Building a Nation - an Interactive British AAR

The Seventh Parliament of the Republic of Britain 1869-1875 (Part 2)



Having taken Britain in her greatest conflict since the death of the Kingdom William Gladstone moved immediately to take extraordinary measures in Parliament. He invited the other parties of Parliament to join his cabinet and form a National Government in order to ensure political stability and national unity as Britain faced this great test against the might of the French military. The National Conservatives, Labour, the IPP and the Unionists all joined into this National Government. Gladstone had made a point of snubbing the Socialists by refusing to extend the invitation to the government to them, they would have probably not accepted the proposal anyway (having been the only major force in Parliament against the war) but quiet attack on what Gladstone called the ''illegitimate Left'' made its point.

The first and most important front for the British in the coming war would be at sea. Since the Britain lost most of her fleet in the turmoil of the 1830s she had not enjoyed the total naval superiority of old. However Labour's shipbuilding program of the 1860s had reinvigorated the Republican Navy. At the outbreak of war only 3 Navies on earth had fully ironclad warships – the Americans had only recently begun the construction of theirs whilst the French had only 2 active vessels and were still experimenting with the new technology. Under Labour Britain had built 50 – now with a fleet of comparable size to France Britain had the supreme technological advantage.



This advantage would show through the late Summer of 1872 as the modern warships of the Republican Navy in coordination with older vessels won a string of victories in the Channel and North Sea against French and Dutch opposition. However, whilst the British won several major battles they failed to sink a substantial portion of the enemy fleet with the French losing just 14 ships in these early battles, the British fleets too suffered some minor losses during the period and many warships were badly damaged. This led to the fateful decision of the Admiralty to send the two main ironclad fleets to port for repairs from October 1872.



On October the 25th the French fleet sprang forth from harbour at Brest in fearsome numbers and confronted the fleet of older wooden ships that had been left to blockade the naval base. The result was a crushing defeat at sea, but worse was to come.



On November 3rd the French audaciously landed an army of 6,000 men in Cornwall. It was the first foreign army to step foot on British soil since William of Orange's Glorious Revolution of the 17th century and was an achievement Napoleon himself had failed to accomplish. A total humiliation for the British military and the sign for a sudden upsurge in anti-war sentiment and more prominently blind panic amongst the British public. As reports of French troops ravaging the countryside reached the newspapers the cavalry was dispatched to fight off the invaders. However they did not arrive in time to prevent the French army from capturing Truro – the small capital of Cornwall.

After a short series of battles the French invaders finally surrendered in late November – but the damage of the incident had been largely psychological.



Meanwhile, on the continent, things had taken a turn in favour of the Prussian army. In the East the Russian invasion was quite frankly a shambles. Poor leadership, poor morale, poor organisation, poor equipment and a total lack of coordination between commanders ensured that the maximum advance of the Russian army into Prussian territory was just 20 miles. It took just a month for the mobile and elite Prussians to totally maul the Russian invasion. However, rather than advance into Russia proper during the Summer Prussia quickly withdrew its troops to more important fronts.

In the South the Austrians had provided an extremely stern test. Together with Swiss troops they had managed to gravely threaten the South German states – countries that were largely left to fend for themselves as the Prussians looked to fight on four other fronts. After the fall of Koblenz in Baden early in the Summer the Swiss had made attempts to advance further into Baden and failed miserably – however their efforts had distracted the Wurttembergian army westwards rather than eastwards. This effectively left Bavaria entirely alone to face the Austrian army. After a long period of intense fighting along the border the Bavarian lines eventually broke around the start of Autumn – by the beginning of December Munich had fallen and Austrian forces were advancing on Nuremberg.

In Silesia the initial overwhelming Austrian strike had failed as the Prussians dug in around a defensive line – however this front proved to be extremely bloody as the Austrians repeatedly went on the offensive.

On what was perhaps the least important front in the Netherlands the pitiful Dutch army was able to put up meaningful resistance for barely two months before withdrawing entirely to Holland.



