O Lord, our God, Arise: More Weekly Reports from England

jmberry: Very, very interesting. The 18th century will have a lot of those huge, world-changing wars that this story's 17th century lacked. As for Egypt, it is Christian. I suppose I shouldn't assume people are so knowledgeable about such deatails when I don't mention them very often.

RGB:
1. It did, I was surprised. I knew that if I lost a single battle I would be unlikely to be able to continue, since reinforcement at that distance would be difficult if not impossible. But I had Marlborough in command, that certainly helped.
2. Not a coincidence, the hotels were named after him.
3. Well, it is John Locke we're talking about, he was a rather progressive fellow.

I'd have preferred to have posted the next update last week, but it's going slowly... it's a very important one as it will help set up the whole 18th century. I'd rather get it right than rush it out there.

[RGB: I've managed to get enough inspiration to finish everything and get the editing in... I think I have gotten it right, at least. This is certainly the longest update of any I can think of in this AAR!

Deamon: Explode indeed. I'll only be able to go into the War of the Spanish Succession here, but there's also a war between Sweden and Finnland going on at the same time, as well as one with Brandenburg, a newly independent Prussia, and Lithuanian rebels all against Poland. In other words, almost all of Europe is at war at once. It's a mess, and the rest of the century isn't going to be any better.]

Despite large lobbies in all the nations of the League of Augsburg calling for them to intervene in the war, they very nearly failed to do so. Rebellions had, in the previous two years, flared up in the Helvetian Confederacy's Italian territories, with Austrian support, and the matter very nearly resulted in full-scale war. Support for the Babenburg candidate in such a situation was a divisive matter, and Helvetia attempted to veto it. Baden and the Palatinate, for their part, were single-mindedly lobbying for war with France for the simple reason of driving them out of the Holy Roman Empire. Britain and the Netherlands, however, were somewhat more uncertain, and neither wished to tear the League apart on the matter. It seemed as if the League might respectfully decline to become involved and allow the nations involved to work it out for themselves. As the war itself broke out, however, Austria, eager for support, agreed to withdraw its support for the rebels; Helvetia was losing the fight on that front in any case.* With that matter settled, the League declared for the Babenburgs.

Britain's plan had been in place since before the Siena war, at least in its general shape, and was the product of Emperor Henry himself. Unlike previous wars against France, where Flanders was the main battlefield, the British would dangle the rich region before the French armies as a trap to draw them in. Henry sent his own uncle, Richard, Duke of York, to take command of the Army of Flanders and attempt to delay the French army as long as possible. He was likely to be vastly outnumbered, but this was entirely Henry's plan; the more French were tied down there and in Upper Lorraine, the fewer were available for his main strike. All Richard had to do was delay as long as he could, and prevent Flanders from falling for a year or two at the most before, hopefully, the heartland of France, Blois and Paris, would be open to the other army.

Although the plan predated Marlborough's rise, Henry knew precisely the man to command said army by this point. As with the Italian campaign, he would board ships and launch an invasion by sea; this time, however, the target was much closer: Bretagne. Welsh and Cornish regiments were disproportionately represented in this army; it was to portray itself as an army of liberation, freeing the Breton people, who had faced centuries of French pressure upon their culture. Henry, of course, pointed out that the British crown still carried with it a claim upon Bretagne (as well as France itself, although Henry knew he could not press that one). The Welsh and Cornish, schooled in the speech of their continental cousins, would proclaim the return of the distant heir of Alderic de Cornouaille and attempt to rally the Bretons behind them.** By the time the French armies realised what was happening, Henry hoped, Bretagne would be solidly in Marlborough's hands and he could advance towards Blois.

As the plan had already been in place for quite some time, both the navy and the armies moved swiftly. The Royal Navy quickly took control of the Channel, a fact that the French navy did not even bother to dispute. As soon as things got in motion, however, a major problem appeared. The original plan had been for York to hold in Flanders and try to bog the inevitable French invasion down; however, of his own accord, he advanced into Picardy in a misguided attempt to further draw the French into the area. York's army was professional, and with 25,000 men outnumbered the 10,000-man French army in the area. York's move had moved him away from supply, however, and he failed to keep his army together, at the end even putting the Somme between the two parts of it. His opponent was Claude Louis Hector de Villars, a skilled commander, who took quick advantage of York's error. At Fricourt on 7 December, and the aptly-named Misery on 9 December, Villars defeated both portions of York's army and sent him back to Flanders.


The British navy's plan for the sea portion of the assault on Brest; south is at top.

