by Tom Anderson
[39] Which in OTL it did – most of these reforms were passed in the 1780s and 1790s, then often reversed after the United Irishmen rebellion and the Act of Union. In OTL the sequence of events was: Irish parliament votes in support of Americans during American War of Independence – British Government panics and starts supporting Irish reform, fearing a rebellion – Irish parliament reforms – Ireland rebels in 1798 – Britain takes back all powers in Act of Union. Here, the initial reforms don’t happen without the American War (and are also delayed due to the Irish Jacobite Rebellion of 1750 prejudicing people against a sympathetic view of the Irish) so instead they happen after the equivalent rebellion, not rescinded as a reaction to it.
[40] A surprising number of OTL British politicians who advocated parliamentary reform had themselves been elected by very corrupt means.
[41] As in Britain, the term ministry is used in the ENA to refer to a period of time in which a party is in power, where ‘administration’ is used in the OTL USA.
[42] The Confederate assembly of the Confederation of New England. Note that in the ENA, as in the USA of OTL, ‘speaker’ usually means something more like prime minister than the neutral oversight figure of Westminster.
[43] There are two opposing effects at work here. Firstly, the Patriot government tended to frown on settlement beyond a few initiatives that could, in theory, be directly controlled by the government (such as Hamilton’s plan in Canada), fearful of losing control of their citizens. Secondly, however, there is the fact that the ENA does not have universal suffrage – like Britain in the period, voting requires proof of property ownership, although the limit in America is only 10s rather than 40s in Britain (prior to Fox’s reforms). One easy way to gain the right to vote is to win land and settle it. The result is that the speed of American settlement is about the same as OTL – but because there are more avenues to expand into (Canada, Cuba) the westward expansion is slower.
[44] As he did in OTL in one of the bodies he chaired.
[45] Or Continental Secretary for short; the ENA equivalent of Home Secretary.
[46] An illustration of how words can mean different things in different universes…
[47] NB in TTL he is not ‘the Great’ due to his ultimate failure, and nor is he King of Prussia, because the Austrians were never in a sufficiently weak position for him to get away with claiming the title.
[48] Yes, Blücher fighting against the Prussians. This is due to a vagary of how un-nationalistic armies tended to be in the 18th and early 19th centuries. In OTL, Blücher (who was born in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, for a double irony) joined the Swedish Army at the age of sixteen and was campaigning in Prussia in 1761 when he was captured by the Prussians, impressed their commanding officer, and was allowed to join their army. The rest is history. But of course in TTL the equivalent war ended in 1759, so he went back to Sweden and continued fighting for the Swedish Army, by now being a general…
[49] Built on the site of OTL Albany.
[50] Note that today in OTL Amsterdam is no longer accessible from the North Sea due to the construction of the Afsluitdijk dyke, which turned the Zuiderzee into an enclosed lake, the IJsselmeer.
[51] In TTL, obviously, a different general came up with this quote to OTL…
[52] Because many people thought laying rails cross-country was unrealistic or overly expensive compared to the existing means of steam transport. This is what happens when the car is effectively invented before the train.
[53] OTL Sir Sidney Smith was a British agent and spymaster, but no official intelligence agency would be set up for a hundred years. The difference reflects the Foxite government’s instincts towards bureaucracy.
[54] The Continental Parliament at this point only has about sixty MCPs, so this is a more significant majority than it sounds.
[55] TTL’s name for the Great Man theory of history.
[56] The Cocteau temperature scale is a decimalised Revolutionary form of the Réaumur temperature scale, chosen because it is French in origin.
[57] Lisieux did not consider William the Conqueror and contemporary Normans to be French due to his Linnaean views on race.
[58] La Manche, French name for the English Channel.
[59] “Fortune Favours the Bold” – a Latin proverb of unknown origin.
[60] Formerly Nelson’s ship and the TTL analogue of HMS Victory.
[61] The Républicaine is the currency of the French Latin Republic.
[62] In OTL Napoleon said this.
