by Tom Anderson
October – Riding the wave of public anger, Hao Jicai of the Sanhedui together with his European allies proclaims the restoration of the Ming dynasty (later known as the Feng dynasty). Zheng Kejing, a distant relative of the last Ming emperor, is declared the Dansheng Emperor, with Hao as his prime minister. Risings begin across southern China.
Chongqian's forces throw Yenshang's back across the White River and march on Beijing.
November – Around this time Napoleon Bonaparte's Bleus are dominant in the French Grand-Parlement, despite being the smallest of the three parties, by playing the Rouges and Blancs off against one another. This is known as “l'équilibre politique”. Bourcier attempts to build his own governing coalition but fails.
Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II dies after only a few months as Sultan, assassinated thanks to his opposition to Grand Vizier Damat Melek Pasha. He is succeeded by Ahmed IV, who diplomatically decides to avoid arguing with Damat.
1813:
February – Elections in the UPSA for the presidency-general after Mateovarón steps down, not contesting a second term. Ayala stands as candidate for the Colorado Party and is defeated by Amarillo candidate José Jaime Carriego López, a more conservative figure than the centrist Mateovarón. After his defeat Ayala steps down as Colorado leader and is replaced by Pablo Portillo de Insaurralde.
End of the Dahomey War of Independence, with Benin also having broken free of Oyo dominance, while the third Oyo vassal of Nupe failed in its rebellion and remains under Oyo control. Oyo is weakened but stabilises under the rule of the new Alaafin Adelu. As a result of all this, the RAC extends its trade deeper into Guinea.
March – Treaty of Blois divides Antipodea between the French south-east, British west and Dutch north.
Partly in response to organisational issues raised in the late Third Platinean War, the Portuguese government creates a Brazilian Cortes (whose members are self-appointed important men from each province, not popularly elected) based in Bahia to help administer the colony.
April – Fighting in Pegu between the Konbaung invaders and the Siamese Royal Army supporting the locals. After six months' grapple, the Konbaung Burmese are defeated and withdraw. Minor skirmishes will continue for two years.
In Hanover, William FitzGeorge, Duke of Cambridge, dies. His son Richard succeeds to the dukedom and takes over his duties as de facto governor of Hanover.
May – Parliamentary election in Great Britain produces a big majority for John Churchill's “Rebirth Coalition”. The election was subject to considerable interference and fraud by the PSC browncoats and Unnumbered spies. After the election, Churchill forces out Dundas and makes himself Prime Minister.
The Dutchman Willem Bicker publishes a new and improved code system for heliography.
June – The Battle of Sagar between the Scindias and Holkars takes place in the Maratha civil war. Maharajah Vitthojirao Holkar loses heavily to the French-backed Scindias and agrees to accept help from the British to help recover his position.
July – Death of King Johannes II and IV of Denmark-Sweden. He is succeeded by his son, who becomes Valdemar V and II. His mother, Queen Mildred, encourages him to send help through local trade concessions to her beleaguered home country of Great Britain. Valdemar does so, but only in exchange for Britain agreeing to allow the Danish Asiatic Company to be re-established in the East. The old Swedish East India Company is absorbed into the DAC.
Second Battle of Ningyuan in China sees the total defeat of Yenzhang at Russo-Corean hands. Accounts vary on whether Yenzhang was killed or just wounded, but the remnants of his supporters under Yu Wangshan flee to the west and eventually end up in Yunnan.
August – British forces take Saint-Malo in Antipodea, renaming it New London and the surrounding colony New Kent. Some Republican diehards keep up a Kleinkrieger offensive in the hinterland.
September – After a brief “retirement”, former Meridian president-general Roberto Mateovarón is appointed Ambassador to the Empire of North America, with the goal of attempting to repair relations between the two countries.
November – John Churchill's third son, George Spencer-Churchill (the Elder), shocks the country by fleeing to the Empire of North America and writing polemics attacking his father.
December – Death of Charles Bone, former Chancellor of the Exchequer of Britain and father of Leo Bone/Napoleon Bonaparte. Bone the elder's death is supposedly due to a heart attack, but Bone the younger suspects foul play on the part of John Churchill's PSC browncoat bullyboys.
1814:
January – Napoleon Bonaparte attends his father's funeral in London and instigates a new cooling of Franco-British relations when he thanks “the gentlemen, along with Mr Churchill” for attending.
February – The Holkars, benefiting from British support, beat the Scindias in the Battle of Mandla.
While Bonaparte is out of France, his lieutenant Barras, attempting to hold the Bleu dominance of the Grand-Parlement together, asks King Louis XVII to dissolve the Parlement. Barras has grown fearful of Bonaparte's political dominance and worries about him becoming a dictator.
March – While both are on a grand tour of Greece, British diarist John Byron III meets French political thinker Henri Rouvroy and the two become fast friends. Both are equally unimpressed by the contemporary Greeks and their widely-circulated writings are influential upon western European perceptions of the region.
In Edinburgh, Scottish dissident Alistair Douglas intercepts a new portrait of the military governor, Joshua Churchill (Marquess of Blandford), cuts out his face, pastes it onto a portrait of William IV, and places it in an out-of-reach position on St Giles' Cathedral to mock him. Blandford overreacts and demolishes the whole cathedral, helping earn him the nickname “Bloody Blandford”. For this controversy, he is removed from his position by his father and replaced with Iain Græme, who manages to put down the rebellions roused by Blandford's policies. Many Scots are 'encouraged' to leave for the New Kent colony in Antipodea.
April – On the 13th Louis XVII dissolves the Grand-Parlement in Paris. On his way through the city he is assassinated. The killer is a madwoman who blames her father's death on royal taxes. However French political factions inevitably blame each other and rioting breaks out; the Great Crisis of 1814. Rouge Party leader Olivier Bourcier is hanged in the street from a gaslight by a mob and his deputy René Apollinaire is killed in a friendly fire incident soon afterwards.
Bonaparte returns on the 15th and restores order, uncovering a conspiracy by the Duc d'Aumont and his own treacherous friend Barras to kidnap the young Dauphin, now Charles X. Bonaparte makes d'Aumont Grand Duke of Louisiana and Barras his chief minister, an exilic punishment. The Dauphin is now under Bonaparte's influence as Regent and Bonaparte begins a period of political dominance as Prime Minister.
May – Suffering from lack of gold reserves, the British Exchequer introduces a new decimal currency based on America's Imperial, the “Royal”.
In China, the Chongqian Emperor's forces have recaptured all the north except those parts of Manchuria held by Corea and Inner Mongolia held by the Mongols. Chongqian proclaims the “Movement to Restore Harmony”, which involves obliterating Manchu language and culture and reorganising the army. Rather than turn on the Feng in the south, and being deluded about the loyalty of the Coreans, Chongqian decides to attack the Mongols in the Reclamation War.
Richard Trevithick or “Vladimir Tarefikhov”, now an important Tula mining magnate, is made a Rytsar (Knight) by the Russian court.
While trying to synthesise quinine from inorganic chemicals for Priestley Aereated Water in the UPSA, the young chemist Agustín Jiménez accidentally discovers the vivid purple dye tyrine. Because the formerly exclusive imperial colour is now available cheaply to the masses, it comes to symbolise radical democratic movements: “every man a king”.
June – In Autiaraux, the two major factions of the Tainui and the Alliance almost come to blows, but this is prevented by the diplomatic effo
rts of the chieftain Raouirie. This ultimately ensures that the Mauré, exhausted by the Gunpowder Wars, do not render themselves too weak to resist outside encroachment.
July – Henri Rouvroy returns to France and institutes an electoral system by which the decapitated Rouge Party may vote for a new leader. However in the actual contest, Rouvroy is defeated by former Jacobin thug Pierre Artaud. Fearing for his safety, Rouvroy goes into exile in Corsica, in which he writes “Heart of Diamond” and founds the ideology of Adamantianism. Artaud on the other hand proceeds to make a hash of running the Rouge Party and ensures Bonaparte's political dominance is unchallenged.
August – First clash of arms in the Reclamation War between the Qing Chinese and Mongols.
September – The Nguyen Lords of Cochinchina (southern Dai Viet) take advantage of the departure of Tonkin's Chinese protector and invade. Ayutthaya sends Royal Siamese Army troops to contest the invasion.
The new Bonaparte regime in France begins using Cayenne in Guyana as a penal colony.
October – La Pérouse finally returns to France and is honoured by King Louis XVII, dying a national hero a few months later.
The New Spanish government, irritated by France's new proclamation of a Grand Duchy of Louisiana and its control over New Spanish-claimed territory, opens up Texas to (Catholic) immigration. A few years later they will have plenty of immigrants from Ireland fleeing the famine.
November – Election in the ENA ejects the Patriots, ending a nine-year reign, and Matthew Quincy's Constitutionalists take power with a majority of 3. However, they are almost immediately beset with rifts within the party.
December – Death of Charles Emmanuel IV, King of Sardinia (and claimant to Piedmont). He is succeeded by his mercurial son, Victor Felix I.
TO BE CONTINUED…
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[1] The Russian writer Rostopshchin, of course, does not use the English ‘war of supremacy’ terminology coined by George Spencer-Churchill.
[2] Acquired from Prussia after the Third War of Supremacy/War of the Diplomatic Revolution.
[3] A poetic term for the gold guineas that Britain supplied as payment to its continental allies, because the coins bore the image of St George slaying the dragon.
[4] Frederick promoted Hanover to a kingdom on his return, though nobody else in Europe acknowledged this.
[5] ‘Alexandru Morusi’ is a Romanianised form of his name: he was actually a Greek Phanariote and it would be equally correct to name him Alexandros Mourousis.
[6] The use of “Mexico” here is arguably an anachronism by the author.
[7] Though less so than OTL. Spain increased the powers of the Audiencias and relaxed the casta system after the Second Platinean War, essentially an appeasement to discourage still-loyal colonies from joining the UPSA in rebellion.
[8] I.e. the Viceroy’s Palace. In OTL this is now the National Palace of Mexico, the building having existed since the 1690s.
[9] Likely a bit of hindsight-driven exaggeration on the part of the author.
[10] Though inaccurately, as this ultimately stems from something that existed in OTL without the influence of Frederick’s exile. A plan not unlike this was indeed drawn in OTL by the elder Count of Aranda (who did not have any children).
[11] In OTL, due to Charles III’s elder brother Philip being disqualified from the succession for being mentally disabled, Charles’ second son Charles became Charles IV of Spain, and his third son Ferdinand became Ferdinand III and IV of Naples and Sicily. In TTL, Philip was born healthy and became King Philip VI of Spain, while Charles became Charles VI and VIII of Naples and Sicily.
[12] She lived until 1812 in OTL.
[13] The use of green in the OTL Italian flag is thought to originate from the uniforms of the Civic Guard in Milan, though this is uncertain and remains a matter for debate. Its use in TTL is likely from the same source.
[14] This was also Hoche’s motto (Res non-verba in Latin) in OTL.
[15] The name (originally belonging to an earlier ship) was rendered euphemistically into English by Francis Drake as ‘Spitfire’, lending its name to the later British fighter plane. It actually means ‘Fire Shitter’.
[16] Though not widely used at this point except in mining, asbestos’ fire-retardant properties were already well known.
[17] Although this phrase was popularised in English by the pronouncements of Mao Zedong’s Communist China in OTL, it is a much older Chinese idiom and has clearly entered the English language from the same source by a different route in TTL.
[18] Son of Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, who in OTL did not marry.
[19] Essentially the assembly line… but as it’s coined earlier in OTL, it does not refer to quite the same thing, and tends to refer to less mechanised processes. Note that ‘Carltonist’ refers to the writings of Adam Smith, who in TTL still wrote much the same works but is a more obscure figure due to the crackdown in Scotland following the Second Glorious Revolution. While Coulomb had read them in the original, Smith’s works were popularised in TTL later on by a writer called Carlton who revived them.
