If you are changing the map, add Belgium to the German Confederation, as there is no reason to keep it out. Certainly not only to include only part of Luxemburg.
Territorial consolidation at the Congress of Vienna
- Thread starter Eurofed
- Start date
If you are changing the map, add Belgium to the German Confederation, as there is no reason to keep it out. Certainly not only to include only part of Luxemburg.
Who's going to get Belgium?
Austria was really unwilling to let Prussia swallow Saxony, and Russia Poland, mainly because it meant a far longer and less defensible frontier with both.
In this scenario, renouncing Galicia and Bukovina would give Austria a more defensible border, but compensation would need to be massive. Maybe adding most of Switzerland could do the trick. Bavaria could be enough for Austria to accept the Prussian annexation of Saxony, but not the loss of Austrian Poland. Unless you have a PoD further back, during the spring campains in 1813 maybe.
I've been toying with the idea that a more succesful Napoleon there (maybe at Bautzen?) could have delayed the Austrian intervention enough and make the Prussian and Russian demands much more heard about in the congress (would it still be in Vienna?) and also, longer French resistance would have brought a more punitive peace at the end. Also, the longer the war, the more Britain would be look with interest at the Dutch colonies she occupied. A Hanover-Indonesia swap seems unlikely, but I really doubt that Britain would ever consider personal union woth the Netherlands.
Austria was really unwilling to let Prussia swallow Saxony, and Russia Poland, mainly because it meant a far longer and less defensible frontier with both.
In this scenario, renouncing Galicia and Bukovina would give Austria a more defensible border, but compensation would need to be massive. Maybe adding most of Switzerland could do the trick. Bavaria could be enough for Austria to accept the Prussian annexation of Saxony, but not the loss of Austrian Poland. Unless you have a PoD further back, during the spring campains in 1813 maybe.
I've been toying with the idea that a more succesful Napoleon there (maybe at Bautzen?) could have delayed the Austrian intervention enough and make the Prussian and Russian demands much more heard about in the congress (would it still be in Vienna?) and also, longer French resistance would have brought a more punitive peace at the end. Also, the longer the war, the more Britain would be look with interest at the Dutch colonies she occupied. A Hanover-Indonesia swap seems unlikely, but I really doubt that Britain would ever consider personal union woth the Netherlands.
I Blame Communism
Banned
I've yet to see how. Benefit is not measured solely in territory, and OTL showed quite clearly what Austria thought of excessive Russian and Prussian power.
1) Austria's control of Germany south of the Main was not territorial but political. Anyway, Bavaria had been promised security (indeed, fair compensation) in exchange for switching sides.
2) Austria has gained nothing in Italy but liabilities. She had the right to invade those states IOTL; now she has the duty to garrison them.
3) How is it balance when Austria gets what might at best be regarded as swapsies (Galicia for Bavaria) whereas Russia and Prussia just get free stuff?
Why don't you try to answer those questions yourself, in a way that fulfills the scenario ?
I'd have to consult a book, but the really important point is that nobody except some not-very-influential middle-ranking Prussian officers and German nationalists philosophers actually wanted to crippled France. Britain didn't want Russian control inside Europe any more than Russia wanted British control out of it, leaving aside the tsar's chivalrous play-acting. Metternich was trying to keep Napoleon on the throne for as long as it stayed feasible, and Prussia did what the Russians told them to do.
The pretence was necessary if the powers were to avoid admitting to the massed ranks of hopeful petitioners (who it might be possible to get something out of) that they didn't give a toss about anything but their own interests.
But the actual principle was about as screwed as it could be. Pretty well nothing was restored solely because it had existed before 1792.
Caulaincourt was no slouch.
It was continual before, and by the OTL settlement. Southern Bavaria is more bang for your back than Galicia (southern Italy isn't), but there's rather less buck and more importantly you've drastically empowered Prussia.
It was to a considerable extent a bandit-haunted malarial wasteland, like much of eastern and southern Europe at the time. And what's "loose" about invading a place at your leisure?
Why should what happened in 1748 (66 years before 1814) necessarily be more relevant to Metternich than what happened in 1945 (66 years before today) is relevant to us now?
