The Dead Skunk
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The recipe is actually my own invention. And whatever else, Italy will at least have France as an ally.
Wow, that's..gruesome.
What's the situation in Naples and Sicily as this is happening?
What's the situation in Naples and Sicily as this is happening?
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Almost as bad, but not quite. King Ferdinand I (not to be confused with Spain's Ferdinand) has lost control of the east and north of the mainland part of the kingdom, but is still holding on in Naples, the toe and Sicily. There are a few British regiments in Sicily helping keep order. One of the British officers is (speaking of gruesome) James Morriset, Wellington's right-hand man in the New England invasion. Lt. Col. Morriset is working to achieve the same reputation for vicious cruelty that IOTL he developed in the penal colonies of Australia.
The Warrior Pope (1)
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I'm going to try to speed up the story a little more for 1817 through 1819.
…it was in that moment, when the 3,600 patriots had the 1,500 royalists surrounded in the dry and dusty valley of Chacabuco, that six Spanish battalions appeared from the west, from the road to Valparaiso. The Infante Carlos ordered his men to fan out to north and south in a great pincer movement.
Bernardo O’Higgins and José de San Martín had no chance of escape. Many observers have said that they died fighting back to back, picking up the weapons of their fallen comrades, having no time to reload. Of those who had accompanied San Martín on his brave journey through the Andes, a few survivors returned to Buenos Aires before winter to warn the people that a new war had begun.
For the patriots of Chile, it was the end of a dream and the beginning of a nightmare. Over the course of his ocean voyage, the Prince-Viceroy had had little to do but give thought to how men ought to be governed. Now he was ready to turn Chile, and Peru, and whatever else he could conquer into a proving ground for his ideals — the “Most Holy Viceroyalty of South America.”
Diego Marquez Rodriguez, A People’s History of the Virreinato
…it was in that moment, when the 3,600 patriots had the 1,500 royalists surrounded in the dry and dusty valley of Chacabuco, that six Spanish battalions appeared from the west, from the road to Valparaiso. The Infante Carlos ordered his men to fan out to north and south in a great pincer movement.
Bernardo O’Higgins and José de San Martín had no chance of escape. Many observers have said that they died fighting back to back, picking up the weapons of their fallen comrades, having no time to reload. Of those who had accompanied San Martín on his brave journey through the Andes, a few survivors returned to Buenos Aires before winter to warn the people that a new war had begun.
For the patriots of Chile, it was the end of a dream and the beginning of a nightmare. Over the course of his ocean voyage, the Prince-Viceroy had had little to do but give thought to how men ought to be governed. Now he was ready to turn Chile, and Peru, and whatever else he could conquer into a proving ground for his ideals — the “Most Holy Viceroyalty of South America.”
Diego Marquez Rodriguez, A People’s History of the Virreinato
The Warrior Pope (2)
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On March 4, John Quincy Adams took the oath of office and became the fifth President of the United States. His very first act was to sign Rep. John C. Calhoun’s Bonus Bill, which called for the building of federal highways using bonuses from the Second Bank. Congress had delayed passage of the bill until the night before Madison left office as a courtesy to the outgoing president, who genuinely held to the old view that such internal improvements were beyond the constitutional authority of Congress, but (having already presided over a disastrous war) did not wish to end his term in office as an object of scorn among the “Dead Roses” for having vetoed it.
Calhoun saw this political triumph as something to build upon. Over the course of 1817, he corresponded with other members of the DRP (John Sergeant and Daniel Webster among them) pointing out that Louisiana v. Gibson, and the precedent for secession that it established, left the nation effectively hostage to “fits of regional grievance and disaffection.” He cited the “precipitous withdrawal of Louisiana from the Union” and the “words and deeds of certain residents of New England during the late war” as examples. Calhoun also sketched out a scenario whereby Britain might invade “some border state” (he didn’t name names), compel an assembly of notables to declare secession at gunpoint, and present the nation with a fait accompli.