Marlborough, of course, could not hear of the defeat, as his men were already crossing the Channel. His army landed at Plougonvellin on 20 December, and set siege to the city of Brest, the British navy also pushing towards the city's harbour. The shocked French defenders put up a token fight, but the siege lasted less than a month; on 11 January 1701, Marlborough's well-trained army, with the help of his ships' guns, assaulted the fortifications and took them with little trouble. The most telling sign of the French defenders' surprise and low morale was the low losses they took; more than one bastion surrendered without a shot when it became obvious they had no chance of victory. Among those captured was the famed Marquis de Vauban, sent to the city to help build up its fortifications; King Louis had obviously not expected so early and so large an attack there.

When the British army sent out its proclamation of Breton liberty, the response was better than Marlborough or Henry could ever have hoped. Bretons turned out by the thousands, eagerly chattering with the Welsh and Cornish despite the difficulty the latter had in understanding, though thanks to preparation translators were easily found. Flags bearing the ermine and stripes of Bretagne were quickly and gladly sewn to fly above the city. Supplies for the winter were cheerfully sold, although this was not so much of a concern as British ships now sailed regularly between Brest and southern England. Hundreds of able-bodied men volunteered to serve under Marlborough's command, allowing him to place a full-sized garrison in captured fortifications. Despite the winter, Marlborough was now in friendly territory, and he could press his advantage while the French armies were still out of position, reaching the Breton capital of Rennes on 1 February. The French there were more ready for an attack, however, and Marlborough was forced to settle down to sieges of the various fortifications in eastern Bretagne.

Among the Bretons who continued to flock to Marlborough's army as he marched through the Breton countryside was a singular woman: Louise de Penancoët de Kerouaille, a Breton noblewoman who had previously been the mistress of Prince Charles. Although appointed Duchess of Aubigny by King Louis, she was deeply in debt and hoped that being a Breton would allow her to profit by switching sides. Marlborough was understandably concerned, but decided to refer her to Emperor Henry anyway. De Kerouaille's appearance was, Henry knew, either a blessing by giving him a Breton figure for his hopefully new subjects to rally around, or a danger as the ambitious woman could tear the whole Breton expedition apart, politically. Although there were no credible rumors of an affair - de Kerouialle was fifty-one years old by this point, and Henry apparently entirely uninterested - she was universally reviled around the British court as a French Papist and undue influence on Henry. Henry carefully kept her out of the way while the war continued.


Louise de Kerouaille, by Pierre Mignard (1660)

As Marlborough continued to attept to reduce the fortifications around Rennes, the main French army, in a severe strategic error that played exactly into the British plan, took the bait and attacked Flanders. In command this time was Francois, Duke of Villeroi, who showed the same impetuosity and carelessness that York had displayed previously by advancing before most of his army was in place. York, for his part, had learned from his error, and regained the confidence of his soldiers by surprising and smashing an advance force at Moorslede. Believing the British defences in Flanders proper to be unbreakable, Villeroi decided to make another attempt to the south. In mid-March he began his march into Wallonia, and for the next month he and York maneuvered around Charnoy and Brussels. A skirmish and British victory at Waterloo south of Brussels made a direct attack on that city unreasonable; Villeroi moved further east, retreating first to Louvain and then to Namur, from where he struck north again. On 14 April, he finally blundered blindly into York's army at Ramillies.

The field was mostly flat and open; Villeroi could see that the two armies were approximately equal in size and composition. Thinking he could goad York into an error, he set up with one flank on the swampy ground along the Mehaigne river, the other quite a distance past York's flank north of Ramillies itself, across a swampy stream known as the Little Geete. He hoped to use this threatening move to force York to try and push through before he was outflanked. York, however, noted that this stretched Villeroi's line thin at several points, and obliged with the attack - on his terms. George Hamilton, Earl of Orkney, the commander of his right flank, surged forward and broke through across the Little Geete with little trouble, as the French had only just arrived in their positions and were not quite set. British cavalry on the other flank had the same success, despite that flank being better set, and pushed the French away from the town of Taviers.


The Emperor's Horse pushing through the French right at Ramillies

Villeroi himself insisted upon holding his ground on the left-centre of his line, even as the rest of his army, seeing the flanks torn to pieces like wet paper, pulled back, broke, and began to flee. His stubbornness only made a bad situation worse; York's flanking cavalry swept across the field, and before the French centre could escape, began riding behind them. The French panicked, crowding themsevles into a smaller and smaller area to try and escape, to no avail. Villeroi and half of his army were captured, and the rest scattered in various groups returning to France. York realised to his own amazement that he had, in his attempt to push the French army backwards, achieved the double envelopment sought after by all commanders ever since Hannibal's victory at Cannae. The rest of the French army that was still gathering in Flanders and northern France was now exposed and still in small groups; York was able to take revenge for his early defeat by taking them out in detail.


The Battle of Ramillies. Each line is c. 1000 men.

