L’Aigle Triomphant: A Napoleonic Victory TL

[KingSweden24]

The Aranjuez Crisis​

“Of all the times we tried to make the Emperor listen, thank god it was at Bayonne he lent his ear to someone other himself…”

- Talleyrand

The two competing Spanish kings, father and son, came to Bayonne in a time of acute crisis and more than a little bashful. Infante Ferdinand had overthrown his father but two months earlier; five days prior, Madrid had violently risen up against French troops stationed there. Ferdinand anticipated a reprimand but little more; Charles IV hoped to be reinstated.

For two centuries, historians have debated how serious Napoleon’s plan to demand both of their abdication and install his brother Joseph in their stead was. Talleyrand’s diaries suggested such a move was imminent but for the intervention of General Junot, racing from Portugal to be present. Whatever changed the mercurial Emperor’s mind, on May 7th 1808 - at the apex of his powers - Napoleon demanded Ferdinand relinquish the throne back to his father.

The prince and brief pretender, having now unsuccessfully conspired against his father twice, agreed reluctantly to a quiet self-exile to Rome, where he intended to study and pray (and wait for the intrigues in his home country to pass); the move was of course received with alarm by Francophobes on the Spanish street and his supporters in Madrid, outraged that Godoy and Napoleon had won again…

 

[KingSweden24]

Tensions on the Tagus
​

"...oh, what foolish thing, what butchery!"

- General Junot

The Madrid that welcomed Charles IV back from Bayonne was not the same city that had lavishly greeted his son as a liberator but two months earlier; the reception he received, along with General Junot, was frosty if not deliberately hostile, occurring in the shadow of the violent response by Murat's men to the uprising that had occurred on May 2nd, to the point that evidence of the violence was still apparent everywhere he looked. His position of king was also substantially weakened; his own son had conspired against him twice, once successfully, and only the foreign intervention of France had kept him on his throne. What kind of Spanish King could rule Spain if he had to role at the end of a French musket? The only upside was that Godoy had not returned to Madrid with him; had the disgraced, violently unpopular deposed minister entered the city at that time with Charles IV, another uprising that would have seen them both hung and gibbeted may have occurred.

It fell to Junot, as was inevitable, to "take care" of the matter on the Emperor's behalf. Napoleon left Bayonne satisfied and with instructions to Charles to impose the terms of Fontainebleu on conquered Portugal, thus completing the domination of Europe from the Atlantic to the Russian frontier envisioned in Tilsit in the year before. The weak, unloved King found that his stature at home was so weak that he had to give instructions through his twenty year old son, Infante Carlos, and the paranoia that would cripple Charles for the rest of his life began in those tense months after Bayonne, where he would often retreat to El Escorial for weeks on end with few people seeing his face and an army of food tasters and bodyguards recruited to protect him against new intrigues. Junot, not even with a Marshal's baton, was left to make important decisions across Iberia, loosely aware that his every move was being watched by enemies both in Paris and abroad, from Talleyrand to the Tsar of Russia. Revolts in Portugal were put down violently; a loot train back to France was ambushed crossing into Spain and bloodily defended; Spanish anger over the violent response by Murat left Junot no choice but to desperately write to Napoleon to have the Duke of Berg removed back to Germany, where he "might serve better use," he diplomatically phrased, worried that Murat's continued presence and the deepening hostility between French soldiers in the cities and the Spanish street was threatening the whole of Iberia.

In Portugal, meanwhile, the question emerged of whether Napoleon would indeed pursue his planned dismantling of the state, and whether a man as thoroughly disgraced as Godoy could indeed take a princely throne in any of the surviving successor states...

 

[KingSweden24]

The Guns Go Quiet​

"...such a strange time it is, that interval where on the Continent - most of the Continent, at least - the guns go quiet..."

- Lord Liverpool

The installation of Charles Louis of Bourbon-Parma as Carlos I of Portugal ended any thoughts that Napoleon may indeed divide up Portugal into minor vassals and carve out one state for the reviled Godoy, who for his part would live out the rest of his life at various estates in France, most commonly Compiegne and Aix, constructing around him a strange little court of eccentrics and sycophants, in addition to a revolving door of mistresses, living off of a modest state pension, his family incomes and the generosity of his hosts. An Italian Bourbon in Portugal, controlled tightly by Junot, who by mid-June was back in Portugal, was hoped to be a satisfactory conclusion to both the Portuguese street and the Spanish throne. Madrid complained little, especially as the troops in the city were drawn down and Murat sent to Denmark to prepare for the invasion of Sweden; Portugal's populace was somewhat more restive, and Queen Regent Maria Luisa proved problematic, with an independent streak, her sister having fled to Brazil as consort to Regent John, an eight-year old son she began raising to be skeptical of the Bonapartes, and an array of suitors who sought her hand with which she carefully began to asses for the best strategic advantage. Napoleon had treated an open enemy in the Braganzas for a quieter one in the Bourbon regency.

But for the rest of 1808, at least, the post-Tilsit European state of affairs was quiet, with the lone exception of Finland, where Russia's steady advance against Sweden continued. The Continental System remained full of holes and not nearly as effective against Britain as Napoleon had hoped, with London having ably replaced lost revenues in Europe with trade overseas, perhaps improving rather than harming its mastery of global trade, and smuggling operations increasing in lucrativeness and frequency. Austria was reforming her army but still licking her wounds from Pressburg; Prussia was no threat any longer on her own, and Russia at least seemed able to coexist as master of the East. In the fall, Napoleon and Alexander met at Erfurt, in Napoleon's personal control, to consolidate their new partnership, despite growing skepticism between both sides only a year after the Fourth Coalition had ended. Napoleon acquiesced to Russian desires over the whole of Finland and promised a land invasion of Scania the following spring to force an armistice; Alexander was already mulling plans to cross the sea ice on the Gulf of Bothnia to end the war, hoping he could complete the matter before Napoleon was involved, well aware that the expeditionary force led by France would expect the intact Russian fleet to clear the Kattegat of British and Swedish vessels for their invasion.

For the most part, though, the boiling waters of Iberia having been cooled to a mere simmer gave the French armies additional breathing room they had not enjoyed since the brief peace after Amiens; it gave time to the ennobled and titled Marshals to invest themselves more fully in their properties and endeavors, most prominently Murat in Berg. This was not to say that there were no tensions; Spanish anger, especially in Madrid, over the events of the 2nd of May still ran hot, and the presence of French troops in the citadels of Barcelona and Pamplona continued to be felt as closer to occupation than alliance. But bloodshed had been avoided, and the consolidation of Napoleonic control of the mainland could continue while Britain continued to harry and dominate the seas...

 

[KingSweden24]

Blood in the Baltic
​

"...what I'd give not even for a fleet but for a bridge! Such a narrow space of water, I could practically reach across and touch Sweden..."

- Napoleon I of France

The Opyt holding her own and fending off a much larger vessel at Nargen kept the Gulf of Finland open for the exit of the Russian Baltic Fleet from Kronstad; the campaign ahead that concluded both the Finnish War and the Anglo-Russian War moved rapidly and surprisingly unfavorably to the British position.

The Russian fleet's emergence into the Baltic - albeit slowly, and reluctantly, under instructions from Tsar Alexander - changed the equation for Admiral James Samuarez, who immediately linked up his most able vessels with the Swedish fleet. The Battle of Hanko proceeded shortly thereafter, with Russia's aim being to clear the Baltic archipelago of any threats to their campaigns in Finland. At Hanko, such a fight occurred; the evenly-matched fleets clashed for two days before the Swedes, having suffered grievous losses (four ships sunk or struck), were driven back into port. The British vessels, HMS Centaur and Implacable, retreated, leaving the Russian fleet with the Baltic largely at its mercy.

Samuarez was informed as the situation turned bleaker for the Royal Navy in the summer of 1808 that Napoleon was massing his forces in Denmark to threaten Sweden; if nothing else, the great army on the coast of the Oresund kept desperately needed Swedish forces out of Finland, where they could ward off the advancing Russians. Deducing that Russia was being nudged into the conflict continuously against her will, Samuarez decided on what he considered a great feint - to retreat through the Kattegat as a ruse, wait for Napoleon's forces to mass and request Russian assistance to cross to Scania, and then smash the invasion fleet and perhaps even the accompanying Russian vessels in those narrow waters. The Russian Baltic threat would be removed permanently, a Baltic Trafalgar; perhaps, even, it would end the war in Finland and create impetus for a Fifth Coalition. He set sail for Gothenburg posthaste.

