Chapter XXII - The War of the Grand Coalition - Part II: Le Déluge (1759-1763)
Though King Philippe II of France and England may have departed this world, the war he brought about raged on. The battlefields of Europe continued to be littered with the dead, freshly restocked after each engagement with distressing regularity.
At court, the new French regency, hastily arranged following the old King’s passing had managed to maintain an uneasy unity, though almost all members were now firmly on the side of peace and reconciliation, not that Kaiser Konrad was willing to allow France and England an easy way out.
On the eastern frontier, German troops began to circle the Rhineland, preparing for a new assault against the Franco-English positions in Lotharingia. Out in the Mediterranean, Anglois forces were already in retreat as the Provencal and Andalusian navy was able to send the Anglois Mediterranean fleet back to port, ending any naval support for the southern front.
Despite this loss on sea however, the peninsula campaign continued unabated. Barcelona would be retaken in March, whilst by spring General Cornelis’ forces had captured Toledo and were marching on the Andalusian capital of Cordoba.
By the summer of the same year Cordoba would fall, striking a hefty blow against the once mighty Andalusian Empire, the pitiful relief force sent to recapture the city would be easily dispatched by the some 50,000 men under Cornelis’ command. Peace envoys were soon sent to Andalusian officials to discuss terms, but there seemed little interest from the Moors in abandoning their coalition allies. With the peninsula campaign seemingly at an end, the General’s forces would be ordered north once more.
And seemingly not a moment too soon as the new Holy Roman offensive began. Around 100,000 troops marched into Lotharingia, quickly recapturing the countryside whilst the Anglois armies remained hunkered down in the region’s urban centres.
Reinforcements from the south would eventually see the bulk of the first wave defeated and forced back to the Rhine, but by this point it was clear that tensions had begun to boil under the surface back home. The war had sapped the realm’s able bodied population leading to economic strains and social unrest. Riots began to break out in more remote areas of the country, the most prominent in Cestre, England. Such a distraction would need troops diverted from the front to be dealt with.
As revolts engulfed the north-west it was then the English Parliament that proved bold enough to take a stand. Long subjugated beneath the jackboot of the monarch, the Westminster parliament had been relegated to a mere appellate court in the mid-Seventeenth century, yet now with no monarch to keep them in line, the commons had begun to reassert its ancient rights and privileges. Traditionally, no English monarch was able to raise revenues without first gaining the consent of parliament, and with the unpopular war raging on, Westminster was now refusing to collect the old King’s taxes, causing a political crisis and a significant shortfall in the crown’s revenues.
Despite appeals from the Lords and backlash from the French Parlements, Westminster remained firm in its disobedience, only further fuelling the ongoing anti-war rioting.
As the Royal army reached Cestre to put down the ravenous rabble, further rebellions sprung up in Chardives. It seemed this instability was not going away any time soon.
Yet it was not only England that was falling to rebellion, revolutionary rebels had risen up in Cordoba tired of the misrule of the Rafid dynasty. Their leader Muhammad Ibn Sa’d was calling for the proclamation of a revolutionary Islamic Republic, yet Caliph Hisham VI and his army 40,000 strong was soon to put a swift end to such far-fetched ambitions.
Meanwhile on the Burgundian front, the second Holy Roman wave had crashed into Anglois forces at Fribourg. 150,000 coalition troops hit the Anglois positions in the spring of 1760. The ferocity of the German attack forced the Anglois forces at Bern to abandon their positions to aid in the defence, but more and more enemy reinforcements continued to pour in from the north. By late April the battle was lost and with it control of Upper Burgundy.
Mere months later, Holy Roman forces led by the Franconians hit Brussels, looking to dislodge French forces from Lotharingia. Despite holding off the initial assault, Brussels would ultimately fall to the onslaught, its defenders put to the sword or captured. With the loss of the entire northern army it seemed a new strategy would be needed to defend the frontier.
With the loss of the forward positions, peace terms began to roll in from Wurzburg, but their contents were so offensive as to not even dein a response from the regency. The Kaiser was effectively demanding an end to the Dual Monarchy and the creation of an independent England and the creation of an independent Champagne on France’s eastern frontier, terms that were completely unacceptable. The war would continue until favourable terms could be secured.
