Carlism in 19th century Spain is one of my two historical analogies about how I think Brexit will continue to impact Britain in the 21st. As in, it keeps running on forever.
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Alright...well that analogy makes me hesitant to suggest it, but what happens if the carlists win? Does all this revilt stuff go away? Cos if so, that would be a big game changer. You can keep bigger armies abroad and really invest in spanish infrastructure and education. And as others have said, rubber and oil are about to boom, and south america and spain has a ton of that stuff.
Basically Spain is always afflicted with either Carlists or Christenos (spelling probably wrong), the latter being the liberal equivalent if the Carlists win, in the mod if you stay as Spain or Carlist Spain.
Unfortunately the only way to get normal revolts and stop them is to tag switch to Iberia which obviously isn't entirely feasible or plausible.
In terms of mechanics nothing can be done, but thematically you might still talk about rebels but have them be different kinds of reactionaries such as potentially republican reactionaries who think a republic will better safeguard catholicism or general moralist generals and rebels with only small Carlist participation.
Unfortunately the only way to get normal revolts and stop them is to tag switch to Iberia which obviously isn't entirely feasible or plausible.
In terms of mechanics nothing can be done, but thematically you might still talk about rebels but have them be different kinds of reactionaries such as potentially republican reactionaries who think a republic will better safeguard catholicism or general moralist generals and rebels with only small Carlist participation.
It does sound like the deck is stacked against a peaceful, stable Spain -- understandable given the very real troubles she faced in the era, but it does sound a bit ridiculous to have revolts quite that frequently when the kingdom is doing well enough to have foreign puppets.
Honestly that's a problem with Victoria 2 in general; major revolts are far, far too frequent.
Yes, the issue of Charlists and Christins (I am spelling them in English on purpouse, being an Orthografic Inquisitor myself
) is not really well modelled in Victoria 2, mainly because the game engine does not understand that Charlist claims weakened over time and they shifted their political stances according to this.Anyhow, in OTL there where three Charlists wars and four uprisings up until October 1900, so it is not that inmmersion breaking.
BTW, the Christin rebels are far worse. They rose up too often and in too big numbers to be realistic or playable.
Right...can we just turn off those rebels then? Cos at this point, they've literally killed almost everyone militant about anything in the north of spain now.
We've got a few decades left. Lets just leave this one behind? If possible.
We've got a few decades left. Lets just leave this one behind? If possible.
Shame to hear about the rebel issue, particularly given the strength of this Spain. Just caught up, hope you can find a way to resolve it or push through (is there a historical end point for the revolts?)
Chapter Twenty Eight: A Throne Falls...
Maria Christina of Austria, swearing the oath of loyalty upon her official appointment as Regent of Spain, December 1885.
Chapter Twenty Eight: A Throne Falls...
For more than five months between November 1885 and May 1886 a swirl of uncertainty surrounded the Spanish Crown. True, whatever happened the regency lay in the hands of the twenty year old Austrian princess Maria Christina Henrietta Désirée Félicité Rénière but whether she would be Queen regent for her eldest daughter or for her yet unborn child was a vital question.
The universal hope was that Maria Christina would produce a boy. This was no slight against the little Princess of Asturias who at the age of five was already beginning to prove herself a shy, rather serious character who took after her Hapsburg mother rather than her Borbón father in looks. Rather it was the fears that another female monarch would turn out like Queen Isabella II, not a fate anyone wished for Spain!
