The Crescent & Corsican: A Ottoman TL

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Deleted member 14881

Hey This is my first TL on the Ottomans comments and criticism is welcome!

Ever since the Great Turkish war a century ago Europe thought the Grand Turk was not very grand anymore. They thought the Ottomans were about to fall and Constantinople could maybe be taken out of Muslim hands. Like the Moon which waxes and wanes, the Crescent will wax again.


The Ottomans and General Bonaparte
The Ottoman Empire in 1789 was both heavily weakened by war with Russia and Austria and the Ottomans were in a war with Russia over the Crimean Khanate. It had lost Hungary in the last century, and was in a retreat primarily north of the Danube. Selim the Third ascended to the throne during a war that the Ottomans were losing badly. He had tried to rally the Ottomans to any sort of victory, but that failed. The Ottomans soon signed the Treaty of Jassy recognizing the Russian annexation of the Crimea, and changed the Ottoman frontier to the Dniester. The Ottomans soon withdrew from the Bug River, and Selim the Third’s reaction was to set up the Asakir-i-Nizamiye (Regular Corp). They were trained in the French style, and wore the blue uniforms of France. Soon the Asakir-i-Nizamiye numbered fifteen thousand men and along with fifty thousand Sipahis. Selim and the Ottomans were soon confident in their abilities to crush the Janissaries, but they had chosen the next year to destroy them. In January 16, 1796 Bonaparte arrived in Constantinople, and he was supposed to train the Ottomans in Artillery. One day, on May 17 1796, the Corps was ordered to stay in their barracks, and then they rioted due to rumors of their abolishment. Twenty-five thousand marched on to Topkapi Palace brandishing muskets, swords, and clubs aiming to overthrow Selim like the previous times they had done so, and replacing him with Shahzade Mustafa who was more pliable to the Corp. What they did not count on was Bonaparte’s grapeshot.

Bonaparte was only armed with 25 cannons and 125 men, but he had positioned his cannons at chokepoints and entrances so he would not have been overran. He had waited until rioters came within point blank range and he had loaded the cannons with grapeshot. When the cannons fired the rioters were massacred and were forced to retreat to their barracks. Bonaparte could barely hold off the masses of Janissaries until the cavalry arrived. Now, they were attacked by the Sipahis who arrived at the barracks and then the corps’ barracks were set on fire. Shahzade Mustafa was rewarded by being strangled in his sleep. The Ottomans soon outlawed the Bektashi Sufi order due to its associations with the Janissaries and was driven underground which won the support with the more orthodox ulema, and Sufi lodges. Within a year the Janissaries were soon exterminated, and as gratitude for saving his life; he had Meanwhile Napoleon converted to Islam and then took the name Napolyon Pasha, he nativitized had chose the first name to make him distinctive in the ranks of the General Staff. By Ahmed Kara 8th year Constantinople Ottoman Military Academy
In 1806, due to an Alliance with France the Ottomans were invaded by Russia which occupied Bessarabia and a year later was forced to withdraw from it because France threatened war with Russia over the Ottomans and Russia was forced to withdraw. In the next year the Greeks revolted over taxes although by the present day some Neo-Hellenic historians would paint it as a nationalist uprising and Russia intervened over the “Greek Horrors” but by the time Russia intervened with the army by then the revolt had been crushed, and the leaders were hanged.
The Ottomans reoccupied Bessarabia and Napolyon decided to wait for a Russian offensive in the spring and Russia did re occupy Moldavia and Wallachia in April. Russia was overconfident and expected an easy victory and only sent a paltry thirty thousand man army to fight. The Ottomans on the other hand were French trained and they had an army of forty thousand men. The Cavalry was under Muhammad Ali Pasha on the left wing, Napolyon on the center wing and Ahmed Bey in the right. The battle plan was Napolyon would attack the Russian army under Bagration, Napolyon knew about Russian tactics against the Ottomans which was beating off the first cavalry charge and then attack the weak infantry and force them to retreat to their forts. Napolyon would attack the center using light cavalry under Muhammad Ali to feint a retreat after a first charge, and the Russians would attack thinking they would win. Then Napoleon would attack them with shock troops and then the Ottomans left and right would surround the Russians and win. The offensive was launched on June 2, 1809. Napolyon attacked Bagration at Sillistra and it was the decisive battle in this war. At Sillistra the Russians were supposed to link up with Kutuzov, and Napolyon decided to defeat Bagration first and then attack Kutuzov. The Russians were superior to the Ottomans in infantry, and so Napolyon Pasha ordered a Grand Battery in which the Ottoman Artillery would break the Russian center, and then light cavalry would screen the charge. The heavy infantry would charge and then break the Russians.
The battle started on June 5th with a massive artillery barrage in the Russian center and then the cavalry screened the attack and then the heavy infantry charged and crushed the Russian army after seeing Bagration’s defeat. Kutuzov was forced to retreat.