Calhoun would not have raised this problem if he did not have a solution in mind. When Congress was next in session on December 1, the young South Carolinian introduced a proposed constitutional amendment:
This would answer the question of secession once and for all. Though the entire population of a state might pack their goods and leave the United States, they could not take the state itself with them. (It also settled the issue of how large and populous a state had to be in order to be admitted, something that had been weighing on a lot of minds since the Northern Louisiana Question.)
Several older representatives, such as Ebenezer Huntington of Connecticut and Josiah Hasbrouck of New York, pointed out that this would be a “precipitous step” and that it would “alter the nature of the Union forever.” John Taylor of Caroline, the defeated Quid presidential candidate, wrote a letter to the Daily National Intelligencer in which he said, “In his famous speech at Gadsby’s Tavern, Quincy Adams called upon the people to ‘have the courage to trust one another.’ Would it not be better for the states to do the same?” To this, Calhoun replied: “If trust were sufficient among men or states, no law would ever need be passed.”
When the amendment passed the House with 171 votes, the representatives stood up to cheer. As the applause subsided, one man, John Randolph of Roanoke, arose to warn them: “The time will come when many of you congratulating one another now shall look back upon this day’s work in bitterness and regret.”
Despite his warning, the amendment was ratified by the middle of next year.
Andrea Fessler, Rise of the Dead Rose
Calhoun saw this political triumph as something to build upon. Over the course of 1817, he corresponded with other members of the DRP (John Sergeant and Daniel Webster among them) pointing out that Louisiana v. Gibson, and the precedent for secession that it established, left the nation effectively hostage to “fits of regional grievance and disaffection.” He cited the “precipitous withdrawal of Louisiana from the Union” and the “words and deeds of certain residents of New England during the late war” as examples. Calhoun also sketched out a scenario whereby Britain might invade “some border state” (he didn’t name names), compel an assembly of notables to declare secession at gunpoint, and present the nation with a fait accompli.
Calhoun would not have raised this problem if he did not have a solution in mind. When Congress was next in session on December 1, the young South Carolinian introduced a proposed constitutional amendment:
Amendment XIII
Article 1. The United States, and the union of each of the several States with the same, shall be indissoluble and perpetual.
Article 2: No territory shall be admitted to the United States as a State which is home to fewer than fifty thousand inhabitants, or is less than two thousand, five hundred square kilometers in area.
Article 1. The United States, and the union of each of the several States with the same, shall be indissoluble and perpetual.
Article 2: No territory shall be admitted to the United States as a State which is home to fewer than fifty thousand inhabitants, or is less than two thousand, five hundred square kilometers in area.
This would answer the question of secession once and for all. Though the entire population of a state might pack their goods and leave the United States, they could not take the state itself with them. (It also settled the issue of how large and populous a state had to be in order to be admitted, something that had been weighing on a lot of minds since the Northern Louisiana Question.)
Several older representatives, such as Ebenezer Huntington of Connecticut and Josiah Hasbrouck of New York, pointed out that this would be a “precipitous step” and that it would “alter the nature of the Union forever.” John Taylor of Caroline, the defeated Quid presidential candidate, wrote a letter to the Daily National Intelligencer in which he said, “In his famous speech at Gadsby’s Tavern, Quincy Adams called upon the people to ‘have the courage to trust one another.’ Would it not be better for the states to do the same?” To this, Calhoun replied: “If trust were sufficient among men or states, no law would ever need be passed.”
When the amendment passed the House with 171 votes, the representatives stood up to cheer. As the applause subsided, one man, John Randolph of Roanoke, arose to warn them: “The time will come when many of you congratulating one another now shall look back upon this day’s work in bitterness and regret.”
Despite his warning, the amendment was ratified by the middle of next year.
Andrea Fessler, Rise of the Dead Rose
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Oops. I borrowed that language from the Northwest Ordinance without looking too carefully at it.
Considering this is Calhoun we're talking about, it needs to be changed.(Seriously, though, does anybody even care that I just killed the founding fathers of Chile and Argentina?)
