PART 3: 1860-1869
This update will be relatively short and simple, as only four things happened during these ten years: a big war, unification, colonization, and infrastructure.
First, 1860-61 was pretty quiet, mostly me just going through, increasing railroads, managing my pops, and preparing for the capture of the remaining Russian controlled Fennoscandian region. I increased all my armies to 5 divisions, increased by reserves to about 24 divisions, and last but not least, bought four guard divisions, and set up the Swedish Republican Guard.
By February of '62 everything was set and I DoW'd Russia, and thus the Third Great Northern War began:
About 448,000 Swedish soldiers took part in the valiant charge against the Russian Bear.
This assault failed, and the war took a turn downhill from there, as Russia was finally able to start pouring it's reserves onto the front line. By the end of the war, Russia had twice the troops I did, with about 800,000 total soldiers.
I was forces to make peace, I count myself lucky Russia accepted, but them getting slaughtered by my troops in the mountains in fruitless charges, most likely had something to do with it. I managed to come out of the war with a gain of a few provinces, mostly filled with Finns:
Overall, the war was mediocre, I lost a net of 63 prestige, but gained 4 provinces.
On March 17, 1863, the King of Sweden proposed a union of Sweden and Denmark. The Danes agreed, and the Kingdom of Scandinavia was formed. I got a ton of prestige, industry, and a whole other navy to play around with, along with 10 new divisions. Other than that, nothing much more happened this decade, other than the Conservative Party for Scandinavia had an interventionist economic policy, so all my filthy rich capitalists started loading me up with factories and upgrading my already complete experimental/early railroad system. My capitalists within two years built over 20 provinces of Early/Iron railroads, along with a small arms, fertilizer, and wine factories.
Also, I researched Machine Guns, so I started my inland expansion of Africa:
So, a pretty good year. But then on November 29, 1869...
[bleep] Russians...
*sigh*
