@Napoleon53 I'm glad to see this timeline alive again. I loved the original What Madness is this. It is one of the timelines that inspired me to start working on my own tl.
"What Madness Is This?" Volume I: The Union Forever
- Thread starter Napoleon53
- Start date
Thank you very much! A lot of people have told me WMiT inspired them to start writing. If that's all this TL does, I'm happy. I honestly am at my happiest when writing. If other people can have that same amount of fun and love of history themselves, I'm thrilled.
This chapter has a lot of information to get across, much of which is complex and difficult, and it's not quite finished. I'm exhausted and plan on reposting an improved version tomorrow. Many of the topics covered might get their own chapter! Also, the Northwest Territory is broken up! Ohio is finally free of the shackles of Pennsylvania. 
CHAPTER 11
PAX NAPOLEONICA
"It has become increasingly clear to this journalist that the French Caesar thinks he has achieved supreme victory. He has met the enemy, and they are his. At least for now. What may lay down the road is unknown, but the stability of the huge empire--and indeed the Peace of Europe--will be difficult to maintain."
-Harold Jenkins Abernathy, Chief Editor of the Maryland Gazette, January 1, 1815
Napoleon declared the Napoleonic Wars over on Christmas Day, 1814. In Canada, the British had been annihilated at last. The aide from the Southrons and French had finally arrived. However, to the people of the Yankee states, it was too little too late. The seeds of hatred had been planted. The Canadians had essentially pillaged themselves into exhaustion until American troops could finally start winning victories and taking the fight into Canada MacDonald had been captured in northern Quebec and was executed by the Republican Union military for war crimes, which was a startling event for the period. Drummond escaped to an unknown fate, likely in the Great Canadian Frontier, leaving many Union citizens thirsting for revenge and wanting to take it out on Canadian citizens and prisoners, who were sometimes randomly executed for "war crimes" in batches of 100 or more.
King Joseph I, wearing Irish Green
Flag of the Kingdom of Ireland
Wales went for an aristocratic republican system. It was heavily inspired by the enlightenment governments of Virginia and Maryland, and Braith Nash became the first Prince-President of Wales. Nash had acted as emergency leader since the Welsh independence movement really took off and was very popular with the people. He desired maximum freedom for his people, and though he was technically a prince he wanted the government to be very much out of the people's way and moderate in its policies. he survived an assassination attempt by the radical Welsh Liberation Group, devout radical democrats who sought the overthrow of all monarchies. This outbreak of violence sadly led to Nash moving to limit civil liberties and crush opposition. He was a reluctant tyrant, but a capable one.
Braith Nash
Wales and Ireland inspired Scotland to finally proclaim freedom from England in a surprise move. They proclaimed a constitutional republic and elected the 81 year-old Ralph Abercromby, a former general in the British Army of Scotland, as the first President of the Scottish Republic. He was considered a fervent Scottish nationalist, anti-English, and was by far the most appropriate choice for leader. He was an intimidating figure; he had lost an arm in 1802, and a large sword gash ran along the right side of his head. He actually became known as the "Highland Bear" throughout Europe, because of his stature and his ruthless habit of getting things done, and getting them done quickly. By being free of England, Great Britain was dissolved and Scotland did not have to pay war reparations to the Imperial Alliance. This triggered massive anti-Scottish sentiment in England, but the ties of friendship between the two countries were never totally severed, as Scotland had indeed fought Bonaparte fiercely.
Scottish President Ralph Abercromby
Flag of the Republic of Scotland
Scottish troops in their uniforms (old surplus British red uniforms they had dyed gray-blue)
The Republic of Scotland became a fairly happy country, but the area bordering Catholic Ireland was so volatile it had to be permanently staffed with French troops, chiefly at Fort Scotia. Fort Scotia, completed in 1820, was a massive seaside castle on the coast of Scotland that was the definition of intimidation and martial power. Scotland tolerated the French troops there for now, but it would later become problematic. Scotland never saw itself as a French satellite, and it wanted to finally be in charge of its own future for once. France would detest this.
The small Isle of Man was ripped from King William, and Napoleon made the island a part of the French Empire. It made an excellent stronghold to keep an eye on Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and England. Shortly after, the French Caesar added Guernsey, Jersey, and all parts of the Channel Islands to his domains, declaring himself "Lord of Man and the Channel Isles." He then proclaimed Cornwall to be a military occupation zone and a French dependency. He set up Marquis Laurent de Gouvion Saint-Cyr, of Truro Invasion fame, as Governor of Cornwall.
