Quick TL: The Frankish Revolution (1799)

Background


In 1799, people in the Frankish Empire were preparing the Millennial Fest events set for 1800 in order to commemorate the birth of the country one thousand ago.

Of course, the Empire of the end of the 18th century had little in common with that created by Charlemagne at the early Middle Ages. Not even the official name: the (Western/Holy) Roman Empire title inherited from the late Classical tradition succumbed to the more practical Frankish Empire once the adjective 'Frankish' lost his original tribal meaning and acquired the sense of mix of Germanic (or Germanized) peoples and Latin traditions.

The Empire, however, had known better days in the past. Thanks to the alliance with the Danish and Norwegians in the 10th century, it built an astonishing trade network in the North Atlantic from the European continent to the colonies in North America, which flourished and expanded to the South. Thus, the Frankish Empire reached the status of undisputed hyperpower in Europe during the 13th and 14th centuries.

But since the 15th century, its power started to decline. England, a former Frankish vassal, got their way to reunite all the British Isles under its dominion (as well as some territories in the continent like Normandy and Brittany) and started to challenge the power of the Frankish in the North Atlantic, to the point of stealing all the North American Frankish colonies (excepting Greenland and Helluland) by 1750. In the South, the surge of the Kingdom of Spain, which also controlled Southern Italy, also led to the lost of the initial Frankish advantage in Central America, which was finally settled by the Spanish; all the Frankish settlements were finally evacuated before 1700.

In the metropoli, things were not better. After the arrival of the House of Reims to the Frankish throne in 1469, a process of internal disgregation started: some entities created their own quasi-independent Kingdoms, in a mere personal union with the Empire. Other minor entities got full independence, like the Dutch Republic in 1591 (under British protection) or the Free Cities of Hamburg, Danzig and Bremen.

As a reaction to this decadence, in 1753 a group of Frankish intellectuals and businessmen created the secret society called 'The Brothers', which aimed to convert the Frankish Empire in a more modern and centralized Parlamentarian monarchy, resembling the successful British model; however, the most radical branch prefered a Republic like the Dutch one.

With the loss of the last colonies, the ideals of 'The Brothers' started to gain popularity among the upper non-noble classes, but the lower classes mostly rejected these ideas because of the perceived anti-Catholic flair of some of them. However, after the coronation of the young, vicious and inept Henry IV in 1784, who increased the taxation in the lands after his direct control for financing some hideous projects while famine broke out in some rural regions, the ideals of 'The Brothers' were received by increasing sympathy among the desperate peasants...

Map of the Frankish Empire in 1799

* Dark orange: lands of the Crown (where the Emperor had direct rule)
* Yellow: vassals of the Crown (duchies, counties etc.)
* Pale yellow: lands of the Catholic Church (under Imperial protection).
* Light Orange: semi-independent kingdoms.

* Green: rivals of the Frankish Empire.
* Pink: independent republics.

Frankish_01 (FILEminimizer).png
 
Religion


The official religion of the Frankish Empire in 1799 was the Catholicism and the Roman Church was the only religious organization legal in all the territory under Frankish rule, including the kingdoms in personal union with the Emperor.

The Catholic Church had lost his universal character during the late Middle Ages and had become a sort of national religion. The British and the Spanish Churches kept a formal union in the dogma, but since the Council of 1473, both Churches developed their own organizations where the Pope had no say. In Sweden, the Linnean heresy had replaced the Catholic faith long before and the Christian population in the Rus and the Turkic Empire was overwhelmingly Orthodox.

The Pope was the only lord in the Papal States of Italy, even if they were considered part of the Empire as they fell under the military protection of the Emperor and no special taxes were imposed to the Frankish merchants working there. The Roman Church also ruled in the Principality of Avignon, but in fact, this was more tied to the neighboring Kingdom of Aquitaine. Finally, the Monastic States of the Baltic were a sort of colonial establishment rewarded to several Catholic orders after the Baltic crusades of the 13th century.

The temporal power of the Church had been heavily contested in the Baltic since the failed Latvian Uprising of 1665, and new protests broke out as close to Rome as in Ravenna in the decade of 1780. The Brothers aimed to abolish the Papal regime in the lands awarded to the Church and incorporate them to the secular structure.
 
Language


The usual language of the administration of the Frankish Empire by 1799 was the Standard German conceived by the School of Hannover four centuries before.

In fact, the Empire always comprised (and tolerated) a high linguistic diversity, but the need of a common language (and not a dead one, like Latin), especially for the administration and trading, led to the creation of a common standard for the Germanic dialects, largely prevalent over the Romances by the 13th century.

The Standard German slowly replaced the use of Germanic dialects among the upper classes, while the lower ones, especially the peasants, kept their local variants. By the mid-18th century, the core of the Empire had largely adopted the Standard German as their common language.

The exceptions came from the semi-independent Kingdoms and the lands of the Church: Aquitaine had the Oc language (a Romance language derived from Latin) as its official one, and it was also widely spoken in Avignon and several neighboring territories in Provence and Burgundy; the Kingdom of the Danes used both Danish and Standard German (as German dialects were used from an early period for the trade with the American colonies), and some peripheral dominions like Iceland, Faeroes, Greenland and Helluland still maintained their archaic Norse dialects; Poland and Hungary used their national languages, but many of their urban and upper classes had also adopted German; Croatia was home of different languages (Croatian, Hungarian, German dialects, Venetian Romance…) and avoided to adopt an official one; the Papal States still used Latin, but the population spoke the Central Italian Romance and the Monastic States combined Standard German, Italian Romance and their local Baltic/Finnish dialects.

The Brothers favored the imposition of the Standard German over the dialects through the education of the lower classes. Even if they respected other languages like Oc, Danish or Polish, they defended the idea of using Standard German as a common language of communication at every level, as well as the language of culture, theatre, poetry etc. They also compiled a complete toponymy in Standard German for all the relevant places under the Imperial authority.
 
Administration


The political structure of the Frankish Empire in 1799 had become pretty obsolete and it was far from being satisfactory for the rising power of the bourgeoisie and other urban classes at the beginning of the industrial revolution.

The Emperor only had an effective rule over the lands of the Crown, and almost nothing in the rest. The Empire itself had no Imperial-wide institutions and the old Imperial Diet had not been called for two centuries. Some of the vassal entities and the Kingdoms had their own Diets, but overall the system was quite absolutist.

The Empire had not a fixed or official capital city, even if the Emperor usually resided in Kaiserslautern. The Government of the Lands of the Crown had two main sees (Frankfurt-am-Main and Paris), but also had important headquarters in Marseille, Berlin and Königsberg; anyway most of the ordinary administration was transferred to the Governorates of the 27 provinces. The vassal entities and the Kingdoms had their own models of administration.

The Brothers considered this model arbitrary, inefficient and obsolete, and a key factor of the decadence of the Empire. Between 1773 and 1778 the secret society implemented a sort of ‘parallel administration’ with delegations in all the Imperial territory, Kingdoms and lands of the Church included.
 
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