Balance of Power

[bytor]

This is the timeline for which I've posted two maps from 1849 in the maps thread. It's mostly stable because I'm trying to make a plausible ATL that grows on it's own consequences rather than shoehorning stuff in just because "it would be neat". I used to call it "Timeline Δ" (The delta symbol indicates change in physics) but ever since I collated and write down the European section of my notes I realized that everything was about the delicate balance of power between the Five Great European Powers and their effects on the rest of the world after Napoleon.

I'm posting it here for comment and critique, as well suggestions for future directions.

[bytor]

Europe and the Balance of Power
Part I, 1812-1827

In 1812, Viscount Castlereagh is passed over for the leadership of the House of Commons and it is instead given to Charles Bathurst (and later George Canning). This frees Castlereagh having to support Lord Sidmouth's Six Acts in order to retain his position as Foreign Secretary, and instead of slowly withdrawing after the Aix-la-Chapelle Congress, Castlereagh and the United Kingdom maintain a strong presence in the Concert of Europe. Castlereagh is a decisive, intelligent personality with a strong dislike for absolutism, and the other Great Powers welcome the protocols he authors for the Congress of Vienna and it is him we thank for the modern concept of “balance of power”. In addition, Castlereagh had the ear of Alexander I of Russia, though he and the other leaders were suspicious of his religious zeal and Austria and Prussia of his seeming Jacobin sympathies.

Klemens von Metternich, Chancellor of the Austrian Empire, is oddly initially allied with Castlereagh. Even though balance of power means the prevention of another Napoleonic chaos in Europe to both powerful men, their ideas on implementation are very different. Metternich is a strong reactionary, intent upon stifling any republican or nationalistic tendency anywhere, whereas Castlereagh is a staunch anti-interventionist who saw the United Kingdom’s obligation to the Vienna Congress resolutions as supporting the territorial boundaries but not political ones. Castlereagh’s relationship with Alexander, though nominally an absolute monarch like the Austrian Kaiser, did not help him in Metternich’s eyes. This difference of opinion would eventually to the two becoming more and more at odds at later Congresses, most notably Troppau where Castlereagh iss able to convince Alexander to denounce Metternich’s protocols for military intervention in other states.


In 1820, Colonel Rafael del Riego y Nuñez leads a mutiny in Cádiz that turns into national revolution which by March leads to King Ferdinand VII restoring the 1812 constitution under duress. Liberals in Portugal, receiving encouragement by the successes of their political brethren in Spain also start a revolution that brings John VI home from Brazil, where he had fled from the invasions of Bonapartist Spain in 1807. John VI’s plight is not nearly so difficult, as the British Navy, which had been in charge since the wars with Bonapartist Spain, is able to help John stay in power though events force him to send both his wife Carlota and second son, Michael, into exile in 1823. When John dies in 1828 his son Peter, who had declared the Empire of Brazil in 1822 after his father left, is forced to abdicate as King of Portugal shortly after taking the crown.


When the unrest in Portugal and Spain spreads to the peninsular parts of both the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Castlereagh was adamant in his policy of non-intervention. His relationship with Tsar Alexander I since Aix-la-Chapelle and Carlsbad was sufficient to keep Alexander in a more liberal frame of mind and out of Metternich’s orbit. As a result, Metternich’s desire to answer the calls of the two Italian monarchs was stifled. Ferdinand I and Charles Felix were forced to accept the constitutions they or they regents had granted to prevent full-scale revolt.

Metternich views this as insupportable, and when Ferdinand VII appeals to him in 1822 for help in restoring his power, Metternich calls for it to be added to the issues to be discussed in Verona that fall.

Austria and Prussia, absolute monarchies, are for intervention in Spain and restoring Ferdinand to absolute status instead of the constitutional monarch he had agreed to become. Castlereagh and the United Kingdom were against any intervention in Spain, as was Alexander, who had remained in Castlereagh’s orbit since Troppau. The French plenipotentiaries, Montmorency and Chateaubriand push, against the directives of Louis XVIII and his Prime Minister Villèle, for France to be allowed to intervene, trying to gain prestige for the Ultra-Royalist faction’s vision are humiliated when both Castlereagh and Alexander denounce their plans as “trying to resurrect the shade of Napoleon”. Back home, this humiliation leads to political recriminations and the fall of the Villèle ministry and the restoration of Decazes to the post.

