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alternatehistory.com
So this was supposed to just be an experiment with using the wikipedia battle wikibox editor and Victoria 2 battle analyser to do some worldbuilding around a particularly massive battle I had in my last game. But I want so far overboard with writing the scenario I figured I might as well post it here, because it's basically a mini timeline.
You'll notice that the bottom of this image is cut off. Suffice to say, the wiki editor is dumb and doesn't have a good way to make a wikibox into an image, and it crashed while I was trying to edit it to include the missing parts, so I'll just add the missing information in a spoiler:
-- should be 99 warships, not 97. I had 18 battleships to begin with
--Scandinavia should have 1 battleship, 3 dreadnoughts, and 8 cruisers as their starting strength.
Here's a slightly older image of the imagebox, though it's also a lot blurrier.
Now, onto the story:
In 1839, the English had demanded they relinquish their rightful claim on belgian land. The Dutch said "no." And so a struggle for the very existence of the people who populated the low countries was ignited. The british landed army after army on dutch shores, but despite their unceasing butchering of innocents and their pillage and destruction of the land the dutch had reclaimed so painstakingly from the ocean, the spirit of the dutch people did not break. They endured, and re-united with the wayward provinces of Flanders and Wallonia despite every british attempt to the contrary. And so queen victoria (allegedly) threw up her hands, and said "fine! You'll never be anything more than an insignificant bit of swampland," and left the dutch in peace.
But the dutch hold grudges, and this was a big one.
For decades, they did nothing. A more immediate concern was the careful balancing act of playing France and Germany against each other to make sure neither of the land powers invaded the dutch. But, almost by accident, their balancing act failed. They'd found loopholes in alliances with Germany before that had allowed the Netherlands to continuously shirk the duty of joining the wars of their "ally", hoping that it would exhaust its strength against France. But nothing seamed to work, and the german eagle seamed to fly higher and higher over Europe. So the Netherlands joined the first great war, and it joined it in earnest. Dutch troops occupied more of France than German troops did, and at Germany's request, the Dutch annexed much of northern france and dismantled the french empire, pledging to divvy it up between Germany and itself. Simultaneously, the agreed to dismantle the Russian Empire, which the extremely liberal House of Orange felt little sympathy for.
But the dutch had been planning ahead, because there was a niggling doubt in their minds. With france and Russia dismantled, who else could possibly challenge the Germans in europe? So behind the back of their ally, the dutch cut a deal with the french and the russians. That France would conspire to give the Dutch the majority of their colonial empire, but in return, that the dutch would ally with france, and return all french lands taken during the war. (note: I actually used changeowner to return france's provinces because I thought they looked really ugly, and then I fixed a lot of dumb looking colonial allocation from the dismantlement process. I got the most territory fair and square though, because I already owned a bunch of territory in west africa. Also I used debug yesmen to get france to ally me for RP reasons.) Simultaneously, the dutch had avoided actually participating in the military action against Russia, leaving the invasion of that frozen wasteland to the germans and japanese. This predisposed the Russian people to look favorably on the Netherlands, which would lead to the the post-war secret agreement between the Dutch and the Russians to keep the slavic peoples strong, even in disunity, to serve as a counterbalance to germany.
This deal bore fruit soon after-- In the second great war, also known as the "dud war" due to its short length and low casualty count in comparison to the other great wars (lasting a year with not even a million casualties on each side) the recently dismantled russia agreed to work with the German-Dutch coalition from the first world war to teach Britain and Austria-Hungary a lesson about meddling in the balkans. (Also making its appearance was Italy, which hadn't participated in the first world war, but had been bribed by Germany with French territory to become a german ally.)
And when Britain decided to meddle into the business of the continent again, for the third and final time, the Dutch Empire (recently proclaimed as such, in a ceremony in Dutch Uruguay) was ready. It had France, Russia, and Italy at its back. In fact, it could have had germany too, if it weren't for the fact that that would require dividing its spoils.
