WI Frederick II died in 1733

i've been thinking more on the subject of the Wof AS...and I've come to a conclusion that there may never have been one in this eventuality... or if so a more likely quick one versus the upstart Charles Albert and perhaps a more reluctant Saxony( Who may not even participate either, I'm not sure there.

The assumption is that under August William Prussian activity will be somewhat more cautious, and less a bold stroke as it were. That may be but their is still Prince Heinrich even without Frederick he is still a very capable general in his own right and an equally capable diplomat, one not adverse to speaking his own mind on matters of policy concerning the electorate, even to Frederick himself to whom he disagreed on more than one occasion.

However Heinrich is not King, but he may be able to mold policy somewhat by force of will with respect to August William.

I suspect that instead of the bold pre-emptive strike of Frederick's which could be nixed by August you could see a vigorous Diplomatic offensive for further concessions instead. If anyone can get them Heinrich probably can as he is one of the architects of Poland-Lithuania's later first partition.

So say the Prussians settle for some minor border adjustments, a few towns, parishes or counties in the furthest reaches of lower Silesia closest to Neumark say in exchange for dropping their claims on Brieg ( The pretext OTL for Frederick's aggressive and rather bold stroke). They preserve their valuable standing army to fight another day and continue to conserve their meagre financial resources. Further more they still remain a dark horse whose potential is not yet realized by the other great powers.

The question then becomes, without a pre-emptive move by Prussia are Charles Albert and August III likely to be so bold. The Hapsburgs would have prepared in case the Prussians moved more forcefully if a diplomatic solution wasn't found. That means there in a better defensive position at the start.

Charles Albert may have rejected the pragmatic sanction OTL, but he does have the junior claim. August III is married to the elder daughter of the previous emporer. All of which is moot once/if Maria Theresa has a son.

However, if concessions are made to the Prussians...August and Charles Albert will probably get something however meagre it may be. Charles Albert may even stand for election and win and become HRE Emporer which may be a marginally longer reign without the stress of the W of A.S. Francis Stephen is likely to then be elected emporer just a little later...

this leaves the French free to intervene more forcefully if they wish in the War of Jenkins Ear between Spain and England. something which could easily go more favourably for the Franco Spanish forces against the English by themselves.

Louisbourg for instance can't be seriously threatened once fortified with French regulars Thus as a minimum... The French will likely make some minor gains in India at the expense of the English, both because they did OTL and without the fall of Louisbourg they won't have to return them and they are likely to have more forces to deploy to that theatre as well as the Caribbean if they are not needed in a serious conflict on the continent.

Best case they can get N.S returned ( even money here i think, this is prior to deportation remember so there are still substantial numbers of Fr. Acadians on the peninsula) and restrictions on English activities in Hudson's Bay that are competing with theirs in the St. Lawrence ( possible but less likely than the former) in addition to their gains in India. Newfoundland I think is pretty much decided at this point and there will almost certainly be action in the Caribbean as well in support of the Spanish at the very least.

AS i stated earlier its still possible to have a seven year war but it won't be recognizable to us as the financial and geo-political situation is entirely changed.

Prussia still perhaps aligned with France, or perhaps not if a realpolitik accomodation is reached between Austria and France. If nothing else a colonial war of this nature that gains them even modest gains will confirm what most in France of influence must already have known at an intuitive level and that being that they need to focus their efforts in the colonies or on the continent, but they cannot do both at the same time. That in itself could give impetus for a rapprochement with Austria.

this will almost certainly change the context of any future colonial conflict if it remains entirely that. Asw the French will be better positioned financially and strategically.
 
OK, this is looking interesting -- is it possible that a different "SYW", with French rappropoachment with Austria and so forth, that France does to Britain what Britain did to France in the SYW OTL? What could be the fall out from that?

Best case they can get N.S returned...

As an acronym connoisseur myself, what does NS stand for?
 
OK, this is looking interesting -- is it possible that a different "SYW", with French rappropoachment with Austria and so forth, that France does to Britain what Britain did to France in the SYW OTL? What could be the fall out from that?



As an acronym connoisseur myself, what does NS stand for?

