Rise of Alexander - A Russian TL

3rd September 1835

Boris Andreiev coughed briefly, before putting his mind on other things. He was due to have an audience with the Tsar himself shortly, but there was one thing he had to control. It was that damn cough he had acquired recently, that accursed, abominable cough...

The Tsar walked in, and Boris coughed again. Little did he know, that little cough changed the fate of a nation.

31st December 1835

It was the evening of the last day of the year, and Nicholas, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, was mortally ill. The physicians had proven themselves true incompetents at every stage of his illness, and now nothing could be done but to pray to Almighty God for the swift assumption of his soul into Heaven. He coughed blood from his mouth, delirious, as he had been for several weeks. Beside his bed were several physicians and a priest, watching, waiting. He kept himself conscious by sheer force of will, knowing well that if he fell asleep, he might never wake up.

He lasted through the night, but on the morning of the next day, as the sun rose thinly through the thick winter clouds, he expired, his last words simple, forced through a bloody mouth between racking coughs - 'Where...is...Alexander...'.

January 13 1836

The funeral of Nicholas was grand and extravagant, his body borne on a coach down to its tomb in Saint Basil's Cathedral. Thousands stood at the sides as the procession, guarded by troops of soldiers, made its slow way toward the cathedral. He was eulogised, and as the royal coffin was placed in the tomb, it ended.

Little did the many people present, including recently-crowned Alexander II, know how much had changed and would change because of one little cough.

A Brief History of the Russian Empire (Vladimir Putin)[1]

The brief reign of Emperor Nicholas (26 December 1825-1 January 1836) is relatively unimportant to history compared to the subsequent reign of Alexander II ( 5 January 1836-8 November 1886) which lasted 50 years and was a period of great reform in the Russian Empire. Alexander II understood well the value of modernisation, and left a somewhat schizophrenic legacy - on one hand he was an autocratic leader with much in common with previous Tsars, and on the other a great reformer who was heavily involved in industrialisation, modernisation and expansion, greatly improving and reforming the Russian Empire throughout his 50-year rule.

To understand him fully, we must also understand his circumstances...


[1] Yes, Putin is a historian ITTL. He's pretty much the only OTL character that will be showing up in the 20th and 21st Centuries however, mostly due to butterflies.
 
It's incredible how a little cough could change the entire world history :D

And with your idea of historian Putin now i'm very curious to know who will govern modern Russia, so i subscribe ;)
 
It's incredible how a little cough could change the entire world history :D

And with your idea of historian Putin now i'm very curious to know who will govern modern Russia, so i subscribe ;)

It's obvious Russia will remain Imperial for longer, and less turbulent I'd assume.
 
A Brief History of the Russian Empire (Vladimir Putin)

Alexander II's accession to the Russian throne was relatively easy, he was the heir of Nicholas. The first thing he did in his reign was begin a four-year program of military reform. Incompetent generals were sacked - competents were promoted. A program to instil a sense of discipline and order in the rank-and-file was begun. Alexander began to copy Prussian tactics and reforms, and founded an officers' school in Saint-Petersburg to prevent incompetents to gain high rank solely by birth. Alexander forced each of the new officers to swear an oath of personal loyalty to him with Almighty God as witness.

In 1846, Alexander faced his first major challenge. Revolutions raged throughout Europe, the Poles rising up en masse in an attempt to reclaim their nation. It took only a few weeks for the Russians to crush the Poles in the country, but the eight-month Siege of Warsaw took up a great deal of time, delaying the Russian advance into Hungary greatly. The Hungarians managed to establish a nation of their own as the Hapsburg Empire fell apart, and by the time intervention was feasible the Hungarians were too strong to feasibly crush.

In early 1847 the Frankfurt Parliament (which the Austrians had somewhat grudgingly joined) sent an army into Schleswig-Holstein. The Danes were driven out, the province was annexed into Prussia and the crown of Germany was offered to the Hapsburgs, who accepted it. The Empire of Germany was born.

