1800:

January - Charles James Fox becomes Prime Minister. He immediately seeks peace with France.

General Wurmser liberates the Prince-Bishopric of Salzburg from the French splinter force under Lascelles. Due to the death of the Prince-Bishop, the future of the state is in flux.

February - In India, the Pitt-Rochambeau Accord is negotiated in Cuddalore, in which the BEIC and FEIC form an alliance against Mysore. Thus begins the War of the Ferengi Alliance.

March - Peace of Caen between Britain and France. This allows a rump royal France in Brittany and the Vendée, which Republican France of course does not officially recognise.

La Pérouse hears of the rumour of peace (though not the actual treaty, of course) from a Dutch merchantman, and decides to return to France.

Francis II, King of the Romans and claimant Holy Roman Emperor, declares the annexation of Salzburg to the Hapsburg dominions in an attempt to recoup face after losses to the Ottomans. However, this deals a death blow to the Imperial system and begins the Mediatisation of Germany.

April - Lisieux holds his first cabinet meetings, deciding the fate of the war. Thouret's plans for Rational square départements with elected Modérateurs is implemented. Ney is ordered to attack northwards from Swabia, and the Spanish front is given top priority. Hoche refuses to recognise Lisieux's regime.

General Bolognesi attacks Lascelles once more at Rosenheim in Bavaria. Lascelles' forces have by now acquired captured German artillery, however, and win the day. Bolognesi retreats to Reichenhall and requests orders.

May - The Austrians decide not to pursue Lascelles further into Bavaria, as they consider the Turkish front to be more important. However, this lack of regard for the Bavarians suffering under Lascelles' reign of terror both seriously injures Vienna's image in the Germanies, and brings about a change in Michael Hiedler. When he hears of the policy, he snaps, reverts from his stunned state and declares a War to the Knife against Lascelles. He becomes Der Führer, first and greatest of the Kleinkriegers, those Partisans who fight the Little War.

John Spencer-Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough - a former member of the anti-Rockinghamite faction in Parliament - first rises to public prominence with the publication of the Churchill Letter, a fiery broadside against the nascent Fox Ministry.

June - Ney opens up his campaign to the north, attacking the Hesses, Nassau and Würzburg.

Boulanger opens up his offensive against Spain.

Lisieux orders the expansion of the Canal de Bourgogne to connect the Mediterranean to the Atlantic by a series of canals. The new work is named the Canal de l'Épurateur.

July - Swiss Rising after Marat is killed by a flying bath. Lisieux backs down and agrees to deal with Hoche. The Treaty of Savoy divides Switzerland between France, Swabia and Italy, all of which put down the rising.

Boulanger breaks the Spanish Siege of Toulouse.

The British Government pays the Danes to act as protectors of Hanover in Germany in the face of the mediatisation wars, but this fails to curb the Danes' own territorial ambitions elsewhere.

The first election is held in the Kingdom of Ireland since the USE rebellion, under new rules introduced by de facto Lord Deputy Richard Wesley, the Earl of Mornington. This produces a more reformist-minded Irish Parliament, and Wesley creates the informal office of an Irish prime minister, with Henry Grattan taking the role.

August - The French Republican Army defeats the Spanish at the Battle of Pau.

Peace between America and France. In order that future American Commissioners to Britain may have the authority to sign such treaties themselves, the office is upgraded to Lord Representative.

Lisieux sends Admiral Villeneuve on a flag-flying mission around the world, which includes quietly distributing Revolutionary propaganda to many places, including Royal French Louisiana.

In India, the Royal French retake Trivandum from Mysore, while the British and Haidarabad beat the main Mysorean army under General Yaar Mohammed at Bangalore.

Treaty of Minden signed between the Dutch Republic and the Electorate of Saxony. This hands the Saxon possessions of East Frisia and Cleves to the Dutch in exchange for Dutch recognition of Saxon influence in Westphalia.

Lazare Hoche turns south and attacks the Italian regions occupied by Grand Duke Carlo's Tuscans.

September - Mysoreans defeat British in the Battle of Charmapatna, but fail to achieve any lasting gains, as the French are pressing in from the west.

Marshal Ney overruns Ansbach and Würzburger Mainz.

The Austrians eject the Ottoman army under Dalmat Melek Pasha from the siege of Zagreb.

Disgusted by the peace between Republican France and Britain and inspired by his friend Leo Bone's service with Royal France, Horatio Nelson resigns from the Royal Navy and takes up Sir John Acton's offer of service in the Neapolitan Navy.

October - In the face of successes from Ney, the leaders of Hesse-Kassell, Hesse-Darmstadt, Nassau and Würzburg sign the Pact of Mainz, later to become the Mittelbund, an anti-French military alliance.

At the Battle of Carcassonne, Boulanger beats Cuesta's Spanish army.

The Danes make territorial demands upon Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz, which reject them out of hand. The Mittelbund supports both Mecklenburgs.

November - The French take Llançà in Catalonia, the only place over the Pyrenees they take before the campaign season ends.

La Pérouse returns to France and is horrified by the excesses of the Revolution, though Lamarck and Laplace disagree. He is sent back by Lisieux with Surcouf, to raid Dutch ships under pirate flag from bases in La Pérouse's Land.

Tippoo Sultan moves his capital from Mysore-city to the fortress of Seringapatam, which is besieged by the British and French.

In response to the Dutch and Saxons dividing the region into spheres of influence, Waldeck, Wittgen and Eichsfeld join the Mittelbund.

December - Lazare Hoche has retaken the Tuscan-occupied Italian territories of Modena, Mantua and Lucca, but has sustained considerable casualties among his French veterans in the process. He begins raising all-Italian regiments throughout the Italian Latin Republic, who fight under a green banner and are known as the Italian Patriotic Army.

1801:

January - Boulanger recruits the new Admiral Lepelley for his new plan against Spain.

Storming of Seringapatam. The Tippoo's plan to blow up the British and French invaders is sabotaged by a treacherous minister, and he is killed in the battle. Mysore is carved up between Britain, France and Haidarabad, with the rump Mysore having the Hindu Wodeyar dynasty restored.

February - Conference of Hagenow defuses the Danish-Mecklenburger crisis, although the provisions of the treaty signed there will not become public for some time.

Admiral Villeneuve's fleet calls in at Norfolk, Virginia and apologises to the Continental Parliament for the death of Thomas Jefferson in a PR exercise.

Von Lützow's Prussian thrust into Saxony is defeated at the gates of Dresden. The Prussian efforts become dispersed thanks to Denmark-Sweden's entry into the war.

March - Death of Rochambeau; Julien Champard succeeds him as de facto Governor-General of French India.

Grand Duke Carlo of Tuscany appeals to King Charles VI and VIII of Naples for help as Hoche's new Italian Patriotic Army invades Tuscany. Charles hesitates and decides against intervention for fear of having his army encircled.

In recognition of his service as de facto governor of Hanover, King Henry IX gives the dukedom of Cambridge to his illegitimate relative, William FitzGeorge.

April - In response to Hagenow, the British governor of Hanover, William FitzGeorge, institutes his own defensive alliance against mediatisation. This is called the Alliance of Hildesheim and includes Hanover, Hildesheim, Brunswick, Bremen and the Schaumburgs. The Alliance is aligned with the Mittelbund but not part of it.

Emperor Francis II orders General Alvinczi to attack Wallachia in an attempt to draw the Ottomans into a broader war with Russia. However, the Russians are already in the process of negotiating with the Ottomans, and Constantinople secures Moscow's neutrality in exchange for withdrawing their influence from parts of the Caucasus they obtained during the Russian Civil War, primarily Georgia.

Denmark makes a descent on Danzig and takes the strategic port.

May - Boulanger launches two new offensives against Spain, Assaut-du-Sud and Tire-Bouchon. The first sees a general attack under Eustache against the Spanish forces north of the Pyrenees. The second is launched on a windless day, after the Spanish General Ballasteros has forced French General Drouet out of Llançà and the Spanish army is strung out thinly in pursuit: the new steamships under Lepelley carry French armies to land on the Catalan coast and sweep up Ballasteros from the rear. During a battle with Spanish conventional galleys, damage to the French steam-galley Palmipède's screw produces by chance a more effective propeller design, which swiftly becomes dominant.

Ney is halted for the first time by a joint Hessian-Würzburger army at Erbuch. The Franco-Swabian advance fails, and soon collapses.

The First Fleet of convicts leaves Britain, bound for the new penal colony in Michigan (Susan-Mary).

Paul François Jean Nicolas, the Vicomte de Barras, returns from French India having made his fortune serving under Rochambeau in the FEIC. He quickly ascends to a position of power in Royal France, becoming Comptroller-General to Louis XVII.

June - General Eustache killed at the Battle of Lourdes, in which the French are defeated by the Spanish under Joaquin Blake.

UPSA general election returns a Cortes dominated by the Partido Solidaridad, led by Juan José Castelli, which sympathises with the French Revolution and advocates territorial expansion at the expense of the Spanish colonies.

