This is a rewrite of my
first ATL on this site. Hope you all enjoy
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Rex Italiae
The Failure of the Risorgimento
MK II
o---------------o
The Expedition of the Thousand
For many years the Italians had struggled, against both foreign threats and those within their own claimed borders, to establish a unified Italian state. By 1860 what had previously been the dream of a few hopeful patriots seemed poised to become a reality. All of the rich and plentiful north lay under the dominion of Victor Emmanuel II, King of Sardinia-Piedmont, who was slowing becoming himself the father of the nation which he seemed destined to rule in its entirety. Indeed the only remaining obstacles to the achievement of this dream were the Papal States and the Kingdom of the Two-Sicilies, two ancient and noble realms which had since decayed and stood ripe for the taking. It was to this objective that led the famed general Garibaldi to sail to Sicily with one thousand men, to stand against the entire Neapolitan army and to finally achieve the unification of Italy.
Upon landing Garibaldi met with great success, defeating a Bourbon army almost twice the size of his forces in the Battle of Calatafimi, which gave him room to breathe as well as inspiring a general revolt that allowed him to lay siege to the city of Palermo, defended by some 16,000 Neapolitans. However, they were poorly led by both their corrupt officers and the weak Ferdinando Lanza. Had a stay cannon shot from the ships which were bombarding the city not killed Garibaldi, the flimsy defences would most likely have fallen to his expert hand. As it was, he was killed on the 29th May during a Bourbon attack which was repelled. Despite the failure of the first attack, when news reached Lanza of his enemy’s death and further bolstered by the arrival of Neapolitan reinforcements, he ordered another attack on the Garibaldian lines, which was held back in many places by the redshirts who fought all the harder for the loss of their beloved leader, but which broke through the demoralized rebels, many of whom were without arms or powder. Although the fight for the city was a brutal one, in the end the Neapolitans regained control, forcing out the surviving rebels and redshirts, who retreated to Alcamo, where much of the populace mobilized to withstand a siege. On the 13th June the Neapolitans laid siege to the well-prepared rebel positions, which repulsed the initial efforts of the Bourbons to force an entrance into the town, leading Lanza to reduce them with artillery bombardment over several days, followed by a final attack which broke through and defeated the last major force of the expedition. Although guerrilla activities in the area continued to be carried out by survivors of the expedition and subsequent revolts, all was quiet in the major cities where the people had been cowed into submission, with many of the monarchy’s opponents removed all together, either perishing in the expedition, entering into captivity or exile, or suffering execution for treason. For the time being, at least, the Kingdom of the Two-Sicilies was to survive.
A mortally wounded Garibaldi being carried away from the fighting by his men
A fanciful and inaccurate depiction, Garibaldi was dead within moments of being hit by a Neapolitan bullet, hardly long enough for his supporters to carry him out of Palermo
The Immediate Aftermath of the Expedition of the Thousand
In the Kingdom of the Two-Sicilies, the effects of the expedition were immediate and far reaching, for the King was shocked by how close the second city of his realm had come to falling into the hands of those he considered mere bandits. In the wake of the failed revolts hundreds were executed across western Sicily for their treason, which served to drive many republicans and opponents of the King into exile or hiding, crippling the opposition, not only in Sicily, but the entire Kingdom. The secret societies which had been formed all over Italy were now ruthlessly suppressed by Francis II, who created a new section of government officials for the detection and capture of all those who sought to oppose or in any way damage the Crown. The creation of an ‘official’ secret police answerable directly to the King and independent of regular law enforcement as well as the serious losses suffered by the republican movement led to a significant decrease in anti-Bourbon activities within the Kingdom. On top of this, the independence-minded Sicilians, in the west at least, were subdued by the bloody fate of the rebellion, which left much of Palermo in ruins, an event carved into the collective memory of an entire generation there. Furthermore, the King resolved that a serious reorganisation of his army was needed and he began investing in more modern arms and equipment, whilst on the grand political stage, it was decided that Naples must end its isolationism and find allies if it was to survive in the modern world. As such, overtures were swiftly made to almost all the nations of Europe, most especially the Papal States, Austria and France. Also of note is the royal tour of Sicily in the immediate wake of the expedition, the Queen especially winning over many during her visits to the crowded hospitals and worst hit areas of the Palermo where she distributed food and inquired as to the particular wounds of the injured, as well as having extra doctors (including her personal physician) brought in to help.
