And so the Red Lion goes from merchant association to international power broker. It's obvious that their influence will only continue to grow -- though, perhaps, at their chiefest client's expense, from the sounds of things.
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Think of the Red Lion like a caffeine addiction. First they help you do better by waking you up, then you become dependent, then you suffer from insomnia ... and then the habit is really hard to break
But but... caffein doesn’t work.Think of the Red Lion like a caffeine addiction. First they help you do better by waking you up, then you become dependent, then you suffer from insomnia ... and then the habit is really hard to break
I’ve drunk a lot coffe in my life, never been anymore awake. In fact, I once took 400 mg caffeine pills and had no effect. I thus hereby proclaim this Red Lion claim null and void. 
Very interesting tale. Spain depending on outsiders for business and industry seems plausible enough.
Now, the two main colonial powers allied against colonial uprisings? That doesn't bide well for defenders of autodetermination. I guess we'll only see Commonwealth-like paths to independence.
Now, the two main colonial powers allied against colonial uprisings? That doesn't bide well for defenders of autodetermination. I guess we'll only see Commonwealth-like paths to independence.
The Red Lion welcome the added obfuscation of the counter-narrativeBut but... caffein doesn’t work.
Indeed. I had to think quite hard about how to go from the situation I had in my EU2 game to a world dominated by a Corporate entity with a criminal heritage.
Oh aye.
I don't intend to start the gameplay part of this AAR straight on release. I will probably take a couple of days at least to get a feeling for how the Corporate authority works and thinking about Civics and other possible traits and whatnot.
History 08 - The Five Good Chancellors and the American Revolt
Excerpts from A Brief History of the Red Lion
Chapter 8 - The Five Good Chancellors and the American Revolt
Carlos de Aranda died in 1741. He was, without doubt, one of the ablest and most influential people to ever hold that office. Before he died he did achieve two last administrative reforms - trying to link colonial and central governance, and how to regularise the succession of his own position. As to the first he organised a series of Colonial Committees that would mirror the various Committees so named in Madrid. The idea was that each Colonial Committee would send two of its members to Madrid, and the Madrid Committee would send two of its members to the respective Colonial Committee. Every three or four years (depending how far away the colony in question was located) new members would be exchanged. The matter of succession was addressed by forming a new Committee of Succession, whose members were all selected from the current Committees. When it was time to choose a new Chancellor members of this Committee could nominate potential candidates. Members of the Committee, as well as the Deputy Chancellor, were not eligible. After a certain period the Committee would vote. Each Committee member could vote for up to three individuals. When voting was concluded the top three candidates would be presented to the monarch, who would choose between them. In rare cases, and if more than half the Committee voted against a particular candidate their name would be bypassed in the list proffered to the monarch. The Deputy Chancellor, usually a somewhat younger man, would after 2-3 years of aiding the new Chancellor taking up their duties would be offered another post.
The five Chancellors who came after Carlos de Aranda are collectively known as the Five Good Chancellors. This is not a judgement as to their competency, but rather something of a moral and aristocratic judgement. All five came from the great houses of Spanish nobility, but all five were also judged to be well-meaning men. As it turns out the third of the five was something of an incompetent, and the fourth was easily the most capable, and the remainder different versions of average. All of them tried to discharge their office and their duties faithfully to the best of their varied abilities.
The precise nature of the relationship between the Red Lion and Carlos de Aranda was not at all known at this time. Indeed the first of the five is said to have been rather shocked by what he learned during a late-morning brunch when a Red Lion representative outlined the “other duties” of that clan to the Crown. Nevertheless the Red Lion proved just to be too useful a resource for any of these five Chancellors to seek to extract the Spanish State from the Two Covenants. At times they had various tasks for the Red Lion, some of which covered by the Covenants and some not. For those that went beyond the Red Lion always negotiated an extra concession or reward - of which the most important for later times was the right to maintain a military force. To begin with these were quite limited - some frigates to help protect their merchant vessels (but with an obligation to help protect all), and some small garrisons to help guard the more exposed of their endeavours. The most unusual allowance was the right to equip a squadron of eight ships of the line and base them at Menorca.
Mostly though they asked for the right to setup new Enclaves, and by the latter part of the eighteenth century nearly every major city in Imperial Spanish Europe, and a good many places in the wider empire, had a Red Lion Enclave. The Enclave in Madrid had also grown to a not inconsiderable size.
The Enclaves became known as places of religious freedom - for the Red Lion allowed anyone to open a religious house as long as they abided by the regulations they put in place. This included on bells or calls. So they may have been no muezzin, but the fact remains in the Red Lion’s enclave in Madrid there were mosques, synagogues, Protestant and Orthodox churches, a Hindu temple, and even a Quaker Meeting House. They also, or more accurately certain areas of the enclave, became associated with the pleasure-trade. In this their arrangements were curious - they organised brothels but sort to regularise their activity. Whores eagerly sought a place in a Red Lion brothel for they offered greater safety and reasonable earning. The Red Lion, for its part, sought to ensure healthy women and took a smaller portion of their earnings than others usually did. Of course, they also made use of any information they garnered.
The Red Lion also opened public hospitals. This seems to have been a particular passion of one of Red Charles’ children, Elizabeth. In this the Red Lion offered the first true public alternative to the monasteries in the realm of public health. Educational endeavours also opened up. The most notable aspect of the Enclaves though was the Red Lion stance on slavery. The rule was simple: any slave who crossed into an Enclave was considered a free person by the Red Lion. In due course this meant the Red Lion started to use a number of former black slaves who were very loyal to the organisation that gave them their freedom and treated them like the human beings they of course were.
The whole Spanish Empire was in a time of prosperity. As a consequence of the Covenant of Shipping the economies of the colonial states became highly stimulated, and the network of Red Lion enclaves encouraged trade routes and industrial endeavours. Always willing to try new things the Red Lion began the process of industrialisation a long time before most other organisations in the Spanish Empire. They even took over the running a mine in Brazil, and used a Newcomb and Watt Steam Engine pump and free (mostly) black labour to make it more profitable than their nearby competitors. Though one should not overstate the Red Lion’s liberal credentials - this was still the eighteenth century.
In the 1780s the Red Lion also re-organised its own succession, but the details are murky. The official history simply mentions new arrangements were made, but gives no details and despite extensive searching I have not been able to find any. It is notable that after Red Charles we do not know who the leader of the Red Lion is until we get to more modern times.
And the Red Lion’s loyalty to the Spanish Crown was unwavering. However, the precise relationship between the Red Lion and the Crown was largely unknown at this time, something that would have grave consequences for the rising American intelligentsias.
Prosperity, rising incomes and the greatest number of educated people in history, and the melting pot nature of colonial cities created a tumult of intellectual activity. The increasing strong commercial links between the Spanish and English American colonies helped foster a sense of community across the continent. There were many thinkers in both lands that were unhappy with their constitutional arrangements - be in the parliamentary tyranny of Britain or the monarchical and aristocratic tyranny of Spain. As far as they were all concerned it was tyranny just the same.
The spark that lit the proverbial fire was caused by a renegotiation of the Covenant of Shipping in 1787. This gave ships based in Spain or Britain greater rights to trade with each others’ colonies, whilst maintaining a general prohibition on ships registered with the colonies from trading with their respective European ports (so British colonial ships could not trade in European Spain, and vice versa).
Tensions started to rise, but this was not universal. Sentiment varied widely and greatly, but in particular places like Massachusetts, Haiti, and Venezuela the blood was up. On the Spanish side the situation was duly mismanaged by the third of the five Chancellors, and equally so by the British. In 1792 the first shots had fired.
Unfortunately for the rebels they had not realised the true nature of the Red Lion, and wouldn’t throughout the conflict. Whilst maintaining a seeming neutrality the Red Lion supplied the Crown with vital information, and towards the end of the conflict even more. But I am getting ahead of myself.
The revolt was timed to begin simultaneously in Boston and Caracas, and as many other places as might be managed. A dozen Spanish cities and four British ones joined in. Soon all of British North America from Concord to Charleston was, at the very least, in a state of unrest if not revolt. A good dozen Caribbean islands joined in, the Spanish Main from Panama to Guyana was affected. Finally in La Plata there was also a separate rebellion, though as it was farther away it must almost be treated separately.
