The Apulian Persons Project

Giuseppe II's reign started under the best auspices. One year before his official crowning in 1702, the theatrical crowd of Napoli acclaimed the young guy during his attendance of the inauguration of the first modern "industrial" winery of the country. The young was flamboyant and nobody would expect that in the following years would evolve in a sort of wacky artist of war completely disinterested in the domestic political affairs. The Regency Council left him the power and stepped back in order, even if some of its members were afraid of leaving so much power in the hands of an inexperienced young man.

Soon they had a clue of that: in 1704 he took as pretext the commercial embargo issued by the Austrian authorities supervising trade in Venice and Prag to declare an absurd war to the Habsburgs. Thanks God, the conflict was short and bloodless for the Apulian armies: landlocked by the stronger Spanish/Apulian fleet, the Austrian army remained on the shores of Veneto without any chance to land elsewhere. After a while, the diplomats found an agreement and peace came with the relief of the trade blockade and a payment of 159.000 ducats as "damage" for lost trade.

But Giuseppe II started to love his presumed warfare capabilities. Few years later he profited of a boundary dispute with the Ottomans to start another useless war which upset the Kosovars (which revolted and took for a while control of their province), costed some thousands of men and got just 50.000 ducats of war indemnities. An additional war against the Russians (1716-1719) added very little to Giuseppe II's score: again, the enemies were forced to pay a similar war indemnity and suspend an embargo against the Apulian merchants in St. Petersburg, but at which costs? Two warships were sunken in the North Sea by the Russian navy during some of the biggest naval battles of the period, and for sure the proceeds of the peace treaty would not recover the outlay for both ships. A good consequence of the war was the destruction of the Apulian slave trading post in Inhambane, the last relic of an ancient world. Even if only forced by events, in this way Apulia went out of that horrible commerce of human bodies as many other European countries were starting to do in those years.

And finally came the second war against the Ottomans, even more cruel and longer than the first one, but with the Apulian armies and navies rapidly advancing versus European peers (in those years both Apulian naval and land technologies moved up at increased pace on the progress scale of technology) the probability of success had increased. On the other side, Ottoman Empire was declining because of the centrifuge authority of regional beys, steady revolts in its Balkan possessions and the lack of military innovations. The war lasted three years (1721-1724) and was fought both on the African continent (where Spanish and Apulian expeditions raided Turkish possessions on the North-West coast) and – mainly – in the Balkans, where the Apulian soldiers managed to hit the enemies several times.

European superiority on the seas was even more marked than on the land and drove to a series of victories which – even if did not destroy entirely the naval power of the Turks – at least severely reduced their projection capability outside their possessions. A vain attempt by the Sultan to make peace offering 200.000 ducats was refused by Giuseppe II, who knew Beograd was finally falling in Apulian armies (as actually occurred in November 1722). The retreat of the Spaniards (who got Issas from the Ottomans and betrayed Giuseppe II in August 1723) started to convince his senior advisors to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict, before it was too late. Also because after the leaving of the Spanish fleet from the Central Mediterranean, Turkish incursions had become more and more dangerous, as shown by the conquest of Ancona in February 1724.

A final attempt was tried. After hiring over 5.000 mercenaries in Kosovo, the army headed to Wallachia to try to get an additional province, but diplomatic efforts were pushed up independently from the campaign and finally brought to the Peace of Beograd. According to its clauses, the Sultan agreed to give up the catholic province of Bosnia to Apulia, another piece of Christianity freed by the cruel sword of the Infidels…


This absurdly warring prince had at least the decency to not interfere in the domestic affairs and the whole country benefited from this. He was slowly but inexorably forced by the advancements of time to reduce feudal privileges and – in some way – share a part of his own economic authority with the emerging classes. Bourgeoisie got new privileges and many cities managed to get an increased level of local self-determination, particularly in the North American colonies. The appointment of Governors both in Southern Italy and then in the biggest colonial cities on the Atlantic coast spurred even more the trend to self-government in as many administrative areas as possible (from commerce, to levies, to prices control). Some degree of self-rule was generally granted also to the natives living in Nova Apulia, where some of them autonomously converted to the Catholic religion, like did those inhabiting the Huron region.