On the French front the initial stalemate that had began after the halting of the Prussian advance at Metz held throughout 1872. Metz had become a city under siege, or rather become a city in ruins. Ever since the first failed attempts to capture Metz the city had come under an endless artillery barrage from the Prussians guns and faced repeated Prussians attempts to capture it – all of which were repulsed. Only to the South was the front mobile – to the South of Strasbourg in Alsace the Prussians had been able to keep their forces mobile and were thus able to make slow but steady gains against the very significant French forces defending the area. By the end of the year the city of Colmar had fallen.

Finally, in Iberia the battle of the Pyrenees went against the Spanish. After a long summer of fighting in the mountains the first French forces began to cross over onto the Spanish side of the mountains around the turn of the year as the Basque country (a territory for years hostile to the Liberal Spanish Monarchy) came under French occupation. Meanwhile, in Portugal a skeleton Spanish army (with most troops fighting the French in either North Africa or the Pyrenees) was able to largely defeat the Portuguese although gains into Portugal were negligible.



With the war in Europe in deadlock Britain's allies in Berlin and Madrid sent a plea to London – begging for the commitment of British troops to the continent. Realising that the war might not be won without such action the British government approved plans to invade France. On March 6th 1873 around 12,000 British troops landed near Dieppe in Northern France. By the beginning of May the numbers of British troops committed to the invasion had swelled to 90,000. And so Britain flung herself into the war of attrition on the continent.

In the beginning the invasion was very successful as the small French forces left to garrison the Northern shore in case of invasion were swept aside – by the mid summer an Anglo-Belgian frontier of occupation stretched from Le Harve and Rouen in the West to Lille and Valenciennes in the East. However in June the French began a counter-offensive that would last a month and claim the lives of tens of thousands of British soldiers. Although surviving the offensive the British army had suffered terrible losses and the government was forced to introduce the very un-British policy of forced conscription in order to provide enough men for the front. Whilst advances resumed, albeit slowly, from August it was clear that the path to Paris was going to be drenched in blood.



At sea things began to rapidly improve during 1873. In February the French fleet suffered a heavy defeat off the Normandy shore and although losing only a few vessels so many ships were so badly damaged that the fleet would be largely confined to port for another year – leaving the Republican Navy free to dominate the Channel and blockade the French ports in the Bay of Biscay and the Channel. Then in April the Portuguese Navy was entirely destroyed in a remarkably decisive engagement before a mixed fleet of Russian, French and Dutch ships was defeated off the Firth of Forth. The seas belonged to Britain once more!

Across Europe things began to improve for the Prussians, British and Spanish. In Russia a brief Prussian offensive in the Spring of 1873 captured Warsaw and convinced the Tsar to bow out of the conflict – accepting white peace with the Triple Alliance. In Southern Germany the arrival of Prussian troops tipped the balance as the Swiss were forced out of Koblenz and subsequently Bern came under siege whilst in Bavaria Nuremberg was saved from Austrian occupation by the timely arrival of reinforcements. More significantly over the Spring and Summer the Austrians were finally defeated in Silesia and Prussian armies began to pour into Western Galicia and Bohemia signalling the beginning of the end for Austria. Meanwhile, in the Netherlands one by one the Dutch cities fell before Amsterdam itself came under Anglo-Prussian occupation in October.

In Spain the French were defeated after a lengthy effort to advance into Catalonia, from henceforth they would never again be able to launch a major offensive on this front. Meanwhile, the occupied Basque territories started to come under heavy attack from the Spanish army. In Portugal Porto and Lisbon were both brought under siege.



Back in France, by far the most important front of all, the grinding battle of Metz persisted whilst slow progress was made to the South. Everything would change in October. Having made substantial gains to the South of Metz the Prussians launched an audacious offensive around 50 miles to the South of the city. The plan worked as the this weaker portion of the French lined buckled and collapsed – with that the much more mobile Prussian army swing Northward at an impressive pace, meeting up with Belgian troops near Sedan and cutting off the French army at Metz from retreat. As France's largest field army surrendered towards the end of the month the will and ability of Europe's old hegemon to fight on seemed to have been broken. From November the face for Paris was on.