July - Mittelbund forces liberate the eponymous city from Ney's Swabia.

Admiral Villeneuve's fleet arrives in Nouvelle-Orléans and tries to demand the Governor-General, Charles-Michéle Ledoux, cleave to the Republican line. Ledoux calls Villeneuve's bluff and refuses.

August - Fall of Barcelona to Drouet's army. Elements of the Spanish fleet in Mediterranean ports flee to Naples, including the experimental rocket ship Cacafuego under the Catalan inventor Josep Casanova i Llussà.

Lazare Hoche's Italian Patriotic Army conquers Florence, capital of Tuscany. Tuscany is formally added to the Italian Latin Republic. However, the Tuscan army holds on in the south.

According to his orders, Admiral Villeneuve arms Haitian rebels in an attempt to undercut the Royal French in Louisiana.

September - Death of Philip VI of Spain; in his maddened last hours, he is heard to disinherit his eldest son Charles in favour of his second son Philip, but this is disputed. While France invades Aragon, Spain is plunged into civil war.

The Mittelbund armies are defeated by Ney at Ansbach.

Leo Bone a.k.a. Napoleone Bonaparte shocks public opinion in Royal France by being appointed de facto admiral of the fleet by King Louis XVII.

October - Alexandru Morusi, Prince of Wallachia and Moldavia, has raised an army and now halts Alvinczi's Austrian offensive.

HMS Enterprize, under the command of George North, sets off from Gosport Yard in Virginia on a mission of mapping and claiming the Oregon country for the Empire of North America.

November - Swabia and the Mittelbund sign the Treaty of Stuttgart. Swabia is left with Ansbach and Nuremberg but no Würzburger lands. The treaty defines the first strict borders for the republic. Afterwards, the Mittelbund nations look towards closer cooperation in the face of more direct aggression from France.

The First Fleet of convicts lands in Michigan after sailing up the St Lawrence and through the Great Lakes.

December - With Madrid burned half to the ground, the Felipistas are victorious. The Infante Philip is crowned Philip VII, and the Principe de Asturias Charles (the claimant Charles IV) flees to the northwest with his favourite the Count of Aranda and his general Javier Castaños.

1802:

January - Spanish General Cuesta ignores orders to attack the French and instead pursues the Carlistas into Asturias and Galicia, leaving Spain underdefended.

The Tuscan army under Grand Duke Carlo has been forced back to the port of Follonica and is surrounded by Hoche's forces. The Tuscan fleet attempts to evacuate them but is faced by Hoche's own Genoese-derived fleet. The two clash at the Battle of Elba and the Tuscans win a Pyrrhic victory, with too few ships left to perform the evacuation.

Admiral Villeneuve's fleet leaves the West Indies as Haiti erupts into rebellion under black leader Vincent Ogé.

Feburary - President-General Azcuénaga of the UPSA is assassinated.

La Pérouse and Surcouf land in Albi in La Pérouse's Land.

The Neapolitan-Venetian fleet under Nelson sails to Follonica and evacuates the Tuscan army to Naples. Nelson wins particular renown for a daring marine action that silences Hoche's shore batteries to make the evacuation possible.

Hoche appeals to Lisieux for French troops, despite the strained relations between the French and Italian Latin Republics, arguing that an Austrian invasion is around the corner. This is a lie, but Lisieux sees an opportunity and gives Hoche some of the Sans-Culotte Jacobin veterans he is trying to get rid of.

Italian scientist Luigi Galvani, best known for his studies of the heart, becomes a martyr and later national hero when, having refused to swear an oath to Hoche's Italian Latin Republic, he is imprisoned and dies of pneumonia in jail.

March - In the U.P. presidential election, Juan José Castelli defeats conservative opponent Juan Andrés to become President-General. He immediately being a programme of armament.

La Pérouse takes a sloop and goes with some supporters on a trading mission to the Mauré. He never comes back, having renounced the Republic, and he and his men act as advisors to the Mauré - both the Tainui and, due to some disagreeing with La Pérouse's leadership, the Touaritaux-Touaux Alliance.

Alvinczi withdraws from Wallachia.

In one of the Fox Ministry's greatest triumphs, the Parliament of Great Britain votes to abolish the slave trade.

Leo Bone marries Jeanette Debauvais, cementing his link with Royal France.

April - The French open the campaign season in Spain. Still fighting the civil war on the side, the regime of Philip VII and Saavedra is unable to resist the French advance, and three battles are lost in rapid succession. Most Spanish armies are surrounded and forced to surrender, with actual losses being relatively light.

Jean de Lisieux publishes his famous “25 Years” monograph, setting forth his vision for France's future - after the securing of all borders by the neutralisation of neighbouring states and the establishment of buffers, France needs 25 years to make its republican institutions entirely 'rational', and only after this will she attempt to replicate them elsewhere. This, it is implied, will require the defeat of Flanders and Royal France, and therefore Britain and the Netherlands as well, which will in turn require large armies. Lisieux believes the Spanish situation is secure and thus continually reduces the troops there, hampering French efforts to hold Spain down.

The Austrians, under General Pál Kray de Krajova et Topolya, successfully defend Zagreb against another offensive by the Turks' Dalmat Melek Pasha.

A new Irish constitution is signed into law. This repeals much of the old anti-Catholic legislation, but discrimination against non-Anglican Protestants remains.

General von Lützow fails to prevent the fall of Magdeburg to Saxon invaders thanks to Frederick William III's dispersal of his forces in Poland. He is upbraided and stripped of his rank and peerage by the king, and in fury at this treatment joins the “Berlin Plot” conspiracy.

May - In Britain, the British Army quietly begins constructing Fort Rockingham at Finningley, near Doncaster. After viewing the effects of the French War of Lightning on other countries, the Parliament of Great Britain is quite certain they need a fortified alternative seat of government a long way from anywhere.

Hoche, supported by his new Jacobin troops from France, invades the Papal States. In the north, the Austrians try a cursory attack over the Alps, but are beaten back by Hoche's Italian levies.

Death of King Hyojang of Corea. He is succeeded by his son Gwangjong, later called 'the Great'.

August - French troops enter Madrid. Philip VII and Saavedra have abandoned the city for Cordoba.

The Enterprize visits Hawaii and Captain North meets John Goodman, whose requests for direct Anglo-American intervention in Noochaland are rejected. Annoyed, Goodman turns to other sources instead.

Prussian General Albrecht von Gessler's army is pounded to pieces by the Saxons when they intercept him as he tries to cross the Elbe at Wittenberge.

September - Fall of Civitavecchia and Ancona to Hoche's army.

In the face of successes by Benyovsky and Lebedev, Tsar Paul declares the formation of the Russo-Lithuanian Pacific Company, granting them official status. He steps up his policy of sending his political enemies to Yakutia to serve as labour for the RLPC. The RLPC also includes Aleksandr Baranov's fur-trading operation in Alyaska.

All Prussian lands west of the Elbe is now lost to Saxony and her allies. The Berlin Plot reacts by arranging Frederick William III's death on the parade ground 'to a misfiring cavalry carbine'. His infant son Henry William becomes king, with plotter-in-chief Lützow as regent. However, this results in civil war and the complete degeneration of Prussian unity, with the anti-Lützow forces led by foreign minister Ludwig von Stülpnagel.

October - The French take Cordoba, the Spanish government having relocated in turn to Seville.

Naples finally intervenes directly, sending troops to try and save the Papal States as Hoche continues to easily defeat the small Papal army.

The Fox Ministry appoints the abolitionist Patrick Petty as Governor of Dakar and upgrades the Lieutenant-Governorship of Freedonia (still held by Olaudah Equiano) to a full Governorship. Equiano has the right to appoint a new Lieutenant-Governor as his deputy and de facto successor, and appoints Julius Soubise to the position.

November - The Spanish under Bernardo de Gálvez win an epic victory over the French under Drouet at Granada. However, this is too little too late to stem the French tide.

The Rape of Rome. As Hoche himself is campaigning in Bologna, his Jacobin troops go rogue, torch the city of Rome rather than trying to take it, and murder both Pope Benedict XV and countless senior Catholic clergy in the streets. This is perhaps the most catastrophic PR disaster in history, with the winter of 1802 seeing countless numbers of Hoche's Italian troops defecting or deserting, and widespread condemnation of the Italian Latin Republic.

December - With the fall of Seville to the French, Philip VII and Saavedra finally retreat to the fortress city of Cadiz.

In France, Lisieux reacts to the Rape of Rome by launching his long-planned purge of the Republican leadership on December 25th, known as La Nuit Macabre. At least eighty senior army officers and politicians of suspected Jacobin sympathy are assassinated. Lisieux blames the atrocities in Rome on the Sans-Culottes and begins his campaign to rewrite history and abominate Le Diamant, banning his La Carte. In this he is assisted by France's growing shutter semaphore communications network.

1803:

January - Portugal approaches the Carlistas in Spain with the offer of an alliance. Charles IV hesitates.

In Africa, the Hausa subject peoples of the declining Bornu Empire rebel against its authority.

