Look to the West -- Thread II
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
- Status
The Popular Wars are interesting so far...........
Three things:
1. Combined House?
Has the UK Parliament become unicameral? Or is this similar to other countries' OTL Joint Sittings?
2. I think the earlier arrival of the car will actually be bad for it in the long run. It still won't be ready to go up against the railway and in the late 19th and early 20th century no one will be interested in reviving it as it will be seen as a failure.
3. Checking I've got my political terms right, Regressive is Conservative, while Reactivist is more Peelite or One nation or Tory Democracy?
Three things:
1. Combined House?
Has the UK Parliament become unicameral? Or is this similar to other countries' OTL Joint Sittings?2. I think the earlier arrival of the car will actually be bad for it in the long run. It still won't be ready to go up against the railway and in the late 19th and early 20th century no one will be interested in reviving it as it will be seen as a failure.
3. Checking I've got my political terms right, Regressive is Conservative, while Reactivist is more Peelite or One nation or Tory Democracy?
Admiral Matt
Gone Fishin'
2. I think the earlier arrival of the car will actually be bad for it in the long run. It still won't be ready to go up against the railway and in the late 19th and early 20th century no one will be interested in reviving it as it will be seen as a failure.
Nah, because there will always be a market for it as a prestige vehicle, if nothing else. And while rail can be more efficient in densely populated areas, in others there will always be places not worth a rail, but worth going to. Further, remember the original (OTL) models the LTTW French turned into cannon-tugs were developed for potential use in farm work. That use remains, and will become critical (for example) when the first voortrekkers cross the Limpopo into the tse-tse fly zone. OTL they simply turned right around because they couldn't run farms without horses and cattle. If the price of tractors has fallen to a level some can afford, though....
Last edited:
Thande
Donor
Part #120: Oranges are Not the Only Rulers
“At the end of the day, the only real winners in any war are crows and ravens.”
*
From “The Forging of Nations: The Popular Wars and their Legacy” by Alan Pressman (1965)—
The Brazilian War ostensibly began as a conflict between two old enemies, the Dutch and the Portuguese. However, both in public perceptions of the war and, to some extent, reality, one is forced to confront the idea that both sides managed to lose. The Dutch lost in home waters and the Portuguese lost overseas, yet neither loss seems to be paired with a lasting victory for either side. In order to better understand these circumstances, vital as they were in igniting the Popular Wars across Europe, we must delve deeper into the specifics involved.
It is important to understand that the Brazilian War did not ‘create’ the Popular Wars. The Popular Wars represent the final eruption of social pressure built up over twenty years of Watchful Peace, an enforced European system that almost everyone found unacceptable but had come into being after the sheer exhaustion of the Jacobin Wars. A new generation of angry young men (and not a few women) was growing up, a generation to home Jean-Baptiste Robespierre, Pierre Boulanger and Jean de Lisieux were nothing more than names. They knew nothing of the horrors of war and revolution—and many of their elders who did have personal experience of those things nonetheless saw them as a worthwhile price to pay to overcome the injustices they saw within the system of government they lived under. What the Brazilian War did was to show weakness in two (or three, depending on one’s perspective) such states and encourage those would-be revolutionaries that their time was now. Indeed the Populists, as we now name them, saw enough early success to inspire their fellows in other countries not directly touched by the Brazilian War, and the rest is history.
With their main fleet sunk at Flushing by the Portuguese, the Dutch had assembled a second navy cobbled together from the ships of the VOC in the east. This fleet, commanded by Admiral Zoutman, successfully raided the Portuguese possessions around the Indian Ocean while stripping much of the Dutch’s own forces in the region to do it. A portion of the fleet was redirected to Brazil under de Vries, where it linked up with Van Nieuwenhuizen—the effective instigator of the war—drove the Portuguese from São Luís and prevented them from further westward reconquest from the firmly held northern cities of Recife and Olinda. In any case the Portuguese forces soon found themselves with bigger problems on their hands. To the south, the Cisplatine and Riograndense Republics arose, the peoples of the cities of Montevideo and Rio Grande rising against the—now few—Portuguese troops in garrison there. After a period of delay, as President-General Velasco obtained his alliance with the New Spanish at the Treaty of Lima, the United Provinces of South America entered the war in support of the revolutionaries that their own ideas had inspired. The Portuguese paused their operations in the north and shifted more troops southwards, massing at Rio de Janeiro—which remained loyal, although the hinterland of Minas Gerais also rose in revolt. The precise nature of the rebellion in Minas Gerais is unclear and not many eyewitness accounts have survived. It seems probable that, regardless of what happened later on, initially it was a straightforward anti-authoritarian revolt complaining about taxation and poor working conditions in the mines that gave the province its name, and lacked the particular solidarity with Meridian ideas that the Cisplatine and Riograndense Republics had been founded upon.