While the Palacio Real de Madrid existed in a state of constant anxiety and apprehension the government lay in the hands of the President of the Council of Ministers, Don Segismundo Moret y Prendergast. The monarchy, which had so recently regained much of its 'soft' power under Alfonso XII returned to a more ceremonial existence as the Queen Regent had neither the inclination nor the personal power base to overrule Moret. The liberal leader was faced with turmoil abroad, though perversely this almost came as a relief as it played to his strengths as a respected diplomat. Once again Britain and Russia had gone to war over the Polish Question [1], but this time the French Republic and the Two Sicilies had sided with Saint Petersburg. Spain was officially neutral in this conflict, though opinion in Madrid was sharply divided along unusual lines. The Sicilian royal family were closely related to the Spanish Borbóns, while many Spanish liberals admired France. Conversely there was much sympathy in religious circles for the Roman Catholic Poles labouring under heathen Russian territory. The royalist-conservative La Correspondencia de España, the most widely read newspaper in the country tried to square the circle between Church and Dynasty by darkly alluding to the mistreatment of the reliably Catholic Irish at the hands of the Anglo-Saxons.
Moret, himself with some Irish blood, had no wish to anger either London or Paris. Even had Spain not been split the kingdom was in little shape to fight a second war. The crisis in Bolivia was both a problem and a convenient excuse for the Spanish state to steer away from foreign entanglements.
In Bolivia the war had hitherto been handled mostly by the Peruvian and Chilean loyalists [2]. On paper this presented a more than sufficient match for the Bolivians, especially with the pro-Madrid government of Brazil preventing any rifles or ammunition entering the rebel state from the east. However the Spanish had discounted two factors; the first was that Argentina was no friend of Spain. That South America republic had resisted attempts to fall under Spain's diplomatic or economic sway and somehow the moment had never come to allow Madrid a chance to reassert hegemony via force of arms. Now the porous Bolivian-Argentine border saw the renegade Bolivian government gain access to the wider world.
The other factor was the quality of the Bolivian leadership. The rebels were mostly the old independence era elites, wealthy landowners of deeply conservative feeling who had seen the viceregal administration as firmly against their interests. In Don Luis de Vidal they had a daring commander who launched a counter-invasion of Peru and Chile in late 1885. The Bolivians were hardly a great threat to Peru proper, but it was becoming clear Madrid would have to get directly involved.
On 7 December 1885 the Real Armada landed twenty seven thousand men at Cauquenes, Chile. The Spanish expeditionary force had been shipped from San Salvador and was under the command of General Alejandro Alcalá-Zamora, an experienced officer with a famously choleric personality. He was nicknamed 'El guacamayo rojo' - the scarlet macaw for the colour he turned when shown disrespect or brought bad news. Still in spite of this, or maybe because of this he was an expert raider and soon had the Bolivians in hand.
On 17 May 1886 as Alcalá-Zamora was pushing into Bolivia proper Madrid was thrown into delight with the news that the Queen had given birth to a healthy son. King Alfonso XIII, literally a monarch from his first intake of breath was presented naked to the prime minister on a silver tray [3].
Of course in the immediate term the birth of Alfonso changed very little - Maria Christina was still Regent and would be for a long time to come and Don Segismundo Moret still ran the country in the exact same fashion as he had before. Nevertheless something of the glow of optimism attached itself to the politician. The news from South America was good, the economy was for the first time showing signs of life and though there were some complaints about Moret's practice of devout neutrality in foreign affairs, that would see Spain absent herself from the Greco-Turkish conflict of 1886 most Spaniards appreciated his caution. As odd a term as it might seem for the blue blooded Moret he had begun to be seen as a 'Man of the People', with the sharp uptick of popularity that sobriquet implies.
The British Revolution of August 1886.
The prime minister was the Marquess of Salisbury, a capable and intelligent leader but a man of reactionary sentiment and given to cynicism and depression. He was not aided by the near invisibility of his monarch. Queen Victoria had retreated from public life after the death of her husband in 1861 and though she had eventually returned to her duties the impact on her popular personality had been lasting. With the influence of the French Republic so close at hand the sentiment of British republicanism, though never a majority, grew strong even among the respectable middle classes.
During the first half of 1886 the British Army had been investing the French Channel coast in the hopes of landing a knockout blow that would push France to the peace table and force Russia to fight on alone. The Royal Navy, though still the largest fleet afloat had been caught in the throes of a major re-organisation when war had come and was hard pressed to keep up the blockade of France, Russia and the Two Sicilies. When the British suffered a ruinous defeat outside Rouen in May the ships were simply not there to rescue the stricken expeditionary and when Boulogne was retaken by the French in June tens of thousands of British soldiers were taken prisoner.