Flag of the French Dependency of CornwallMeanwhile, England, now without it's Great Union, was in chaos. Several attempts to overthrow the government had been attempted, chiefly by Arthur Wellesley, who plotted a removal of William during an event known as "The 100 Days," which took place after Wellesley escaped from an Irish prison camp with a few loyal officers. At the last moment, Wellington was defeated in a small skirmish with Williamite troops at a place called Waterley, on the west coast. He was handed over to the French and Irish by obedient William and was then exiled to the Falklands, where he died of arsenic poisoning and stomach cancer five years later.
William was desperately clinging to power as his kingdom had literally been ripped apart around him and his inherited mental problems became more and more apparent. He would have to kowtow to France from this point on or be invaded, and if he did kowtow, the people would overthrow him eventually for being a "Bonaparte boot-licker." So, finally, he announced he was abdicating the throne, which would go to his younger brother, Edward, who then became King Edward VII. In 1818, Edward married Marie Louise Viktoria, ex-wife of the late German nobleman Emich Carl, Prince of Leiningen. On May 24th, 1819, Princess Victoria of England was born.
King Edward VII
Edward was a moderate man of moderate temperament, rather weak in fact, but he at least seemed to be solid in the brain, and hopes were high Princess Victoria would not turn out to be a screaming banshee of a madwoman later in life. The Queen Consort was known for worrying for her daughter's health, but publicly stated again and again that Victoria was perfectly sound of mind. The only thing she expressed concern about was who would marry the princess later; with a huge family history of insanity, megalomania, and homicidal psychosis, not many princes and dukes would be wanting to meet Victoria at the altar. Growing unrest in England did not let up under Edward's reign, and Prime Minister Spencer Percival was gunned down in the House of Commons, rocking the English government to its core.
Meanwhile, in the rest of Europe, armed struggles continues, but no where close to what they had been at the height of the true Napoleonic Wars. Serbia had attempted to declare a republic in 1814 and rebelled against the Ottoman Empire. The Turks crushed them, but that struggle would rear its head again later in 1816. The Turks would finally grant them local autonomy. Anti-Jewish pogroms known as the Hep-Hep Riots in Bavaria that swept the country after the Napoleonic Wars were a bloody, nasty affair, and sent many wealthy Jewish-Bavarians fleeing to North America, especially the Republican Union where they set up new businesses in the war-torn nation. Also, Spain teetered closer to complete bankruptcy and defaulting on its debts.
The French were quick to wrest Francophone Quebec from American influence, and they were also quick to warn the Union to only take areas of Canada approved by Napoleon. Threats of retaliation were issued to the American Consuls, saying that any attempt by American soldiers to occupy Canadian soil would be considered an act of war against France and her allies. This shocking warning worked, and the French government hunkered down to work out the new borders.
In the Republican Union, anti-French demagoguery sounded through the cities and was plastered on newspapers everywhere, as well as coverage of the ongoing hunt for "Drummond the Ogre." They had no clue that Drummond had escaped to British holdings in India (the last remnant of British colonialism) by early 1815. The R.U. proclaimed Christmas Eve to be "Remembrance Day," with festivities such as dressing in black, fasting, going to church, and burning effigies of Drummond and Napoleon at the town squares. Boston proclaimed March 26 a city "holiday," officially called "Siege Day," commemorating the day in 1814 when Canadian forces barraged and burnt 50% of the famous port city down. The growing American Fundamentalist Church was one of the main sources of anti-French propaganda, cementing in the Yankee collective memory the "Great Betrayal" of France willingly letting Canada rampage across the Union, burning cities and killing and raping people who had never wanted to be a part of Napoleon's war anyway.
Burning Drummond's Effigy in Chapelton, Pennsylvania, by Edward Staten (1821, Maryland Gazette)
Boston's regrowth was slow at first, and then boomed as converts of the AFC movement donated their time, money, and effort into rebuilding. New York City and Philadelphia received similar reconstruction. After the war in Europe had wrapped up, the European workforce--no longer producing ships, guns, bullets, swords, and bayonets--started leaving for the New World. New Spain was largely ignored, as it was too unstable and Spain itself, though on the winning side of the Great Wars, was teetering on collapse. The aforementioned Jewish immigrants, escaping the pogroms of the German lands, were a real shot in the arm for the Union economy as well, cementing their later acceptance within the increasingly xenophobic nation.
