Uncharted Territory (Look to the West Book 2)

by Tom Anderson

  Bourcier, despite his understrength 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 growing 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 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 Crabe, 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, de
feat 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 RLPC, means the young heir comes to the throne as Kamehameha II, a weak ruler and effective puppet of the Russians.

  November – First BEIC Bengali 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 Damat 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 Damat 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 Ahosu (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 Béron 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 RLPC'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 int
o 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 North American 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 Valdivia 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 Valdivia 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.