Well, Congress just gave the biggest "Up yours" to the Constitution possible by this point. And by Calhoun no less! Sad And as a proud Italian by blood, my heart breaks at the happenings of the Peninsula. My hope? They kill all the Austrians, unify, and become a powerful European nation by conquering neighboring Italian regions and colonies while being a constitutional monarchy. All in the name of peace and prosperity, of course
And as a proud Italian by blood, my heart breaks at the happenings of the Peninsula. My hope? They kill all the Austrians, unify, and become a powerful European nation by conquering neighboring Italian regions and colonies while being a constitutional monarchy. All in the name of peace and prosperity, of course Lycaon pictus
Donor
Well, Congress just gave the biggest "Up yours" to the Constitution possible by this point. And by Calhoun no less! Sad
As it happens, you're not the only Italian by blood who has had it with the Austrians. I'll get to that in the next update.
Oh, man, I hadn't even thought that far ahead. But you're right. If the Republic can survive that long, it'll have some very nice oil reserves. And thanks.
EDIT: Last chance to vote, everyone.
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The Warrior Pope (3)
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If ever a man was cursed to live in interesting times, it was the man who was born Barnaba Chiaramonti, and is known to history as Pope Pius VII.
Since the days of the Cisalpine Republic, when he was bishop of Imola, he had done his best to turn the other cheek to the Bonapartists and their followers and allies. “That democratic liberty which now is introduced among us… is not against the gospel,” he said to his followers in the Christmas homily of 1797. “It demands on the contrary the lofty virtues that are only to be attained in the school of Jesus Christ… Do not think that the Catholic religion and the democratic form of government are irreconcilable. When you are wholly Christians you will be excellent democrats.”
When Chiaramonte was elevated to the papacy in Venice and escorted to Rome, Napoleon, flush with victory from Marengo, went to great lengths to present himself as the Church’s stoutest ally. “If I should be able to talk with the new pope,” he said to the priests of Milan, “I hope to succeed in removing all the obstacles that may still hinder the complete reconciliation of France with the head of the Church.”
But if Napoleon had hoped that Pius would prove a coward or a collaborator, he was disappointed. He refused most of the gifts that Napoleon offered him on the occasion of the emperor’s self-coronation in 1804, and regularly opposed him on issues of civil law and government control of church functions in France. When the French emperor and the puppet Kingdom of Italy annexed the Papal States, Pius responded by excommunicating Napoleon. As a resule, he was taken prisoner and held for years. By the time of Napoleon’s escape from Elba, Pius had a reputation as a man who would do what he thought was right, and one whom it would be more trouble than it was worth to try to bribe or bully into doing otherwise.
This was to prove important during the annus horribilis of the Italian war, from the summer of 1816 to the summer of 1817. Although Pius was at this point completely out of sympathy with liberal causes, he never condemned the rebellion outright, despite the urges of Cardinal Pacca and other zelanti. He simply denounced the crimes of the war, whichever side happened to be committing them. As a result, for a long time neither side dared to attack or make demands of the Papal States, for fear of his considerable moral authority landing on the other side.
So Pius’s dominion became a shelter for thousands of refugees from the north and south. He put the numerous monks of Rome to work ministering to the needs of the refugees, and dug deep into the Church’s already-strained coffers to pay for their food and clothing.
But his effort to remain above the fray was doomed by the fact that the Papal States themselves were on the brink of anarchy. They had been rather loosely governed at the beginning, and over the course of the wars had been divided, conquered and reunited again, with changes in the laws at every step. By retaining some of the French-imposed reforms, the pope and Cardinal Consalvi, who had represented the States at Vienna, hoped to turn the Pope’s dominion into something that more or less resembled a modern, centralized state (a task made no easier by the fact that Cardinals Pacca and Rivaroli had undone almost all the French reforms in Rome and the western States while Consalvi was away).
In the process, they had not only created a great deal of confusion, but had stepped on a lot of toes. The privileges of the old nobility and the municipal governments had been lost, and prelates were placed in charge of each of the “delegations” into which his realm was divided. Opposition to his reforms — and, by extension, to his government — was already rife on the local level.