Alexander II was something of a liberal even at this point, and a clear Germanophile. So in 1847 the Russo-German Alliance was negotiated, stating that an attack on any of the two powers would be seen as an attack on both, and that Russia and Germany would support each other in war. This greatly worried the British, who saw it as a threat to the balance of power in Europe.

In France the July Monarchy was ousted, and after a few months Napoleon III took power, as in Britain the Chartists failed to get their demands accepted. The map of Europe had been changed forever by 1846.

In early 1844, before the Revolutions of 1846, Alexander's wife bore him a son, Vasiliy, who would become Emperor Vasiliy V of Russia. The succession was secure. Vasiliy too would be liberal, and would bring Alexander's reforms further along...
 
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A minor quibble - The Habsburgs deem the title of Archduke as being equal to, if not greater, to that of a King; there's a reason they called their dominions an Empire.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
So independent Hungary? What happened to Austrian Galizia and Bukovina? And will some Poles be slaughtered?

Glad there's no Alex III. I consider him the man who brought down the House of Romanov.
 
So independent Hungary? What happened to Austrian Galizia and Bukovina? And will some Poles be slaughtered?

Glad there's no Alex III. I consider him the man who brought down the House of Romanov.

The Russians occupied Galicia before pushing into Slovakia, however the Hungarians managed to defeat these attacks, holding them off and defeating the relatively small Russian forces sent in - by the time the Russians could muster a sizeable attack, the Hungarians were too strong to best. Galicia is under Russian control and ownership ITTL. As for Bukovina, the Hungarians took it.
 
However, even with a Great Germany, the empire is still divided with Prussia who control the North and Austria concentrated in the South even if the Hapsburgs had the Imperial title... how will it last? ;)

Liberal Russia is on the rise... soon the Second and the Third Rome will be reunited? :D
 
However, even with a Great Germany, the empire is still divided with Prussia who control the North and Austria concentrated in the South even if the Hapsburgs had the Imperial title... how will it last? ;)

Liberal Russia is on the rise... soon the Second and the Third Rome will be reunited? :D

Yes...mwahahaha! :D
 
A World In Crisis: The 19th Century (August Jones)

In 1848 Alexander II began a major industrialisation program in a belt of territory going from Saint-Petersburg to Kiev. He also began a modernisation program for agriculture, in the hope that farmers would get higher yields and Russia would thus support a much larger population. In the far east, he took the Halshenwai and Sofianova regions from the Chinese in the brief Far Eastern War of 1849, founding the city of Romanovsk[1] as capital of the 'Far Eastern Maritime Province'.

The Chinese Qing dynasty was seen to have lost the Mandate of Heaven, as reports of the complete annihilation of Chinese armies by outnumbered Russian forces spread throughout China. Anti-Manchu sentiment was added to this, and a series of large revolts took place that greatly devastated China, draining the Qing Dynasty's wealth greatly and ushering in the beginnings of an economic collapse.

The Qing were standing on a volcano about to erupt, and would soon become completely powerless in their own nation. China would become a byword for an anarchy and chaos that even the Great Powers could not control.

In 1853 in the United States, trouble brewed as the South contemplated seccession from the North over the issue of slavery. In 1856, this happened, ushering in a new era...



[1] OTL Vladivostok

 
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Wait, why do the 1848 Revolutions happen two years earlier ITTL? How does Tsar Nicholas I dying earlier lead to an earlier end to the July Monarchy, or lead to an earlier Sicilian Revolution? And how does Napoleon III take over 'after only a few months'? :confused:
 
I guess you talk about the Crimean war in the next post...;)

So the American civil war sparkled after the proclamation of the Kansas-Nebraska act?
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Hmm, could the Kansas- Nebraska act really spark the ACW? I was under the impression that the South wouldn't secede if not slavery/ the Southern Economy was seriously under threat (like when Lincoln became president).
 
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