The Progresista’s hold on power has never been that strong or pervasive, and their continuing attempts at a Bonapartist-like centralization angers various regions that had retained some autonomy from the Habsburg days when the Spanish crowns were all legally separate entities. In 1825 Aragon, Valencia and Catalonia declare independence from the Progresista Cortes in Madrid as the reconstituted Crown of Aragon and elect Ferdinand Karl Joseph of Austria-Este as their new king. The Progresista Cortes attempt take back Aragon, as well as further ham-fisted ventures in centralization, but in a country still devastated by the Peninsular War, this spells the end of the frail liberal coalition. Within six months, the Andalucian, Leonese, Navarrese and Basque regions have also declared independence. As battalions declare for their local governments the military support that a handful of years earlier had allowed the Progresistas to defeat the absolutists falls away. Two years later the Castilian rump-state is forced to acknowledge the independence of Aragon, Navarre and Leon. Castile is only able to keep hold of Andalusia because of the alliance between moderate liberals and absolutists, leaving Ferdinand VII with greatly reduced powers. To satisfy the absolutist regimes of Austria, Prussia and Russia, Leon is required elect a King and they chose Leopoldo of Salerno, second youngest brother of the newly crowned King Francis I of the Two Sicilies.

[bytor]

Europe and the Balance of Power
Part II, 1827-1847

In April of 1827, Castlereagh is named Prime Minister when Lord Liverpool resigns after having a cerebral haemorrhage. He names George Canning as his successor as Foreign Secretary, due to former experience in the role, however Canning dies a few months later in August, the shortest term ever for any Foreign Secretary in the United Kingdom. By now, pro-Hellenic opinions in Europe has reversed the Great Powers’ opinion on Greek independence which they had formerly rejected. The Ottoman Empire, on ultimatum from Russia, had signed the Akkerman Convention regarding the Danubian Principalities and Servia and withdrew the troops sent there as a result of the Greek Revolution. When the Ottomans reject mediation by the Five Great European Powers, British, French and Russian fleets combine and destroy the Ottoman Egyptian fleet. Further fighting by the Ottomans results in France and the United Kingdom proposing an independent Greek state, to which Russia reluctantly agrees.


When unrest strikes Europe again in August 1830, as the Belgian Walloons rebell against the Dutch, Castlereagh is still Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, but by the time things come to a head in December, the Tories have lost the election and Earl Grey is Prime Minister with Viscount Palmerston as the Foreign Secretary. When insurrection breaks out in the Duchy of Parma and the Duchess Marie Louise is forced to flee, her father, Emperor Francis II of Austria, demands to be able to send troops to her aid. In order to secure French acquiescence to the violation of 15 years of non-intervention, Palmerston must agree to allowing the new Belgian Parliament’s choice of king, Louis de Nemours, second son of the newly installed King Louis-Philippe of France.

When Ferdinand VII, formerly King of Spain, now only the King of Castile, dies in 1833, his brother the Infante Carlos takes the throne as Charles V. This adherence to the semi-Salic system established by Philip V of Spain was demanded of the moderate liberals by the absolutists in exchange for retaining the constitution of 1812. Ferdinand’s wife, Maria Christina, tried to convince him to revive the Sanction of Charles IV on his deathbed and she tried to use this to start a rebellion to place her daughter, Isabella on the throne. There were minor skirmishes throughout Castile, instigated by the Izquierdistas though they never amount to anything serious.

In March, 1828, Prince Michael of Portugal, uncle to the 9 year old Queen Maria II, stages a coup and proclaims himself King Michael I of Portugal. Peter I of Brazil, formerly IV of Portugal and Maria’s father, abdicates his throne in 1830 and returns to Portugal to help his daughter. Unable to get help from the British or French governments due restrictions upon them by the Concert of Europe, Peter raises a private army which trains in the Azores before invading Porto in July 1832 where he remains besieged for a nearly year until he takes Lisbon in July 1833 and succeeds to quash the remaining Miguelites by that fall.