Then came the flood of refugees, bringing little beyond the clothes on their backs. They were governed and policed, if at all, by the sort of ad-hoc, self-organizing citizens’ groups that often emerge in the immediate wake of disasters. Meanwhile, the regular population of bandits in the Apennines had been swelled by uncountable desperate men, more and more of whom were joining or assisting the carbonari or other partisans. In the words of the Austrian field marshal Frederick Bianchi, “We cannot end this war with a victory while our enemies can run and hide under the Pope’s robes. He must either join the war or stand aside.”
Under the circumstances, what happened on June 27, 1817 was probably inevitable. On that day, a regiment of Austrian dragoons operating in Tuscany entered Imola on the the rumor that one of the major partisan leaders, Santorre di Santa Rosa, was there. (In fact, he had already moved on to Rimini by this time.) Precisely what happened next is not known — the Austrians claim they were attacked by rebels within the town, the Italians that the occupiers were in a fit of rage at being thwarted. What is known is that somewhere between 500 and 3,000 civilians were killed, and the dragoons burned most of the city to the ground.
It is generally agreed by historians that the Imola Massacre was not the first reprisal against civilians committed on Pontifical soil. By the end of May, there had been several incidents in which refugee camps on the south bank of the Po had been burned out on suspicion of harboring rebels. But it was the first incident that came to the attention of the Pope.
This attack against a flock that he had once served as bishop shook him to his core. According to Consalvi, he spent the rest of the day, and all that night, secluded in prayer. The next morning, he began making plans.
On July 8, he addressed the people of Rome in St. Peter’s Square. The pope began by making it clear that on this occasion he was not speaking ex cathedra, but in his capacity as their temporal leader. He recalled words he had spoken before, about rendering until Caesar and obeying magistrates.
Then he took a different tack. “There comes at last a moment,” he said, “when a magistrate is no longer a magistrate, when Caesar casts down his laurel crown. When that day comes, he who hath eyes, let him see. For the tree is known by its fruit, and the tree that bears bad fruit is cut down and thrown in the fire… The House of Hapsburg has forfeited the right to rule any part of Italy. It is no part of Christian duty to obey them, but rather to protect our women and children, our aged and invalids, from their mad depredations.”
Now the war took a new direction. Within weeks, even the sanfedisti had joined the fight against Austria…
Arrigo Gillio, The War of Italian Unification
Since the days of the Cisalpine Republic, when he was bishop of Imola, he had done his best to turn the other cheek to the Bonapartists and their followers and allies. “That democratic liberty which now is introduced among us… is not against the gospel,” he said to his followers in the Christmas homily of 1797. “It demands on the contrary the lofty virtues that are only to be attained in the school of Jesus Christ… Do not think that the Catholic religion and the democratic form of government are irreconcilable. When you are wholly Christians you will be excellent democrats.”
When Chiaramonte was elevated to the papacy in Venice and escorted to Rome, Napoleon, flush with victory from Marengo, went to great lengths to present himself as the Church’s stoutest ally. “If I should be able to talk with the new pope,” he said to the priests of Milan, “I hope to succeed in removing all the obstacles that may still hinder the complete reconciliation of France with the head of the Church.”
But if Napoleon had hoped that Pius would prove a coward or a collaborator, he was disappointed. He refused most of the gifts that Napoleon offered him on the occasion of the emperor’s self-coronation in 1804, and regularly opposed him on issues of civil law and government control of church functions in France. When the French emperor and the puppet Kingdom of Italy annexed the Papal States, Pius responded by excommunicating Napoleon. As a resule, he was taken prisoner and held for years. By the time of Napoleon’s escape from Elba, Pius had a reputation as a man who would do what he thought was right, and one whom it would be more trouble than it was worth to try to bribe or bully into doing otherwise.
This was to prove important during the annus horribilis of the Italian war, from the summer of 1816 to the summer of 1817. Although Pius was at this point completely out of sympathy with liberal causes, he never condemned the rebellion outright, despite the urges of Cardinal Pacca and other zelanti. He simply denounced the crimes of the war, whichever side happened to be committing them. As a result, for a long time neither side dared to attack or make demands of the Papal States, for fear of his considerable moral authority landing on the other side.
So Pius’s dominion became a shelter for thousands of refugees from the north and south. He put the numerous monks of Rome to work ministering to the needs of the refugees, and dug deep into the Church’s already-strained coffers to pay for their food and clothing.