The gambit was sensible - it was not unreasonable to suspect that Russia would provide some assistance to opening up not just the threat of a third front [1] in Scandinavia but a live one, an invasion into Sweden proper that would give their French post-Tilsit allies control over both sides of the entrance to the Baltic. To crush Napoleon's invasion - perhaps even with the Emperor aboard one of the ships! - would have made Samuarez a hero in London. But, the Admiral forgot one thing, and that was Napoleon's own penchant for innovation.

The British fleet, confident that no Danish vessels could molest it after the bombing of Copenhagen, moved into the Oresund, with a small Swedish contingent of three frigates traveling with them. The ambush laid by Napoleon was a stroke of brilliance; though he had no command of the sea the way the Royal Navy did, he did command the land, and with the armies routed north from Spain and kept ready in Denmark was much of the French artillery, now lined up along the coasts, as well as a small flotilla of Danish gunboats. The Battle of Oresund was known in later years as the "Gauntlet of Grapeshot;" the entire route from Amager to Helsingborg was lit up with cannon fire, cannonballs raining down on the fleet as the smaller but nonetheless daring Danish vessels formed a line at the northern mouth of the strait to create a temporary blockade. It was a bit of luck for Napoleon, who had not expected such a maneuver but upon hearing from scouting vessels two days before that Samuarez was bringing the weight of the Baltic Fleet with him, the move was obvious. That half of the Russian fleet was in pursuit was pure divine intervention, though they arrived days late. Of the vessels Samuarez tried to bring through the Oresund, three were sunk, and six so damaged they were forced to return to Britain for repairs; the Admiral himself was killed by a stray cannonball, and the surviving vessels holed up in Gothenburg before setting out over the North Sea home. The Russian fleet held the line to block a Swedish counterattack, with several vessels committing to a blockade of Swedish vessels in Karlskrona and Stockholm; Napoleon moved five thousand men across the Oresund in early September, establishing a small beachhead for a larger force. When winter came and Russians daringly marched across the frozen Gulf of Bothnia, the opportunity for more Frenchmen to cross emerged, and soon the bulk of his army was in Scania. King Gustaf IV was deposed by a cabal of Swedish nobles alarmed at the rapid advance of Napoleon in the south and Russia in the north; his uncle was proclaimed Charles XIII, with strictly limited powers, shortly thereafter...

[1] Bear in mind, Denmark can harry Sweden from Norway

 

[KingSweden24]

Rule of the Seas
​

"...what I would give instead to have my feet on the Continent, helping drive the Corsican from every conquered capital, than here, to do what?"

- Arthur Wellesley

The successful defeat of Sweden in the Finnish War - which ceded all of Finland to Russia as a grand duchy, left Sweden with an invalid, childless and weak new King inheriting a political crisis, earned France and Denmark substantial indemnities in turn that would bankrupt the poor Scandinavian kingdom for decades and forced it into the Continental System - also included a rare naval defeat for the Royal Navy at the Oresund. Though no Trafalgar or Copenhagen, not even close, the battle and the subsequent exit of Sweden from the war left Britain outside the Baltic and suddenly bereft of formal allies anywhere in Europe, but otherwise in command of both the North Sea and the Mediterranean and thus able to continue to enforce its will regarding a blockade of French ports and defending the expansion of British trade worldwide in the absence of competition. It was a strange stalemate, that France utterly dominated Europe now as 1809 dawned but Britain dominated beyond, each desiring what the other had, with Britain lacking an army or alliance to challenge Paris and France lacking a navy to challenge London.

Though the incomes from Europe had been somewhat augmented by overseas trade (and smuggling), hard power was still the backbone of British naval policy and Britannia took advantage of her dominance at sea to consolidate her position even as Napoleon used the broad peace ushered in with the Treaty of Stockholm to allow Europe to breathe and settle under the Napoleonic Codes and Continental System. Spain was wholly cut off from her New World; in 1808 a British force was dispatched to Tobago under Arthur Wellesley to intervene in Venezuela alongside Francisco de Miranda, a patriot seeking to fight for independence, a sharp departure from their policy in their own Thirteen Colonies thirty years prior but in line with their attempts to seize Buenos Aires a year before. The British shelled Havana and seized St. Augustine later that autumn, and continued to harass formally neutral American vessels, making the outgoing Jefferson administration's Embargo Act even more unpopular in the United States.

Despite their dominance at sea, though, talk in London by early 1809 began to swirl around the long term. The Continental System was ineffective at keeping British commerce fully locked out of Europe, but the blockade was not succeeding in economically starving Napoleon, either. Feelers to the Austrians continued quietly but after the Third Coalition had ended in failure and humiliation for the Habsburgs at Pressburg, Francis I was reluctant to stick his neck out again, at least until he had rebuilt his forces sufficiently. In all, the British position was mixed, despite some positive reports from Wellesley regarding the Venezuelan Expedition, suggesting to Lord Portland's Cabinet that operations in the New World to try to force Spain to exit French hegemony could bear fruit. The question in London for those skeptical of further war was this: how long was Britain willing to go on against Napoleon alone? At what cost, to what end? How would victory be achieved? What was such a victory worth...?

 

[KingSweden24]

The Peace of Stockholm
​

"...what ruin, what ruin! Oh, what terrible circumstances, what humiliation we have received! My soul weeps even as I sign this document with dry eyes..."

- Charles XIII of Sweden

Stockholm, like Tilsit two years prior, suggested once again to Tsar Alexander that Napoleon was a man who was difficult to trust and who made decisions erratically and arbitrarily, with little thought as to their impact on the European order and the regimes on whom "French peace" was imposed at gunpoint. That all being said, the terms of the Peace of Stockholm were so absurdly favorable to St. Petersburg that Alexander protested little, choosing instead merely to pocket his substantial wins and the goodwill he had engendered at Erfurt and assess his options in the future.

The Treaty that was signed at Stockholm Castle were not as harsh as Tilsit only by virtue of Sweden being a weaker minor power; the terms ceded the entirety of Finland to Russia, sans the Aland Archipelago, thus ripping the kingdom in two, and in addition ordered substantial indemnities be paid to Russia, Denmark, France, Westphalia and Mecklenburg-Schwerin in the form of both cash and naval assets, depleting the remainder of the Swedish Navy to the point that it had only 1 in 10 ships left from the start of the war. The terms of the agreement bound Sweden to the Continental System, assigned Danish prince Christian August, the former Viceroy of Norway, to be the heir of Charles XIII and severely restricted the size of the Swedish Army and Navy moving forward. Danish garrisons would be placed in Gothenburg and Malmo to enforce the terms of the treaty, and a combined force of Westphalian and Mecklenburger [1] men would garrison Pomerania until the indemnities were paid.

Russia's bounty out of the treaty designed by the Duc de Cadore, Napoleon's new foreign minister, was substantive. Between Tilsit and Stockholm, the former a treaty signed in a war she had lost, Russia now controlled both shores of the Gulf of Finland and thus all approaches to St. Petersburg; Prussia had been eliminated as a potential competitor on land and Sweden at sea; within the confines of the Continental System the Baltic was now effectively a Russian lake, with Denmark's hostility to Britain effectively creating a guard on their behalf at the Danish Straits that opened to it, and Tsar Alexander had won considerable prestige in his conquests. The only price he had truly paid was the formation of the Duchy of Warsaw on his border; the reconstitution of a proto-Polish state supported by Napoleon concerned him, and many of his court ministers, but it had not come at the expense of Russian territory and with the Swedish frontier now far from St. Petersburg, he could adequately draw down northern garrisons.

If Alexander was surprised by how substantive his advantages in the Peace of Stockholm were, perhaps he shouldn't have been; the reality was that after six years of war, the Continent was exhausted, with only Britain ready to campaign on at sea. Prussia had been defenestrated at Tilsit, Austria humbled at Pressburg; the Holy Roman Empire was no more, now a patchwork of client states to Napoleon. Italy had been brought to heel, though Napoleon turned his eye toward Rome next, and the Iberian Peninsula had pliant Bourbons who would cause Paris little trouble. Russia was, though skeptical and wary, for now sated with their gains and satisfied that France had no interest in projecting war that far east. The Third and Fourth Coalitions had ended in disaster; there was little appetite for a Fifth, at least not beyond cursory sounding-out from London's financiers who eagerly hoped for one.

