"I do not have to forgive my enemies. I have had them all shot."
-Last words of Ramón María Narváez, when asked about his opponents in life, 1868
Part 10: "Poor Places"
A wide variety of events from a wide variety of places, and the beginning of the next war.
Excerpt from: The First Republic, by Pannacotta Fugo, 2011
[...] by this point, Jean Bernadotte had already been head of the Army of Italy for nearly 18 months, his position was secure despite the downfall of his former patron, the Director Barras. Hoche and the post-coup Directory had ventured to sack many of the more corrupt or unworthy of those appointed by Barras, yet Bernadotte had proven himself a venerable military mind and an adept political infighter. Indeed, though many of Barras’ appointments were made in exchange for a pouch of coins, Bernadotte had actually earned his position, appointed by Barras to place a reliable ally in a key position as unrest against the Republic (in reality, against Barras himself), intensified. Ultimately, Bernadotte’s sheer geographical distance left him uninvolved in the War in the Vendee or the unceremonious dismissal of Citizen Barras.
Bernadotte, ever the controlling sort, found himself in the awkward position of being an occupying authority - while the Cisalpine Republic was essentially a French puppet state, Bernadotte himself held very little sway over the proceedings there, other than being the iron fist within the velvet glove of fraternite. However, placed in control of both the area’s French Army as well as the organization of a Cisalpine Italian military to assist in the campaigns no doubt soon to come, Bernadotte was, without directly implementing policy, the most important actor in Northern Italy.
His invasion of the Papal States and Naples had gained territory for the Cisalpine Sister Republic, gaining him goodwill among the liberals and secularists of Northern Italy who represented the revolutionary vanguard of pan-Italianism. It was his goodwill among a key constituency of powerful stakeholders that wedged open the gate to greater control of proceedings in Italy - acting, essentially, as the go-between of France and the Cisalpinese, keeping a foot in each camp, with real credibility in both. Thus it was through Bernadotte that the authorities of the Cisalpine Republic voiced their desire to unite more of the peninsula, and it was through Bernadotte that authorities in Paris voiced their desire to consolidate borders and widen the recruitment base for the Italian Legions…. and it should thus come as no surprise that Citizen Bernadotte became First Director of the new Republic of Italy. The Republic of Italy would, in the years preceding the War of the Third Coalition, be permitted to absorb the Republic of Liguria as well as the nascent Republic of Etruria. This expansion, largely thanks to the lobbying of Director Bernadotte, earned him a distinct power base on the Italian peninsula, and the trust of the region’s revolutionary stakeholders [...]
The Republic of Italy in 1807, featuring engravings of Bernadotte and a personification of Italy.
Excerpt from: The Rising Continent: Africa's Tumultous Past and Hopeful Future, by Eugene McClaskey, 1999
[...] France choosing to abolish slavery, and seeming to actually stick to it vis a vis its recognition of Haitian autonomy, put new pressure on the United Kingdom to take action. While abolitionism had gained traction in France as a result of revolutionary circumstances and foreign policy concerns, it was Britain’s relatively well-developed (for the time) civil society that brought slavery under increasing scrutiny among the English.
Slavery had already been made illegal within the Kingdom proper since the 1772 court decision Somerset v Stewart, though no mention was made of the practice among the colonies nor the international slave trade. Domestic pressure for further action on slavery remained strong, and abolitionist committees of correspondence had grown in popularity far beyond their original supporting cohorts of free blacks and quakers to include a wide supporting base of liberals, intellectuals, moralists, and even everyday Brits who began to speak their mind on the subject more forcefully.
By 1806, the political power of the abolitionists, known as ‘The Saints’ in the House of Commons, had increased to the point that outlawing the slave trade had become increasingly likely. Yet for the decades prior to the actual abolition of the slave trade, the movement of enslaved African people across the Atlantic had been one of England’s most profitable businesses. A middle ground solution between outright abolition and the gradual winding down of the slave trade was decided upon - a scheme of African resettlement.