Thanks, Coz1. You're right, those isolated provinces on the east coast woul be a wonderful addition to my country. Let's hope!

You're right. The shape of my possessions in the Balkan is really disappointing. And - even more - I'm grabbing wrong-culture and wrong-religion provinces, but actually it's really a hard task taking land from those Infidels.

Their huge number superiority, higher morale and good fortress levels (2-3) in poor provinces, make difficult to have swift progress. I must be quick and determined every time, hope in a bunch of naval victories and after a circa 20-25% victory score ask 1-2 provinces, before hundred thousands of Turks march on me (in the last campaign they took Ancona and almost Napoli o - you can still see 30.000 Turks there, and thanks God they didn't destroy the refinery). The good thing is that until I'm allied with Spain they won't sneakly attack me, but the day I left the alliance ... brrrr

Really few events in the second quarter of the XVIII century, mainly passed under the rule of the mediocre Giuseppe II, until his death in 1747. At least, he had calmed down the hot spirits of youth and had had a more cautious foreign policy during the years of maturity. Actually the main events that can be recorded during Giuseppe II's reign are:

• the terrible plague of the 1731, which killed 3.500 people in Italian and Balkan territories before spreading even to the Atlantic coasts of Nova Apulia,
• the inauguration of the naval equipments manufactory in Ile Ste. Croix (in the province of Micmac) to increase the development of better ships dedicated to the exploration of the Arctic Sea (a new trading post was founded in Ungava in 1744 following such advancements and even more would follow during the reign of Giuseppe II's successor),
• the chartering of a university in Taranto, the first one in the home province of Apulia.

Also for Europe as a whole that was a period of relative peace, just a prologue of the harsh wars that would follow in the following decades because of the consolidation of two opposing alliances. The first one was established by the Austro-Russian pact of friendship signed in 1748 and followed few months later by another embargo of Apulian merchants declared by the Habsburg authorities governing the centre of trade of Venice. "Just one more step towards the war" a newly established King of Apulia and Naples Carlo III told his advisors after having been informed of this… but don't want to anticipate events...

coz1 said:

Spain and France should be a huge help when the time comes to deal with the Turks. And I don't think you have much choice but to deal with the Turks.

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Yeah, Turks and Habsburg are my favourite victims so far. I've played until the 1780s right now and enjoyed very much the last bunch of years. Reeeeeally exciting, you know, with a number of neck-to-neck deathmatch wars with those two bad guys, lots of explorations (finally I reached 'naval entrepreneurs' lvl in 1755 and was able to explore all the seas) and high-level diplomacy, with even France joining my alliance with Spain.

And I must say I've been lucky, seeing Colombia & La Plata spinning-off from Spain and a single-province USA seceding in 1774 from ... ehm ... France

I hope to update you asap on these years.

Fulcrumvale said:

Apulia looks quite powerful despite it being surrounded by powers far larger than itself. Good going!

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Yeah, a second ranking power in Europe - but well connected with the big guys - and absent in Asia and Africa, but a huge North American domain that supports income with the very profitable fur trade...

... oh, and a disruptive technological superiority in warfare, infra and trade. These are the secrets of we Apulians.

Hopefully and update will come in few hours.

The last kings of the ruling dynasty were poor in administration – which could anyway be overseen because of the overall economic boom, with enterprises increasingly independent from royal funding – but had dreams of "grandeur" in terms of foreign affairs. Public administration had to shape his structures to adapt itself to the self-government desires of the colonial provinces of Nova Apulia and the kings were happy with the possibility of reducing their duties in administrating territories on the other side of the ocean. Sometimes the kings tried to keep a more centralised structure, but the trend was inevitably toward an increase in local authorities powers versus the central goverment. But unity of the country could not be questioned, of course …