As Napoleon's armies began to shift their attention southwards, it was in fact only a portion of them, under Bernadotte and Ney, that were massed to head to Italy. For the first time since the Amiens Interlude was ended ("interrupted by the British," as the French would say), the weight of Napoleon's professional corps in his Grand Armee were going home, to workshops and wives, farms and families. A reconciliation with both revolution and Empire seemed at hand, the reactionary forces arrayed against France for nearly twenty years defeated in every attempt to impose the Ancien Regime on a people who outside of Bourbon restorationists had little use for them. France was tired, but victorious - and, for the first time since Amiens, happy. The consolidation of the Napoleonic order in both France and the rest of Europe, with the reluctant stroke of Charles XIII's pen in Stockholm, had begun...

[1] Is this the right terminology?

 

[KingSweden24]

Le Monsieur des Myriades​

“…before all else, comes France…”

- Talleyrand (apocryphal)

Perhaps no notable of the post-Revolutionary era cuts a stranger figure than Talleyrand; as the epic opera about his life, Les Myraides, detailed, he was simultaneously an ardent French patriot who nevertheless found himself in the parlors and salons of Europe taking bribes, selling secrets and cutting deals with foreign powers, all in the name of what he thought was best for his homeland. He was a clergyman with a taste for expensive mistresses, a cynic of the first order who’s name is now synonymous with crafty diplomacy. When his treacheries were eventually revealed shortly before they both died, the only reason he was spared the guillotine despite his advanced age was that his machinations had, in the end, worked, despite the ugly means to their end.

Talleyrand had been as shocked as anyone at the compounding on Napoleon’s successes at Tilsit with his last minute decision to refuse Ferdinand at Bayonne and re-install Charles IV, followed by a settlement in Sweden overly favorable to Russia. His first concern was that the Emperor would follow up these successes with a potentially destabilizing move against the Papacy in Rome, and so his first priority was to make sure to consolidate these gains. Despite no longer being Foreign Minister, he quietly traveled to Vilnius shortly after the Treaty of Stockholm to advise Alexander, who was turning his full attention to the Ottomans at last. They had struck up a healthy relationship at Erfurt the previous autumn; now it was time for Talleyrand to argue his case.

It had been made plain to the wily old diplomat that Alexander cared little for Napoleon at best and held him in contempt at worst; the influential Dowager Empress’ attitudes were even more negative. Aware from his dealings with Napoleon that personality and pride oft dictated the fate of nations as much as strategy, Talleyrand approached the matter carefully. It was at Erfurt that he had begun probing the issue of a new wife for Napoleon; Empress Josephine was aging and likely infertile, and Talleyrand knew that a peaceful transfer of power was the only way to consolidate France’s gains rather than have the Marshals fight over the scraps (the thought of a Warlord Murat in particular galled him). The suggestion of marrying the Tsar’s sister Ekaterina Palvovna to Napoleon had horrified the Russian court (Dowager Maria Feodorovna in particular), and Talleyrand was preparing to steel himself for rejection once again, or news that her hand had already been promised.

His hand, and Russia’s, was strengthened at Napoleon’s expense by the time he arrived, for news of an assassination attempt in Rome accompanied him (indeed Talleyrand learned of it as he was being shown to his quarters). A priest had brandished a pistol as Napoleon rode past into the Vatican and fired a single shot; it grazed the Emperor’s shoulder and struck and killed one of the Imperial Guards. The attempt had caused chaos and a riot in the Vatican herself and threatened the political stability of Italy; more than that, though, it reinforced Talleyrand’s determination to find a suitable young bride to bear Napoleon an heir, and Alexander’s leverage.

Despite his mother’s protests, Alexander was willing to hear Talleyrand out. As Le Myriade put it, a marriage would bind Russia closer to France, and reduce the chances of an invasion by Napoleon in the future but also reduce the ability of Paris to interfere in Alexander’s ambitions in Eastern Europe and beyond. The Continental System would be easier to ignore, Austria better contained, and Russia’s status as a great power equal only to France and Britain assured. Talleyrand tipped his hand that France had been closer to defeat before Austerlitz than previously thought, and even suggested to the silent Tsar that in the event that Napoleon - occasionally known to suffer poor health - should pass early, influence over a “half-Russian” nephew would place Russia first in a new European balance of power.

Already riding high from his surprising coup at Stockholm, Alexander shocked his mother and the Russian public by changing course and agreeing to marry Ekaterina to Napoleon, on the condition that no formal military alliance be signed by Russia and France against Austria or Britain and that Prussia be considered part of the Russian sphere of influence and thus beyond French interference (unspoken - that the Duchy of Warsaw, which Alexander hated, was thus sandwiched). For the second time in a year, Alexander took his considerable advantage and pocketed it, marveling at his continued run of luck that had been delivered to him nearly prostrate by the French…

 

[KingSweden24]

The Consolidation - the West​

"...an insect of a man, who with a stroke could have felled an elephant..."

- Joseph Bonaparte

Napoleon's near-death experience in Rome hardened his resolve against his enemies and perhaps helped end his giddy sense of indestructibility that had followed him since the improbable rout at Austerlitz. His goal now was one thing, and one thing alone - to consolidate his victories and set up the new France for his great dynasty. He was still in Rome, drafting his next decisions, when he heard that Talleyrand had secured Grand Duchess Catherine of Russia's hand in marriage. Napoleon was elated at the diplomatic stroke though saddened that he would have to bid farewell to his beloved, but barren, Josephine.

The news perhaps was well timed, for it helped satisfy the Emperor enough that his redrawing of Italy's map in the summer of 1809 was milder than expected. His sister Elisa and her husband Felix, already Prince and Princess of Lucca and Piombino, were now granted titles as Queen and Prince Consort of Etruria, which was to see its French occupation ended, but its position in the Continental System maintained, now that Charles Louis had been compensated as Charles II of Portugal. Napoleon quietly granted the Kingdom of Italy some of Bavaria's land south of the Alps (and the city of Trent) in return for ceding his personal possessions of Bayreuth and Erfurt to Maximilian Joseph, and then set about attempting to solve the question of Rome.

The reality was that with the Peace of Stockholm guaranteeing, at least for the time being, a broad peace on the land and much of his armies headed home for a much-needed rest from war, the necessity and costs of garrisoning Italy were starting to look daunting. Not only that, but Napoleon had two siblings now in Florence and Naples, a personal union with the Kingdom of Italy in the north which would eventually go to his adoptive son Eugene de Beauharnais, and in the Papal State a Pope, Pius VII, who participated willingly and openly in the Continental System. Napoleon saw Rome as the ultimate feather in his cap, however; it was his desire to incorporate it into his personal domain and to make his and Catherine's future son titular King of Rome. That Pius VII had been insufficiently responsive to the near-assassination by that damned priest irked him as well.

It was Bernadotte who, in one of his lengthy debates on geopolitics [1], presented a solution to Napoleon. Knowing that the Papacy would not accept a complete suspension of temporal powers in the Papal State, he instead suggested incorporating it as a "protectorate." In the Farnese Declaration, made from the Palazzo Farnese, Napoleon announced that France would heretoforth regarded the Papal State as its protectorate, with the French Emperor "defender of the Church" by title. In his role of Defender of the Church, France would be wholly responsible for the Church's temporal (though not spiritual) activities of foreign policy and defense, meaning that the army of the the Papal State would be under direct French control. Internally, the Papal State would be governed by the Curia as before; however, the French Emperor was permitted to grant noble titles within its territory, and as his first move named Bernadotte Duke of Anzio (and thus his titular personal representative in Rome) in addition to his title as Prince of Pontecorvo, and vowed to make "Duke of Rome" the title of his heir. The Duchy of Rome, though holding no temporal authority, was to enjoy substantial incomes for which the Pope would be responsible to produce; several cardinals noted begrudgingly that this reeked of France extorting the Papacy at gunpoint, perhaps not an inaccurate summation of the state of affairs.