On paper it wasn't a fatal moment - Britiain had near bottomless resources of soldiers in India and Africa and even in Ireland. However it was one thing to know that, it was another to realise that Southern England was suddenly hideously exposed to a French invasion and that most of the flower of British manhood was being held in prisoner of war camps. When the Salisbury government insisted that the United Kingdom would fight on London exploded into riots - and then revolution. With astonishing rapidity the Salisbury government collapsed, the Royal Family fled London and a restored Commonwealth was declared.
The British Revolution caught everyone off guard, the participants included. It was not a socialist revolution, though socialists played a relatively minor part. Rather the British 'Jacobins' were a hetrogenus collection of radicals, pacifists, intellectuals and reformers. Sir Charles Dilke, afterwards President of the Council of State for the Commonwealth of Great Britain and Ireland was an excellent example of the strange constellation of new leaders in London. He was a republican and electoral reformer but had also been an advocate of the British Empire and a sitting Liberal MP and was along with many of the 'Jacobins' desperate to prevent the revolution turning red either in politics or in bloodshed.
Queen Victoria in exile, August 1886.
In Spain the attitude was akin to that everywhere: sheer disbelief. The strongest country in the world and what at least to outsiders had seemed the single most stable monarchy had been turned upside down. The Queen Regent's impulsive generosity in offering Queen Victoria safe harbour was a common feeling among European conservatives. Naturally Spanish republicans, predominately middle class and urban and therefore sympathetic towards the British 'Jacobins' were ecstatic.
Moret's feelings were complicated. As a royalist he was personally horrified by the collapse of the British monarchy. Nevertheless he was also a realist, a pragmatist and deeply concerned with the future of Spain. The worst thing that could happen was that Britain would implode into civil war which quite apart from the human cost would bring down the global economy at a moment when Spain was at least seeing green shoots. It was in the interests of Europe that the moderate liberal republican regime of Dilke survive and make peace with France and Russia. To that end from August he tried to position Spain as an honest broker between the warring powers.
France was willing to consider a rapid peace. M. François Paul Jules Grévy, the President of the French Republic considered his nation's honour more than satisfied by the military defeat of Britain and had no wish to strangle the fragile new government in London by carrying war to the knife. Unfortunately the Tsar felt differently. The Emperor Alexander III of Russia had been aghast at events in Britain and had every ideological reason to punish the British government. More to the point he considered himself the aggrieved party and wished to make sure no foreign government should interfere in his administration of Poland ever again.
Between September and November 1886 the Dilke government in London was engaged in frantic negotiations with Saint Petersburg, Paris and Naples. Moret, in correspondence with Dilke (a fact he kept hidden from both the Queen and the Cortes) urged the British to avoid the temptation to drive a wedge between France and Russia and accept Alexander's terms as swiftly as possible, lest the Russians insist on the outright restoration of Victoria - and the possibility of pro-Victoria Germany becoming involved. Eventually the Commonwealth caved and agreed to the Tsar's demands which included the renunciation of British interests in Poland and a Franco-Russian military parade through the centre of the British capital.
The Treaty of Warsaw which concluded the war between the Commonwealth of Great Britain and Russia and her allies.
One headache had vanished in September 1886 with the surrender of the renegade Bolivian regime and the restoration of a Spanish viceroy. This did not mean all Spain's difficulties in the New World were done. The Confederate States of America was in the middle of a series of violent civil disturbance between socialist and conservative factions, which naturally impacted Spanish credit in Richmond. The Spanish were intensely reluctant to intervene in the Confederate States, fearful that by doing so they would discredit the legitimate government and perhaps draw the United States into the fray.