[20] This does not refer to African-blood slaves in the Americas (although it could), but to slave practices in Africa itself.
[21] A bomb-ship, or bombardment vessel, is a ship designed to fire plunging mortar shot in order to bombard coastal fortifications or cities.
[22] OTL, Revolutionary and Napoleonic France did have an extensive optical telegraph system which was used well into the nineteenth century. Here it is slightly more advanced than OTL, as shutterboxes did not make an appearance until later (too late, really, as the electric telegraph was invented just a few years later and so they never caught on).
[23] More or less OTL except Baranov started a few years earlier (1795 rather than 1799).
[24] Shogunate, or the Shogun’s ‘court’.
[25] Indeed this happened in OTL a generation earlier, when Emperor Go-Momozono had no sons and adopted an heir descended from an earlier Emperor’s daughter. However, this did not happen in TTL as Go-Momozono had a son (Tenmei).
[26] I.e., guerilla, partisan. Hiedler’s movement provides the most accepted name for it in TTL because it is most notorious.
[27] Somewhat typically for the confused historiography of Hapsburg affairs both in OTL and TTL, his name is rendered here as a hodgepodge of the Hungarian name form in the German order with French influence. In OTL he was known as ‘Paul Freiherr Kray von Krajova und Topola’ in German and ‘Krajovai és Topolyai báró Kray Pál’ in Hungarian.
[28] In OTL the Republic of Ragusa (also called the Republic of Dubrovnik) was contested between the French and Russians during the Napoleonic Wars and the former finally abolished it and annexed it to the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, with Marshal Marmont becoming Duke of Ragusa. As Marmont eventually betrayed Napoleon, the words ragusade and raguser entered the French language to mean treason and cheat respectively. Following the war, Ragusa was transferred to the Hapsburg empire and is today part of Croatia.
[29] In OTL, of course, he actually was King Charles IV of Spain.
[30] All of which happened in OTL, but when the British took over the Cape in 1801, they removed most of those policies, quieting most Boer discontent. ITTL, there is even more resentment with a permanent presence of the VOC. (Note that in TTL English, ‘Boer’ is not found as a word alone, but always as the compound ‘Boertrekker’, applied incorrectly by this translation to the farmers before they became mobile).
[31] Also sometimes referred to in English in translated form as ‘the Lords Seventeen’.
[32] This is roughly half of Transvaal and Zululand without the coast in OTL. The Maloti Mountains are the OTL Drakens
berg Mountains.
[33] Shaka is a much different person than OTL, albeit with some similarities. He does not have a close relationship with his former tribe of the Zulu. Shaka is still the military genius of OTL, but without the political ambition and paranoia that he exhibited in OTL. The Matetwa Empire was the OTL predecessor, but eventually dissolved into the Zulu Empire because of Shaka’s excessive purges. The resulting violence, called the mfecane today in OTL South Africa, caused a lot of instability, restricting white settlement in Natal in OTL. In TTL, there is a consolidation of the Matetwa Empire, but with a relatively peaceful transition. Because of this, there could be far more British settlement in Natal this early on.
[34] A slightly modified OTL Arthur Wellesley quote.
[35] Properly he should be called Mornington, but in Anglophone sources in TTL he’s usually referred to as Wesley, as his title was in the peerage of Ireland and he did not obtain one in the British peerage.
[36] Though Britain’s OTL leader of anti-Catholic riots, the eccentric Lord George Gordon, has already moved on from this particular predilection in TTL.
[37] Benedict Arnold VI is the son in TTL of Benedict Arnold V (the one we all know), who in TTL was a distinguished American general in the Second Platinean War but not so famous or flashy as George Washington.
[38] In OTL, until the Great Reform Act, the chief requirement for voting in England and Wales was to own property equivalent in value to forty shillings. Note that this ignored inflation, so the number of voters expanded over time from when the limit was set in 1430. Scotland, by contrast, defined the value as forty shillings of the value when the act was enacted, thus keeping the number of voters roughly constant. Ireland also used this law – in OTL, when Catholic emancipation came in, it was raised to £10 in order to exclude more Catholics from voting.