The more fundamental reason Napoleon did not annex Rome entirely, of course, was not just to avoid setting Catholic Europe aflame in anger (particularly Austria, which would be sure to react to such a move what with its substantial army reforms over the last four years) but to avoid any distractions from his final target - Britain. The Farnese Declaration, though reviled in Italy and stirring up a great deal of resentment in the Papal State, was the exclamation point on European peace in Napoleon's mind. "The matters of state here have been solved," he announced. Now only Britain remained, with all other enemies conquered or sated. In Italy in particular, his able brother Joseph had in a few short years turned Naples into a model kingdom, doubling the number of roads and schools while the reactionary Bourbons he had overthrown sulked in Messina in Sicily licking their wounds and glaring angrily. A new, enlightened cadre of monarchs dotted the continent now, upholding Napoleonic ideals. But Britain remained to fend off, and Napoleon needed a lasting peace to defeat the enemy he obsessed over the most. Later in 1809, with his Army of the Low Countries, he stood at Calais and stared across at the White Cliffs of Dover, thinking about what he would need to achieve to find victory over London...

[1] Hat tip to @alexmilman for this idea

 

[KingSweden24]

The Consolidation - the East
​

"...see, brother, what our friendship with the French has produced! What gains we have seen, with no enemies on any horizon left to molest us!"

- Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich

The Ottoman signing of the Treaty of the Dardanelles with Britain allowed both sides to return their attention fully to the intrigue on the Danube, and later in 1809, shortly after Catherine's marriage to Napoleon, a great battle erupted near Silistra, with a reinforced Prince Bagration able to drive the Turks back. The Porte was alarmed when the quiet encouragements of the French to keep fighting went completely silent; it appeared, finally, that perhaps the Franco-Russian understanding was genuine. The Porte sued for peace, brokered by Britain. It was a largely white peace decided upon at the Treaty of Bucharest; the Ottomans paid a small indemnity, reinstalled the pre-war rulers of Wallachia and Moldavia as Russia had demanded, and ceded a small territory south of the Dniester known as Budjak, giving Russia the Danube port of Izmail as well. In the Caucasus it was status quo ante, but for Russian annexations of Georgian lands, and allowed Russia to turn her full attention to the on-again, off-again war with the Persians over neighboring lands - that would be quickly settled too, as Persia, faced by the full strength of Russia marching towards the mountains, sued for peace, ceding the rest of Georgia south of the mountains and all of Dagestan north of it in the Treaty of Baku.

These moves came to be seen as a grand consolidation of the Alexandrine order in the East of Europe; Russia was ascendant and mighty, and was pre-eminent now in the Black Sea. With the Christian Wallachia and Moldavia in her influence again, her power projected deep into the Balkans. Much of the Court seemed pleased by the string of rapid, territory-earning glories in quick succession, but Alexander remained restless as always; was this really all there was? Had he indeed solved the war issues of Europe along with Napoleon, or was there more to be done...?

 

[KingSweden24]

A Season of Joy​

“…she may be no Josephine, but oh, she is an Empress!”

- Napoleon I

The wedding of Napoleon and Catherine was conducted by proxy before her arrival in Paris to meet her new husband; upon their first meeting in person, Napoleon remarked on her beauty, and she was quoted as quipping in relief “he’s taller and handsomer than I thought!” Their wedding in Notre Dame was a splendid affair on the heels of a private civil ceremony; Empress Catherine was celebrated in effigy throughout France, and even in Russia some relief was allowed at the match, especially when news arrived later in 1810 that she had become pregnant quickly after the wedding. Catherine, despite her initial misgivings, would before long take to the Parisian court life, enjoying her role as purveyor of a lavish lifestyle hosting balls and even currying some level of political influence among a bloc of Russophilic French aristocrats.

It was the other wedding of 1810 that captured the continent’s attention, however, and not in as good a way. The marriage of Maria Augusta of Saxony to Prince Josef Poniatowski, thus guaranteeing their issue would inherit the Duchy of Warsaw (with a Polish Duke) alarmed and angered Russia and Austria alike. Alexander was convinced that Napoleon’s hand was in the matter, especially the speed with which the marriage was announced and consummated. Though any designs on the lands of the Partition were near impossible under the young peace, it nevertheless marked an early breach between Paris and Moscow soon after Tislit and Stockholm; and it came as Napoleon entertained informal discussions with Britain about what a treaty could look like…

 

[KingSweden24]

The Wager at Wismar
​

"...they may have the seas yet, but I have Europe; and when can London ever say that they have had that?"

- Napoleon I

Deep into 1810, two things favorable to France seemed plain: the consolidation of the new Napoleonic order was here to stay, at least for the short and medium term, and the Austrians and Prussians were good enough at math to recognize the hopelessness of their situation if they were to attempt another war. It was obvious in London to the Perceval government that there would be no Fifth Coalition put together and financed to finally defeat the little Corsican; of the non-Ottoman powers, only Sweden, bound to the Continental System and utterly defenestrated on land and at sea, and the fuming Bourbons and Savoys of Sicily and Sardinia, were even remotely aligned with them now. Despite its considerable holes, the Continental System had succeeded in reducing British trade to Europe, and though a vast overseas network had compensated, exhaustion was beginning to set in amongst many in Cabinet.

The Wismar meeting, then, was meant to be a preliminary negotiation for a ceasefire and little more; London hoped that a full congress of the European powers could be called later and final borders, trade terms and other settlements agreed upon then. Canning chose Wismar for its siting in Mecklenburg, which had had a pre-Napoleonic monarch, and its proximity to Sweden, as he sailed to Gothenburg and then south through the Kattegat on a Swedish vessel under white flag. Talleyrand met him there, and the wily old Myriades had a plan of his own; he sought to end the war then and there, aware that the longer a stalemate with Britain dragged on, the more antsy other European sovereigns would start to become and the more appetizing a Fifth Coalition would look. Napoleon, in a decision he would later regret, chose not to accompany Talleyrand, seeing the meeting as purely preliminary and meant to decide nothing other than an immediate ceasefire and suspension of hostilities against French and allied shipping on the seas. "We must end their attempts to strangle Europe," he insisted as Talleyrand prepared to leave. "All else can wait."

Talleyrand had different ideas, surprising Canning. The French minister straightforwardly asked for British terms for a bilateral peace a la Amiens; an uneasy ceasefire suited nobody, and it was time to end this war favorably for everyone. Canning was shocked but presented what he viewed as fairly reasonable terms, seeing how France had not scratched Britain at sea since Trafalgar - the immediate cessation of the Continental System blockade, the return of Hannover to its rightful sovereign George III, the evacuation of the Channel ports in Flanders and subsequent return of them to Holland (though no mention was made of Napoleon's brother Louis, whom Britain knew often frustrated his elder brother, stepping down in favor of the House of Orange), and the return of the House of Braganza from Brazil to Portugal, in honor of Britain's long term alliance. In return, Britain would immediately cease its harassment of continental trade and end its blockade of French ports, pay a small indemnity for the shipping intercepted over the past three years (not seven), return some (but not all) seized overseas possessions to France and Holland, and recognize Napoleon and all treaties with foreign powers he had signed (and thus recognize the new states he had established across Europe). The matter of Wellington's expedition in Venezuela and other British encouragements in Spanish America would be negotiated separately with Madrid, and a final congress of Europe would be held at an indefinite date with the other powers to iron out any final disagreements or differences.

Canning took the view that this was an imperfect but satisfactory offer bordering on a status quo ante; Talleyrand agreed, but carefully gave no assurances to the British Foreign Minister that Napoleon would accept. It was prudent of him not to; for upon arriving back in Paris and presenting the Wismar conference's results, the Emperor was apoplectic. Anything other than a total return to the status quo of Amiens was unacceptable to him; that he would have to give back the port of Anvers, in particular, was outrageous for Britain to demand, to say nothing of welcoming the Braganzas back and needing to find yet another throne for Carlos I, whom he had installed personally. Though Napoleon had considered that Britain was likely to want Hannover back, he was reluctant to give them a continental foothold again where they could threaten the heart of the Confederation of the Rhine or France herself; to have to give all that up, when Britain hadn't put a single soldier on the European continent in years to fight his armies and sat back in their boats, was absurd. Napoleon then made what came to be known as the Wager at Wismar (even though he wasn't there personally) - he sent counter terms across the Channel, not with Talleyrand but with a minor diplomat, to make sure Britain knew it was meant as a slight. Napoleon's terms demanded the immediate cessation of hostilities, a large indemnity, the return of all overseas possessions seized along with the Bahamas, the return of Wellington's expedition from Venezuela, a reduction in Royal Navy vessels in the Channel, the acceptance of a small tariff on British goods in return for the Continental System's suspension, recognition of all of Napoleon's gains, and the end of the blockade, all to be signed bilaterally, with no future conference or reference to the status of Hannover.