The third Chancellor resigned, to be replaced by the Duke of Sicily. As previously mentioned the Duke of Sicily was quite able, and whilst the situation in the Americas was dire it was not all bad. Spain and Britain were naturally in an alliance, and indeed their respective colonial authorities had been cooperating even as the revolt started to break out. He also had the Red Lion, and unlike his predecessor he knew best what use to make of this unusual resource. Finally British Canada, and Spanish Mexico and Peru, and the Pacific Empire, remained largely untouched.
I do not intend to go into great detail here, but in large strokes the British defeated the Americans at the Battle of the Hudson and retook New York. A Spanish expedition to La Plata restored order there - an undertaking only possible because of Red Lion merchantmen and warships. This was because the rest of the Imperial navy was concentrating on the Caribbean. Firstly they retook the islands and blockaded what of the coast they could. Whilst this was happening the leaders of the rebellion began to be killed off.
Assassination was always part of the Red Lion’s business, though one generally used sparingly. Now they were unleashed, and their effectiveness was proven. Twenty significant rebellion leaders were killed in 1793 alone, and more than thirty in 1794. Of course, the Red Lion had done what it does best and had infiltrated many rebellious movements. To hide their own activity the Red Lion even arranged for the Imperial forces to burn down several of their enclaves in rebellious towns.
The simple geography of the rebellion and the slow nature of trans-atlantic communication meant it took until 1801 to finally restore order throughout the Americas. Two years earlier ships from loyalist ports were given the right for unrestricted trade with Europe, with a programme for how a rebellious port could be granted the same right. It was the death knell of the rebellion. The Duke of Sicily did not live to see the triumph of his policy, however, dying two days before the turn of the century. Before he died though he had amended the Covenant of the Red Lion to allow the clan to form a small number of regiments and support some additional warships. In this manner he had freed up Imperial Spanish forces for use in America, and perhaps he foresaw their future need.
Chapter 8 - The Five Good Chancellors and the American Revolt
Carlos de Aranda died in 1741. He was, without doubt, one of the ablest and most influential people to ever hold that office. Before he died he did achieve two last administrative reforms - trying to link colonial and central governance, and how to regularise the succession of his own position. As to the first he organised a series of Colonial Committees that would mirror the various Committees so named in Madrid. The idea was that each Colonial Committee would send two of its members to Madrid, and the Madrid Committee would send two of its members to the respective Colonial Committee. Every three or four years (depending how far away the colony in question was located) new members would be exchanged. The matter of succession was addressed by forming a new Committee of Succession, whose members were all selected from the current Committees. When it was time to choose a new Chancellor members of this Committee could nominate potential candidates. Members of the Committee, as well as the Deputy Chancellor, were not eligible. After a certain period the Committee would vote. Each Committee member could vote for up to three individuals. When voting was concluded the top three candidates would be presented to the monarch, who would choose between them. In rare cases, and if more than half the Committee voted against a particular candidate their name would be bypassed in the list proffered to the monarch. The Deputy Chancellor, usually a somewhat younger man, would after 2-3 years of aiding the new Chancellor taking up their duties would be offered another post.
The five Chancellors who came after Carlos de Aranda are collectively known as the Five Good Chancellors. This is not a judgement as to their competency, but rather something of a moral and aristocratic judgement. All five came from the great houses of Spanish nobility, but all five were also judged to be well-meaning men. As it turns out the third of the five was something of an incompetent, and the fourth was easily the most capable, and the remainder different versions of average. All of them tried to discharge their office and their duties faithfully to the best of their varied abilities.
The precise nature of the relationship between the Red Lion and Carlos de Aranda was not at all known at this time. Indeed the first of the five is said to have been rather shocked by what he learned during a late-morning brunch when a Red Lion representative outlined the “other duties” of that clan to the Crown. Nevertheless the Red Lion proved just to be too useful a resource for any of these five Chancellors to seek to extract the Spanish State from the Two Covenants. At times they had various tasks for the Red Lion, some of which covered by the Covenants and some not. For those that went beyond the Red Lion always negotiated an extra concession or reward - of which the most important for later times was the right to maintain a military force. To begin with these were quite limited - some frigates to help protect their merchant vessels (but with an obligation to help protect all), and some small garrisons to help guard the more exposed of their endeavours. The most unusual allowance was the right to equip a squadron of eight ships of the line and base them at Menorca.
Mostly though they asked for the right to setup new Enclaves, and by the latter part of the eighteenth century nearly every major city in Imperial Spanish Europe, and a good many places in the wider empire, had a Red Lion Enclave. The Enclave in Madrid had also grown to a not inconsiderable size.
The Enclaves became known as places of religious freedom - for the Red Lion allowed anyone to open a religious house as long as they abided by the regulations they put in place. This included on bells or calls. So they may have been no muezzin, but the fact remains in the Red Lion’s enclave in Madrid there were mosques, synagogues, Protestant and Orthodox churches, a Hindu temple, and even a Quaker Meeting House. They also, or more accurately certain areas of the enclave, became associated with the pleasure-trade. In this their arrangements were curious - they organised brothels but sort to regularise their activity. Whores eagerly sought a place in a Red Lion brothel for they offered greater safety and reasonable earning. The Red Lion, for its part, sought to ensure healthy women and took a smaller portion of their earnings than others usually did. Of course, they also made use of any information they garnered.
The Red Lion also opened public hospitals. This seems to have been a particular passion of one of Red Charles’ children, Elizabeth. In this the Red Lion offered the first true public alternative to the monasteries in the realm of public health. Educational endeavours also opened up. The most notable aspect of the Enclaves though was the Red Lion stance on slavery. The rule was simple: any slave who crossed into an Enclave was considered a free person by the Red Lion. In due course this meant the Red Lion started to use a number of former black slaves who were very loyal to the organisation that gave them their freedom and treated them like the human beings they of course were.
The whole Spanish Empire was in a time of prosperity. As a consequence of the Covenant of Shipping the economies of the colonial states became highly stimulated, and the network of Red Lion enclaves encouraged trade routes and industrial endeavours. Always willing to try new things the Red Lion began the process of industrialisation a long time before most other organisations in the Spanish Empire. They even took over the running a mine in Brazil, and used a Newcomb and Watt Steam Engine pump and free (mostly) black labour to make it more profitable than their nearby competitors. Though one should not overstate the Red Lion’s liberal credentials - this was still the eighteenth century.
In the 1780s the Red Lion also re-organised its own succession, but the details are murky. The official history simply mentions new arrangements were made, but gives no details and despite extensive searching I have not been able to find any. It is notable that after Red Charles we do not know who the leader of the Red Lion is until we get to more modern times.
And the Red Lion’s loyalty to the Spanish Crown was unwavering. However, the precise relationship between the Red Lion and the Crown was largely unknown at this time, something that would have grave consequences for the rising American intelligentsias.
Prosperity, rising incomes and the greatest number of educated people in history, and the melting pot nature of colonial cities created a tumult of intellectual activity. The increasing strong commercial links between the Spanish and English American colonies helped foster a sense of community across the continent. There were many thinkers in both lands that were unhappy with their constitutional arrangements - be in the parliamentary tyranny of Britain or the monarchical and aristocratic tyranny of Spain. As far as they were all concerned it was tyranny just the same.
The spark that lit the proverbial fire was caused by a renegotiation of the Covenant of Shipping in 1787. This gave ships based in Spain or Britain greater rights to trade with each others’ colonies, whilst maintaining a general prohibition on ships registered with the colonies from trading with their respective European ports (so British colonial ships could not trade in European Spain, and vice versa).
Tensions started to rise, but this was not universal. Sentiment varied widely and greatly, but in particular places like Massachusetts, Haiti, and Venezuela the blood was up. On the Spanish side the situation was duly mismanaged by the third of the five Chancellors, and equally so by the British. In 1792 the first shots had fired.