In the Papal States, the effects of the expedition mirrored those in the Kingdom of the Two-Sicilies, to an extent, for the Pope had been greatly moved by his regular correspondence with King Francis and Queen Maria during the time of the Expedition of the Thousand. Convinced that the revolutionaries would come for him next, Pius began similar reforms to Francis, creating a division specifically to deal with internal opposition to his temporal authority, leading many intellectuals who had supported the expedition, either directly or simply morally, to flee abroad to more friendly nations or abandoned their activities in the wake of Garibaldi’s failure. The Pope made overtures to the French and Austrians, but both refused an alliance with the Pontiff, leaving him to create a new alliance between the throne of St Peter and the Bourbons to the south. The Pope also ordered the strengthening of the Papal army, with the raising of various new military units and the expansion of those that already existed, with a general call to arms being issued to Catholics across the world. The Holy Father was set upon establishing the Papal Army as a force to be reckoned with.
In the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont, the effects were less obvious but perhaps more profound. Victor Emmanuel II had hoped that Garibaldi would be successful and deliver Sicily to him, but now many began to doubt that the South should be incorporated into the planned Kingdom of Italy and the King became somewhat set against his forces directly participating in any wars of unification or uprisings there. Although Cavour attempted to stir up republican unrest in the south and revitalise the broken republican movement there, he found the majority of those who had previously been so eager and hopeful now disheartened and unwilling to act in any decisive manner. In this way the two southern states found themselves, for the time being at least, let well alone with only some small guerrilla bands and a few ruined republican societies to worry about. Instead, Venice became the target of republican ambition in Italy, as the papers in Sardinia-Piedmont began to focus more and more on the “serene and noble jewel of Italy, so long held by foreign barbarians who continue to violate this Queen of the Adriatic, even as she longs for her King to liberate her” as one republican paper put it. Nevertheless, Francis II remained a constant victim of ridicule and often appeared in caricature in such papers, who showed him hand in hand with the hated Austrians.
In the end, both southern Italian states were drawn closer together, with a variety of treaties being concluded between them, resulting in an alliance and blossoming trade, allowing industry to expand and also leading shortly to the construction of a railway between the two capitals. Both agreed to exchange advancements and innovations in virtually every field, most especially the military as both sought to expand their forces to protect themselves from a repeat of the Expedition of the Thousand. Rome and Naples were thus brought closer together than ever (also thanks to the blossoming personal connection between Pius and the Neapolitan royals), but the rift between north and south was deepened, as Pius and Francis blamed the Sardinians for the expedition and feared their increasing power. Banditry, an eternal problem in Italy, most especially the south, began to decrease at this time, as the bandits were often swept up with republicans in the crackdowns. The rebels themselves had become disorganised and few in number without the unifying force of Garibaldi, leaving them unable to achieve anything near the danger that the Expedition of the Thousand had posed, government troops quickly putting down the handful of abortive revolts which served only to provide the recruits being drawn into the Neapolitan and Papal armies with experience.
The Neapolitan Army during the victory parade in Naples, following the defeat of the Expedition of the Thousand
Peacetime in Italy
For a time, Italy was at peace. The revolutionaries, so dangerous before, were reduced to a mere annoyance, whilst Victor-Emmanuel was unwilling to march south and found himself unable to march east against the powerful Austrians. Because of this, Italy prospered, especially in the south, where trade rapidly expanded between the Naples and Rome thanks to the introduction of favourable tariffs between the two which also served to lock Sardinia-Piedmont out of much of Southern Italy’s trade. Industry grew quickly, especially in the Kingdom of the Two-Sicilies, which was by far the richest of all the Italian States in terms of gold circulating (although it was poorer in terms of how well off most of its inhabitants were). With this wealth, the Kingdom was able to bolster its army, obtaining some of the latest arms and equipment and increasing the number of artillery pieces it had, as well as constructing a respectable but small number of new ships for the navy (including a handful of ironclads). Some new railway lines were also lad, mainly to begin connecting important economic sites which had previously been languishing in isolation, the most important of these new lines being the Rome to Naples line, which carried industrial (and later military) material, but soon saw the establishment of a regular passenger service in 1864. Such industrial and economic development as there was, in both the Papal States and the Two Sicilies, was almost entirely limited to Naples, Rome and Palermo, outside of which such development was generally limited to the opening of new mines and the like to plunder the region’s resources and fuel the expansion of the industrial sector. The King, as time wore on, became more obsessed with the state of his military, fearing the loss of his throne, either to revolutionaries in the same vein as Garibaldi or to the Sardinians. This fear led Francis to refuse all attempts to reform the government and to reject all offers of an alliance from Victor Emmanuel in case it set the Kingdom on a downward trajectory that would allow the radicals to gain power.
