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Yes and no. It's has "the honor" or "prestige" of the title that is Germany, but it's has a very different make-up and doesn't have any ambitions of encompassing what the German nationalists of the 19th century wished Germany to be.
On the one hand I'm kinda annoyed by how powerful Yuan is (which is also a nice counterbalance to my natural instinct of limitless expansion), on the other I'm impressed by how long they have kept it together and it provides something different compared to the megacampaign "trope" that is multiple Chinese tags around from EU4 till HoI
Karel I, part II
The reign of Karel I, part II
For those unfamiliar with Dytsch history, the title of this chapter (and perhaps the entire numbering of the monarchs over the course of this history) might seem a bit odd, since this certainly isn’t the first Karel of the Roderlo’s to have reigned and we come to this title halfway into his reign, where he was already known as Karel IV. Most monarchs, when founding a new state, chose to keep the same numbering going as had been customary with their previous titles. Savoy/Arelat and the many disperate crowns that make up Spain are nice examples of this, but Karel IV/I chose to break with this tradition very actively. It was a choice to break with that which was old, broken and indicated the subservience of the Saxon monarchs to a higher authority, the Holy Roman Emperor. Karel I, wishing to be remembered in that manner, also chose to actively break with the way living monarchs were referred to. A living monarch was never referred to with his regnal number, it was always “King [X]” or “Duke [Y]”, but to make sure he was seen as the start of a new tradition, a new baseline, he actively enforced the policy that every mention of his name in official documentation should come with his regnal number. And as the future of this history will show, he succeeded in his aim.
First and foremost, Karel I turned out to be another reformer. The title of king wasn’t just a project for glory and a title more worthy for the status of the realm, it also opened up many opportunities in, what would become known as, the constitutional development of Dytschland. The Troubles had seen the centralization of power, through the reassignment of sovereignty from the provinces to the monarch and his parliament, but this was followed through a slowly increasing level of dysfunction in the unicameral parliament. The Riot of 1705 was already mentioned and is a great example of this dysfunction, but it does not represent it properly. The reality is much more boring, as debating went on longer, filibustering increased an multiple speakers of the Staten resigned their position to either force a victory on a tied vote or to tie a 1 seat majority vote. Part of the slow mobilization for the War of Imperial Dissolution compared to Bohemia was parliament, which was slow to give consent to a mobilization of forces for a war which elements of it saw as “feudal and nothing more than for the vainglory a self-important monarch.” In the end, the whole of parliament did celebrate when she was however elevated to the parliament of a kingdom rather than the parliament of a, at the highest level, grand duchy or, at the lowest level, a lordship. (Hypocrisy is of all ages it seems.) Karel I, long enthralled by alternative systems of government was pushed over the edge by his close call at Dessau. The core of his attack on the old ways became the way voting was set up, or more in the way that it was never present. It was, after hundreds of years, still the Staten itself that decided upon the manner of the vote. It was this part of the procedure that had actually come to take up most of the process. To go back to 1726, it was a filibuster by the entire delegation of Zeeland that had demanded voting concession where Saxony had demanded a simple tax based system, mainly because of the need to act fast and the fact that Saxony was to be first hit, Zeeland could afford to demand concessions. Throughout the early 1730’ies he would begin to write out proposals, have them openly debated in sessions of both local Staten and the Staten Generaal. What became clear was that neither party was willing to meet the other somewhere for a workable compromise in a unicameral system. The 1737 session of the Staten Generaal would finally see the king bring forth his proposal, split the Staten Generaal into two separate chambers. On the one hand there would be a upper house, a assembly made up of 150 members, with 5 each assigned to the provinces, Saxony being awarded with 25 corresponding with 5 for each of her quarters. To counter the upper house, the lower house would be established, made up of 200 members assigned to the provinces according to their contribution to the treasury of the whole kingdom (this was by now already a mostly flat rate for all provinces, with certain provisions still remaining). The seats would be allocated once every ten years based on the total amount of taxed income of the previous ten years. The eagle eyed among you might notice that the Staten Generaal had always counted 25 members, accounting for the extra Saxon seats, this would bring the total in the upper house to 145. Included in the act was also the integration of the Duchy of Holstein into the Staten Generaal. Where Saxony always remained an exception to the whole system by virtue of her size, and Frisia remained it because of the fact that it was a republic headed by the Roderlo’s, Holstein would provide to be an exception by the fact that it was the only part of the country not nominally headed by the king as its feudal lord. One of the Holsteiner seats of the upper house would always be reserved for the Duke, and that (as later became clear as part of a bribe to have him accept his subservience to the parliament) Adolf V of Schauenburg would receive an appointment as Chancelor, who acted mainly to keep parliament in line for the king, but what would fast grow into a more modern position of his head of government, the prime minister. Finally, the two new chambers would receive their names. The upper house would receive the name Statenkamer (Chamber of the States). The lower house, in somewhat of a democratic foreshadowing, would be anointed with the name Volkskamer (Chamber of the People). The location of these two thirds would become representative of their general political leanings. The Statenkamer, a body dominated by conservative nobility and clergy, would be seated in the current house of the Staten Generaal in Broenswiek. The Volkskamer, a body to be dominated by more liberal bourgeoise, would return to the first home of the Staten Generaal in Antwerp. The, now officially designated as such, third chamber, the Kamer der Waterschappen, which had never found a permanent place of residence yet, would find a home in the city of Zwolle. The old Staten was very accepting of the split, despite the conservative backlash. The main source of debate was on the division of powers, which, in the end, fell mostly to the camp of the Statenkamer, who received the grace of the monarch as it was his most likely ally if it ever came to blows between King and his parliament again. The Plakkaat der Verdeling van de Staten Generaal (Law of the Division of the Staten Generaal) would pass on the last day of the 1737 session, after it was initially unclear if it would receive a majority.
The Staten Generaal of Dytschland, as affirmed in 1737
The second matter that received the attention of the monarch was colonial reform. The system of governance for the colonies that had been set up during the reign of Jan de Grote. In the New World, all colonial authorities had to report to the Viceduke in New Saxony propper. Whilst in the beginning this didn’t prove to be a massive problem, but as the colonies outside of New Saxony proper grew, governance grew increasingly difficult. In the conflicts with France military priority was always given to Louisiana instead of Remigia, causing frustration in New Antwerp as multiple chances at destroying the Remigian guerilla force were lost due to simply not having enough numbers to pull of the decisive victory. Within Belgium there was also a different relationship with the natives. In New Saxony a lot of the old Mesoamerican nobility had converted to Catholicism and integrated into the new political machine, such that the bulk of the nobility was actually of mixed descent (which actually caused a increasing degree of separation from the whole machine in Broenswiek.) Belgium had always had a much lesser degree of noble presence, being established as a couple of trading outposts instead as the result of a conquest spree of the younger sons of the Saxon nobility. Whilst there certainly was co-operation with the natives, and there were many who proved themselves to be just as much willing Catholics as their Mesoamerican brothers, the nature of the relationship was much more one of alliance than that of intergration. With the passage of time, the increasing numbers of mainly Brabantian settlers and the defeat and destruction or forced removal of certain tribes turned the dynamic of the relationship much more in favour of the Dytsch. The civilized tribes “grew” from allies, trading partners and mercenairies into much more of auxillaries for the Lieutenant in New Antwerp, only the relationship was obstructed by the fact that it was not officially recognized and that it lay outside of his authority, as they were “foreign relations” of the colonies. At the same time, the Lieutenant of Zilverstroom in Sint Nicolaas, was having a hard time having to deal with the long travel times, a issue even greater than New Antwerp was having itself with the slow communications. Long gone were the days of a small area around the mouth of the Zilverstroom, the Lieutenancy had grown from coast to coast and from the small gathering of Scottish settlements in the south to Olivaria in the northeast and the mighty Andes and the Spanish in the northwest. All throughout, they still had to compete with many natives. (Zilverstroom would develop a slightly ironic horseback culture to control the vast mass of land, mainly made up of pains, ironic considering the fact that the colony was mostly settled by Flemish.) Increasingly, conflict came at the northern frontier, and any kind of military undertaking would still have to go through Roderlostad, meaning that any kind of proper response might take up to a year. Last but not least, the recent conquest of the French colonies meant having to deal with a, at times rather unhelpfull local colonial elite. And whilst this was still working perfectly acceptable in Louisiana, the fact was that the Remigians took ample opportunity to require orders to come from Roderlostad itself. Very fast after 1728, the Viceduke would return to Broenswiek for a year to receive his new position as Viceroy, but not much changed in the actual system of administration. The establishment of tricameralism would see the first session of the new bicameral Staten Generaal debate and decide of the future of the Viceroyalty of New Saxony. For a baptism of fire, the whole system worked pretty well, the whole process for the passing of the bill lasting some one and a half month (not bad for a bill consisting of such a massive reform whilst in the same time still debating lesser bills). Principle became splitting off the largest Lieutenancies, Belgium and Zilverstroom. A more radical proposal to also split off Gryn was shot down as it wasn’t much more than a couple of settlements, trading outposts and military posts. The structure of New Saxony would continue to exist, encompassing Gryn and the holdings on the Caribbean coastline. Zilverstroom would become a “unitary” Viceroyalty, not having to deal with Lieutenancies, and being allotted some extra resources for defense at the same time (which would inevitably lead to another conflict with the Spanish empire). Whilst for Belgium the raising to the status of Viceroyalty already entailed the ability to deal with the natives, it also received the approval from the Staten to “develop the relation with the civilized tribes of Periosia more closely.” The Staten would also sign away on the deportation of the final Newfoundlander communities which remained outside of the Peninsula of Saftingen, which would, along with the seizure of land from tribes not considered civilized, open op more of the inland for European settlement.