The Sierra Leone (literally: ‘Land of Freedom’) scheme had not been universally accepted. In general, resettlement and back-to-Africa plans were more likely to be encouraged by conservatives and landowners who desired a ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’ of an increasing population of free blacks, who made up the backbone of the abolitionist movement. Yet the Freetown settlement did have supporters among Britain’s blacks and those free blacks present in the colonies; the town had been settled by free blacks from Britain proper in 1792, and grew with settling cohorts from Nova Scotia and Jamaica in 1792 and 1800, respectively.
The colony had gotten off to a bit of a poor start, by any reasonable measure. Indeed, the Cline Town settlement had nearly been sacked by the nearby Temne Chiefdom, and successive waves of settlers more often than not brought rebellious captives from the various Maroon Wars and slave uprisings Britain experienced over the 1790s. Gradually, though, conditions improved - Freetown began to grow, and the Tenme agreed to allow further settlement along the northwestern Grain Coast. However, growing British interests along the coast of West Africa had brought them into increased contact with the native polities of the region. European factory posts along the West African coast had long necessitated some degree of informal diplomacy with the Kingdoms of the area, yet the generalities of native political organization necessitated little more.
Prior to sustained European contact, African statehood was a fairly loose affair, in which state power emanated outwards from the capital and from towns in a series of increasingly large concentric rings, fading into the periphery of actual state control into the wilderness. For Africa simply had quite a lot of room - if a tribe or even an entire village wasn’t keen on pledging loyalty to a King or Chieftain, it was a simple enough affair to simply relocate away. Relocation of large groups had thus been common for many centuries, perhaps dating all the way back to the great Bantu migrations. Yet the more concerted arrival of the Europeans, with their strange ideas of firm international borders and more exclusive Westphalian sovereignty forced a shift in perspective, at least among those polities set against the settlements and factories the white man had constructed.
To this end, different African authorities responded in different matters. The densely populated Niger River region and delta had long been home to kingdoms and empires more recognizable as states by the Europeans, a trend only continued with the rise of the Sokoto Caliphate and the other Fulani Jihadi states which had spread out across the Sahel. In spite of being called the Fulani Jihads, and being led largely by Fulani warrior-clerics, the Sokoto Caliphate was culturally anchored in an emergent syncretic Fula-Hausa people, and gradually grew outwards towards the South and the richly dense farming lands along the Niger. To the West, Fouta Jallon and Fouta Toro expansion brought them into direct contact, and occasionally competition, with the declining Jolof Kingdom as well as the French holding of Fort-petit-sud (formally Saint-Louis), through which European goods and arms began to flow.
Photo of the Asante Golden Stool with its immediate caretaker, 1935
Indeed, it was competition and trade which would create the incentive to consolidate politically and expand externally: the numerous trading posts set up along the Gold Coast, maintained by the Dutch, the British, and even the Danish, gave the ascendent Ashanti Empire a number of useful trading partners and even the opportunity to play potential threats off of eachother, if the realm’s leaders were adept enough. To the great fortune of the Ashanti, they possessed the skills of Konadu Yaadom, the Asantehemaa Queen Mother of the Empire. In 1803, Yaadom successfully engineered the suicide of sitting King Panyin, having left him no other options other than outright civil war that he would most certainly lose, and saw one of her many sons installed as ruler, whose early death saw him replaced by another son of Yaadom, whose eventual death by disease saw another son of hers installed… altogether, from the coup until her death at 94 in 1844, Yaadom would be Queen Mother for three of her sons, and was for the entire duration the real power behind the throne (or, as it were, the stool).
Yaadom cultivated a distinct political base in the Empire, and realized quickly the benefit that could be gained through cooperation with the Europeans. Some historians have argued that the Ashanti-Fon Wars of 1806 to 1808 should really be considered a theater of the War of the Third Coalition, which overlapped with this African struggle for nearly two years - with the Dutch on the side of the Ashanti, and the British on the side of the Fon Confederacy, the battle took the shape of a proxy battle [...]