Austria-Hungary was swiftly occupied, leaving only the impossibly smug brits on their infuriating isle. But this time, the Dutch were getting even. They'd massed their entire navy, the output of naval yards across the entire planet, resolved themselves to the sacrifice of all their colonial holdings to foreign occupation. They'd recruited subjects from Java, from Vietnam, from Uruguay, from Abyssinia, from Guyana, and even from their farthest-flung subject, the province of Fengtian, where civilized chinese and dutch men relaxed as equals, heedless of the chaos of the chinese warlord states.*
And so, when word arrived that the British had sent their crack troops and navy to land in crimea, leaving primarily poorly-trained infantry levies to defend the home islands, the Netherlands made their attack of opportunity. Ninety Nine ships, the song goes, transported soldiers two 66,000 men divisions at a time, flooding the beaches of east england.
The plan was simple-- establish a toehold, and then capture london. If anything when wrong, then they could bring their men back across the channel to recuperate. Meanwhile, if the 200,000 men already on the beaches of england proved insufficient, then the remaining 500,000 men the netherlands kept in reserve on the mainland could get sent across to reinforce them. And indeed, things went as planned, for a while. 300,000 englishmen attacked the dutch as they defended their beachhead, but it was no concern. After all, the Netherlands had the most militarily advanced army in the world, lead by the best commanders. Peasants with sticks, supported by barely 12,000 artillery men and 9,000 cavalry men, with not a tank or aircraft between them, could hope to take down the juggernaut that was the Dutch military, with its engineers and guards and planes and tanks, all marching to the rhythmic boom of the dutch navy bombarding the british shore.
Of course, things went wrong, as they always do.
Earlier in the war, the dutch had made a pit stop, so to speak, in the British Dominion of Scandinavia**. For the dutch, their temporary occupation of the Jutland peninsula had been nothing more than a tactic to bleed the Scandinavians, while taking the pressure off their Russian ally. For the Scandinavians, it was nothing short of their greatest fears coming true. An enemy force with a navy that could effortlessly wrest control of the baltic ocean from them. That could land a hundred and twenty thousand troops anywhere on their extensive shores at a whim. The Dutch troops would depart Scandinavia as quickly as they came, to wipe out the divisions Scandinavia and Britain had assigned to occupy russia. But the mark they left on the Scandinavian psyche would linger for much longer.
So the Scandinavians resolved that the only way to maintain their safety was to prop up the british umbrella. So the daring Scandinavian admiral, Sigurd Petersen, resolved to do whatever it took to make the Dutch invasion of Britain fail. He scrounged up every ship the Scandanavians had managed to shelter from the Dutch fleet's adventure in the baltic. A mere 12 ships, to fight 99. A suicidal battle if there ever was one.
But Sigurd wasn't thinking about battleships or cruisers; he was thinking about transports. The dutch strategy relied on their ability to pull out shattered units from britain via sealift, and replace them with fresh units, thus allowing those units time to recover. Meanwhile, the dutch only possessed 4 ports in europe. Yes, their overall warship building capacity was nothing short of incredible, with massive modern shipyards spread out over the entire globe. But the dutch had, in their bloodthirst, committed so totally to an invasion of britain that they simply had no ships to spare for escorting vulnerable transports from those colonial ports that had not yet been captured by british, australian, and canadian expeditionary forces. So every transport in the Dutch navy was irreplaceable.
And there was a secondary factor to his calculation too-- the dutch had underestimated the number of soldiers the british had. Yes, they were nothing more than peasant levies. But quantity has a quality all its own, and as the number of british soldiers tried to push the Dutch expeditionary forces ballooned from 300,00 to 600,000, the dutch had been forced to commit to more and more resources, bringing the total number of troops on the british isles to 380,000. And the british still had more men to raise; hundreds of thousands more. So many more the dutch doubted their ability to keep holding the line. So many more the dutch had resolved to ship an additional two divisions of men, 120,000 total to the british isles. If these men could be sent to watery graves, the dutch would not only lack the manpower to hold their beachhead in england, but they would leave their homeland only thinly defended. So thinly defended, Germany might be enticed to enter the war on the side of the British Empire.
