L’Aigle Triomphant: A Napoleonic Victory TL
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
If Russia tries for the Greek Plan, I can see Napoleon and Austria trying to protect the Ottomans. A trope I see too much is Napoleon helping the Russians carve up the Ottomans when in OTL Napoleon hoped the Ottomans would hold back against the Russians. So I definitely don't see Napoleon being ok with the Russians doing whatever they want in the Balkans and neither will the Habsburgs.
I agree
That’s the crux of it. Of course, Britain is the real wild card. The Austrians are probably fine with a solution where they absorb Serbia as sort of a third position to go with their other Slavic holdings but the full neo-Byzantinism of the Russian objective would be very hard to swallow
I am very curious to see how Napoleon reacts to the Ottomans struggling to keep their empire together, especially since he needs them as a good counter to balance Austria and Russia. If Egypt tries its bid for independence like OTL, that'll be a whole nightmare on its own.
Also would Austria really be ok with the Ottomans falling? They could see an overpowered Russia potentially harming their own interests.
The Venetian Republic had to be a full-scale partner (see blue parts). This would be rather hard to accomplish with it ceasing to exist. 😉 Who would replace it? Britain?
In the (unlikely, IMO) case of the French, Austrian, Russian consensus, the only thing Britain could do is to try to establish a permanent blockade of the Straits. Based upon experience of the 2nd Coalition, chances for this to work are slim. Especially taking into an account that unlike OTL supply of Constantinople would not depend upon communications by the Med.
The “State of Dacia”, as intended by CII, also may be problematic on two accounts:
- Its initially intended ruler (Potemkin) is more than a little bit dead (😉) so it would be necessary to find someone who would suit both Russia and Austria and, now, France as well. Not an easy task.
- With this state being squeezed between Russia and New. Byzantine Empire ruled by Russian Grand Duke, Austria would seriously expect that the trade route by the Danube will end up under the Russian control (not sure how important this was in the early 1800’s ).
Part of it. The rest went to Austria and most of it ended in France. So who and how would go to split the “blue” territories? Ah, almost forgot: the Russian-Ottoman controlled Septinsular Republic kind of presumed to be a successor of Venice so here we have a nice candidate for all these territories. 😂
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And neither honestly would anyone. Remember, the only ones who want the Russians to take Constantinople...is Russia itself.
Just had a thought about Champollion and Egypt. Being a Bonapartist IOTL, I wonder how different his research efforts and his carreer might turn with Napoléon still in power. His OTL work, while considerable, was somewhat impeded by his bonapartist credentials under the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X. A continued empire would possibly help and speed up his research, and perhaps allow him to mount an important expedition in Egypt with more resources and personnel than he did go with IOTL.
Butterfly effects like these are my favorite kinds. The "little" stuff that often gets overlooked.
The more I think about it, the more I believe that not even Napoleon can keep the Ottoman Empire from falling apart. All the talk about nationalism is going to tear the entity apart in a way that not even Napoleon could try to prevent. Maybe Napoleon tries to encourage the Ottoman Empire to federalize or give certain provinces more autonomy but other than that it'll be a miracle if the Ottoman Empire is able to hold itself. Can't see Napoleon putting in men and resources into trying to maintain an empire that's already loaded with so many damn structural problems. That being said he'll try to negotiate with various parties to prevent as much instability as possible.
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Basically his Austria-Hungary? The Ottomans being confined to Anatolia or even less if he or the Russians is feeling generous towards Greece
Napoleon could advocate for a rump Greek state if it meant avoiding a long war that could see the Ottomans losing worse to Russia, and most likely a puppet state to the Ottomans. And I imagine any part of the Ottomans that wants independence needs to be France's lackey and also not conspire any further against the Ottomans. And the Ottomans might as well be compensated by French subsidies.
That's my first thoughts on this.