February - The Neapolitan army wins its first major victory over Hoche at the Battle of Frosinone, helped by Hoche's desertions.

Philip Hamilton, on assignment to Liberty City in Freedonia, meets Olaudah Equiano.

March - The French take Cadiz and Philip VII surrenders. By the Treaty of Cadiz, the French allow a Kingdom of Spain to remain, but annex much of the border region to France and keep an armed presence in the major Spanish cities.

U.P. navigator José Rodriguez-Decampo, working for the Persians, is the first person to map the Shatt al-Arab using modern scientific techniques.

Hoche attempts to invade Naples but is defeated at the Battle of Teramo by Prince Mario Pignatelli Strongoli. Soon afterwards, however, he holds against an attempted Neapolitan follow-up at Ascoli Piceno.

The Austrians are defeated by the Turks before the gates of Sarajevo, finishing their attempt to retake Bosnia or southern Dalmatia.

Lützow's Prussian forces withdraw to Ducal Prussia with the infant King Henry Frederick as Stülpnagel rules in Berlin over a vanishing electorate of Brandenburg.

April - Saavedra assassinated, probably on French orders, leaving Philip VII bereft of advisors. He does the bidding of the French occupiers, issuing death warrants against Charles and the other infantes.

New York Assembly rather reluctantly abolishes slavery by gradual manumission, though the law does not apply to unincorporated territories or the Iroquois protectorate.

Archduke Ferdinand leads another small Austrian army over the Alps into the Venetian Terrafirma, but as of yet Hoche's forces in that region still hold firm.

A Louisianan force, together with allied Indians, is defeated by Vincent Ogé's Haitian rebels and the Haitian African Republic is proclaimed.

The Enterprize visits the Oregon country and stakes an American claim at Fort Washington (site of OTL Seattle).

May - With a combined Felipista/French army approaching, Charles IV agrees to the Portuguese demands, assenting to a Portuguese occupation of Galicia and the border cities, in exchange for ships to take him and the other infantes to the New World.

Edo, capital of Japan, hears that the situation in Edzo has stabilised and there is a new Daimyo of Matsumae. Emperor Tenmei and Shogun Tokugawa Iemochi are rather relieved, as they are still struggling to make the Japanese economy recover after several devastating natural disasters in the last two decades, and did not want to finance a military expedition. Little to they know that the Daimyo is only a puppet of Benyovsky's Russians, who have seized the city…

Austria and the Ottoman Empire sign the Treaty of Bucharest, ending the Austro-Turkish War; the treaty is very favourable to the Ottomans, who obtain the vast majority of the former Dalmatian territory of the Venetian Republic and also increase their holdings in Bosnia. The euphoric aftermath of the war in Constantinople, however, leads to a sense of victory disease and military conservatism.

The Cuba Question comes to a head in the ENA. The ruling Constitutionalists want to annex Cuba to Carolina and institute slavery and anti-Catholic laws. They win the parliamentary vote, but the Lord Deputy refuses to grant Royal Assent. Lord President James Monroe resigns and calls a general election.

In Guinea, the French geographer and explorer Pierre Jacotin is commissioned to perform an extensive survey of the lands the Royal Africa Company rules and trades with, mapping West Africa to a level of detail far greater than previously seen.

June - Nelson, having successfully argued that the French steamship base at Mahon in Minorca is too much of a danger, takes the Neapolitan fleet and attacks it on the night of the 15th. The attack is spearheaded by the Cacafuego's rockets and the new technology helps to confuse and panic the French, who are mostly celebrating ashore. Nelson sails his own Siracusa straight into the harbour, giving his famous orders “Tactics? Damn the tactics, sir - full speed ahead!” and sinks or burns a large portion of the French steam fleet almost single-handedly. He loses the use of his left arm after a vicious fight with one of the steamships whose crew was aboard and alert. The Neapolitans retreat in victory on the morning of the 16th. Admiral Lepelley is furious…once he gets back from his rendezvous with his mistress on the other side of the island.

The Saxons buy the neutrality of the Lützow regime by guaranteeing it all former Prussian territory outside the boundary of the HRE, removing a key front (and annoying the Danes and Poles).

Around this time low-level informal contact begins between the court of Corea and the Russo-Lithuanian Pacific Company.

Death of Timur Shah Durrani of the West Durrani (Afghan) Empire. His ambitious son Ayub succeeds to the throne, putting down the usual minor rebellions, but seeks a way to unite his feuding subjects…

July - Ivan Potemkin, exiled in Yakutia but working his way up to effective governor status, visits Matsumae in Edzo to observe Benyovsky's operations there. He agrees to support some of Benyovsky's less crazy plans.

The Portuguese General Julio Vieira attempts to take Badajoz from its maverick Spanish commander, Mateo María Núñez y Blanco, but fails.

News of Nelson's attack on Minorca splits the British ruling Reform Coalition, with the Liberals tending to praise Nelson and the Radicals attacking him. This rift slowly heals, but is instrumental in the fact that the Fort Rockingham project is very much a brainchild of only the Liberal half of the government.

The American general election returns a surprise increased majority for the Constitutionalists, even though their abolitionist wing breaks away under Bejnamin Rush to form the American Radical Party. In view of this, royal assent is reluctantly granted to a second, slightly watered-down Cuba Annexation bill.

August - Newfoundland petitions to join the Confederation of New England as a province, worried about the establishment of the Cloudborough penal colony in the north of the island. This request is eventually approved, meaning Newfoundland is no longer used as a penal colony.

Lisieux, in response to Nelson's attack, begins a new 'Rational' shipbuilding programme under Jean Jacques Coloumb. This involves the construction of the new, improved “Surcouf” class steam-galleys in Marseilles and Toulon, mainly using the slave labour of Jacobin-sympathising political prisoners.

September - Jean de Lisieux publishes his “Nouvelle Carte”.

The Dutch Navy begins assembling a fleet under Admiral Willem van Heemskerk at the Cape Colony in order to take action against Surcouf's privateers.

October - The Infante Charles of Spain, claimant King Charles IV, lands in the port of Veracruz in the Viceroyalty of New Spain. He, his four brothers and their soldiers begin a leisurely march to the City of Mexico.

Admiral Villeneuve's fleet briefly visits La Pérouse's Land to resupply Surcouf's privateer colony at Saint-Malo (on the site of OTL Albany, Western Australia).

November - Mutterings throughout southern Russia on the emancipation of the serfs finally erupts into violence, as Count Kirill Klimentov openly rebels in Voronezh. The Russian response is swift, to avoid looking weak to the Ottomans, but carefully organised by Heinz Kautzman to fit with Tsar Paul's propaganda of Slavic superiority to appease the former Potemkinite supporters.

Hoche, faced by his position disintegrating due to the fallout from the Rape of Rome and his poor political skills meaning that he cannot react as Lisieux can, moves his headquarters to Viterbo. Meanwhile, Cardinal Henry Benedict Stuart, the Jacobite claimant to the throne of England, is elected Pope Urban IX while in exile in Naples. He immediately issues a Papal bull urging Italians to turn against Hoche.

Lascelles' bullyboy general Cavaignac is killed by a Kleinkrieger woman he tried to rape, signalling a great victory for Michael Hiedler's forces in Bavaria.

December - Infante Charles arrives in the City of Mexico. After negotiations with the Viceroy, Martín de Gálvez, new constitutional reforms are announced on December 26th to better facilitate the raising of a colonial army, the Nuevo Ejército, to take back Spain. This, the brainchild of the Duke of Aranda, is known as the Arandite Plan: the Spanish colonies in the New World are grouped together as an Empire of the Indies, ruled by the King of Spain as Emperor. The old Viceroyalties are abolished and new Kingdoms are created - Mexico, Guatemala and New Granada - each ruled by one of the junior Infantes. Gálvez is made Imperial Secretary.

Urban IX's plan for an Italian uprising is facilitated by Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo, who organises an 'Army of the Faith', and Michele “Fra Diavolo” Pezza, who leads the Neapolitan Kleinkriegers.

1804:

January - Philip Hamilton is appointed to one of the junior-lieutenancies in the Royal Africa Company's Gold Coast possessions, where he meets lifelong friend James Wayne (son of Isaac Wayne II).

A rice plantation near Congaryton, Carolina is acquired by Douglas Eveleigh, the father of future American Lord President Andrew Eveleigh. One of his overseers is Alf Stotts Sr, father of the Great American War General of the same name.

February - The Russian army and its allies under Heinz Kautzman defeats Kirill Klimentov's rebels at Somovo.

Infante John of Spain's entourage arrives in Maracaibo as he takes up his new role as King of New Granada.

March - Klimentov executed in Red Square. Tsar Paul's minister Count Rostopshchin decides to reunite the Russian peoples by unifying them against an enemy - their Jewish neighbours.

Hawaii is unified as a kingdom under King Kamehameha, assisted by European adventurers including John Goodman.

The French forces in Spain, led by Drouet, launch 'Le Nouveau Poséidon', an operation aimed at striking the Portuguese and Carlistas simultaneously in Badajoz, Ciudad Rodrigo and Galicia.