The Sardinians, meanwhile, sought to bring themselves closer to France, in an attempt to prepare themselves for a war with Austria. Some vague suggestions at carving up the Papal States between Naples and Turin were made, but were immediately rejected by Francis who was a devout Catholic and who disliked the Sardinian King for the threat he posed. Whilst these diplomatic manoeuvres were made, The Sardinians attempted to provoke war with Austria as they had done in 1859, by deploying troops along the border. However, the Austrians refused to declare war, remembering the previous outcome for them, meaning that the Sardinians were unable to get their war, too weak to defeat Austria alone and only assured of French support if the Austrians could be framed as the aggressors (a diplomatic trick made no easier to pull off by Cavour’s death in 1861 from malaria).
Francis II with his wife Maria Sophie c. 1860
The Mexican Civil War
During the mid-19th Century, Mexico was consumed by civil war, as the republicans battled against the government of Emperor Maximillian. The events leading to the civil war had begun after the Mexican President suspended the payment of interest on his county’s foreign debts. This led to the French, Austrian and British fleets seizing various parts of the coast in late 1861 and early 1862, in an attempt to force the Mexicans to continue the payments. However, Napoleon III had grander plans and landed an entire army under General Lorencez on the 5th March 1862, as control of Mexico would give France access to all of Latin America. In April, when the Spanish and British realised the intentions of the French, they withdrew their forces.
The French intervention progressed rather haphazardly, with the first major action, the Battle of Puebla on 5th May, ending in defeat for the French, forcing them to retreat. However, with the arrival of French reinforcements, the Mexicans were halted and the way to Puebla forced open. On 30th April 1863, the famous action of Captain Danjou occurred when 3,000 Mexicans attacked his small patrol, forcing them to take cover in a nearby inn. After an inspiring attempt to hold out, the remaining legionaries sallied out in a bayonet charge, leaving only three survivors. Although strategically insignificant, it proved a morale booster for the French in Mexico and became an important part of the Foreign Legion’s history. This was followed by the French defeat of the Mexican relief attempt and their capture of Puebla on the 17th May, scaring the President into fleeing the capital with the country’s finances, allowing the French to enter Mexico City on 7th June. On 10th July, the founding of the Mexican Empire was announced and the crown offered to Archduke Maximillian, whose ancestors had once been the Viceroys of Mexico. It was during this first phase of the French intervention in Mexico that the Pope had resolved to intervene in Mexico in support of the conservative Catholic elements of the country as he had received (exaggerated) reports of outrages perpetrated by republican forces against the Church in Mexico and he was attempting to become more involved in temporal politics. To this end, Louis de Becdelièvre, who had been sacked following disagreements with Papal commander Lamoricière, was again commissioned to raise a unit for intervention in Mexico, to which end he founded the Papal Zouaves in 1863, which was comprised of some 600 men of various nationalities by 1864, when it embarked for the New World. Although the Pope promised to send more troops as soon as was possible, distractions such as the January Uprising and the Austro-Prussian War prevented him from making good on this. Naples did not send any troops to support the Emperor, despite the Pope’s encouragement, as the King was consumed with concern for his country’s own ability to defend itself, although some small financial aid was given, aid which was further supplemented by subscriptions taken up at the behest of the Pontiff to support the Papal forces and the new Catholic Emperor of Mexico.
In 1864 the French advances got off to a good start, with the capture of Guadalajara in January and Zacatecas in February, but they then failed in their attempts to take Mazatlán in March. However, French successes continued with the capture of Acapulco on 3rd June and Durango on 3rd July and the defeat of various other republican forces. Maximillian had accepted the crown on 10th April, with the signing of the Treaty of Miramar, and landed in Mexico in late May, followed shortly by the arrival of the Papal Zouaves the next month, who arrived on the 14th June. The year ended with the capture of Mazatlán in November.
