Franco-English union?

archaeogeek

Banned
Admittedly I was hurrying somewhat and my words were in a block of text, but mainly because I was writing on my phone on the walk home from work - also why I had little to no capital letters and a lot of misplaced full stops.
The fact that you write walls of text on a phone gives me pause.

I will admit I cut some corners and misrepresented, but I stand by the gist of my points. I will also not deny that much of the inspiration for the bureaucracy came from Normandy and Anjou too. But still, the reason the English Kings got away with so much taxation when it was needed to fight France was because Parliament agreed it. I suggest you read 'Agincourt: The King, the Battle' by Juliet Barker to see how much wrangling Henry V needed to achieve with Parliament to get his loans for wars with France, among other books.
A fascinating book. I add to this two excellent academic biographies of the two Tudor Henry, and an overview of the Plantagenet "empire", but sadly it's in french.

And yes, England had a lot of rebellions I will grant you, but they didn't tend to have them over taxes raised for war. Far more commonly they were over taxes raised for purposes seen as far more beneficial to the King than to England, or were raised when the King used his authority to demand extraordinary taxation - as well as the usual revolting against perceived evil or unwise councillors to the King leading him down unpopular paths.
The latter was also how the french Jacquerie worked, and is not uniquely english, again. The king was good, his councilors were obviously leading him astray.

I also won't argue that the Tudors were very absolutist re: their treatment of Parliament, but the Plantagenets, by and large, were not so, and since we aren't discussing the Tudors, I am not considering them here.
The early Plantagenets fought three civil wars against parliament, were deposed once by parliament, and did all they could to keep it small and unrepresentative. Parliamentary boroughs were mostly added under the house of York.

Re: Gascony, I won't give you any talk of "that's how the Gascons were". Rather, the difference between Aquitaine and France was that Aquitaine, as I said, was unusual in that the Duke had little to no power as he had little to no income, and the Gascon lords over time had become accustomed to a political scenario where their lord exerted little serious control over them - in no small part because their liege lord was typically either King of France or England, and thus had bigger fish to fry - and where they had gorged themselves on virtually unrestricted freedom to pursue their own agendas, including blood feuds and family vendettas, pursuing their own alliances against neighbouring lords and occasionally seeking to pervert the Duke's authority into their political web. By contrast, few places in France had such weak authority exerted by the reigning count/duke etc, and Aquitaine had enough castles to be a nightmare for any Duke who sought to pacify it - as Richard I found out when he spent 10 years campaigning there and achieved virtually nothing whatsoever. Every gain he made he lost again. The Aquitanian vassals knew how to be vicious and manipulative when they needed to be.
Yes, but almost every other part of France had a powerful duke or count who ran his personal domains like a kingdom and could easily be a pain in the ass to the plantagenet, especially as he owes them his crown.
 
Centralisation of the HRE?:rolleyes: I am begining to seriously think you are trying to wank all thing related to germany or germanic peoples.

Nah. See, "Germanic peoples" includes the Danes and Swedes and Norwegians and so on - to say nothing of the English and the Lowland Scots. He just makes Germany invariably huge and successful. :p
 
Nah. See, "Germanic peoples" includes the Danes and Swedes and Norwegians and so on - to say nothing of the English and the Lowland Scots. He just makes Germany invariably huge and successful. :p

In general Eurofed prefers hegemonic powers.

Anyway, how would an Anglo-French union be counterbalanced?
 
I think if the jacobite claim goes to the Bourbon-Orleans or Victoria marries a Protestant ambitious Bourbon an Anglo-French state with a late POD is possible.
 
I think if the jacobite claim goes to the Bourbon-Orleans or Victoria marries a Protestant ambitious Bourbon an Anglo-French state with a late POD is possible.

Personal unions weren't so big post-Congress of Vienna, with the only notable examples being UK-Hanover, Netherlands-Luxembourg, Denmark-Schleswig-Holstein (with all three dissolved by 1890).
 
Personal unions weren't so big post-Congress of Vienna, with the only notable examples being UK-Hanover, Netherlands-Luxembourg, Denmark-Schleswig-Holstein (with all three dissolved by 1890).

Yeah, and a personal union between two powers of that size and importance simply wouldn't be allowed to fly by the relevant managerial people in both countries.

As for the Jacobites, the last real shot they had was the end of the War of the Spanish Succession.
 
As for the Jacobites, the last real shot they had was the end of the War of the Spanish Succession.

A French victory at Blenheim could turn things bad for the anti-French alliance, and thus Scotland could be separated (this is pre-Act of Union IIRC) from the English crown with the Stuarts as rulers.
 
A French victory at Blenheim could turn things bad for the anti-French alliance, and thus Scotland could be separated (this is pre-Act of Union IIRC) from the English crown with the Stuarts as rulers.

Several people were never going to accept this, some of the most important being:

1) The Stuarts. They would be making a mockery of their cause if they accepted one crown without the others. Not to mention the fun times the dynasty had had the last time they ended up as, in practice, kings of Scotland alone: Charles II was desperate to escape the clutches of Argyll and get to his supporters in England. The Stuarts, by now bona-fide Catholic, were not going to become Covenanted kings, and a lot of the opposition to the Union in the years just after it in the southwest lowlands came from people who rejected the British state because it breeched the Covenants. The French were planning to make use of these people because it was war and they wanted to win, but they would have fought against the imposition of the Stuarts. They in fact did, in the Covenanting War and the first Jacobite war. And, wearing red coats, in the other Jacobite wars: the Cameronians weren't called that because they came from Clan Cameron (which was generally Jacobite, confusingly enough) but because they were recruited from Richard Cameron's fiercely Presbyterian sect.