You are confusing a commitment with an interest. Britain obviously had a major and immediate interest in what happened in Germany and Europe generally - hence why if we were going to have to gain a lump of territory it might as well be an electoral vote in the Bund (I'd note that people actually celebrated when we got rid of Hanover - because we hated Ernest Augustus, primarily, but it shows how much we cared for the place).
But a commitment is a place that you own, hence have to defend with troops. And that means making binding alliances with actual military resources and objectives specified like those vulgar other countries do. Britain's preferred kind of alliance, when we made them at all, was "we pick up the bill, we set the programme".
If there's an Anglo-Prussian border then Prussia can conceivably invade Britain (they actually tried such blackmail over Hanover at one point in the 18th C). That adds an edge - for us an unpleasant one - to any Anglo-Prussian dissension. It may may mean calling on France or Austria, which gives them power over us.
Being an island enabled us to be, as my history teacher once said when explaining the Anglo-Japanese treaty, always the girl in the teenage relationship.
Countries are not companies. Having the Netherlands in personal union makes it harder to keep the Dutch out of our markets, and we had fought several wars against the Dutch for trade. English jealousy about trade was a sufficiently powerful force to keep Scotland independent for half a century.
Actually we threw a party, because we really didn't like Ernest Augustus one little bit. George IV was another morbidly unpopular monarch (or regent), but the thing was he was the boss. The prestige of his house couldn't be completely disregarded, especially not when Britain had to shake a not altogether undeserved reputation for cynicism and duplicity.
Which is why Britain had made the restoration of Hanover and Brunswick to their lands of 1806 conditions for subsidies to Prussia back in 1813. The statesmen at Vienna weren't operating in a vacuum.
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I Blame Communism
Banned
If Napoleon had kept the initiative after Luetzen and Bautzen, he might have kept his throne.
If ASBs waved their wand and made this happen Britain would be pretty quick to set up an independant Netherlands again.
As said though its not going to happen, Vienna wasn't just a blank state where lines were randomly drawn. There was a huge history both recent and far back, relationships between the players, all sorts of stuff, determining where the borders were to be drawn.
As said though its not going to happen, Vienna wasn't just a blank state where lines were randomly drawn. There was a huge history both recent and far back, relationships between the players, all sorts of stuff, determining where the borders were to be drawn.
Austrian Italy makes the least sense to me. In OTL Austria's troops maintained Garrisons all around Italy and was able to march their troops all over the place. No Italian power could threaten Austria because of this, so there is no need to really eliminate them by annexing them. But also economically, what could Austria gain from Italy? The "geographical expression" was totally ruined after the Napoleonic wars, any extra Austrian taxes would be instant cause for revolt. Instead directly ruling Italy would mean an extremely expensive and unrewarding endeavor.
Eurofed
Banned
You are likely right.
How much of Switzerland do you deem necessary and proper for Austria to get ? Here is the map of Swiss cantons.
Given that people seem dead-set against the idea of Anglo-Dutch personal union, perhaps the Hanover-Indonesia swap merits consideration instead. It would keep the UK out of European committments, and for Britain it would exchange a useless dynastic tie with a quite valuable colony.
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Eurofed
Banned
Whatever. This idea seems to get more negative criticism than constructive advice. Perhaps instead of a scenario proposal, I should have gone for a simple AHC (how to simultaneously ensure a unified Poland under Russian rule, a Prussian 1866-like Northern Germany, and a largely unified 1860-like Italy, if under foreign, ie Austrian, rule, with a PoD at the tailend of the Napoleonic Wars). As I reviewed my signature TL for further revision, and read the recent thread about Prussian Belgium, I got curious if what USAO accomplishes with a war between the great powers, jumpstarting the unifications of Germany and Italy since 1815, could be done without bloodshed.
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Eurofed
Banned
Although 1815 Italy was neither its Renaissance nor its Belle Epoque self, I believe you are grossly exaggerating the effects of Napoleonic Wars on Italy here. Although the Continental System had had its deleterious effects, and the demands of Napoleon's government were quite high, totally ruined Italy was not and anyway not going to stay so for long with the reestablishment of peace.
Moreover, indirect rule has its limits and drawbacks. Austria had not such a developed economy as to benefit overmuch from it, while direct rule allows Austria to get Italian taxes in its coffers and Italian levies to beef up its army.