Although the Portuguese had a fair number of troops to call upon, they suffered from Meridian domination of the waters. The Meridian Armada guarded the mouth of the River Plate from any attempts at incursion: the UPSA would not suffer the attacks via that mouth that she had faced in the three Platinean Wars.[1] Never again would Portuguese possession of the northern bank of the River Plate compromise Meridian power and territorial integrity. When Meridian troops landed in Montevideo, they were greeted as liberators, the people cheering in the streets and flying the Meridian flag alongside the flag of their own revolution, drawing upon similar colours and concepts as its inspiration. Yet while the Meridian Armada would play a major role in the conflict, it was their Riverine navy that was decisive in the quick collapse of Portuguese power in Cisplatina and Rio Grande. The Meridians had been enthusiastic steam-engineers during the Watchful Peace. Their relaxed economic approach and egalitarianism made the country a place where men could make their fortunes in new industries. One such man was a Neapolitan immigrant, Enrico Morelli. Arriving in the country shortly after the Third Platinean War, he worked for several of the Meridian industrialists building textile factories on the British model, drawing upon the wool both from the UPSA’s own farms and also that traded to them by Portuguese in less-industrialised Brazil. Once he had amassed a small fortune, he struck out himself in 1817 with a steamboat venture. Morelli was not the first man to focus on using steam solely for riverine barges: Burgoyne in Britain and de Clerck in Flanders predate him, to name two. Nonetheless his business went from strength to strength, with his steamboats enhancing trade all up the River Plate, through the canals that his fellow industrialists were constructing—and up the Uruguay River to trade with the Brazilians. Where trade barges could go, so could riverine warships. And the Meridian Armada had not failed to take notice of Morelli’s successes. When the Meridians sent their steamcraft up the Uruguay River to take control of the Cisplatine interior, they were guided by Morelli’s own boatmen in ill-fitting naval uniform, men who knew the river as well as the few Portuguese who remained to defend it.
But while the Portuguese underwent reversals in Brazil, their fortunes faired better closer to home—for the moment. Admiral Zoutman’s main Dutch force was rounding Guinea and heading for Europe—and the Portuguese knew about it. A Portuguese trader in Dakar, selling manufactured goods to the Royal Africa Company, received intelligence of the approaching fleet (slowed by Zoutman assembling the force and then directing de Vries’ portion to Brazil) and promptly fled to bring the news to Lisbon. The trader was a fast clipper ship and made it to Portugal several days ahead of the Dutch. The Portuguese, though not as quick to embrace the innovations of the age as some nations, had invested in an excellent Optel semaphore network—they would be foolish to do anything else, as the nascent form of the technology had helped them repel Drouet’s French during the Iberian phase of the Jacobin Wars. A small army with good communications could hold off a big army without them, rushing troops to wherever they were needed along the border.
Thus the Portuguese court soon knew of the approaching Dutch. The trader, Filipe Cunhal, knew something of the size of the fleet—he overestimated, not knowing that de Vries had taken part of the force to South America. John VI asked the Duke of Aveiro and his other ministers for their advice. They replied that the remaining Portuguese home fleet could defeat such a Dutch force, but it would be a Pyrrhic victory, and since New Spain had entered the war, John feared a second attempt at landing troops in the Peninsula to take the Castilian throne.[2] Portugal would need a fleet to ward off any attempt. The New Spanish Armada was not very large and could be held back by what ships Portugal possessed—but not if the Dutch decimated those ships first.
The solution (as it seemed) came from Aveiro himself. He had been working with the Castilian regime and the Portuguese ‘advisors’ who still held Alfonso XII in thrall, having raised him from a child. At present Castile had remained neutral in the conflict, but the entry of New Spain (and the UPSA!) into the war would justify her entry, and Alfonso did whatever the Portuguese told him to do. Though the Castilian Armada had been reduced in size by the Philippine War, enough ships remained in port at Cadiz to play a significant part. Aveiro had been planning to send the Castilian ships to Brazil to aid the Portuguese forces, but now a different role suggested itself. The Castilian fleet could be used to destroy the Dutch and remove them from the equation, thus leaving the Portuguese unharmed and able to guard against any New Spanish invasion. King John approved the plan. A small Portuguese force went along with the Castilians, including special weapons created by the Portuguese inventor Estêvão Marques. The real reason the Portuguese were there, of course, was to ensure the Castilians did not get any funny ideas about avoiding giving battle to an enemy that, after all, had very little to do with them.