[63] In OTL, the British national debt spiralled out of control during the American Revolutionary War; William Pitt the Younger had an ambitious plan to pay it back by raising taxes, but the French Revolutionary Wars intervened and the debt continued to grow to its current level. In TTL, the lack of an American Revolutionary War means the debt is much smaller, and Fox can realistically consider trying to pay it back without squeezing the taxpayer too much.
[64] A newly-built fort exists there in TTL, but unlike OTL it is not the revolutionary, ground-breaking Shorncliffe Redoubt. Sir John Moore survived the campaign in France seven years before but he has been developing new infantry tactics elsewhere, at Fort Pulteney in Gloucestershire.
[65] Similar to mainstream English attitudes to Napoleon’s planned 1803 invasion in OTL. Most of the population were convinced the very idea was so absurd that it couldn’t possibly be true. It didn’t help that a small minority did believe it, but came up with bizarre conspiracy theories about the French invading by balloon, a spontaneously-dug Channel Tunnel and windmill-driven ships.
[66] The first of these examples was recorded in OTL. Other OTL reported instances of the drum sounding include when Nelson was made a freeman of Plymouth; when Napoleon was held prisoner in Plymouth harbour; the start of the First World War; when the Imperial German High Seas Fleet surrendered in 1918; and in the darkest hour of the Battle of Britain in 1940 when the RAF was losing to the Luftwaffe due to the Luftwaffe’s policy of targeting airfields, but on the night when the drum beat, the first German bomber accidentally bombed London, resulting in British retaliation on Berlin and Hitler shifting policy to city bombing, thus giving the RAF time to recover. There is also a legend that if the drum is ever removed from Buckland Abbey, Plymouth will fall. In the Second World War, the drum was indeed moved for safety, and Plymouth was devastated by a blitz not long afterwards. It was hastily moved back and no further attacks happened for the remainder of the war.
[67] Hail shot is the name in TTL for case shot or the Shrapnel shell, the powerful British secret weapon invented by Lt. Shrapnel in OTL (and by both him and a Captain Philips in TTL). It consists of a shell packed with musket balls, designed to hit its target and then explodes, spraying musket balls everywhere in a devastating anti-infantry strike. In TTL as in OTL, Continental arsenals did not manage to duplicate it until years later.
[68] OTL Brooks’s was the main Whig gentleman’s club, but as this was founded in 1764, the changes to TTL such as the political upheavals following the Second Glorious Revolution mean that matters have changed. Grenville’s club is still on Pall Mall, but is larger and essentially occupies the place of both Brook’s and Boodle’s.
[69] White’s club, founded in the 1690s by an Italian immigrant named Francesco Bianco (“Mr White” being the anglicised version of his name) is, in TTL as OTL, the primary Tory club. In TTL it has extended its membership to the more conservative Whigs who are in opposition as well. Macall’s is the TTL version of Almack’s (according to legend, founded by a Mr Macall who reversed the syllables to have a less Scottish-sounding name – in TTL he decides not to), which is one of the few clubs that allowed mixed membership, and is thus focused on social events like balls and masques.
[70] In OTL prior to the fire of 1834 which destroyed the old Palace of Westminster, St Stephen’s Chapel was used as the chamber of the House of Commons.
[71] In OTL the reserves of Scottish and Irish banks were not tied to the Bank of England (as they are to
day, albeit now only Northern Ireland) via deposits until the 1840s.
[72] OTL it was moved to St Swithin’s Church and then to Cannon Street Station.
[73] OTL the Hellfire Club was closed down under considerably different circumstances and its successors became more moderate (the Phoenix Room at Oxford is one of them). In TTL the fact that the Church is specifically involved drives the successor Club into even more radical territory instead.
[74] In OTL it was the 57th (Middlesex) Regiment of Foot which received the ‘Diehards’ nickname thanks to a similar stand in Spain during the Peninsular War. In TTL the 57th are still the 59th due to two American regiments not being disbanded, and were not stationed in their native London at the time, being one of the regiments sent to fight the Meridians. This fact will obviously impinge heavily on their regimental image. (In OTL, the 52nd became the 50th and then became known as the Dirty Half-Hundred.)