Facts on the Ground
Facts on the Ground
The curious character of Carlos V who took the throne of Spain in January of 1819 confounded, both initially and for the rest of his reign and even future historians, with his views and personality. He was on the one hand perhaps the most rigid absolutist outside of Austria of any European state, calmly but curtly informing the courtiers who came to kiss hands at El Escorial "when you hear my voice, what you hear is the law," and was jokingly suggested by Lord Liverpool to be "more Catholic than the Pope." At the same time, Talleyrand, with more than a hint of amusement, wrote to Metternich in 1820 of the new King of Spain, "He may have a very strong opinion on absolutism, but he has near no opinions on anything else." This was indeed true - as staunchly pious as Carlos V was, he had never entertained ambitions to be King until his brother's various debacles in the early 1810s and subsequent death in Mexico, and even after it became clear he was the heir he would make no political statements whatsoever until his father had died, so seriously did he take the notion of divine right and the sanctity of the Spanish monarchy.
The accession of Carlos V was met with a good deal of anticipation and trepidation around not just Spain but Europe, in part because his views and character were so uncertain. As it quickly dawned on all of Europe what Spaniards had known for years - that Carlos, while certainly not a fool, was an agreeable man who had not bothered to seek out many firm ideas of his own and was thus easily swayed or flattered by those who understood his passions - the contours of what his reign might look like began to become apparent. His rise at first horrified liberal Spanish constitutionalists such as Evaristo Perez or Rafael del Riego and was met with cheers by absolutists of the Partido Apostolico such as Tomas Zumalacarregui or Rafael Maroto, both sides quickly realized that the King was unlikely to be what they feared or hoped.
This is not to say that Carlos V was some kind of moderate. He quickly established that freedom of religion had no place in Spain and that "the Church is the foundation of the state," and tolerated the persecution both of anticlerical agitators and Jews, doing nothing to reign in the excesses of the Inquisition. Any hope for reforms similar to the Napoleonic Codes in France and elsewhere in continental Europe (even in Portugal) were thus utterly dashed, and liberal economics seemed unlikely with Carlos thoroughly wedded to the mercantilistic policies of his father and other Bourbons before him; the budding industrial economy of Spain was sustained by resource imports from abroad and not attacked by Carlos, but also the reformist ideals necessary for it to flourish as it was beginning to in France like in Britain before it were nowhere to be seen.
That being said, Carlos V's ascension proved to occur at an absolutely critical moment in Spanish history, and his ability to be persuaded on practical matters perhaps rescued the Spanish Empire from otherwise inevitable ruin. The Spanish Americas by 1819 were on the verge of revolt, with the Superior Juntas having largely remained intact in some form or another and viceregal authority openly snubbed by the local criollos. The criollos were in most cases firm monarchists and devout Catholics - Simon Bolivar and Jose San Martin first and foremost, but also New Spain's Agustin de Iturbide, who had made a name for himself putting down a number of Hidalgist revolts since the restoration of direct rule from Madrid - but also held influential positions in the Superior Juntas and chafed at the return of the strict, statist edicts from Viceregal authority. Particularly jarring to them was the economically damaging generally (and financially ruinous to them and their allies personally) edicts of what exactly to grow or produce, not just in terms of the type of goods but also the precise locations and times at which such production was allowed, a level of intrusive central planning that exceeded anything elsewhere in the world. Other colonies were hardly exercises in anything other than profit for the metropole and thus not exactly exemplars of liberal capitalist economies. That these edicts were drafted and handed down from nepotistic court officials in Madrid who had never set foot in the Americas and thus had little understanding of local environments and sometimes were as granular as making demands down to the plot of land made matters much worse, and it was this dictated economic system that had produced revolt upon revolt across the Americas going back decades and which increasingly appealed to the elites as much as to the landless, unemancipated mestizos generally held in peonage who had flexed their muscles for the first time in the Hidalgo Revolt.