By 1810 the Russian army was forced to withdraw from the principalities due to several defeats at Shumla, and at sea in the Dardanelles, the Russians could not establish naval supremacy strategically due to British Advisors in the Ottoman Navy due to the Treaty of the Dardanelles which in exchange for massive concessions economically they would train the Ottoman Navy and then the Russians were forced to sign the Treaty of Bucharest which was a Status Quo Ante Bellum peace. Article on the Russo Ottoman war (1806-1812) on Omnipedia Ottoman language version
The Tanzimat reforms of 1809 were started by Alemdar Mustapha Pasha, and these reforms were to take the feudal system of the Ottomans and make them more like Europe. First in order for Europe not to interfere in Ottoman affairs they made everyone equal under the law. Second they made the Eyelets which were huge and unwieldy into Vilayets which was more like French Provinces. The rest of the reforms included revamping of the Navy and Bureaucracy. Article on the Tanzimat Reforms French Secondary School textbook (1990)

The Selimiye was a flag ship which was a three masted and three decked 128 gun ship commissioned in 1817. In the 1820’s and 30’s trade increased and some of the Balkan Christians decided to immigrate to Louisiana in a desire to gain economically. In 1845 the economic reforms happened like breaking up the guilds and attempting to start light industry like Textiles had started to take effect in the Balkans in locations primarily in the Danube they had employed mostly women and Children. This was caused by primarily by French loans to build industry in the empire, and soon the Ottoman Empire had a lot of French and British loans to build up their navy. excerpts from Ottoman Reforms for dummies

An Ottoman army under Napolyon Pasha in 1811 was sent to Arabia which was on the Hejaz. His campaign was against the Saud clan, who were recently in Mecca. They followed a puritanical form of Islam called Wahhabism, and they destroyed things like the Prophet’s tomb because to the Saudis this is “idolatry.” The army was sent to Mecca to chase them out, and they did chasing them southeast into the Nejd engaging them at Diriyah. The Ottoman army easily crushed the Saudis sending them to the sand. The Saudis were poorly armed whereas the Ottomans fresh from campaigns in the Romanian Principalities were well trained. The Saudis were brave but they had no defense against cannon and muskets, and were retreating into the desert with no supplies. After a while the Saudis were forced to send their religious leaders to Constantinople for execution and Saud clan was forced to retreat to the Nejd because the Ottomans could not be bothered by a bunch of Bedouin, but it was only temporary until the Ottomans could recentralize their position in Arabia.

Selim had sent Bonaparte into Egypt. Egypt was under the rule of the Mamluks, who were similar to the Janissaries in that they were slaves who had amassed power and now ruled Egypt. Bonaparte Pasha, along with ten thousand men marched to Cairo, and they met the Mamluks just outside of Cairo in the small town of Embadeh, in the Battle of the Pyramids on April 17, 1813. Bonaparte had organized his army in the square formation. The Mamluk armies were armed with traditional weapons like swords and spears. They attacked relentlessly, but they were routed with heavy losses, and with relatively few losses on the part of the Ottomans. The remaining Mamluks either fled to Sudan or lived anonymously until their death. In 1814 the Ottoman state centralized control in Libya, Tunis and Algiers rather easily. By 1815 the Ottoman state was somewhat recentralized and Selim III appointed Muhammad Ali as Grand Vizier who replaced Hurshid Pasha. Bonaparte atricle excerpt from Omnipedia

