maximilian of Mexico”

 

[KingSweden24]

"...four years spent in the north of Mexico had surprisingly not taken its toll on Diaz's small but substantial army, which controlled a wide swath of the arid north and much of the highlands of the Sierra Madres. This was the land of El Caudillo del Norte, as he came to be known, a folk hero standing against the Imperial throne and continuing the War of Reform long after it had been ended in the monarchy's favor in the south. Young, swaggering and handsome, Diaz led raids against the small expeditions Maximilian I would send north to find him. Little more than a nuisance for much of the early Empire, by early 1867, however, Diaz had begun to regroup and amass serious forces again. Escaped slaves from the Confederacy, especially from Texas and Louisiana, had sought shelter in Mexico, a land that had abolished slavery decades earlier. Indigenous Mexicans and poor mestizos were drawn to his championing of land reform and the unfinished Juarez project; while most liberals, moderate and radical, had since 1863 accepted Maximilian and taken amnesties, Diaz and his supporters had not. "The foreign crown shall be driven from Chapultepec while I still draw breath!" Diaz declared in a fiery speech in Chihuahua on Christmas Day 1866, the day after his forces had surprised the garrison there at night and seized the city. It was the boldest move made by the suddenly reenergized rebels since Juarez's death.

Alarmed, Emperor Maximilian dispatched in early January a force from Mexico City to head north and retake Chihuahua, and immediately sent additional forces to reinforce northern cities, particularly the crucial and booming port of Matamoros at the mouth of the Rio Grande and on the border with Texas. Well aware that Diaz's men had conducted raids into Texas and the Arizona Territory over the last few years as well, and with Mexican newspapers suddenly shrieking with alarm that the war might bloom again after four years of relative peace in the south, the Emperor's men began putting out feelers to foreign mercenaries, hoping to not have to dispatch the still-reforming and developing Mexican Army, in the midst of a grand overhaul to professionalize in the mold of Prussia or Austria's forces, northwards until it was absolutely necessary.

It fell then to Forrest, who in January of 1867 gathered a surprising force in New Orleans, to set sail to Matamoros and then ride inland - two hundred veterans of the Memphis Massacre, known as the Tennessee Templars; forty Cherokee volunteers recruited from the Indian Territory; and three hundred additional volunteers, all veterans of the War of Independence from Louisiana and Mississippi, short on pay and eager for glory when a grand purse was offered by Mexico for Diaz's capture or execution. Upon arriving in Matamoros, they were greeted by an additional three dozen German Texan volunteers, some of whom had been robbed by Diaz's "bandidos," twenty Texas Rangers, and well over a hundred Mexicans, some of them criminals and one or two escaped slaves. In all, Forrest's force numbered over 700, and became dubbed "the Great Posse." Westward they rode, at rapid pace, Forrest back in his element in the saddle, hoping to find Diaz before any of the other mercenary bands setting out or the Mexican Imperial Army did. The Sierra Madre War had begun."

- The Wizard: The Life of Nathan Forrest (University of Mississippi, 1927)