September 15th 1829 saw the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, one of many naval battles to have been fought some distance away from that Portuguese promontory. The Castilians and Portuguese had a particular advantage: the Dutch were becalmed, an unusual instance in that part of the Atlantic. Their paralysis would last only hours, but it gave Estêvão Marques the chance to try his new weapons. Marques’ chief innovation was the development of steam tugs that, unlike the earlier models used by the French, were capable of towing anything up to the size of a ship of the line even on the open ocean without capsizing. The tugs were usually themselves towed behind the larger ships, but now they went into action. The Portuguese warships lowered their own sails. Some were equipped to heat hot-shot, while others possessed long-guns with rifled barrels, taking many minutes to reload but capable of accurately firing at far greater range than most. Using their steam tows, the Portuguese were able to approach the massed Dutch ships at angles that made return fire difficult, raking their bows with broadsides and flinging the occasional hot shot into their midst, setting light to rigging and sails. The Dutch did their best to fight back, but by the time the wind returned, the Portuguese had sank thirteen Dutch ships for only three of their own lost.
With the wind once again in play, the battle’s second phase took place. The Portuguese withdrew and the Castilians fought more conventionally, now slightly outnumbering the Dutch thanks to Marques’ successes. The Castilian commander, Fernando Díaz, was a brave man and a respected commander. Zoutman was also a skilled commander, but possessed a very different force. The Castilians were organised, well supplied and used to fighting as one force, but inexperienced. The Dutch had just fought their way all the way from Batavia, but were an awkward coalition of captains used to operating more independently in the service of the VOC. The two joined in battle and, as the sun sank below the horizon, the Castilians emerged triumphant. Once again the victory was Pyrrhic: nineteen Castilian ships and ten Portuguese returned to port, while twelve Dutch ships managed to escape. The majority of both fleets joined the bones of their grandfathers on the sea bed.
In the short run, the Battle of Cape St Vincent appeared to help the Portuguese cause, or at least hurt the Dutch one. Stadtholder William VII was young, inexperienced, and embattled. He relied too strongly on one Oren Scherman, a member of the States-General so dominant within the Council of Ministers that he was effectively Prime Minister in all but name—an office repellent to many Dutch constitutionalists, who prized the more committee style of government that their Republic had prospered under. Furthermore, though undoubtedly clever, Scherman was hugely unpopular with the Dutch people, something which the sheltered William VII did not truly appreciate until it was too late. There were dark rumours about certain...proclivities he enjoyed which always ended in shallow graves, and whether those graves contained women, children or animals depended on who was whispering the rumour. It is difficult now to conclude whether there was really anything to these rumours or whether they were born from public dissatisfaction with Scherman’s arbitrary rule in the name of the Stadtholder, though some have produced letters from other members of the Council of Ministers suggesting that at least some of the darker suggestions were true.
The Dutch Republic had survived multiple attempts to overthrow it. Born in the fire of the Eighty Years’ War, the Republic had resisted invasion from without and revolution from within. In the early part of the Jacobin Wars, the so-called ‘Patriots’—democrats inspired by both the Meridians and the early phase of the French Revolution—had been crushed with Fleming assistance. The Jacobin Wars had brought the Dutch and Flemings closer together, from traditional enemies to close allies. Later, when Lisieux had invaded Flanders as the opening of the War of the Nations, the Dutch had come to Flanders’ aid, even as they themselves faced sporadic attempts at revolution by the Vordermanites. A certain supra-national image of sorts had been created in those days, when the Walloons had turned against the Flemings and Dutch at the Battle of La Belle Alliance, and the French had been driven from Brussels with help from the German states. The Vordermanites might have been bloodily suppressed and their writings banned, Sijbren Vorderman might have died in exile in Denmark, but nonetheless they had the last laugh. A sense of Germanic fellow feeling had settled over the Low Countries, in which the Latin Walloons were viewed with suspicion as traitors and discriminated against in law, their language and customs suppressed. The Flemings and Dutch participated in the Concert of Germany, though suspicious about Saxon intentions, and appeared to have successfully integrated the German states that they had overrun in the early part of the Jacobin Wars ‘for their own protection’. In reality, while the Flemings—ruled by Palatine Wittelsbachs—did mostly achieve this, discontent continued to rumble in the former German states now part of the United Netherlands. Representation in the States-General was less freely granted than to the equivalent institution in Brussels, and while places like Cleves, East Frisia and Munster might elect their own States-Provincial on the Dutch model, in practice these entities were treated with scorn by the high and the mighty in Amsterdam. Furthermore, these states lay near to the Mittelbund, some bordering it, and their peoples became swept into the Schmidtist fever sweeping the region. But this would come later.
When the few remaining ships from Zoutman’s fleet found themselves in Flushing, the news spread like wildfire. Scherman only poured oil on the flames when he tried to suppress the news and make it a criminal offence to repeat it: a foolish thing to do in an age of semaphore, particularly when many used cryptograms that made it almost impossible to trace who was sending a message. The breaking point came when the Nederlands Dagblad, a respected newspaper published in Rotterdam and circulating throughout the country,[3] openly published the news, defying Scherman’s demand by printing it in the form “many telegraphers throughout the country are discussing...” rather than claiming it as reality. Of course the difference was purely philosophical. Scherman sent his private army of bullyboys to have the Dagblad stopped, but guildsmen turned out to defend the presses, an oil lamp was knocked over in the struggle and the newspaper’s offices burned down, taking a significant part of the city with them. Public anger, blaming this on Scherman, soon spread. There were many in the Netherlands, Vordermanites and Adamantine Rouvroyistes both, who seized upon the widespread fury for their own purposes. Wild rumours spread, such as the VOC really having more ships in reserve but caring more about their profits than about the Dutch people they ostensibly served. One of the rumours, about Van Nieuwenhuizen having started the war, was true—but it blended in with the others seamlessly. An opportunistic Portuguese raid or two on the now almost defenceless Dutch coastline did not help.
Desperate for his position, William VII appealed for help from the King of Flanders, Maximilian II Charles.[4] But Maximilian was not as ready to give it as had been his father and brother. Never particularly wanting the throne, he had hoped to be a great war leader in the service of his older brother, helping to cement the ramshackle state that his father had created. He viewed the Dutch as opportunists, and never forgot that for decades they had prevented the Flemings—whether under Spanish or Austrian rule—from taking their own place among the world’s trading powers by closing the Dutch-controlled mouth of the Scheldt to prevent access to Flanders’ principal port of Antwerp. While the Dutch had not sought to do so since the Jacobin Wars, and had allowed Charles Theodore II to re-found the Ostend Company, Maximilian believed that they sought to control the Ostend Company and fold it into the VOC. The Dutch sought to suppress all trade competition and to leave the Flemings dependent on their navy the next time there was a war. Scherman had even increased taxes on the Scheldt with the obvious implication of warning the Flemings that he had his boot on their necks. And Maximilian, a hard man who had fought at the Battle of La Belle Alliance, was unwilling to accept that.
Maximilian told William that he would help him suppress the rebellion, on two conditions: dismiss Scherman, and seek a peace with honour with Portugal, for he would not commit Flanders to enter the Brazilian War directly. William initially said no, unwilling to contemplate such an idea, but after some agonising and discussions with his other advisors, agreed. A mistake. By now Scherman had extended his tentacles throughout the Council and the Estates-General, and at least three of the men William talked to immediately turned around and told Scherman. Scherman, convinced he could crush the rebellion single-handedly and viewing the stadtholder with scorn, spread a story that William was ill and bedbound, while in reality having him imprisoned. The real story soon came out, of course, and men burned Scherman in effigy in the streets, calling him “the Dutch Joshua Churchill”.
It was on October 16th 1829 that the Popular Wars can truly be said to have begun, for it was then that a state army crossed a border not to suppress a popular uprising, but to aid it. The army was that of Flanders, and the border was that which she shared with the dying Dutch Republic. A fuse lit thousands of miles away in Brazil had found its first powder keg...
[1] A bit anachronistic, as the UPSA didn’t exist at the time of the First Platinean War.
[2] The New Spanish previously tried this during the Philippine War (1817-21).
[3] Aided by the fact that the Dutch have been promoting a standardised version of the Dutch language for use in their semaphore network for some years now, and it is widely known (and another cause of resentment among the former German provinces).
[4] The regnal numbers of Flanders are counted from the rulers of the Rhine Palatinate, which had already had one Maximilian. Maximilian II is the younger brother of Charles Theodore II, who died childless in 1827.
“At the end of the day, the only real winners in any war are crows and ravens.”
—Pablo Sanchez, 1847
*
From “The Forging of Nations: The Popular Wars and their Legacy” by Alan Pressman (1965)—
The Brazilian War ostensibly began as a conflict between two old enemies, the Dutch and the Portuguese. However, both in public perceptions of the war and, to some extent, reality, one is forced to confront the idea that both sides managed to lose. The Dutch lost in home waters and the Portuguese lost overseas, yet neither loss seems to be paired with a lasting victory for either side. In order to better understand these circumstances, vital as they were in igniting the Popular Wars across Europe, we must delve deeper into the specifics involved.
It is important to understand that the Brazilian War did not ‘create’ the Popular Wars. The Popular Wars represent the final eruption of social pressure built up over twenty years of Watchful Peace, an enforced European system that almost everyone found unacceptable but had come into being after the sheer exhaustion of the Jacobin Wars. A new generation of angry young men (and not a few women) was growing up, a generation to home Jean-Baptiste Robespierre, Pierre Boulanger and Jean de Lisieux were nothing more than names. They knew nothing of the horrors of war and revolution—and many of their elders who did have personal experience of those things nonetheless saw them as a worthwhile price to pay to overcome the injustices they saw within the system of government they lived under. What the Brazilian War did was to show weakness in two (or three, depending on one’s perspective) such states and encourage those would-be revolutionaries that their time was now. Indeed the Populists, as we now name them, saw enough early success to inspire their fellows in other countries not directly touched by the Brazilian War, and the rest is history.
