For this TL I've decided to step outside of my usual favourite period (1800-2000). The POD will soon makes itself evident 
.
1708 was an important year in the War of the Spanish Succession as this year would be a turning point in the future of two emerging European great powers: Great Britain and Prussia. This year, although seemingly no different from other years, would define Europe’s and indeed the world’s future, leading to the largest empire in history. This turning point was the Battle of Oudenarde which was a decisive victory for the British, Dutch and the Holy Roman Empire over the armies of French King Louis XIV who sought to unite France and Spain in personal union. In this battle, however, Duke George of Cambridge, who was the heir to future King George I, was in the vanguard and died as his horse staggered and he fell off, breaking his neck. Barely a year later, his son Frederick contracted tuberculosis and passed away. The result was that Sophia Dorothea of Hannover, who was married to King Frederick William I of Prussia as Queen Consort, became the only heir to the British throne although the immediate implications of this were disregarded by other powers as they wished to vanquish the French and so the war continued unabated.
In the meantime, the Duke of Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy marched on to take Lille while the Austrians sacked a number of cities. These disasters brought France on the brink of ruin and it induced Louis XIV to negotiate; he offered to relinquish Spain and other French conquests except for Naples and provide money to dethrone Philip V of Spain. The Allies offered a more humiliating deal, namely that the French used their army to dethrone Philip V themselves. Louis XIV was insulted and chose to fight on and appealed to the French people, bringing in thousands of new recruits. Three invasions of France were attempted in 1709 although two were so small that they were only diversionary. The third was more serious as Eugene and the Duke of Marlborough attempted a march for Paris which resulted in the Battle of Malplaquet, an Allied victory over Duc de Villars and the bloodiest battle in the war. They, however, couldn’t capitalize on their victory due to their heavy losses.
It was a turning point in the war: the invasion was successful, but the Allies couldn’t exploit their victory. Several more victories were scored by the Allies although their alliance weakened. Marlborough lost political influence because the friendship between his wife the Duchess of Marlborough and Queen Anne ended while Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I suddenly died and was succeeded by Charles VI. With exhaustion near, the two parties agreed to peace which was made official with the Treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt in 1713 and 1714 respectively. The foremost issue was the succession to the Spanish throne. Philip V was recognised as the successor to Charles II, but had to renounce his claim to the French throne, thus avoiding a personal union of the two. There were also many territorial redistributions: Spain was forced to cede the Spanish Netherlands, the Duchy of Milan, the Kingdom of Naples to the Habsburgs, Sicily to Savoy, and Gibraltar and Minorca to Britain. France’s former conquests were recognised, but the French recognised British sovereignty over Rupert’s Land and Newfoundland, ceded Acadia to Britain, and also ceded half of Saint Kitts to the British. The Dutch retained several fortresses in the Southern Netherlands and annexed part of Guelders. The result of these peace treaties was a short war known as the War of the Sextuple Alliance when Philip V of Spain tried to reclaim his Italian possessions. Britain, the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, Savoy, France (now led by Louis XV who had succeeded Louis XIV in 1715) and Prussia (de jure still part of the Holy Roman Empire) defeated Spain. The Treaty of The Hague forced Spain to renounce its claims on its former Italian possessions. With this done, a short period of relative peace from 1720 to the early 1730s could begin while a new power emerged: the Anglo-Prussian Alliance.
With the death of King George I in 1727, Sophia succeeded her father as Queen Sophia I of Great Britain and Ireland. This brought Prussia and Britain much closer since she was Frederick William I’s wife and her son and only heir, Frederick, would unite the two in personal union after both his parents were dead. Sophia’s accession to the throne did lose her the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg (formally known as Hannover) which had Salic Law which resulted in a ridiculously distant cousin of George I related to the house of Mecklenburg-Schwerin gaining the title of Duke of the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg. For now, Prussia remained the lesser and the two states and both signed a military alliance. Sophia was officially Queen of Great Britain and Ireland (and her territory included Scotland due to the 1707 Act of Union which made them a single country instead of the personal union founded in 1685). In Prussia, however, she was only Queen Consort and needed to consolidate her power, using her position as Queen of Britain as leverage. She spent most of her time travelling back and forth between Great Britain and Prussia and managed to put British aristocracy in the Prussian government on honorary positions and vice versa in a crosspollination to strengthen ties. The Prussian elites and King Frederick William I were wooed by access to British trade with its colonies in America: the thirteen colonies, Nova Scotia, Rupert’s Land and Newfoundland. This provided Frederick William I with power as the money allowed him to form a large, strong army and strongly centralize his country and concentrating power into his own hands. The result was that he became the new model absolutist monarch instead of Louis XIV who had held his model role since the late seventeenth century. His country became heavily militarized with military officers becoming leading figures. His soldiers were intensively drilled, firing speed was heightened and the army was streamlined, making it a modern standing army.
In the meantime his wife steered for more control over India. English and now Britain had had permission to trade in India from the Mughal Emperor since 1617. They also gained free trade permission from the de jure Emperor although he was nothing but a British puppet. Britain was a dominant power in world affairs and a naval force while Prussia became to increasingly dominate north German affairs as it fielded a strong, professional 70.000 men army, the fourth largest in Europe even though Prussia’s population was twelfth with 2.5 million. Together, the two formed a strong power bloc, a geopolitical force to be reckoned with. Both Sophia and Frederick William were confident and steered to conflict.
Sophia had never officially recognised the reign of her distant German relative over Hannover as the Elector in spite of Hannover’s Salic Law. In 1732, Sophia managed to pressure her husband into supporting her claim on the throne of Hannover and he was easily convinced because it would increase his base of power over the north of the Holy Roman Empire, making it the dominant power among the Protestant northern German states and weakening Habsburg influence over his fledgling country. He threatened to declare war on Hannover if they didn’t abolish Salic Law and recognise his wife’s ‘legitimate’ claim as Elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg, also known as Hannover. Hannover refused to bow to the demands of Prussia and Britain and so a 75.000 strong army made up of Prussian and British forces entered Hanoverian territory which dispelled their notion that Sophia and Frederick William had been bluffing. A 12.000 strong Hanoverian force was squashed at Lüneburg in a one sided battle and the Elector retreated with his total 8.000 remaining soldiers while the Habsburgs declared their support for his cause and declared war on Britain and Prussia, thus initiating the War of the Hanoverian Succession (1732-1735). French King Louis XV decided to support his former enemy the Habsburgs as the French feared growing Anglo-Prussian power and possible encirclement. They preferred to maintain a relatively weak Holy Roman Empire under de jure Habsburg domination, but de facto a smattering of independent bickering little states. Undue Anglo-Prussian influence there was not wanted. Louis XV ignored France’s terrible financial situation which had been caused by Louis XIV’s incessant warfare which had caused major debts which the French hadn’t been able to pay off yet. Savoy opportunistically threw in its lot with the Prussians and British to end strong Austrian influence over northern Italy, thus starting the world’s first global conflict.
Austria mobilized, albeit more slowly than the Prussians because they used the old system of nobles conscripting a number of peasants, usually three out of every four households so that one remained to tend to the farms of the others. This was not a professional and permanent standing army like the Prussian army and was qualitatively inferior although it did have numerical superiority. Prussian forces took Leipzig which was a city in northern Saxony, thus involving this Electorate too with Elector Frederick Augustus I, who was also King Augustus II of Poland, declaring war. Therefore Saxony and Poland sided with Austria and France although it might not be enough with Russia looking to expand at the expense of Poland which meant the Poles could never throw in their full weight. They were already Russian puppets since Augustus’s reforms to strengthen his country had failed to take effect, also due to opposition from the strong nobility. Because of this, 1732 was a good year for the Anglo-Prussian-Savoy alliance. They crushed an Austro-Saxon force at Dresden and sacked the culturally important city despite superior Austrian numbers. Prussian efforts in Silesia didn’t change the frontline all that much.
The British engaged in a naval campaign against the French and scored a number of decisive victories with their superior navy. By 1733, France’s possessions in the New World were conquered by British troops as French forces couldn’t be adequately supplied as the Royal Navy terrorized its supply lines by sea, denied them reinforcements and cut off communications with Paris. British troops were marching into New Orleans and Quebec after crushing limited French forces. Defence cutbacks had rendered France a shadow of its former self and with this resounding defeat and a major peasant revolt in the countryside, it requested an armistice. France was no longer the dominant power of Europe, not even in name. It was a sideshow, struggling to maintain its image while combating an economic crisis of unseen scale. An unstable France had surrendered just before a revolution, fortunately for Louis XV although his country was now a sideshow. Savoy forces defeated the Austrians and marched into Parma, Modena and Luca. After some indecisive campaigning back and forth in Saxony and Silesia, and some messing in central Germany with Prussia being supported by the Protestant north, Austrian forces received a crippling blow in the Battle of Chemnitz in 1735 in which an enormous 80.000 men Anglo-Prussian forced commanded by 23 year old future king Frederick won. His cavalry formations flanked the Austrian army while his massed artillery battered the centre of the Austrian army commanded by none other than Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI himself. He commanded a 110.000 strong army, but the heavy artillery bombardment decimated his centre and the sweeping cavalry flanking manoeuvre broke down his army completely with panic erupting. Frontlines moved very quickly.
His forces were routed and he sued for peace while Russia moved into Poland to move forward its border since Poland’s fate was clear. Peace was negotiated in the Treaty of Potsdam which thoroughly redistributed power in Europe. Queen Sophia I’s status as Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg was recognised and Hannover abolished Salic Law. Britain annexed Louisiana and Quebec to form one contiguous colony of British North America. Prussia annexed Silesia, Saxony, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Posen and what would become known as West Prussia. Austria was weakened enough for the Prussians to let Charles VI’s succession by Maria Theresa slide. Frederick William I assumed the title King of Poland and united Prussia and Poland in a personal union, but was forced to cede Lithuania and everything up to and including Minsk to appease Russian Empress Anna. Finally, Savoy was allowed to annex Luca, Parma, Modena, Lombardy, Tuscany and Venice to form a northern Italian state to which Naples was added. Savoy thus controlled all of Italy except for the Papal States and also had Istria and Dalmatia. The Kingdom of Italy was hereby founded, thus destroying Austria’s aimed sphere of influence in Italy.
A few years after in 1740, Frederick William I passed away and Frederick II became King of Prussia and Poland while his mother remained Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and of course her massive empire in north America which her son Frederick stood poised to inherit.
.The Lion and the Eagle
Chapter I: Prelude to the Union and Baptism of Fire, 1708 – 1740.
1708 was an important year in the War of the Spanish Succession as this year would be a turning point in the future of two emerging European great powers: Great Britain and Prussia. This year, although seemingly no different from other years, would define Europe’s and indeed the world’s future, leading to the largest empire in history. This turning point was the Battle of Oudenarde which was a decisive victory for the British, Dutch and the Holy Roman Empire over the armies of French King Louis XIV who sought to unite France and Spain in personal union. In this battle, however, Duke George of Cambridge, who was the heir to future King George I, was in the vanguard and died as his horse staggered and he fell off, breaking his neck. Barely a year later, his son Frederick contracted tuberculosis and passed away. The result was that Sophia Dorothea of Hannover, who was married to King Frederick William I of Prussia as Queen Consort, became the only heir to the British throne although the immediate implications of this were disregarded by other powers as they wished to vanquish the French and so the war continued unabated.
In the meantime, the Duke of Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy marched on to take Lille while the Austrians sacked a number of cities. These disasters brought France on the brink of ruin and it induced Louis XIV to negotiate; he offered to relinquish Spain and other French conquests except for Naples and provide money to dethrone Philip V of Spain. The Allies offered a more humiliating deal, namely that the French used their army to dethrone Philip V themselves. Louis XIV was insulted and chose to fight on and appealed to the French people, bringing in thousands of new recruits. Three invasions of France were attempted in 1709 although two were so small that they were only diversionary. The third was more serious as Eugene and the Duke of Marlborough attempted a march for Paris which resulted in the Battle of Malplaquet, an Allied victory over Duc de Villars and the bloodiest battle in the war. They, however, couldn’t capitalize on their victory due to their heavy losses.
It was a turning point in the war: the invasion was successful, but the Allies couldn’t exploit their victory. Several more victories were scored by the Allies although their alliance weakened. Marlborough lost political influence because the friendship between his wife the Duchess of Marlborough and Queen Anne ended while Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I suddenly died and was succeeded by Charles VI. With exhaustion near, the two parties agreed to peace which was made official with the Treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt in 1713 and 1714 respectively. The foremost issue was the succession to the Spanish throne. Philip V was recognised as the successor to Charles II, but had to renounce his claim to the French throne, thus avoiding a personal union of the two. There were also many territorial redistributions: Spain was forced to cede the Spanish Netherlands, the Duchy of Milan, the Kingdom of Naples to the Habsburgs, Sicily to Savoy, and Gibraltar and Minorca to Britain. France’s former conquests were recognised, but the French recognised British sovereignty over Rupert’s Land and Newfoundland, ceded Acadia to Britain, and also ceded half of Saint Kitts to the British. The Dutch retained several fortresses in the Southern Netherlands and annexed part of Guelders. The result of these peace treaties was a short war known as the War of the Sextuple Alliance when Philip V of Spain tried to reclaim his Italian possessions. Britain, the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, Savoy, France (now led by Louis XV who had succeeded Louis XIV in 1715) and Prussia (de jure still part of the Holy Roman Empire) defeated Spain. The Treaty of The Hague forced Spain to renounce its claims on its former Italian possessions. With this done, a short period of relative peace from 1720 to the early 1730s could begin while a new power emerged: the Anglo-Prussian Alliance.
With the death of King George I in 1727, Sophia succeeded her father as Queen Sophia I of Great Britain and Ireland. This brought Prussia and Britain much closer since she was Frederick William I’s wife and her son and only heir, Frederick, would unite the two in personal union after both his parents were dead. Sophia’s accession to the throne did lose her the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg (formally known as Hannover) which had Salic Law which resulted in a ridiculously distant cousin of George I related to the house of Mecklenburg-Schwerin gaining the title of Duke of the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg. For now, Prussia remained the lesser and the two states and both signed a military alliance. Sophia was officially Queen of Great Britain and Ireland (and her territory included Scotland due to the 1707 Act of Union which made them a single country instead of the personal union founded in 1685). In Prussia, however, she was only Queen Consort and needed to consolidate her power, using her position as Queen of Britain as leverage. She spent most of her time travelling back and forth between Great Britain and Prussia and managed to put British aristocracy in the Prussian government on honorary positions and vice versa in a crosspollination to strengthen ties. The Prussian elites and King Frederick William I were wooed by access to British trade with its colonies in America: the thirteen colonies, Nova Scotia, Rupert’s Land and Newfoundland. This provided Frederick William I with power as the money allowed him to form a large, strong army and strongly centralize his country and concentrating power into his own hands. The result was that he became the new model absolutist monarch instead of Louis XIV who had held his model role since the late seventeenth century. His country became heavily militarized with military officers becoming leading figures. His soldiers were intensively drilled, firing speed was heightened and the army was streamlined, making it a modern standing army.
In the meantime his wife steered for more control over India. English and now Britain had had permission to trade in India from the Mughal Emperor since 1617. They also gained free trade permission from the de jure Emperor although he was nothing but a British puppet. Britain was a dominant power in world affairs and a naval force while Prussia became to increasingly dominate north German affairs as it fielded a strong, professional 70.000 men army, the fourth largest in Europe even though Prussia’s population was twelfth with 2.5 million. Together, the two formed a strong power bloc, a geopolitical force to be reckoned with. Both Sophia and Frederick William were confident and steered to conflict.
Sophia had never officially recognised the reign of her distant German relative over Hannover as the Elector in spite of Hannover’s Salic Law. In 1732, Sophia managed to pressure her husband into supporting her claim on the throne of Hannover and he was easily convinced because it would increase his base of power over the north of the Holy Roman Empire, making it the dominant power among the Protestant northern German states and weakening Habsburg influence over his fledgling country. He threatened to declare war on Hannover if they didn’t abolish Salic Law and recognise his wife’s ‘legitimate’ claim as Elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg, also known as Hannover. Hannover refused to bow to the demands of Prussia and Britain and so a 75.000 strong army made up of Prussian and British forces entered Hanoverian territory which dispelled their notion that Sophia and Frederick William had been bluffing. A 12.000 strong Hanoverian force was squashed at Lüneburg in a one sided battle and the Elector retreated with his total 8.000 remaining soldiers while the Habsburgs declared their support for his cause and declared war on Britain and Prussia, thus initiating the War of the Hanoverian Succession (1732-1735). French King Louis XV decided to support his former enemy the Habsburgs as the French feared growing Anglo-Prussian power and possible encirclement. They preferred to maintain a relatively weak Holy Roman Empire under de jure Habsburg domination, but de facto a smattering of independent bickering little states. Undue Anglo-Prussian influence there was not wanted. Louis XV ignored France’s terrible financial situation which had been caused by Louis XIV’s incessant warfare which had caused major debts which the French hadn’t been able to pay off yet. Savoy opportunistically threw in its lot with the Prussians and British to end strong Austrian influence over northern Italy, thus starting the world’s first global conflict.
Austria mobilized, albeit more slowly than the Prussians because they used the old system of nobles conscripting a number of peasants, usually three out of every four households so that one remained to tend to the farms of the others. This was not a professional and permanent standing army like the Prussian army and was qualitatively inferior although it did have numerical superiority. Prussian forces took Leipzig which was a city in northern Saxony, thus involving this Electorate too with Elector Frederick Augustus I, who was also King Augustus II of Poland, declaring war. Therefore Saxony and Poland sided with Austria and France although it might not be enough with Russia looking to expand at the expense of Poland which meant the Poles could never throw in their full weight. They were already Russian puppets since Augustus’s reforms to strengthen his country had failed to take effect, also due to opposition from the strong nobility. Because of this, 1732 was a good year for the Anglo-Prussian-Savoy alliance. They crushed an Austro-Saxon force at Dresden and sacked the culturally important city despite superior Austrian numbers. Prussian efforts in Silesia didn’t change the frontline all that much.
The British engaged in a naval campaign against the French and scored a number of decisive victories with their superior navy. By 1733, France’s possessions in the New World were conquered by British troops as French forces couldn’t be adequately supplied as the Royal Navy terrorized its supply lines by sea, denied them reinforcements and cut off communications with Paris. British troops were marching into New Orleans and Quebec after crushing limited French forces. Defence cutbacks had rendered France a shadow of its former self and with this resounding defeat and a major peasant revolt in the countryside, it requested an armistice. France was no longer the dominant power of Europe, not even in name. It was a sideshow, struggling to maintain its image while combating an economic crisis of unseen scale. An unstable France had surrendered just before a revolution, fortunately for Louis XV although his country was now a sideshow. Savoy forces defeated the Austrians and marched into Parma, Modena and Luca. After some indecisive campaigning back and forth in Saxony and Silesia, and some messing in central Germany with Prussia being supported by the Protestant north, Austrian forces received a crippling blow in the Battle of Chemnitz in 1735 in which an enormous 80.000 men Anglo-Prussian forced commanded by 23 year old future king Frederick won. His cavalry formations flanked the Austrian army while his massed artillery battered the centre of the Austrian army commanded by none other than Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI himself. He commanded a 110.000 strong army, but the heavy artillery bombardment decimated his centre and the sweeping cavalry flanking manoeuvre broke down his army completely with panic erupting. Frontlines moved very quickly.
His forces were routed and he sued for peace while Russia moved into Poland to move forward its border since Poland’s fate was clear. Peace was negotiated in the Treaty of Potsdam which thoroughly redistributed power in Europe. Queen Sophia I’s status as Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg was recognised and Hannover abolished Salic Law. Britain annexed Louisiana and Quebec to form one contiguous colony of British North America. Prussia annexed Silesia, Saxony, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Posen and what would become known as West Prussia. Austria was weakened enough for the Prussians to let Charles VI’s succession by Maria Theresa slide. Frederick William I assumed the title King of Poland and united Prussia and Poland in a personal union, but was forced to cede Lithuania and everything up to and including Minsk to appease Russian Empress Anna. Finally, Savoy was allowed to annex Luca, Parma, Modena, Lombardy, Tuscany and Venice to form a northern Italian state to which Naples was added. Savoy thus controlled all of Italy except for the Papal States and also had Istria and Dalmatia. The Kingdom of Italy was hereby founded, thus destroying Austria’s aimed sphere of influence in Italy.
A few years after in 1740, Frederick William I passed away and Frederick II became King of Prussia and Poland while his mother remained Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and of course her massive empire in north America which her son Frederick stood poised to inherit.
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