The events of the battle put the whole French battle plan into ruin. The only other army in France with any sort of cohesion was collecting men with which to assault Marlborough's advance; believing that the Channel was the British general's main goal, however, Louis put Villars in command and hastily ordered him to Flanders to prevent what he believed was a threat to Rheims and Paris, and perhaps Blois afterwards. The besieged garrison at Rennes, slowly realising that relief would never come and that the Breton population of the city was growing ever more restless, surrendered on 11 July, leaving all of Bretagne under British control. Marlborough himself marched northeast to Normandy, spending the next three months dealing with several forts over the region and setting up a new supply line that would be shorter than one extending all the way from Brest.

Outside of France, Louis was having no more luck. The Duke of Vendome was attempting to hold Lower Lorraine, but he faced two skilled opponents: Ludwig Wilhelm, King of Baden and Holy Roman Emperor, and his cousin Francis Eugene, Prince of Savoy-Carignan.*** The two had no less a goal than the complete conquest of Lower Lorraine, but Vendome made every effort to slow them down and hold the region until peace could be obtained. He did succeed on delaying the invasion for nearly a year, but at Haldorf on 20 September 1701, Emperor Ludwig and Prince Eugene broke the army and pushed it back all the way to Muenster. The Holy Roman Emperor became noted for his bright red coat on the field, gaining the nickname of "The Red King"; as he continued to advance further and destroyed the remaining pieces of French resistance utterly, he became known as the "Shield of the Empire".†


A bust of Ludwig Wilhelm von Zähringen, the "Shield of the Empire"

The conflict in America was not organised on either side; minor border incidents had been occuring for half a century before the War of the Spanish Succession broke out. Both sides mostly limited themselves to minor raids across the border; as 1701 went on, however, it became increasingly obvious that British raids were occuring more often and pushing further into French territory. On 18 June 1701, a raiding force viciously sacked Savanne, the capital of the French colony of Louisiana. Among the raiders (and likely contributing to the brutality) was a privateer named Edward Teach, later to make his name as the pirate Blackbeard. Whatever the case, no force quite large enough to permanently occupy French territory could be raised, but the Portuguese were able to seize a few Caribbean islands and maintain control over them.

These victories effectively shrank the region of conflict to northern France itself. York defeated several attempts by Villars to push into Flanders, and finally, on 17 December 1701, laid siege to Calais. This was another potential gain from the war for Emperor Henry, as he also held claim to the city, and it served as a useful strategic port, the nearest point in France to Britain. York made several assaults upon the city, using both his army and the Royal Navy, but all were repulsed. The bravery and tenacity of the inhabitants of Calais, despite being outnumbered and surrounded, became legend within France. Despite continuing to besiege and assault the city, and despite the lack of any French relief force able to come to its aid, York was never able to capture Calais.

Marlborough, meanwhile, had begun marching south from Rouen, feinting a march up the Seine towards Paris before striking southward to Blois. No force large enough to significantly delay Marlborough could be brought together, and on 14 January 1702 the British army marched into the French capital. Louis did not capitulate yet, however, and a final army, under Villars' command, appeared near Paris. Villars was outnumbered, but could expect 16,000 more men from the south by mid-year; Marlborough would have to strike immediately. This he did, and after several skirmishes they met at Cergy on 10 March 1702. The result was not in doubt, and Marlborough did defeat Villars' army. However, it was not an easy victory, with Marlborough's army taking a surprisingly large number of casualties; a rumor that Marlborough himself had fallen went around the battlefield at one point.‡ All Marlborough could do was occupy Paris and keep the French from retaking the captured cities of northern France.

By this point, France had already been forced out of the entirely of Lower Lorraine, and the Count Palatine had captured Cologne. Although Spain was not much involved in the war, as the disputed succession had caused a practical civil war there, even that country was beginning to stabilise and advance along the Mediterranean coast of southern France. An armistice between France and the League of Augsburg was agreed to in May of 1702, but peace talks took another year after that, during which time the annoyed Duke of York was forced to lift his siege of Calais. The severe losses taken by Marlborough at Cergy and the failure to capture Calais put France in a surprisingly good position as the leaders of the various European powers met at Utrecht in the Netherlands. That France had lost its German territories and the Babenburg candidate would take the Spanish throne was taken as a given by both sides, and the British claim to Bretagne was agreed to quickly as well. Although the colonial militia had finally taken Savanne, France insisted upon keeping it as its only access to the region of Louisiana, and that part was dropped. Other attempts to bite off various bits from France had various amounts of success.