Even without the crisis in Richmond relations with the United States were poor, with the Spanish resentful of the growing influence in Mexico. The government in México City was nominally tied to the Spanish Crown but with the Americans pouring dollars into the country there was a real fear in Madrid that even these token links between old and new Spain would be abandoned. From 1887 on both the Spanish and American governments would be engaged in a bidding war to win over the Mexicans who quite naturally were prepared to play both foreign powers off against each other [4].
However it was to be one of the interminable Spanish domestic problems that delivered the greatest crisis of Moret's period in government. In March 1888, a conspiracy of reactionary millitary officers with the support of ex-Carlists launched a coup against the government, seeking to replace both the liberal cabinet and the foreign and female regent with an appropriate Spanish military man...
The military uprising of March 1888.
Footnotes:
[1] In November 1885.
[2] In context in this AAR the term 'Loyalist' always refers to a supporter of the Madrid government and reigning Spanish monarch (or regent as is the case here.)
on 11 November 1885, just before King Alfonso's death.
[3] This really happened.
[4] The US pushed Mexico out of my Sphere of Influence twice and I've been fighting a diplomatic war to retain control.
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HI guys, sorry this update took so long.
As infuriating as the constant Carlist outbreaks are I've decided to give the game another go, at least for a little while. I've taken the advice of some of you and portrayed them as something other than purely Carlist affairs, whatever the games says. Anyway here's hoping I won't have to do this too often.
As infuriating as the constant Carlist outbreaks are I've decided to give the game another go, at least for a little while. I've taken the advice of some of you and portrayed them as something other than purely Carlist affairs, whatever the games says. Anyway here's hoping I won't have to do this too often.
Well, that is something I never thought I'd see happening outside of player intervention. That being said, the relative bloodlessness and almost surreal civility of it all does make for a "very British" sort of revolution.
I note that it's the Commonwealth of Great Britain and Northern Ireland -- I'm guessing the pro-Independence faction saw their chance to make their play?
And yet more reactionary rebels... The Spanish Army will not want for practice, at least.
I note that it's the Commonwealth of Great Britain and Northern Ireland -- I'm guessing the pro-Independence faction saw their chance to make their play?
And yet more reactionary rebels... The Spanish Army will not want for practice, at least.
Damn! I never saw the United Kingdom lose the Kingdom bit! I'm curious about how the revolution and the humiliation will affect the colonies. Might the Empire fray at the edges?
The Carlist/Reactionaries seem like a pain but nothing major.
I'm wondering how Moret will deal with the resurgence of the United States. If the Confederacy falls, I expect that Spanish influence in the Americas will suffer greatly
The Carlist/Reactionaries seem like a pain but nothing major.
I'm wondering how Moret will deal with the resurgence of the United States. If the Confederacy falls, I expect that Spanish influence in the Americas will suffer greatly
Ah, Prefidious Albion, once the arch enemy of the Netherlands, now her dispossesed royal family seeks refuge there.
The really interesting thing would be a restoration, and every possible pretender seeking to claim their rightfull throne.
I would also like to see countries making use of this. Russia would advance in Persia and Afghanistan, the French would dominate Egypt and Sudan, the Americans might try some things in Canada and maybe the Dutch can seek a few gains in Malaysia
Ominous.
Britain is strong in this AAR, moreso than most Vicky games (where they're already v. Powerful).
Especially since they seem to be fighting every great power in europe bar germany...at the same time.
OTL pretty sure they were practically in the British Empire at this point. Not sure TTL.
A relief to be sure. And sire.
What a mess that must have been.
Indeed. Scary what they might do now. A three-way allaince between republics US, French and British wpuld be a scary thing. Watch out absolute monarchies of the world? Maybe Germany and Russia might have to get alone after all...
Do you see why the Yankees must be humbled?
Anyhow, interesting developments in Great Britain.
Anyhow, interesting developments in Great Britain.
Well, it is what - two generatiosn or so now since the original Carl-ism? Quite reasonable for the body politic around that movement to be morphing into something else, even as it keeps the same name.