Excerpt from: The Rise and Fall of the Ottoman Empire Volume IX, by Muhammad Avdol, 1987
[...] although encouraged by the British to undermine the Ottomans from within, the Mamluk chieftains Ibrahim Bey and Murad Bey did not actually benefit from British arms. Thus, although the struggle was fierce, the Ottoman army under Muhammad Ali Pasha was able to re-establish control of the Egypt Eyalet. This was, in theory, carried out on behalf of the Sultans in Constantinople. Yet despite being carried out by an Ottoman general, the settlement of the final Mamluk revolt was largely conducted by Albanians, who were really solely loyal to Muhammad Ali. Ali’s ability to carve out an independent base of power in Egypt, best summarized in his declaration of himself as Khedive of the province despite the illegality of such a move by a mere military commander, stands as a key example of the collapse of Ottoman authority over its provinces over the course of the Wars of Revolution.
Massacre of the Mamluks at the Cairo citadel
Oil on Canvas, Horace Vernet, mid-19th century
Turkish loss of grip upon the hinterlands began in Serbia, which soon became a key flashpoint in the escalation of tensions ahead of the War of the Third Coalition. The chief matter which so greatly escalated tensions between the Ottomans and the Russian Empire was the nominal autonomy of the principality of Serbia. Tolerated as pseudo-autonomous since the Hapsburg-supported First Uprising, Ottoman desire to re-establish absolute control over the small principality brought them to loggerheads with the Austrians as well as the Russians, who sought by any means necessary to undercut tacit Turkish support for the French Republic and Poland. Indeed, the fact that the Hapsburgs and the Romanovs had found a common foe left Ottoman Turkey extremely vulnerable to a ‘death by a thousand cuts’ along the periphery.
There was an opening, a way out, for the Porte, in the divergence between Russia and Austrian aims. The Hapsburgs were most interested in pursuing the strategy already mentioned - peeling off territories along the borders of the empire, particularly in the Balkans, to provide buffers against the Turks. In this, the British were largely in agreement, having cast their lot with Muhammad Ali Pasha, and working to expand European presence along the Barbary coast to get at the source of Mediterranean piracy, rather than just attacking the pirates themselves. Theoretically under Ottoman suzerainty, the Beyliks of Tunis and Algiers received European dignitaries to their courts throughout the conflict, and the more astute among the Barbary rulers found success at playing the Coalition and the French off of eachother.
The Russians, meanwhile, kept their eyes squarely on the straits. Ever on the hunt for warm water naval access, breaking out from the Black Sea and gaining a foothold into the Mediterranean was the primary goal of St. Petersburg throughout the period. Of course, Russian aims also included the protection of Christians within the empire, with particular focus in the Caucasus and the fellow-Slavs of the Balkans. The Tsardom still regarded the autonomous principalities of Crimea and Circassia as their exclusive subjects, although under existing treaties the Ottomans remained their nominal protectors as well. These considerations were certainly important to Tsar Alexander I.
A Chronic Case
Political Cartoon, Charles Bartholomew, 1903
Still, the opportunity existed for the Porte to play St. Petersburg and Vienna off one another. The Habsburgs (and, indeed, the Brits) were opposed to the Russians coming to the Mediterranean, and the Russians were resentful of any attempt by the Austrians to influence the Slavs of the Balkans who were viewed as natural Slavic brothers who belonged under Russian protection. Both were distrustful of each others’ designs on the territories of Poland. Had the Porte been well-led, they perhaps could have navigated these stormy seas. Unfortunately, they were not.
Reform efforts by Selim III, spurred on by the conclusion of a partnership with the French and in expectation of the re-eruption of war in Europe, had proved highly unpopular among the Janissary military class, whose privileged position in the Porte’s bureaucracy was directly threatened by military reforms. Many Janissaries, especially those in and around the Empire’s Turkish heartland, had very few actual military duties, instead acting as a kind of non-landed militant gentry. However, the Janissaries did command the arms of the Empire, and, just as seen with Muhammad Ali, their non-Turkish origins often allowed prominent Janissaries to carve out distinct bases of power.