Verdun remained in French hands, as France claimed it was a necessary border fortification. The particularly fluid borders of Flanders were not moved an inch, and Helvetia, despite constant fighting along its border with France, only gained a small portion of land in Savoy. Spain gained a small sliver of land near the Catalan border town of Rossello. The final Treaty of Utrecht was agreed to and signed on 18 March 1703; the ultimate stated goal of the treaty was the preservation of a "balance of power" in Europe that France had overturned by its attempted expansion. The war was a clear victory for the Grand Alliance against France, as would be expected from the massive advantage in numbers they had, but French morale was far from broken, as Calais and Cergy became symbols of French tenacity and ability against impossible odds. Still, the British armies could return to their own country as victorious heroes.
__________
*The independence of the republics of Mantua and Milan would be recognised in the Treaty of Utrecht.
**Although the Cromwells could not, of course, claim direct descent from the de Cornouailles, they counted on the fact that Breton patriots would not be too concerned with that fact, as the British crown had been possessed by the true heirs of Alderic for nearly four centuries. King Louis, for his part, allowed James Borcalan (the now-dead Prince Charles' brother) his claim to Bretagne, but this produced no loyalty among the Bretons.
***Despite the name, he was not fighting on behalf of Savoy but of the Duke of Austria.
†Sadly, a full account of the Holy Roman Emperor's campaign in Lower Lorraine is well outside the bounds of this account; for those further interested, there is no small number of works on the subject.
‡The rumor gave rise to a cruelly mocking French folk song ("Death and Burial of the Invincible Marlborough"), very popular during the 18th century as a sign of defiance against the British.

jmberry said:

Just a side note, but David the Wrathful's succesor would have been listed as "Malcolm", not "Maelgwn" in English sources.

Click to expand...

Ah! I'd been trying to figure out something more Englishy than that, but to no avail. Finally someone works it out for me. I don't know where I'd be without you all.

Ugh, yet another update taking longer than I'd like. It's always the little details here and there... ah, well, at least it's not a year-and-a-half gap.

RGB: Hah! He'll be showing up again, of course.

Jape: Well, the "Saxon" bit is slowly disappating, though it's still somewhat stronger than it was in our history. Mostly in language, and a few matters of regionalism. As for the Cromwells, that was just something that came to me suddenly while I was reading up on Oliver. In fact, my original plan was to have the republic survive permanently, but I changed my mind then.

Morsky: The matter with Bretagne is the main one that's delaying the next update. There's all the small, fun details that come with an empire absorbing a new region, especially one where the entire upper class (which is almost entirely French by this point) needs to be replaced, or at least very carefully watched...

jmberry: Hm. For those two, I think I'll stick with the French names. Think of it as a slight difference in this timeline than how they'd end up in real life.

Bells had rung throughout Britain when the news of the capture of Blois had reached that island, and they rang again after the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht. Victories against Britain's mortal enemies had been few indeed, and such a decisive one had not been gained since Agincourt nearly three centuries previous. As soon as he and his army returned to Britain, Marlborough was raised to the status of a Duke and made Lord President of the Council of State. Although the Council itself had been a non-factor in British politics since Fleetwood's fall from grace in 1659, Marlborough's solid Tory sympathies did provide an effective counterbalance to an increasingly Whig parliament. Godolphin was doing his best to try and stem the tide, but the rising upper middle class, now having obtained enough property to vote themselves, tended to vote Whig, if moderately. Constrained by the Instrument's support for Parliamentary authority, Godolphin and the Tories were forced to give ground on several issues.


Sidney Godolphin, by Godfrey Kneller (date unknown)

While Marlborough and Godolphin attempted to deal with internal issues, Henry himself began focusing outward. At the same time as the negotiations for the Treaty of Utrecht, Henry sent John Meuthen, a member of the Council of State and Lord Chancellor of Ireland, to Portugal to work out an official economic agreement between the two nations. Portugal and its colonies were excellent markets for the British textile industry, while Portugal wished to increase its profits from its wine, which was very popular in Britain. The main treaty itself, signed on 16 May 1703, was simply a free trade agreement involving those two items; however, further agreements quickly came from both sides,and slowly but surely it became obvious that Portugal was coming out on the losing end of matters, as British influence came to be felt throughout the Portuguese empire. As the early 18th century continued, Portugal became more and more reliant on British trade, unable to end the agreements without crippling its own economy.

Included as a "foreign" matter - as it was technically not a part of the Empire of Great Britain - was the newly reborn Duchy of Bretagne. As various acts forbade the Emperor from residing in foreign territories without Parliamentary permission, Henry would have to appoint a representative. The ambitious Louise de Kerouaille, hoping that victory would end Henry's attempts to ignore her, immediately began lobbying for the position, pointing out that she was the highest-ranking Breton noble in Henry's court. Henry would have none of it, however; Louise was hideously unpopular and made no effort to hide her Francophilia. During the de Cornouaille period, the lords of Richmond had traditionally aided with Breton matters, but that title was in abeyance by the early 18th century and would not likely be revived soon. The main noble family of Bretagne, the Dukes of Rohan, were supportive of the French king and fled to Blois upon the region's capture. In fact, it became painfully obvious that the vast majority of the Breton nobility was French and thus wanted nothing to do with the new regime.