As the situation seemed increasingly dire, unity within the Anglois camp seemed to dissolve, any sense of a command structure amongst the country’s generals seemed to shatter, with each looking to take their own initiative as to what action or strategy would bring about the best hope for peace. One such figure to strike it out alone was George de Broglie, a longstanding French general who had long held an almost unwavering sense of loyalty to the old king. De Broglie’s strategy was to launch a last-ditch offensive against the Imperial capital in the hopes of holding Wurzburg and brining about a decisive end to the conflict. Slipping across the Rhine with an army 45,000 strong, the general laid siege to the city. Yet as word of his actions reverberated around the German lands, a response was not too far off.
As the weeks passed, the Princes planned their relief effort and in late August they struck, led by Andalusian reinforcements waves of enemy forces buckled against the Anglois lines. With under 2000 losses to their ranks, General de Broglie had managed to completely destroy the advancing army.
Yet word of more enemy troops circling led de Broglie to abandon his siege to head back west. Only 3 days later enemy reinforcements arrived, ambushing and outnumbering the General’s forces 2:1 at Aschaffenburg. Despite his battlefield heroics the Anglois army stranded east of Rhine could not hold on, its remnants retreating back to friendly territory as fast as their legs could carry them.
The word from Iberia was just as disappointing. With the Anglois armies having withdrawn, Andalusia was making progress regaining its lost lands. Order had been restored to the capital and the revolutionaries put to the sword and Toledo was next to fall. Little now stood in the way of the Moors marching back into Catalonia and threatening the Pyrenean frontier. Worse was the news of the Castilian exit from the war. With the campaign looking increasingly fruitless and with great public pressure for peace, the Castilian King and Cortes signed a peace agreement, the terms of which were to be decided upon the Dual Monarchy’s defeat.
Without any remaining allies and vultures circling on all sides, chaos seemed to be reigning strong across both court and army. It seemed the regency was losing control. Revolts began to break out across the province in protest of the war and the demands placed upon the populace, further exacerbated by harvest failures and a lack of manpower.
Yet in the depths of the carnage, Regent Joubert was able to enlist the support of General Orson de la Bretonniere to restore a semblance of order to the army. With no allies and the coffers running dry, the plan was to organise a new defensive perimeter and bleed the Imperial armies as they encroached upon French territory. But new offensives would be needed to establish this frontier. 60,000 troops soon re-entered Upper Burgundy to capture Franche Comte and hold the Alpine passes.
Meanwhile, General de Bretonniere personally led the new assault on Nancy with hopes of pushing on to to Alsace. Whilst the initial battle was won, little hope remained of reaching the Rhine before Imperial reinforcements could arrive. The fortress at Nancy would have to do.
As 1761 rolled around, the great German offensive came, hitting Burgundy first. Alpin Cameron would be forced to retreat as South German troops crossed to Franche Comte, but reinforcements from Nancy were able to rescue the Alpine front.
The assault through Wallonia also began in earnest, with German troops clashing against the walls of Verdun, only to be repulsed and sent packing east by the defenders. With Franconian forces having captured Brussels and pushing into Picardie, the Army of Montpellier was evacuated from Antwerp and redeployed back in French territory to stem the oncoming assault.
The German assault on Bruges in early March also faltered, leading Konrad to order his troops south through Burgundy instead of a headfirst assault through Lotharingia and Alsace. Clearly General de Bretonniere’s strategy was paying dividends.
And division was beginning to rise in the Imperial camp. Several parties were now willing to entertain a separate peace with Salzburg and Angria both signing peace agreements with the Anglois regency. The infighting had begun and the pressure of six years of continuous conflict was now becoming all too apparent. With little to gain territorially from the struggle, smaller and more remote princes of the empire were beginning to fall away from the wider cause and a long a gruelling campaign into the French interior would only exacerbate these issues.
As 1762 turned to 1763 the Anglois defenders stood strong. The realm’s manpower remained sapped though had recovered somewhat but the coffers remained just as bare, the war effort propped up on various loans and IOUs. But so long as the frontier held and the outward appearance of strength remained a chance of a fair peace was there.
And so it would come in April of 1763. Andalusia enduring civil strife of its own and far less attached to the grand struggle of the Princely German states signalled its intentions to negotiate. With their exit from the war, more French troops could be routed north, further bogging down any efforts to penetrate the realm’s defensive frontier. With little appetite for further dragging out the war and inflicting a humiliating defeat upon the French and English, Konrad made it known he was willing to negotiate a mutual settlement.
Both parties would meet at Aachen for peace talks and to decide the future of European diplomacy and politics. The Anglois delegation would endure jeers and ill-treatment throughout their stay in Aachen, gifted with cramped living quarters and limited access to servants. If there was any semblance of rapprochement between the two camps it was certainly not evident here.