King Louis XVII, on the urging of his ministers, marries Hélène, daughter of the Duke of Rohan. Their marriage will be loveless but will produce heirs.

April - Archduke Ferdinand finally gets a sizeable army from Vienna and proceeds to roll up the Italian Latin Republic in the north, occupying Venice.

General Ballesteros, fighting for the French, rescues Cuesta from a Portuguese army near Ponferrado and Valdés. However, Cuesta refuses to take orders from Ballesteros.

British Parliament passes the Reform Act (1804), increasing the franchise in England to all who own property worth 20 shillings (rather than 40).

Berlin falls to the Saxons and their allies and Stüpenagel surrenders.

John Spencer-Churchill has his friend Colonel Douglas Moore help in training the Oxfordshire yeomanry he is responsible for up to higher standards.

In Africa, the Hausa revolt against Bornu fails when the rebels are defeated at the gates of Gazargamo. A dynamic general, Idris al-Kanem, seizes control of Bornu and ensures the old empire will last for one more generation.

May - Treaty of Berlin divides the former Electorate of Brandenburg between Saxony and the Mecklenburgs, while the coastal Mecklenburger lands are given to Denmark-Sweden.

Death of Admiral Campbell, Admiral of the Fleet of the Royal Navy. He is replaced by Sir Humphry Pellew, hero of the Second Platinean War, who ends the standoff with the government about steam innovations and commissions an experimental steamship project based in Lowestoft.

The Bohemian Estates illegally convene and appoint Jozef Graf Radetzky von Radetz to lead a militia to drive the Cougnonistes from Budweis, Austria having refused to spare any troops.

Leo Bone begins his programme of building border forts to seal Royal France's defences in the event of a renewal of war with the Republic, using guns taken from scrapped ships. His political opponents dub him “Le petit Vauban” for this.

Richard Trevithick, having emigrated to Russia, settles in Tula (known for its armaments industry and nearby mines) and takes the Russified form of his name “Vladimir Tarefikhov”.

June - The summer sees violence against Jews in all major Russian cities and many smaller towns. In Krementchuk, Yitzhak Volynov survives an attack that killed the rest of his family and has a vision. Despite his youth, his charisma leads to him becoming a leader of many of the survivors of the pogrom. He leads them out of Russia and into the Khanate of the Crimea. Khan Devlet V is happy to gain so many skilled workers.

Neapolitans take Rome and Pope Urban IX is blessed in the ruins of St Peter's.

Ballesteros is forced to fight and kill Cuesta in battle at Allande before he can amalgamate their armies - while the Portuguese gain time.

General Devilliers storms Ciudad Rodrigo and takes it from the Portuguese.

Admiral Heemskerk's Dutch fleet falls upon Surcouf's privateer colony at Saint-Malo in La Pérouse's Land and burns it, but only a few French ships are caught there and the colony is rapidly rebuilt.

July - On the 24th, after months of preparation and recognising the fragile state of the newly reorganised Spanish colonies to their north, the UPSA declares war on the Empire of the Indies.

Ballesteros defeats Vieira at Lugo. Meanwhile, General Drouet sends assassins to try and kill King Peter IV of Portugal in Lisbon. The king is saved when an artilleryman, Jorge de Lencastre, raises the alarm and helps fight off the assassins. Lencastre is heir to the Aveiro peerage, attainted by Carvalho after the attempted coup of 1758, and in thanks Peter controversially restores the dukedom to him. The new 9th Duke of Aveiro becomes a friend and confidante to Peter's son and heir John, the two being of an age.

Italian Latin Republic disintegrates. Although Hoche and his core of loyal troops continue to win battles, they cannot be everywhere, and the Republic is being attacked simultaneously by Austria from the north and Naples from the south.

The British Parliament first convenes the Borough Committee, aimed at reassigning rotten boroughs' representation to the new industrial cities.

August - Hoche withdraws his remaining loyalists to Genoa.

Bourcier besieges Badajoz, but General Blanco continues to defend the fortress city against the French.

Death of Olaudah Equiano, first Governor of Freedonia. He is succeeded by his Lieutenant-Governor, Julius Soubise, though Soubise's privileged background provokes some resentment from the more radical and American-descended political factions. In order to appease them, Soubise appoints the radical leader Habakkuk Turner as the new Lieutenant-Governor.

September - First Meridian troops, under the command of General Pichegru, cross the border into the newly declared Kingdom of New Granada, a constituent part of the Empire of the Indies. General O'Higgins, commanding the New Granadine force in the region, decides to withdraw in the face of numerical superiority.

Hoche takes what is left of his army and evacuates from Genoa to Mataró in Spain using the Genoese fleet. Nelson pursues with the Neapolitan fleet.

Trying to take the Portuguese fortress city of Almeida before winter sets in, Devilliers is bloodily repulsed and forced to retreat to Ciudad Rodrigo.

Radetzky's Bohemians retreat from a battlefield rather than face the Cougnonistes. Radetzky spends the winter training them as St-Julien, leader of the Cougnonistes, grows complacent.

The Enterprize returns home after their important voyage, and George North achieves backing to send an overland mission to relieve the new Fort Washington he has established.

October - Hoche marches inland. Nelson attacks and burns the Genoese ships in Mataró, then strikes at the French in Catalonia, escalating the conflict further.

Bourcier, despite his lack of much artillery, finally makes a practicable breach in the walls of Badajoz and attacks it, but the Portuguese sally from Elvas and destroy much of Bourcier's siege preparations.

Ballesteros defeats Vieira's Portuguese once more at Ourense.

Admiral Villeneuve's fleet finally returns to France after their three-year worldwide voyage.

Queen Hélène of Royal France gives birth to a son, ensuring an heir for King Louis XVII. In a break from tradition he is named Charles Louis Philippe rather than being yet another Louis.

November - As part of a steady grinding campaign northwards through Lower Peru, Pichegru's Meridian troops take the town of Caraz. However, the poor countryside means his troops are starving, and so he leads the bulk of his army over the Andes to the coast to winter there - harried by O'Higgins enroute.

Bourcier retreats to Mérida for the winter, harried by the Portuguese. Blanco reluctantly agrees to work with the Portuguese.

Vincent Ogé's Haitian African Republic finishes overrunning and absorbing the Spanish half of Hispaniola, uniting the island under black rule.

December - Ballesteros pursues Vieira all the way to Vigo, but the Portuguese army is there evacuated by the Portuguese navy. Lisieux is unwilling to release any of France's slowly building new navy for what he sees as a sideshow, so the Portuguese enjoy near-impunity at sea.

1805-1808: The Third Platinean War. The United Provinces of South America fights the Empire of the Indies/New Spain, with Britain, the Empire of North America and Portugal eventually joining in on the New Spanish side. Though the Meridians win on several fronts, particularly in New Granada, they eventually succumb. The UPSA loses Upper Peru to the New Spanish, yields a few border adjustments to Portuguese Brazil, and significantly revises its political system to introduce term limits for the President-General. In addition, the Partido Solidaridad is discredited and conservative rule sets in.

1805:

February - O'Higgins' New Granadine troops retake Caraz from the small garrison Pichegru had left there.

March - The Neapolitan and Austrian armies meet on a line between Ancona and Orbetello, effectively dividing Italy between them.

Death of Pasquale Paoli, President of the Corsican Republic and icon of moderate republicanism. He is succeeded by Carlo Andrea Pozzo di Borgo.

Radetzky's Bohemian fighters make a surprise attack on Budweis and defeat the Cougnonistes. St-Julien is executed in Prague.

April - Pichegru stops O'Higgins' reconquest at Yungay.

Hoche appeals to Lisieux to re-enter the mainstream French forces, and the Administrateur reluctantly agrees.

The Royal Africa Company, on the advice of Alexander von Humboldt, transplants cinchona trees from UPSA-controlled Peru to West Africa in an attempt to supply the country with quinine in order to defeat the endemic malaria.

At Swellendam in the interior of the Dutch Cape Colony, the over-taxed frontier Boers (colonial farmers) rebel against the government in Kaapstaad and, influenced by the Racialist writings of Sijbren Vorderman, declare an Afrikaan Germanic Republic.

Treaty of Baton Rouge between the ENA and Royal French Louisiana (with tacit New Spanish assent) sees the Louisianans and New Spanish abandoning all claim to Hispaniola to the Empire in exchange for recognition of their other holdings.

The Morton and Lewis expedition is launched in the ENA with the intent of crossing the continent overland to reach the Pacific coast - more specifically Fort Washington.

May - Daimyo Hidoshi of Matsumae finally visits the ailing Emperor Tenmei in Kyoto to give him homage.

Pichegru deploys mountain troops recruited from the Tahuantinsuya against O'Higgins, forcing the New Granadines to abandon their mountain warfare attacks against the Meridian regulars.

Ballesteros continues his string of victories against the Portuguese in Galicia and northern Portugal.

Anglo-Dutch accord leads to British recognition of Dutch control of the Cape. The BEIC decides to plant a halfway-house-to-India colony further east, at Natal.

Admiral Surcouf returns to France from La Pérouse's Land, with many privateering successes to his name but ultimately having failed to draw the Netherlands into a war.

June - Ballesteros' army threatens Oporto.

Hermanus Potgieter, a Boer military leader, becomes effective consul of the Afrikaan Germanic Republic. He begins organising an army to take Kaapstaad.

A ship carrying Persian pilgrims to Mecca is attacked by Arab pirates, who slaughter several, including the son of Persian Grand Vizier Mirza Reza Khan Sadeghi. Mirza Reza wants to hold the Porte responsible, but for now Shah-Advocate Ali Zand Shah counsels peace, fearing a Durrani attack and a war on two fronts.

The Chinese learn of the Russian encroachment in the Amur Valley thanks to the Russo-Lithuanian Pacific Company, and dispatch troops.

Around this time, Freedish radicals begin the practice of 'abolitionist piracy', attacking Dutch and Portuguese slave ships and freeing their cargo, with the tacit consent of the Governor of Freedonia and especially his fire-breathing deputy Habakkuk Turner. A policy is instituted by which the freed slaves work for the Freedish government for six months to pay for these operations before receiving full freedom, often then joining the RAC's Jagun army.

July - Daimyo Hidoshi travels on to Shogun Tokugawa Iemochi in Edo. However, his “Aynyu servant” is recognised by the Dutch trader Pieter Roggeveen as Ulrich Münchhausen, captain of marines on the Lithuanian ship Skalvis. Tokugawa has the two of them arrested, but Münchhausen succeeds in a prison break and flees with the Daimyo after commandeering a fishing boat. The Shogun orders the drawing up of an army to retake Matsumae.

The Portuguese retake Ciudad Rodrigo, helped by Lisieux ruthlessly withdrawing French troops from Spain for operations elsewhere.

August - The assembled naval forces of the Empire of the Indies fight a battle with the Meridian Armada off Paita and win a narrow victory.

Castelli advocates the formation of a new fleet to sweep the imperials off the waves and then land an army in Mexico to win the war by taking the City of Mexico.

An American force led by General Isaac Wayne II (OTL Anthony Wayne) lands on Hispaniola and defeats Vincent Ogé's rebels, though a bitter Kleinkrieg conflict continues.

On the 18th, in light of Surcouf's failure to draw the Dutch into a war, Lisieux outlines a new strategy to the Boulangerie: France will assemble a great fleet of steam transports to land an army on the Dutch coast (on a windless day when sailships are of little use), while concentrating a large new army to simultaneously invade Flanders, ensuring the two allies cannot come to each others' aid. The plan is named Le Grand Crave, the great crab, after its two 'pincers'.

September - At Trujillo, the New Granadines fight hard but are unable to prevent Pichegru from winning a strategically crucial victory. O'Higgins' forces are evacuated by ship. The whole Lower Peruvian coastal plain now lies open to the Meridians, who are protected from malaria by quinine supplies from Noailles' plantations.

Oporto falls, after a siege, to Ballesteros.

The remnant of Hoche's Italian Latin Republic is reorganised as the Piedmontese Latin Republic, nominally ruled by Boulanger, who successfully manages to hold it against further advances by Archduke Ferdinand.

The Bavarian Germanic Republic is reduced to its capital Eichstätt as Lascelles' troops fear the Kleinkriegers more than him and desert, fleeing the country.

October - As part of Castelli's policy for neutral ships to be seized to help boost the Meridian Armada's size, Captain Alejandro Mendez attacks the Malvinas in order to obtain the pirate ships there. However, he also takes two Nantucket whalers, and his subordinate Captain Eduardo Alvarez inadvertently attacks a British ship with a largely American crew, HMB Cherry under the command of Lieutenant Jeremy Hayward. Alvarez tries to cover the incident up, but it soon gets out.

The Kleinkriegers in Bavaria finally launch an all-out attack on Eichstätt, and though they take casualties, defeat the French. Lascelles is killed and Michael Hiedler weds Petra Schickelgruber.

Reluctantly, drawn along by Nelson's policy of raiding the Spanish Mediterranean coast, King Charles VI and VIII of Naples and Sicily agrees to send an army under Pignatelli to Barcelona, proclaiming himself Charles IV of Spain.

Death of King Kamehameha of Hawaii to illness. The country is briefly gripped by civil war as rival claimants clash, but the intervention of John Goodman, now working for the RPLC, means the young heir comes to the throne as Kamehameha II, a weak ruler and effective puppet of the Russians.

November - First BEIC colonists land at Natal.

News of the Cherry Massacre outrages Fredericksburg. The Constitutionalist Party splits between pro- and anti-UPSA factions, with many MCPs believing that the UPSA should be supported so American settlers can gobble up New Spanish Mexico. A bill for an intervention against the UPSA is passed only with the support of the Patriot opposition. Having lost control of his party, James Monroe resigns as Lord President and the Lord Deputy calls another general election.

December - American election topples the divided Constitutionalists and Lord Hamilton's Patriots return to power. The American Squadron is withdrawn from Haiti to prepare for operations against the UPSA. The Third Platinean War has begun.

1806-1809: The Turco-Persian War of 1806-09. Persia, with Portuguese backing, fights the Ottoman Empire, with unofficial support for the Ottomans from Oman. After the Durrani Empire and Kalat stab the Persians in the back, the war ends with an Ottoman victory and Persian territorial losses - Ilam, Khuzestan and Azerbaijan to the Ottomans, Panjdeh to the Durranis and Jask to the Kalatis. Persia moves closer to the Portuguese; the Ottomans get victory disease, cementing Dalmat Melek Pasha's conservative militarist faction into power with strong Janissary support.

1806:

January - News of the Cherry Massacre hits London. Though Fox is reluctant, Britain joins America in declaring war on the UPSA. The Mediterranean Squadron strips the garrison from Gibraltar and Malta and transports it to the Falklands in support.

February - Treaty of Rome formalises the division of Italy between the Hapsburgs and Neapolitan Bourbons. Hoche's former Italian Latin Republic is recreated as the Hapsburg Kingdom of Italy under Archduke Ferdinand. Tuscany is separated and returned to Carlo I, but though Hapsburg he remains in the pocket of the Neapolitans, and his son Carlo II marries Princess Carlotta, daughter of Charles VI and VIII. The Papal States are reduced to Lazio.

The French under Drouet win a tactical victory over Pignatelli's Neapolitans at Albacete, but fail to fling them back into the sea.

The Turkish Grand Vizier, Mehmet Ali Pasha, dies - possibly from poison. Sultan Melek V appoints Dalmat Melek Pasha, hero of the war with Austria, as the new Grand Vizier. At first it appears that a Turco-Russian war is on the cards, and both sides mass troops on their borders.

March - Able to concentrate his forces by Franco-Spanish disarray elsewhere, Vieira succeeds in driving Ballesteros out of Oporto and the whole of northern Portugal.

By this point, Leo Bone has effectively become prime minister of Royal France.

Philip Hamilton and James Wayne, among many other American volunteers, temporarily leave the Royal Africa Company to take up commissions with Admiral Perry's fleet as it docks in the Company's ports enroute to the Third Platinean War.

April - The Japanese launch an attack on Edzo across the Strait of Tsugaru. However, their lack of a serious navy means that their transports virtually commit suicide against the Russo-Lithuanians' dozen or so ships of the line and frigates. A small portion of the Japanese army successfully lands, but is defeated by the Russo-Lithuanian force, which includes Aynyu and Japanese sympathisers trained in European warfare.

A punitive expedition by the Dutch East India Company aimed at bringing the Boers back into line is badly defeated by Hermanus Potgieter at Tulbagh - the VOC had severely underestimated the Boers' manpower and leadership.

First elections to King Louis XVII's experimental Grand-Parlement in Royal France produces a largely conservative assembly.

Battle of Ciamberì: Collapse of the Piedmontese Latin Republic as General Bourcier is defeated by the Archduke Ferdinand and withdraws to the Saône.

A Royal Navy taskforce under Admiral Sir William Byng and Commodores John Harrison and Christopher Perry reaches Falkland's Islands, swiftly capturing them from the small Meridian garrison and stationing most of his troops there. The fleet divides into three.

Battle of Cocos: the Meridian Armada under Admiral Ramírez defeats the remnants of the New Spanish fleet under Admiral Ruiz.

Shah-Advocate Ali Zand Shah of Persia dies from an infected insect bite. He is succeeded by his son Zaki Mohammed Shah, who goes along with Grand Vizier Mirza Reza Khan Sadeghi's plans for war with the Ottomans.

May - Humboldt's plan pays dividends for the Royal Africa Company when quinine dramatically heals the King of Dahomey, who had been dying from malaria. The drug immediately becomes popular among Africans, with the Company both reaping profits and gaining much volunteer labour to grow more cinchonas.

Drouet reacts to dwindling French troops in Spain and defeats on all fronts by withdrawing his forces to Madrid and defending the 'French road' that stretches northwards to the border.

