1839-July 1840: Triumph and Tragedy
As 1838 drew to a close, most Germans were optimistic about their country’s future. The British put up resistance for two more weeks after the landmark vote to secure only Plymouth and its environs, but in the end capitulated.
With a certain amount of trepidation, Foreign Minister Defarge received the newest proposal from the British delegation: to cede Plymouth, the province, once and forever, in exchange for having their other provinces restored. Since he had all the authority he needed to negotiate on his own, or so Chancellor Picard had explained to him, he wisely chose to keep the extra provinces, if for no other reason than to perhaps gain concessions from the British later on. [1]
February provided a bit of unlikely news, as a discovery of some ancient Roman artifacts in somebody’s trunk in the Byzantine Empire launched Byzantine prestige into the stratosphere. German citizens simply laughed dismissively at something so absurd, but for the moment, German attempts to draw the Byzantines closer were foiled. [2]
Yet all of that polite laughter ended quite suddenly with the outbreak of cholera in Bregenz in March 1839. Augsburg felt the cold grip of the disease a few weeks later, and with the people of Germany reeling, an international crisis in Kashmir went by unnoticed. [3]
At the same time, Michael von Hohenzollern found his own position in the Foreign Ministry’s hierarchy strengthened as Canada was recognized among the Great Powers of the world. Of course, his heart was still properly at home, as cholera continued to ravage Germany, spreading to Bozen, Chur, and Salzburg. The disease inflamed political opinion throughout the Republic of Germany, and a new era in Ideological Thought began in October of 1839.
The election proceedings began, as dictated by German law, in January 1840. On the heels of the opening of the polls, Europe was rocked with the revolution in Castille, where the Carlists seized power and promised to reforge Spain in the Iberian Peninsula.
The report that a notorious criminal was arrested in Jylland gave the German people a moment to catch their breath and recuperate from the horrors of cholera, which seemed to be all but dissipated.
Unfortunately, less than three weeks after the criminal’s arrest, the capital of the Republic got hit with cholera. Katherine von Hohenzollern, the youngest child of Konrad von Hohenzollern, was one of its first victims – Konrad himself was one of its last. Friedrich von Hohenzollern, the new Stadtholder of Nürnberg, took his father’s place in a daze.
Brittany was the next country to join the Reactionary Revolution; a number of politicians were concerned it might move on to France next.
Klagenfurt was the next to feel the icy grip of cholera. As if that weren’t bad enough, a virulent form of flu attacked those few citizens untouched by cholera. Things were so bad that extremely risky ventures to uncharted tropical islands were underwritten by the government in an effort to find some sort of medicinal breakthrough.
With Chancellor Picard’s earlier announcement not to seek reelection, the field of 1840 was wide open. Who would win the Chancellery and guide Germany out of the horrifying plagues?
[1] I completely forgot about this event in NNM; I should have remembered it and included it in the vote. We can always change things later, if needed. I should note that it’s almost always better to have the whole state, even if it means the Brits will have a CB on us.
[2] I honestly don’t know where the Byzantines got 300 prestige.
[3] I could have stopped the AAR here to ask about what to do, but I know the system, and with no actual GPs in Asia at this point, it would have fizzled had we supported it or not.
I didn’t expect to Ideological Thought to be finished so quickly, but we’ve been banking the RPs, so we haven’t lost anything.
Okay, at this point, we need candidates for Chancellor. The only confirmed candidate is Gen. Marshall for the Imperialists. Once I have all the candidates, I’ll post the election results and a bunch of general information. If there’s something in particular you want to see in that update, please let me know.