As the Belgian war for independence finally winds down, to the detriment of the Netherlands, Duchy of Limburg is created to compensate the German Confederation’s Grand Duchy of Luxembourg it’s loss of half its territory. Limburg is technically independent but is in personal union with the Dutch crown and is governed as an integral part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

At this point, Europe’s attention turns back towards North America with the arrival of Texian diplomats looking for diplomatic recognition and loans for the cash-strapped republic. Sam Houston, former president, entertains nobles across Western Europe, telling his tales of growing up with the Cherokee Nation. Even the petty bourgeoisie and peasantry eagerly await the next instalment of his tales as they are serialized across Europe. In 1844 and 1846, respectively, the Republics of Río Grande and Yucatán are recognized by several European states on the coattails of burgeoning trade with Texas and the United States's slide into tariffs and protectionism and disinterest in the outside world. France under Louis-Philippe, most especially, looks at the nascent democracies of the New World for ways to expand its influence outside of the stifling environment of the Concert of Europe.

[bytor]

Europe and the Balance Power
Part III, 1848-1849

After nearly a decade of relative quiet, 1848 and 1849 were two very bumpy years for Europe.

In January, the island Kingdom of Sicily declared itself independent of the Kingdom of Naples. Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany declared a new and liberal constitution in February to quell unrest, as did, unexpectedly, Pope Pius IX for the Papal States, and the French overthrew King Louis-Philippe Orléans and proclaimed another republic. Even the long-powerful Klemens von Metternich resigned his post in March as the Foreign Secretary and fled Vienna because of violent unrest across the Austrian Empire.

Also in March, King Charles Albert of Sardinia granted a liberal constitution under duress, and the same pressures which made him do that also forced him to invade the Austrian component kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia and take advantage of its rebellion. Initially successful in forcing the Austrian General Joseph Radetzky to retreat, the French and British applied pressure to withdraw from Lombardy-Venetia. This was a major blow to Piedmontese designs to unite the Italian Peninsula.

North in Denmark where uprisings were also underway, King Frederick VII joined the list of monarchs forced into granting liberal constitutions to their realms. Banking on the anti-interventionist policies of the Concert of Europe as well as the parallel rebellious distractions across Europe, he included the mostly German duchies of Holstein, Schleswig and Saxe-Lauenburg in the process, giving them separate but subordinate constitutions and parliaments in order to integrate them more firmly into the Danish realm while still giving the citizens expanded rights. Duke Christian August II of Augustenborg, also took advantage of the 1848 uprisings and claimed the dukedoms of Schleswig, Holstein and Saxe-Lauenburg. Because the three are largely populated by Germans and he himself is German, Christian Augus tried to get Prussian support for them to leave Denmark and become full members of German Confederation. Christian August was initially able to attract many of the rebellious people as well as Prussian help in the form of an army which entered Schleswig in April. However, after several losses to Danish forces as well as significant pressure from Britain and Russia, Prussia gave into to all Danish demands and signed the Treaty of Malmö in August. In the meantime, the petty nobility and bourgeoisie of the three duchies were withdrawing their support from Christian August after learning of the new Danish constitution and their own local parliaments. As a result he drops his claims to the three duchies in return for being named heir presumptive to Frederick VII who is childless and believed to be infertile. When the Congress of London meets in January, 1849, to review the Treaty of Malmö, it requires Denmark to join the German Zollverein. This is based in part on the precedent from Luxemburg and Limburg ten years previous to offset any economic losses that would arise from the new constitutions of Holstein and Saxe-Lauenburg, being subordinate to the Danish one, only nominally leaving them in the German Confederation. This proves to be a boon for the Danish economy.