With their main fleet sunk at Flushing by the Portuguese, the Dutch had assembled a second navy cobbled together from the ships of the VOC in the east. This fleet, commanded by Admiral Zoutman, successfully raided the Portuguese possessions around the Indian Ocean while stripping much of the Dutch’s own forces in the region to do it. A portion of the fleet was redirected to Brazil under de Vries, where it linked up with Van Nieuwenhuizen—the effective instigator of the war—drove the Portuguese from São Luís and prevented them from further westward reconquest from the firmly held northern cities of Recife and Olinda. In any case the Portuguese forces soon found themselves with bigger problems on their hands. To the south, the Cisplatine and Riograndense Republics arose, the peoples of the cities of Montevideo and Rio Grande rising against the—now few—Portuguese troops in garrison there. After a period of delay, as President-General Velasco obtained his alliance with the New Spanish at the Treaty of Lima, the United Provinces of South America entered the war in support of the revolutionaries that their own ideas had inspired. The Portuguese paused their operations in the north and shifted more troops southwards, massing at Rio de Janeiro—which remained loyal, although the hinterland of Minas Gerais also rose in revolt. The precise nature of the rebellion in Minas Gerais is unclear and not many eyewitness accounts have survived. It seems probable that, regardless of what happened later on, initially it was a straightforward anti-authoritarian revolt complaining about taxation and poor working conditions in the mines that gave the province its name, and lacked the particular solidarity with Meridian ideas that the Cisplatine and Riograndense Republics had been founded upon.
Although the Portuguese had a fair number of troops to call upon, they suffered from Meridian domination of the waters. The Meridian Armada guarded the mouth of the River Plate from any attempts at incursion: the UPSA would not suffer the attacks via that mouth that she had faced in the three Platinean Wars.[1] Never again would Portuguese possession of the northern bank of the River Plate compromise Meridian power and territorial integrity. When Meridian troops landed in Montevideo, they were greeted as liberators, the people cheering in the streets and flying the Meridian flag alongside the flag of their own revolution, drawing upon similar colours and concepts as its inspiration. Yet while the Meridian Armada would play a major role in the conflict, it was their Riverine navy that was decisive in the quick collapse of Portuguese power in Cisplatina and Rio Grande. The Meridians had been enthusiastic steam-engineers during the Watchful Peace. Their relaxed economic approach and egalitarianism made the country a place where men could make their fortunes in new industries. One such man was a Neapolitan immigrant, Enrico Morelli. Arriving in the country shortly after the Third Platinean War, he worked for several of the Meridian industrialists building textile factories on the British model, drawing upon the wool both from the UPSA’s own farms and also that traded to them by Portuguese in less-industrialised Brazil. Once he had amassed a small fortune, he struck out himself in 1817 with a steamboat venture. Morelli was not the first man to focus on using steam solely for riverine barges: Burgoyne in Britain and de Clerck in Flanders predate him, to name two. Nonetheless his business went from strength to strength, with his steamboats enhancing trade all up the River Plate, through the canals that his fellow industrialists were constructing—and up the Uruguay River to trade with the Brazilians. Where trade barges could go, so could riverine warships. And the Meridian Armada had not failed to take notice of Morelli’s successes. When the Meridians sent their steamcraft up the Uruguay River to take control of the Cisplatine interior, they were guided by Morelli’s own boatmen in ill-fitting naval uniform, men who knew the river as well as the few Portuguese who remained to defend it.
But while the Portuguese underwent reversals in Brazil, their fortunes faired better closer to home—for the moment. Admiral Zoutman’s main Dutch force was rounding Guinea and heading for Europe—and the Portuguese knew about it. A Portuguese trader in Dakar, selling manufactured goods to the Royal Africa Company, received intelligence of the approaching fleet (slowed by Zoutman assembling the force and then directing de Vries’ portion to Brazil) and promptly fled to bring the news to Lisbon. The trader was a fast clipper ship and made it to Portugal several days ahead of the Dutch. The Portuguese, though not as quick to embrace the innovations of the age as some nations, had invested in an excellent Optel semaphore network—they would be foolish to do anything else, as the nascent form of the technology had helped them repel Drouet’s French during the Iberian phase of the Jacobin Wars. A small army with good communications could hold off a big army without them, rushing troops to wherever they were needed along the border.
Thus the Portuguese court soon knew of the approaching Dutch. The trader, Filipe Cunhal, knew something of the size of the fleet—he overestimated, not knowing that de Vries had taken part of the force to South America. John VI asked the Duke of Aveiro and his other ministers for their advice. They replied that the remaining Portuguese home fleet could defeat such a Dutch force, but it would be a Pyrrhic victory, and since New Spain had entered the war, John feared a second attempt at landing troops in the Peninsula to take the Castilian throne.[2] Portugal would need a fleet to ward off any attempt. The New Spanish Armada was not very large and could be held back by what ships Portugal possessed—but not if the Dutch decimated those ships first.