Unfortunately for the rebels they had not realised the true nature of the Red Lion, and wouldn’t throughout the conflict. Whilst maintaining a seeming neutrality the Red Lion supplied the Crown with vital information, and towards the end of the conflict even more. But I am getting ahead of myself.
The revolt was timed to begin simultaneously in Boston and Caracas, and as many other places as might be managed. A dozen Spanish cities and four British ones joined in. Soon all of British North America from Concord to Charleston was, at the very least, in a state of unrest if not revolt. A good dozen Caribbean islands joined in, the Spanish Main from Panama to Guyana was affected. Finally in La Plata there was also a separate rebellion, though as it was farther away it must almost be treated separately.
The third Chancellor resigned, to be replaced by the Duke of Sicily. As previously mentioned the Duke of Sicily was quite able, and whilst the situation in the Americas was dire it was not all bad. Spain and Britain were naturally in an alliance, and indeed their respective colonial authorities had been cooperating even as the revolt started to break out. He also had the Red Lion, and unlike his predecessor he knew best what use to make of this unusual resource. Finally British Canada, and Spanish Mexico and Peru, and the Pacific Empire, remained largely untouched.
I do not intend to go into great detail here, but in large strokes the British defeated the Americans at the Battle of the Hudson and retook New York. A Spanish expedition to La Plata restored order there - an undertaking only possible because of Red Lion merchantmen and warships. This was because the rest of the Imperial navy was concentrating on the Caribbean. Firstly they retook the islands and blockaded what of the coast they could. Whilst this was happening the leaders of the rebellion began to be killed off.
Assassination was always part of the Red Lion’s business, though one generally used sparingly. Now they were unleashed, and their effectiveness was proven. Twenty significant rebellion leaders were killed in 1793 alone, and more than thirty in 1794. Of course, the Red Lion had done what it does best and had infiltrated many rebellious movements. To hide their own activity the Red Lion even arranged for the Imperial forces to burn down several of their enclaves in rebellious towns.
The simple geography of the rebellion and the slow nature of trans-atlantic communication meant it took until 1801 to finally restore order throughout the Americas. Two years earlier ships from loyalist ports were given the right for unrestricted trade with Europe, with a programme for how a rebellious port could be granted the same right. It was the death knell of the rebellion. The Duke of Sicily did not live to see the triumph of his policy, however, dying two days before the turn of the century. Before he died though he had amended the Covenant of the Red Lion to allow the clan to form a small number of regiments and support some additional warships. In this manner he had freed up Imperial Spanish forces for use in America, and perhaps he foresaw their future need.
So, tbe colonial rebellion achieved the objective that sparked it, the colonies themselves were retained, and the Red Lion became wvwn more of an state-within-the-state. I wonder how different is the treatment the organisation receives in English domains though.
So by this point, the only major independent realms besides the two of the covenant are Scandinavia, Russia, China, Japan, and some middle eastern/balcanic minors?
So by this point, the only major independent realms besides the two of the covenant are Scandinavia, Russia, China, Japan, and some middle eastern/balcanic minors?
Currently the organisation has no arrangement with Britain as it does with Spain. It maintains certain agents - some entirely open for matters of trade and diplomacy, and doubtless some less so.
Major realms would be Spain and Britain (I never thought of calling them the Covenant realms, but it fits) Denmark, Russia, PLC, Ottomans, Mamluks, China, Japan. Then a number of variously sized realms in the Caucuses, Iraq, Persia, Central Asia, and in Africa. Britain retains Normandy. The Balkans are mostly Ottoman. Spain and Denmark basically split Germany - there are a handful of minor German powers in the border area. Russis does not have access to the Baltic. Not mentioned so far but Russian has only reached around Bratsk/Irkutsk in Siberian expansion - Spain has colonised Kamchatka and around the modern day Sea of Okhotsk.
The Red Lion is playing by that old time-tested survival strategy of making oneself too indispensable to be removed, one way or another.
A colonial Russia that has no reliable access to a warm water port -- that's an odd duck indeed.
A colonial Russia that has no reliable access to a warm water port -- that's an odd duck indeed.
Very much so, on both counts. Russia's relative weakness is very much what happened in my game, and as far as I can recall EU2 AI Russia did tend to be slow on the Siberian front.
For the Spanish colonies, that does seem a win-win situation. Well, except for the fighting and assassinations and all.
Well the idea is that the third Chancellor contributed to the crisis, the fourth helped undercut it.
History 09 - The Bad Chancellor and the Revolutionary War
Excerpts from A Brief History of the Red Lion
Chapter 9 - The Bad Chancellor and the Revolutionary War
The Duke of Sicily was succeeded by the Duke of Coimbra, a rather nondescript Chancellor - but not a poor one. He brought the American Revolt to a conclusion, and concentrated on ensuring future stability in Spain’s Imperial domains. This caused him to neglect events transpiring in Europe, and within continental Spain. Then he was struck down by a sudden illness. Given what followed there has always been a suspicion this was a poisoning, but exhumation of his body in more recent decades and a forensic examination suggests nothing more dramatic than food poisoning.
The succession was contentious. Emperor Francis II had a fatal fall from when his horse spooked on an outing in 1813, leaving the Empire in the less than capable hands of his son Ferdinand. Ferdinand, epileptic and weak willed, was dominated by his good friend Sancho y Arri, a minor noble who had been assigned as his playmate when they were both young. Ferdinand wanted his friend to be the new Chancellor, and Sancho had an aggressive cunning. The combination of Imperial patronage (despite everything, one should not believe talk that Ferdinand was an idiot), and bribes and blackmail ensured that Sancho was one of the three candidates.
Even before he was officially confirmed he was being called the “Bad” Chancellor. However, just as with his five predecessors this was an aristocratic and moral judgement, not a measure of competency. Indeed Sancho was quite an able Chancellor, but self-centred. He also knew that the Great Families, ruing the loss of the Chancellorship, threatened him. Fortunately for Sancho in the Red Lion he had an answer.
When Sancho learned about the Red Lion he is said to not initially believed it. After perhaps some convincing Sancho began to order the Red Lion to eliminate his rivals amongst the Spanish aristocracy. The official Red Lion history notes that the Red Lion used a rarely used avenue of communication with the Emperor for verification. Ferdinand backed his Chancellor, himself having a dislike of many of the great nobles of state. Thus the Red Lion largely carried out the orders, if not always how Sancho would have preferred. Assassination was employed, but also other economic and diplomatic incentives. Unfortunately all too many of the high nobility would not take a hint, so over the next several years a good many died in a reign of political terror known as The Winnowing. And for each act the Red Lion extracted its due.
I say a reign of terror, but this was not a time of chaos in Spain. The vast majority of folk simply didn’t care, and in absolute terms we are not talking about large numbers. However, matters in Spain became more fraught with developments elsewhere in Europe.
After the American Revolt many of the leading thinkers and fighters - those that were not captured - fled to Europe, and in particular to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. There they found fertile ground, for the multicultural Polish state already had a solid core of radicals. The divided leadership of the Sejm ensured there was little effective done about them. All it took was a poor harvest, and typical gridlock on the part of the Sejm. On the 18th June 1815 a crowd charged the Sejm and over half the membership was massacred. A new state was proclaimed, serfdom abolished, and a raft of other revolutionary reforms.
Spain was initially not overly concerned about these events. Poland seemed a long way away, even though they bordered on the easternmost extent of former Bavarian lands. Denmark too adopted a more watchful attitude. The other two bordering powers felt more threatened. The abolition of Serfdom was a clear threat to Russia, and the call for Christian equality also threatened the Ottomans with their large non-Muslim populations. Both immediately arranged a hasty alliance and began to invade the nascent revolutionary state the following year.
The revolutionaries, their numbers bolstered by veterans of the American Revolt, quickly organised, and defeated the Russians at the Battle of Smolensk. They then turned south, and at the Battle of Iassy the Ottoman army was surrounded. The revolutionaries made the Ottoman soldiery an offer: join them, or be slaughtered. Underpaid it was an easy decision, and like wildfire the revolution started to spread through the Ottoman state. Constantinople itself was betrayed to the revolutionaries before year’s end. A second Russian invasion was defeated, and then the Cossacks joined the revolutionary cause. In under two years the stability of Europe had been shattered.