In the South French lines in the Basque country broke and the Spanish began to reclaim their lost territory whilst advancing across the Pyrenees – capturing Perpignan. From the East the Prussians divided their army into two – the smaller part advanced Southward via Dijon towards Lyon whilst the much larger part began to fight increasingly desperate French forces on the advance Westwards, towards Paris. Finally in the North-West the British started to make good progress towards the French capital.



On January 3rd 1874 the British won the race to Paris – capturing the capital of France whilst the Prussians were still at least two weeks away. King Philippe VII fled the city – he would never return. With the capital under occupation the King was determined to fight on – believing that if French forces could regroup it would still be possible for them to drive out of the invaders. It was this refusal to realise the realities of the situation that would bring an end to the Bourbon Dynasty in France for the second time. As the King refused to surrender his government decided to 'overthrow' him by placing him under house arrest and proclaiming a Republic – a move that went down very well with the people and the army who had grown increasingly dissatisfied with Philippe's rule. The new Second Republic then precoded to enter peace negotiations with the allies.



Considering the loss of Paris the French escaped peace negotiations in a rather strong position. But it cannot be forgotten that the French army still had almost 200,000 men on the field, the Austrians were undefeated and even controlled Munich whilst the Triple Alliance armies advancing into France were had already outrun their supply lines. From the subsequent peace treaty the Spanish would gain nothing, the British a little and the Prussians a great deal. Pondicherry, the most ancient of French colonies in India, was ceded to the British client state of Hyderabad, the former British colony of Sierre Leone was annexed – increasing British presence in West Africa further whilst the final and most important prize came last in the form of the 2/3s of the large and rich island of Sumatra which was ceded by the Dutch. Sumatra would provide the British with an invaluable new colony in the East Indies.



There is no question about who the biggest winners from the Great War were. Prussia annexed Alsace-Lorraine from the newborn French Republic and King Wilhelm of Prussia then proceeded to proclaim himself Kaiser Wilhelm of the German Empire – annexing the states of the North-German Confederation into Prussia and uniting with the South German states.

With the war at an end Gladstone's National Government was dissolved and the Liberals returned to their minority government.

British forces had barely begun to occupy the new colony on Sumatra before a war broke out with the Sultan of Atjeh. Over the Spring, Summer and Autumn of 187 British troops would wage war against the Sultan before his final surrender and the annexation of the Northern 1/3 of the island into the new British colony.



As the British Empire continued to expand routes to further expansion were starting to be shut off. Whilst the British were engaged in warfare in Europe the Chinese had established a sphere of influence in Indochina with Vietnam and Siam coming under the Asiatic titan's grip whilst in Central Asia the Chinese had advanced up the old silk road by annexing Bukhara – a country once under Russian influence. Nether the less, Chinese efforts to bring their dominance over Korea had been kept at bay and Britain maintained her East Asian Empire.



Finally, 1874 would provide one last earth shattering event. Following the death of both the President and Vice President in a tragic boating accident an early Presidential election had been called. On November 5th ageing Republican Abraham Lincoln won that election – finally breaking decades of right-wing Democrat rule. However, Lincoln had been elected on a ticket promising an end to the repression of the Left, and more significantly, an abolitionist position as well as a centralist one. Fearing the repercussions of this event a mass wave of secessions from the Union took place as states from the icy North in South Dakota, to the deserts of Nevada in the West and the Old South in the East joined a new nation – the Confederacy. As war broke out between the pro-Union North and the Confederate South, quite incredibly the state of Texas (inspite of its culture and status as a slave state) remained loyal to the Union (perhaps due to the large Union army present across the state) creating a strange threat in the South for the Confederates. However, the Confederate army was to be boosted further as Mexico lept at the opportunity to reclaim lost land and lost pride – aligning with the Confederacy it invaded the United States of America. The American Civil War had begun.

Needless to say the Civil War was to divide opinion back in Britain ….

But with his term coming to a close Gladstone decided to dissolve Parliament in January 1875 – calling the latest election.