Le déséquilibre des puissances - Europe out of balance.

This thread is meant to host properly the result of a previous discussion that has started developing into a TL.
It will be my first true TL here, and it is a shot into a area where some points are quite outside my area of expertise. It was born almost by chance and I am not sure how long I can and will go on with it. To my surprise, I received enough encouragement to make me go on with this.
I'll start reposting here the stuff from the previous discussion, edited and revised, before going on.
I am not a native English speaker, so please forgive my errors and my sometimes convoluted syntax.

The POD for this TL is an earlier demise of Cardinal Fleury at the beginning of the War of the Austrian Succession. Fleury was very reluctant in getting involved in this war, and his action in OTL contributed to give Austria some room to react.
Here, France takes a more assertive attitude, resulting in a more effective alliance with Spain, Prussia and, to a lesser extent, Saxony and Bavaria. So here Vienna falls and the Hungarian diet proves much less eager to support Maria Theresa, though it still acknowledges her as Queen of Hungary. The result is that the European Balance of Power is upset completely. In the following years France lacks any real continental counterweight, that frees her resources for the naval conflict with Britain. This will have nasty consequences for the Netherlands, literally caught in the middle with no other choice than sticking to the British side.
So far, I have a vague outline of what will happen for a century or so thereafter, but many parts are still very uncertain.
This will be a massive French wank, but is meant to stay plausible. France will be very, very powerful in every sphere for quite a long time, and will leave a mark on almost everything. I think that in this tl's 2012 France will still be the among the top world hyperpowers.
However, she will be not without worthy rivals. The obvious one is Russia, but some surprises can emerge in the future.

Much of the TL will be related through excerpts of alternate history book and scholarly papers. It is a kind of writing I am a little familiar with, especially when writing in English.

A note about butterflies. Some people born long after the POD will have names identical or similar to OTL, but that does not mean they are the same people. I just tried to kept it simple and, sometimes, funny.
 
Will be following this. A french wank with Louis XV in charge is difficult he would screw things up. Kill him with syphilis.
 
Will be following this. A french wank with Louis XV in charge is difficult he would screw things up. Kill him with syphilis.
He did nearly die during that war, so putting his son in charge isn't hard. (I will neither confirm nor deny whether or not this is a plug for the timeline in my sig. ;))

Anyway, I will await this. We need more plausible super Frances. :D
 
Will be following this. A french wank with Louis XV in charge is difficult he would screw things up. Kill him with syphilis.

I thought Louis XV would live his OTL lifespan. In a sense, France will be succesful in spite of his efforts at ruining things. :D
 
It's him who put France in the mess with his mismanagement as his bad reputation did not help.

Yeah, but many of the things he did OTL to earn his bad reputation won't happen here. Also, probably d'Arnouville reforms will have success TTL.
 
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But he was so close to dying at Metz.

He won't be at Metz ITTL.
I had failed to notice your TL before. I'm reading it now and it is very interesting. I hadn't thought much of the Dauphin, actually I somehow had in mind the notion that OTL's Louis XVI was Louis' XV son. I'll fix it.
 
The POD and some flash-forwards.

From "Dynasty, Nation, Imperium: Family, Power, and the end of European Balance of Power" by Maurice Braudel, Université Imperiale de Nouvelle Orléans, Nouvelle France du Sud, 1947. Introduction. Translated from French.

"When the eighteenth century started, the old system of power in Europe, that had gone on consolidating for almost three century into conglomerates of dynastic power, proved to be in crisis. The so-called Wars of Succession that stained the whole course of the century with blood may appear, from a certain perspective, a chain of particularly useless and trivial conflicts whose purpose had to do with little else than dubious dynastic claims as paper wraps for greed and blatant aggression.
The grounds for the Prussian invasion of Silesia in 1740, for example, where legally shaky at best, and the French support for the Bavarian and Saxon claims to the Hapsburg Heritage at the same time was at least debatable. Remarkably, Cardinal Fleury had opposed that course of action. Had he lived, France may have not pursued this policy with resolution and the War of the Austrian Succession might have been a much less clear-cut French victory.
After his death, however, the strong anti-Austrian faction at court had large freedom. They, and King Louis, felt France was strong enough to carry a bold policy. Dynastic claims and family feuds between the royals cannot be the correct level to understand the Wars of Succession.
The issue at stake was the continued existence of the Balance, that France has been threatening with mixed success since the second half of the preceding century, and thus the increasing power of France. Out of the Bourbon dynastic compact, a State, an Empire was slowly emerging. The actions of the alliance crafted by Maréchal Belle Lisle upset the Balance destroying the power of one of its main pillar, the Hapsburg dynastic compact.
The War of Spanish Succession had been a defeat for France, but had destroyed Spain as an independent Great Power. This altered the Balance in ways that would prove to favor France in the long run.
The rise of France really started with the next round of the Wars. The War of the Polish Succession was a mild success for Louis XV, but the Balance was never threatened there as it had been in the War of the Spanish Succession. However, most historians agree to see it as a sort of premise for the subsequent chain of successful wars that involved France: the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1747), the War of the Dutch and Swedish Successions (1751-1756), the War of the Bohemian Succession (1763-1769), the War of Succession of the Schleswig-Holstein (1772-1774) and the War of the Bavarian Succession (1778-1784). In approximately half a century, France had managed to destroy her two long-standing enemies, Austria and the Netherlands, and to reduce emerging competitors like Bavaria and Saxony-Bohemia to irrelevance, while ensuring that Germany would remain divided.
France was by far the greatest winner of this series of wars, but Prussia, Spain and Russia, the first two mainly as French allies, the latter as the only remaining French rival on the Continent, also rose greatly in European political landscape.
By 1784, the Balance was radically upset and weakened, but still not completely dead. A European coalition to put down France was still possible, and the relationships between France and Prussia had become increasingly strained.
The death of Frederick, however, deprived the only hypotetical counterweight to France that survived the Wars in Western Europe of its leadership, and the Prussian might, now headless, stood idly watching the French consolidating their gains overseas and completing the Partition of Switzerland.
The War of the Mysorean Succession (1791-1795) is so called because it was similar to the previsious European Wars of Succession in its outcome, but it obviously had nothing to do with continental Balance in its origin and structure. It sucked the Swiss conflict, the Polish Troubles and the Russian conflicts with Sweden and Turkey into itself. Still, none of these was a conflict where the Balance was at stake, especially not as an equilibrium among dynastic compacts.
At the end of the century, international relationships in Europe, and then, in a large part of the world, had essentially changed. Since the French power was established as a more or less a given,
the next series of conflicts would be less general in scope and focused on local matters. The Polish Troubles of 1791 anticipated this, though only the Italian Revolutionary Wars clearly showed the new pattern."
 