It is worthwhile remembering that there had been no major European wars since the French war a century earlier. Denmark and Russia had last faced each other even earlier, and apart from a brief border spat with the Commonwealth in the 1740s Denmark had a peaceful eighteenth century. The Ottomans had been engaged in border wars in Mesopotamia and the Caucuses, but these conflicts were small in scale. Tensions had risen several times with the Mamluks, but war had always been averted. The Mamluks themselves had conducted small scale operations to their south,but nothing more. The nation with most martial experience at that time was Russia, but its wars were with Central Asian nations and the nature of that warfare was very different from what was unleashed in Poland.
This was mass war, with armies that could number well over a hundred thousand. The three great early victories of the Revolution occurred, in part, because the Revolutionaries were able to swamp their opponents. Also, no one had experience of such fighting.
By the spring of 1817 it was clear that something had to be done. In the wake of the fall of Constantinople the Ottoman Sultanate had collapsed into a multi-faceted civil war. Every major group in the Empire split into three or four sides - those loyal to the Sultan, those loyal to the revolution, those loyal to local aristocrats and notables, and those loyal to nothing more but themselves or their immediate locales. The Balkans and Anatolia turned into a bloodbath, and the Mamluks occupied Palestine with little incident, claiming a desire to protect Jerusalem.
To the north the Revolution was having a debate regarding its aims: sort out the Balkans, invade Russia, or spread the Revolution further afield. After much debate they choose Russia, with some support to their ideological allies in the Balkans, but it was clear it was only a matter of time before other lands entered their sights. Revolutionary agents started to spread to the cities of Germany and Italy, and tensions began to rise.
War, it seemed, was going to be inevitable, and Sancho sought to prepare Spain. He knew well the Spanish weakness. Firstly, that although the Spanish Guards were very creditable soldiers the majority of the Spanish army was relatively poorly trained and inflexibly led. The fighting in America had been between forces which rarely numbered more than ten thousand on each side, but in the invasion of Russia in 1817 the Revolutions sent three separate armies, each in excess of sixty thousand men (and one significantly over a hundred thousand) - and an additional force of forty-thousand to the Balkans. The troops maintaining order in American elsewhere would clearly be needed there, as this Revolution was likely to inflame dormant passions.
The second was that, because of his the Winnowing he actually had fewer avenues to improve matters. He did what he could though, and setup no less than three new military colleges and sought to organise a new training regimen. He knew, however, by itself this would not be enough, and that Revolutionary agents in Italy in particular were seeking to cause problems.
I would say that he found himself turning to the Red Lion, but this was inaccurate. By the summer of 1817, with the armies of the Tsar forced to abandon Moscow and Novgorod and retreat to Kazan it was clear a fight with the Revolution was imminent. The Red Lion took the initiative, and offered to raise and train over sixty thousand troops and outfit a further dozen ships of the line and more than twenty new frigates. They would do this in promise of future reward. Knowing how many funds would be required to finance the coming war Sancho was all too eager to accept this offer, even knowing that the price was likely to be high. He decided to designate Italy to the Red Lion’s safekeeping, taking advantage of the rich web of Enclaves that Red Lion had already established there. This allowed Sancho to concentrate Imperial forces in Germany.
Eighteen eighteen was the year the Revolution took on a larger perspective. Flush from their victories in Russia, and perhaps ignoring the fact that the Tsar, whilst beaten, was not defeated, the revolutionaries turned their attentions to the two great powers of Continental Europe, and in the process sparked the Italian Revolution. Whilst their armies poured over the borders of Denmark and Imperial Spain, and their allies rose in revolt on the Italian peninsula, in the former Ottoman Sultanate further developments bolstered the revolutionary position. A new group of Ottoman soldiers, calling themselves the Young Turks, allied themselves with revolutionary forces. They trapped and killed the last Sultan, and brought much needed order. Whilst the Balkans proper remained a fratricidal killing ground, the Young Turks secured command of the still mostly intact Turkish fleet, and invaded Egypt. The Danes were long allied with the British, and made common cause with the Empire and even with Russia and Egypt. This grand coalition was in part stitched together by the tireless work of Klemens von Metternich, used by Sancho because he was not Spanish.
I do not intend to dwell in detail on the war. It did last for eleven full years, and it laid waste to much of Eastern and Central Europe. The Danish strategy was to partly retire to their fortress ports, and concentrate their army in close to Bohemia where in theory it and the Spanish army could aid each other. Further south the Red Lion had amassed the majority of their forces in Italy and was as prepared as any could be for when the revolution there happened. For three years the Red Lion engaged in a vicious campaign up and down the Italian peninsula until finally the fires of rebellion was doused. In this time the Red Lion army swelled to over one hundred and fifty thousand.
Whilst Sancho poured resources into the fighting north of the Alps - on the not entirely incorrect theory that Spain could win any war of attrition - the Red Lion dispatched an expeditionary force to Egypt and helped defend Cairo. In a series of operations in the early 1820s they seized Cyprus, Crete, and a handful more Aegean islands. Small operations were also conducted down the Adriatic Coast, and in 1825 Corfu was added to the tally of Red Lion conquests. It was in 1826 however that the Red Lion conducted their most ambitious operation. Gathering together a large fleet they sailed an army of one hundred and five thousand and landed it before Constantinople. The city had been ill-prepared for this move - its fate sealed at the naval Battle of the Bosphorus.
They then engaged the services of the great British military engineer Arthur Wellesley. He had already made a name for himself with the defence of Courland in 1823. Now he aided the Red Lion in fortifying the approaches to Constantinople for the inevitable counterstrike. This happened the following year, and the Battle of the Nations - so called because of the many disparate nationalities of the soldiery on both sides - ended in an emphatic Revolutionary Defeat. As payment for their efforts the Red Lion demanded to be added to their Covenant all the land they had seized from the Turks, and Sancho was in no place to disagree.
Indeed Sancho’s position was getting increasingly perilous. He had financed the war through a number of wealth taxes that fell heavily on Spain’s grandest families. Through these efforts, and by engaging the Red Lion, he had been able to finance the war without resorting over-much to general taxation. In Germany the allied forces fought a bloody back and forth war that slowly drained everyone of men and treasure.
Then the Emperor Ferdinand died in 1828. The Emperor had a fit and suffered a head injury in the process, dying three days later. His successor was the Emperor Louis. Whilst Sancho had tried to be on good terms with Ferdinand’s family, they largely despised him. It was clear by the end of the first formal meeting between Emperor and Chancellor that the Emperor would be seeking to replace him. In a combination of grief and panic Sancho made a mistake. He asked the Red Lion to remove Louis, which would cause the inheritance of the eminently more pliable Franz Karl.
However, if the Red Lion had a motto, it would be “Never Treason”. Deftly they gave the Chancellor the rope he needed to hang himself, and contacted the new Emperor. The Emperor had summoned von Metternich home for consultations, and quickly a coup was plotted. Indeed the Red Lion already had the majority of people they needed in place, having long-prepared for this day. The Demotion, as the coup somewhat whimsically became known, was carried out nearly bloodlessly. At the Emperor’s urging the Committee of Succession voted Metternich the new Chancellor.
Metternich immediately set about ending the Revolutionary War. In Poland two well-timed assassinations removed the most intransigent of the Revolutions leaders, allowing cooler heads to prevail. The outline of the deal was simple enough: the Commonwealth of All Peoples (as it was now known) would be allowed to exist, and would even be awarded a slice of Russian and former Ottoman territory. The Red Lion territories were confirmed as territories of Spain. The Young Turks were allowed to setup their new state of Turkey in Anatolia. Syria broke away as its own separate state. The Mamluks had Palestine restored to them. As to the Balkans, it was a mess. By the Congress of Berlin the official line was containment. It took a couple of years, but by 1830 peace had finally broken out in Europe.