Although the French successes at first continued in 1865, with the fall of Oaxaca to them on 9th February and Guaymas on 19th March, things took a rather worrying turn when a 300-strong detachment of Belgians was surrounded in Tacámbaro, attacked by ten times their number. Their commander, Major Tydgat, attempted to hold out, but they were on the verge of surrender when a force of some 100 Papal Zouaves attacked the republicans. Both the Belgians and the republicans thought that it was a much larger force, resulting in the retreat of the republicans into better position for fending off a relief effort and their temporary cessation of attacks on the Belgians, who were themselves inspired to resist by the presence of what they thought to be a large relief force. In the confusion the Zouaves were able to reach the Belgians and bolster their defences. For the next day, the Mexicans failed to attack the Imperial forces as they searched for a larger Imperial army in the area, convinced that the Zouaves must have been only a vanguard of a relief force. However, on the 13th they renewed their attacks, which were barely held off. On the following day a major battle took place as a French relief column arrived, having marched desperately to reached the beleaguered Belgian and Papal troops, which ended in a narrow Imperial victory as the republicans were compelled to retire. In 1865, the USA finally began to exert significant influence during the civil war in Mexico, when 50,000 troops were moved to their border with Mexico and pressure put on the French to withdraw, as the American Civil War had finally come to an end and US forces were no longer needed to fight the Confederate States of America. At this point American volunteers began trickling in to help the beleaguered republican government in Mexico, but as they were not drawn by religious conviction or the loss of their homeland as those volunteering in the Imperial Mexican Army (Catholic Irish and the Confederates respectively) their numbers were always comparatively limited.
In 1866 the increasingly tense relations between France and the USA took a turn for the worse when Napoleon III refused to withdraw from Mexico, influenced by letters from the Pope which praised his intervention, the presence of the Pontiff’s own soldiers in Mexico and the assurances of his generals that the republicans would be crushed within a year as their forces were becoming weaker by the day and the French felt that the collapse of the republican military was mere months away. Having also been warned that the Zouaves would not abandon the Mexican Emperor in the event of a French withdrawal, Napoleon decided that he was unable to abandon the Zouaves and Mexican Emperor after all that had been achieved. Although Lincoln was unwilling to directly intervene against the French so soon after the bloody American Civil War, the US Navy was employed in a blockade of Mexico, stopping any further French forces from landing, although occasionally a French convoy would manage to slip into the country, with the two nations coming to the brink of all-out war a number of times as their ships came close to openly engaging one another.
Meanwhile, the French and Imperial forces continued to expand their grip over the country in 1866, taking Oaxaca in February, Chihuahua in April and Monterry and Minatitlan in July, forcing the republican forces further from the Mexican heartland and slowly establishing the Emperor’s control over the country. Although they did suffer some reverses, most seriously in the aftermath of the Battle of Miahuatlán in October. In a series of skilful engagements, the republican commander, Diaz, held off the Imperial forces, while his cavalry flanked them, inflicting a terrible defeat on the Imperial and French forces. Having captured more supplies and better arms, Diaz was able to advance on Oaxaca, laying siege to the city until he was forced to retire later the same month, after clashing with the French relief force during the Battle of La Carbonera. In the battle, Diaz was once again on the defensive, although his ranks were swollen by an influx of recruits after his last success. One Imperial and two French columns advanced against him, and although he held back two, badly mauling one French column, the remaining French column was able to break through his lines and force a republican retreat. Diaz was captured the day after the battle when his staff was cut off from most of the army during the retreat and forced to surrender. His capture led to the surrender of republican forces in Southern Mexico, only a few independent bands continuing to operate in the region. The same year, Emperor Maximillian made the Belgian Volunteers (as well as the Hungarian Volunteers) a permanent unit of the Imperial Mexican Army, much to the delight of his wife, Carlota, who was the daughter of Leopold I, King of the Belgians, who had died in 1865.
In early 1867, Imperial forces conquered north-eastern Mexico, allowing American Volunteers to begin to flow into the Empire across the rather porous border, where previously they had had to take a ship to neutral territory and from their make their way to Mexico to sign on in the Imperial Army. These volunteers were almost entirely Irish and the majority were veterans of the American Civil War. By March there were so many of them that the Emperor decided to create an entirely Irish unit, the Saint Patrick’s Battalion, named after its predecessor that had existed in the Mexican-American War. The same year, Archduke Karl Ludwig of Austria consented to his second son, then only two years old, becoming heir to the Mexican throne. Although some Mexicans had hoped for one of the descendants of the earlier Emperors to become heirs and eventually Emperors themselves, the Imperial couple even adopting some of the grandsons of the last Mexican Emperor, there was no real dissatisfaction with the choice. By the end of the year, the succession was secured and the republican forces all but defeated.