Thus, he lead his daring attack, and it succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Twenty transports sunk. And, to boot, and entire four battleships sent to the bottom of the ocean. The dutch, for all the sophistication of their army, had neglected their navy. And why wouldn't they? Warships were just boats to transport soldiers from the colonies to the motherland. Plus, they'd never faced a peer opponent on the water; the french were terrible sailors, and the british skill at sea was so legendary the dutch has preferred to simply keep their ships hidden safely at port until the british fleet had left for the black sea. He died in the battle, and officially the engagement was a Dutch victory, as they had kept their ships on the water long enough to finish transporting two division of reinforcements intact. But four cruisers escaped, and they did so with German assistance.
The government was in shock. True, the germans had done nothing more than allows the scandinavian ships to stay in their ports for a little bit. But it was a hard reminder that they had a mere 200,000 soldiers still in reserve in the homeland. Meanwhile, they were fully aware of the reputation of the Dutch: deceitful, mercurial, ruthless, and above all, unpredictable. It would not take a large push to convince the germans to enter the war. But at the same time, the government could not simply pull troops back out of england and risk the success of the invasion.
So the verdict came down. The Dutch fleet would hedge its bets by staying in port, save for the occasional escort duty to keep the french merchant ships supplying the dutch army afloat despite British submarine warfare. No further reinforcements could be provided to the soldiers in Britain.
And so, the attention of the world fell upon those soldiers all-but-stranded in east england. For months, they fought off wave after wave of british levies. Meanwhile, the situation in the colonies began to turn in favor of the british. Austria hungary was still entirely occupied, yes, but the Dutch colonies were free pickings for british looters. The dutch people began to starve without imports from the east indies, and the dutch economy began to starve as the incredibly important industrial province of Fengtian was occupied and its industry shuttered. The war seemed to turn in britain's favor, as it won battles against the far less professional russian and italian militaries.
But the dutch soldiers persisted in their valid defense of foreign soil. It took almost two years, but on the 25th of march, the British people finally gave up. There were still british men of fighting age left, of course. But there were no men left who were stupid or suicidal enough to throw themselves at the dutch defenses. The battlefield went quiet. 'What next?' the british wondered. Would their cities be occupied? Would not just their colonies, but their nation be sundered, and divided like scraps between the dogs of war?
But in an act that remains controversial to this day, the Dutch offered a rare mercy. They had the troops to occupy as much of england as they wanted. But what would be the point? The dutch did not desire the british as their subjects. They made the same demand they'd been making for the past two years-- that the british surrender their colonial holdings, that they pay reparations for the war, and that they assumed primary responsibility for the war. A humiliating defeat, yes, but one that left them north Ireland, scotland, and wales. One that let them hold their heads, if not high, than at least not under a conqueror's boot. And a victory that let the dutch immediately pull back its troops to the netherlands, and dissuade the german eagle from waking up and seeing that they would be helpless before it.
And so, merely hours after the final assault on the dutch position, the british signed the peace at the occupied town of Chelmsford. (The assent of the Austro-hungarians was unnecessary, as they'd been fully occupied for years at this point.) The age of the british empire was over. The dutch ruled the waves now, an empire on which the sun never, ever set.
(*Incidentally, my populace was basically half min because I decided to take a state off civilized china and make them all craftsmen to boost my industrial score. Luxembourg actually has a Min plurality, as does a good chunk of Uruguay and Guyana. This Netherlands would be a super weird place to visit in 2019.)
**So I noticed sweden was close to being able to form scandinavia, so I gave it the extra seventy prestige it needed to do so. I have no clue how Britain got it puppeted though.