France had taken over New Portugal, including all of Brazil, following the 1808 formation of the Portuguese Confederation. It then declared volatile Brazil to be an "independent Brazilian Republic." A new identity was forming in the decade after, a strange mix of Spanish, French, Indian, and Negro culture. It received quite a bit of immigration from France itself by wealthy businessmen seeking to create new plantations (and sometimes unfairly rip farms out of middle-class Portuguese growers). Many Brazilians suddenly found themselves second-class citizens, and much of their wealth was what many would call "redistributed" to Frenchmen by Napoleon's government. Tensions finally boiled over in 1819, when a mob of native Brazilians stormed the Brazil government headquarters with torches and farming tools. Swiss mercenaries opened fire with their expensive rifled muskets, massacring the rioters. Napoleon declared martial law, and by 1820, the French were firmly the undisputed masters of New Portugal. The Republic was declared over and French rule came down with a heavy hand.
Flag of the short-lived Republic of Brazil
Meanwhile, immigrants to the Southron North American countries found themselves in a land of opportunity. Georgia, CoCaro, Virginia, and the rest all highly valued hard work, and let most any white man (and much of the time Hispanics) to rise wherever the sweat of their brow would take them. The Caribbean islands were a hotspot of new citizenry. Many of the ships coming from southern Europe would stop to resupply in the Caribbean, and many of the Europeans favored the warm climate and style of living and thought it reminiscent of places like Naples and the Mediterranean coast. Thomas Bragg's Virgin Islands Confederacy experienced a massive population boom. The quasi-independent and very peaceful and agricultural Jamaica also doubled in size at this point, with citizens of the former Great Britain seeking refuge in a friendly land.
In Georgia, though it was still considered a Protestant country, Catholic presence was increasing dramatically, largely due to the romance between the country and Catholic France. Spaniards were coming in from New Spain, and shiploads of Catholic Irish and Scots were arriving daily. Savannah soon had its very own "Little Ireland," and the metropolis grew and grew after that point, soon adding Eastern European neighborhoods, German speaking ones, and more than a few Italian areas. Crime from the massive influx of immigrants, many of whom were homeless for extended periods of time as the nation adapted to the population boom, made Savannah's poorer districts a dangerous place. Savannah was "rife with Papal vermin infestations" according to R.U. newspapers, and deserved to be "exterminated by God like Sodom and the Whore of Rome itself." By 1840, Georgia would in fact be a predominantly Catholic country. In 1820, the West Florida Republic was finally annexed into the Republic of Georgia.
Despite the fairly decent treatment in other American countries, many immigrants recognized the most liberal republics were Virginia and Maryland. Virginia, as a largely agricultural country, needed as many immigrants as it could to bolster its fledgling post-war industry. French scientists and engineers had been in Virginia for decades, trying to help their good ally move beyond cotton and tobacco. When mass waves of English, Eastern European, and Austrian families arrived, Richmond may have been the national capitol, Newport News became Virginia's economic capital.Maryland had an almost purely maritime tradition. Whaling, and the general whale oil industry, was predominate, with Maryland having gone so far as having beaten the R.U. to the valuable rights to fish off the coast of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, something which incensed the Consuls. It was only fitting that, after several brutal winters and poor harvests in the homelands (1814-18), the famously seafaring Scandinavians began pouring into Maryland with their fishing and naval know-how and many of their own boats, forming a staunch conservative, ultra-Lutheran, working-class block of the population, which severely outnumbered the formerly predominate aristocratic Catholic population (though Catholics were never a true majority).
By 1825, the R.U. was lagging behind terribly, but in the coming decades it would form its own metropolis out west, nested along the Great Lakes. The Northwest Territory Act was signed by the R.U. Government in 1820. The states of Ohio, Michigania, and Iowai were was declared following the Act. Shicagwa was the site of several bloody massacres of the Pottawatomie and Miami Indian tribes at the turn of the century, but by 1825 it was already a booming Lake Michigan port town. Iowai's government had proposed the idea to the Chief Consuls in 1823, right before statehood, that Shicagwa was in a perfect place to cause maximum profit; iron mines nearby and fishing on Lake Michigan were available, as well as the possibility of textile mills and such. The business moguls then sent agents to Eastern Europe and other poor regions to lure people to Shicagwa with promises of fame, fortune, charity, and certain jobs.