N.S. : Nova Scotia which at this point is just the peninsula. The English have the harbour at Halifax but not much else in the way of settlements except perhaps Lunenburg. The place is still relatively speaking...infested with Frenchman ( who would really prefer to be left alone, but they are still Frenchmen). if the French make any kind of headway even minimal and even if they just hold their positions...


if Prussia is French aligned and Austria has no axe to grind, then its likely Hannover is toast and any gains by the English will almost certainly be negated by its loss.
 
So French power grows on the continent while the hold their positions in Canada and India?

How much could these domains grow in the 18th Century then, following from this?
 
As an example, could we see India united under French rule (as opposed to British)?

I think a fully french India is unlikely at this POD. England has already well established itself in Bengal and along India's eastern coast. By virtue of having a larger, better navy they could more easily reinforce, support, and transport their forces across the subcontinent. More likely see France establishing itself in southern India with the buffer states of Madras and Hyderabad separating the two powers spheres of influence.
 
The French can/will take Madras, Hyderabad, Mysore and Sri Lanka - but the British already have Bengal and Oudh, and the city of Bombay/Mumbai. However, with French India and British India glowering at each other, the Maratha can probably keep playing one against the other to maintain their independence; so I suspect you get 3 Indias, British, French and Native(Maratha).

Virtually any butterflies can allow the French to do better in the Indian theatre of a *7YW - OTL, most of the French fleet was destroyed by a hurricane, so the British won by default. Leave a day earlier or take a different route and the British have a fight on their hands.

Agree that the odds of the British trading back any colonial gains in order to keep Hanover are pretty high. With predictable results on British American morale.

Still think that no WoAS = no Madame P = Very Bad Things for French finances.
 
Still think no WoAs = no Madame P = very bad things for French finances

I'd like to see this settled -- if no WoAS, and France spends a lot less money on wars, what are the effects of this absence that would make up for such a drop in French spending?
 
Orry, comptroller-general of France, was competent, but his way of coping with French debts was essentially to embrace and enforce the medieval forced-labor system so that the Crown didn't have to pay its laborers. Madame P replaced him in 1745 with d'Arnouville, but Orry died in 1747 anyway, so he would have been followed by someone with rather less vision and vigor TTL. d'Arnouville instituted a 5% corporate income tax, which the nobility and Church both interpreted as a violation of their tax-exemption prerogatives; the nobility because they failed to distinguish between their personal income (which was tax-exempt) and the revenue of a corporation in which they were the major or principal shareholder (which was not exempt under this law, but the nobility didn't see it that way). It initially also applied to charitable nonprofits that were administered by the Church but not technically part of the Church; that got so much resistance that it was retracted in 1751.

The French deficit in 1745 was 100 million livres. Not the total debt, the annual deficit. Even subtracting war expenses from the equation, the French Crown had a problem. Contemporaries blamed the Crown's profligacy on Madame P, but this is probably ridiculous; neither Louis XV nor his court showed any signs of fiscal restraint before or after her. In OTL the Crown was kept afloat by both that corporate income tax and many "loans" from Madame P's family; without her, the Crown has neither. It can force loans, but this is a short term solution, since it shatters public confidence in the banking system and leads to fiscal collapse in the private sector. It can increase the taille, the head tax payed by commoners, but doing that by any significant amount makes the masses more revolutionary, not less (and the actual ability of the commoners to pay it is questionable, whatever rate it is assessed at).

So that's my case. Without Madame P, Louis has yes-men sympathetic to the nobility to advise him, and no personal connection to the banking establishment. He's also missing the only person (from what I could tell) who can plausibly be called a friend. Between greater stress on the King, the necessity of using coercion on the banks, and a less competent and ruthless comptroller-general, France looks in a bad fiscal position to me.
 
Well then, it seems I was wrong to think France skipping the WoAS would be such a boon as had thought -- even if it goes on to be in a significantly better position vis a vis its colonies.

I am going to retract a statement here, and put forth this revision -- that, whether or not Louis goes to war with Austria minus Prussia, it is likely to end up with an Estates General 30 years or so earlier.

Anyone want to correct this position? Because if I'm right, I think this needs a thread all its own...
 
I want to clarify one more thing that Shawn said:

No War = Louis never dismisses his old mistress in favor of Pompadour

How does this happen? I mean, Marie Anne de Mailly died in 1744, why would she not be succeeded by a woman with Jeanne Antoinette Poisson's reputation?
 