But his effort to remain above the fray was doomed by the fact that the Papal States themselves were on the brink of anarchy. They had been rather loosely governed at the beginning, and over the course of the wars had been divided, conquered and reunited again, with changes in the laws at every step. By retaining some of the French-imposed reforms, the pope and Cardinal Consalvi, who had represented the States at Vienna, hoped to turn the Pope’s dominion into something that more or less resembled a modern, centralized state (a task made no easier by the fact that Cardinals Pacca and Rivaroli had undone almost all the French reforms in Rome and the western States while Consalvi was away).
In the process, they had not only created a great deal of confusion, but had stepped on a lot of toes. The privileges of the old nobility and the municipal governments had been lost, and prelates were placed in charge of each of the “delegations” into which his realm was divided. Opposition to his reforms — and, by extension, to his government — was already rife on the local level.
Then came the flood of refugees, bringing little beyond the clothes on their backs. They were governed and policed, if at all, by the sort of ad-hoc, self-organizing citizens’ groups that often emerge in the immediate wake of disasters. Meanwhile, the regular population of bandits in the Apennines had been swelled by uncountable desperate men, more and more of whom were joining or assisting the carbonari or other partisans. In the words of the Austrian field marshal Frederick Bianchi, “We cannot end this war with a victory while our enemies can run and hide under the Pope’s robes. He must either join the war or stand aside.”
Under the circumstances, what happened on June 27, 1817 was probably inevitable. On that day, a regiment of Austrian dragoons operating in Tuscany entered Imola on the the rumor that one of the major partisan leaders, Santorre di Santa Rosa, was there. (In fact, he had already moved on to Rimini by this time.) Precisely what happened next is not known — the Austrians claim they were attacked by rebels within the town, the Italians that the occupiers were in a fit of rage at being thwarted. What is known is that somewhere between 500 and 3,000 civilians were killed, and the dragoons burned most of the city to the ground.
It is generally agreed by historians that the Imola Massacre was not the first reprisal against civilians committed on Pontifical soil. By the end of May, there had been several incidents in which refugee camps on the south bank of the Po had been burned out on suspicion of harboring rebels. But it was the first incident that came to the attention of the Pope.
This attack against a flock that he had once served as bishop shook him to his core. According to Consalvi, he spent the rest of the day, and all that night, secluded in prayer. The next morning, he began making plans.
On July 8, he addressed the people of Rome in St. Peter’s Square. The pope began by making it clear that on this occasion he was not speaking ex cathedra, but in his capacity as their temporal leader. He recalled words he had spoken before, about rendering until Caesar and obeying magistrates.
Then he took a different tack. “There comes at last a moment,” he said, “when a magistrate is no longer a magistrate, when Caesar casts down his laurel crown. When that day comes, he who hath eyes, let him see. For the tree is known by its fruit, and the tree that bears bad fruit is cut down and thrown in the fire… The House of Hapsburg has forfeited the right to rule any part of Italy. It is no part of Christian duty to obey them, but rather to protect our women and children, our aged and invalids, from their mad depredations.”
Now the war took a new direction. Within weeks, even the sanfedisti had joined the fight against Austria…
Arrigo Gillio, The War of Italian Unification
The Austrians are not going to be happy about that..
Also, Am I right in assuming the Spanish are staying on their side of the Andes and not trying to reconquer Argentina?
What's the situation in Peru and Mexico?
Also, what's happening with the other Bonaparte's that joined up with Napoleon during the hundred days? Lucien and Louis particularly, since they seem to be the competent ones (Hell, Louis still drew a crowd when people found out he was in the Netherlands in 1840)
Also, Am I right in assuming the Spanish are staying on their side of the Andes and not trying to reconquer Argentina?
What's the situation in Peru and Mexico?
Also, what's happening with the other Bonaparte's that joined up with Napoleon during the hundred days? Lucien and Louis particularly, since they seem to be the competent ones (Hell, Louis still drew a crowd when people found out he was in the Netherlands in 1840)
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Carlos will probably make an attempt at Buenos Aires by sea, but if that doesn’t work he’ll let it go for now. (He’s been reading the Dominion of Southern America thread on the logistics of supplying armies across the Andes.