Viceroyalties from 1737 onwards, colours different from the viceroyalty itself indicates either French or English settlement or a recognized area of native settlement.
On further colonial reforms, we look back over on the other side of the Atlantic, where for a long time now discontent has been brewing with the rule of the VOC. It was mentioned in the intermission that the VOC itself was rather disappointed about the increased need to defend the expanding settlements of the Cape. The settlers themselves had grown increasingly disappointed by the unwillingness of the Company to defend the frontier and were growing rather sick of what was essentially a military dictatorship by the mercenaries of the Company, which itself was driving people to the frontier in a bid to escape the harsh control of Kaapstad and the lesser settlements spread throughout the colony. Already in 1709 a petition was addressed to the Staten Generaal to do something about the situation, but it was mostly ignored at the time. The issue had become pressing as during the reign of Karel I, there had already been two riots in Kaapstad in 1729 and 1733. The Roderlo family, a great stakeholder in the company, now took a greater interest, and the eldest son of Karel I, another not-so young man named Karel, would form a royal envoy to the colony, the first visit of a Roderlo to the colony in her history. He was received gratefully by the settler population, who used the opportunity to direct their grievances directly to a Roderlo. Throughout his tour however, the First Dytsch-Xhosa War would break out and Karel would witness the marching out of the mercenaries and kommando’s where he would also note the general unwillingness of the kommando’s to work with the Company mercenaries. Having written up his report on the state of the colony, he would take a ship back home. The ship would suffer from a period of lacking wind however off the coast of West Africa and the crew would begin to suffer from scurvy. Karel, never the most healthy of men, would be one of the victims of scurvy, the first and one of only a few of the Roderlo to receive a burial at sea. His report would however continue on and reach the hands of his father, who would continue on with the recommendation, which was to bring the colony under the authority of the state. Nationalization of the colony would be the only way to ensure the removal the hated mercenaries and to offer a counterweight against the interest of the Company which it had always continued to exercise in a unlimited fashion through the monopoly on trade it had. Whilst the support was there in the Staten Generaal, it was the Company which in this case was the obstacle, but the monarch had to admit the opposition was justified. If the VOC monopoly was abolished, who would the colony trade with besides the Company? There were no other Dytsch merchants sailing east, the monopoly made certain of that. The only ones sailing east were the European rivals of Dytschland, the French, English and Spanish. In order to get the VOC shareholders to accept, the colony would be bought from the company and the monopoly maintained, although the prices of goods would be something both the VOC and the local governor had to agree upon. In practice, it meant that the goods sold to the Company would immediately jump up in price, much to the pleasure of the residents of the colony, but also that the military presence in the colony grew and that another drive for expansion began aimed at the northern fringes of the Kaapkolonie, the Kremerrivier and the Hoogveld.
To continue on with the topic of the VOC, we also have the strangest time of her existence during the reign of Karel I. The only real military action within Europe was saw was a time in the early 1730’ies when the army was forced to be deployed in the defense of Bohemia, which faced warfare on all fronts and threatened the balance of power within the former HRE, something which Karel I, despite him dismantling the Empire, still cared about. The war prevented the division of the lands united under the crown of Bohemia and consolidated much of her position but it’s a rather boring affair compared to the happenings in the east. The VOC governor in Batavia had become Mattheüs Seelmann, who much like Karel I was a character to break the mold, but in a very different way. It was at age 44 that he would become governor of the East for the VOC, and had by that time a 20 year long career in service of the Company behind him, but when he was young he first had ambitions for the priesthood. He was kicked out of seminary for “unacceptable behaviour” (probably to do with theft of donations from the faithful for personal luxury.) His very religious attitude would however remain as he entered into service of the VOC. As he gained the position in Batavia, he got his greatest opportunity in life thrown in his lap, a riot in Nagasaki encouraged by the Hosokawa Shogunate. The riot saw the looting and burning of the unofficial Dytsch quarter in the city and the death of 24, under who were 6 children and a priest. The rest of the Dytsch community fled back to their (armed) merchant ships where, with the added firepower, they were able to see their assailants off. The following weeks would see attempts to retrieve bodies, receive compensation and to see the assailants brought to justice but the local authorities, indiscreetly backed up by the Shogun, would refuse any such attempt. Outrage would build not only throughout the company but also the clergy and the Catholic community of the east. In a scene much reminiscent of the Council of Clermont, the sermon of the Bishop of Batavia of the Mass of the 24th of May would build up in almost a frenzied manner, to end with a call for crusade against Japan. (We now know that this call was mainly made at the insistence of Seelmann.) Seelmann was quick to respond, assessing the reaction that the news of the riots would have back home, he assembled the troops, racking up a fair bit of debt for the company and set off for Formosa. Whilst the Company leadership back over in Antwerp was angry with the incurred debts, they had their hands tied as the expedition held the sympathies of most of parliament. The invasion fleet, entering the Tsushima Strait, was beset upon by elements of the former Korean navy. Korea currently found itself in anarchy, as the Joseon dynasty was in her death rows from decades of constant Manchu raiding turned invasion. The Joseon navy, turned to pirating Hosokawa trade, had accidentally beset itself on the VOC navy, causing a deviation for the “crusade”, first taking Busan from its lack of authority, before heading to Japan in the first days of 1734. The Hosokawa, very much aware of the capabilities of the Company by this point, chose the indirect approach, but it wouldn’t be enough. Much like in Ancient Rome, through 1734 and early 1735, the indirect approach of Shogun Hosokawa Katsumoto would cause great discontent as large tracts of Japan would fall under Company occupation. But, his death in 1735 caused the ascension of young Hosokawa Katsuhisa, who himself was much more malleable to the wishes of those who demanded aggressive action, costing the young Shogun dearly at the fields of Tomo, resulting in a European power taking the Imperial and Shogunal capital of Kyoto, a short 50 years after the Company first stood at her gates. Forced to concede, the practicing and proselytization of Catholicism would be made legal throughout the whole of Japan and Kyushu would come under nominal control of the VOC. Whilst the “First Japanese Crusade” was a phenomenal success, it would have massive effects in Japan as the peace that had persisted since the Hosokawa Shogunate had been able to subjugate the island nation would begin to come crashing down, as already many lesser daimyo in the north would declare themselves loyal to the Ando clan.
Finally, we come to the last great project of Karel I, the Kiel Canal. It was not mentioned before in the hecticity of the end of the Holy Roman Empire, but Karel I actually began construction of the canal back in 1729. Plans for a canal across Hosteen had actually been floating around since the late 17th century. In 1690, the Duke of Holsteen had actually already attempted to build a connection between the North Sea and the Baltic by connecting the river Aider to Kiel with a canal. The project had some powerful backers, mainly in the shape of the merchants operating the Baltic trade in Saxony and Holsteen. In the end, it fell through because of a series of setbacks in the weather and the canal collapsing in on itself combined with Denmark meddling in the shipping rights on what was and is the river denoting the Danish border in Sleswig. Since then, the relation between Broenswiek and Copenhagen had become complicated because of the Danish ambitions to dominate the Baltic. Serving with the Teutons had already made Karel I more weary of the Danish ambitions than his cousin had been. Instead of using the river Aider, the plan was to dig a canal through the entire length of Holsteen, connecting the estuary of the Elve and the port of Hamborg with Kiel. Danish victory over the Teutons during the War of Imperial Dissolution had only strengthened his resolve. Money was found in the shape of multiple low-interest loans from the largest banking houses of the realm, as they had recently (either luckily or unluckily depending on the perspective) suffered mayor losses after multiple years of bad storms had sunk many ships in the treacherous waters of the coast of the Heligoland Bight and Jutland. Within the admiralty, there also was a slight panic about the prospect of war with Denmark, as the small Baltic fleet stationed in Lubeek would be cut off from any reinforcements, at least not without the risk of massive casualties when passing through the Danish Belt. Construction of the canal would receive multiple setbacks through the incompetence of the still nominally independent Duchy of Holsteen, which became one of the impetuses of the integration of Holsteen within Dytschland proper. The soil dug out over the course of the rough 12 years of construction went to the improvement of the levies along the banks of the Elve and to poldering of lands along the North Frisian Coast in Ditmaarsen. Whilst the canal itself was a great feat of the accomplishment of engineering in the era before great machines of steel, steam, internal combustion, hydraulics and electricity, the greatest feat of the whole project are the locks of the canal. It was quickly decided that, to prevent either erosion or silting up, and to make traveling the canal not a hassle requiring the greatest sailor, to keep the canal at a steady level by placing a set of locks at either end. Being made to fit the largest ships of the Dytsch navy, the doors of the locks became perhaps the height of pre-industrial wood- and metalworking. Off the first 10 locks to serve the canal (five at either end) only one set of doors survives till this day in the maritime museum in Kiel. However, as these locks were being finished over in the city of Kiel in late 1742, Karel I would pass away at the age of 52 due to the effects of syphilis. The throne would pass to his eldest living son Johannes.