Anyway, Carlo III enthusiastically pursued his glorious dreams through the development of stricter connections with Spain and France. In order to challenge the emergence of the Russo-Austrian pact, France and Spain, which were actually governed by two Bourbon lines, agreed that also France would access the old alliance with Apulia and this event happened in 1758, when the war against Austria had been already going on for three years (it would last until 1764 and be recalled as the "Nine Years War" in the annals of history)…


The Nine Years War was a major event in the history of Europe. Top-5 great powers fought it, France (#1 in V.P.), Spain (#3), Apulia (#4) on one side and Russia (#3) and Austria (#5) along with other minor countries. It was not only a harsh military confrontation, but also accelerated some epochal changes which practically put an end to the "ancienne regime":

Nationalistic revolts in the Americas, tired of funding with their resources and men the quarrelling European homelands…


... prolonged war exhaustion and popular upsettings in France and Spain, which would bring in 1758 to the Northern Italian revolts (cruelly suppressed by France) and the independence war of Sicily, which was fought by the Apulian armies and would lead to the conquest of Palermo...


General upset in France would lead even to the 1771 French civil war and the subsequent 1774 Declaration of Independence of the United States of America from France…


… and even some destabilising efforts in the Kingdom of Apulia, which would lead in the longer term to the Petition of Citizens' Rights undersigned by King Francesco I in 1784, the first tangible opening to the popular movements after decades of "enlightened despotism".

Nine Years War diary​

But let's go back to the Nine Years War, which recorded a sort of prologue during the minor conflict against the Knights of 1749-52 (nothing relevant to write about), which after the defeat would join the alliance with Austria and Russia against Apulian and Spanish pressures.

Actually the Maltese conflict convinced Apulian authorities of the necessity to fund new expenditures to the enlargement of navy and army, which have been traditionally held at maximum technological advancement but at minimum numerical strength during peace times. Instead, in the second half of the XVIII century a tendency to professional military service emerged, with huge investments in warships to sustain the control of both the Mediterranean Sea and the transatlantic routes to Nova Apulia. In land warfare, general conscription was gradually replacing the old styled armies, both in Apulia and in other European countries: thus, when the Austrian refusal to remove after roughly five years the trade embargo against the Apulian merchants ignited a global conflict, huge quantities of men – as never recorded in the history of Europe – went down to the battlefields.

I really don't want to bother you with battles and dates, but just give you the main events. Until France joined the Spanish-Apulian side in the middle of the conflict, the most important land front was the border between Bosnia (Apulia) and Croatia (Austria). Apart from landing attempts performed by the Spaniard in the Russian Baltic provinces, in the early stages the cruelest battles were fought to prevent Austrian advances towards Sarajevo – and actually the Apulian garrisons managed at a high cost to stop the overwhelming enemy troops, at the point that Carlo III had to launch a general conscription of 7.000 units in Apulia to strengthen the presence in the Balkan area, leaving undefended the Adriatic coast of Italy. An Austrian raid even took and held Ancona (Marche) for two years, until a naval blockade in the Adriatic Sea weakened their defences and helped the liberation of the port.

Exhausted by Spanish victories in the northern front, Russia surrendered paying a huge tribute, exactly when the French intervened alongside with Spain and Apulia. At that point, the fate of the Nine Years War was already determined. Left alone, the Habsburgs were smashed by a joint attack from West and South. Zagreb fell to Apulian armies in 1759, whereas the Austrian generals had to abandon Lower Germany to the advancing French-Spaniards armies. The apotheosis came with the 1761 siege of Wien, which surrendered to the Apulian troops in June, with the Imperial court fleeing to Prague. Carlo III sent his troops to chase the Emperor, but when they reached his palace in Prague and held him prisoner there (December 1763), an Austrian counteroffensive got back Wien and Zagreb.

Anyway, with the Emperor captured and Germany lost, the enemy was gradually forced to come to a deal. The hostilities calmed down slowly but the humiliating Peace of Prague was signed only on 7th June 1764. Together with the payment of 75.000 ducats, in order to avoid further trade restrictions, Prague with his rich centre of trade was freed and reinstated as a formally independent city-state (on the late medieval models of Venice and the hanseatic cities), but actually a protectorate of Apulia.