Chapter 9 - The Bad Chancellor and the Revolutionary War
The Duke of Sicily was succeeded by the Duke of Coimbra, a rather nondescript Chancellor - but not a poor one. He brought the American Revolt to a conclusion, and concentrated on ensuring future stability in Spain’s Imperial domains. This caused him to neglect events transpiring in Europe, and within continental Spain. Then he was struck down by a sudden illness. Given what followed there has always been a suspicion this was a poisoning, but exhumation of his body in more recent decades and a forensic examination suggests nothing more dramatic than food poisoning.
The succession was contentious. Emperor Francis II had a fatal fall from when his horse spooked on an outing in 1813, leaving the Empire in the less than capable hands of his son Ferdinand. Ferdinand, epileptic and weak willed, was dominated by his good friend Sancho y Arri, a minor noble who had been assigned as his playmate when they were both young. Ferdinand wanted his friend to be the new Chancellor, and Sancho had an aggressive cunning. The combination of Imperial patronage (despite everything, one should not believe talk that Ferdinand was an idiot), and bribes and blackmail ensured that Sancho was one of the three candidates.
Even before he was officially confirmed he was being called the “Bad” Chancellor. However, just as with his five predecessors this was an aristocratic and moral judgement, not a measure of competency. Indeed Sancho was quite an able Chancellor, but self-centred. He also knew that the Great Families, ruing the loss of the Chancellorship, threatened him. Fortunately for Sancho in the Red Lion he had an answer.
When Sancho learned about the Red Lion he is said to not initially believed it. After perhaps some convincing Sancho began to order the Red Lion to eliminate his rivals amongst the Spanish aristocracy. The official Red Lion history notes that the Red Lion used a rarely used avenue of communication with the Emperor for verification. Ferdinand backed his Chancellor, himself having a dislike of many of the great nobles of state. Thus the Red Lion largely carried out the orders, if not always how Sancho would have preferred. Assassination was employed, but also other economic and diplomatic incentives. Unfortunately all too many of the high nobility would not take a hint, so over the next several years a good many died in a reign of political terror known as The Winnowing. And for each act the Red Lion extracted its due.
I say a reign of terror, but this was not a time of chaos in Spain. The vast majority of folk simply didn’t care, and in absolute terms we are not talking about large numbers. However, matters in Spain became more fraught with developments elsewhere in Europe.
After the American Revolt many of the leading thinkers and fighters - those that were not captured - fled to Europe, and in particular to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. There they found fertile ground, for the multicultural Polish state already had a solid core of radicals. The divided leadership of the Sejm ensured there was little effective done about them. All it took was a poor harvest, and typical gridlock on the part of the Sejm. On the 18th June 1815 a crowd charged the Sejm and over half the membership was massacred. A new state was proclaimed, serfdom abolished, and a raft of other revolutionary reforms.
Spain was initially not overly concerned about these events. Poland seemed a long way away, even though they bordered on the easternmost extent of former Bavarian lands. Denmark too adopted a more watchful attitude. The other two bordering powers felt more threatened. The abolition of Serfdom was a clear threat to Russia, and the call for Christian equality also threatened the Ottomans with their large non-Muslim populations. Both immediately arranged a hasty alliance and began to invade the nascent revolutionary state the following year.
The revolutionaries, their numbers bolstered by veterans of the American Revolt, quickly organised, and defeated the Russians at the Battle of Smolensk. They then turned south, and at the Battle of Iassy the Ottoman army was surrounded. The revolutionaries made the Ottoman soldiery an offer: join them, or be slaughtered. Underpaid it was an easy decision, and like wildfire the revolution started to spread through the Ottoman state. Constantinople itself was betrayed to the revolutionaries before year’s end. A second Russian invasion was defeated, and then the Cossacks joined the revolutionary cause. In under two years the stability of Europe had been shattered.
It is worthwhile remembering that there had been no major European wars since the French war a century earlier. Denmark and Russia had last faced each other even earlier, and apart from a brief border spat with the Commonwealth in the 1740s Denmark had a peaceful eighteenth century. The Ottomans had been engaged in border wars in Mesopotamia and the Caucuses, but these conflicts were small in scale. Tensions had risen several times with the Mamluks, but war had always been averted. The Mamluks themselves had conducted small scale operations to their south,but nothing more. The nation with most martial experience at that time was Russia, but its wars were with Central Asian nations and the nature of that warfare was very different from what was unleashed in Poland.
This was mass war, with armies that could number well over a hundred thousand. The three great early victories of the Revolution occurred, in part, because the Revolutionaries were able to swamp their opponents. Also, no one had experience of such fighting.
By the spring of 1817 it was clear that something had to be done. In the wake of the fall of Constantinople the Ottoman Sultanate had collapsed into a multi-faceted civil war. Every major group in the Empire split into three or four sides - those loyal to the Sultan, those loyal to the revolution, those loyal to local aristocrats and notables, and those loyal to nothing more but themselves or their immediate locales. The Balkans and Anatolia turned into a bloodbath, and the Mamluks occupied Palestine with little incident, claiming a desire to protect Jerusalem.
To the north the Revolution was having a debate regarding its aims: sort out the Balkans, invade Russia, or spread the Revolution further afield. After much debate they choose Russia, with some support to their ideological allies in the Balkans, but it was clear it was only a matter of time before other lands entered their sights. Revolutionary agents started to spread to the cities of Germany and Italy, and tensions began to rise.
War, it seemed, was going to be inevitable, and Sancho sought to prepare Spain. He knew well the Spanish weakness. Firstly, that although the Spanish Guards were very creditable soldiers the majority of the Spanish army was relatively poorly trained and inflexibly led. The fighting in America had been between forces which rarely numbered more than ten thousand on each side, but in the invasion of Russia in 1817 the Revolutions sent three separate armies, each in excess of sixty thousand men (and one significantly over a hundred thousand) - and an additional force of forty-thousand to the Balkans. The troops maintaining order in American elsewhere would clearly be needed there, as this Revolution was likely to inflame dormant passions.
The second was that, because of his the Winnowing he actually had fewer avenues to improve matters. He did what he could though, and setup no less than three new military colleges and sought to organise a new training regimen. He knew, however, by itself this would not be enough, and that Revolutionary agents in Italy in particular were seeking to cause problems.
I would say that he found himself turning to the Red Lion, but this was inaccurate. By the summer of 1817, with the armies of the Tsar forced to abandon Moscow and Novgorod and retreat to Kazan it was clear a fight with the Revolution was imminent. The Red Lion took the initiative, and offered to raise and train over sixty thousand troops and outfit a further dozen ships of the line and more than twenty new frigates. They would do this in promise of future reward. Knowing how many funds would be required to finance the coming war Sancho was all too eager to accept this offer, even knowing that the price was likely to be high. He decided to designate Italy to the Red Lion’s safekeeping, taking advantage of the rich web of Enclaves that Red Lion had already established there. This allowed Sancho to concentrate Imperial forces in Germany.
Eighteen eighteen was the year the Revolution took on a larger perspective. Flush from their victories in Russia, and perhaps ignoring the fact that the Tsar, whilst beaten, was not defeated, the revolutionaries turned their attentions to the two great powers of Continental Europe, and in the process sparked the Italian Revolution. Whilst their armies poured over the borders of Denmark and Imperial Spain, and their allies rose in revolt on the Italian peninsula, in the former Ottoman Sultanate further developments bolstered the revolutionary position. A new group of Ottoman soldiers, calling themselves the Young Turks, allied themselves with revolutionary forces. They trapped and killed the last Sultan, and brought much needed order. Whilst the Balkans proper remained a fratricidal killing ground, the Young Turks secured command of the still mostly intact Turkish fleet, and invaded Egypt. The Danes were long allied with the British, and made common cause with the Empire and even with Russia and Egypt. This grand coalition was in part stitched together by the tireless work of Klemens von Metternich, used by Sancho because he was not Spanish.
I do not intend to dwell in detail on the war. It did last for eleven full years, and it laid waste to much of Eastern and Central Europe. The Danish strategy was to partly retire to their fortress ports, and concentrate their army in close to Bohemia where in theory it and the Spanish army could aid each other. Further south the Red Lion had amassed the majority of their forces in Italy and was as prepared as any could be for when the revolution there happened. For three years the Red Lion engaged in a vicious campaign up and down the Italian peninsula until finally the fires of rebellion was doused. In this time the Red Lion army swelled to over one hundred and fifty thousand.