The first meeting of the Estates of Bretagne after the Treaty was therefore without a representative of "Duke Henry", and the nobility weakly represented. The overwhelmingly Catholic clergy was in several places annoyed that a Protestant had become the region's ruler and equally failed to show, leaving only the neglected Breton upper middle class to take part. That group, the "third estate" of the French system of governance, had not been allowed to play any real role previously and could only agree to send a petition back to Henry in 1704 asking that he come personally to deal with the matter. Ignoring de Kerouaille's increasingly dubious offers of help (Henry finally appointed her Baroness Petersfield to keep her away from both the royal court and Bretagne), the Emperor applied to Parliament for permission to settle in Bretagne for a time to deal with the matter, with his son Thomas, Prince of Wales, taking the role of Lord Protector in his absence. After a long debate, Parliament passed an act which allowed it in exchange for tranferrance of certain minor matters of authority to Parliament for as long as said Protectorate would last. With this, Henry left for Bretagne on 18 October 1705, and upon his arrival a week and a half later set up his court at Nantes.


The ducal castle in Nantes

The Bretons were as a whole relieved that their new ruler did not consider them a conquered people and took a personal interest in them. The move to Bretagne allowed Henry to not only see the problems of the region in person but to meet the important people there as well. One quickly made a good impression on him: Clement Chrysogone de Guer, Marquis de Pontcallec. Pontcallec had been no friend of the old French regime, thanks to its impoverishment of much of the region, and could truthfully claim a minor role in helping the English armies moving through Bretagne. Over the next two years Henry worked out the new government of Bretagne, appointed Pontcallec as Count of Gwened, and established the office of Steadholder of Lesser Britain with weakened powers compared to those of the French governors of Bretagne, the Estates gaining authority in return. Henry also carefully picked replacements for the depleted lesser nobility, so far as it was needed.

Back in Great Britian, Thomas had not performed as well as Henry would have hoped during his Protectorate. Corruption slowly increased in Britain, causing scandal after scandal for the increasingly embattled Tory government. The Whig opposition was, at the time, led by the Baron Somers, and when in 1706 the Tories lost most of their power he replaced Marlborough as Lord President of the Council of State. Godolphin was moderate enough to keep some authority in the new goverment, but somewhat weakened. Somers had played a large role in the creation and passage of the Bill of Rights, and as such he could claim that he was vital in upholding of the natural law becoming increasingly important to the British middle and upper classes by this time. In fact, his main concern was not with the Tories, but another group who had been quiet over the previous years but was now suddenly vocal again: The Levellers.

The Levellers had been effectively stifled by Oliver Cromwell and the Grandees during the Commonwealth, and for the next half-century kept entirely quiet about the matter. As the 17th century ended, however, the Enclosure movement began to enter its final phases, and the difficult conditions for the lower classes in the now-overcrowded cities and towns involved an increase in crime and general unrest. Many still had hope in Parliament to help alleviate the problem, but had little success, and began to call for an extension of suffrage below the £200 in property required by the Instrument. They had few allies within Parliament itself, but obviously a considerable amount of support among those who stood to gain a vote by a reduction in the amount of property necessary. As those in the 1640s, the group preferred to consider themselves "Agitators" rather than "Levellers", though of course the title was applied to them in any case.

In America, things were going little better. On 24 May 1706, the Shawnee and Iroquois agreed to work together against the English attempting to encroach upon their land. The Shawnee had originally lived in New Lothian and Pennsylvania, but continuing English encroachment had eventually encouraged them to settle further to the west. This encouraged them to attempt to do whatever possible to organise resistance against the English, even to the point of working alongside their former enemies. The 1706 agreement was intended to unite all the eastern American nations in one broad confederation, inspired by stories of the Incan Empire holding its own against attempted Spanish conquest. Most of them, however, were too far out of contact to be able to provide any real aid. The only other tribe to join was the Tuscarora, originally of North Carolina, who fled to the protection of the Iroquois in the 1720s as their lands were taken over. A delegation to London by several Iroquois leaders, attempting to gain recognition of offical borders to their lands, resulted in nothing but the painting of their portraits.


Ti-yi-neen-ho-ga-row, leader of the Iroquois, by John Verelst (1710)

In the face of ever more constant resistance from the native inhabitants, the British continued to expand. The colony of New Hampshire was officially founded in 1710, providing yet another base for encroachment upon Iroquois lands (as well as a potential defence against the French who had appeared in Quebec to the north). The Kentucky County of New Lothian, for its part, flourished as it was found to be excellent ground for the growing of two important crops: grapes and hemp. The former, of course, found its way into wine production, while the latter was important for making sails and ropes for the Royal Navy. Combined with timber from elsewhere, the American colonies were able to begin production of a few ships of their own for defence and pirate hunting. Though none would have survived in the line-of-battle in Europe, they allowed Britain to gain naval superiority in America as well.