The solution (as it seemed) came from Aveiro himself. He had been working with the Castilian regime and the Portuguese ‘advisors’ who still held Alfonso XII in thrall, having raised him from a child. At present Castile had remained neutral in the conflict, but the entry of New Spain (and the UPSA!) into the war would justify her entry, and Alfonso did whatever the Portuguese told him to do. Though the Castilian Armada had been reduced in size by the Philippine War, enough ships remained in port at Cadiz to play a significant part. Aveiro had been planning to send the Castilian ships to Brazil to aid the Portuguese forces, but now a different role suggested itself. The Castilian fleet could be used to destroy the Dutch and remove them from the equation, thus leaving the Portuguese unharmed and able to guard against any New Spanish invasion. King John approved the plan. A small Portuguese force went along with the Castilians, including special weapons created by the Portuguese inventor Estêvão Marques. The real reason the Portuguese were there, of course, was to ensure the Castilians did not get any funny ideas about avoiding giving battle to an enemy that, after all, had very little to do with them.
September 15th 1829 saw the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, one of many naval battles to have been fought some distance away from that Portuguese promontory. The Castilians and Portuguese had a particular advantage: the Dutch were becalmed, an unusual instance in that part of the Atlantic. Their paralysis would last only hours, but it gave Estêvão Marques the chance to try his new weapons. Marques’ chief innovation was the development of steam tugs that, unlike the earlier models used by the French, were capable of towing anything up to the size of a ship of the line even on the open ocean without capsizing. The tugs were usually themselves towed behind the larger ships, but now they went into action. The Portuguese warships lowered their own sails. Some were equipped to heat hot-shot, while others possessed long-guns with rifled barrels, taking many minutes to reload but capable of accurately firing at far greater range than most. Using their steam tows, the Portuguese were able to approach the massed Dutch ships at angles that made return fire difficult, raking their bows with broadsides and flinging the occasional hot shot into their midst, setting light to rigging and sails. The Dutch did their best to fight back, but by the time the wind returned, the Portuguese had sank thirteen Dutch ships for only three of their own lost.
With the wind once again in play, the battle’s second phase took place. The Portuguese withdrew and the Castilians fought more conventionally, now slightly outnumbering the Dutch thanks to Marques’ successes. The Castilian commander, Fernando Díaz, was a brave man and a respected commander. Zoutman was also a skilled commander, but possessed a very different force. The Castilians were organised, well supplied and used to fighting as one force, but inexperienced. The Dutch had just fought their way all the way from Batavia, but were an awkward coalition of captains used to operating more independently in the service of the VOC. The two joined in battle and, as the sun sank below the horizon, the Castilians emerged triumphant. Once again the victory was Pyrrhic: nineteen Castilian ships and ten Portuguese returned to port, while twelve Dutch ships managed to escape. The majority of both fleets joined the bones of their grandfathers on the sea bed.
In the short run, the Battle of Cape St Vincent appeared to help the Portuguese cause, or at least hurt the Dutch one. Stadtholder William VII was young, inexperienced, and embattled. He relied too strongly on one Oren Scherman, a member of the States-General so dominant within the Council of Ministers that he was effectively Prime Minister in all but name—an office repellent to many Dutch constitutionalists, who prized the more committee style of government that their Republic had prospered under. Furthermore, though undoubtedly clever, Scherman was hugely unpopular with the Dutch people, something which the sheltered William VII did not truly appreciate until it was too late. There were dark rumours about certain...proclivities he enjoyed which always ended in shallow graves, and whether those graves contained women, children or animals depended on who was whispering the rumour. It is difficult now to conclude whether there was really anything to these rumours or whether they were born from public dissatisfaction with Scherman’s arbitrary rule in the name of the Stadtholder, though some have produced letters from other members of the Council of Ministers suggesting that at least some of the darker suggestions were true.