) He’ll also take a crack at Gran Colombia.Peru, where royalist sentiment is still pretty strong, is more or less stable under the Prince-Viceroy. Mexico, on the other hand, is still in a state of civil war. The most heavily organized opposition to Francisco and Iturbide is in the south, in Oaxaca, the Yucatan and the isthmus. (Notice I said "Francisco and Iturbide." The latter is the one with real power here.)
All the Bonaparte siblings, along with Marie Louise and Masséna, Davout, Ney and some others, are on the Regency Council (it’s one of those don’t-give-any-one-person-too-much-power type deals). Inevitably, of course, some of them are doing more work and gaining more influence than others. One of Lucien’s minor tasks at this point is finding an estate in the Paris area no one’s using and setting up Princess Caroline (Prinny’s wife, not Murat’s) and her household there.
The Warrior Pope (4)
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I realize this next update is sort of glossing over the Battle of Middelbeers, which is obviously a significant event. Truth is, I'm kinda epic-Napoleonic-battle-sequenced out. I promise, next war I'll be back in form.
Bottom line — the British and Dutch advance toward Antwerp under Beresford, bump into the French under Masséna and Ney, things go wrong, the British turn around and start advancing the hell away from Antwerp. (This war just isn't the same without Wellington.)
The Battle of Middelbeers, on June 8, 1817, marked the end of British and Dutch attempts to recover Belgium. Other historians have recounted how a British ambassador traveled across the Channel to arrange a cease-fire that would hold until a final peace could be established at the Congress of Stockholm. Of greater concern to us is one particular casualty of that battle — Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, who was struck by a cannon-ball when Ney closed in on the rear of the British position.
Adolphus was not only a soldier, but viceroy of the Kingdom of Hannover. The Prince Regent George had many younger brothers and sisters, but Adolphus was one of the few who had shown any interest in the kingdom whence the dynasty had come. A new viceroy needed to be appointed at once.
George’s first thought was to send the Duke of Wellington, a great general now bound by parole not to fight France, to rule Hannover in his stead. The duke begged to be excused this duty, pointing out that he knew little of the affairs of Hannover, and that moreover “to be given a general in place of a son of the royal family would surely be taken as an insult by the people.” Prince Ernest Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland, was at this time needed to assist the Prince Regent with political matters in the House of Lords. It was Prince William, Duke of Clarence and Lord High Admiral, who accepted the duty.
All the sons and daughters of George III were fated to be, in one way or another, unlucky in love. William was swept away by the charms of Dorothea Jordan, a common woman of Irish blood who worked as an actress. Wiser than his elder brother, he did not seek to defy his father with a formal marriage to her, but lived with her as man and wife without the ceremonies, and had many children. But this wife in all but name had passed to her reward the previous year.
So — to Hannover he went, accompanied by his eldest son George FitzClarence. He expected to govern as viceroy for a brief time, and then to return to other duties and hand the kingdom over to one of his brothers. He did not expect to remain there for the rest of his life, barring occasional visits — still less to become king himself.
Above all, he never expected to fall in love again…
Maria Gertrude Schneider, The Poet King
Bottom line — the British and Dutch advance toward Antwerp under Beresford, bump into the French under Masséna and Ney, things go wrong, the British turn around and start advancing the hell away from Antwerp. (This war just isn't the same without Wellington.)
The Battle of Middelbeers, on June 8, 1817, marked the end of British and Dutch attempts to recover Belgium. Other historians have recounted how a British ambassador traveled across the Channel to arrange a cease-fire that would hold until a final peace could be established at the Congress of Stockholm. Of greater concern to us is one particular casualty of that battle — Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, who was struck by a cannon-ball when Ney closed in on the rear of the British position.
Adolphus was not only a soldier, but viceroy of the Kingdom of Hannover. The Prince Regent George had many younger brothers and sisters, but Adolphus was one of the few who had shown any interest in the kingdom whence the dynasty had come. A new viceroy needed to be appointed at once.