He won't be at Metz ITTL.
I had failed to notice your TL before. I'm reading it now and it is very interesting. I hadn't thought much of the Dauphin, actually I somehow had in mind the notion that OTL's Louis XVI was Louis' XV son. I'll fix it.
Yeah, 18th century French monarchs had a habit of outliving their sons. :p
 
From "The Rise and Fall of the United Provinces of the Netherlands: a Tale of Glory and Folly" by Alain Jobert, Université Imperiale de Capeville, Afrique Australe, 1916.

"The Netherlands had lived under the threat of the French for approximately eighty years. After the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, this threat was present and direct more than ever, but the Estaten-Generaal failed to find a sensible course of action. While alliance with Britain seemed unavoidable, in case of war this would only mean that the Netherlands would take the brunt of the fight, possibly both from East and South.
The issue of Hannover barred any reconciliation between Britain and Prussia, and this, more than anything else, spelled death for the United Provinces. A French invasion alone could be fended off with British help.
A joint invasion could not.
At the same time, the rift between the Orangist and Republican parties had grown larger.
While William IV had been grudgingly accepted by most, his infant son was another matter. Hereditary staathouderhood was suddenly troubling. Britain, France and Prussia were all contributing to Dutch disunion, feeding the feuding parties as they could.
The Dutch policy had been focused on detaching Prussia and France, but the only realistic way to do so was alienating Britain in the process. And that, the Dutch could not afford.
This unsolvable problem lay at the core of the tragic destiny that the Republic met shortly after the death of William IV."
 
a map

Here is a tentative map of Europe after the War of the Austrian Succession of this timeline, and some things that happened during it and immediately afterwards.
You'll notice that the Dutch have every reason to be very worried, as they actually are. You can see also the obvious reasons why the Wettin and Hohenzollern dynastic compacts are likely to be at each other's throat sooner or later, and how Italy is going to be Spanish-dominated.
Savoy, Sweden and the Austrian States have been screwed quite badly.
You will see that some ecclesiastical states and Imperial cities have been absorbed by Bavaria, France and Prussia. This was something Frederick had proposed OTL, but was refused by the Bavarians. Here it sticks, though some bishoprics still exist.
Prussia has been enlarged very much, but in exchange for the vital French support, has given to France everything she has west of the Rhine.
For Frederick, it has been a very good deal, but of course it makes clear to everybody that France is really hell-bent about the "natural borders" again. Only, this time there is basically nobody to stop her.
Russia has chosen to renounce imposing her Gottorp candidate to the Swedish throne, and keep Finland as a duchy for Tsarevich Peter instead.
This sets the stage for the War of the Swedish succession that is going to break out soon and entangle with the Dutch one.
I hope this helps to see the strategic situation.

deseq-eur-1750.png
 
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Bavaria seem like a good counter to Prussia.
There are war of succession everywhere is ir normal? By the way Louis XV son died of tuberculosis in 1765 OTL there is no reason for him to die of that TTL.
 
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Bavaria seem like a good counter to Prussia.
There are war of succession everywhere is ir normal? By the way Louis XV son died of tuberculosis in 1765 OTL there is no reason for him to die of that TTL.

Many of the ones I listed almost happened OTL. Some are OTL conflicts with names changed to the historiographical fashion of calling every dynastic squabble a "War of Succession" even when they are not exactly about it.
Bavaria is not worried about Prussia. Not yet. She has trouble enough in digesting her conquest and has competing claims with Saxony about Bohemia. And Hungary is dangerously close. Actually, for a while she'll be more friendly to Prussia, out of common hostility with the Wettins and Hungary.
That however will prove a good idea. Saxony is the least trusted among the French allies in Germany, the one with more attitude towards Hungary and Russia. Stanislaus fought for both sides during the War of the Austrian Succession in OTL, and was basically an Austrian ally before and after it.
His main concern here is Prussia, so he would like to ally with Britain, the Netherlands, possibly Russia, and, why not, Bavaria in order to cripple it.
Only, this is not something France is ever going to approve. And it may cause a odd version of the reversal of the alliances, with Hungary joining the Franco-Prussian side to recover Bohemia and Austria, if only France allows such a thing.
It is all about what France is going to do. Nobody else can oppose her will in the end, except maybe Russia.
 
And if Russia and France came to an understanding they can pretty mutch divide europe between themselve.

Oh, more or less they can. But they won't, not yet at least. However I think much of the 19th could easily see a sort of "Cold War" between them.
 
I like your timeline for now. While I am monarchist I don't think the absolutist monarchy of France can become a democracy without some serious crisis or it being abolished.
 
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