In Austria, Kaiser Ferdinand I is faced with insurrections throughout his empire is forced in April 1848 to enact a set of reforms written by the Hungarian Diet, granting them wide powers. However, even though the Hungarian Prime Minister, Batthyány, was a supporter of Hungary remaining in the Empire, the young Franz Joseph who had become Kaiser after his uncle and father had abdicated in quick succession, revokes the new laws in August. As a result, Batthyány declares open revolution in September and hastily gathers an army. The Hungarians are defeated in October at Schwechat when they try to come to the aid of the rebellion in Vienna, but they are able to mostly hold their own inside Hungary to start. Their undoing, though, is two-fold. First, the Kingdom of Hungary is in some ways the Austrian Empire in miniature right down to the mistreated subordinate ethnic groups wanting to rebel, which Austria uses to its advantage. The second, is thanks to the British and French pressures on Piedmont-Sardinia, the Kaiser is able to call General Radetzky and his armies back from Italy in August. Because of the difficulties crossing the Alps, Radetzky marches through Trieste, Laibach and Agram and enters Hungary from the south in November, surprising the militarily inexperienced Hungarian head of state Lajos Kossuth who was having problems controlling his generals. By the time Kossuth cedes control to Artúr Görgey in June, 1849, it is too late. Though preventing Hungarian independence, Radetzky’s return is actually a good thing for Hungary in that Austria no longer needed the Russian troops the new Foreign Minister Schwarzenberg was requesting from Tsar Nicholas I for. Letters between the two indicate that Nicholas would have sent 200,000 troops which would have annihilated the Hungarians, and many historians believe the repercussions would have been far worse than the so-called “12 Prisoners of Arad” and other possible reactions. As it was, while Radetzky’s military genius allowed the 70,000 troops he brought from Northern Italy to decide things against the otherwise numerically matched Austrian and Hungarian armies. In the end Franz Joseph still had to accept the April Laws of the previous year when the treaty was signed at Világos in August by Görgey and Radetzky, though Hungarians had to accept the severing of Servian and Croatian lands from the Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen.

The Germanies were not free of strife either with everything from protests to outright armed insurrection breaking out in many of the states.. The Frankfurt Parliament was called, populated by deputies from across the German Confederation but from the beginning was rife with the combination of regional politics, Austro-Prussian rivalries and moderate/radical dissension causing serious problems in talks to ostensibly unify the states. The Frankfurt Parliament ultimately failed and the constitution it produced was only recognized the smaller states but not by Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Hanover or Saxony.

In Baden, Bavaria’s Rhenish Palatinate exclave and Saxony as a result there were significant armed insurrections in the spring of 1849. While Baden’s and the Rhenish Palatinate’s rebellions were successful, the Saxon one was disorganized, being mostly students, and lacked weapons. In spite of not being able to receive Prussian assistance, the Saxon army was still able to crush the rebellion and continue the constitutional monarchy which had been in place since 1830. Because Austria’s own internal issues were under control, through not resolved, by this time, it stood with great Britain and France against Prussian assistance of local monarchs across the confederation uder the guise that these were independent states and the Concert of Europe had a tradition of maintaining the balance of power by preventing such intervention. In reality, though, this was just another facet of the Austro-Prussian rivalry. Even without Metternich's guiding hand, Austria would still do almost anything to frustrate Prussia's influence.

As a result, the new Republic of Baden and the Rhenish Republic were the only significant political changes in the confederation, though the high emigration to the new countries in North and South America lessening the workforce population did what the Frankfurt Parliament could not - increase the pace of industrialization and economic integration and thus favourable views of unification across Germanized Central Europe.

[bytor]

The Rise of North America
Part I, 1835-1848

In 1835 Texas declares its independence from Mexico and after a short war the two enter an uneasy, unofficial truce punctuated by the occasional skirmish.

By 1839, the Republic of Texas is deep in debt an only getting deeper with a failed attempt a printing paper money to stave off the impending doom. Encouraged by the recognition from France and sick of former President Sam Houston’s “irritating meddling” in affairs of state, President Mirabeau Lamar sends him to Europe with James Hamilton in order to aid James Pinckney Henderson’s work in obtaining the diplomatic recognition all Texians wanted. “At the very least,” Lamar is reported to have said, “it will make it easier to get the charter to move the capital to Waterloo without the current capital’s namesake constantly voicing his objections.” The only problem there was what new name to give it that did not invoke Napoleon’s defeat?

Houston’s natural charisma and oratory skills makes the team successful and gets the young, cash-strapped Republic back on its feet. How could King Louis-Philippe say “non” to the quick-witted and amiable charmer whose tales of life with the Cherokee were being serialized in Le Nationale and the talk in coffee houses across the rest of Europe? That France’s ambitions in Europe were stifled only made the prospect of influence in North America that much more attractive. The fifteen million francs into the Texian coffers is exactly what is needed to relieve the nascent nation of its crushing debt.