Whilst Sancho poured resources into the fighting north of the Alps - on the not entirely incorrect theory that Spain could win any war of attrition - the Red Lion dispatched an expeditionary force to Egypt and helped defend Cairo. In a series of operations in the early 1820s they seized Cyprus, Crete, and a handful more Aegean islands. Small operations were also conducted down the Adriatic Coast, and in 1825 Corfu was added to the tally of Red Lion conquests. It was in 1826 however that the Red Lion conducted their most ambitious operation. Gathering together a large fleet they sailed an army of one hundred and five thousand and landed it before Constantinople. The city had been ill-prepared for this move - its fate sealed at the naval Battle of the Bosphorus.
They then engaged the services of the great British military engineer Arthur Wellesley. He had already made a name for himself with the defence of Courland in 1823. Now he aided the Red Lion in fortifying the approaches to Constantinople for the inevitable counterstrike. This happened the following year, and the Battle of the Nations - so called because of the many disparate nationalities of the soldiery on both sides - ended in an emphatic Revolutionary Defeat. As payment for their efforts the Red Lion demanded to be added to their Covenant all the land they had seized from the Turks, and Sancho was in no place to disagree.
Indeed Sancho’s position was getting increasingly perilous. He had financed the war through a number of wealth taxes that fell heavily on Spain’s grandest families. Through these efforts, and by engaging the Red Lion, he had been able to finance the war without resorting over-much to general taxation. In Germany the allied forces fought a bloody back and forth war that slowly drained everyone of men and treasure.
Then the Emperor Ferdinand died in 1828. The Emperor had a fit and suffered a head injury in the process, dying three days later. His successor was the Emperor Louis. Whilst Sancho had tried to be on good terms with Ferdinand’s family, they largely despised him. It was clear by the end of the first formal meeting between Emperor and Chancellor that the Emperor would be seeking to replace him. In a combination of grief and panic Sancho made a mistake. He asked the Red Lion to remove Louis, which would cause the inheritance of the eminently more pliable Franz Karl.
However, if the Red Lion had a motto, it would be “Never Treason”. Deftly they gave the Chancellor the rope he needed to hang himself, and contacted the new Emperor. The Emperor had summoned von Metternich home for consultations, and quickly a coup was plotted. Indeed the Red Lion already had the majority of people they needed in place, having long-prepared for this day. The Demotion, as the coup somewhat whimsically became known, was carried out nearly bloodlessly. At the Emperor’s urging the Committee of Succession voted Metternich the new Chancellor.
Metternich immediately set about ending the Revolutionary War. In Poland two well-timed assassinations removed the most intransigent of the Revolutions leaders, allowing cooler heads to prevail. The outline of the deal was simple enough: the Commonwealth of All Peoples (as it was now known) would be allowed to exist, and would even be awarded a slice of Russian and former Ottoman territory. The Red Lion territories were confirmed as territories of Spain. The Young Turks were allowed to setup their new state of Turkey in Anatolia. Syria broke away as its own separate state. The Mamluks had Palestine restored to them. As to the Balkans, it was a mess. By the Congress of Berlin the official line was containment. It took a couple of years, but by 1830 peace had finally broken out in Europe.
The Red Lion finally comes into its own as an equal partner (whatever the formalities of the Covenant may say, we all know who has most of the real power these days). The British East India Company wishes they had it this good...
I am somewhat chuffed to see that the idea of Revolutionary Ottomans has been carried over from your previous AAR. I always did find that a bit of an intriguing development.
From which I immediately deduce that there was, in fact, exactly one casualty -- no more and no less than the target of the exercise in question himself
I am somewhat chuffed to see that the idea of Revolutionary Ottomans has been carried over from your previous AAR. I always did find that a bit of an intriguing development.
From which I immediately deduce that there was, in fact, exactly one casualty -- no more and no less than the target of the exercise in question himself
Yes. I am now moving well beyond my EU2, and the memories thereof (things get increasingly hazy after 1750-ish in the dusty corridors of the brain). The idea of Poland and the Ottomans falling to Revolution was, once I thought of it, too good to pass up. Then I tried to work in a couple more historical characters into it.The Red Lion finally comes into its own as an equal partner (whatever the formalities of the Covenant may say, we all know who has most of the real power these days). The British East India Company wishes they had it this good...
I am somewhat chuffed to see that the idea of Revolutionary Ottomans has been carried over from your previous AAR. I always did find that a bit of an intriguing development.
From which I immediately deduce that there was, in fact, exactly one casualty -- no more and no less than the target of the exercise in question himself
The East India company was certainly part of this inspiration, and the homage continues later on as you will see. I would say that, in terms of power, I intend to explore that question more in the next post.
Yes. I wanted a nice revolutinary war, large and bloody, and perhaps a forestaste of a later conflict.
History 10 - From War to War
Excerpts from A Brief History of the Red Lion
Chapter 10 - From War to War
In the wake of the conclusion of the Revolutionary War the new Emperor and Chancellor Metternich faced an unpalatable truth: if it were not for the loyalty of the Red Lion to depredations of Sancho would have continued, and the war might not have been won. The same Red Lion that was, with the grants of former Ottoman lands, now effectively a state within a state, like some of the grand mediaeval states of old. Both appreciated, in a way many former Chancellors had not, is that while the Red Lion were a great asset they were also an alternative power structure, an odd thing to tolerate in a theoretically autocratic state.
Thus the Emperor and his Chancellor sought to keep the Red Lion at arm’s length, and only call upon their services already directly guaranteed by the Covenants and which required no further negotiations. For their part the Red Lion also needed time. Before the Revolutionary war they had amassed a quite sizeable financial reserve, but the costs of the war had seriously depleted it. It was a time of rebuilding and making their new domains harmonious and profitable. In this they succeeded. Constantinople, which in 1828 was a ruined shell almost empty of people, within thirty years became a thriving metropolis, thronged with folk of seeming every origin and creed. Bizarrely this included relatively few Greeks or Turks as those citizens became engaged in the setting up of their new respective states.
The militaries of the world were reduced, and those included the Red Lion. Nevertheless their standing force was a good bit larger than hitherto, a boon the Emperor was unable not to grant. In due course the Red Lion also began to industrialise with the harnessed power of steam. It is perhaps true to say that the inherent conservatism of Metternich and the Emperor prevented them realising exactly how greatly the Red Lions efforts in these arenas outpaced many of their competitors.
The first great disruption of the new harmony happened in India in 1849 - the so-called Great Mutiny of a large number of Indian troops and some vassals. Whilst widespread, the initial military uprising was effectively put down in just over a year - an impressive achievement considering the distances involved. The discontent lingered, and it was clear that a serious investment of time and energy would be required.
Thus Metternich made his gamble. It required some convincing of the Emperor, but in 1851 they made their move. They made the Red Lion an offer - take over the Viceroyalty of India, charged with turning that place into a loyal domain, whilst maintaining and expanding Imperial revenues. This was not a grant of Enclave. The Red Lion broadly agreed on one condition - that they were given sufficient time. Fifty years was granted.
Through this Metternich hoped to effectively swamp the resources of the Red Lion. It is not hard to see why he thought this would happen - India was a morass of states and vassals, archaic arrangements and prickly locals. However, it also displays the limits of his experience.
After some deliberation the Red Lion sent out their candidate - a man in his late forties called Bernard Brewer. As a young officer he had participated in the battles around Constantinople, and had fought in a number of minor actions around the Balkans as required after the Peace (the Balkans remaining a most unsettled place). He had also served as a Reeve of an Enclave in Cartagena, and then as a Captain-Reeve of the Enclaves of Italy. An erudite man, not given to airs, he had a facility with languages and a quiet way. Not always personable, he also rarely gave offence.