2) The English. They would invade, like they invaded Ireland under William, and there's little France can do about that.

3) Us. The first Jacobite war was entirely internal, the second mostly so, but they still lost.
 
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So how could you end up with "victorious" Jacobites by the WotSS?

England. There were always, in my opinion, more Jacobites (well, obviously, bigger place) and less dedicated opponents in England, it's just that without any Highlands there was no way to arm they all in a jiffy. The Spanish certainly counted mainly on English Jacobitism in their Glenshiel plan.

My memory's hazy, but the Tory ministry basically realised that they were all for it when George I turned up owing to the Utrecht fiasco and frantically tried to restore the Pretender, and it was a sufficiently serious threat that the Dutch designated regiments for another invasion in support of Hanover, but the Whigs got the other hand and the Hanoverians took over relatively peacefully. "Relatively" meaning a war in Scotland and armed cavalrymen being sent to the Tory stronghold of Oxford, IIRC.

In spite of later mythology, Jacobitism was never about Scotland and certainly not about the Highlands.
 
So better French performance + Tories gaining the upper hand = (Catholic) Stuarts on the Crown of England?

Hum. Since I seem to have forgotten most of what I knew about this period's high politics, I probably shouldn't have started up about it. :eek::D But it's not a direct function of French success, though a different conduct of and end to the war would be favourite if we were looking for a PoD to butterfly into this. If anything, we might want the regime not to be in a position to be lambasted for ditching our allies but instead triumphant.

But none of this is to say that the Tories were a party defined by Jacobitism and were always going to try and get the Jacobites back in charge: merely that, unlike in the awkward fizzle of 1745 which the mythology focuses on, there was actually some possibility of a restoration.
 
Aquitaine were not vassal stated but became miniature Kingdoms) and could easily eventually fall under English control - especially as Gascony itself was very much in the English economic orbit when they shared a monarch. France could end up being reduced as a result of this alliance, rather than enhanced.

I query whether the French would be happy with your proposed scenario. Higher (which is what efficient taxation means), English officials, etc?

And of course Henry V is followed by Henry VI, who is not, ah, competent. Or sane.
 
I query whether the French would be happy with your proposed scenario. Higher (which is what efficient taxation means), English officials, etc?

And of course Henry V is followed by Henry VI, who is not, ah, competent. Or sane.

I think Henry VI born as Henrietta will be a nice way to end the Hundred Years War and have her marry a Valois that will merge the English and French claims..

I think a Jacobite Bourbon will be cool for both England and France..
 
I think Henry VI born as Henrietta will be a nice way to end the Hundred Years War and have her marry a Valois that will merge the English and French claims..

I think a Jacobite Bourbon will be cool for both England and France..

The first one sounds both quite plausible and... off. If Henry VI were female she'd probably be named Elizabeth or Catherine.

And for the second, the Jacobite movement will be butterflied away and the Bourbons may not become kings of France.
 
The first one sounds both quite plausible and... off. If Henry VI were female she'd probably be named Elizabeth or Catherine.

And for the second, the Jacobite movement will be butterflied away and the Bourbons may not become kings of France.

The Jacobite Bourbon is a different scenario it occurs on a later POD, I think by having the daughter of Henrietta Maria have a son with the Duke of Orleans...

I think yes, Henry VI will be either Elisabeth or Catherine... Catherine Plantagenet should be married to the direct Valois like what happened to John of Gaunt in Castille.
 
I query whether the French would be happy with your proposed scenario. Higher (which is what efficient taxation means), English officials, etc?

I recall an article I read about the treaty outlining the union-that-wasn't in the person of Margaret of Norway. There was to be no move whatever away from the traditional and time-honoured Scottish practices like, say, inefficient taxation: we were very clear about this.
 
I query whether the French would be happy with your proposed scenario. Higher (which is what efficient taxation means), English officials, etc?

well, there are two sides to the coin. one is that aquitaine was.sufficiently ungovernable that it was impossible to institute these things anyway, so they had little to fear. for the record, aquitaine chafed under the French too, not just the English.

the other side is that aquitaine's economy was not dependent on taxation. neither was England's, or France's, or Germany's, etc. taxation and royal/ducal revenue is different to economy. It's economy was dependent on its exports and imports, and these were almost entirely controlled by the merchant class on the coastline. that merchant class made far more money from trading with England than trading inland to France. the gascon merchants were significantly pro-english that they on several occasions sponsored armies to rebel against the French when the English lost control of the duchy. the final campaign of the HYW happened because the gascons revolted and pleaded with Henry VI to restore English rule.

for the record, I seem to recall taxation was typically higher under the French. also, IIRC the French were more proactive about trying to.break the power of the rebellious aquitanian vassals too.
 
What would be the name of this entity? I fear that the power will shift toward France.

It will, but the resulting union likely does develop differently from OTL England and OTL France governmentally. There might be reduced absolutist rule in *Franglia, but at the same time the English part will have to deal with stronger kings.
 
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