Families would save up for years to pull together the money to cross the Atlantic, only to find Shicagwa an impoverished shanty town, where the port bosses built up a reputation for cruelty and the factories were complete sweatshops. The cheap Slavic labor would soon spiral out of hand, with the immigrants becoming slaves in everything but name. And while the slave population in the south was decreasing in the 1820s and "enlightened" plantation masters were supposedly treating blacks with more dignity, the Slavs were treated with utter contempt. When Philadelphia was faced with civil unrest caused by angry immigrants, the R.U. deployed its military to crack down dissent. Angry mobs would go into the ghettos and pelt rocks and bottles at the immigrants. Huge prisons were built in the Ohio wilderness, where any "trouble-makers" were sent. These prisoners were then sent to build roads and bridges with no pay. No understanding would ever come between the "subhuman" immigrants and the American citizens. As the AFC stepped up xenophobia under Reverend-Colonel Edward Everett, any understanding that could ever have been reached was forever lost. The American population had no idea that American businesses were essentially shipping in illiterate serfs on empty promises, and thought the Slavs simply anarchistic trouble-makers who were not true Americans and who refused to assimilate. To them, the immigrants were lawless troublemakers who came in mass numbers to destroy the morals of the Union with "Papist doctrine and false Orthodoxy." Not every American hated the immigrants, not even most Americans, but the minority was vocal. However, the true persecution would begin later in the century as immigrant workers would strike and riot across the nation, ultimately leading to the establishment of the Republican Union Military Police.
As immigrants from Protestant countries would get off the ships in New York, Boston, and the rest, AFC missionaries would immediately greet them and hand them a Bible and the Three Books of Manifest Destiny. The Slavs, Italians, and Irish would get off the ships only to be surrounded by police and required escorts to the slums where they were housed. The children of the "foreign beasts" were worked in wretched conditions for barely any pay at all. A Georgian traveler named Barnabas P. Jekyll wrote in his diary that "the state of the foreign little ones in the Union sickens me. It is an abomination. This damnable 'Republic' should be burned down."
As the year 1826 approached, it looked as if another year of the Pax Napoleonica would come and go. But growing discontent of the nations in the Imperial Alliance was getting out of hand, actions on the Gulf of Mexico were about to plunge the very unstable New Spain into a Revolution, and back in Asia, decisions would have to be made about the all-important colonial jewel of India, only now possible after a decade of stomping out insurrection. And last but not least, the Mysterious Orient was calling the White Man's name. These events would all be decided upon by an assembly of world leaders meeting in Vienna....
CHAPTER 11
PAX NAPOLEONICA
"It has become increasingly clear to this journalist that the French Caesar thinks he has achieved supreme victory. He has met the enemy, and they are his. At least for now. What may lay down the road is unknown, but the stability of the huge empire--and indeed the Peace of Europe--will be difficult to maintain."
-Harold Jenkins Abernathy, Chief Editor of the Maryland Gazette, January 1, 1815
EUROPE:
Back in Europe, Wellesley had been captured in May, 1814. After that, the war in Britain was effectively over. Ireland declared independence on May 16, the same day as Wales. Joseph Bonaparte was installed by Napoleon as King of Ireland. Naples and Sicily, of which Joseph was formerly monarch of, went to his capable 15 year old daughter Zénaïde. His younger daughter, Charlotte, had died in an horrific carriage accident in 1813. Joseph took his only son, 16 year-old Dominique-Antoine Napoleon Bonaparte, with him to be Crown Prince Dominic of Ireland.
King Joseph I, wearing Irish Green
Flag of the Kingdom of Ireland
Wales went for an aristocratic republican system. It was heavily inspired by the enlightenment governments of Virginia and Maryland, and Braith Nash became the first Prince-President of Wales. Nash had acted as emergency leader since the Welsh independence movement really took off and was very popular with the people. He desired maximum freedom for his people, and though he was technically a prince he wanted the government to be very much out of the people's way and moderate in its policies. he survived an assassination attempt by the radical Welsh Liberation Group, devout radical democrats who sought the overthrow of all monarchies. This outbreak of violence sadly led to Nash moving to limit civil liberties and crush opposition. He was a reluctant tyrant, but a capable one.