When he arrived in India the first thing he did was conduct a tour of the Spanish domains and to the various allied Potentates. He had also arrived with a large and able team who surveyed and quizzed up and down the land. After three years, it is said, everyone in India was heartily sick and wondered when anything was actually going to happen.
Well things began to happen in 1855, when as his first truly dramatic gesture Bernard Brewer, repealed the hated salt tax. Within five years the Indian administration was dramatically enlarged, barriers brought down, and businesses began. India went from a sullen resentment to a sort of shocked tumult. One should not pretend there were not serious challenges ahead, upsets and drawbacks, but when Bernard Brewer resigned from his office on account of his age in 1882 he had transformed India.
When Metternich died in 1859 he already saw the way the wind was blowing. He is reputed to have said “I had hoped to hamstrung the lion, instead I have only made it stronger”. This may be true, but perhaps on his deathbed he was also being overly harsh - the Red Lion had turned India into a true jewel of the Empire from the wreck it was previously becoming.
The Emperor Louis died in 1864 and was succeeded by Franz Joseph. Entirely more liberal than his predecessor he appreciated that the Empire needed change. New technologies both made the sprawling Empire easier to govern and more fractious, and he was aware that the subjects would slowly desire more opportunities like those which existed in Britain, Denmark, the the Republic of All Peoples (former Poland). With slow deliberate steps he ensured a reformation of Spanish governance, whilst preserving a great deal of authority and influence in the Crown.
The key was not overturning the Committee system, but transforming it, so that rather being wholly appointed they became part-elected from the local Cortes. The nature of these reforms and their progress can (and have) taken many volumes, but by 1916 when Franz Joseph died the Spanish Empire had transformed into the Spanish Imperial Commonwealth. The constituent units were named the Commonwealth of X, and were often smaller than the previous Vice-Royalties, though in higher population areas they sometimes formed intermediate units called Confederations. As an example the Confederation of Iberia consisted of the Commonwealths of Portugal, Galicia, Castile, Aragon, Catalonia, Andalusia, Murcia, and Valencia. Madrid was government separately from the rest. A much larger degree of local autonomy was allowed. He also oversaw the final abolition of slavery and the formal dismantling of the Inquisition. These changes brought howls of protests from many of the former Grand Families, but the simple fact is that the Bad Chancellor Sancho had done his work well. The Winnowing had removed some of their most vital talent, and the wealth taxes had hit their finances. Also, the Imperial family was now more solidly German despite spending most of their time in Madrid. Franz Joseph was also the first Emperor to conduct a Grand Tour of the Empire, and became greatly loved in all its parts.
This is not to say there was no discontent. These were decades of stupendous social change, but Franz Joseph cultivated an air that genuine grievances could and would be addressed. An absolute response to violence was married with a determination to listen and a knowledge that reforms were inevitable. The most significant achievement though was not allowing a truly united opposition to form. The trans-nationalism of the American Revolt faded. People might consider themselves Imperial subjects, but they were also Genoese or Florentine, Colombian or Peruvian, Mississippian or Californian.
In India Franz Joseph faced a greater challenge in that the agreement with the Red Lion by his predecessor made him have to work through the Red Lion. Fortunately he proved an apt negotiator, and the overall governance of India was reformed along with the rest. India did remain governed in a somewhat unique manner - it remained the last Vice-Royalty - but it was also integrated into the new system of Commonwealths and Confederations. When the Red Lion appointment had reached its fifty year tenure at the start of the twentieth century the Emperor decided to renew the arrangement, though with some modifications that made more explicit this was an Imperial appointment and not a matter of the Covenant. It perhaps says something that Franz Joseph is today regarded as perhaps the one Emperor who saw a restoration of Imperial power, even if from one perspective he gave so much away.
Whilst there was peace in Europe during this time, this was not true elsewhere. There came a great common movement in Europe in the latter third of the 19th century that the world markets should be opened up. By this they principally meant China and Japan, though there were others as well. Japan actually proved relatively easy, as the Emperor Meiji wished to modernise his country. A joint British, Spanish, and Danish squadron gave him the opportunity he needed.
China was a more difficult nut to crack, but China’s isolation and sclerotic government made the end result never in doubt. The Chinese Wars were some of the most nakedly Imperial that ever occurred, and by the end of it many ports were under effective international, not Chinese, control. These led directly to the Chinese civil war of 1899 that saw the end of the Qing Dynasty. There were also wars in Africa, but largely these again were wars of access, not conquest.
The most notable event though was probably the Sinai War, caused by the Mamluk Civil War of 1882-4. In return for Spanish support the Mamluk liberal claimant agreed that a strip of land would be ceded to Spain (though actually as an Enclave to the Red Lion) through which the Suez canal would be constructed.
The Red Lion participated in many of these smaller wars. Their forces were useful ways for the Spanish Imperial Commonwealth to get involved without over-committing its own resources. What the Red Lion largely got in exchange was, in a sense, what they already had: the right to establish Enclaves in the new territories. Indeed in the Chinese Treaty ports the Spanish Enclaves were in fact Red Lion Enclaves, though with some particular characteristics.
This though was the time when the Red Lion can truly be said to have corporatised. Of course, by this time the Red Lion was really a large conglomeration of a wide variety of businesses, all technically independent - but linked even so. It was in 1884 that the Red Lion first officially announced a public leader. Now, there is a good bit of doubt whether the publicly identified leader of the Red Lion is actually the leader, but it marked the start the Red Lion taking a new direction.
It was during this time that the Red Lion signed its first commercial agreements with other nations - Britain, and then later Denmark. However, the true new step happened with Japan, which was the first other nation with whom the Red Lion signed a Covenant. The terms were more restrictive than the Spanish agreement, almost inevitably, but still significant. For the Emperor Meiji it was a way of aiding the rapid transformation of Japan. This might be seen as the first concrete step of the Red Lion trade policy that was instituted in the aftermath of the Great War.
In terms of politics the Red Lion remained something of an enigma for the liberalising political classes. Whilst the full extent of their intelligence endeavours were not well known, their loyalties to the Imperial State were now unquestioned, so from one perspective they were a pillar of Empire. On the other they were a bastion of religious freedom, a provider of healthcare and education, a leader in the treatment of workers, a forerunner in women’s equality, and a leading force in the worldwide abolition of slavery (which was not to be achieved until the 2100s).
By the death of Karl Joseph the Red Lion had become an industrial powerhouse, a vitally important part of Imperial society, and an increasing part of Japanese life as well. Indeed in 1922 the new Emperor formally dropped the name “Spanish” from the name of the Empire: it was now known as just “The Imperial Commonwealth”. Given the storm clouds that were already starting to gather on the horizon this proved to be a prescient move.
Chapter 10 - From War to War
In the wake of the conclusion of the Revolutionary War the new Emperor and Chancellor Metternich faced an unpalatable truth: if it were not for the loyalty of the Red Lion to depredations of Sancho would have continued, and the war might not have been won. The same Red Lion that was, with the grants of former Ottoman lands, now effectively a state within a state, like some of the grand mediaeval states of old. Both appreciated, in a way many former Chancellors had not, is that while the Red Lion were a great asset they were also an alternative power structure, an odd thing to tolerate in a theoretically autocratic state.
Thus the Emperor and his Chancellor sought to keep the Red Lion at arm’s length, and only call upon their services already directly guaranteed by the Covenants and which required no further negotiations. For their part the Red Lion also needed time. Before the Revolutionary war they had amassed a quite sizeable financial reserve, but the costs of the war had seriously depleted it. It was a time of rebuilding and making their new domains harmonious and profitable. In this they succeeded. Constantinople, which in 1828 was a ruined shell almost empty of people, within thirty years became a thriving metropolis, thronged with folk of seeming every origin and creed. Bizarrely this included relatively few Greeks or Turks as those citizens became engaged in the setting up of their new respective states.
The militaries of the world were reduced, and those included the Red Lion. Nevertheless their standing force was a good bit larger than hitherto, a boon the Emperor was unable not to grant. In due course the Red Lion also began to industrialise with the harnessed power of steam. It is perhaps true to say that the inherent conservatism of Metternich and the Emperor prevented them realising exactly how greatly the Red Lions efforts in these arenas outpaced many of their competitors.