Karel IV/I, founder of Dytschland, reigned from 1724 to 1742
For those unfamiliar with Dytsch history, the title of this chapter (and perhaps the entire numbering of the monarchs over the course of this history) might seem a bit odd, since this certainly isn’t the first Karel of the Roderlo’s to have reigned and we come to this title halfway into his reign, where he was already known as Karel IV. Most monarchs, when founding a new state, chose to keep the same numbering going as had been customary with their previous titles. Savoy/Arelat and the many disperate crowns that make up Spain are nice examples of this, but Karel IV/I chose to break with this tradition very actively. It was a choice to break with that which was old, broken and indicated the subservience of the Saxon monarchs to a higher authority, the Holy Roman Emperor. Karel I, wishing to be remembered in that manner, also chose to actively break with the way living monarchs were referred to. A living monarch was never referred to with his regnal number, it was always “King [X]” or “Duke [Y]”, but to make sure he was seen as the start of a new tradition, a new baseline, he actively enforced the policy that every mention of his name in official documentation should come with his regnal number. And as the future of this history will show, he succeeded in his aim.
First and foremost, Karel I turned out to be another reformer. The title of king wasn’t just a project for glory and a title more worthy for the status of the realm, it also opened up many opportunities in, what would become known as, the constitutional development of Dytschland. The Troubles had seen the centralization of power, through the reassignment of sovereignty from the provinces to the monarch and his parliament, but this was followed through a slowly increasing level of dysfunction in the unicameral parliament. The Riot of 1705 was already mentioned and is a great example of this dysfunction, but it does not represent it properly. The reality is much more boring, as debating went on longer, filibustering increased an multiple speakers of the Staten resigned their position to either force a victory on a tied vote or to tie a 1 seat majority vote. Part of the slow mobilization for the War of Imperial Dissolution compared to Bohemia was parliament, which was slow to give consent to a mobilization of forces for a war which elements of it saw as “feudal and nothing more than for the vainglory a self-important monarch.” In the end, the whole of parliament did celebrate when she was however elevated to the parliament of a kingdom rather than the parliament of a, at the highest level, grand duchy or, at the lowest level, a lordship. (Hypocrisy is of all ages it seems.) Karel I, long enthralled by alternative systems of government was pushed over the edge by his close call at Dessau. The core of his attack on the old ways became the way voting was set up, or more in the way that it was never present. It was, after hundreds of years, still the Staten itself that decided upon the manner of the vote. It was this part of the procedure that had actually come to take up most of the process. To go back to 1726, it was a filibuster by the entire delegation of Zeeland that had demanded voting concession where Saxony had demanded a simple tax based system, mainly because of the need to act fast and the fact that Saxony was to be first hit, Zeeland could afford to demand concessions. Throughout the early 1730’ies he would begin to write out proposals, have them openly debated in sessions of both local Staten and the Staten Generaal. What became clear was that neither party was willing to meet the other somewhere for a workable compromise in a unicameral system. The 1737 session of the Staten Generaal would finally see the king bring forth his proposal, split the Staten Generaal into two separate chambers. On the one hand there would be a upper house, a assembly made up of 150 members, with 5 each assigned to the provinces, Saxony being awarded with 25 corresponding with 5 for each of her quarters. To counter the upper house, the lower house would be established, made up of 200 members assigned to the provinces according to their contribution to the treasury of the whole kingdom (this was by now already a mostly flat rate for all provinces, with certain provisions still remaining). The seats would be allocated once every ten years based on the total amount of taxed income of the previous ten years. The eagle eyed among you might notice that the Staten Generaal had always counted 25 members, accounting for the extra Saxon seats, this would bring the total in the upper house to 145. Included in the act was also the integration of the Duchy of Holstein into the Staten Generaal. Where Saxony always remained an exception to the whole system by virtue of her size, and Frisia remained it because of the fact that it was a republic headed by the Roderlo’s, Holstein would provide to be an exception by the fact that it was the only part of the country not nominally headed by the king as its feudal lord. One of the Holsteiner seats of the upper house would always be reserved for the Duke, and that (as later became clear as part of a bribe to have him accept his subservience to the parliament) Adolf V of Schauenburg would receive an appointment as Chancelor, who acted mainly to keep parliament in line for the king, but what would fast grow into a more modern position of his head of government, the prime minister. Finally, the two new chambers would receive their names. The upper house would receive the name Statenkamer (Chamber of the States). The lower house, in somewhat of a democratic foreshadowing, would be anointed with the name Volkskamer (Chamber of the People). The location of these two thirds would become representative of their general political leanings. The Statenkamer, a body dominated by conservative nobility and clergy, would be seated in the current house of the Staten Generaal in Broenswiek. The Volkskamer, a body to be dominated by more liberal bourgeoise, would return to the first home of the Staten Generaal in Antwerp. The, now officially designated as such, third chamber, the Kamer der Waterschappen, which had never found a permanent place of residence yet, would find a home in the city of Zwolle. The old Staten was very accepting of the split, despite the conservative backlash. The main source of debate was on the division of powers, which, in the end, fell mostly to the camp of the Statenkamer, who received the grace of the monarch as it was his most likely ally if it ever came to blows between King and his parliament again. The Plakkaat der Verdeling van de Staten Generaal (Law of the Division of the Staten Generaal) would pass on the last day of the 1737 session, after it was initially unclear if it would receive a majority.
The Staten Generaal of Dytschland, as affirmed in 1737
Grand Duchy:
Saxony
Duchy:
Holstein
Gelre
Brabant
Berg
Gulik
Limburg
County:
Holland
Kleef
Zutphen
Keulen
Zeeland
Vlaanderen
Artesië
Henegouwen
Namen
Bonen
Picardië
Loon
Lordship:
Utrecht
Luik
Doornik
Kamerijk
Aken
Republic:
Friesland
Saxony
Duchy:
Holstein
Gelre
Brabant
Berg
Gulik
Limburg
County:
Holland
Kleef
Zutphen
Keulen
Zeeland
Vlaanderen
Artesië
Henegouwen
Namen
Bonen
Picardië
Loon
Lordship:
Utrecht
Luik
Doornik
Kamerijk
Aken
Republic:
Friesland
The second matter that received the attention of the monarch was colonial reform. The system of governance for the colonies that had been set up during the reign of Jan de Grote. In the New World, all colonial authorities had to report to the Viceduke in New Saxony propper. Whilst in the beginning this didn’t prove to be a massive problem, but as the colonies outside of New Saxony proper grew, governance grew increasingly difficult. In the conflicts with France military priority was always given to Louisiana instead of Remigia, causing frustration in New Antwerp as multiple chances at destroying the Remigian guerilla force were lost due to simply not having enough numbers to pull of the decisive victory. Within Belgium there was also a different relationship with the natives. In New Saxony a lot of the old Mesoamerican nobility had converted to Catholicism and integrated into the new political machine, such that the bulk of the nobility was actually of mixed descent (which actually caused a increasing degree of separation from the whole machine in Broenswiek.) Belgium had always had a much lesser degree of noble presence, being established as a couple of trading outposts instead as the result of a conquest spree of the younger sons of the Saxon nobility. Whilst there certainly was co-operation with the natives, and there were many who proved themselves to be just as much willing Catholics as their Mesoamerican brothers, the nature of the relationship was much more one of alliance than that of intergration. With the passage of time, the increasing numbers of mainly Brabantian settlers and the defeat and destruction or forced removal of certain tribes turned the dynamic of the relationship much more in favour of the Dytsch. The civilized tribes “grew” from allies, trading partners and mercenairies into much more of auxillaries for the Lieutenant in New Antwerp, only the relationship was obstructed by the fact that it was not officially recognized and that it lay outside of his authority, as they were “foreign relations” of the colonies. At the same time, the Lieutenant of Zilverstroom in Sint Nicolaas, was having a hard time having to deal with the long travel times, a issue even greater than New Antwerp was having itself with the slow communications. Long gone were the days of a small area around the mouth of the Zilverstroom, the Lieutenancy had grown from coast to coast and from the small gathering of Scottish settlements in the south to Olivaria in the northeast and the mighty Andes and the Spanish in the northwest. All throughout, they still had to compete with many natives. (Zilverstroom would develop a slightly ironic horseback culture to control the vast mass of land, mainly made up of pains, ironic considering the fact that the colony was mostly settled by Flemish.) Increasingly, conflict came at the northern frontier, and any kind of military undertaking would still have to go through Roderlostad, meaning that any kind of proper response might take up to a year. Last but not least, the recent conquest of the French colonies meant having to deal with a, at times rather unhelpfull local colonial elite. And whilst this was still working perfectly acceptable in Louisiana, the fact was that the Remigians took ample opportunity to require orders to come from Roderlostad itself. Very fast after 1728, the Viceduke would return to Broenswiek for a year to receive his new position as Viceroy, but not much changed in the actual system of administration. The establishment of tricameralism would see the first session of the new bicameral Staten Generaal debate and decide of the future of the Viceroyalty of New Saxony. For a baptism of fire, the whole system worked pretty well, the whole process for the passing of the bill lasting some one and a half month (not bad for a bill consisting of such a massive reform whilst in the same time still debating lesser bills). Principle became splitting off the largest Lieutenancies, Belgium and Zilverstroom. A more radical proposal to also split off Gryn was shot down as it wasn’t much more than a couple of settlements, trading outposts and military posts. The structure of New Saxony would continue to exist, encompassing Gryn and the holdings on the Caribbean coastline. Zilverstroom would become a “unitary” Viceroyalty, not having to deal with Lieutenancies, and being allotted some extra resources for defense at the same time (which would inevitably lead to another conflict with the Spanish empire). Whilst for Belgium the raising to the status of Viceroyalty already entailed the ability to deal with the natives, it also received the approval from the Staten to “develop the relation with the civilized tribes of Periosia more closely.” The Staten would also sign away on the deportation of the final Newfoundlander communities which remained outside of the Peninsula of Saftingen, which would, along with the seizure of land from tribes not considered civilized, open op more of the inland for European settlement.