Braith Nash
Scottish President Ralph Abercromby
Flag of the Republic of Scotland
Scottish troops in their uniforms (old surplus British red uniforms they had dyed gray-blue)
The Republic of Scotland became a fairly happy country, but the area bordering Catholic Ireland was so volatile it had to be permanently staffed with French troops, chiefly at Fort Scotia. Fort Scotia, completed in 1820, was a massive seaside castle on the coast of Scotland that was the definition of intimidation and martial power. Scotland tolerated the French troops there for now, but it would later become problematic. Scotland never saw itself as a French satellite, and it wanted to finally be in charge of its own future for once. France would detest this.
The small Isle of Man was ripped from King William, and Napoleon made the island a part of the French Empire. It made an excellent stronghold to keep an eye on Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and England. Shortly after, the French Caesar added Guernsey, Jersey, and all parts of the Channel Islands to his domains, declaring himself "Lord of Man and the Channel Isles." He then proclaimed Cornwall to be a military occupation zone and a French dependency. He set up Marquis Laurent de Gouvion Saint-Cyr, of Truro Invasion fame, as Governor of Cornwall.
Flag of the French Dependency of Cornwall
William was desperately clinging to power as his kingdom had literally been ripped apart around him and his inherited mental problems became more and more apparent. He would have to kowtow to France from this point on or be invaded, and if he did kowtow, the people would overthrow him eventually for being a "Bonaparte boot-licker." So, finally, he announced he was abdicating the throne, which would go to his younger brother, Edward, who then became King Edward VII. In 1818, Edward married Marie Louise Viktoria, ex-wife of the late German nobleman Emich Carl, Prince of Leiningen. On May 24th, 1819, Princess Victoria of England was born.
King Edward VII
Meanwhile, in the rest of Europe, armed struggles continues, but no where close to what they had been at the height of the true Napoleonic Wars. Serbia had attempted to declare a republic in 1814 and rebelled against the Ottoman Empire. The Turks crushed them, but that struggle would rear its head again later in 1816. The Turks would finally grant them local autonomy. Anti-Jewish pogroms known as the Hep-Hep Riots in Bavaria that swept the country after the Napoleonic Wars were a bloody, nasty affair, and sent many wealthy Jewish-Bavarians fleeing to North America, especially the Republican Union where they set up new businesses in the war-torn nation. Also, Spain teetered closer to complete bankruptcy and defaulting on its debts.
THE AMERICAS:
The French were quick to wrest Francophone Quebec from American influence, and they were also quick to warn the Union to only take areas of Canada approved by Napoleon. Threats of retaliation were issued to the American Consuls, saying that any attempt by American soldiers to occupy Canadian soil would be considered an act of war against France and her allies. This shocking warning worked, and the French government hunkered down to work out the new borders.
In the Republican Union, anti-French demagoguery sounded through the cities and was plastered on newspapers everywhere, as well as coverage of the ongoing hunt for "Drummond the Ogre." They had no clue that Drummond had escaped to British holdings in India (the last remnant of British colonialism) by early 1815. The R.U. proclaimed Christmas Eve to be "Remembrance Day," with festivities such as dressing in black, fasting, going to church, and burning effigies of Drummond and Napoleon at the town squares. Boston proclaimed March 26 a city "holiday," officially called "Siege Day," commemorating the day in 1814 when Canadian forces barraged and burnt 50% of the famous port city down. The growing American Fundamentalist Church was one of the main sources of anti-French propaganda, cementing in the Yankee collective memory the "Great Betrayal" of France willingly letting Canada rampage across the Union, burning cities and killing and raping people who had never wanted to be a part of Napoleon's war anyway.
Burning Drummond's Effigy in Chapelton, Pennsylvania, by Edward Staten (1821, Maryland Gazette)
France had taken over New Portugal, including all of Brazil, following the 1808 formation of the Portuguese Confederation. It then declared volatile Brazil to be an "independent Brazilian Republic." A new identity was forming in the decade after, a strange mix of Spanish, French, Indian, and Negro culture. It received quite a bit of immigration from France itself by wealthy businessmen seeking to create new plantations (and sometimes unfairly rip farms out of middle-class Portuguese growers). Many Brazilians suddenly found themselves second-class citizens, and much of their wealth was what many would call "redistributed" to Frenchmen by Napoleon's government. Tensions finally boiled over in 1819, when a mob of native Brazilians stormed the Brazil government headquarters with torches and farming tools. Swiss mercenaries opened fire with their expensive rifled muskets, massacring the rioters. Napoleon declared martial law, and by 1820, the French were firmly the undisputed masters of New Portugal. The Republic was declared over and French rule came down with a heavy hand.