The Yamaks, recruited from the Muslims of the Balkan sanjaks, proved a particularly dangerous threat to the Porte’s authority. Indeed, the instigator of the Coup of 1807 was a Yamak by the name of Kabakçı Mustafa, who was able to call upon a small but loyal force of Bosnian militiamen (along with a number of fellow Janissaries), removing Selim III and Mustafa IV as a puppet emperor. The new regime, generally considered the first of the Janissary Aghanate, attempted to chart a middle course - to abandon the French alliance, of course, would leave the vulnerable empire at the mercy of the already-hostile Russians and Austrians. [...]
Excerpt from: Native Title in the Australian Colonies , by Rupert Murdoch, 2002
[...] reinforced by a number of unexpected allies: Irish convicts, transported to the continent as a punishment for participation in any number of abortive risings or nationalist organizations. The exact number of Irish convicts who fought on the side of the Australians is not precisely known - at least one was responsible for teaching Bembulwoyan some modicum of English, and it’s known that at least two Irishmen were present during the signing of the Treaty of Botany Bay, the first of the various aboriginal treaties hashed out between the British and native Australians.
The Botany Bay Treaty is quite rightfully considered to be a landmark event in the history of Australia, if not all mankind. The figures that came together for such a step forward are giants in this particular corner of the earth, figures who have more than earned the books written about them, hailing from diverse and unique backgrounds yet coming together for an important step forward in the history of relations between people. Bembulwoyan’s nascent confederation, whose martial skills were complemented by the breakout leadership of his son Tjedboro, were given a seat at the table by figures who crossed over between the communities like Yarramundi, who would become the first Australian to marry into a Euro-Aussie family, Yemmerrawanne, and Bennelong, all of whom spoke English.
View upon the Napeans
Aquatint with hand colouring, Joseph Lycett, 1825
The Botany Bay Treaty, over the span of many decades, would eventually be largely superseded by other Treaties as European settlement spread outwards from the coast. Yet legal recognition of the Eora’s traditional connection to the land, and the treatment of the nascent Confederacy as a partner (an unequal partner, yes, but a partner nonetheless) who could and should be negotiated with fairly, set a critical precedent. The bar was set for dealings with the native Australians, a standard that both the French to the West and the Portuguese to the North were forced to observe, in general. Dealings with the native Australians would not always be as equitable or fair, yet with the threat of war hanging over the European powers, it was determined that native uprisings could not be spared, and thus revolts could not be risked. [...]
Excerpt from: The Mexican North, by Manuel Espinoza, 1999
Despite repeated demographic blows due to occasional flare-ups of smallpox and other Old World diseases, the Comanche remained extremely well-positioned, and controlled perhaps the first real native ‘Empire’ seen north of the old Aztec heartland in Mexico. Critical to keeping numbers ‘above water’ would be the assimilation of other tribes and groups, including via the capture and assimilation of Europeans, particularly Spaniards and Spanish Louisianians. For the Spanish-Comanche relationship would prove critical for the nation’s future - theoretically sovereign over the entirety of the region from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, Spanish control was in reality quite thin, and would only become thinner with the oncoming chaos that would grip the Spanish empire. The Comanche would take advantage of this, in due time [...]
Excerpt from: The Industrial Explosion, by Robert Speedwagon, 1895
[...] The Pyréolophore was truly an ingenious piece of technology, though even its creators were unaware of just how important it was. The creation of the internal combustion engine, quickly followed up with the addition of a functional temperature compression mechanism and an early fuel injection system, produced an invention that quite literally drives modern life, pun intended! [...]
Reconstruction of the original Pyréolophore engine
Excerpt from: The Third Coalition, by Albrecht von Closen, 1921
[...] the root of the War of the Third Coalition, which so decisively shaped the future of Europe (and beyond), can be found in the bad blood between a father and son.
King Charles IV Bourbon of Spain had the dubious fortune of presiding over two distinct embarrassments to the upstart Republican French. His popularity was low, and the loss of colonies to the French had greatly diminished his prestige, along with the prestige of the Kingdom as a whole. His Prime Minister, Manuel Godoy, was even less popular: a womanizer and flirt who had committed the grave misdeed of being an ambitious man from common background, his continued presence and closeness to the King had pushed a not insignificant portion of the nobility into the camp of Ferdinand VII, a reactionary and brutish fellow whose grim legacy is well deserved. Resentment was beginning to bubble over against the King, against his son, against the nobility. A famine was ongoing, the average Spaniard was going hungry, and there was a distinct impression in the air that the Kingdom was headed in exactly the wrong direction.