Dutch Stadtholder William V dies and is succeeded by his son, who becomes William VI. A more conservative and paranoid ruler, he exiles Dutch Linnaean thinker Sijbren Vorderman to Denmark.

The Republican French colony of Saint-Malo has by now recovered from Heemskerk's attack, and is now self-sufficient - while Albi suffers under Lamarck's “scientific” principles and Bieraroun is burnt by the Ouarandjeré people.

In Canton, Dutch East India Company trader Dirk de Waar first meets Hao Jicai, a local mandarin and secret member of the Heaven and Earth Society or Sanhedui, a group aimed at the restoration of the Ming Dynasty. This partnership will eventually lead to the group known as the Phoenix Men, including the Royal French and British traders Michel Ouais and Henry Watt, the businessman Hu Kwa and the Governor of Canton Wen Mingxia.

June - Death of the Emperor Tenmei of Japan. This, coupled with the spreading news of the shocking defeat in the Strait of Tsugaru, leads to a breakdown of order, with the Daimyos of the Hans on the islands of Sikoke and Kiusiu asserting their independence. The Emperor's son Yasuhito, considered unsuitable by many for his absolutist philosophy, is displaced by the noble Kojimo, who (it is claimed) was adopted by the Emperor on his deathbed. The Imperial court's ministers are divided between the two. Yasuhito flees to the south and is supported by the rebels, led by the Satsuma and Choshu Hans. The Second Warring Courts period begins, with the southern court being supported with Dutch weapons from Nagasaki and the northern court, despite the irony, buying from the Russians. The RPLC's position in Edzo is, for the moment, secure.

Battle of Valdes: Admiral Perry's flotilla destroys a Meridian Armada force off the Valdes Peninsula. Philip Hamilton distinguishes himself.

The Chinese surround several Russian forts in the Amur valley and march their inhabitants - including Lebedev - back to Beijing.

July - By means of an amphibious descent, the Portuguese take Cadiz.

With the withdrawal of the American fleet from Haiti, Haitian Kleinkriegers are able to resupply and spread their rebel message to the slave plantations on nearby British islands. Accordingly, a British squadron and three British regiments are deployed there to bring the island under control. Lord Hamilton refuses Carolinian requests to send their own troops there (obviously to presage another annexation as with Cuba) and instead sends the Carolinian regiment (the 101st) to Ireland for training. At the same time, Irish troops are used to resupply the Gibraltar and Malta garrisons and half the Home Squadron is used to create a new Mediterranean Squadron under Admiral John Jervis, based at Corsica. The remaining Home Fleet is under the command of Admiral Michael Parker.

The Austrian advance into southeastern France is curtailed with General Bourcier's defeat of Alvinczi at the Battle of Rives. The front stabilises for a time as the Austrians instead plan an attack on the Swabian Germanic Republic via what was Switzerland.

15,000 Meridian troops led by General Hector Fernández are landed at Acapulco.

End of the Hawaiian Civil War and the accession of Kamehameha II, the Russian puppet king.

The Morton and Lewis expedition reaches Fort Washington in Drakesland, having successfully crossed the continent overland.

August - British general election returns the Foxite Reform Coalition with a slightly increased majority both for the Radical and Liberal factions: the Tory opposition remains divided and cannot put together a credible agenda beyond knee-jerk reactionism.

Admiral Byng's fleet burns and occupies Valvidia in the UPSA and then begins performing random amphibious descents along the coast, hampering the UPSA's ability to fight its war in New Granada via resupply from Lima.

September - American troops led by General Andrew Clinton begin landing on the Atlantic coast of the UPSA with the intent of marching on Buenos Aires.

October - Admiral Ramírez launches a daring surprise attack on Byng's fleet in Valvidia harbour, sinking several ships, including the British flagship Royal Frederick. However, Commodore Harrison's fleet returns at exactly the wrong moment and the Meridians are completely wiped out, leaving General Fernández's troops in Mexico stranded without resupply.

General Clinton's forces begin their attack on Buenos Aires.

Turco-Persian War of 1806-09 breaks out.

November - Meridian forces under General Miguel Bautista successfully repulse an attempted attack by Clinton, who retreats and instead tries to cut Buenos Aires off from resupply.

General Fernández successfully intercepts a Manila galleon bound for the exilic Spanish in Mexico, but after this strategy of attempting to bankrupt the Spanish fails, resumes his march on the City of Mexico.

December - The Guangzhong Emperor of China sentences Lebedev to death as a persistent treaty offender, but the Emperor is killed in his sleep by Cossack bodyguards who still held debts to Lebedev. The Russian captives are killed in their escape, but China descends into civil war as chief minister Zeng opens the tablet on which the heir's name is written, only to find the Emperor never changed it from his dead first son. The War of the Three Emperors begins.

1807:

January - Le Grande Crabe, the French offensive aimed at taking the Low Countries, is finally ready - the army is assembled and a vast steam transport fleet has been assembled. The French wait only for the right opportunity to make their move.

The Guangzhong Emperor's two sons Baoli and Baoyi proclaim themselves the Yenzhang and Chongqian Emperors respectively. As Yenzhang and General Yu are about to fall upon little-defended Beijing with the army they were using to pursue the Russians, Chongqian - heavily influenced by his father's prime minister Zeng Xiang - chooses to flee and relocate his own capital to Nanjing.

February - The Boers besiege Kaapstaad and attempt to starve the city out, helped by the fact that most of the VOC's ships have already left for European operations. Governor Cornelisz Jacob van de Graaff institutes a draconian rationing policy which proves highly unpopular.

General Ballesteros switches sides, supporting the Neapolitans against Drouet's French.

The Russians launch their Great Eastern Adventure, sending 75,000 troops overland to support the Russo-Lithuanian Pacific Company as China collapses into civil war.

James Monroe steps down as leader of the Constitutionalist Party (and therefore Leader of the Opposition) in the ENA. His replacement is Wade Hampton.

March - The Boers take Kaapstaad, fighting in the streets against van de Graaff's weakened armies, but the loyalists are saved when a VOC fleet arrives from Batavia with reinforcements.

Lisieux publicly announces Le Grande Crabe with a declaration of war on Flanders and the Dutch Republic. Boulanger takes command of the army and invades Flanders, while Villeneuve takes France's sailfleet and fights the Dutch under Admiral Carnbee on the 20th. Villeneuve wins a Pyrrhic victory and manages to land a few troops on the Dutch islands off the Zuider Zee, but more importantly Admiral Parker sends part of the British Home Fleet to keep an eye on Villeneuve.

On the 22nd, calm Channel weather strikes and the chance is there to use the French steamfleet to support Villeneuve's landings, safe from intercept by sail. But Lisieux suddenly sees the vulnerability of Britain and unexpectedly orders the steamfleet to redirect its invasion landings to the Kentish coast. Via France's semaphore network, the changed orders are swiftly transmitted.

On the 23rd, the French launch their invasion. Surcouf leads a fleet of steamships into the Channel, but is followed by a second fleet under Lepelley - unbeknownst to the British, the French have transported their Mediterranean fleet through the expanded Burgundy Canal to the Channel, doubling the size of their forces there. Hamstrung by the lack of wind, Parker struggles to respond to the French, sinking some of their ships but ultimately facing defeat. His flagship HMS Mirabilis is destroyed by the French rocket ship Enfant de Tonnerre, which also sinks in the process.

General Hoche, commanding the armies on the French fleet, lands 8000 Italian troops under General Modigliani on the Kentish coast to distract the British, then sails up the Thames and attacks London itself, landing his main force there. The British garrisons are defeated and all who can, flee. Hoche seizes the gold of the Bank of England. 300 British troops under Ashcroft and Blount hold back the Italians for a day in “Thermopylae-on-the-Downs”. Joseph Dashwood and the Hellfire Club help the French in exchange for revenge attacks on the Church of England. Hoche goes to Fox to receive his surrender, but Fox blows them both up with a magazine. Angrily assuming this was a deliberate trap set by Dashwood, French soldiers hang him, but inexpertly, and Dashwood survives with a hanging scar. In the confusion, London burns down and the fleeing King Henry IX is caught and phlogisticated, along with his queen and daughter, by the French.

April - Boulanger defeats the Dutch-Flemish forces under Steffen von Wrede at the Battle of La Belle Alliance when his agents successfully persuade the Walloons among the enemy to switch sides.

What remains of Parliament convenes at Fort Rockingham near Doncaster and proclaims the infant Prince Frederick (in America) as Frederick II, then appoints the Duke of Marlborough as regent; Churchill had retreated with his trained milita from Oxford.

Seven Republican French regiments under General Devilliers launch a rapid invasion of Royal France, which swiftly grinds to a halt as it smashes against Leo Bone's network of border forts.

Thanks to General Clinton's strategy, Buenos Aires is now on the verge of starvation, yet it is at this point that the Anglo-Americans learn of the French invasion of Britain.

The Corsican Republic declares war on France, supporting Nelson's Neapolitan Navy.