Flag of the short-lived Republic of Brazil
In Georgia, though it was still considered a Protestant country, Catholic presence was increasing dramatically, largely due to the romance between the country and Catholic France. Spaniards were coming in from New Spain, and shiploads of Catholic Irish and Scots were arriving daily. Savannah soon had its very own "Little Ireland," and the metropolis grew and grew after that point, soon adding Eastern European neighborhoods, German speaking ones, and more than a few Italian areas. Crime from the massive influx of immigrants, many of whom were homeless for extended periods of time as the nation adapted to the population boom, made Savannah's poorer districts a dangerous place. Savannah was "rife with Papal vermin infestations" according to R.U. newspapers, and deserved to be "exterminated by God like Sodom and the Whore of Rome itself." By 1840, Georgia would in fact be a predominantly Catholic country. In 1820, the West Florida Republic was finally annexed into the Republic of Georgia.
Despite the fairly decent treatment in other American countries, many immigrants recognized the most liberal republics were Virginia and Maryland. Virginia, as a largely agricultural country, needed as many immigrants as it could to bolster its fledgling post-war industry. French scientists and engineers had been in Virginia for decades, trying to help their good ally move beyond cotton and tobacco. When mass waves of English, Eastern European, and Austrian families arrived, Richmond may have been the national capitol, Newport News became Virginia's economic capital.Maryland had an almost purely maritime tradition. Whaling, and the general whale oil industry, was predominate, with Maryland having gone so far as having beaten the R.U. to the valuable rights to fish off the coast of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, something which incensed the Consuls. It was only fitting that, after several brutal winters and poor harvests in the homelands (1814-18), the famously seafaring Scandinavians began pouring into Maryland with their fishing and naval know-how and many of their own boats, forming a staunch conservative, ultra-Lutheran, working-class block of the population, which severely outnumbered the formerly predominate aristocratic Catholic population (though Catholics were never a true majority).
By 1825, the R.U. was lagging behind terribly, but in the coming decades it would form its own metropolis out west, nested along the Great Lakes. The Northwest Territory Act was signed by the R.U. Government in 1820. The states of Ohio, Michigania, and Iowai were was declared following the Act. Shicagwa was the site of several bloody massacres of the Pottawatomie and Miami Indian tribes at the turn of the century, but by 1825 it was already a booming Lake Michigan port town. Iowai's government had proposed the idea to the Chief Consuls in 1823, right before statehood, that Shicagwa was in a perfect place to cause maximum profit; iron mines nearby and fishing on Lake Michigan were available, as well as the possibility of textile mills and such. The business moguls then sent agents to Eastern Europe and other poor regions to lure people to Shicagwa with promises of fame, fortune, charity, and certain jobs.
Families would save up for years to pull together the money to cross the Atlantic, only to find Shicagwa an impoverished shanty town, where the port bosses built up a reputation for cruelty and the factories were complete sweatshops. The cheap Slavic labor would soon spiral out of hand, with the immigrants becoming slaves in everything but name. And while the slave population in the south was decreasing in the 1820s and "enlightened" plantation masters were supposedly treating blacks with more dignity, the Slavs were treated with utter contempt. When Philadelphia was faced with civil unrest caused by angry immigrants, the R.U. deployed its military to crack down dissent. Angry mobs would go into the ghettos and pelt rocks and bottles at the immigrants. Huge prisons were built in the Ohio wilderness, where any "trouble-makers" were sent. These prisoners were then sent to build roads and bridges with no pay. No understanding would ever come between the "subhuman" immigrants and the American citizens. As the AFC stepped up xenophobia under Reverend-Colonel Edward Everett, any understanding that could ever have been reached was forever lost. The American population had no idea that American businesses were essentially shipping in illiterate serfs on empty promises, and thought the Slavs simply anarchistic trouble-makers who were not true Americans and who refused to assimilate. To them, the immigrants were lawless troublemakers who came in mass numbers to destroy the morals of the Union with "Papist doctrine and false Orthodoxy." Not every American hated the immigrants, not even most Americans, but the minority was vocal. However, the true persecution would begin later in the century as immigrant workers would strike and riot across the nation, ultimately leading to the establishment of the Republican Union Military Police.