Madrid had chafed at any suggestion that this system could be reformed even under relatively pragmatic Kings such as the otherwise hapless Carlos IV, and not just because the system as it worked had greatly enriched Spain for over three hundred years. In the view of the royal establishment, after all, the criollo elite enjoyed their privileges as subjects of the Spanish Crown at the Crown's pleasure, and what Madrid said was the Word of God. The interruption in Spanish trade across the Atlantic from 1805-15, the so-called "Lost Decade" of the Spanish Empire, had irrevocably changed the situation, however. The collapse of direct control from Madrid and subsequent erasure of Viceregal authority had left the Superior Juntas in total control and thus economies of scale had drastically changed; men who understood what could be grown where, including otherwise firm royalists such as the upper echelons of the clergy who owned much of Spanish America's land, changed course and greatly liberalized the economies of New Spain, New Granada, Peru and La Plata, to the point that while the Lost Decade was a very meagre era due to social conflict and being cut off from access to European markets, a sense of financial and political self-sufficiency had emerged that could not merely be relegated to memory with the flick of a King's wrist in Madrid.
Men like Bolivar, San Martin and especially the avowedly loyalist Iturbide were thus willing to give the new King Carlos V a chance but were rapidly running out of patience as demands for crops grown in areas local landowners knew were of poor or unviable soil and other restrictions on trade started flowing back across the Atlantic, and the restive population was even worse as Spanish soldiers quickly reminded them why, exactly, they had been so disliked. All three would-be liberators were nonetheless also aware that to directly challenge the authority of Carlos V and demand a change was likely to only worsen the situation by directly questioning his "divine right" to dictate to Spanish America what they would and would not do as his God-granted subjects. The plan, then, was to appeal first to Infante Francisco de Paula, the King's younger brother, and the man who arguably saved the Spanish Empire from itself.
Francisco was a moderate liberal of a Napoleonic persuasion who nonetheless was as much as Carlos a staunch believer in divine right and prided himself as his brother's strongest ally despite his own political persuasions; Carlos, in turn, thus trusted the word of Francisco as pure and final, relieved that his younger and more popular brother was as firm in defending his prerogatives as he had been for the exiled and disgraced Ferdinand. Francisco was a straightforwardly simple man, interested in the arts and in procreating, having 11 children with his wife and niece, Luisa Carlota of Sicily, who urged him to intrigue in favor of Spain's liberals more than he was ever willing to, and Carlos was often very pointedly made aware of this, which sullied his relationship with his sister-in-law but improved it with his brother. Francisco was in many ways the things Carlos was not - creative and curious, more than anything - and this lead Carlos to lean on him a fair deal, especially in the early years of his reign. Due to Francisco's curiosity and clear-eyed sense of Spain's precarious finances and political situation both at home and abroad, he resolved to solve the "American Ulcer" first as that was less likely to invite agitation from either the Spanish street, as a counter-reaction against the liberals would have, or alienate the Apostolicos who could not ask for a stronger proponent than Carlos.
As such, Francisco invited San Martin, Bolivar and Iturbide to Madrid in the autumn of 1820, and they arrived together the following spring from Havana. The Madrid Declaration that followed was a work of genius statesmanship that would surely have escaped Carlos had he been dealing with the three mouthpieces of Spanish American angst and grievance by himself. Francisco presented their visit rather as a noble plea to their gracious king - of men who sought to do good in his name for his subjects and enrich the Crown through more profitable enterprise, but whose hands were bound by laws passed by kings centuries ago. Francisco was a bright and canny man not above flattery to manipulate his brother to his ends, and the appeal worked by playing to Carlos' sense of honor and duty. Carlos promulgated, to the horror of peninsulare administrators and bookkeepers, the Madrid Declaration that granted no new political rights to the Spanish Americas and still placed them under the heel of the Viceroy, but ended the ability of Viceroys and the Court in Madrid alike to so directly control the local economy of the various colonies. The Madrid Declaration did not end the trans-Atlantic disputes between Madrid and its domains in the New World, but for the time being it greatly alleviated them, and the path to political and economic reform in the Spanish Empire had seen its first several steps taken under the guide of the arch-conservative King few would ever have expected to suggest something so forward-thinking and liberal...
If I were Napoleon I'd write a letter to Carlos and tell him to find a peaceful compromise before it's too late.
I really hope that Nappy aids Carlos or he'll have a collapsing state next to him.
This more or less is the peaceful compromise - Carlos gave the Juntas much of what they wanted, economically at least.