After a short detour to Rastatt, the newly-built residence of the Kings of Baden, to meet with the new Holy Roman Emperor (Ludwig Wilhelm had died in January of 1707 and his son was elected in his place) and meet with a delegation from the King of Sicily, Emperor Henry returned to London in March of 1707. Thomas' period as Lord Protector had not been a good one, though it seemed matters had become more settled. The Levellers continued to only petition, while Somers attempted to get Whiggish legislation through a still-divided Parliament. The long awaited storm, however, finally broke in 1709.

An Anglican priest named Henry Sacheverell, on 5 November, was invited to preside over a service at Saint Paul's. His sermon was very much pro-Tory and pro-Emperor, feeling that the Anglican church was in danger not only from Papists but from nonconformists as well. The result, especially after the sermon was printed, was a chaos of political debate, into which Godolphin made a major impact. Although a Tory, he was involved with the government and believed that Sacheverell had specifically spoken against him, and asked that the priest be prosecuted for slander. Although Somers attempted to delay the process, Godolphin got his trial in February of 1710, likely due to the influence of Emperor Henry himself. Sacheverell was found guilty, suspended for three years, and copies of his sermon burned. In response, many Anglicans began a campaign against supposed nonconformist pressure against them, and in many cases this became full rioting. The turmoil led to the fall of the Whig government and new elections, leading to a Tory resurgence.

Unfortunately for the leader of the new government, Robert Harley, this did not begin well. The Whigs obviously had no love of the new government at all, and the Tories felt that he was too accomodating to Parliament. An attempted assassination attempt on 8 March 1711 showed that the radicals certainly had little appreciation for him either. It seemed as if Britain was starting to come apart even in the wake of her greatest triumph; here, at the worst point, the Emperor grew ill. On 23 November 1711, Henry died, leaving his unappreciated son to become the new Emperor of Great Britain.

[canonized: Bretagne is pretty much resolved. And in game terms, I didn't release Bretagne as a vassal - it's still part of Great Britain.

Morsky: Several of the Tories agree with you on that part, as you'll find out in this update.

RGB:
1. All men must die sometime, I'm afraid. The succession is going to make things a bit of a mess, too.
2. Hemp (and wine* to a lesser extent) was actually a major crop in Kentucky during the early 19th century. Early settlement just means that it all came about earlier.
3. Ha! The early 18th century is going to be a good time for the middle class in the various Cromwell realms.
4. No kidding. Good thing he's pretty much out of the picture from here on.

*What happened to the wine? A nasty rot went through much of the region's grapes in the mid-1800s. Shame, really. It's started to come back in recent years, though. And plenty of people still grow hemp, despite it now being illegal...]





Titles: (claimed but unrecognised in brackets)

Emperor of Great Britain
King of Ireland [and France]
Prince of Wales
Lord of the Scottish [and Greek] Isles
Duke of Lothian, Albany, [Holland and Friesland], Flanders, Cornwall, [Iceland] and Bretagne
[Count of Guines]
Supreme Governor of the Church of England



Few paid much attention to the change in Emperor, both due to the general weakening of Imperial authority and the continuing political problems. As Thomas displayed less and less interest in actually running the country, however (perhaps as a result of his bad experiences during the Protectorate five years earlier), he left these powers to the Officers of State - especially the Lord High Treasurer, and to a lesser extent the Lord President of the Council. Robert Harley, whom Henry had made Earl of Oxford in May of 1711, was now undoubtedly the most important man in the country. The term "First Minister" had already been in use before this, but it was due to Oxford's increased authority that it became a true head of government, and more visible than the Emperor in political matters.


Robert Harley, by Jonathon Richardson (1710)

This, unfortunately, also made him a target for growing discontent. A second assassination attempt, this time by a hatbox containing pistols, was only barely foiled on 4 November 1712; on 15 November a different attempt succeeded in killing the Duke of Hamilton. Both before and after these, London erupted into rioting by several different groups. Supporters of Sacheverell rioted due to the percieved injustice of his conviction, and did so regularly. Members of the trade guilds, supportive of the called-for extension of suffrage and unhappy due to the weakening of Stafford-era trade legislation, attempted to make their opinions heard and at times this also led to violence. Involved in all of these riots was the overcrowded population of London, which all sides courted with promises to alleviate their suffering.