In 1821 the Ottoman Empire declared war on Persia due to the accusation of Ottoman backing of Azeri rebels. They had met at Lake Van and the Persians were commanded by Abbas Mirza who had trained a Western style force of thirty thousand men it was bloody but the Ottomans had numbers on their side won but the Persians and the Ottomans signed a treaty of Erzurum it was a Status Quo Ante Bellum peace due to the Ottomans desire to not expand their borders with the Russian Empire. Excerpt from The Late Ottoman Era authored by Lord Richmond 9th edition (1972). [/I]
 
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Good start to the TL. The earlier and seemingly more energetic Tanzimat reforms are a good touch. Out of curiosity, how will the Ottomans eventually deal with the Saudis? The most logical way to me would be to establish garrisons at the key oases in the Nejd, but I'm curious to see how else you could do it.
 

Deleted member 14881

in the 1830's they destroy the entire saud clan in the Nejd and establish a gassion, the Ottomans dont think that the Nejd is that important
 

Razgriz 2K9

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Well I see it is somewhat possible, the Ottomans IOTL did eliminate the more religious leaders of the First Saudi State in 1818. But with Nejd destroyed as a political power, wouldn't that leave a small vacuum?
 

Deleted member 14881

Well I see it is somewhat possible, the Ottomans IOTL did eliminate the more religious leaders of the First Saudi State in 1818. But with Nejd destroyed as a political power, wouldn't that leave a small vacuum?

I mean get rid of the religionus leaders and put a garrison in there.
 
Well I see it is somewhat possible, the Ottomans IOTL did eliminate the more religious leaders of the First Saudi State in 1818. But with Nejd destroyed as a political power, wouldn't that leave a small vacuum?
All that's likely to happen I think would be one of the surrounding tribes that Ibn Saud later conquered when founding Saudi Arabia move in to take over the territory. You've got the Hashemites in Hejaz along the western coast, the Bani Khalid in Al-Hasa on the east coast which IIRC is where the Saudis got a lof of their food from, or the various tribes in the Asir region down towards Yemen. The Ottomans did actually suppress the rebelling first Saudi state in the 1810s but even though they beat them militarily and destroyed the Saudi capital they didn't finish the job and the Saudis regrouped in a new capital of Riyadh. Since IIRC Wahhabism was fairly deeply rooted I think the Ottomans may have to go all the way and completely crush them, not giving them the opportunity to regroup in Riyadh but pretty much massacre most of them and let the other local tribes and things take their natural course with the remainders.
 
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Deleted member 14881

New update!:D

In 1795 a royalist uprising happened it was a glorified riot and the 13 Vendémniaire, and Thomas Alexandre Dumas had been on time, and ordered a whiff of grapeshot to be used on the protestors, and he soon became a republican hero, and two years later he was on the Irish Invasion with Hoche ,and he had managed to stay alive ,and during the Consulate, he was made Minister of War as a way to render his powers impotent. Beforehand he was sent to the Louisiana colonies to fight the Americans with 10000 men and with the help of the several native tribes he defeated several militias sent by the US and the President Thomas Jefferson was forced to sign a humiliating peace after France’s ally Spain bombed the American coast and seized fort McHenry. The treaty stipulated that America will stay behind the Mississippi river, and pay the French and Spanish government ten million pounds each. Jefferson was humiliated and when elections were held in 1804 Jefferson was soundly trounced by the Federalists led by Charles Pinckney which ran on the premise of Jefferson made America weak and vote for a strong America. In 1816 he was appointed to the Consulship as the Proconsul of the French Republic which made him responsible for France’s internal affairs like keeping law and order, prevent any internal revolts like in the Vendee and maintaining infrastructure like bridges.

