Peace and Prosperity
Excerpt from The Byzantine Empire in the Victoria Era: 1836-1936 by Prof. Charles Whitsford:
The Third War of Italian Unification started off with a bang on the 2nd of June, 1890 as Sardinian troops marched into an undefended Florence, kicking out Grand Duke Ferdinand IV that same day. A member of the Hapsburg family, he quickly ran to Vienna seeking assistance, which Franz-Joseph was more than happy to give. Assuming the Sardinian performance in a large-scale war would be as poor as it was in the last, he saw it as an opportunity to regain some glory for the visibly waning nation, and cement his position of control over southern Italy as well (through the de facto puppet regime in Naples). Austrian and Sicilian troops quickly mobilized in response to the northern aggression. However, the independent republics of Lombardy and Venice remained staunchly neutral, cutting off a land route of advance against the northern Italians. Austria troops would have to travel across the Adriatic by water to reinforce their Sicilian allies. Unfortunately, the Kaiser did not gamble on 'foreign' intervention in what he saw as a police action. France's entry into the war on the first of July certainly startled the Hapsburg coalition.
The political situation on the Italian peninsula in early 1890.
The true scale of the war was finally realized when the first major Austrian troop supply convoy was intercepted by the French Navy near the coastal town of Bari on the 12th of July. The resulting battle pitched twenty-two French ironclads versus a joint Austrian-Sicilian force of sixteen similar vessels. The first sizable naval battle between just iron-hulled vessels in European history would result in a loss for the Hapsburgs, with ten of their vessels being sent to the bottom of the Adriatic Sea, compared to only three French-flagged ships. The only saving grace was that in the battle, 80% of the Austrian transport fleet managed to turn around and escape back to the Dalmatian coast, saving nearly 100,000 on board troops from capture, or worse. Regardless, with the French (and soon to be Sardinian) navies in complete control of the Adriatic, Austria was unable to assist her smaller allies on the peninsula. Midway through September, the Franco-Italian forces finally managed to break through Sicilian lines in Perugia, with the Papacy finally falling a week later. The Pope managed to escape south, and eventually to Austria where the office would remain until 1919, due to a number of particular internal and external reasons we will not go into here. Regardless, the northerners' march onwards continued. A revolt in the down of Potenze in December would tie up a number of Sicilian divisions in the south, weakening their front lines even more. Fast forward to June of the next year, and the Sardinian-French alliance had positioned enough troops in central Italy to finally be able to overwhelm the defenders. Over 750,000 surged over a front line (nearly every mile across the Italian peninsula in fact). The nearly 400,000 strong opposing army buckled within two weeks, with Naples finally falling on the 23rd of July. With this victory, Umberto I declared victory, announcing the creation of yet another nation in Europe; a united Italian Kingdom. With no common land border between Italy and Austria, the latter conceded defeat, signing a white peace with Rome in early November. There still was the curious problem however of this new Kingdom of Italy not including the two independent republics in the north. Negotiations began almost immediately after the end of the war for their inclusion, a treaty that was finally agreed to. However, the main concession Umberto had to give was the enacting of a new constitution based around universal male suffrage, making his Kingdom the newest democratic nation on the European continent. Venice and Lombardy officially joined this united Italy on January 14th, 1893, also known as the same day that the Empire of Japan annexed Hawaii.
While all this was going on of course, time did not freeze in Byzantium. French long term concerns of Austrian revenge would result in their looking abroad for further allies to shore up their own position. On March 2nd, 1890, Paris approached Constantinople with the offer of a defensive alliance, which was accepted. As agreed to in this treaty, the Senate also voted to drop the national tariff rate by 20%, mainly to encourage further importing of French goods. The process of industrialization continued, with the wave of new and expanding factories opening their doors (especially in the fields of steel, cement, and machine parts). In January of 1891, with the Italian war in full swing, Conservative Party politicians (with limited support from the Progressives) voted to divert funds from internal improvements towards a massive military expansion project. Funds were allocated for the expansion of the Army by eighteen active duty infantry divisions and twenty reserve divisions. On top of this, orders were placed to modernize the Imperial Navy, with keels for ten
Hydra-class protected cruisers and four
Constantine-class battleships laid. [1]
Hydra, the namesake of her class is the only armored cruiser to remain afloat today, and is a museum ship in Athens.
There of course were internal troubles as well. A huge strike of clothes and furniture factory workers erupted in January 1892, which was eventually settled in favor of the workers after two months of negotiations. The Sofia Strikes, as they are known to history, are the starting point for the beginning of factory worker unionization in the Empire, an effort generally supported by the ruling Progressive/Socialist coalition. However, the negotiations inside the Senate to allow this result to pass showed to many how weak the aging Prime Minister actually was. With the 1893 elections getting nearer and nearer, it was not clear whether Karamanlís would even live out his current term. His announcement in September that he would be retiring, while startling to much of the public, did not serve as much of a shock to many in the political circles of Constantinople, least of all his close friend Otto. As the May elections neared, he handed off leadership of the Progressive Party to his political protege, the sixty-year old Charilaos Trikoupis, an ally of his among liberal circles for nearly twenty-five years now. The results of the election, held on May 17, 1893, are as follows: [2]
Communist Party - 1.32% - 5 seats [+5]
Democratic Movement - 3.18% - 13 seats [-1]
Socialist Party - 15.93% - 64 seats [-10]
Progressive Party - 38.58% - 155 seats [+23]
Conservative Party - 39.86% - 159 seats [-11]
Traditionalists - 1.07% - 4 seats [-6]
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the results of this election is that it represented the first time any follower of Karl Marx's ideology had found themselves sitting in a national legislature, something many were not happy with. However, the ruling Progressive/Socialist coalition (whose margin of control was just widened by a good deal) would not allow any of the numerous attempts to ban the Communist deputies from taking their seats be passed. In the end, the Senate quickly got to work on normal business, forgetting the business of limiting the legally elected deputies from doing their jobs. The lack of Karamanlís as a force in politics was odd to most, as he had dominated the Greek political scene for over sixty years. Regardless, Trikoupis filled his shoes perhaps as best as he could, with major banking regulations being passed in April of 1894. Following that by a few months, his administration finally achieved international recognition for their seizure of the remaining 'Egyptian' part of the Sahara desert, which is generally considered the start of the Scramble for Africa. [3]
Byzantine Egypt in 1894.
The next few months were quiet for Byzantium, and Europe as well. However, on the morning of January 8, 1895, the world was shocked to hear of the death of Geórgios Karamanlís, who had passed away peacefully in his sleep at the age of 90. Such a political giant that had not only dominated the Balkans and Middle East for more than a half century, but had served as the spiritual guide for European liberalism as well. His death was followed only three months later by that of Otto von Bismark, which according to some accounts "left the nations of Europe astray as orphans without their proper guiding hands."
Geórgios Karamanlís, b. 1805 (2019), d. 1895.
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[1] Pre-dreadnoughts, fyi.
[2] The damned math for these seats never works out. Can't figure out what is wrong. QQ
[3] We'll go into this later.
Thanks for reading!