Viceroyalties from 1737 onwards, colours different from the viceroyalty itself indicates either French or English settlement or a recognized area of native settlement.
On further colonial reforms, we look back over on the other side of the Atlantic, where for a long time now discontent has been brewing with the rule of the VOC. It was mentioned in the intermission that the VOC itself was rather disappointed about the increased need to defend the expanding settlements of the Cape. The settlers themselves had grown increasingly disappointed by the unwillingness of the Company to defend the frontier and were growing rather sick of what was essentially a military dictatorship by the mercenaries of the Company, which itself was driving people to the frontier in a bid to escape the harsh control of Kaapstad and the lesser settlements spread throughout the colony. Already in 1709 a petition was addressed to the Staten Generaal to do something about the situation, but it was mostly ignored at the time. The issue had become pressing as during the reign of Karel I, there had already been two riots in Kaapstad in 1729 and 1733. The Roderlo family, a great stakeholder in the company, now took a greater interest, and the eldest son of Karel I, another not-so young man named Karel, would form a royal envoy to the colony, the first visit of a Roderlo to the colony in her history. He was received gratefully by the settler population, who used the opportunity to direct their grievances directly to a Roderlo. Throughout his tour however, the First Dytsch-Xhosa War would break out and Karel would witness the marching out of the mercenaries and kommando’s where he would also note the general unwillingness of the kommando’s to work with the Company mercenaries. Having written up his report on the state of the colony, he would take a ship back home. The ship would suffer from a period of lacking wind however off the coast of West Africa and the crew would begin to suffer from scurvy. Karel, never the most healthy of men, would be one of the victims of scurvy, the first and one of only a few of the Roderlo to receive a burial at sea. His report would however continue on and reach the hands of his father, who would continue on with the recommendation, which was to bring the colony under the authority of the state. Nationalization of the colony would be the only way to ensure the removal the hated mercenaries and to offer a counterweight against the interest of the Company which it had always continued to exercise in a unlimited fashion through the monopoly on trade it had. Whilst the support was there in the Staten Generaal, it was the Company which in this case was the obstacle, but the monarch had to admit the opposition was justified. If the VOC monopoly was abolished, who would the colony trade with besides the Company? There were no other Dytsch merchants sailing east, the monopoly made certain of that. The only ones sailing east were the European rivals of Dytschland, the French, English and Spanish. In order to get the VOC shareholders to accept, the colony would be bought from the company and the monopoly maintained, although the prices of goods would be something both the VOC and the local governor had to agree upon. In practice, it meant that the goods sold to the Company would immediately jump up in price, much to the pleasure of the residents of the colony, but also that the military presence in the colony grew and that another drive for expansion began aimed at the northern fringes of the Kaapkolonie, the Kremerrivier and the Hoogveld.
To continue on with the topic of the VOC, we also have the strangest time of her existence during the reign of Karel I. The only real military action within Europe was saw was a time in the early 1730’ies when the army was forced to be deployed in the defense of Bohemia, which faced warfare on all fronts and threatened the balance of power within the former HRE, something which Karel I, despite him dismantling the Empire, still cared about. The war prevented the division of the lands united under the crown of Bohemia and consolidated much of her position but it’s a rather boring affair compared to the happenings in the east. The VOC governor in Batavia had become Mattheüs Seelmann, who much like Karel I was a character to break the mold, but in a very different way. It was at age 44 that he would become governor of the East for the VOC, and had by that time a 20 year long career in service of the Company behind him, but when he was young he first had ambitions for the priesthood. He was kicked out of seminary for “unacceptable behaviour” (probably to do with theft of donations from the faithful for personal luxury.) His very religious attitude would however remain as he entered into service of the VOC. As he gained the position in Batavia, he got his greatest opportunity in life thrown in his lap, a riot in Nagasaki encouraged by the Hosokawa Shogunate. The riot saw the looting and burning of the unofficial Dytsch quarter in the city and the death of 24, under who were 6 children and a priest. The rest of the Dytsch community fled back to their (armed) merchant ships where, with the added firepower, they were able to see their assailants off. The following weeks would see attempts to retrieve bodies, receive compensation and to see the assailants brought to justice but the local authorities, indiscreetly backed up by the Shogun, would refuse any such attempt. Outrage would build not only throughout the company but also the clergy and the Catholic community of the east. In a scene much reminiscent of the Council of Clermont, the sermon of the Bishop of Batavia of the Mass of the 24th of May would build up in almost a frenzied manner, to end with a call for crusade against Japan. (We now know that this call was mainly made at the insistence of Seelmann.) Seelmann was quick to respond, assessing the reaction that the news of the riots would have back home, he assembled the troops, racking up a fair bit of debt for the company and set off for Formosa. Whilst the Company leadership back over in Antwerp was angry with the incurred debts, they had their hands tied as the expedition held the sympathies of most of parliament. The invasion fleet, entering the Tsushima Strait, was beset upon by elements of the former Korean navy. Korea currently found itself in anarchy, as the Joseon dynasty was in her death rows from decades of constant Manchu raiding turned invasion. The Joseon navy, turned to pirating Hosokawa trade, had accidentally beset itself on the VOC navy, causing a deviation for the “crusade”, first taking Busan from its lack of authority, before heading to Japan in the first days of 1734. The Hosokawa, very much aware of the capabilities of the Company by this point, chose the indirect approach, but it wouldn’t be enough. Much like in Ancient Rome, through 1734 and early 1735, the indirect approach of Shogun Hosokawa Katsumoto would cause great discontent as large tracts of Japan would fall under Company occupation. But, his death in 1735 caused the ascension of young Hosokawa Katsuhisa, who himself was much more malleable to the wishes of those who demanded aggressive action, costing the young Shogun dearly at the fields of Tomo, resulting in a European power taking the Imperial and Shogunal capital of Kyoto, a short 50 years after the Company first stood at her gates. Forced to concede, the practicing and proselytization of Catholicism would be made legal throughout the whole of Japan and Kyushu would come under nominal control of the VOC. Whilst the “First Japanese Crusade” was a phenomenal success, it would have massive effects in Japan as the peace that had persisted since the Hosokawa Shogunate had been able to subjugate the island nation would begin to come crashing down, as already many lesser daimyo in the north would declare themselves loyal to the Ando clan.