Thus ended the Nine Years War, the truly last war of the Modern Age... From then on, revolutionary developments in society, economy and military tactics would change forever warfare...

Domestic affairs and the liberal movement​

The liberal movement emerged as a consequence of the tremendous efforts made by the Apulian people to have their nation strong and modernised. The intense warfare of the second half of XVIII century brought general conscription and shipbuilding: under Carlo III the conscription centre of Taranto was built in order to give a stable organisational structure to the national army. Furthermore, he ordered the construction of a new shipyard in Napoli, in order to increase shipbuilding capabilities of the Kingdom.


In addition to fostering further advancements in the warfare, such development affected society as well. The huge number of workers employed in the Napoli's shipyard anticipated in some way the concentration of workforce more typical of the industrial revolution. A sort of class-consciousness emerged in the docks among people aware of their common interests and difficulties and fuelled the first examples of proletarian instances that state authorities needed to address.

The young King Francesco I, who succeeded his father in 1778 when he was only 27 years old and would be the last King of Apulia, had to deal with such hard challenges without the experience of the later life stages. Francesco himself was popular and not completely closed to social advancements. But – similarly to his contemporaneous Louis XVI of France – he suffered from severe indecisiveness about his role in the envisaged change of the nation, oscillating between backward and forward movements. He promoted new chief judges in the less developed Balkan provinces to administrate justice in a more effective way and in November 1784 he redressed a peasants' petition against the aristocracy, which was refusing to pay the levies imposed by the kingdom to support an extra war against the Ottoman Empire. Noblemen were obviously upset by the king's sudden move in favour of popular instances and this event was actually the first sign of times becoming mature to bring to a new political order, but this will be treated in a more detailed way in the next posted chapter.

Overseas activities and exploration​

The last two Kings of Apulia, Carlo III and Francesco I, authorised a number of important exploration and colonisation efforts, as if they had perceived that these were the last goals of the Apulian monarchy before it ended with the 1791 republican revolution.

With the advancement of naval technology, exploration and trading enterprises became even more inexpensive and reliable. A new figure of naval entrepreneurs emerged, which were able to fund their voyages by means of the proceeds of the trade raised in the newly chartered areas, in a virtuous cycle of internal funding generation. One of the most remarkable examples was Campobasso, a voyager that pushed the colonisation of the Arctic area to new highs. Able to raise gold from the fur trade in the provinces of Nova Apulia, he moved to build few additional Apulian permanent settlements on the icy coasts of the Sea of Baffin. In 1775 – during the French Civil War – even the province of Nipigon seceded from New France to join Carlo III's domains. In the wake of fur trade came also diffusion of Catholicism and one after the other also the native groups in Ottawa converted to the state religion.

The colonisation of Arctic area wasn't the greatest endeavour of the period. Alongside with it, other naval explorers conducted a massive charting venture of the world oceans. The main milestones of this endeavour were:

• access to Malacca and opening of that port to Apulian trade (trade convention signed in 1760), where the first monopoly was gained in 1771
• discovering of Kamchatka peninsula (1780)
• discovering of New Zealand (1787) and Australia mainland (1788)

Foreign policy and the "Greek affair"​

One of the main causes, which would precipitate the fall of the monarchy, was the huge military spending of Francesco I. The main conflict was the 1784-1786 war against the Ottoman Empire, caused by the so-called "Greek affair". Hellenic territories had been since long time under the Turks' control, but from time to time rebelled against the Muslim yoke. As champions of the Orthodox populations of Albania and Kosovo, the Kings of Apulia had traditionally supported their peers in Greece, which actually had become a minority due to a gradual spread of Islam in those provinces.