In 1797 Hoche had landed with 15000 men and the political core of the United Irishmen, like Wolfe Tone who were able to rally 70000 men to the cause the Irish Revolt lasted until 1799 and guerilla resistance lasted into 1802. The Hibernian Republic seized Dublin and almost managed to drive however this had caused a massive economic depression because of a run on the Bank of England and massive revolts by the working class. The United Irishmen lay dormant until 1805 in which Robert Emmet launched a well hidden uprising however it seized Dublin castle however soon it degenerated in a riot with a dragoon dying and it was soon broken up and Emmet was hanged in 1806. This culminated in Luddite riots in all of the major industrial areas of Britain. The Army was called in and several hundred rioters were killed. George III was assassinated in 1802 by a former Colonel Edward Despard, who then wanted a revolution to establish a republic. This however did not go down as well as he hoped there was no uprising and he was hanged on February 5th 1803.


What happened next was George IV ascended to the throne, an election was called and William Pitt the Younger was elected to become Prime Minister. Soon afterwards repression happened like a crackdown on subversives, and the passage of the Six Acts. Charles James Fox who was George’s favorite to become prime minister tragically died in 1802 due to a carriage accident. The Six Acts included restriction on the press; Assembles, military training and it gave the right of Magistrates to seize weapons from homes. The government used the threat of Irish radicalism, Luddites, and evils of the subversives seeking to overthrow Britain through reform of Parliament. The Six Acts however lasted into 1830’s.

Hoche returned in a triumph worthy of Caesar and Alexander, and he soon was seen as a threat by the Directory. He had set up the Cisrhenish and Swabian Republic as buffer states in a customs union with France. By 1799 he had aligned himself with Sieyes, and launched the Coup of 18th Brumaire with the help of the army and by the next day the Counsel of Ancients approved the Constitution of the year VIII which was approved by 99.9% He had subverted Sieyes’s plan for a Aristocratic type of Republic and replaced with a Caesarian republic which used words like Consul, Senate, and Tribunes. There were originally three Consuls by the name of Lebrun, Carnot, and Hoche. Hoche however managed to bend France to his will. In 1801 He had signed a Concordat with the Papal States recognizing the Catholic Church as the main religion of France, but not the only religion of France. Hoche let the Jews out of the Ghetto, and gave everyone freedom of religion. He had reorganized the Cisrhenish Republic and Swabian Republic as the Rhenish Republic, and he had fused Piedmont, Liguria, Parma, Lucca and the Cisalpine Republic as the Italian Republic. France and her Sister Republics had a free trade agreement between them. They also had common weights, measurements and exchange rates between each other along with a defensive agreement to protect them from attack. France was at its maximum height since Charlemagne, and it had the future Industrial heartland of Western Europe. He had taken Josephine de Beauharnais as a mistress, and eventually made her son Eugene de Beauharnais a prominent person in French politics and his de facto successor.

The Peace of Amiens was signed on June 8th 1802 and it recognized French domination in Western Europe, and it ceded Malta, the Cape colony, the East Indies , and Dutch India. Afterwards he had started to expand his power asking the French people to make him First Consul for life and then asking the French people to make him Princeps of the French Republic in 1804. He had managed to take over the French Republic and established a de facto Monarchy. He had hoped for a new peace of economic bloom. In 1808 the Peace of Amiens was broken by both Britain and France, and Hoche reluctantly went to war. France at first formed up for an invasion of Britain. The plans were stopped due to the disparity between the French and British Navy. Hoche had the French Navy to not engage the Royal Navy, and they were bottled up in port.