Finally, we come to the last great project of Karel I, the Kiel Canal. It was not mentioned before in the hecticity of the end of the Holy Roman Empire, but Karel I actually began construction of the canal back in 1729. Plans for a canal across Hosteen had actually been floating around since the late 17th century. In 1690, the Duke of Holsteen had actually already attempted to build a connection between the North Sea and the Baltic by connecting the river Aider to Kiel with a canal. The project had some powerful backers, mainly in the shape of the merchants operating the Baltic trade in Saxony and Holsteen. In the end, it fell through because of a series of setbacks in the weather and the canal collapsing in on itself combined with Denmark meddling in the shipping rights on what was and is the river denoting the Danish border in Sleswig. Since then, the relation between Broenswiek and Copenhagen had become complicated because of the Danish ambitions to dominate the Baltic. Serving with the Teutons had already made Karel I more weary of the Danish ambitions than his cousin had been. Instead of using the river Aider, the plan was to dig a canal through the entire length of Holsteen, connecting the estuary of the Elve and the port of Hamborg with Kiel. Danish victory over the Teutons during the War of Imperial Dissolution had only strengthened his resolve. Money was found in the shape of multiple low-interest loans from the largest banking houses of the realm, as they had recently (either luckily or unluckily depending on the perspective) suffered mayor losses after multiple years of bad storms had sunk many ships in the treacherous waters of the coast of the Heligoland Bight and Jutland. Within the admiralty, there also was a slight panic about the prospect of war with Denmark, as the small Baltic fleet stationed in Lubeek would be cut off from any reinforcements, at least not without the risk of massive casualties when passing through the Danish Belt. Construction of the canal would receive multiple setbacks through the incompetence of the still nominally independent Duchy of Holsteen, which became one of the impetuses of the integration of Holsteen within Dytschland proper. The soil dug out over the course of the rough 12 years of construction went to the improvement of the levies along the banks of the Elve and to poldering of lands along the North Frisian Coast in Ditmaarsen. Whilst the canal itself was a great feat of the accomplishment of engineering in the era before great machines of steel, steam, internal combustion, hydraulics and electricity, the greatest feat of the whole project are the locks of the canal. It was quickly decided that, to prevent either erosion or silting up, and to make traveling the canal not a hassle requiring the greatest sailor, to keep the canal at a steady level by placing a set of locks at either end. Being made to fit the largest ships of the Dytsch navy, the doors of the locks became perhaps the height of pre-industrial wood- and metalworking. Off the first 10 locks to serve the canal (five at either end) only one set of doors survives till this day in the maritime museum in Kiel. However, as these locks were being finished over in the city of Kiel in late 1742, Karel I would pass away at the age of 52 due to the effects of syphilis. The throne would pass to his eldest living son Johannes.
Karel IV/I, founder of Dytschland, reigned from 1724 to 1742
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The Dytsch are doing well.
I wonder if they will gain German nationalist ideas in time?
I wonder if they will gain German nationalist ideas in time?
I got my idea's for that but that will have to wait for the coming chapters
Johannes I
The reign of Johannes I
Johannes I would provide quite the contrast with his enlightened, forward thinking and bisexual father. This is mostly due to dumb chance. Johannes I was born as the eldest son of his mother Marie-Violante d’Escaubleu, who was the second wife of Karel I. Had his elder half-brother Karel not died and taken the throne as Karel II it is likely that the immediate influence of Karel I would linger on much longer than it did. The first Margrave of Ollmark, Karel, had come from the first marriage of Karel I with a Dytsch noblewoman from the region around Luik. His, presumed, position far away from the line of succession allowed him to pick somewhat freely, finding a woman who “suited him well”. However, her early death in 1723 would see him, under pressure from his court, marry Marie-Violante in 1725, to strengthen the alliance with the erstwhile ally in Arelat, with the symbolism of a marital union between the two young kingdoms overcoming the old and decrepit Empire not lost on them. Sadly, Marie-Violante took a lot closer to Catholic morals than her husband did, making the girl deeply unhappy about her situation. Karel I took a pragmatic approach in the marriage, he fulfilled his duties as husband and monarch, that being producing children and thus a heir, they would appear together for official occasions, but besides that the couple mostly ignored each other. Whatever little willingness to make the marriage work quickly disappeared after the day of the wedding. Karel I exchanged his wife for his many mistresses (both male and female) whereas his wife would retreat in her Catholicism, almost living the life of a nun in the palace in Broenswiek. This was the context that Johannes I was born in in 1726. Whilst Karel I did attempt to raise the boy, and succeeded in teaching him the matters of statecraft, his suffering mother found much more of his sympathy, who proceeded to leave a much more present note on his personality and relationship with Catholicism and the Church, leaving behind many of the more “progressive” attitudes of his father.
Dytschland in 1742 was at the height of the First Empire, a true era of peace and almost unimaginable wealth, but the cracks were however beginning to show. His rule would however see a return to a much more refined foreign policy instead of the blunt force that his father had used. First example of this we find shortly after he would rise to the throne. On the 23rd of January, whilst the seas and the canal itself were frozen, it was officially handed over to the government as a sign it was done. At the first opportunity, a ship would pass through in late march, officially ending Dytsch dependency on their Danish ally. The Danish would find that the Dytsch were now in a much stronger position regarding their relationship, and would grab on to the last chance they had, declaring war on the Teutonic order in early 1746, to seize the Baltic coast for themselves and reassert the Danish position in the Baltic. The king, not wishing to throw away either the alliance with Denmark or the leverage he held, chose a more indirect approach in the hopes of not alienating his ally. Through multiple financial backchannels organized via the Antwerp and Breemn stock exchanges, he was able to divert parts of the Dytsch military spending directly to the Teutonic treasury, which were in turn used to finance the conflict with the Danish crown. Parts of these funds immediately returned to Dytschland via the Teutonic import of modern Dytsch artillery pieces, despite the policy of absolute neutrality Johannes and the navy had enforced to reassure the Danish of the commitment to their alliance. It also allowed for the navy to control where the artillery ended up if the smugglers were caught, meaning that the state earned a decent penny off of the traders buying back the artillery they had just been caught with before attempting to run the blockade again. Between 1746 and 1751 the Teutons, with secret Dytsch funding and aid from their allies in Greater Poland, the Teutons would triumph in their war of attrition, wearing out the Danish when they moved away from their supply base’s on the Baltic coast and (re-)capturing the entire coast and large tracts of Pomerania. Both parties had fought each other to absolute exhaustion, which was when Hochmeister Eginolf IV requested Dytsch arbitration to end the conflict. Between the position of Denmark (only willing to give minor concessions) and the Teutons (demanding the return of all former provinces and the secession of the whole of Pomerania) the Treaty of Kiel hammered out a decent enough compromise between both parties, returning mostly to the pre-1726 status quo, with only the city of Riga remaining in the hands of the Danish crown, with the Teutons being compensated for the more permanent losses. At the same time, the rights of Dytsch merchants in Danish ports were confirmed and Christoffer III Estrid-Roderlo personally thanked Johannes I in his efforts to both re-establish a fair peace and curtail the weapons smuggling to the Teutonic order. It seemed that his efforts to keep the aid to the Teutons a secret were successful. The aid was only declassified during the 1980’ies, causing a diplomatic incident between Broenswiek and Göteborg. A final note in the Treaty of Kiel would soon prove to become important, that being “compensation in the form of territory elsewhere.”
Due to obligations in both the former Holy Roman Empire and a the Third Kalinga-VOC War, the Teutons were left to fight another war with the Muscovites, losing a large tract of borderlands from Pskov to Polotsk and Smolensk in the process, but resulting in the dissolution of the remnant Latgale authority. After both parties had finished their foreign entanglements (victory in case of Dytschland and loss for the Teutons) both parties came to the table and signed a alliance in the middle of 1756, with the Dytsch aim mainly being the hope to, at the very least, start a thaw between the Danish and Teutons. The foreign territory in question that was mentioned before was Sweden, because what gets two powers together like the mutual partition of a uninvolved third? For Copenhagen it meant finally proclaiming a United Kingdom of Scandinavia, for the Teutons the recovery of the lands lost to Sweden and for an internal power within Sweden, the lords of Finland, it meant that they would rise again after subjugation some 50 years before. By the end of 1759, with Dytsch naval assistance, Sweden was forced to the lands as the Dytsch enforced treaty prescribed, being followed by an immediate powergrab by the Finnish lords who, as of yet, still remained loyal to the King of “Sweden” now ruling from Åbo.