Determined to free the Orthodox minority (headed by its leader Argyrus), Francesco I sent an ultimatum and finally declared war on the Sultan in 1784. Supported by the French-Spanish fleets and a blatant superiority in naval technology, the Apulians had an easy time against the enemies in North-West Africa (where all the undefended Turkish outposts were occupied), but had to face a terrible menace in the Balkan region, where the rivals had outnumbering forces. During 1785 the fortunes of the combats alternated from one side to the other: in February the Turks got Kosovo, pushing their advance toward Sarajevo, whereas an Apulian landing succeeded in the capture of Nafplion (Morea) in August. Soon after the Ottomans captured Sarajevo, but with the loss of further possessions to the Catholic powers they were ready to agree a settlement over the fate of Morea. The peace treaty signed in 1786 sanctioned the transfer of Massawa to Spain and of Morea to Apulia. As a sign of liberality, Francesco I created a formally independent Orthodox Principality of Morea – which actually was a protectorate of Apulia – and gave Argyrus the title of Prince of Morea.


In 1788 Apulia fought also a short commercial war (the so-called "8 Weeks War") against the British Empire to cancel the trade ban issued by the English against Apulia in their overseas centres of trade. With the quick occupation of Biloxi and other English posts in the Carribean Sea, the enemy was forced to suspend the ban. But these continuous conflicts with huge expenses and limited gains were even more stressing the public opinion, not only in Taranto, Naples and Palermo, but also in the capitals of allied powers. Few months later the storming of the Bastille came to put an end to the establishment.

On 14th July 1789 the French Revolution erupted in all its violence, but I feel unnecessary to resume anything but the most focal points, and particularly their impacts on Apulia. After the capture of the Bastille, Louis XVI left the country and asked for the help of other European monarchies, which did not intervene in the internal affairs of France. Due to the betrayal of the King, the National Constituent Assembly met to address immediately the constitutional regime of the state. Soon the most radical positions prevailed and the French First Republic was proclaimed. Feudal privileges were abolished together with the "fleur de lis" and – as we all know – a new era opened for that country.

When echoes of those major events reached Italy, Francesco I did not oppose reforms but tried to keep monarchy popular among the lower classes. In this effort, he issued a softly moderate constitution to get some grade of liberalism in the country, in particular concerning the personal freedom of subjects. He had a mixed sentiment toward the French revolutionaries: he could not forgive them the dethroning of Louis XVI, but he understood that European society needed some kind of innovation.


But – again – he lost his chances to survive the revolutionary tide with a further pretentious war, declared on Russia and Austria (actually because of a trade embargo issued by Russian mercantile authorities). After six months of sacrifices and war duties (which at least produced one positive outcome, the advance of Apulian armies in the Habsburg-controlled Croatia), people reacted in a reckless way. A mob assembled in front of the Royal Palace on 20th January 1791 asking for the constitution of a Parliament and the draft of a Constitution. Unwilling to surrender to popular sentiment, Francesco I fled in the night with his court and embarked to reach Spain.


During that hysterical night, the representatives of the Jacobins (more radical) and the Republicans (more liberal-conservative), directly inspired by the analogous French parties, found a minimal agreement to avoid anarchy and civil war. On 21 January 1791, the day after the king's voluntary exile, the Republic was proclaimed and a Consiglio Repubblicano (Republican Council) established.

The first deeds of the Republican Council were the drafting of a Constitution (inspired by the prevailing liberal ideals of the time) and the calling of elections for the first Parliament of the Republic. Feudal and ecclesiastical privileges were abolished and negotiations with the Russians were started to find a reasonable agreement with them. On 7th March the hostilities were stopped with Russia ceding the Scandinavian port of Narvik to France and paying with its allies an indemnity of 100.000 ducats. During peace negotiations, the parties signed a secret agreement that allowed the Habsburgs to reoccupy Prague, ending the short-lived autonomous entity under the (former) protectorate of Apulia.

After few months of relative calm, domestic situation deteriorated again during autumn 1791. Similarly to what was to happen in France few months later with the emergence of Robespierre's Reign of Terro, the Republican Council came under the control of the ultra-radical Jacobin faction, inaugurating a wave of obscurantism aimed at the elimination of counter-revolutionary pro-monarchical activities. From then on, menaces against the new political order could come only from outside, as experienced with the First Revolutionary War (1797-1798).

Ehi, I almost forgot the new republican flag!
The tree is an olive, chosen by the republican representatives as symbol of strenght, generosity and endurance.