Eurofed
Banned
Which randomly drawn lines ? The settlement I proposed trades various areas with recognizable historical, political, and cultural significance between the great powers and minor European states. And in Germany, mediatization, secularization, and Napoleonic rule had created in many areas a kind of partial political vacuum where the great powers did drew lines largely according to their own interests.
Eurofed
Banned
Hmm, I wonder how much of this discussion is really going to be constructive.
It is not an outcome set in stone.
Later history showed how such indirect control was fleeting, and someone may relize it early. Such promises may be butterflied away.
Now it can get Italian taxes and Italian levies.
Austria's share can be further expanded. Someone proposed parts of Switzerland.
To lose Alsace, Lorraine, and Corsica in no way "cripples" France, it just largely resets it to pre-Louis XIV level. Still a great power by any means.
I disagree, Galicia was similar to Naples in value. And in 1815, North German Prussia is still not so strong as an Habsburg state that has Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and most of Italy.
By the way, were all the European statesmen (many of them Austrians) that fought over the 17th and 18th centuries for direct control of Italy all wrong ?
Large parts of the Habsburg empire were not really better. Yet the Habsburg did bother to cling to them ferociously.
About Britain, it has been proposed to swap Hanover with Indonesia instead, and that nullifies all of your objections about UK reluctance to European committments.
It is not an outcome set in stone.
Later history showed how such indirect control was fleeting, and someone may relize it early. Such promises may be butterflied away.
Now it can get Italian taxes and Italian levies.
Austria's share can be further expanded. Someone proposed parts of Switzerland.
To lose Alsace, Lorraine, and Corsica in no way "cripples" France, it just largely resets it to pre-Louis XIV level. Still a great power by any means.
I disagree, Galicia was similar to Naples in value. And in 1815, North German Prussia is still not so strong as an Habsburg state that has Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and most of Italy.
By the way, were all the European statesmen (many of them Austrians) that fought over the 17th and 18th centuries for direct control of Italy all wrong ?
Large parts of the Habsburg empire were not really better. Yet the Habsburg did bother to cling to them ferociously.
About Britain, it has been proposed to swap Hanover with Indonesia instead, and that nullifies all of your objections about UK reluctance to European committments.
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I Blame Communism
Banned
You live and learn.
No, because it's not an outcome. It's an attitude, a concern, a fear.
Later history showed that Austrian control could be disrupted by revolutions, war, and France. The Metternich's vision was at bottom meant to ensure that nobody, least of all France, embarked on any wars, and that everybody helped crush revolutions.
And is direct control less fleeting? The mechanisms of foreign rule (Croat soldiers, possibly more taxes, the absence of the king on who's behalf they had revolted during the revolutionary wars in favour of a distant foreign emperor) would make the southern Italians more revolutionary.
That would require Bavaria not to switch sides as early as she did, which would probably require no Leipzig disaster. You start butterflying things to fix the Congress you want and damn, before you know it it's at Frankfurt and Napoleon is trying to extract a compromise peace from the coalition.
She can raise taxes that may prompt revolt among a people who had a revolution (a counter-revolutionary one, but still) not too long ago and are accustomed to social banditry.
Austria was perfectly happy to have Switzerland as a neutral buffer area and was sympathetic to the authorities of the Cantons.
Carving up the France that had existed in 1792 was precisely what the moderates (who included Metternich, Alexander, and just about the entire British diplomatic service) did not want to do. The allies had been negotiating on the basis of a Rhine frontier still after Leipzig.
I believe that's what I said.
North Germany was rich country. That was the root of the whole misunderstanding, to simplify: Prussia had been promised the recovery of her stature of 1806 when she joined the coalition; the Prussians and Russians decided that this meant the same population, cheerfully ignoring the obvious differences between the same number of Polish peasants scraping a living from the marshy earth and well-fed Saxon China manufacturers. The other powers were not keen to see Prussia in charge of so many prime proto-industrial regions.
Your contention that the Wars of the Spanish and Austrian succession - in which Austria was neither time the aggressor and in which two large empires that happened to have Italian possession were at stake - were fought by Austria for Italy is shaky, but that is besides the point. Since 1789 there had been some rather profound changes in European politics.
True; but the struggle to maintain say, Venetia came later, when any concession was a concession to nationalism of one sort or another. During the Napoleonic wars they had shed Belgium with a shrug.