Fernández's Meridian forces are poisoned in the city of Cuernavaca, but nonetheless beat off an attack by the New Spanish Nuevo Ejército. However, when they occupy the deserted City of Mexico, the New Spanish destroy the bridges and trap them in the city, burning it. Much of Fernández's army is destroyed, ending the UPSA's attempt to strike to the heart.

In the UPSA, British-born electrical researcher Henry Cavendish dies.

Scattered fighting along the Yellow River between the two Chinese claimants' factions, Yenzhang in the north and Chongqian in the south. This will continue for the rest of the year, hardening up as both Emperors summon their armies.

Around this time in Freedonia, the radical preacher Gabriel Brown begins preaching his Freedom Theology, which partially blames native African rulers for the horrors of the slave trade and calls for them to be toppled.

May - Liège, full of radical sympathies, overthrows its Dutch overlords and joins with Boulanger's invading French, along with many other Walloons. At the same time, the Mittelbund and the Alliance of Hildesheim declare war on France and send troops to Flanders.

Battle of Cambridge: Michael Sackville-West, the Earl de la Warr, refuses orders from Churchill to retreat and consolidate forces, instead attacking the French under General Gabin and being soundly defeated. Cambridge is put to the torch, though most of the damp city survives.

Sir Lyell Brotherford, commander of the 56th West Norfolk, tries to bring his troops away but is assassinated by the Bishop and Count Palatine of Ely, Philip Matthews, who commandeers the force and then orders the Vermuyden works dismantled so that the Isle of Ely is restored, the waterworks protecting the rest of East Anglia from the French.

Controversially, the Austrian government imprisons Jozef Graf Radetzky von Radetz for his activities in serving the 'illegal' Bohemian Diet against the Cougnonistes.

June - Battle of the Solent: Admiral John Jervis, aided by the Royal French and the experimental Whistler ships out of Lowestoft under Commodore Frederick Keppel, destroys much of the Republican French steam-fleet. Admiral Lepelley is killed and Admiral Surcouf is shipwrecked, though he eventually escapes to the UPSA.

French advance north through England slows thanks to extended supply lines and the water barriers. Rumours of an Irish army landing in Liverpool abound. Edinburgh briefly rises to form the Scottish Celtic Republic under Thomas Muir, which is swiftly crushed by the Oxfordshire Yeomanry under Joshua Spencer-Churchill, the Marquess of Blandford.

Meridian General Pichegru besieges the New Granadine capital of Santa Fe, but O'Higgins holds him off long enough for Nuevo Ejército reinforcements to arrive. Pichegru withdraws in good order.

July - Madrid falls to the Portuguese under Vieira. Philip VII is shot by Drouet, who then kills himself. The infant king Alfonso XII falls into Portuguese hands. The Neapolitans swiftly roll up the east of Spain.

The “Irish” army meets the British at Emley Moor and it turns out to be an allied Anglo-Hiberno-American force led by Sir John Moore, Richard Wesley the Earl of Mornington, and John Alexander of Carolina.

Devilliers finally breaks through Leo Bone's fortress network into the interior of Royal France. The Royal French retreat to their fortified cities.

Corsican and Neapolitan forces under Nelson occupy the city of Toulon in a bloody amphibious descent, then grimly hold on as Bourcier tries to retake it.

August - The British and allied counter-attack against the English Germanic Republic begins in earnest with the Relief of Bedford.

Devilliers besieges Brest, having heard Leo Bone is in the city; however, it soon becomes apparent that the Royal French are moving their commanders by sea and using misinformation to distract the Republicans.

Lima rises in rebellion against the Meridians with support from American troops, severely hampering the supply line to Pichegru's army through Upper Peru. At the same time, Portugal declares war on the UPSA.

Phaungasa Min, Konbaung King of Burmese-Arakan, hears of the death of the Guangzhong Emperor and prepares another attack on Ava. For the moment, however, General Sun Yuanchang's Chinese troops remain in the area, and the Konbaung await a moment of weakness.

September - The French occupying the town of Cervera, after many years of unusually peaceful coexistence, are set upon by the furious townsfolk due to Philip VII's death. The town's mayor, Francisco José Sanchez y Rodriguez, is branded a traitor and collaborator and his family is killed by the mob - all except his young son Pablo Rodrigo Sanchez y Ruiz.

Battle of St Albans: English Germanic Republic, cut off from resupply from the Continent thanks to the Royal Navy once dominating the Channel, swiftly begins to collapse.

President-General Castelli is killed while trying to withdraw from the besieged Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires surrenders to the Americans a few days later.

Lamarck dies of a snake bite while on a botanical expedition in La Pérouse's Land; the governorship passes through the Lascelles wannabe René Demoivre.

HMS Dauntless visits Fort Washington in Drakesland. It brings home Morton and the feverish naturalist Weston, suffering from snakebite.

October - Saxony and Denmark-Sweden declare war on France in support of the Dutch and Flemish.

Descent on Harwich: Major Alexander Cochrane and Commodore Keppel's steamships take the town, encircle General Gabin's army, and destroy it.

La Roche falls to General Devilliers' army.

Political chaos in Cordoba. General Ayala manages to hold back the Anglo-American forces from the city while a new conservative political alliance, the Reagrupamiento por la Unión (“Rally for the Union”) seizes power from the collapsing Partido Solidaridad.

John Goodman visits Fort Washington and informs Lewis that he has established a Russian fort to the north (OTL Vancouver) called Baranovsk.

November - Battle of Islington: Saissons is defeated by Wesley while Moore takes London from the rear. Saissons is executed, while suspected collaborators (including Dashwood) are shipped to Susan-Mary.

Keppel's steamships sink General Modigliani in his attempt to flee.

The Saxons and Danes attack Swabia, pre-empting an attempt by the Austrians under Alvinczi to invade via the former Switzerland. In a bit of diplomatic jiggery-pokery behind the scenes, Ney surrenders the Republic without a fight in exchange for amnesty for his men. The Swabian Germanic Republic becomes the Duchy of Swabia under Frederick IV, exiled Duke of Württemberg.

The Yenzhang Emperor's forces besiege the Chongqian-held city of Xi'an.

December - Final destruction of the last remnants of the English Germanic Republic. Privy Council meeting convened in the ruins of London. Churchill speaks of the need to take the fight to the enemy once more.

General Pichegru is surrounded near San Francisco de Quito by combined New Spanish and Portuguese forces, and is forced to surrender.

Reagrupamiento’s leader, Miguel Baquedano y Zebreros, seizes control of the UPSA while pledging to rule for no more than three years and hold new elections and a constitutional convention. He seeks immediate terms with the UPSA's enemies.

1808:

January - General Thomas Græme is sent to descend on Ostende with 20,000 men to attack Boulanger's flank, in a typically quixotic Churchill scheme. Græme is defeated by General Armand Poulenc at the Battle of Dixmuyden and is evacuated from Dunkerque. The whole business is a disaster, meaning Charles Bone's view of supporting Royal France gains supremacy in the Privy Council.

Charles Theodore II and Steffen von Wrede withdraw to the Palatinate, allowing Brussels to fall to Boulanger without a fight. The Dutch implement their Water Line defences, preventing Boulanger and Poulenc from invading the heart of the United Netherlands.

General Marceau tries to retake Toulon from the Neapolitans and Corsicans and is bloodily repulsed.

The wandering orphan Pablo Sanchez is recruited by a local Catalan Kleinkrieger group as a drummer boy.

February - Five British and allied regiments under Wesley occupy Granville in Normandy, distracting Devilliers from his growing successes against the Royal French fortress cities. Devilliers reconstitutes his army and marches to confront them. Simultaneously, another British force under Sir John Moore lands at Nantes and relieves the besieged cities.

The rump Parliament of Great Britain moves from the Doncaster Mansion House to the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford. As a consequence of these cramped venues not allowing voting lobbies, a new voting method is developed involving holding up a white or black paddle.

The siege of Xi'an is relieved by Chongqian's reinforcements from the city of Chongqing. Yenzhang's forces retreat in good order but continue to hold the northern bank of the Yellow River.

After the Konbaung advance into Burma has bogged down thanks to General Sun's resistance, Phaungasa Min has his troops withdraw to a defensive position and await a new opportunity to strike.

March - Informal agreement between Portugal and Naples to divide Spain once more as Castile and Aragon, with Castile being ruled by the Portuguese puppet Alfonso XII and Aragon as another dominion of Charles VIII and VI (and now IV).

Battle of Draguignan: the Archduke Ferdinand and Alvinczi finally achieve a decisive victory over Bourcier.

Another attempt by Marceau to retake Toulon is on the verge of success when he is forced to retreat to Marseilles to support Bourcier.

Revolution in Albi against the tyrannical governor Demoivre. Revolutionary leader Locard re-establishes contact with La Pérouse in Autiaraux and the colony's famine is finally relieved through trade.

Hawaii stabilised as an effective Russian vassal state.

April - Devilliers fights Wesley at Laval and wins a Pyrrhic victory. Wesley makes a strategic retreat southwards, Devilliers pursuing.