By 1868, the republicans had been forced into guerrilla warfare even in the north, with large numbers of men abandoning the cause and deserting their units. An amnesty which extended to all republicans except the most important leaders was announced in late 1868 and accepted by the majority of the republican forces, who were only too happy to lay down their arms after having fought for so long, hammering the final nail into the coffin of the republican war effort in Mexico. Although the fighting continued, by 1870 resistance had come to an end, with the Catholic Mexican population becoming used to the rule of their European Emperor, who introduced many new reforms and advancements to Mexico, beginning the process of modernising the country. The war also had the effect of providing a large number of veteran troops to various governments in France, most especially the Papal States, which gained the hardened Papal Zouaves. Louis de Becdelièvre had been killed in the war, dying during the Battle of La Carbone in 1866, but his men became the elite of the Papal Army, the 500-strong unit which returned to Rome in early 1869 being increased to 1,500 men by the end of the year. Over the course of the war, they had suffered some 240 men killed and many more wounded. When the Papal Zouaves departed Mexico, they were accompanied by some 200 men of the Saint Patrick’s Battalion of Mexico, who joined the Pope’s own Saint Patrick’s Regiment.
The Mexican Civil War was the first time the Monroe Doctrine had been outright opposed by a European power, forcing America to either step up its military commitments or see its hegemony in the Americas come to an end. Furthermore, the establishment of a French protectorate on the North American continent was a major (albeit bloody and costly) victory for Napoleon III and was also to significantly affect the demographics of Mexico, which came to be seen as just as much of a land of opportunity as the USA was, especially among the Catholics of both America and Europe. It also virtually cut Mexico’s trade with the USA, causing a short economic depression that lasted from 1867 to 1869 but which led her to seek even closer ties with France and the rest of Europe, eventually causing the economy to bounce back.
Emperor Maximilian of Mexico
The January Uprising
Beginning in 1863, the January Uprising was a widespread rebellion against Russian control of a large part of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Breaking out in Poland in January, uprisings followed in February in Lithuania, the Baltic, Belarus and the Ukraine. A provisional government was formed and an appeal made to the rest of Europe, resulting in an influx of support, the Pope even ordering prayers to be said for the success of the Catholic Poles against the Orthodox Russians. The war escalated when Prussia gave the Russians use of its railways in defeating the uprising, uniting all the nations of the old Commonwealth together. At first the uprising was limited mostly to the nobility and war was first waged over the support of the peasants. Although the provisional government began to offer them the land they worked on, many were bought off by the Russians, who redistributed land in Poland to the peasants with indifference.
Throughout the Uprising, the rebels were often outnumbered ten to one and they constantly struggled with being poorly armed. Despite determinedly opposing the Russians, the Poles were slowly crushed and with the capture of much of their leaders in 1864, their resistance began to collapse. Despite the presence of many able and enthusiastic French and Papal commanders among the Polish forces (the Papal officers being present outside the authority of the Pope, having been allowed to temporarily leave the Papal army to support their fellow Catholics and gain experience), it was a doomed venture as political infighting undermined them and they crumbled under the might of the Russian army, tens of thousands being deported to Siberia in the aftermath.
During the course of the Uprising a variety of regular and irregular units were formed to fight the Russians, but the Zouaves of Death stand out in particular. Created by the Frenchman François Rochebrune in 1863, it acquitted itself admirably over the course of the conflict, often throwing itself into the thick of the fighting and repeatedly taking high casualties as their oath forbade them from retreat or surrender. At the end of the war, a portion of the survivors went on, at the invitation of the Pontiff, to become the core of a new Polish battalion of Zouaves, bolstered by other Poles who were fleeing the aftermath of the Uprising. With the establishment of this new battalion of Zouaves, the Papal Zouaves were turned into a regiment in early 1865, with plans for the creation of another battalion to bring them up to full strength.
Three Zouaves of Death photographed during the January Uprising
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It should be noted that ITTL the Black Decree never happens as Maximilian is convinced not to by the French and the Papal commanders (IOTL the former were against it), the weight of the Pope being more than enough to change his mind.