The first days of the peace talks were dedicated solely to the claims to the title of Holy Roman Emperor, a title the Anglois regency was more than willing to surrender. The Franco-English diplomat Gaston de la Rochelle was definitive in his statements. The Dual Monarchy would recognise Konrad V’s accession, revoking the illegitimate claim of the late Philippe II. La Rochelle was also forced to give assurances that the Dual Monarchy would refrain from any further interventions in Holy Roman elections or internal politics "in perpetuity". As such the Anglois-friendly regime in the Archbishopric of Mainz would be quickly toppled and replaced with a more suitable candidate, with the Pope’s blessing of course.
The days that immediately followed focused on the Dual Monarchy’s allies which were each one by one treated to the gaze of the various princes and rulers of the coalition. Unlike France and England, each of Philippe’s backers had been definitively defeated, signing a conditional agreement of surrender with the grand coalition.
Friesland was the first to be put to the sword, as a prince of the Empire; Frisian treachery was looked upon with great suspicion by the allied powers who called for great concessions to be extracted to teach the rebels a lesson. Yet anti-Imperial sentiment had been on the rise for a while amongst the Frisian people given the increasingly German-centric tendencies of the later Empire. The intervention of the Franconian ambassadors did much to curb the worst excesses of the princes. Instead minor territorial concessions would be extracted with Limburg ceded to Franconia and the border regions around Munster and Dorpen ceded to Angria.
Poland was the next focus, though this section of the treaty had already largely been dealt with through negotiations within the conflict itself. Poland was to revoke its territorial claims on Silesia, with the lands ceded to the Duchy of Meissen. Yet the elephant in the room remained Brandenburg. The Polish King continued to rule as Margrave of these lands, giving him significant influence over Imperial politics. Calls for King Zygmunt I to be stripped of this title were widespread, yet once again compromise prevailed. Poland would retain Brandenburg, yet upon the death of Zygmunt, Brandenburg would be ceded to his second son Michal, whilst the first son Stanislaw would gain Poland. Various protocols were also put in place in case of a death in the family, but all seemed assured that given time, Poland and Brandenburg would divorce.
Castile would undergo minor territorial adjustments, with Andalusia regaining control over the city of Madrid, once again restricting Christian territory to the lands north of the Sistema central. Additionally, the disputed borders between the colonies of Aljanubiyah and Brasil would be redrawn, naturally favouring the former party.
With that, attention turned to the Dual Monarchy. France and England however would not take terms lying down. After all, for the most part, the Anglois Empire’s territorial integrity remained largely intact, whilst it also retained occupation of several territories in Alsace, Upper Burgundy, Wallonia and a few holdouts in Andalusia. Yet the coalition would not allow the Dual Monarchy to escape unscathed, territorial adjustment would be necessary and some recognition that Philippe II’s war had not been a victorious one, lest the same ambition come over future denizens of the Palace of Versailles.
After weeks of tense negotiations, la Rochelle agreed that the Dual Monarchy would cede its recent gains in Savoy and Geneva, sacrificing the country’s control over the western Alpine crossings. Nevertheless, this concession did provide the realm with a hand to pursue minor territorial ambitions elsewhere. The claims to Flanders had long been a sticking point though whilst there proved no prospect of regaining the entire county, minor readjustments in Artois would be acceptable, creating a much more defensible northern border with Franconia.
Meanwhile, territorial trades with Provence would see the Catalan march regain control over Tarragona, creating a more defensible southern border.
In terms of colonial possessions, the Dual Monarchy was able to largely retain the territorial integrity of its empire, mainly owing to the lack of colonial powers in the coalition. Some minor territorial trades would be made with Andalusia in Africa and the spice isles, though otherwise, the empire remained intact. The main sticking point proved to be Ceylon, the return of which was demanded by the Indian princes of Chola Lanka, only for the European powers to turn on their unappreciated eastern ally.
As for monetary reparations, these remained moderate within the final negotiations given the mutual nature of the final settlement between Franconia and the Dual Monarchy. France and England would pay minor reparations in recognition of the destruction wrought by Philippe’s claims. Nevertheless, the realm’s coffers were already buckling under the weight of the wartime expenditure and further debts would not aid the situation.
Though the Dual Monarchy may have survived the old King’s foolhardy war as one, they had left the realm far weaker than it had ever been in centuries. The following decades would be testing and the regency would need a firm hand to guide the realm towards newfound stability and prosperity…
Map of the known world, circa 1763: