The March of Albion: A TL (Part 1)

Okay, so I've been working on this TL for quite some time and I have decided to split it up into managable projects becuase I cannot write indefinitely in the same detail Thande does. So this part of the TL will cover the POD (1743) to the year 1785. Then Part two will be forthcoming, hopefully. But without futher ado, I give you The March of Albion!
 
Part #1: To Capture a King

From “The War of Austrian Succession: Volume I” By Thomas A. Greenling, 1979

The Battle of Dettingen had high expectations on both sides. George II and his son William IV were commanding an Anglo-Austrian force known as the Pragmatic Army. Austria was coming off a long string of defeats at the hands of the French, Bavarians and Prussians but had recently turned the tide, also hopeful for victories ahead, as Bavarian control over Prague began to break down. This loss of control by Franco-Bavarian forces had allowed the British to land in Hanover and seek to rout the French. The French Army was commanded by the Duc De Noialles and the Duc de Gramont. They had quite a strong force and Gramont was actually Noialles’ nephew. Many wanted to contain the British early on and not allow them a hand in central Europe. The French Generals did not know how much this idea would bear fruit for them.

The Duc De Noialles played a cat-and-mouse game with the Pragmatic Army, but finally he knew when and where to strike. He ordered his army to cut the route by the Rhine and Main Rivers by which the Pragmatic Army received supplies from its base in the Austrian Netherlands. There had been no proper supply of bread for a week, when finally in June King George ordered the retreat to begin; West along the road to Hanau and Frankfurt and then North to Flanders. Between that lay the tiny village of Dettingen, where the battle would take place.

As the Pragmatic Army marched towards Dettingen, advanced parties reported that the French occupied the village, blocking its path. During the night the French, commanded by the Duc de Gramont, had crossed the river, using bridges of boats across the Main, and held the village and the marshy ground between Dettingen and the hills in strength.

After hearing this news, King George was shocked. He had no idea such a massive French force could have assembled so close to them and moved without them have forewarning. This of course was the brilliance of the Duc De Noialles, a Marshal in one the greatest armies Europe had ever seen, and clearly his genius had shown through in this encirclement.

Preparing to give battle, the British, Austrian and Hanoverian troops formed line; the Main River on the left and the wooded Spessart Hills on the right. The regiments took from 9am to midday to form up. This extraordinary length of time must have been due to the inexperience of the regiments and the difficulty of moving from a column of march into battle line and would prove to foreshadow the relative incompetence of the British Army.

Soon after they formed up, the Duc de Noialles’ plan became obvious and struck fear into the Pragmatic Army. The Duc De Gramont held at the Village of Dettingen and nearby streams to prevent their March forward and Noialles would hold with the Artillery, where they could shell them with impunity.

Nevertheless, surrender was not an option. Their capture would not only reverse the course of Austrian victories in Germany, but would give the entire British Army and their King to the French, something that to the British Army couldn’t accept. So despite their terrible position they had to hold out and fight.

At one in the afternoon, Noialles began shelling their formations and causing havoc among the now trapped Pragmatic Army. George knew they in a bad situation but also knew that they had to wait for the French strike first if they had any chance of getting out of this snare.

They never knew however, how close they did come to salvation. The Duc De Gramont, being impatient, as he was, nevertheless had to wait in the village until he received word from his brother to attack. After three hours, he desperately wanted to attack. He wrote later that he almost ordered them to strike, thereby allowing the Pragmatic Army a chance to escape. But his horse bucked, threw off his train of thought, and he decided to hold.

After five hours of shelling, with British soldiers dying all around them, George still wanted to wait until the French attacked first, but his own son was getting more impatient. William, the Duke of Cumberland and George II’s second son, was raised as someone who would be military minded and since this was the first major military conflict in Europe since he reached adulthood, this would be his first big battle. He wanted to prove himself, as did all of the other British officers who hadn’t fought in a large-scale war yet. These men, being impatient, decided to follow the young Duke of Cumberland forward against his father’s wishes and provided the break that the Duc de Nioalles had wished.

After seeing William charge forward, the French marshal moved quickly to stop the artillery shelling and ordered the French to charge. The Duc De Gramont received the order he had been waiting eight hours for and charged against the now split and confused Pragmatic Army. The French dragoons charged and scattered the men. The fighting quickly devolved into a blood fest.

After the battle had calmed down and the chaos had subsided, the result of the battle became clear. Gramont, in the fighting allowed the Duke of Cumberland to escape towards Flanders with roughly one third of the Pragmatic Army, with mostly Austrian troops. Noailles, however, captured most of the British troops along with the King of Great Britain himself, George II.

This would prove to be one of the most decisive victories in the virtually perennial Anglo-French conflicts of the time period, but few knew how influential this battle would be, save Noailles and the King …

*

An excerpt from “Voltaire’s Letters: the Genius of France”
… My God, you should have seen it! The sheer audacity of that dreadful march throughout the city couldn’t have surprised me more. Led in the front by the dreadful aristocrat and simply disgusting man, with enough pomp to choke any decent minded person, the Duc de Noialles and beside hundreds of French dragoons, pulled thousands of British soldiers-turned-prisoners through the streets of Paris. Thousands of Parisians, from lawyers and artists to peasants and beggars, all looked out to see the great French victory parade. This great ignorant multitude chanted and foamed themselves in rage in blind support of their people, their army and their king.

But lo, as the march continued past, I saw the key piece to the whole spectacle. The King of Great Britain, defender of her country’s faith, now being vilified by lowly peasants who pledge allegiance to the very man whom their country broke their faith of! And worse yet, it seems as though these impoverished people are vilifying the wrong man, for if he, George II was the true King of France as he claims to be, their lot wouldn’t be nearly as downtrodden as they appear now.

I’ve heard the captured King is going to see the sovereign living in Versailles. I pity him, for George, as the enlightened king I have heard so much of, deserves far better than this. Louis XV doesn’t seem to be especially involved in this conflict. He seems to only care of his perfect hexagonal kingdom and none beyond. Furthermore, he seems to detest warfare in general. This seems to be a ploy by that Duc de Noialles. He seems to be more of a politician than a general and I’m fairly sure he seeks to be a marshal. Well I am quite sure this spectacle will no doubt help his chances. But I wonder it will help France’s chances…

*

From “British Politics: 1688-1800” By William Thomas Jennings

When word reached Parliament of the news from the continent, there was a predictable uproar in the house made by almost everyone. The stories by this time were being exaggerated wildly, much like the story of Jenkin’s Ear that led to the war against Spain only several years earlier, which had roused even Robert Walpole to war. But this was a crisis writ large, a king captured and held for ransom, debased and abused by the French people! It was enough to make any citizen’s blood boil and by this time many in the streets of London were baying for vengeance.

Of course, most of this criticism fell, as it always does, on the Prime Minister himself, Henry Pelham. He, along with his brother had taken the mantle to lead the country after Robert Walpole’s death. They had been against war as Walpole had been for his twenty year long tenure, but Henry had neither the skill nor the charisma to control parliament in the same way Walpole did to preserve the peace. During this crisis, his weak hold over the Parliament buckled and any solution he wanted to propose to bring the king back was met with great resistance. He had been indifferent about the war and strongly in favor of avoiding conflict, now a position vastly unpopular with the people.

Walpole’s traditional enemies took advantage of his inaction during this crisis and hit him hard with criticism. His biggest enemies were known as the Patriot Boys or Patriot Whigs, led by the Earl of Bute, William Pulteney and younger but soon to be famous politicians like William Pitt and George Grenville. They had used the new and now pervasive language of patriotism to attack Walpole and now Pelham, but now this was different. They had to deal with a captured king and a ransom to try to get him back.

Some more radical members in the Patriot Whigs believed that they should let George II rot for awhile and weren’t too keen on sacrificing their own government’s money on saving him. He had after all, supported Walpole and Pelham, while they were supported by his popular son, Frederick the Prince of Wales. The family drama between the King of Great Britain and his firstborn son was told all over the Empire, his expulsion from the court and the political intrigues were unforgettable, with George openly trying to undermine his son’s political alliances with offers of cabinet positions and other bribes. Now however, Frederick was overjoyed by his failure and embarrassment, yet expressed displeasure about the treatment of the British troops involved in the capture and march.

The Patriot Whigs, being split between those who wanted to bail out the king by any means necessary and those who wanted to make him wait until they could strike a better deal. William Pulteney knew that this deadlock was ridiculous and could mess up his chances at running the government. He had been in the opposition against Pelham and Walpole before him and had been staring down that seat of Prime Minister, then known as the Lord of the Treasury, with envy for twenty years. Nothing, not even his own allies could stop him now.

He began, during the chaotic first days of the crisis, to bleed away support from Pelham. With his superior position and his comparable depiction of Pelham as a blubbering fool had him gain support among Pelham’s former supporters within days. By week two of the crisis, Pelham no longer had any meaningful support in Parliament and he subsequently resigned.

Pulteney moved in quickly. By early November, He muscled through an agreement among moderates from both Walpole Whigs and Patriot Whigs to pay a ransom of two hundred thousand pounds to Louis XV in exchange for George II and his accompanying British escorts. He decided to follow it up with an official declaration of war, one that Pulteney unlike his predecessor decided to take seriously…
 
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