[75] OTL this was the primary residence of the British Royal Family until 1809, when it (ironically) largely burned down. Buckingham Palace here is (or rather was, before it burned down) still Buckingham House, home to the Duke of Buckingham’s family.
[76] Before she married Henry, Lady Diana Spencer. It was a very common female name for daughters of the Dukes of Marlborough over many years. OTL, George IV’s proposal was turned down by Lady Diana Spencer, and of course almost 200 years later Prince Charles married another Lady Diana Spencer (thus leading to the classic catch-22 pub trivia question of ‘When the Prince of Wales asked Lady Diana Spencer to marry him, did she say yes or no?’)
[77] In other words, at what became Speaker’s Corner in OTL.
[78] This is the site of the OTL Battle of Waterloo (which some wanted to name for La Belle Alliance instead) in 1815.
[79] The fact that they enumerated him from the kings of united Spain instead of going back to the Aragonese royal line emphasises the fact that this division of Spain is a legal fiction designed to disguise a cynical carve-up.
[80] The situation is a little more complicated than that translation suggests, with corregidor or co-councillor being a personal representative of the King, only appointed to the larger cities, and in most cases having been replaced by an intendant by this point due to the reforms of the Spanish Bourbons – however, Cervera is sufficiently isolated for this reform never to have taken effect.
[81] The uniforms were later changed to red and black, but given the isolated nature of Cervera garrison duty, it is probable that Aumont’s men were scarcely near the top of the list to be issued with new ones.
[82] In OTL Radetzky’s analogue was not wounded and became one of Austria’s greatest generals, later acting as effective military governor of Austrian Venetia after the Napoleonic Wars.
[83] A term used in TTL to mean human wave attack.
[84] Note that he was given this title after Henry IX ascended to the throne, Prince Henry William himself being the previous Duke of Cambridge.
[85] OTL Barras was indeed with the FEIC in India, but was captured during the Second Anglo-Mysore War (which was essentially the Indian front of the American Revolutionary War) and decided to return to France a few years later, eventually becoming the leader of the Revolutionary Directory. In TTL there is no war at that point and Barras remains with the FEIC, arising to a strong position under Rochambeau: he therefore remains a Royalist.
[86] In OTL William Wilberforce pulled off this trick to get from London to York within 48 hours to attend an important abolitionist meeting.
[87] The earliest known reference to Davy Jones’ Locker is from 1726, predating the POD of this timeline by a year.
[88] This is presumably one of the ‘cultural translations’ made by Captain Nuttall’s team and not present in the original text, as the term chauvinism is named for an OTL figure born after the POD of this timeline.
[89] OTL and TTL; the butterflies by that point had not affected a song which had its roots in a poem written only three years after the POD (by Thomson himself). However, it is not as popular a patriotic hymn in TTL due to being associated with George II’s reign.
[90] Ciamberì is the Italian name for the city which in OTL, as Savoy became part of France in 1860, is known as Chambéry.
[91] As opposed to the heraldic ‘France ancient’ (a field of many fleur-de-lys) and ‘France modern’ (three fleur-de-lys).
[92] A slogan used in the early revolutionary period of France in OTL (the Kingdom of the French) which still accepted the monarchy.
[93] Though, of course, generations of conspiracy theorists will swear otherwise.
[94] TTL-speak for psychological profile.
[95] In OTL this quote (or a very similar one) was made by Franklin during the American Revolution.
[96] His OTL counterpart the Duke of Wellington implemented a similar strategy in Spain, also inspired by Indian adventures in his youth.
[97] OTL John M. Hall developed an American breechloading rifle in 1819. His TTL counterpart, Paul Hall, is both born a few years earlier and has less far to go thanks to the prevalence of and improvement upon the Ferguson design.
[98] Switzerland, Genoa, Lucca, San Marino, Venice, the Netherlands and Corsica. Of course the pre-war republics tended to be oligarchic and bourgeois (except Corsica) and thus not necessarily ideologically aligned with the Jacobins, but Tressino’s goal here is wit rather than accuracy. Note he also neglects Ragusa, though it is debatable whether that would be considered “European” at the time.