The Dutch Republic had survived multiple attempts to overthrow it. Born in the fire of the Eighty Years’ War, the Republic had resisted invasion from without and revolution from within. In the early part of the Jacobin Wars, the so-called ‘Patriots’—democrats inspired by both the Meridians and the early phase of the French Revolution—had been crushed with Fleming assistance. The Jacobin Wars had brought the Dutch and Flemings closer together, from traditional enemies to close allies. Later, when Lisieux had invaded Flanders as the opening of the War of the Nations, the Dutch had come to Flanders’ aid, even as they themselves faced sporadic attempts at revolution by the Vordermanites. A certain supra-national image of sorts had been created in those days, when the Walloons had turned against the Flemings and Dutch at the Battle of La Belle Alliance, and the French had been driven from Brussels with help from the German states. The Vordermanites might have been bloodily suppressed and their writings banned, Sijbren Vorderman might have died in exile in Denmark, but nonetheless they had the last laugh. A sense of Germanic fellow feeling had settled over the Low Countries, in which the Latin Walloons were viewed with suspicion as traitors and discriminated against in law, their language and customs suppressed. The Flemings and Dutch participated in the Concert of Germany, though suspicious about Saxon intentions, and appeared to have successfully integrated the German states that they had overrun in the early part of the Jacobin Wars ‘for their own protection’. In reality, while the Flemings—ruled by Palatine Wittelsbachs—did mostly achieve this, discontent continued to rumble in the former German states now part of the United Netherlands. Representation in the States-General was less freely granted than to the equivalent institution in Brussels, and while places like Cleves, East Frisia and Munster might elect their own States-Provincial on the Dutch model, in practice these entities were treated with scorn by the high and the mighty in Amsterdam. Furthermore, these states lay near to the Mittelbund, some bordering it, and their peoples became swept into the Schmidtist fever sweeping the region. But this would come later.
When the few remaining ships from Zoutman’s fleet found themselves in Flushing, the news spread like wildfire. Scherman only poured oil on the flames when he tried to suppress the news and make it a criminal offence to repeat it: a foolish thing to do in an age of semaphore, particularly when many used cryptograms that made it almost impossible to trace who was sending a message. The breaking point came when the Nederlands Dagblad, a respected newspaper published in Rotterdam and circulating throughout the country,[3] openly published the news, defying Scherman’s demand by printing it in the form “many telegraphers throughout the country are discussing...” rather than claiming it as reality. Of course the difference was purely philosophical. Scherman sent his private army of bullyboys to have the Dagblad stopped, but guildsmen turned out to defend the presses, an oil lamp was knocked over in the struggle and the newspaper’s offices burned down, taking a significant part of the city with them. Public anger, blaming this on Scherman, soon spread. There were many in the Netherlands, Vordermanites and Adamantine Rouvroyistes both, who seized upon the widespread fury for their own purposes. Wild rumours spread, such as the VOC really having more ships in reserve but caring more about their profits than about the Dutch people they ostensibly served. One of the rumours, about Van Nieuwenhuizen having started the war, was true—but it blended in with the others seamlessly. An opportunistic Portuguese raid or two on the now almost defenceless Dutch coastline did not help.
Desperate for his position, William VII appealed for help from the King of Flanders, Maximilian II Charles.[4] But Maximilian was not as ready to give it as had been his father and brother. Never particularly wanting the throne, he had hoped to be a great war leader in the service of his older brother, helping to cement the ramshackle state that his father had created. He viewed the Dutch as opportunists, and never forgot that for decades they had prevented the Flemings—whether under Spanish or Austrian rule—from taking their own place among the world’s trading powers by closing the Dutch-controlled mouth of the Scheldt to prevent access to Flanders’ principal port of Antwerp. While the Dutch had not sought to do so since the Jacobin Wars, and had allowed Charles Theodore II to re-found the Ostend Company, Maximilian believed that they sought to control the Ostend Company and fold it into the VOC. The Dutch sought to suppress all trade competition and to leave the Flemings dependent on their navy the next time there was a war. Scherman had even increased taxes on the Scheldt with the obvious implication of warning the Flemings that he had his boot on their necks. And Maximilian, a hard man who had fought at the Battle of La Belle Alliance, was unwilling to accept that.
Maximilian told William that he would help him suppress the rebellion, on two conditions: dismiss Scherman, and seek a peace with honour with Portugal, for he would not commit Flanders to enter the Brazilian War directly. William initially said no, unwilling to contemplate such an idea, but after some agonising and discussions with his other advisors, agreed. A mistake. By now Scherman had extended his tentacles throughout the Council and the Estates-General, and at least three of the men William talked to immediately turned around and told Scherman. Scherman, convinced he could crush the rebellion single-handedly and viewing the stadtholder with scorn, spread a story that William was ill and bedbound, while in reality having him imprisoned. The real story soon came out, of course, and men burned Scherman in effigy in the streets, calling him “the Dutch Joshua Churchill”.
It was on October 16th 1829 that the Popular Wars can truly be said to have begun, for it was then that a state army crossed a border not to suppress a popular uprising, but to aid it. The army was that of Flanders, and the border was that which she shared with the dying Dutch Republic. A fuse lit thousands of miles away in Brazil had found its first powder keg...
[1] A bit anachronistic, as the UPSA didn’t exist at the time of the First Platinean War.
[2] The New Spanish previously tried this during the Philippine War (1817-21).
[3] Aided by the fact that the Dutch have been promoting a standardised version of the Dutch language for use in their semaphore network for some years now, and it is widely known (and another cause of resentment among the former German provinces).