By late 1713 the rioting had become so common in British towns that the possibility of outright revolution seemed to hang over the Tory government. Said government blamed the Whigs for instigating all of the various riots, stating that the Whigs' nonconformist and mercantile sympathies had led them to attempt a second revolution as in 1642. Specifically, Harley blamed the assassination attempts on him on specific Whigs, several of whom were arrested and tried, and a few among them convicted (including a young Sir Robert Walpole). Even the end of Sacheverell's suspension did not entirely end the pressure from that end. When the Parliamentary election of 1713 returned a massive Whig majority, the Tories claimed that it was void due to the rioting. Outright civil war would have been in the wind, but Thomas finally came back into the public spehere. Unlike his father, Thomas eventually sided with the Whigs. More importantly, he quickly thought to make sure that the Duke of Marlborough did not bring the army against him, removing him from his position as Captain-General of the army.

It was none to soon. In early 1714, a scandal broke out as it became known that the Tories had been in contact with James Borcalan, the claimant to the Imperial throne, and that Marlborough would have brought all the forces he could to London to depose Thomas. The plot only added a further layer of complexity to the chaotic situation, but oddly enough it helped contribute to its resolution. The Tories were now labeled "Jacobites" for their support of the Borcalan claimant, those specifically named were forced to flee the country, and when several Scottish clans rose up as their part of the plan, most of the rest took the initiative in putting the rebellion down at Sheriffmuir in late 1715.


The Battle of Sheriffmuir, by John Wootton (date unkown)

The Whigs gained a sudden surge in popularity, which they put to good use. Several of those newly elected were more sympathetic to the Levellers' grievances, and over the objections of several high-ranking conservative Whigs (such as Robert Walpole and James Stanhope) introduced legislation to the House of Commons to attempt to rectify the situation. It was, of course, no simple task, and debates ran back and forth. Many, including Walpole, were of the opinion that the whole matter was giving in to the mob and encouraging further violence on their part. British politics of the time ran on the concept of "virtual representation", which stated that the interests of non-voters were represented by those who could vote. By July of 1714, however, several began to filter over to support of reform after arguments that this concept overemphasised the similarities between the interests of different groups, and on 2 August 1714 the House of Commons passed "An Act to amend the representation of the people in Britain", better known as the Reform Act of 1714.

Unsurprisingly the act did not do away with voting qualifications entirely, but it still expanded voting rights considerably, as well as more thoroughly connecting constituencies with population, and mandating that Parliament continue to regularly update them. As hoped, the middle class was very pleased with the legislation, and prepared for the new elections in 1715 where the act would truly take effect. For those who continued to revolt, Parliament had (as a compromise) passed the Riot Act the day previous. Said act allowed municipal officals to declare any assembly of more than twelve persons as riotous, and for lethal force to be used if the assembly did not disperse peacefully within one hour of being informed of the act's provisions. Sacheverell's supporters were eventually convinced to end the constant revolt, although the eighteenth century remained a period of constant unrest throughout Britain, despite the reform.

The Reform Act did, however, open up the field for Levellers to have proper representation in the House of Commons, giving them a place as a "third party" alongside the Whigs and Tories. Smaller groups, such as Radicals who continually called for universal male suffrage, also appeared from time to time among the less important members of Parliament. Walpole and Stanhope, for their part, eventually reconciled with the legislation, perhaps in no small part because it was simply politically expedient for them. The emperor himself characteristically refused to comment on the matter and returned to his private life as soon as the crisis ended.

The other important event of the early reign of Emperor Thomas was of a more distant, although certainly no less defining, nature. The Honourable East India Company had been limited to the region of Calicut and a few smaller operations elsewhere, but the President of Calicut, Edward Harrison, had designs on not only the trade but other potentially profitable matters in Bengal. By several methods, including siding with a claimant to the region's rule named Murshid Quli Jafar, Harrison gathered a force of 15,000 men, including a small force of cavalry and 20 of the most modern cannon available, and sailed into the Bay of Bengal. Dealing with the naval forces there was almost trivial; securing the region, however, required quite a bit more work. By December 1713 the British had a good grasp on the mouth of the Ganges, but expansion outward was either rebuffed militarily, or would require leaving supply lines vulnerable. Reinforcement was difficult, if at least possible, so far from the Company's base of power, and for several years Harrison could only go back-and-forth with the Bengalis, though the British slowly expanded.


Murshid Quli Jafar, in a contemporary depiction

On 29 January 1718, Harrison's army, along with Quli Jafar, met that of the Nawab of Bengal at Plassey (Polashi), northwest of the Bengali capital of the time, Dacca. Quli Jafar had chosen the location personally, and Harrison gladly assented: the Nawab's army was forced to crowd between a river and a forested area, allowing Harrison's men and some of Quli Jafar's to move forward and act as skirmishers. More importantly, it had rained earlier, and while Harrison and Quli Jafar's army had in the main taken proper measures to protect their gunpowder, the Nawab had made no such orders, and although most of his soliders did not carry guns, their loss took much of his army's power away from him. All of this delayed the Nawab's advance for an hour, while all the time his men were taking fire from Harrison's artillery.