Not about the treaty guarantee of Hanover signed when Napoleon's forces were still miles east of the Netherlands, though.
Eurofed
Banned
Not necessatily overwhelming or set in stone, either.
Get your history straight. When the 1799 rebellion occurred, Napoleon was not yet emperor.
Anyway, if anything the 1821 (and 1848) revolutions are going to be much more relevant for this scenario than what happened in 1799. I won't say that Habsburg Italy is going to be any less than Habsburg Hungary. It shall. But no more that that, since unification of most of Italy, even if under foreign rule, is going to take one of the main causes for Italian rebelliousness, namely lack of unity. I would also argue that Habsburg Italy is going to enjoy a more efficient administration than OTL native princes, most definitely including the Bourbons, which is also going to reduce rebelliousness. I'm also puzzled by your expectation that in order to be profitable, the Habsburg empire would have to extract more taxes from southern Italy than OTL. It won't be so. Even the OTL amount would be good. It's not like the Kingdom of Naples was an happy tax-free area, and the Bourbons kept a considerable military.
As far as I'm concerned, the intellectual challenge of picking a given broad outcome, and reverse-engineering the event chain that brought it into being, is one of, or even the, most appealing aspects of AH, even more so than picking a PoD and going for the two or three most likely outcomes.
I'm fairly confident that there can be a reasonable butterfly path which wields a Bavaria clinging to the side of Napoleon at least as long as Saxony, and Napoleon still being defeated.
As I said, it's not like the Bourbon Kingdom of Naples had no significant taxes and everybody lived off oil revenues. And if anything, 1821 is more relevant to our scenario than 1799.
And of course, this too is set into stone.
Just like they changed their mind from the Rhine to 1792, so they can change their mind from 1792 to 1670 if Napoleon lasts longer.
One might argue that in this regard, the combo of Bohemia-Moravia, German Austria, and Northern Italy was not too radically inferior to the one of Rhineland, Silesia, and Saxony, and that Austria was foolish to pass the opportunity to own Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine.
A point of this scenario is that there is an alternative to try and keep your potential rivals weaker than yourself, and it is to try and make yourself of similar strength as they get stronger.
True, but see my point above, they could have hold on Belgium (which was willing) to counter the effect of Prussian Saxony. Anyway, I was making the point that Southern Italy was not any worse than Galicia or Transylvania.
Not about the treaty guarantee of Hanover signed when Napoleon's forces were still miles east of the Netherlands, though.
I can see so many ways this can easily butterflied away, since as you admitted, the vast majority of the British ruling class and public did not give a rat's ass for Hanover, after it had provided a Protestant dynasty a century ago.
I Blame Communism
Banned
Nothing existing in the minds of men is set in stone or can be; that does not mean you can dismiss it for no reason.
Get your history straight. When the 1799 rebellion occurred, Napoleon was not yet emperor.
I referred to the Austrian emperor. Poor phrasing, try again:
"Austrian rule in Naples and Sicily would replace a king - a king who commanded enough loyalty to have quite recently seen a peasant revolution in his favour - with a distant foreign emperor."
A "revolution", by the way, is not always urban or liberal. I was referring above to the destruction of the brief Neapolitan republic by the peasants. Peasant revolutions were almost invariably loyalist at this time: the Guerilla, the Chouanerie, Naples, Andreas Hoffer, such partisan fighting as actually did happen in Russia...
Even the peasants of France in 1789, or the Luddites, were revolting more against hunger than the persons of God and the King. In 1848, the French peasants still chucked out a republic.
So, when it comes to deciding what to do in 1815, what had already happened is not so important as future events which the diplomats cannot possibly predict?
Run that past me again?
Main cause? Bah. "One of", perhaps, among a few students, intellectuals, and gentry - the sort of people who belonged to the 2% of Italians who spoke Dante's Italian in their homes as of 1861 ("We have made Italy, now we must make Italians") - but certainly not the only. For followers of Mazzini, a national Italy was obviously an Italy free of censors and Spielberg, spreading the shining light of liberalism across the world. United Hungary failed to satisfy Hungarians.