As immigrants from Protestant countries would get off the ships in New York, Boston, and the rest, AFC missionaries would immediately greet them and hand them a Bible and the Three Books of Manifest Destiny. The Slavs, Italians, and Irish would get off the ships only to be surrounded by police and required escorts to the slums where they were housed. The children of the "foreign beasts" were worked in wretched conditions for barely any pay at all. A Georgian traveler named Barnabas P. Jekyll wrote in his diary that "the state of the foreign little ones in the Union sickens me. It is an abomination. This damnable 'Republic' should be burned down."
As the year 1826 approached, it looked as if another year of the Pax Napoleonica would come and go. But growing discontent of the nations in the Imperial Alliance was getting out of hand, actions on the Gulf of Mexico were about to plunge the very unstable New Spain into a Revolution, and back in Asia, decisions would have to be made about the all-important colonial jewel of India, only now possible after a decade of stomping out insurrection. And last but not least, the Mysterious Orient was calling the White Man's name. These events would all be decided upon by an assembly of world leaders meeting in Vienna....
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The Napoleonic Wars may be over, but their legacy is going to influence the world for decades to come.
Reading the chapter gave me an idea: what if the Republican Union, aware of the British buildup in Canada and annoyed at Napoleon for trying to dragoon them, signed an alliance with the British? It probably wouldn’t be enough to shift the war, but it could see the RU solidified in its nationalism as it rallies to take on “the southrons who destroyed our great nation and their Papist enablers.”
They tried that. It didn’t work.
They tried that. It didn’t work.
Can’t help but wonder what would happen if cooler heads had prevailed in Canada and not burned and pillaged the RU. What would America and the world be like without that spark to stoke the fires of madness?
Well, America didn't have a good enough reason before 1812 to hate the French and the South *that* much. The "Great Backstab" that made them hate them is the war of 1812. Britain was still the big bad at that point, and there were real unsettled grievances from the Revolution dragging on. However, it's hard to irrationally hate them when you share the exact same heritage. The French could be seen as utilitarian imperialist Frogs and the South as greedy and lazy slave-whipping traitors who wanted America to get screwed over. Arguably, sorta true. The main reason I have Bonaparte win the wars ITTL is that the Union needs a "foreign evil empire" for this TL to really work. If they sided with Britain in 1812 they would win and America and Britain would reign for eternity and it would be boring.
Hey Napoleon53, I just realized there's one important figure that should be mentioned in the context of the War of 1812: Tecumseh. I would imagine ITTL, the British and Canadians would work with him to help establish his Confederacy. While Drummond and McDonald were wreaking havoc in the East, I would imagine Tecumseh and his warriors attacking and chasing out white settlers in the Old Northwest territory. After the British and Canadians were finally defeated, RU and Southern troops would head west, attack and destroy the Indian Confederacy, killing Tecumseh and ending his dream. What do you think?
I am amazed that France did not take India since that was Britain's most profitable property.
AeroTheZealousOne
Monthly Donor
"I've heard this before somewhere..."
Ironic echoing, much?
The madness begins in earnest...
The entrance of the Republican Union wouldn’t be enough to win in Europe, though, and could result in a scenario where the British hold on in North America (or it turns into the French burning and looting across the RU).
That's actually a super dope idea. The only thing I can't see is the vital torching of the Union by France. I don't think there would enough troops present to do significant damage before being defeated by the Union. Also the South wouldn't ally with the French if they were raping other American countries.
This song I randomly discovered would suit the Madnessverse. It makes me think of some Irish laborer named Riley running away from his job at Colonel Goodyear Railworks, dashing for the mountains and freedom.
The melody is certainly dark and driving enough that I can see a RU war montage set to it...
...with a horde of refugees trying to escape them...
...Maybe the conquest of "Corea"...
...Maybe "Riley" is a generic name for "inferiors" (possibly because it both "sounds Irish" and is easy to say)...
I love we both pictured the same thing. Riley, Ivan, Tony and Jose.