The first great disruption of the new harmony happened in India in 1849 - the so-called Great Mutiny of a large number of Indian troops and some vassals. Whilst widespread, the initial military uprising was effectively put down in just over a year - an impressive achievement considering the distances involved. The discontent lingered, and it was clear that a serious investment of time and energy would be required.
Thus Metternich made his gamble. It required some convincing of the Emperor, but in 1851 they made their move. They made the Red Lion an offer - take over the Viceroyalty of India, charged with turning that place into a loyal domain, whilst maintaining and expanding Imperial revenues. This was not a grant of Enclave. The Red Lion broadly agreed on one condition - that they were given sufficient time. Fifty years was granted.
Through this Metternich hoped to effectively swamp the resources of the Red Lion. It is not hard to see why he thought this would happen - India was a morass of states and vassals, archaic arrangements and prickly locals. However, it also displays the limits of his experience.
After some deliberation the Red Lion sent out their candidate - a man in his late forties called Bernard Brewer. As a young officer he had participated in the battles around Constantinople, and had fought in a number of minor actions around the Balkans as required after the Peace (the Balkans remaining a most unsettled place). He had also served as a Reeve of an Enclave in Cartagena, and then as a Captain-Reeve of the Enclaves of Italy. An erudite man, not given to airs, he had a facility with languages and a quiet way. Not always personable, he also rarely gave offence.
When he arrived in India the first thing he did was conduct a tour of the Spanish domains and to the various allied Potentates. He had also arrived with a large and able team who surveyed and quizzed up and down the land. After three years, it is said, everyone in India was heartily sick and wondered when anything was actually going to happen.
Well things began to happen in 1855, when as his first truly dramatic gesture Bernard Brewer, repealed the hated salt tax. Within five years the Indian administration was dramatically enlarged, barriers brought down, and businesses began. India went from a sullen resentment to a sort of shocked tumult. One should not pretend there were not serious challenges ahead, upsets and drawbacks, but when Bernard Brewer resigned from his office on account of his age in 1882 he had transformed India.
When Metternich died in 1859 he already saw the way the wind was blowing. He is reputed to have said “I had hoped to hamstrung the lion, instead I have only made it stronger”. This may be true, but perhaps on his deathbed he was also being overly harsh - the Red Lion had turned India into a true jewel of the Empire from the wreck it was previously becoming.
The Emperor Louis died in 1864 and was succeeded by Franz Joseph. Entirely more liberal than his predecessor he appreciated that the Empire needed change. New technologies both made the sprawling Empire easier to govern and more fractious, and he was aware that the subjects would slowly desire more opportunities like those which existed in Britain, Denmark, the the Republic of All Peoples (former Poland). With slow deliberate steps he ensured a reformation of Spanish governance, whilst preserving a great deal of authority and influence in the Crown.
The key was not overturning the Committee system, but transforming it, so that rather being wholly appointed they became part-elected from the local Cortes. The nature of these reforms and their progress can (and have) taken many volumes, but by 1916 when Franz Joseph died the Spanish Empire had transformed into the Spanish Imperial Commonwealth. The constituent units were named the Commonwealth of X, and were often smaller than the previous Vice-Royalties, though in higher population areas they sometimes formed intermediate units called Confederations. As an example the Confederation of Iberia consisted of the Commonwealths of Portugal, Galicia, Castile, Aragon, Catalonia, Andalusia, Murcia, and Valencia. Madrid was government separately from the rest. A much larger degree of local autonomy was allowed. He also oversaw the final abolition of slavery and the formal dismantling of the Inquisition. These changes brought howls of protests from many of the former Grand Families, but the simple fact is that the Bad Chancellor Sancho had done his work well. The Winnowing had removed some of their most vital talent, and the wealth taxes had hit their finances. Also, the Imperial family was now more solidly German despite spending most of their time in Madrid. Franz Joseph was also the first Emperor to conduct a Grand Tour of the Empire, and became greatly loved in all its parts.
This is not to say there was no discontent. These were decades of stupendous social change, but Franz Joseph cultivated an air that genuine grievances could and would be addressed. An absolute response to violence was married with a determination to listen and a knowledge that reforms were inevitable. The most significant achievement though was not allowing a truly united opposition to form. The trans-nationalism of the American Revolt faded. People might consider themselves Imperial subjects, but they were also Genoese or Florentine, Colombian or Peruvian, Mississippian or Californian.
In India Franz Joseph faced a greater challenge in that the agreement with the Red Lion by his predecessor made him have to work through the Red Lion. Fortunately he proved an apt negotiator, and the overall governance of India was reformed along with the rest. India did remain governed in a somewhat unique manner - it remained the last Vice-Royalty - but it was also integrated into the new system of Commonwealths and Confederations. When the Red Lion appointment had reached its fifty year tenure at the start of the twentieth century the Emperor decided to renew the arrangement, though with some modifications that made more explicit this was an Imperial appointment and not a matter of the Covenant. It perhaps says something that Franz Joseph is today regarded as perhaps the one Emperor who saw a restoration of Imperial power, even if from one perspective he gave so much away.
Whilst there was peace in Europe during this time, this was not true elsewhere. There came a great common movement in Europe in the latter third of the 19th century that the world markets should be opened up. By this they principally meant China and Japan, though there were others as well. Japan actually proved relatively easy, as the Emperor Meiji wished to modernise his country. A joint British, Spanish, and Danish squadron gave him the opportunity he needed.
China was a more difficult nut to crack, but China’s isolation and sclerotic government made the end result never in doubt. The Chinese Wars were some of the most nakedly Imperial that ever occurred, and by the end of it many ports were under effective international, not Chinese, control. These led directly to the Chinese civil war of 1899 that saw the end of the Qing Dynasty. There were also wars in Africa, but largely these again were wars of access, not conquest.
The most notable event though was probably the Sinai War, caused by the Mamluk Civil War of 1882-4. In return for Spanish support the Mamluk liberal claimant agreed that a strip of land would be ceded to Spain (though actually as an Enclave to the Red Lion) through which the Suez canal would be constructed.
The Red Lion participated in many of these smaller wars. Their forces were useful ways for the Spanish Imperial Commonwealth to get involved without over-committing its own resources. What the Red Lion largely got in exchange was, in a sense, what they already had: the right to establish Enclaves in the new territories. Indeed in the Chinese Treaty ports the Spanish Enclaves were in fact Red Lion Enclaves, though with some particular characteristics.
This though was the time when the Red Lion can truly be said to have corporatised. Of course, by this time the Red Lion was really a large conglomeration of a wide variety of businesses, all technically independent - but linked even so. It was in 1884 that the Red Lion first officially announced a public leader. Now, there is a good bit of doubt whether the publicly identified leader of the Red Lion is actually the leader, but it marked the start the Red Lion taking a new direction.
It was during this time that the Red Lion signed its first commercial agreements with other nations - Britain, and then later Denmark. However, the true new step happened with Japan, which was the first other nation with whom the Red Lion signed a Covenant. The terms were more restrictive than the Spanish agreement, almost inevitably, but still significant. For the Emperor Meiji it was a way of aiding the rapid transformation of Japan. This might be seen as the first concrete step of the Red Lion trade policy that was instituted in the aftermath of the Great War.
In terms of politics the Red Lion remained something of an enigma for the liberalising political classes. Whilst the full extent of their intelligence endeavours were not well known, their loyalties to the Imperial State were now unquestioned, so from one perspective they were a pillar of Empire. On the other they were a bastion of religious freedom, a provider of healthcare and education, a leader in the treatment of workers, a forerunner in women’s equality, and a leading force in the worldwide abolition of slavery (which was not to be achieved until the 2100s).
By the death of Karl Joseph the Red Lion had become an industrial powerhouse, a vitally important part of Imperial society, and an increasing part of Japanese life as well. Indeed in 1922 the new Emperor formally dropped the name “Spanish” from the name of the Empire: it was now known as just “The Imperial Commonwealth”. Given the storm clouds that were already starting to gather on the horizon this proved to be a prescient move.