1746 had seen the breakout of the Third Kalinga-VOC War. Reason was nothing more than a pure powergrab by the company, seeking to profit off of the Kalinga Kanga who found themselves in complete disarray as they were faced with a Yuan invasion. The company used a small dispute over the settlement of the last war as their excuse for the invasion. At the time, the Kalinga were faced with revolt in Mysore, the Ganges Plain being completely wasted and Cuttack had already fallen to the advancing Celestial forces. The Company hoped to cause enough destruction, havoc and unrest to more permanently rid of the dominant force on the subcontinent, and they certainly did. For the first two years, the south of the subcontinent laid open to the arms of the Company and her mercenaries. Halfway through 1748, the Kalinga Ganga made peace with their Yuan invaders at the cost of more lost ports, however, it meant that now finally their armies could turn on the other invader, with the first troops sent south being wiped out on December 17th, to be followed by another less devastating loss by a greater force in January 1749. In turn, these victories allowed for the Coast of Coromandel to fall under the control of the Company. The Kalinga navy, not wishing to be captured, was forced out to sea where she was faced with a series of defeats throughout the year as the coast provided the route to Cuttack and less and less ports became available, with the Kalinga capital, although it did not yet again serve in that function since the Yuan occupation. Cuttack would fall during August of 1750 with a final counterattack by the Kalinga aimed at one of the two main supply basis for the Company in India at the port of Bhatkal. The attack would be countered by the armies coming back from up the Orissa coastline, and through a series of maneuvers and battles the Kalinga army would become smaller and trapped on the Deccan Plateau, where on the 11th of October the remnants of the army and their king would surrender, signing another humiliating peace, seceding more land and causing a decade of troubles to come over the country.
The boldness of the Company was certainly growing, even if her profit margins weren’t getting any larger for it. One of the main ways that stockholders found, and demanded their dividends to be paid, was through the plunder and redistribution of land and goods that came with new military conquests. This attitude of the Company caused renewed conflict with Japan, as seizing of wealth and redistribution of property was attempted in the regions where the VOC was nominally the administrator. The lands it administrated were, however, still a part of the Hosokawa Shogunate. Unlike the mid-16th century, when Korea had, for a moment, used Japans internal divisions and her superior navy to establish control over the Straits of Kammon and much of the coast of West Japan. This period of rule lasted only 2 decades as Manchu attacks drained much of the strength of the Korean state, leading to the eventual abandonment of the conquests and the Hosokawa marching in, being a leading cause for the establishment of their Shogunate. There never would come an official declaration of war, but the 1st of October 1762 is generally seen as the start of the 3rd conflict between the VOC and the authorities of Japan, as this is the day that reinforcements from Batavia would arrive on Kyushu. The conflict is of note for two reasons. One, is the loss at the Battle of the Kii Channel, an embarrassing affair for the Company. Some of the largest and best armed ships of her arsenal took part and never returned to their port, as they found themselves outmaneuvered by the much smaller Japanese ships, which were much more well suited for the narrow space that had been “allotted” to the battle. The Japanese navy was however driven from the area afterwards by cannons brought in by the troops that had already landed on Shikoku, which cleared the crossing of the sea for these troops, which was the main goal of the naval battle in the first place. The battle must be mentioned as the cost of the loss was one of the prime reasons why Jan Schlien, local governor of the Company and commander of the troops, decided to loot Kyoto when it fell September 3rd 1764. The looting of Kyoto can be described as nothing else but a national catastrophe for Japan. Kyoto, which had been the capital of Japan since 795, was looted of anything valuable, causing a direct loss of close to a thousand years of cultural heritage. Anything that couldn’t be take was destroyed in the great fire that started at the final day of the 2 week long looting. (Schlien made sure that his troops took their time and that everything that was taken was noted down and assessed in value.) Worst of all was the fact that with the fall of the city the emperor was taken into captivity. Still, the war would last for more than a year until the 27th of September 1765, with the signing of the Convention of Nagasaki, which saw the official secession of Kyushu and Shikoku to the Company and a oficiall repayment of the cost of the sunk ships, which ended up being about 10% of the entire Japanese economy that was left over, causing the reparations to be paid out over the course of 15 years. Even if somebody had hoped to attempt a revolt against the Hosokawa, the only thing that prevented another direct VOC intervention was a government that kept to its promises, thus, the mayor powerholders begrudgingly stood behind the Hosokawa, for now.
It must also be noted that the peace was singed only 2 days before war with Spain would break out.
It can almost be described as a miracle that a (direct) war between Spain and Dytschland didn’t occur for some 200 years. Pope Victor IV had been quite thurrough in his easing of tensions, but since then the situation in the New World had changed, and Spanish and Dytsch colonial ambitions had made sure that renewed direct conflict was guaranteed. The Dytsch expansion from the former Spanish outposts at the La Plata/Zilverstroom eventually brought them north to the Andes, where the Spanish authorities stretching out from Cartagena de Indias had long made themselves ruler over the many statelets that had dotted the mountains. Whilst there were defacto lines of control, mostly set up by local commanders, the issue had remained that from the late 17th century onwards a state of semi-constant conflict through proxies (i.e. the local not fully under the authority of either Cartagena or Sint Nicolaas. The more effective command from 1737 onwards only made sure that a direct clash was to come about. Up north, much the same issue’s had developed, although much more indirectly. The earlier mentioned issue’s over the Shones, Hoodenoosjoone and the hunting grounds had actually resulted in what was effectively recognized as the borders between the two colonial powers. Where issue’s had come cropping up was further out west, where the Scottish boundaries had been expanding since the acquisition of Beaver Bay, where outposts out west on the great plains of Periosia had become quite intermingled, and the loyalty of local tribes had caused a general lack of any real border. The direct cause of the war was actually the actions of a couple of pirates who had fled after the fall of the first pirate republic of New Providence in 1739. A group of pirates, acting as privateers for the viceroy in New Saxony attempted to seize on of the islands of the Bahamas but got into a combined land and naval battle with the stationed Spanish garrison which was reinforced from the old capital of New Providence. The sinking of the fleet and the taking of the island was met by a Spanish declaration of war on Dytschland on the 29th of September 1765. France, which was still very weary of Dytschland, accepted a ultimatum delivered on the 10th of December to allow for Dytsch forces and their supply train to pass through the territory of the kingdom, the result of which was that by March of 1766 the first Spanish fortress on the western side of the Pyrenees fell to a assault lead by Reinier von Lenzburg, and at the same time Willem II van Oranje-Nassau laid siege to the Spanish fortresses on the eastern side of the mountain range. By the middle of the year the Dytsch armies were marching down the easter coast, occupying Catalonia and Valencia, preparing for a strike at the royal capital of Madrid. The Dytsch navy was already maintaining a partial blockade of the Portuguese and Algarvian coasts. In the New World, the war proceeding much worse. Spanish forces were offering stiff resistance in the Andes and small parties had incited the Guarni living in (nominally) Dytsch territory to revolt. Broggeborg was occupied by forces of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, providing a massive hindrance to trade coming from the Pacific. Controll of Koeba was also lost. The only relatively good news came from Periosia, where the Viceroyalty of Dominica found itself under attack from all sides. Despite the revolt of the population of Louisiana, it did not hinder the siege of Santo Domingo at the mouth of the Mississippi, although much of the inland of Louisiana slipped from the control of New Saxony for the duration of the conflict. The 13th of September saw a Papal-Dytsch navy face off against the Spanish off of the North African coast. Jakobus ‘t Hooft had run the Straits of Gibraltar under great risk but was victorious, forcing the remnants of the Spanish navy to return to port for repairs and to stay out of the grasp of the Dytsch. Victory at sea, however, did not mean that Spain was unable to bring reinforcements to the mainland, which were slowly gathering on the northern side of the straits. The reach of the Dytsch armies was however so advanced that Madrid couldn’t be saved anymore, which fell December 22nd. For the next half year, a pattern of slow occupation whilst under harassment would come about, but this was broken on the 11th of June 1767, as Hasso von Querfort engaged a massed Spanish infantry force at Malaga, he was victorious, however, a month later, he would see his force wiped from the field by the might of the Spanish army which converged on Malaga. The stragglers of the 2nd Battle of Malaga would make contact with Willem II, who would gather the disperate Dytsch armies to finally defeat the Spanish army in force, but they would already slip back over the straits en masse as the navy had returned to port for some refits. Spanish inability to restore control over the heart of their nation meant that they came to negotiate in their occupied capital late in 1767. Despite the inability to fully defeat Spain, the negotiators for Dytschland got the concessions they set out in their war for, mainly a reinforcement of the Dytsch and Scottish colonial positions with minor concessions throughout the New World. The greatest victory was that Koeba, despite being perhaps the base of Spanish authority in the Caribbean, was seceded to New Saxony, along with a restoration of New Providence in the Bahama’s.