And yet when the Tumult of Aranjuez did erupt into furious violence in April of 1808, the country and indeed the nations of Europe were surprised. The nobility were less surprised when Ferdinand sprung into action, forcing the issue to bring about Godoy’s resignation and, in time, the abdication of his father. One cannot fault Ferdinand for being an opportunist in this situation, for the state of the country was grim. Yet the tumult did not cease, and rioting began to spread. The long-starved residents of Madrid began to march, and the powers of Europe began to see grim reminders of 1793.
The Fall of Godoy
Engraving, Francisco de Paula Martí, 1814
What happened next, though, remains controversial, and will likely never be fully understood. In those chaotic days, the court did not keep very good records, and lord knows that fleeing one’s home makes bookkeeping rather difficult to maintain. Some things are clear. As chaos in the streets of Madrid began to intensify, a cohort of Spanish liberals led by General Rafael del Riego made a public request to Paris for intervention, to bring about a stabilization of the country and its hinterlands, whose semi-autonomous Basque and Catalan areas had been more gripped with unrest than the core of the Kingdom. Whether the nascent popular revolt was started or at least encouraged by French instigators cannot be known, and despite the privileged position del Riego would enjoy under French occupation, his actual ties to Paris remain a mystery.
Unlike the unfortunate Louis, the Bourbons of Madrid managed a hasty escape, and perhaps saved their necks from the guillotine. The precise thoughts of each man is not well known, as none kept a diary; of the three Bourbons claimants, only the papers of Charles V have been preserved, and are today held by the Mexico City Museum of National History. The now-former King Charles fled to the North, bringing with him a small entourage and, of course, no diary, leaving his decision to announce his resumption of the Crown to be explained only by the dubious memoirs of Godoy. The nascent King Ferdinand and Carlos, his brother, fled South, perhaps knowing that the British fleet at Gibraltar could save their skins. Still largely in command of the Mediterranean, the Balearics became King Ferdinand’s capital in much the same way that the Savoyards had fled to Sardinia. Carlos’ decision to flee to the New World would be perhaps the most mystifying if unexplained; thankfully, as stated, his papers remain, and it is possible to hear the man’s reasoning in his own words - he simply deemed being as far as possible from France, for the time being, to be the wisest course of action. Not unreasonable!
Yet the forces of history, now set in motion, cared very little for the family drama beginning to unfold between a father and his two sons. In those days of confusion, the French soldiers who began their arduous trek through the mountain passes of the Pyrennes experienced very little opposition to Paris’s delight. For, indeed, Spain had been a particular thorn in the Republic’s side! Even with the superior numbers and training of the levee en masse, the previous two Wars of Coalition had been wholly undesirable from a tactical perspective, with France facing two major fronts, at least. The potential for success to the East had thus been constantly held back by the difficulties the army continued to face in the West, although in the waning days of the Second Coalition War it appeared that the Spanish army was on the verge of collapse. Now, the opportunity stood wide open to sweep across the entire Iberian peninsula, eliminate the second front, and be able to focus entirely on the Holy Imperial armies across the Rhine. It was as a result that the Third Coalition coalesced, as the fall of Spain would perhaps doom the rest of Europe to the French…
Author's Note: March is always a busy month for me, so I hope this update was worth the wait! I still hope to minimize such long periods between updates, but with this being my last semester before concluding higher education, and perhaps the last year spent wholly in America, I've got quite a bit going on.... however, the past few weeks weren't spent solely on my own business.
I have a general idea of where the timeline will be going, and I've confirmed to myself that at some stage I'll transition over to a graphic TL set in modern times, like after getting into the 20th century. A lot is still to be done, and plenty will be decided as the events unfold, but I've roughly sketched out the broad trends to take place.
Thanks again for reading.