British public opinion was inflamed and Cabinet insulted, and the terms angrily rejected - which was precisely what Napoleon wanted. Declaring that the Wismar demands were unreasonable to impose upon a victorious Emperor, he announced that he was open to peace but that Britain would have to "see the hour for what it is." Hannover was wiped off the map moments later with the stroke of a pen; in a series of quick treaties, Napoleon parceled it up amongst Oldenburg (below the Elbe), Schleswig-Holstein (Lubeck), Mecklenburg, a newly-formed Grand Duchy of Hamburg which was granted to the retiring Jean Lannes, and the vast majority to his brother in Westphalia, which now gained the port of Bremen and most of central Hannover, cementing it as the key state of the Confederation of the Rhine.

George III, not yet entirely consumed by madness, was outraged, and the European powers shocked at Napoleon's callousness in choosing not to seek peace. As a man whom L'Aigle oft sought to emulate once famously said, the die was now cast...

 

[KingSweden24]

The Fernandine Gambit​

"...it matters little what Spanish law actually says or suggests; our sea power determines practically what Spanish law is."

- Lord Liverpool

Britain's "Wismar Insult" was taken as an affront in France and when the terms of Canning's initial offer - with its robust list of demands and sparse number of compromises in turn - were distributed to other European capitals by Napoleon's agents, most other monarchs and their courts were surprised that Britain was not willing to settle for a white peace to end the seemingly endless wars against Napoleon. But so long as Russia was content, and she was indeed content for now, there was no chance of revanchist Prussia or cunning Austria joining another Coalition. Paris's gamble that Britain would refuse to compromise on their counter-terms, and the perception on the Continent that it was now Britain being unreasonable and choking European commerce, gave Napoleon an opening - the reform of the Continental System and its replacement with a more lenient policy. In Toulon, he revoked the Berlin and Milan decrees and replaced it with a new one, namely stating that "neutrally flagged" transshipment would now be permissible, a move that simultaneously continued to twist the screws to Britain while giving "neutral" states such as Holland, Russia, Austria and Portugal the ability to move transit goods [1]. The early 1810s, then, saw an explosion in commerce in European, with Russia once again redounding the most as it formally formed the Baltic League, a successor to the League of Armed Neutrality, now dominating the Baltic and its ports with its navy and merchant marine. By 1815, indeed, St. Petersburg was one of the busiest ports in Europe.

"We must not starve just because we are strangling Britain," Napoleon remarked, and indeed he was not wrong; the Toulon Decree would do as intended, giving the rest of Europe a sigh of relief, improving the continent's economy and allowing relations with the skeptical United States to flourish once more, with Britain now viewed definitively as the villain in Washington. Of course, the move was not a total masterstroke - the other side always gets a say, after all.

Effectively denied any foothold on the Continent or European partner besides Bourbon Sicily and Savoyard Sardinia, hardly allies who could help defeat Napoleon's vast (and now well-rested) armies, Britain's focus since 1808 had been on a series of campaigns to probe Spanish America. The Wellington expedition to the Orinoco that year had helped create a substantial republican rebellion in Venezuela that threatened the whole of New Granada; Fireland in the Southern Cone had been occupied by the Royal Navy, as had the Chiloe Archipelago, in order to completely command trans-oceanic trade. But after the debacle in Buenos Aires in 1807, Cabinet was leery of a full invasion of Spanish America, and was beginning to doubt their ability to sustain control there in a society that was densely populated, with its own traditions and ways, and which would have been nakedly hostile to an Anglican government seizing control of a fervently devout Catholic polity.

Liverpool had a solution, what he called a "gambit," and spies paid out of his own pocket had journey to Rome - where the locals were not huge fans of Napoleon to begin with - to feel out its intended target. Infante Ferdinand of Spain had been in self-exile there since he was denied at Bayonne and replaced by his father; under Spanish law, Napoleon's re-imposition of Charles IV, effectively negating his abdication as void, was dubious. Though the pro-Ferdinand segment in Spain was not insubstantial, and was particularly concentrated in Madrid, the exile of the hated Godoy to France had tempered many of the passions, and the shrinking bloc opposed to Charles had simply resigned themselves to waiting for the old, unpopular King to die and then have one of his sons take power. That Ferdinand had attempted to overthrow his father twice and been humiliated was of little import to them, especially as his rigidly dutiful and traditional younger brother, Infante Carlos, would have refused any attempted usurpation out of order for the throne out of hand.

The reality on the ground in New Spain was murkier, though. The Spanish Navy had been effectively eliminated as a global force after Trafalgar and her armies were trapped in Iberia by the Royal Navy effectively cutting the lines of communication, with Spanish ports a particular focus of the British blockades after Charles was placed back on the throne. Without peninsular authority, local juntas had been formed in the absence of Spanish control. This arrangement, ad hoc at first, had actually worked rather well; and though New Spain and New Granada would never have deigned to revolt in the name of liberty the way the United States had, the elite criollos of Mexico and Bogota were beginning to wonder if this arrangement perhaps did not work better than staying forever under Madrid's control. The seed of an opportunity had been planted.

Britain's plan, then, was to smuggle Ferdinand out of Rome and sail him to Mexico via Barbados (Havana was still fairly loyal to Spain), where he would declare his father an illegitimate puppet of the French, the Bayonne Abdication an illegal usurpation, and that he was the rightful King of Spain, in the same sense/legal fiction that the Braganza court in Rio de Janeiro was the rightful court of Portugal. Liverpool, Canning and Perceval saw no particular downside to this gambit; there were a number of ways to measure success, all of which damaged Spain to their benefit. "We have identified the weak underbelly of Napoleon's continental network of despots," Liverpool announced to the Cabinet. "It is in Iberia, and that is where pressure shall be applied. It matters little what Spanish law actually says or suggests; our sea power practically determines what Spanish law is."

Ferdinand was smuggled out of Rome in early December, 1810. Stopovers in Gibraltar, the Canaries, Barbados and Jamaica preceded his arrival in Veracruz, where he made his anticipated declaration as Ferdinand VII, the rightful king of Spain, setting up an exile court in Mexico, and endorsing the juntas in his name...

[1] Credit to @alexmilman for this suggestion

 

[KingSweden24]

A Prince is Born​

"...oh, what a joyous thing, to be a father!"

- Napoleon Bonaparte

The bizarre news of Ferdinand's declaration as the proper king of Spain by virtue of an overly technical reading of Spanish succession law reached a Paris in thrall to the news of the birth of the Prince Imperial, Napoleon Charles Paul-Alexandre Joseph Bonaparte. Both mother and son had had a healthy and relatively light birth and the city was overjoyed, with fireworks and a carnival-like atmosphere in the streets. The Empire had its prince; Napoleon had his heir.

The news reverberated around Europe; as if the battlefield victories and strategic marriage between Napoleon and the Russian Imperial house had not fully conferred a sense of permanence upon the Bonaparte dynasty, perhaps this would. Louis of Holland, Jerome of Westphalia and Joseph of Naples, his royal brothers, had children of their own, as did his sister Caroline and her husband Joachim Murat, the Prince of Berg; the Bonapartes, ensconced on their thrones and with children set to succeed them, did not seem likely to be going anywhere anytime soon. Russian nobility was mutedly optimistic about the birth, though Tsar Alexander was said to have scowled upon the news of his nephew's birth; in the last year, he had slowly began to sour on his arrangements with France and though he did not desire war had begun to hatch a project to diplomatically isolate France in order to wring concessions from his brother-in-law, with his sister as an agent of influence.

Congratulations rolled in from across Europe (with the notable exception of Britain) as Napoleon focused on celebrating his son, including a lavish baptism when he was two months old. The news came within a few months, too, that Catherine was pregnant again; it looked likely that L'Aigle would have two hatchlings, an heir and a spare, in short order. For now, military and political matters would have to wait, no matter what the alarmed letters from Madrid said...

 

[KingSweden24]

The Baltic League​

"...he who can exercise the most influence in Germany, will be he who controls Europe..."

- Apocryphal, early 19th century

The Baltic League was meant to do one thing and one thing alone: recreate a League of Armed Neutrality and remake the Baltic, particularly her once-Hanseatic ports, into a Russian lake. Its members were Russia, Sweden (by force), Denmark and Prussia; the League built upon Denmark's suzerainty over the Kattegat and Swedish politics, and the Russian-Prussian military understanding that had quietly come into play by 1811. With the relaxation of the Continental System, and the withdrawal of Britain from the Baltic after the Battle of Ostersund, Russia was poised to dominate the region like never before. Indeed, the economic dominance of Russia over Baltic ports increasingly bent the agrarian, estate-focused economies of Sweden and Prussia towards St. Petersburg's thriving port and its growing merchant marine - and Navy, which Russia's booming economy and flush tax coffers could by mid-decade afford to subsidize at a much higher rate.

The Russian-Prussian "understanding" was not a formal alliance per se; such a move would have created much alarm in Paris and Vienna. Frederick William III was not particularly interested in anything other than his church consolidation project, besides; Prussia's grievous losses at Tilsit had left him humiliated, embittered and, already shy and indecisive, reluctant to make a major power play less his pride be damaged again. Where Prussia had a common interest with Russia, though, was in checking the Duchy of Warsaw that was sandwiched between them; said Duchy had been carved out of Prussian lands at Tilsit and its existence angered both states considerably. The tensions between Prussia and Warsaw increased when the daughter of King Frederick August of Saxony, Maria Augusta, and Warsaw's civic leader Jozef Poniatowski had their first son, Jozef August; the hereditary Duke of Warsaw - and, more dangerously, potential future King of Poland if the geopolitical winds blew the wrong way - had been born. The bond between Saxony and Warsaw had now been tightened; this was a problem for both states.

It did not help matters that Saxony was one of the leading states within the Confederation of the Rhine, in concert with Westphalia and Bavaria to dominate the Union; they were generally seen as the kings aligned with the French. Opposing them were three duchies; Oldenburg, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and, curiously, Murat's Berg. The latter was mostly due to the eccentricities of Murat himself, who hated being dictated to and desired more influence in Frankfurt, specifically trying to cajole, flatter and control Prince-Primate Karl von Dalberg, who in theory was the head of state of the loose Confederation. The former, however, were aligned with Russia and Prussia respectively, and Mecklenburg-Schwerin desired entry into the Baltic League, which would entrench its ties with friendly Prussia and, theoretically, boost prosperity for influential merchants in Rostock.

With the dismantling of Hanover and Britain's exit from its substantial position of influence over Germany, exercising power over the Confederation became a geopolitical matter. Napoleon was unamused by Denmark's entry into the Baltic League, after he had assisted the state in defeating Sweden and revenging itself upon Britain for Copenhagen; that Oldenburg and Mecklenburg-Schwerin seemed likely to swing into the Russian camp more formally, and thus give Tsar Alexander much more than merely familial influence in Germany - to say nothing of returning Prussia to a position of importance in Germany, an eventuality the Confederation was designed to block - was a substantial problem and potential point of friction within the informal alliance between Paris and Moscow.

The Congress of Erfurt seemed a distant memory all of a sudden, and as 1811 dragged on, it was an open question what the resolution in Germany would be and if the Confederation could survive. The widely divergent internal politics of the various Confederated states did not help matters; administration ranged from the Napoleonic model to reformist South German kingdoms to conservative, unflinching arbiters of the old feudalistic ways. The Confederation's structure did not lend itself to cohesiveness and its foundation had been ad hoc; it was primarily a military alliance first and foremost, an organized German state second. Neither Napoleon nor Tsar Alexander wanted a unified Germany that they could not dominate, nor did Prussia, and Austria certainly did not accept the idea that it had lost the Holy Roman Empire at Pressburg only to see Germany formally unified under some other power. The tensions were at a simmer at first, but as Dalberg began a fierce debate over how much of an economic union the Confederation would be as Hamburg thrived as a "neutral" port but was hammered by duties on overland transport, there seemed to be dark clouds on the horizon over a part of Europe that had experienced them repeatedly before, and the British Cabinet began to wonder if Germany and Warsaw were not the ideal wedges to re-isolate Napoleon once more...

 

[KingSweden24]

I realize now I neglected to include the Swedish succession crisis' resolution; Carl August dies in 1810 just as in OTL so they need to pick somebody. Since Bernadotte has a hereditary title in Rome, the Danish Duke Frederick Christian of Augustenborg (older brother of Carl August) is picked instead; this was almost the case OTL until Bernadotte got tapped at the last minute. Of course, he'll die in 1814, so it is his son Christian (Charles) August who will succeed in Sweden in 1818 as Charles XVI August instead.

(Threadmarked for canon entry)

 

[KingSweden24]

An Unpleasant Welcome​

"...far be it from me to so directly question the decisions of Cabinet; I should relate, however, that our decision has not been popular with the allies we have now left to turn their guns on us with this change of direction, nor has it been popular with the countrymen of the Spanish colonies, who despite what I must imagine is an uncharitable view of their acumen have quickly, through local officials, been able to quickly determine the situation for precisely what it is - a farce! For this reason, I see now that I cannot in good conscience lead my men under these circumstances, and I thus see that the only honourable path forward for me to take is to dutifully resign my commission, so that His Majesty's Government may send a better and more capable commander to Mexico in my stead..."

- Arthur Wellesley's resignation letter

The installation of Ferdinand in Mexico City was met with a veritable mix of emotions in the Viceroyalties; shock, confusion, laughter, derision, and frustration chief among them. In Madrid, it was met with little shy of apoplexy. If Britain had hoped to set up a Portuguese-style "exile court" to put leverage against the regime of Charles IV, they had grievously misread the situation, so badly so that the Fernandine Gambit is now regarded as one of the worst foreign policy decisions of all time and the beginning of the end of the so-called "Second British Empire" that emerged after the loss of the Thirteen Colonies. The court in Madrid had previously, of course, been divided into pro-French and anti-French camps, with the latter enjoying the benefits of sharing the Spanish public's antipathy for the disgraced minister Godoy. Godoy's exit, Charles IV being returned to the throne after two coup attempts by his son, and France's sharp reduction in troops across the Pyrenees by 1811 had dramatically reduced the power of both camps; the chief admirer of French progressive reforms was gone, and thus much of the reasoning for his antagonists' political program. That their hero, Ferdinand, had gone into exile in Rome had stilled the waters; Infante Carlos, the king's second and non-disgraced son, was an almost maniacally devout man who believed he would go to Hell if he crossed his family and attempted to intrigue against his father whom God had personally chosen to rule Spain.

This was all to say that French prestige, while battered in the mid-1800s, had recovered on the Peninsula even before Britain decided to pull its maneuver that would only inflame Spanish opinion further. Still heated over Trafalgar and the continued occupation of Gibraltar, Britain's declaration that it was, in effect, installing the King's would-be two-time usurper son as the "rightful" King of Spain in exile, a la the Braganzas in Brazil, met with an uproar of righteous fury. Whatever differences had once divided the afrancescados and their opponents melted in mere instants; Spain was now, quite possibly, France's most ardent ally on the Continent. Peace with Britain was now impossible, and the effects spread beyond Spain soon. In Portugal, much of the old, pro-Braganza courtiers and intelligentsia had fled; the cautious, canny and most importantly pragmatically neutral regency established over Charles I by his mother Maria Louisa was alarmed that Britain's move signalled that they aimed to one day restore the Braganzas to the throne in Lisbon, where before there had been three years of a silent understanding that Britain would accept the Bourbon Portuguese usurpation provided they did not materially aid Napoleon. Other royal houses winced at the clumsiness of the move, and opinions towards London cooled substantially at a time when intrigues in Germany provided the British Cabinet an opening on the Continent that had seemed evasive for years.