I think a fully french India is unlikely at this POD. England has already well established itself in Bengal and along India's eastern coast. By virtue of having a larger, better navy they could more easily reinforce, support, and transport their forces across the subcontinent. More likely see France establishing itself in southern India with the buffer states of Madras and Hyderabad separating the two powers spheres of influence.
Thats what I would suggest as well... A small French India along with Allies in the South with the British remaining in Bengal and the North... The Marathas could then play one off against the other but they might still be too weak even now to prevent being nibbled away at by both .

North America is hard to say... the Fre3nch can hold if they invest the time and effort and the ground troops to hold the fortified positions in conjunction with Native allies. Its not impossible... but the circumstances that allow them to concentrate on the colonies might not occur on a regular basis. Prussia may not always be an ally Austria may be opposed at some point, and the continental position cannot be totally abandonned in favour of the colonies... Eventually there will come a time when France is exposed in the colonies and on the continent and she will eventually lose something to the English.

The steady encroachment of English settlers over the Appalachians means that they will eventually fight a war over the interior best case they lose the sparsely held Native lands beyond Appalachians to the Mississippi but may hold Canada and perhaps Acadia and probably Michigan and the immediate hinterland of the Great lakes. It could also be they lose terr. piecemeal in smaller minor conflicts instead of wholesale as OTL. English settlers unencumbered by some Proclamation line ( The English do not have the same interest in the immediate term afterall and likely won't) Whats really going to matter when this occurs is the situation in Europe...are the French committed there as well. If Austria has no axe to grind against Prussia and the latter is still Fr. aligned but the spark that starts it is in the colonies..then its likely they will have no interest if they have in some way neutralized the A.N. Austria can look elsewhere. They can look to Italy, the Ottomans ( most likely ) or bolster P-L. France should then do quite well and at the very least hold its own or perhaps there are just exchanges of terr. based on Use possedetis ante bellum. Depends on the course during said conflict.

If the French can maintain their position in the St. lawrence untill at least the mid '70's then they probably will retain colonies on the mainland in some form The colonies there and in Acadia will probably have grown too much to be simply over run anymore by colonial militias. If they avoid revolution ( not a given if they still have to finance several wars even if they come out more or less on the positive side of things but its more likely or its simply milder given that France has a place to either send trouble makers if she likes, or more likely they choose to go on their own. as long as there is a place to go. so the variables leading to OTL Fr Rev will almost certainly be ameliorated somewhat if not altered all together.. I've heard many espouse here that but for the revolutionary wars France was on the cusp of a minor population explosion and would have needed an outlet for immigrants by about the turn of the century. which would then also feed into an earlier transition to full scale industrialization as well shortly after.

So absent the 20+ year conflagration we know as the French revolutionary Wars then this is likely to occur and demographically France might not make the transition to slower growth if they have settler colonies to let people go to...the inheritance laws which in part fed it I think were a by product of the Napoleonic era, but may be wrong there.

What you really need to decide is what is most likely to happen in the aftermath and where the major players are likely to fit...and it can definitely go any number of ways even if the French were to do better in this one conflict.
 
I've heard many espouse here that but for the revolutionary wars France was on the cusp of a minor population explosion and would have needed an outlet for immigrants by about the turn of the century. which would then also feed into an earlier transition to full scale industrialization as well shortly after.

So absent the 20+ year conflagration we know as the French revolutionary Wars then this is likely to occur and demographically France might not make the transition to slower growth if they have settler colonies to let people go to...the inheritance laws which in part fed it I think were a by product of the Napoleonic era, but may be wrong there.

What you really need to decide is what is most likely to happen in the aftermath and where the major players are likely to fit...and it can definitely go any number of ways even if the French were to do better in this one conflict.

Got a thread going on that, more or less.
 
On why no WoAS = no Madame P; Louis XV had a life-changing experience (a couple of them, actually) near the front lines at Metz. The one I'm concerning myself with is taking along his girlfriend, and thus being boo'd by his subjects for the first time in his life. She was cursed and pelted with mud, and his confessor refused to give him the sacraments while she was there. He dismissed her, essentially to appease his soldiers...and next took up with Madame P, a very different woman.

Had there been no front to go to and take the lady along, he probably would have been with her longer, and chosen a next mistress just like the ones he'd always had before - women of high noble birth without a shred of backbone and not much education.
 
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