Chapter 4 – Twilight of the Hapsburgs
The French King Louis Phillipe observes a battle in the North Italian front of the war of Austrian partition
The 1848 revolutions, although being unsuccessful, rocked Europe to its core. Whereas before the powers felt some need to all work together, the new Europe was increasingly being dominated by a developing Franco-Russian alliance. They both distrusted Prussia’s developing pan-Germanism, they both desired to either gain territory from Austria or cripple it, and now thanks to Mehmet Ali’s last act as sultan, they both wanted to teach the Aghayids a lesson. They could not just attack at will though, for Britain seemed poised to help any country threatened by them, so they waited for a good opportunity to expand.
That opportunity seemed to come with the developing Italian crisis. Under the brilliant Prime Minister Cavour, Sardinia-Piedmont had gone from being an insignificant kingdom to being a big problem for Austria’s Italian flank. Speeches in the Piedmontese parliament often condemned Austria, and talked about liberating their “brothers” in Lombardia and Venetia from the Austrian yoke. Austria had been looking for a good opportunity to shut the Piedmontese up once and for all, and their opportunity seemed to come in 1858 after a drunken argument turned bloody on the Austrian-Piedomentese border. The new Austrian emperor, Franz Josef, sent a force of 200,000 men to Lombardia, and sent an ultimatum to Vittorio Emmanuel and Cavour requesting the handover of the troops responsible as well as minor border adjustments.
France and Russia had identified their first target, Austria. The problem was, whilst they could easily bring down Austria by itself, Britain was likely to protect Austria and this would make any attempt conquest difficult. So they decided to approach the Prussians, who had been in a cold war with Austria over Germany since the end of the 1848 revolutions. The Prussians agreed to attack Austria from the north in exchange for Bohemia and Moravia. This just left the Aghayids and Britain out of the loop. The Aghayids could scarcely afford a war, especially one in which they probably gain nothing, and made this clear to Russian diplomats (though their rejection was motivated by distrust of Russian ambitions as much as anything else). Britain, was once again forced into abandoning an ally by conspiring forces on the continent, but would still play a role in the war.
On the 15th of July, 1858, The Austrian army invaded Piedmont, aiming to knock them out quickly before the Russians and French had time to mount an attack. The Piedmontese main army didn’t engage with the Austrian force directly, but instead harried their supply lines, slowing their advance so that French troops could come and help with the defence of their country. However, the Austrian army arrived near Turin towards the end of September. The Piedmontese army was waiting for them, not willing to retreat any further. The Austrians attacked furiously, and performed better than expected, but they gave up the attack 6 days into it as the French advance guard arrived. The Army pulled back to the Quadrilateral, where Franz Josef met with his generals to discuss the situation.
The situation for the Austrians was grim. Altogether, they had managed to gather an impressive 600,000 men into the armed service, mainly thanks to British subsidies, but they faced combined forces of nearly a million. There were 200,000 Prussians marching into Bohemia, 400,000 Russians in Galicia and 300,000 French and Piedmontese in Northern Italy. The Austrians won an early morale boosting victory at Lviv, but things quickly started unravelling after a devastating defeat at Magenta at the hands of the French and Piedmontese. The small Austrian force in Bohemia was forced out having not given much of a fight, and Franz Josef decided to protect the capital with it. The Allies progress seemed to be slowing down as the Russians were bogged down in Galicia and Slovakia, the French were cautious about attacking the Austrians in the Quadrilateral fortresses in Venetia, and the Prussians didn’t have the numbers to press into Austria itself.
This ray of hope vanished when the exiled Hungarian political leader Lajos Kossuth returned to Hungary and proclaimed a separate Hungarian republic. Most Hungarian units in the army mutinied, and after negotiations between the provisional Hungarian government and the Allied forces, actually joined up with the enemy soldiers, rolling up forces on all of the fronts. Austria was now a state in collapse. Franz Josef had given up command of the army to Friedrich Zobel, a General who had distinguished himself in the initial offensive in Piedmont. Zobel saw that the Hapsburg Empire was done for, but they could still hope to hold some of the old empire. In Italy, he pulled back Austrian troops to the Alps, in Hungary, pulled them back to Austria, Krain and Istria. The Austrian forces in Galicia and Slovakia were pinned down and unable to retreat, but the Austrian garrisons in Serbia and Bosnia were ordered north to try and relieve them.
While this turmoil was happening in Europe, the United States seemed to be descending into war as well. Stephen Douglas had won the democratic nomination. Although not an abolitionist as a rule, he was more likely then the other possible candidates to work towards the abolition of the institution of slavery. 3 years of heated argument in Congress had eventually lead to a compromise. There would be no extention of slavery into any new states, and all the future children of slaves, as well as all slaves under 18 were free. This was still too much for the south to accept, and many southern states announced their intention to secede from the United States. After more heated debates in Congress, it was decided that what the Southern states intended to do was illegal, and that the Federal government had the right to stop them. Fear of the Union caused division within Southern society, so when armed conflict came, it resembled disjointed rebellions more then the civil war that many had feared. Still, it left alot of Southern resentment for the Federal government as well as for their own black populations that would express itself in the form of the Ku Klux Klan, a terrorist group dedicated to white supremacy and the strengthening of individual states powers.
Eventually, the Allies started to wear out, and in December 1859, the British called for an international congress in London resolve the situation. They advocated a big Hungary to be a buffer state in the Balkans, as well as the preservation of a rump Austrian state. In return, Prussia would get Bohemia and Moravia, Russia would get Galicia and Serbia, and the French would get a satellite North Italian kingdom, as well as Savoy and Nice. The Aghayids occupied Bosnia on their own initiative, and although most of the powers didn’t care, Hungary was outraged as they had assumed Bosnia was theirs at the congress, but was more concerned with establishing stability in their own state then chasing after marginal territories.
The Aghayids were starting to do fairly well. Their cotton exports from Egypt were booming thanks to the unrest in the Southern United States, they had gained some prestige for their re-taking of Bosnia, and the profit from their growing economy was invested in their country. Railroads started to connect the cities of the empire, and industry was booming in Thrace and the Nile delta, whilst it was starting to emerge in Bulgaria and Macedonia. However, this seeming success would turn out to be an Indian summer, as many internal and external factors would drag the Aghayid Empire into the grave.
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Part of me is uncertian about weather the events that have unfolded up to now are plausible or not, so I guess other peoples perspectives could help. Sorry for the lack of focus on the Aghayids themselves at the moment, but things will get alot more interesting for them in the next chapter.