The effects in the New World were no less major. In Mexico, the heartland of Spanish America, Ferdinand was met with a frosty reception even in the capital; a peninsulare class of administrators long cut off from Europe had consolidated much control to the chagrin of the criollos and were ready to continue their tight-fisted rule that they viewed theirs by right. Discontent towards long-off Madrid had been bubbling for years; Ferdinand's tactlessness in dealing with complex local power centers made things worse. This multiplied beyond just New Spain; in installing Ferdinand as the "King in Exile," Britain had to completely revoke its support for campaigns in Venezuela in support of Francisco de Miranda; the sudden retreat from the Orinoco, and the anger from Miranda's partisans, resulted in nearly half of Wellesley's force in the start of 1811, which had nearly captured Caracas at that point despite attrition, failing to return to Trinidad, one of the worst British military debacles of the Napoleonic period. Wellesley himself was rightfully angered, especially when Miranda and his former opponents in Venezuela quickly buried the hatchet, effectively overthrew the colonial administrators and within months had installed, alongside compatriot Simon Bolivar, a junta in Bogota that ruled in the name of Charles IV. Revolts against Ferdinand erupted outside of Buenos Aires and Lima as well; only Mexico, where Britain quickly dispatched a force of 10,000 men to support their ally, was pacific, for the time being. The Braganzas in Rio de Janeiro were stunned by what they could see from thousands of miles away was an enormous debacle; their flight to Brazil was built on the legitimacy of their overthrow by Napoleon! How the Prime Minister could not have seen that was beyond them. Geopolitical costs in the Americas mounted, too; the commitments to embargoing New Spain and New Granada and dispatching men meant Britain needed to not concern themselves with the young United States on New Spain's northern flank and Canada's southern; an amenable arrangement on impressment and trade was quickly cut with the Madison administration, with Britain making a note that they would return to find a more permanent solution to American trade with Europe and the remaining disputes once Ferdinand was more secure.

There was too vast an area arising against the "Rey Falso" or "Falso Fernando," and too many criollo-backed militias declaring support for the Madrid throne, for Britain to pacify at once, to say nothing of the strapped, besieged Fernandine regime. Wellesley, by late 1811 and having sent his men into disease-ridden Hell up the Magdalena River to put down Bolivar's army, had had enough and after a bloody defeat near Cartagena de Indias in December of that year, tendered his resignation and returned to Ireland. Britain had abandoned Europe to Napoleon only to fight an increasingly impossible war on behalf of a puppet king in the crumbling remains of the Spanish Empire, cutting off the "true king" and his forces from reaching their de jure domains but unable to enforce any kind of lasting peace...

 

[KingSweden24]

The View from Vienna​

"...it is key to the order of Europe that Austria's course be one inherently of pragmatism; that is what she shall endeavor to give, and as such that is all Europe can expect to receive..."

- Klemens von Metternich

Austria, of all the powers, was in a strange gray area of discomfort with the new Napoleonic order but not entirely inconvenienced by it. The revocation of the Milan Decree had freed up its trade under neutral flags, creating new opportunities now that the Holy Roman Empire was not of Vienna's concern, but her economy recovered slower than the European average. Not having faced war since Pressburg, the Austrian Army had been given time to undergo substantial modernizing reforms and revise its budgets, but the war indemnity from the Third Coalition had taken a bite and there was little for the army to do, what with France at peace but able to mobilize within weeks if war were declared. Austria had been driven from influence in Italy and lost substantial influence within Germany, reduced tremendously in prestige, but had no natural enemies save for the Ottomans on their southwest flank and no immediate intersections of interest with potential allies. Prussia was defanged, and Russia seemed content for the time being with the status quo. Only Britain dispatched agents to the court of Francis I to attempt to goad his state into another conflict, but there was no plain cassus belli that could induce such an event without placing Austria at the mercy of much of Europe. The Habsburgs had lost power, yes, but not enough to cow them entirely.

In Metternich, then, Francis found an able ambassador to France who served as a sort of second foreign minister, allowing him influence in Paris and most importantly a figure close to Talleyrand. A quiet struggle emerged in the Napoleonic Peace that was emerging in the early 1810s, where Metternich sought ways to excite Napoleon's passions for dominance over Germany and thus weaken his position with wary German kings and princes, hopefully in doing so rolling back some of the revolutionary reforms brought to fore in those states. The plan, as it were, was to chip away at the position of French clients within the Confederation of the Rhine over time, to allow Austria pole position again, and if goading Napoleon into a clash with Russia was part and parcel with that, then so be it. Italy was a harder target, but Austrian merchants were kind to the reactionary island kingdoms of Sicily and Sardinia, rewarding their absolutism with open friendship, but not outright alliance that would implicate them in what the French angrily regarded as "British schemes."

The dance of the powers, then, had at least some of its music playing from Vienna; Metternich proved canny, effusive in his congratulations in early 1812 for the birth of two more children to Empress Catherine, twins - a boy, Louis-Joseph Napoleon, and a girl, Catherine Leticia Josephine - while also nudging his French peers, including those such as Marshal Ney who had the restless Emperor's ear, in hopes of forcing a much-desired confrontation between France and Russia over the slow-boiling question of Germany's leading state what with the complications introduced by the Baltic League...

(Recall: there has been no Fifth Coalition ITTL)

 

[KingSweden24]

Sunk Cost Fallacy​

"...let it be clear, His Majesty's Government intends to continue to pursue the current policies with regards to affairs both on the Continent as well as in the Spanish Americas, and there are few if any circumstances short of the terms presented at Wismar by myself being accepted by the Corsican and his regime that would reverse such a course by Cabinet..."

- George Canning, maiden speech to the Commons after becoming First Lord of the Treasury

Historians would, for decades, debate the course that Britain pursued in the first half of the 1810s and the direct effect it had on ending what is today known as the "Second British Empire," or the British colonial empire as it was constituted after the Revolution in North America severed the 13 colonies from London. Numerous paths to acknowledge reality - utter defeat by every possible coalition partner in Europe and their subsequent alienation from London through an array of economic and diplomatic missteps, the ascendance of French hegemony in Western Europe in combination with a grand detente achieved with Russia over Central and Eastern Europe, and finally the disastrous and ever-costly interventions in the Spanish Empire - were presented to Britain over the course of several years, and at every opportunity the government refused to see reason and take them.

Part of the reason was the increasing madness of George III, which had rendered the King mostly confined to his various estates and his namesake son the Prince Regent. George, Prince of Wales, could have made for a fine sovereign if the war were going well and Britain was pressing her advantages; as it were, his spendthrift style and many personal and financial scandals alienated him from the populace and made his rule both as regent for his father and later as king hideously unpopular. His presaging over the decline of Britain's influence in Europe over a twenty year period is remembered remarkably poorly. Stubborn as he was, the Prince Regent encouraged his government to press Britain's case on, viewing Napoleon no longer as a nuisance as he had been in the 1790s but now an existential threat to British commerce on the continent. Nevermind that it was Russia that had now blocked British commercial activity from the Baltic almost entirely, nor that Spain was so furious at the British Fernandine Gambit and Portugal so contemptuous of the Braganza court in Rio de Janeiro that every port in Iberia was closed to British ships; France held a unique position in the paranoid British mind.

It further complicated matters that Britain had sunk so much time, treasure and blood into casting off "that damned Corsican," as the Prime Minister Spencer Perceval called him on the floor of the Commons mere days before his assassination by a desperate and angry day-laborer, that now London could not retreat without threatening a full revolution. To admit defeat now, after the sacrifices made, with Britons starving in the streets and debt mounting? No, that would be to invite revolution! And so more men were impressed for the Navy ships that scoured the ocean waves hunting for French vessels, with the possibility of carrying out close blockades on anything but French naval ports all but impossible in the post-Continental System era, and even more men recruited to be dispatched to the slow-rolling disaster on the Spanish Main.

If canny observers of British politics of the time had thought that Perceval's shocking murder would cause a course correction, they were even more stunned that it seemed only to cause a redoubling. This was thanks to Canning, the architect of Britain's foreign policy, taking his place as head of government, narrowly beating out Lord Liverpool for the job but causing a raft of resignations from his Cabinet among prominent statesmen who disliked his person that it nearly brought the whole government down within weeks of his kissing hands with Prince George. The "Two Georges," they were caricatured as, trying desperately to swim against the tide.

The tide, as it were, in the Americas was blood red - the red of actual blood on the red uniforms of British soldiers. Venezuela was lost and the local junta had nearly driven every last British soldier fighting on "behalf" of the "true king Ferdinand" from La Plata. New Spain was the crown jewel, where peasant armies led by the preacher Miguel Hidalgo had marched on the cities and captured much of the countryside in partnership with the local criollo military class; Ferdinand was in power only thanks to a battalion of Spanish loyalists who had voluntarily exiled themselves from Europe and the peninsulare aristocracy that sat in the capital at Mexico. That the Canning government elected to redouble their efforts to prop up their vassal in Ferdinand despite the costs two years of intervention by early 1813 had cost them stands as one of the great foreign policy blunders in history; whatever leverage they thought they may have earned with the court in Madrid was nonexistent, especially as Charles IV of Spain aged and a subset of fiercely Anglophobic advisors emerged who if anything encouraged a harder, more resolute line on the colonial question than their King or his French allies.