[99] In OTL, faced with a similar problem in invading the Netherlands, the French General Pichegru had the bright idea of waiting until winter and crossing the Line when it was frozen. But TTL’s version of Pichegru is thousands of miles away, in command of the UPSA’s armies…
[100] The Grand Place, but the people of TTL have a certain disincentive to use the French name.
[101] Note these are not the same red trousers which caused controversy in the OTL French Army of World War I, but originated earlier by the different process of Jacobin French uniforms in TTL being designed after simplified ancien régime uniforms recoloured to imply being soaked in blood. Initially this just consisted of dying the formerly white parts red (including the trousers) but later versions also switched the blue parts for black.
[102] “H-ball” is the name used in TTL for a sport codified in the mid-19th century in America which is somewhat reminiscent of a mixture between rugby, American football and Australian Rules football.
[103] Translation: Now I take up my rightful crown once more, and may you know, my people, that I shall reign here and my sons after me from now until the ending of the world; and know also that the world watches, and together we shall ensure that the powers of our time see one thing – that no matter what we have all suffered under the nightmare of the past few years, no matter how our nation has been ravaged by the hand of brutes and lunatics claiming to speak for the very people they murdered wholesale, no matter how much we have to rebuild… the Kingdom will always survive.
[104] In British usage of the time, 'Picts' essentially = 'cavemen'.
[105] Alexander was promoted thanks to his actions in the early stages of the return to the war in France. He is now supreme commander of all American troops there, mostly consisting of his own 101st Carolinians.
[106] A punning reference combining ‘Bastille’ with ‘Basilic’ (French for ‘Basilisk’, the idea being to metaphorically tie the statue to the notion of someone being turned to stone by the Greek mythological creature in question).
[107] “Protgun”, short for protected gun, is the TTL name for the fighting vehicle that will eventually emerge as something roughly analogous to a tank.
[108] Near the location of the Stade de France in OTL.
[109] Hail shot = case shot or Shrapnel shell.
[110] OTL, the three colonial Portuguese States of Brasil, Maranhão and Grão-Pará were amalgamated into a single Viceroyalty in 1775; in TTL the same event takes place earlier, just after the First Platinean
War in 1769, but for similar reasons.
[111] Note that the pinyin system of Chinese transliteration is mostly used in the text as it is the most familiar today, but this is a ‘translation’ to aid reader comprehension – in-timeline the Chinese Latin alphabet transliteration system is very different and more Russian-influenced.
[112] Taizu and Taizong are more commonly known by their Manchu names of Nurhaci and Huang Taiji.
[113] There is some debate as to when the Tiandihui was founded; modern scholars say the 1760s, but earlier sources tend to view them as dating from the reign of the Kangxi Emperor in the 1720s. Regardless, they would probably still form in TTL either way.
[114] There is speculation that Yongzheng doctored his father’s deathbed proclamation of succession to declare the fourth son (himself) as Emperor rather than the fourteenth, Kangxi’s favourite.
[115] Unlike OTL where he died in 1735 rather than 1754 and was succeeded by the Qianlong Emperor – see Interlude #5.
[116] OTL Hongli became the Qianlong Emperor.
[117] OTL, the Nguyens eventually rallied and defeated the Qing armies in a surprise seven-day Tet campaign. The Nguyens would go on to eventually unite the remaining factions as the new country of Viet Nam in 1802.
[118] This system was adopted in OTL after the Yongzheng dispute as well.
[119] OTL this happened earlier, under the Qianlong Emperor, and was spread out over a longer period of time.
[120] Strictly speaking this office did not exist under Qing rule – it’s an informal translation reflecting the fact that Zeng was an unusually dominant minister within the Grand Council (Junjichu, more literally ‘Office of Military Secrets’) established by the Yongzheng Emperor in 1730.
[121] OTL the Chinese already had considerable influence over the Kazakhs at this point, although Ablai Khan tried to play them off against the Russians. TTL, as there was no Qianlong Emperor and no successful conquest of the Dzungars earlier on, contact between the Kazakhs and China is much more limited.