The rest of Quli Jafar's army was settled along the embankment surrounding a grove of the parrot trees that gave Plassey its name. As the skirmishers rejoined the line, the Nawab's men finally formed into their lines, swung the cavalry to the left, and charged. Traditional British depictions, as usual unfair to non-Europeans, gave the charge as a disorganised mass breaking on British bayonets; in actuality the Nawab's army advanced in good order and fired professionally. They had been exhausted by the earlier advance, however, as well as thinned by the artillery, and when the cavalry failed to punch through it became obvious that the attack was doomed. It was Quli Jafar who took charge of the battle at this point. Seeing the Nawab's attack losing its momentum and order, he ordered a charge on the spur of the moment, without even telling Harrison beforehand. His men streamed around the shocked British and overpowered the Nawab's army, killing some, taking thousands of prisoners, and at one point mortally wounding the Nawab himself.


The Battle of Plassey. Each line is c. 1000 men.

With their leader gone and their numbers vastly reduced, the late Nawab's army surrendered and proclaimed Murshid Quli Jafar as the new Nawab of Bengal. Quli Jafar moved his capital to the city of Maksudabad (renamed Murshidabad in his honour), and on 4 May 1718 he signed a treaty with the East India Company. Recognising that he owed not only his position as Nawab but also his continued rule to the Company, he essentially signed away much of his independence. The Company was granted a large area of land within the mouth of the Ganges, centred around the new city of Calcutta, which rapidly grew to control the trade leaving the mouth of the Ganges. Samuel Flake was appointed the Company's president in Bengal, and oversaw the slow movement of the Company's operations to the city. In one campaign, British India became one of the smaller operations in the region into a major power, much larger even than the Dutch who had previously been the most important European presence.


British ships in the harbour of Calcutta, by Elisha Kirkall (1735)

Back in Europe, an unusual event shocked the continent. In November of 1719, Karl III, Duke of Austria and King of Spain, Hungary, and Bohemia, proclaimed the Declaration of Vienna. This stated that not only would Protestantism be entirely legal and non-persecuted in his various lands, but limitations to governmental positions would be removed. As Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary all had a Protestant majority, that region's various governmental offices eventually filled with them. Karl himself remained a Catholic, but tended to spend more time in his Spanish lands, where Catholicism was essentially unopposed. The declaration finalised the hemegony of Protestant rule in Germany; only the County of Cleves, soon to become a part of the Palatinate, had a Catholic government. Some of the more hard-line Catholics protested, but most recognised that the period of religious conflict in mainland Europe was over.

Britain, however, still had religious problems. Thomas' wife, Maria Anna Malaspina (daughter of the King of Sicily), had converted from Catholicism upon her marriage; many, however, did not take the conversion as particularly genuine, and believed that she was a Papal agent within the country. In early 1721 a group of hard-line Protestants in Parliament demanded that the Emperor send her out of the country, and soon after attempted to pass dubiously legitimate legislation to that effect. The legislation was defeated and Thomas refuse to give in, but, combined with a poorly-concieved scheme in 1719 and 1720 by the South Sea Company that ran Britain's Columbian colonies which implicated several politicians in corruption, the result was to collapse the government and force a new one to be organised.

The result was that, after being reappointed Lord Treasurer on 4 April 1721, Robert Walpole (now resigned to the new nature of the British government) held several important positions and was clearly the most important person in the government. Despite his somewhat conservative views compared to his Whig colleagues, said Whig government, also clearly the dominant party in Parliament, was willing to support him. That Walpole held such a high position and would retain it for two decades made him a defining figure of the early 18th century, itself a defining period as Britain settled into its expanded franchise. Although Harley is generaly considered the beginning of the "First Minister" in its modern form, it was Walpole who consolidated it.

Walpole's goal was to, working alongside his political ally and brother-in-law Charles Townshend (the Northern Secretary, and thus a major part in maintaining the League of Augsburg), maintain peace in Europe by whatever means possible, and especially to ensure that Britain did not get involved in any unnecessary conflicts. They were successful for the next seven years, allowing Britain to grow with surprising rapidity economically; Townshend's position as Northern Secretary also allowed him to do the same with Flanders. Unfortunately, the peace was not to last, no matter what Walpole did. Louis IX had died in 1714, and his son, Louis X, had designs for restoring control on all French-speaking regions. Believing that the League of Augsburg had been weakened by the time passed since the War of the Spanish Succession, he declared war on the Palatinate on 7 July 1728, his target being Upper Lorraine.
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[Yes, I got a political crisis in April of 1721. That could not have been timed better to get Walpole into place. ]