Hoche marched the Grande Armee to the Rhine, and his plan was a three pronged attack the First army corp would link up with the Second army at Ulm and then they march on Vienna. Then the 3rd army and 4th army corp under Murat and Davout would march north from Aachen and then attack the Hanoverian army. Murat and Davout crushed the Hanoverian army. By 1810 Hoche had negotiated a Prussian alliance by getting Prussia Hanover due to Hoche’s desire to have no enemies in Germany. He had used Bavaria for a buffer in Southern Germany. He had sent an army to Italy under Massena to attack the Habsburgs in Venice, and he laid Venice under siege for six weeks. He then was ordered by Hoche to attack the Neapolitan army because Ferdinand aligned himself with the Coalition. Meanwhile in Germany Hoche and attacked the Austrians at the outskirts of Salzburg. The Austrians under Mack were outnumbered by the French 3 to 1. This was due to the Bavarians aligning themselves with Hoche. Hoche had managed to surround the Austrian army and made General Mack a POW but Hoche released Mack to the Austrians. At November of 1811 France took Vienna, and Hoche managed to cut the Austrians in two at the Battle of the Pratzen Heights, Hoche would use Soult , Murat, Lannes as a lure to get the Russians and Austrians to attack the French ,and the trap was set. He had more men closer but not to close so the allies would never think that could lose their advantage. The French army would be forced march to charge the allies. Hoche knew that Tsar Alexander I would be more aggressive so he gave up the high ground , and he had Soult charge up the Heights by 1000 hours. Hoche had the Cavalry cut off Bagration from the rest of the allies and then crushed the Imperial Guard. During the frantic fighting Alexander I was knocked off his horse suffering massive head trauma and dying, and his brother Constantine took the throne. Constantine wanted peace with Hoche and wanted to develop Russia like Western Europe. As long as France and her allies do not interfere in the affairs of Russia it would not interfere in Western Europe.

The treaty of Pressburg was signed in the next week on the condition that the Holy Roman Empire is dissolved and Bavaria gets Tyrol, Voralburg, and Augsburg. Venetia, Istria, and Dalmatia were ceded to Italy. Also, Prussia received Hesse, and Braunschweig in the treaty of Pressburg. Hoche did not want to conquer Europe, and make it according to France’s image, but build several buffer states in the east and west. In 1812 Spain had invaded Portugal, due to the Anglo Portuguese alliance, and France sent an army to take Portugal under Ney. Lisbon was taken on Christmas day, and even though Portuguese guerillas annoyed the two countries. In the treaty of Aranjuez they had partitioned Portugal into two parts. Everything north of the river Douro will go to Spain, The Kingdom of the Algarve to Manuel de Godoy, and the rump Portugal was made a Principate like in France.

Prussia on the other hand was content to be the leading state of Northern Germany what with Britain having no power in the European continent due to Portugal’s partition. The Habsburgs also were hesitant about turning against France because they were melting down gold plates of the Hofburg to pay for the army without British subsidies, but they had learned after their defeat to reform their military like using Levee en Masse, and were waiting on France to screw up epically by getting bogged down somewhere like Spain. The British however were trying to invade Spanish America like in Rio de la Plata and New Granada. This was not successful because the British thought they were going to be the French to the Latin Americans tiring of the Spanish yoke. However there was not many independence fighters in both of those areas. The commanding officer Lt. General Arthur Wellesley died on board in his quarters on ship when a Spanish cannonball came crashing through, and caused heavy amounts of shrapnel hitting his eye killing him instantly. By 1814 Hoche had started to send out peace feelers to Britain the timing could not have been better timed.

. The British Government had to deal with riots from the Luddites. The Luddites were formerly employed skilled Artisans angry at the mechanical textile industry taking their livelihood. Luddites were attacking mechanical spinning Jennies, and similar devices. At the same time a drought destroyed most of the cereal crops that the poor, and working class depended on combined with the fact of the Corn Laws high bread prices were staggering. People reacted poorly and with riots culminated in the Manchester massacre in which five hundred people were mercilessly gunned downed by the reserves of the British army. Afterwards the Six Acts were mercilessly enforced including throwing Radicals into prisons, and trying to use the French as a Boogeyman to keep the population distracted. However people were guided by their stomachs and Britain were forced to sign a peace treaty with France. It was signed in 1814 in Paris, in which Britain recognized Franco Prussian gains in Europe, and France will recognize British gains in the world like in Guyana, and Brazil will receive Portuguese West Africa and the Portuguese African colonies from the treaty. Also Britain will receive Danish colonies in Africa, and Caribbean the treaty just made something de jure, and Europe had shifted its balance of power into the French orbit.