[4] The regnal numbers of Flanders are counted from the rulers of the Rhine Palatinate, which had already had one Maximilian. Maximilian II is the younger brother of Charles Theodore II, who died childless in 1827.
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I just found this in time when sitting down with lunch. Perfect timing.
All I can say is the Dutch sure are having their asses kicked. All of Van Nieuwenhuizen's conquests will become pretty pointless soon.
....hell, temporarily (?) extended Dutch Brazil, Riograndese Republic, revolts across Brazil in general, and the UPSA reclaiming Uruguay? Who ever would've thought Brazil could be such a place with such battles raging about!
All I can say is the Dutch sure are having their asses kicked. All of Van Nieuwenhuizen's conquests will become pretty pointless soon.
....hell, temporarily (?) extended Dutch Brazil, Riograndese Republic, revolts across Brazil in general, and the UPSA reclaiming Uruguay? Who ever would've thought Brazil could be such a place with such battles raging about!
Same here!
I am so perfectly contended that the battle has truly began to begin. This makes me only makes me want more! Poor Dutch, however, I always had an unexplainable preferenece for them. Alas...
So is the Brazilian War considered a 'Popular War' or is the Flanders-Dutch one the first Popular War?
Thande
Donor
It's a matter of debate among historians, sort of like whether the Japanese intervention in China from 1937 should be counted as part of the Second World War.
That's very cool.
Question: where are the Meridian industrialists and engineers getting the energy for all this development and steam-powered toys, considering they lack coal, consistent small-unit hydropower, or abundant and fast growing trees?
Pre-electricity its only really economic bringing the resource to the energy source, to south america and Southern Europe's eternal detriment.
Question: where are the Meridian industrialists and engineers getting the energy for all this development and steam-powered toys, considering they lack coal, consistent small-unit hydropower, or abundant and fast growing trees?
Pre-electricity its only really economic bringing the resource to the energy source, to south america and Southern Europe's eternal detriment.
Thande
Donor
A point, certainly; I had not considered that the geographic area of the UPSA is not exactly renowned for its coal reserves. The UPSA is not supposed to be anything like as industrialised as Britain, most of northern Europe or parts of the ENA--just more so than New Spain or Portuguese Brazil. Still this probably needs justification. Wood burning can probably take the place of some of it given the region's considerable forest (renewability not exactly being a major concern at this point). Brazil and New Granada do have some coal reserves but the question is whether it would be profitable to trade them to the UPSA over a considerable distance. It may be, given those regions' lack of manufacturing capability relative to the UPSA and the potential for a trade balance.
Wow - by the sounds of it, and the various hints you've dropped previously, the Dutch Republic is not long for this world...
Two quick questions:
1. Is Pascal Schmidt still alive at this point - and if not, what happened to him? My money's on Mysterious Death With Hammer Wounds...
2. Where does the symbol on the Cisplatine flag come from - is it a regional thing, or is it linked to Adamantianism?
Finally, a quick personal note - it seems oddly appropriate that the Watchful Peace in Europe ends as I finish my degree - some kind of bizarre metaphor, almost...
Two quick questions:
1. Is Pascal Schmidt still alive at this point - and if not, what happened to him? My money's on Mysterious Death With Hammer Wounds...
2. Where does the symbol on the Cisplatine flag come from - is it a regional thing, or is it linked to Adamantianism?
Finally, a quick personal note - it seems oddly appropriate that the Watchful Peace in Europe ends as I finish my degree - some kind of bizarre metaphor, almost...
Now that's an interesting way of arriving at a Greater Netherlands. Doubly so for the irony, considering the time period (just 10 months before the OTL Belgian Revolt).
I wonder what they'll do with William, considering he's still the highly respected Prince of Orange. Perhaps some kind of federal monarchy or, going on a limb here, empire?
I wonder what they'll do with William, considering he's still the highly respected Prince of Orange. Perhaps some kind of federal monarchy or, going on a limb here, empire?
Thande
Donor
It's a single repetition of the fimbrillated lines on the UPSA flag, which is itself a modification of a Spanish Burgundian colonial cross with the colours reversed, as seen in the progression of the UPSA's three flags over the years (see below). The resemblance to the British Rail logo is just a happy coincidence...
Also I've just noticed a typo in the last segment--it should be President-General Velasco, not Vallejo, who was his predecessor. See if I can edit that in...
Thande
Donor
I've had a good idea for an Interlude (about literature) so I think I will do that next before continuing with the Popular Wars. Only problem is that, as usual, real life has pre-empted me and now it will look really derivative of last week's Doctor Who, even though I had the idea several days before...
Alex Richards
Donor
As I said, it will have to be known at some point as the Locomotive Republic of Cisplatinea. Narrative Casuality demands it
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