George’s first thought was to send the Duke of Wellington, a great general now bound by parole not to fight France, to rule Hannover in his stead. The duke begged to be excused this duty, pointing out that he knew little of the affairs of Hannover, and that moreover “to be given a general in place of a son of the royal family would surely be taken as an insult by the people.” Prince Ernest Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland, was at this time needed to assist the Prince Regent with political matters in the House of Lords. It was Prince William, Duke of Clarence and Lord High Admiral, who accepted the duty.
All the sons and daughters of George III were fated to be, in one way or another, unlucky in love. William was swept away by the charms of Dorothea Jordan, a common woman of Irish blood who worked as an actress. Wiser than his elder brother, he did not seek to defy his father with a formal marriage to her, but lived with her as man and wife without the ceremonies, and had many children. But this wife in all but name had passed to her reward the previous year.
So — to Hannover he went, accompanied by his eldest son George FitzClarence. He expected to govern as viceroy for a brief time, and then to return to other duties and hand the kingdom over to one of his brothers. He did not expect to remain there for the rest of his life, barring occasional visits — still less to become king himself.
Above all, he never expected to fall in love again…
Maria Gertrude Schneider, The Poet King
Heh, heh.
I've got a soft spot for William, I must say. Hannover will do better with him than with Ernst, certainly.
Carlos will probably make an attempt at Buenos Aires by sea, but if that doesn’t work he’ll let it go for now. (He’s been reading the Dominion of Southern America thread on the logistics of supplying armies across the Andes.
Ah yes, how's Bolivar doing?
Ah okay, Has Iturbide crowned himself? And is the oppisition in the Yucatan royalist, or just the usual "The colonial authorities never actually tried governing most of it"
well Louis did honestly just want to be king of Holland, so I could see that as part of the peace negotiations, seeing as he was popular. Also, Joseph stole the crown jewels of Spain when he left, since he's presumably not pawning those in New York TTL, what's happening with them?
I'm crossing my fingers that the pope is going to kick some serious ass And the fact that the book title's name is The War of Italian Unification, gives me hope that my previous prediction might just come true.
And the fact that the book title's name is The War of Italian Unification, gives me hope that my previous prediction might just come true.Lycaon pictus
Donor
Bolívar is doing about what he was doing IOTL, only against the Infante Carlos. The British could have stopped him from coming back from Haiti, but their alliance with Spain doesn’t extend toward helping Spain recover her colonies. Spain could still lose this war, after all, and the last thing the Foreign Office wants is more angry, hostile nations in the Americas.
At the moment, having the Bourbon Francisco de Paula as “Prince-Viceroy” is enough to get all the royalists on board while Iturbide calls the shots. Of course, Iturbide still wants more… and he has a plan.
As for the Yucatán… let me retcon that and flesh it out a little. As of 1817, it isn’t a center of resistance, but over the course of the next year Vicente Guerrero will get desperate enough to start arming and recruiting the Maya (who were promised an end to forced labor, Church taxes and tributes to Spain in 1814, but this didn’t pan out). This is a measure of last resort, because it’s basically salting the earth against the kind of social order that anyone in Madrid or Mexico City would want for the place.
From the point of view of the Dutch people, this isn’t a bad plan — if nothing else, it represents the only way the Netherlands can get France to give up Zeeland, Noord-Brabant and Limburg. But Castlereagh doesn’t want to risk the Netherlands becoming a French ally, and William I really likes being king. Of course, if he ever makes himself unpopular with his people, guess who will be waiting in the wings. In the meantime, Louis is using his popularity to boost the Liberal Party (the Parti de Bonaparte being kind of a dead letter at this point) in Bouches-de-l’Escaut, Meuse-Inférieure and the other majority-Dutch departments.
I realize I’m giving a lot away by saying this, but the jewels will be formally returned to Spain on the occasion of Napoleon II’s accession to the throne.
Oh..that is really not going to end well at all. I'm guessing a Mayan victory in any *Caste War is going to be essentially a fait acompli to everyone else?
Okay, makes sense. I suppose Lucien's the closest thing to a Jacobin voice on the counsel?
Well, that raises at least as many questions as it answers!