The long, peaceful and economically prosperous reign of Johannes I is a good moment to mention the slowly developing Industrial Revolution. A definitive starting point is hard to pin down, but since the start of the 18th century it had been slowly developing. Early in the century, a student of the Royal University of Broenswiek would improve upon traditional plough designs. This Broenswiek Plough would start a trend of agricultural improvements leading for increased domestic food production within Dytschland, something the kingdom had partial problems with due to the high degree of urbanization of the Dutch provinces and their agricultural focus on “luxury” food products. Domestic production was aimed at dairy, meat and fruits whilst basic foodstuffs (grains) were imported from the Baltic area. The introduction of improved ploughs, along with the introduction of the humble potato helped alleviate dependency on foreign grains. The potato was introduced to Dytschland by Karel I himself, who maintained a patch of them in the garden of every one of his palaces, and he insisted that they would be served at every dinner he attended. The introduction of the potato also opened up many poorer sand soils for more intense forms of agriculture as, often not realized by modern man, the potato is kind of famed for being able to grow on poor soil. Increased domestic food production allowed for the soon to be growing class of urban working class to be fed. The first sector in which such a class would develop was the cloth industry, with which Dytschland already had a long history. The power of the County of Flanders had always come from her strong economic relationship with England, from where wool was imported for her cloth industry, spurring on her revolts against the French crown to protect her economic power by preventing royal meddling. Coal mining throughout the realm had also seen a long history. The area comprising Loon, Limburg, Opper-Gelre and Aken had for example seen coal mining since the early medieval era. Whilst transport of coal was far from ideal as it chipped away at whatever little profit margin there was in this cheap source of fuel, bulk transport over water was improved by the geographical position and continual governmental investments in her waterways and their feasibility for easy transport. The most important legacy of Jan de Grote and the establishment of the Kamer der Waterschappen might not be the conquests made upon the water, but her taming of it. The availability of a cheap source of power, knowledge and capital of the textile industry, increasing quality and quantity of the produced cast irons and first practical applications of steam engines would come together for the industrial production of cloths.
A last small note on the reign of Johannes I must be on Great Britain. On the 27th of February 1767, the first pamphlet signed with the name “John Wilkes” was published, which echoed popular discontent with the “Parliament of Saints” that had been ruling ever since the elevation of Oliver Cromwell to the British throne. Secondly, is the heir of Oliver Cromwell, Alfred II, and his Parliament of Saints declaring war on France, supported by the Yuan dynasty. Europe was to see an upset than Karel I hadn’t even dreamed of causing.
Johannes I mainly represented a return to normalcy deeply desired by all classes within the new kingdom and Europe at large. He mainly helped re-establish a more “permanent” peace, despite the former Empire quickly descending into petty squabbles. He died on the 28th of August 1773, aged 47.
Johannes I, reigned from 1742 to 1773
Johannes I would provide quite the contrast with his enlightened, forward thinking and bisexual father. This is mostly due to dumb chance. Johannes I was born as the eldest son of his mother Marie-Violante d’Escaubleu, who was the second wife of Karel I. Had his elder half-brother Karel not died and taken the throne as Karel II it is likely that the immediate influence of Karel I would linger on much longer than it did. The first Margrave of Ollmark, Karel, had come from the first marriage of Karel I with a Dytsch noblewoman from the region around Luik. His, presumed, position far away from the line of succession allowed him to pick somewhat freely, finding a woman who “suited him well”. However, her early death in 1723 would see him, under pressure from his court, marry Marie-Violante in 1725, to strengthen the alliance with the erstwhile ally in Arelat, with the symbolism of a marital union between the two young kingdoms overcoming the old and decrepit Empire not lost on them. Sadly, Marie-Violante took a lot closer to Catholic morals than her husband did, making the girl deeply unhappy about her situation. Karel I took a pragmatic approach in the marriage, he fulfilled his duties as husband and monarch, that being producing children and thus a heir, they would appear together for official occasions, but besides that the couple mostly ignored each other. Whatever little willingness to make the marriage work quickly disappeared after the day of the wedding. Karel I exchanged his wife for his many mistresses (both male and female) whereas his wife would retreat in her Catholicism, almost living the life of a nun in the palace in Broenswiek. This was the context that Johannes I was born in in 1726. Whilst Karel I did attempt to raise the boy, and succeeded in teaching him the matters of statecraft, his suffering mother found much more of his sympathy, who proceeded to leave a much more present note on his personality and relationship with Catholicism and the Church, leaving behind many of the more “progressive” attitudes of his father.
Dytschland in 1742 was at the height of the First Empire, a true era of peace and almost unimaginable wealth, but the cracks were however beginning to show. His rule would however see a return to a much more refined foreign policy instead of the blunt force that his father had used. First example of this we find shortly after he would rise to the throne. On the 23rd of January, whilst the seas and the canal itself were frozen, it was officially handed over to the government as a sign it was done. At the first opportunity, a ship would pass through in late march, officially ending Dytsch dependency on their Danish ally. The Danish would find that the Dytsch were now in a much stronger position regarding their relationship, and would grab on to the last chance they had, declaring war on the Teutonic order in early 1746, to seize the Baltic coast for themselves and reassert the Danish position in the Baltic. The king, not wishing to throw away either the alliance with Denmark or the leverage he held, chose a more indirect approach in the hopes of not alienating his ally. Through multiple financial backchannels organized via the Antwerp and Breemn stock exchanges, he was able to divert parts of the Dytsch military spending directly to the Teutonic treasury, which were in turn used to finance the conflict with the Danish crown. Parts of these funds immediately returned to Dytschland via the Teutonic import of modern Dytsch artillery pieces, despite the policy of absolute neutrality Johannes and the navy had enforced to reassure the Danish of the commitment to their alliance. It also allowed for the navy to control where the artillery ended up if the smugglers were caught, meaning that the state earned a decent penny off of the traders buying back the artillery they had just been caught with before attempting to run the blockade again. Between 1746 and 1751 the Teutons, with secret Dytsch funding and aid from their allies in Greater Poland, the Teutons would triumph in their war of attrition, wearing out the Danish when they moved away from their supply base’s on the Baltic coast and (re-)capturing the entire coast and large tracts of Pomerania. Both parties had fought each other to absolute exhaustion, which was when Hochmeister Eginolf IV requested Dytsch arbitration to end the conflict. Between the position of Denmark (only willing to give minor concessions) and the Teutons (demanding the return of all former provinces and the secession of the whole of Pomerania) the Treaty of Kiel hammered out a decent enough compromise between both parties, returning mostly to the pre-1726 status quo, with only the city of Riga remaining in the hands of the Danish crown, with the Teutons being compensated for the more permanent losses. At the same time, the rights of Dytsch merchants in Danish ports were confirmed and Christoffer III Estrid-Roderlo personally thanked Johannes I in his efforts to both re-establish a fair peace and curtail the weapons smuggling to the Teutonic order. It seemed that his efforts to keep the aid to the Teutons a secret were successful. The aid was only declassified during the 1980’ies, causing a diplomatic incident between Broenswiek and Göteborg. A final note in the Treaty of Kiel would soon prove to become important, that being “compensation in the form of territory elsewhere.”
Due to obligations in both the former Holy Roman Empire and a the Third Kalinga-VOC War, the Teutons were left to fight another war with the Muscovites, losing a large tract of borderlands from Pskov to Polotsk and Smolensk in the process, but resulting in the dissolution of the remnant Latgale authority. After both parties had finished their foreign entanglements (victory in case of Dytschland and loss for the Teutons) both parties came to the table and signed a alliance in the middle of 1756, with the Dytsch aim mainly being the hope to, at the very least, start a thaw between the Danish and Teutons. The foreign territory in question that was mentioned before was Sweden, because what gets two powers together like the mutual partition of a uninvolved third? For Copenhagen it meant finally proclaiming a United Kingdom of Scandinavia, for the Teutons the recovery of the lands lost to Sweden and for an internal power within Sweden, the lords of Finland, it meant that they would rise again after subjugation some 50 years before. By the end of 1759, with Dytsch naval assistance, Sweden was forced to the lands as the Dytsch enforced treaty prescribed, being followed by an immediate powergrab by the Finnish lords who, as of yet, still remained loyal to the King of “Sweden” now ruling from Åbo.
1746 had seen the breakout of the Third Kalinga-VOC War. Reason was nothing more than a pure powergrab by the company, seeking to profit off of the Kalinga Kanga who found themselves in complete disarray as they were faced with a Yuan invasion. The company used a small dispute over the settlement of the last war as their excuse for the invasion. At the time, the Kalinga were faced with revolt in Mysore, the Ganges Plain being completely wasted and Cuttack had already fallen to the advancing Celestial forces. The Company hoped to cause enough destruction, havoc and unrest to more permanently rid of the dominant force on the subcontinent, and they certainly did. For the first two years, the south of the subcontinent laid open to the arms of the Company and her mercenaries. Halfway through 1748, the Kalinga Ganga made peace with their Yuan invaders at the cost of more lost ports, however, it meant that now finally their armies could turn on the other invader, with the first troops sent south being wiped out on December 17th, to be followed by another less devastating loss by a greater force in January 1749. In turn, these victories allowed for the Coast of Coromandel to fall under the control of the Company. The Kalinga navy, not wishing to be captured, was forced out to sea where she was faced with a series of defeats throughout the year as the coast provided the route to Cuttack and less and less ports became available, with the Kalinga capital, although it did not yet again serve in that function since the Yuan occupation. Cuttack would fall during August of 1750 with a final counterattack by the Kalinga aimed at one of the two main supply basis for the Company in India at the port of Bhatkal. The attack would be countered by the armies coming back from up the Orissa coastline, and through a series of maneuvers and battles the Kalinga army would become smaller and trapped on the Deccan Plateau, where on the 11th of October the remnants of the army and their king would surrender, signing another humiliating peace, seceding more land and causing a decade of troubles to come over the country.
