"By this plan we shall direct all mankind. In this manner, and by the simplest means, we shall set all in motion and in flames. The occupations must be so allotted and contrived, that we may, in secret, influence all political transactions. I have considered every thing, and so prepared it, that if the Order should this day go to ruin, I shall in a year re-establish it more brilliant than ever."
- Adam Weishaupt
- Adam Weishaupt
In 1790, a general uprising against the dominance of the Catholic Jagiellons and the South German dynasties backing them errupted in the Northern German states. Inspired by the writings of the Anglo-French "philosophes des Lumiéres", as well as by the German philosophers and intellectuals, the rebels rose in opposition to the decaying institutions of the Holy Roman Empire. Many aristocrats sympathised with the rebels, and even took part in the uprisings themselves. Others, loyal to the Bohemian Emperor, were executed or forced to flee as their estates were expropriated. Within a few years, the rebels took control of a good third of the Empire's territory, jolting the sleepy feudal Reich into action. The rebellion had failed after the Imperial Army's triumph at Leipzig, and the reforms undertaken by Vaclav VIII afterwards were the proximate cause for the Great German War, which was to last for years, causing further chaos in the long-suffering German lands.
Conservative thinkers, among them the Scot John Robison, laid the blame for the uprising on an obscure Bavarian professor, one Adam Weishaupt, and his secret society, which had been outlawed by order of the Duke of Bavaria in 1784. After the ban, Weishaupt fled to Gotha, where he spent his days in anonymity, writing vindications and improvements of his system. He played a minor role in the abortive Revolution, and was pardoned after his arrest at the insistence of his erstwhile patron, the Duke of Gotha, who was rumoured to have been a supporter of the revolutionaries himself.
The combined effects of the Revolution's failure and the depredations of the Great German War (which culminated in the abolition of the Holy Roman Empire in 1820) seemingly extirpated the nationalist and liberal opposition. The crowned heads of Bohemia and Burgundy now jostled for influence over the German states, unburdened by the prospect of another pan-German uprising. Many of the leading lights of the German unification movement - names like Fichte, Herder, and Goethe - fled to exile or were censored, and many others perished at the barricades or on the gallows. Weishaupt, for his part, died in 1830, his grand designs for a secret order of enlightened men that would usher in a new era of Reason and Progress seemingly an utter failure...
Or maybe... maybe that is what they want us to think?
***
Hello all.
Inspired by the recently announced AAR contest, I've decided to finally try my hand at a Vicky 2 AAR. Originally, I had thought about porting my relatively successful "PeAARl of the Antilles" AAR to V2, but I'm going to put that project on hold until I learn how to code events and the VIP2 Team comes out with a workable release. To try something a little different from the vanilla setup, I've opted for the excellent yet underappreciated Divergences mod, which makes things rather more interesting at start, and has the added bonus of letting you go hog wild with filling the gaps in the canon history. The AAR will be largely documentary/epistolary, focusing on the correspondence and nefarious plotting of the Bavarian Illuminati, who in this timeline are alive and well, furthering their grand scheme of destroying the Bohemian-Burgundian duopoly over the German lands. The ultimate goal, of course, is to rule the world, or at least a substantial portion of it, by the end of the game. Heute Deutschland, morgen die ganze Welt! In the process, there will be plots, complots, counterplots, glaring plot holes, intrigues, assassinations, splits, espionage, warfare, a dash of the occult, ups, downs, lefts and rights...
I cannot at all guarantee that the combined effects of work-and-college-related obligations will not grind this to a premature halt, but I think I'll manage at least a brief update every week. My expectations for the AAR are modest, and its main use is as a side project until I get the time and skills necessary to redo my Haitian AAR. Nevertheless, I hope at least two or three people find it interesting, and who knows, maybe I'll get some blue coins out of it.
Last edited:
