Die freie Stadt Mainz - A great hunt for glory.
After the war Mainz had very bad finances. Mainz had taken several big loans and had gone bankrupt twice. But instead of paying the money back Mainz borrowed more money to pay for the colonisation they had started with. The Archbishop considered that he and the court needed a place to go in exile to and that that was more important than good economy. The choice of Mainzian colony became the area called Bangor in North America and colonists were sent there. The first attempt did not do so well but the second did successfully claim the area for Mainz and build up a small society there. More money was borrowed and more colonists were sent to the colony which had got the name Neue Mainz. In August 1807 the population rose over 1000 inhabitants and was given city privilege. Mainz begun to build a colonial army at this point and did attempts of colonising more in the area.
Most thought that the Archbishop should move his interests back to Europe when Neue Mainz was considered a city but he did not so. Instead he enlarged the colonial army even thought there was none in Mainz itself. It was soon clear that the army not was for defensive purposes, as the size was unnecessary big, but for offensive ones. A war against England or Spain was not likely so the only probable enemy was the Native Indian tribe of Huron.
Native Americans were all after in military technology and they still mainly fought with bows and arrows. But there were two things that made a war with Native Americans hard. The Indians had learned one thing military from the Europeans and that was the use of fortifications with garrisons in important areas. That meant that an invader had to have rather big armies to take the area completely. The other thing that made American wars difficult was that it was hard to get reinforcements if the operation went wrong. This applied very much in Central America where the Aztecs did conquer vast areas if they did manage to defeat the Spanish conquistadores.
April 2nd 1811 Mainz’s colonial army did enter Huronian land and some days later Huron and another American tribe Shawnee declare war upon Mainz to give the appearance of civilized nations. Mainz plan was to do three summer offensives and retreat to their own land in winter. Hopefully they would be able to take all the fortifications in Huron in that time. However, they turned out to be wrong. Mainz suffered from higher casualties than expected and reinforcements was hard and took long time to get. In the end it was a good year if they managed to capture one fortification. In open battle Huron did not give any resistance even with big numerically superiority. In the end it took seven years to take control over all of Huron and de facto make it a colony of Mainz.
Mainz colonies 1818-1826.
In the winter of 1817 Mainz did fool and recruit many Huron Indians to Mainz’s army. In the spring they were fully equipped and educated and the size of the army now marching on Shawnee was almost 30.000 men. The invasion was quick but not without losses. In the late months 1818 everything but one fortification was captured but so many had died that no more progress could be made. After some time of negotiation with the tribe chief Mainz made peace with Shawnee on the terms of that Shawnee had to give away about half of their land. The American war was Mainz greatest victory since the defeat of The Palatinat in 1421 and the greatest victory in America accomplished by a European nation ever to that point.
After the colonial war the Archbishop had become old and he considered that the Church should no longer practise politics and rule over territory. He and Austria’s Emperor Franz II agreed on that Mainz and its colonies should be handed over to Austria when the Archbishop died. December 1st 1826 Mainz did disappear from the map to never return again but their story should be the proudest for the German people for centuries and centuries to come.