The only genuine success, if it can even be called that, of the Canning era was continuing to mollify an instinctively pro-French administration in America's James Madison, who having survived a closer than expected reelection had more wiggle room to cool the rhetoric with Britain and avoid a war, despite a number of small indignities. The United States, unhappy at the ever-growing British presence in New Spain, needed to be kept satisfied and so American shipping through Europe was one of the few to be unrestricted by Britain, creating a new economic boom for ports like Boston, New Haven and New York as the young democracy reintegrated her economy with that of the emerging European capitalist system...

 

[KingSweden24]

A German Game​

"...by decree, I duly appoint Eugene de Beauharnais, Viceroy of Italy, my successor..."

- Karl von Dalberg, Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhone and Duke of Frankfurt

If the Confederation of the Rhine, the central political entity in the region of "Germany," had one saving grace, it was that it was inoffensive to Russia and Austria thanks to its weakness. Yes, it was plainly a hodgepodge of Paris-friendly satrapies (most notably the Bonaparte-ruled Westphalia), but at least in theory it was the sum of its parts, a greater whole, and with keen leaders in places such as Bavaria, Mecklenburg, Saxony and Oldenburg (and, depending on the mercurial Joachim Murat's mood, Berg) a place that could be influenced as a common ground in the Napoleonic Peace and a robust buffer state in the event of future war. Much of this hinged on the power held by individual kings and dukes; on paper, the Confederation was ruled by a Diet that was a facsimile of and successor to that of the Holy Roman Empire, which held little practical influence, and as figurehead sat the Prince-Primate, Karl von Dalberg, who as a sinecure for incomes also held the titular office of Duke of Frankfurt, the Confederation's capital near the confluence of the Main and the Rhine (and, not coincidentally, quite close to the French Corps des Frontieres division stationed in Mayence).

Dalberg was a former priest nearing the age of seventy, however, and had no issue of his own. The German Question took on new meaning - who would inherit the title of Prince-Primate when he passed, and what would they do with it? The question had an answer before long, and one that threatened another war in Europe with its answer: Eugene de Beauharnais, Napoleon's stepson and previously Viceroy of Italy.

Napoleon had, with the birth of his second son Louis, finally found an heir to the title of King of Italy and named his son as such. The result, however, was that his loyal and reliable Eugene needed a place to "land;" Germany seemed the obvious choice. Approaching five years of peace and with the British threat seeming more impotent by the month, Napoleon consulted no-one and informed Talleyrand of the ultimatum he was about to present Dalberg only hours before he traveled to Frankfurt personally to inform the Prince-Primate - who, again, on paper was theoretically an equal to the French Emperor - that Beauharnais was to receive the title of Duke of Frankfurt and that, henceforth, the Duke of Frankfurt would be the hereditary holder of the office of Prince-Primate of the Confederation. Dalberg, increasingly aware of his age, mortality and the precariousness of his position, agreed and decreed by edict; Talleyrand was barely able to warn his Russian friends of the move before the law had been passed in Frankfurt by fiat in October of 1813.

It is almost certain Napoleon did not time this maneuver for the weeks before winter made a military campaign virtually impossible; nevertheless, his rash choice to impose Eugene de Beauharnais upon Germany and its monarchs was well-timed despite its unilateralism and the anger it caused across Europe. Rumors had already spread in Prussia of Westphalian armies slowly growing their ranks; now, it seemed plain that Berlin's exclusion from a Napoleonic "German Confederacy" was designed for permanence. Alexander of Russia recoiled at the thought of his familial ties to the Duchy of Oldenburg being subsumed; he was not quite as ready as Friedrich Wilhelm to mobilize, what with his Baltic League having enriched Russian coffers, but for the first time since Erfurt the idea of a Fifth Coalition seemed live, though not yet enticing. Austria, at any rate, was about ready to mobilize, if nothing else than to make a point; being shut out of influence in Germany so completely was unacceptable. In Britain, the first ray of hope in years emerged. At least two continental powers, possibly three if the diplomacy by Canning's men in St. Petersburg could be good enough, seemed willing to rise in defense of the German kingdoms, and the cohesiveness of the Confederation's military forces and cooperation of the various personalities under Beauharnais left ample opportunity; even Murat chafed at the declaration.

The stage, then, was set for the German game to reach some kind of conclusion as the fall of 1813 deepened - one that could quite easily end in bloodshed...

 

[KingSweden24]

The Winter Maneuvers​

"...what I would give to show our friends in Russia that we mean them no ill-will, no offense, and only courtesy..."

- Eugene de Beauharnais

The German war scare only intensified into the winter of 1813 - suggesting a probable Fifth Coalition being formed to challenge French supremacy in Germany by the following spring by, at the least, Austria, Britain and Prussia with the possibility of some of the Confederation's statelets throwing their lot in with them. With the armies of Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, in addition to most of Germany and the experienced French armies, Napoleon felt good about his odds in such a conflict; he would quite possibly have his most robust advantages in any coalition yet, even with the army reforms pursued by Vienna since Austerlitz. This, of course, was provided that Russia was not led into war by the nose by her Prussian ally, and a number of French statesmen winced at the thought of Napoleon continuing the fickle and fragile dance of diplomacy to keep Tsar Alexander out.

Eugene de Beauharnais met with Alexander's envoys personally at Regensburg in late November as rumors spread that von Dalberg would retire entirely on his 70th birthday - the following February. Eugene assured Alexander's men as well as the Duke of Oldenburg that as prince-primate he would suborn no royal or ducal rights in any kingdom and that his sole goal was to pursue a uniform foreign policy for the Confederation to keep peace in central Europe. The Russians, of course, were skeptical; but the "Regensburg Reassurances" seemed to have done their job in convincing them that under the soon-to-be "Prince Eugen," a more fully-federated Germany was not a risk. The ongoing diplomatic antics of Joachim Murat in Berg further satisfied Russian worries of a future unified, singular Germany being a creature of Paris; Napoleon, after all, could not even get his brother and brother-in-law to cooperate, so why would they listen to his adopted son?

Prussia and Austria, meanwhile, had their own work to do, planning a joint offensive into Saxony and Warsaw to start off the coming war while Austria, with British support, launched an attack into the Kingdom of Italy. Contrary to prior conflicts, both states agreed - contra British intentions - to keep their war aims limited. The goal of this Fifth Coalition would be to dissolve the Confederation as a buffer state and undo some of the imposed territorial humiliations of the previous wars; beyond that, both Austria and Prussia accepted that there could be no dislodging of Napoleon at all, but with the tide of revolutionary governments seeming to have mostly receded (Napoleon's firm Spanish ally was perhaps one of the most conservative regimes on the continent) the ideological underpinnings of the Coalitions had waned. Only Britain still really aimed for a Bourbon Restoration in France, and they had their hands more than occupied with their Spanish-American ulcer.

Napoleon mobilized 100,000 of his soldiers after Christmas and began maneuvering them to winter camps on the Rhine so that he could launch an offensive as soon as spring began and catch his enemies off guard; in a meeting with South German kings and their generals in Stuttgart in early January, he described his strategy as having their soldiers put pressure on Austria via Salzburg, while he routed his soldiers straight through the Fulda Gap on a lightning march into Saxony, which was already steeling itself for the spring war, to crush the Prussian and Austrian forces separately before they could link up. A joint Dutch-Westphalian force, meanwhile, would attack Mecklenburg and into northern Prussia to open up another theater. It was a gamble, and a risky one, but Ney and Massena were mobilizing reserve armies behind him as they spoke, as well as a Spanish force preparing itself. The advantage clearly belonged with the French - but again, the fate of the continent depended on how satisfied Russia was with their Baltic League and whether they would join this proposed "Holy Alliance" of conservatism, which they had resisted in previous coalitions.

The Prussians and Austrians had their own troubles to worry about as the new years arrived; late in the winter, a typhus epidemic emerged and struck the East of Europe hard. Thousands of men who would have served in the armies of the Fifth Coalition perished; thousands more in neutral Russia, particularly St. Petersburg, which was hit perhaps the hardest. Nobleman and serf died alike, including perhaps the most important of all - Tsar Alexander I, perishing after weeks bedridden, on January 30, 1814... [1]


[1] Credit to @alexmilman for this idea!