Also necessary, many historians later say, were Houston’s newspaper royalties from those serializations, for he came to love French brandies almost as much as the French loved his stories. The incidents were mercifully kept hush-hush by the papers, for none wanted to be embargoed from the immensely popular stories. Who knows what damage would have been done to Texian negotiations had those stories came to public attention before his biography in 1865?

Alphonse Dubois de Saligny, the French chargé d'affaires whom Houston had sweet-talked into a favourable report when they met in New York City, returns to Texas in 1840 and sets up consuls in Austin, the new capital, and Galveston where the French loan made possible the building of new port facilities. By 1841, French trade, especially cotton, starts to flow through Texas, as well as from French citizens in Mexico moving to Texas to take up the three million acres reserved for their settlement. Many French businessmen move to Galveston to take advantage of the advantageous terms Houston, Henderson and Hamilton had conceded, to be followed by Germans after the Unrest of ‘48. Today the European Quarter of Galveston rivals New Orleans as a tourist destination for those wishing to experience Old World charm in the New World.

Belgium and the Netherlands follow the French with recognition, trade, embassies, and even a Dutch loan. The Hanseatic cities in northern Germany, not to be out-done by the Dutch, also jump at a treaty with Texas as an entry to North American trade in as last grasp at their fading legacy. Texian indigo-dyed cotton becomes a status symbol for the middle class and petty nobility all around the Baltic Sea and Central Europe.

Even the British, though they are wary of negative influences on their American and Mexican relations, facilitate trade from the Republic at favourable duties and give approval to a legation in 1844. Diplomatic recognition, however, will have to wait.

Sam Houston’s triumphant return to Texas results in a landslide victory over David Burnet for a second term as president of the Republic. With the economy on the road to a sound financial footing, Sam Houston rebuffs renegade American President John Tyler’s offer to reopen talks for Texian annexation in 1843. Houston had realized this was an unrealistic goal during his first term as president and while there was still a minority who wanted it, his successes in France had made it effectively a non-issue.

In the United States of America, James Polk becomes the dark horse candidate for the Democratic nomination because of Martin van Buren’s anti-slavery stance and picks up votes because of his support of Secretary of State Abel Upshur’s theory that Britain was pressing the Texians for emancipation. While this was enough for Polk to win the Democratic nomination he loses the election on the economic question to Henry Clay who almost manages to equal William Henry Harrison’s win with two-thirds of the states. The shift in trade to new neighbour to the south, though not initially large, worries the public less than a year out the recession caused by the Panic of 1837. The idea of steady jobs even during recessions thanks to government public works projects to build roads, bridges, canals and railroads is ultimately more attractive to the American electorate than continuing expansion.

Texian independence and success was also to have profound consequences in the former Viceroyalty of New Spain.

Numerous other Mexican states revolted in 1835 against Santa Anna's Siete Leyes though only the Texians were successful that time. On January 17, 1840 a meeting was held at the Oreveña Ranch near Laredo, Tamaulipas. A group of notables from the states of Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas advocated a rebellion seeking secession from Mexico and formation of their own federal republic with Laredo as the capital. Pointing to the success of the Texians they were able to convince the state governments to sign on to the cause of independance. The new nation was called the Republic of the Río Grande. The state governments go along with it and appoint Antonio Canales, leader of the notables, as their general over the states' militias. This allows Canales (plus a little Texian combat experience as leavening) to defeat Mexican generals Mariano Arista and Rafael Vasquez and their armies which are composed, in typical Santa Anna fashion, of convicts and forced draftees with a penchant for running away.

The Yucatán, which also had a fractious relationship with the central government, declared independence for a final time in 1846, ironically due to a post-Santa Anna government rejecting the 1843 agreement on Yucatecan autonomy. Texas, going to the main chance, is able to use it’s established relations in Europe to successfully advocate varyings levels of trade and diplomatic recognition for the Republic of the Río Grande and Republic of Yucatán, primarily convincing the European nations that the volume difficulties plaguing the port of Galveston can be overcome by expansion to Río Grandean and Yucatecan ports of Corpus Christi and Campeche.