Treaty of Rio de Janeiro formally ends the Third Platinean War. The UPSA surrenders Upper Peru to the Empire of New Spain, while Portuguese Brazil receives several favourable border adjustments both from the UPSA and New Spain. The Anglo-Americans get nothing beyond trade concessions and confirmation of British possession of Falkland's Islands.

The Dauntless rounds Cape Horn on the way back to Fredericksburg; Weston wakes up from his fever and proclaims what will be the beginnings of the Moronite religion.

The Kingdom of Ireland holds its first election since the new constitution came in in 1801. The election returns a more solid majority for Henry Grattan and his supporters. This encourages Grattan to pursue more muscular reforms, including allowing Catholics to stand as candidates for election as well as voting.

May - Devilliers finally catches Wesley at Angers. Devilliers is killed at extreme range by sharpshooter James Roosevelt in the “shot heard 'round the world” and the Republicans are routed.

The Dutch astronomer Arjen Roelofs discovers the first 'sub-planet' (asteroid) although their precise classification will not be settled for some years and he initially tries to claim it is a planet. It is eventually named Agamemnon, with astronomers using the names of mortals from Greek legendary history for such bodies.

June - All Republican forces thrown out of Royal France.

The band of Catalan Kleinkriegers who adopted Pablo Sanchez are folded into the regular Neapolitan army.

July - A Dutch naval squadron sails to Ostende and helps temporarily relieve the French siege of Bruges. Poulenc is sent to defeat them.

In China, Yenzhang begins withdrawing his Manchu Banner soldiers from Manchuria proper and assembling them for an attack on Kaifeng. The Coreans under the ambitious King Gwangjong take note.

August - The armies of the Mittelbund confront Boulanger in occupied Flanders.

The Royal French take the strategic town of Royan on the Gironde Estuary.

In an audacious move, King Gwangjong's Coreans attack Manchuria with grand irredentist aims on the historically Corean region of Balhae.

October - Battle of Adenau: French General Henri Trenet defeats the Mittelbund General Konrad von Löwenstein.

November - Battle of Mersch: The French are driven back by General von Wrede. Boulanger combines his armies at St. Hubert for a counter-attack, but then retreats to Brussels to winter, unwilling to give up such a forward position.

Yenzhang launches the Kaifeng campaign.

December - Corean forces conquer the city of Andong (“Eastern Pacification” of the Coreans), which they rename Seoseungri (“Western Victory” over the Chinese).

The Portuguese government sends a mission to re-establish diplomatic relations with Great Britain after the former Portuguese ambassador was killed during the French invasion the previous year. A junior member of the mission is the young Duke of Aveiro, sent away by Peter IV's ministers in part due to paranoia that he was growing too close to Peter's son John. However, this backfires and only makes John dislike Peter's ministers and resolve to dismiss them when he becomes king. Meanwhile, Aveiro's experiences in Britain–in particular how he notes that the Americans no longer consider themselves to have much of a shared identity with the British–will influence his ideas about colonial government, the 'Aveiro Doctrine'.

1809:

January - Brussels, now starving and resentful thanks to the huge French armies encamped there, is attacked by the forces of the Mittelbund, Flemings and Alliance of Hildesheim. Bitter winter urban fighting sets in.

Petersburg Colloquy in the capital of Russia. Emperor Paul and his ministers decide to enter the war in Europe, sending ten regiments directly to France using Danish transport ships.

American general election returns an increased majority for Lord Hamilton's Patriots thanks to the war fervour.

February - Pascal Schmidt, then a young Hessian soldier, controversially kills General Poulenc when the Frenchman is captured.

A newly assembled French army under Stéphane Pelletan attempts a defensive campaign against the advancing British and Royal French.

The long and bloody Siege of Kaifeng begins by Yenzhang in China. Over the next year it will be repeatedly relieved and restored, the whole front turning into the meat grinder of the Chinese civil war.

March - The French are thrown out of Brussels and retreat in the greatest defeat of Boulanger's career thus far.

Incensed by the Corean attack, Yenzhang sends General Yu with reinforcements to throw them back, while handing over the Kaifeng/Henan front to Cao Qichang. As Cao is a less capable commander and has fewer men, this means Yenzhang's forces' previous advance there stalls. As increasing numbers of Green Standard troops from Chongqian are sent against him, all he can do is hold the White River line.

April - Pelletan's army suffers a series of defeats to the western allies. General Alexander, who was involved in the fight, records in his diary that his experiences fighting alongside Catholic soldiers from Royal France and Ireland has forced him to re-evaluate the anti-popish assumptions he was raised to believe. This is the start of what will lead Alexander to favour Catholic relief in the ENA years later.

Second Meridian Constitutional Convention in Cordoba makes significant revisions to the U.P. constitution, restricting the president-general to three-year terms and re-elections rather than being a life position.

End of the Turco-Persian War of 1806-09 with a Persian defeat.

In Guinea, Ghezo becomes Ahosu (King) of Dahomey. He institutes policies that increase trade and collaboration with the Royal Africa Company, using their Jagun army to help train and modernise his own in preparation for trying to break away from the dominance of the Oyo Empire.

May - Pelletan arrives in Paris to deliver his report in person to Lisieux, only to find that L'Administrateur is nowhere to be found, and no-one can account for his location. Lisieux's disappearance will be an unsolved mystery to baffle the historians and conspiracy theorists of the future.

Bourcier seizes power, reverses most of Lisieux's constitutional changes and reconvenes the National Legislative Assembly, presided over by René Apollinaire.

In China General Yu counter-attacks the Coreans but is unable to prevent the fall of the Manchu city of Girin Ula, which King Gwangjong identifies with the historical capital of Balhae, Kungnaesong.

June - Bourcier's new Republican regime delivers a plea to the western allies offering the crown to Louis XVII, seeking a bloodless transfer of power rather than suffer under the rhetoric-spewing Germans advancing from the east. Louis accepts and 50,000 allied troops march on Paris.

Russian force under Heinz Kautzman lands in Dieppe and heads towards the capital.

July - The British, Royal French, Americans and Irish occupy Paris and Louis is crowned King of all France.

Boulanger hears of the change of power, goes berserk and turns his remaining army around, planning one last quixotic attack in an attempt, if nothing else, to ensure the Revolution is remembered as something more than a bunch of pragmatic turncoats. He will march on Paris.

Philip Hamilton and James Wayne return to the Royal Africa Company as heroes.

August - On the 4th, the last and greatest battle of the Jacobin Wars is met before Paris. Eighty thousand Republican troops under Boulanger face fifty-five thousand Allied troops defending the city. It is the first major engagement in which both sides deploy steam cannon against each other. The Allies hold to breaking point, only to be rescued at the eleventh hour by Kautzman's Russo-Dano-Lithuanian force taking Boulanger's army in the rear. Seizing an opportunity in the thick of battle, Lord Mornington challenges Boulanger to a duel in a gamble to keep the French commander from reorganising his forces. Boulanger defeats him, but is shot down by Carolinian general John Alexander, who argues that the Jacobins long since abandoned any claim to be treated according to the laws of war and honour. General Trenet takes over the Republican remnants and surrenders. The war is over.

September - In China, Yenzhang's forces face reverses on all fronts as the outnumbered Coreans hold their gains and fight General Yu to a standstill, while Chongqian's General Liang Tianling liberates Kaifeng and General Cao is thrown back across the Yellow River. However, there is one piece of good news: Sun Yuanchang, the governor of the Burmese provinces conquered fifty years before, is loyal to Yenzhang and is now striking into Chongqian-held southern China with his army (including Shan and Mon native troops). The purpose of this attack is strike into Siechuan and then up the Yangtze to eventually reach Nanjing. Its actual effect will be quite different…

October - Death of Nadir Shah Durrani of the East Durrani (Neo-Mogul) Empire. He is succeeded by his son Mohammed Shah II. However his cousin Ayub of the West challenges him for the throne, calling him soft and Indianised, unworthy to be an heir to Ahmed Shah Abdali. In reality Ayub wants to use the war to reunite his squabbling peoples. The Neo-Moguls, benefiting from reforms under Nadir, prove to be a deadlier foe than Ayub expected.

November - The Congress of Copenhagen is held in the eponymous Danish capital, in which the postwar settlement for Europe is hammered out. France escapes serious dismemberment, its only major loss being the Duchy of Lorraine detached by the Hapsburgs. The Russians possess disproportionate influence thanks to their key role at the Battle of Paris, and split off a “kingdom of Navarre” around Bayonne, under a Lithuanian noble, to effectively give themselves a warm-water port. A shaky Franco-Austrian pact, put together by the nations' foreign ministers, manages to exclude most of the north German states from possessing much influence at the Conference, forcing them to band together. Broadly, the status quo as of the closing stages of the war is allowed to serve as the peace.

December - In China, the Chongqian Emperor becomes convinced that if Heaven is to favour his cause, he must finally do something about the weakness of foreign trade, and proclaims an end to all trade with foreign barbarians…it remains to be seen whether this proclamation will be enforced…

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