New steamboats made by Fulton were proposed for the invasion of Britain in 1809 but they could get knocked over by the wind but after the final peace in 1814 there were in all of the Republic’s and its Allies rivers by 1815. By 1815 France had been in peace for less than a year , and Lazare Hoche was the greatest French ruler since Louis XIV. Britain on the other hand was under George IV who had built Buckingham and Brighton Pavilion by 1822. He was a massive man by his death because of his meat pie cravings, and he had no legitimate heir except a stillborn in 1795 and he had divorced his wife Caroline of Brunswick in 1803. He had spent all his money on sumptuous décor, and silverware. William, Duke of Clarence died in 1820 due to an assassination by James Baker a former soldier in the East Indian Company who had radical sympathies. In February 5th 1820 Princess Alexandra Victoria died after a bout of measles, and her uncle King George IV died in 1825 due to his various health problems like his obesity, and addiction to Laudanum which was proto morphine with the strength of codeine. Frederick I died of illness in 1827 and he was succeeded by his brother Ernest Augustus as King of Great Britain. The Parliamentary election brought several Ultra Tories into power, and the Duke of Richmond as Prime Minister. He had supported the Orange Order which was a reactionary anti Catholic Fraternity based in Northern Ireland had spread in Britain and by 1835 it had lodges in every major city in Britain. He had managed to be as unpopular his older brother George IV by 1830. Some people accused him of raping his younger sister and fathering a child Sophie, and in the Brighton Pavilion Ernest Augustus were accused of having massive orgies inside. Other rumors were basically he poisoned all his older siblings and nieces to gain power. He had kept all of the reactionary laws like the six acts ,but kept the corn laws which was a tariff on imported grain and made land owner ship profitable. Parliamentary reform on the other hand was stalled due to a stalwart King and House of Lords, and it was controlled by rotten boroughs which meant less than two hundred people could control half of the British parliament. Soon heads would roll.

In Russia on the other hand developed in a both liberal and reactionary way. Constantine I tried to improve the lot of the State owned serfs ,and he tried to limit the control of the land owning nobility to increase his own power not to bring democracy to the people. Alexander I’s reign was both mired by use of the Ohkrana, and increased the rank to get noble status from the 8th rank to the 5th rank. He had managed keep order and made it easier for reform to happen. After the Russian defeat in the Pratzen heights the Russian government decided to launch several military reforms although it took a long while to affect Russia because of its geographic mass and size, and the inertia of the military.
 
The timeline is good so far for your first attempt. The only thing I'm quite concerned is that it can confusing sometimes. My advice is to take your time in expanding your updates and you'll get more comments and possibly more views.
 
The timeline is good so far for your first attempt. The only thing I'm quite concerned is that it can confusing sometimes. My advice is to take your time in expanding your updates and you'll get more comments and possibly more views.

I'd second that. Add some pictures, make it more clearly organized, and perhaps think about where the sources for your text are. Right now, it's good and interesting but quite tough to follow.

Cheers,
Ganesha
 

Deleted member 14881

The timeline is good so far for your first attempt. The only thing I'm quite concerned is that it can confusing sometimes. My advice is to take your time in expanding your updates and you'll get more comments and possibly more views.

How confusing does it flow well
 
It flows well, but you'll need headers. As in you have to divide the updates into events. Like events occuring in Ireland and in continental Europe have to be separated, but stays within the same update. Read some of my TLs and you'll know what I mean.
 
It flows well, but you'll need headers. As in you have to divide the updates into events. Like events occuring in Ireland and in continental Europe have to be separated, but stays within the same update. Read some of my TLs and you'll know what I mean.

Yup. If you want other examples, I'd suggest looking at Jonathan Edelstein's fantastic Malê Rising or Lo, The Nobles Lament. He's an author who has an excellent sense of pacing.

Cheers,
Ganesha
 

Deleted member 14881

I think I would like to rewrite my 2nd update to make it flow better
 

Deleted member 14881

Sorry guys

I have been dealing with writers block and procrastinating lately. Im sorry ill try to update asap.
 

Deleted member 14881

I think I will rewrite this TL since I am not that satisfied with this.
 
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