[bytor]

The Rise of North America
Part II, 1844-1864

Henry Clay’s election as president of the United States was the death knell for the Jacksonian ideal of expansion and a domination of the Presidency by the Whigs until Mallard Fillmore’s handling of the Kansas-Nebraska question.

Clay’s American System had stimulated talks of a transcontinental railroad, especially after the organization of Oregon Territory from the American share of the lands of the Pacific Northwest that had formerly been held in condominium with Great Britain. However, this required enabling acts of organization to facilitate railroad land grants, legislatures to create necessary laws. Of course, this was also necessary as more and more people were settling in the unorganized territory remaining from the Louisiana Purchase.

The California Gold Rush starts, but after almost 15 years of increasing autonomy and home rule, the attempts to impose greater central control in Alta California to drain taxation- and economic-related monies from the gold rush back to the central government prompted Alta California to declare independence. Attempts were made to bring it to heel but were just as toothless and unsuccessful as all the bluster against Texas, Rio Grande and Yucatan was. Some adventurous Americans, but not many thanks to a solid Whig economy back home, join in with Europeans escaping the Revolutions of 1848 as well as Chileans, Mexicans and Chinese. Most Americans moving west prefered to settle in places like Portland and those that chose to emigrate mostly headed north to the Columbia and New Caledonia colonies of Britain. Still, the 150,000 new residents changed Alta California dramatically and set it off on the road to being the successful multicultural nation that today is often referred to as "The Argentina of the North".

In the United States, tensions over the place of slavery in the Union were rising as many Democrats and Whigs in the South wanted the new territories to be given “popular sovereignty”, that is, to decide for themselves whether slavery was to be allowed or not. As most of the territory was north of the Missouri Compromise Line of 36°30’, this angered many. Fillmore’s support for popular sovereignty brought Whig factionalism to the fore that had been pushed into the background since 1844. Having succeeded Clay after his death in office three years into his second term, Fillmore expected to be nominated for his own second term, but the divisions he created resulted in Daniel Webster receiving the most votes after numerous ballots and a push by northern, anti-slavery Whigs against the southern faction’s preference of Fillmore.

Whigs slowly became more and more disaffected over things like the Bleeding Kansas incidents, many joining the Know Nothing movement which made a strong showing in the midterm elections of 1858. However, many northern Whigs Party joined with some Free Soil Democrats in creating the new Republican Party which also gained seats in the midterms and nominated John C. Frémont for the 1860 presidential election. The remaining Whigs stick with the Know Nothing movement and form the American Party which selects Fillmore as their candidate. Democratic candidate Stephen Douglas wins the election in 1860 because the similarity in economic platforms results in the Republicans and APs splittin the vote. However, Douglas and the Democrats are forced to absorb some of the Whig economic ideas on internal improvements into their platform though they repudiate the tariffs that were part of the American System.

Over the next four years the American Party and the Know Nothing movement fall apart for basically the same reasons the Whigs did, and when the 1864 Democratic convention falls apart, nominating three candidates (a northern one, a southern one, and a fringe one), Senator William H. Seward wins as the first president from the young, anti-slavery Republican Party in 1864 after gaining the endorsement of prominent Illinois Senator Abraham Lincoln.

Mexico refuses to recognize the four breakaways as anything other than rebellious provinces though internal conflicts make them unable to do much more than talk a tough line. Santa Anna remains in exile for almost a decade and returns in 1853 when the Conservative factionalistas invite him back. His autocratic style and its aftermath eventually throw the country into civil unrest and rebellion that erupts into actual civil war in 1858. The four Republics unofficially help the losers in the Mexican War of Reform and Leonardo Marquez's guerrilla operations after 1861. In order to stop Marquez and gain some solidity of control, President Benito Juarez agrees to a recognition of the four Republics in early 1862 as a concession to the British, French and Spanish fleets that had arrived off the coast of Veracruz after he suspended payment on debts from the civil war. Juarez is able to consolidate power by a combination of increased autonomy for the state legislatures to quell further conservative opposition, tariff policies favourable to the threatening nations in return for debt reduction and allowing investment from the breakaway Republics to kickstart the country's industry and agriculture decimated after five years of civil war.