And most of the revolutionaries killed in Milan in '48 were journeymen and tradesmen, the labouring poor. They were in favour of Italy because it was identified with justice, jobs, and bread. Garibaldi convinced the peasants of the south that free Italy meant no more landlords. It didn't, so then they revolted against Italy. The peasants of the Papal regions were lefty because it was hard to believe in God, King, and Soil when God's representative on Earth, the local king, was right there taking your money.
Radetzky, as satrap in the decade after '48, worked hard to turn the poor of Lombardy-Venetia against nationalism - not entirely without success.
Efficient means taxes. The liberal middle-classes like postal services and swift administration of the laws, but what's it to the poor?
And whereas it could not conceivably be worse than the Bourbons, Austria was not very well-governed before '48. The Bachian, railway-nationalising, telegraph-building, beaurocratic despotism happened when the authorities in the wake of the counter-revolution decided to work out what had gone wrong.
If Metternich was given free-er reign over finances, things might be better, mind.
Place is run from Vienna, right? Everywhere was. So that means cycling your regiments in and out, keeping up swift lines of communication - and if you want it to be any more efficient as you suggest above, well, surfaced roads cost money.
These aren't crippling expenses, but for a country that was already bled white in 1815 they are unnecessary ones.
Hmm, different strokes for different folks. Since I for the most part don't believe anything in history should or shouldn't happen, I'm more inclined to just see what the likely consequences of something are.
I do think you could come at your scenarios from a rather different angle, broaden the gaze a bit. You aren't asking "So, how can the *Napoleonic Wars end like this?", you're telling us that they end this way because of changes at Vienna, which ain't likely.
She's need to raise more taxes to pay for the expenses of running things remotely in the pre-railways, pre-telegraph age, never mind making things more efficient. More taxes, and an alien government, mean a less reliable peasantry. Peasants, in or out of white uniforms, were the prop of the monarchy well into the 19th century.
And of course, this too is set into stone.
And of course nobody has told me why it should change. Effect implies cause.
Their hatred and fear of France eventually loses out to their hatred and fear of each-other - it was already starting to. Britain had never wanted to hear about French Belgium, but the Austrians were interested in the idea.
What opportunity? No part of France inside the Paris borders was on offer, except scraps after Waterloo, and the Austrians were altogether uninterested in Belgium.
The idea that Austria would settle for being only a little bit less than Prussia is completely anachronistic. Prussia had been knocked down to the stature of Sweden or Spain and pulled herself up by a surprising military effort - and having the Tsar of All Russias for a patron didn't hurt. (Nor did switching sides at just the right moment: Prussia and Bavaria pulled broadly the same trick.) Prussia was not imagined by anybody to be Austria's equal. Austria was hoping to pull a we-can-rule-together on Germany at large; Prussia was merely hoping to be recognised as a proper great power - the least of proper great powers.
Europe contains only so many people with so many farms and workshops. Britain and to a lesser extent Russia could look for morsels elsewhere, but the others could get stronger only by taking things from other European countries. There was no such thing as a true neutral (Switzerland being neutralised was a boon for Austria), and so anything taken had to come from either rivals (making them weaker) or friends (making them questionable gains).
They weren't particularly willing for Belgium. They would rather have somewhere else of equivalent value than have to be again the frontline against any French ambition. Again, if there was a way to make such deals palatable, would they not have taken it? They certainly didn't war to go to war, as they threatened to do.
So many ways? Name one.
The British ruling class at this time was not like the British ruling class after 1832. It consisted of perhaps 200 obscenely rich landlords, some powerful merchantmen, and miscellanious others. It also very much contained the king. It's thoughts seldom went the same way as those of the British public.
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Eurofed
Banned
Point taken, So let's wrap up this discussion. I may or may not reopen it in the future by turning it into an AHC scenario.
In alot of cases, those territories that were disunited were often forged into single, powerful states under strong rulers. Case in point, Prussia. It started as a margravate in the Holy Roman Empire, then got upgraded to an electorate as part of the Golden Bull agreement. They (the Hohenzollerns) first became Electors of Brandenburg before gaining the duchy of Prussia (which was partially under Polish patronage). They also received additional statelets on the Rhine frontier near the Netherlands (there was even a possibility that the Netherlands would be the next to fall to Brandenburg-Prussia). Through war and diplomacy, the Hohenzollerns forged the separate statelets and districts into a single, cohesive state.
That same process would eventually help them unite the other German states into an empire