The boldness of the Company was certainly growing, even if her profit margins weren’t getting any larger for it. One of the main ways that stockholders found, and demanded their dividends to be paid, was through the plunder and redistribution of land and goods that came with new military conquests. This attitude of the Company caused renewed conflict with Japan, as seizing of wealth and redistribution of property was attempted in the regions where the VOC was nominally the administrator. The lands it administrated were, however, still a part of the Hosokawa Shogunate. Unlike the mid-16th century, when Korea had, for a moment, used Japans internal divisions and her superior navy to establish control over the Straits of Kammon and much of the coast of West Japan. This period of rule lasted only 2 decades as Manchu attacks drained much of the strength of the Korean state, leading to the eventual abandonment of the conquests and the Hosokawa marching in, being a leading cause for the establishment of their Shogunate. There never would come an official declaration of war, but the 1st of October 1762 is generally seen as the start of the 3rd conflict between the VOC and the authorities of Japan, as this is the day that reinforcements from Batavia would arrive on Kyushu. The conflict is of note for two reasons. One, is the loss at the Battle of the Kii Channel, an embarrassing affair for the Company. Some of the largest and best armed ships of her arsenal took part and never returned to their port, as they found themselves outmaneuvered by the much smaller Japanese ships, which were much more well suited for the narrow space that had been “allotted” to the battle. The Japanese navy was however driven from the area afterwards by cannons brought in by the troops that had already landed on Shikoku, which cleared the crossing of the sea for these troops, which was the main goal of the naval battle in the first place. The battle must be mentioned as the cost of the loss was one of the prime reasons why Jan Schlien, local governor of the Company and commander of the troops, decided to loot Kyoto when it fell September 3rd 1764. The looting of Kyoto can be described as nothing else but a national catastrophe for Japan. Kyoto, which had been the capital of Japan since 795, was looted of anything valuable, causing a direct loss of close to a thousand years of cultural heritage. Anything that couldn’t be take was destroyed in the great fire that started at the final day of the 2 week long looting. (Schlien made sure that his troops took their time and that everything that was taken was noted down and assessed in value.) Worst of all was the fact that with the fall of the city the emperor was taken into captivity. Still, the war would last for more than a year until the 27th of September 1765, with the signing of the Convention of Nagasaki, which saw the official secession of Kyushu and Shikoku to the Company and a oficiall repayment of the cost of the sunk ships, which ended up being about 10% of the entire Japanese economy that was left over, causing the reparations to be paid out over the course of 15 years. Even if somebody had hoped to attempt a revolt against the Hosokawa, the only thing that prevented another direct VOC intervention was a government that kept to its promises, thus, the mayor powerholders begrudgingly stood behind the Hosokawa, for now.
It must also be noted that the peace was singed only 2 days before war with Spain would break out.
It can almost be described as a miracle that a (direct) war between Spain and Dytschland didn’t occur for some 200 years. Pope Victor IV had been quite thurrough in his easing of tensions, but since then the situation in the New World had changed, and Spanish and Dytsch colonial ambitions had made sure that renewed direct conflict was guaranteed. The Dytsch expansion from the former Spanish outposts at the La Plata/Zilverstroom eventually brought them north to the Andes, where the Spanish authorities stretching out from Cartagena de Indias had long made themselves ruler over the many statelets that had dotted the mountains. Whilst there were defacto lines of control, mostly set up by local commanders, the issue had remained that from the late 17th century onwards a state of semi-constant conflict through proxies (i.e. the local not fully under the authority of either Cartagena or Sint Nicolaas. The more effective command from 1737 onwards only made sure that a direct clash was to come about. Up north, much the same issue’s had developed, although much more indirectly. The earlier mentioned issue’s over the Shones, Hoodenoosjoone and the hunting grounds had actually resulted in what was effectively recognized as the borders between the two colonial powers. Where issue’s had come cropping up was further out west, where the Scottish boundaries had been expanding since the acquisition of Beaver Bay, where outposts out west on the great plains of Periosia had become quite intermingled, and the loyalty of local tribes had caused a general lack of any real border. The direct cause of the war was actually the actions of a couple of pirates who had fled after the fall of the first pirate republic of New Providence in 1739. A group of pirates, acting as privateers for the viceroy in New Saxony attempted to seize on of the islands of the Bahamas but got into a combined land and naval battle with the stationed Spanish garrison which was reinforced from the old capital of New Providence. The sinking of the fleet and the taking of the island was met by a Spanish declaration of war on Dytschland on the 29th of September 1765. France, which was still very weary of Dytschland, accepted a ultimatum delivered on the 10th of December to allow for Dytsch forces and their supply train to pass through the territory of the kingdom, the result of which was that by March of 1766 the first Spanish fortress on the western side of the Pyrenees fell to a assault lead by Reinier von Lenzburg, and at the same time Willem II van Oranje-Nassau laid siege to the Spanish fortresses on the eastern side of the mountain range. By the middle of the year the Dytsch armies were marching down the easter coast, occupying Catalonia and Valencia, preparing for a strike at the royal capital of Madrid. The Dytsch navy was already maintaining a partial blockade of the Portuguese and Algarvian coasts. In the New World, the war proceeding much worse. Spanish forces were offering stiff resistance in the Andes and small parties had incited the Guarni living in (nominally) Dytsch territory to revolt. Broggeborg was occupied by forces of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, providing a massive hindrance to trade coming from the Pacific. Controll of Koeba was also lost. The only relatively good news came from Periosia, where the Viceroyalty of Dominica found itself under attack from all sides. Despite the revolt of the population of Louisiana, it did not hinder the siege of Santo Domingo at the mouth of the Mississippi, although much of the inland of Louisiana slipped from the control of New Saxony for the duration of the conflict. The 13th of September saw a Papal-Dytsch navy face off against the Spanish off of the North African coast. Jakobus ‘t Hooft had run the Straits of Gibraltar under great risk but was victorious, forcing the remnants of the Spanish navy to return to port for repairs and to stay out of the grasp of the Dytsch. Victory at sea, however, did not mean that Spain was unable to bring reinforcements to the mainland, which were slowly gathering on the northern side of the straits. The reach of the Dytsch armies was however so advanced that Madrid couldn’t be saved anymore, which fell December 22nd. For the next half year, a pattern of slow occupation whilst under harassment would come about, but this was broken on the 11th of June 1767, as Hasso von Querfort engaged a massed Spanish infantry force at Malaga, he was victorious, however, a month later, he would see his force wiped from the field by the might of the Spanish army which converged on Malaga. The stragglers of the 2nd Battle of Malaga would make contact with Willem II, who would gather the disperate Dytsch armies to finally defeat the Spanish army in force, but they would already slip back over the straits en masse as the navy had returned to port for some refits. Spanish inability to restore control over the heart of their nation meant that they came to negotiate in their occupied capital late in 1767. Despite the inability to fully defeat Spain, the negotiators for Dytschland got the concessions they set out in their war for, mainly a reinforcement of the Dytsch and Scottish colonial positions with minor concessions throughout the New World. The greatest victory was that Koeba, despite being perhaps the base of Spanish authority in the Caribbean, was seceded to New Saxony, along with a restoration of New Providence in the Bahama’s.
The long, peaceful and economically prosperous reign of Johannes I is a good moment to mention the slowly developing Industrial Revolution. A definitive starting point is hard to pin down, but since the start of the 18th century it had been slowly developing. Early in the century, a student of the Royal University of Broenswiek would improve upon traditional plough designs. This Broenswiek Plough would start a trend of agricultural improvements leading for increased domestic food production within Dytschland, something the kingdom had partial problems with due to the high degree of urbanization of the Dutch provinces and their agricultural focus on “luxury” food products. Domestic production was aimed at dairy, meat and fruits whilst basic foodstuffs (grains) were imported from the Baltic area. The introduction of improved ploughs, along with the introduction of the humble potato helped alleviate dependency on foreign grains. The potato was introduced to Dytschland by Karel I himself, who maintained a patch of them in the garden of every one of his palaces, and he insisted that they would be served at every dinner he attended. The introduction of the potato also opened up many poorer sand soils for more intense forms of agriculture as, often not realized by modern man, the potato is kind of famed for being able to grow on poor soil. Increased domestic food production allowed for the soon to be growing class of urban working class to be fed. The first sector in which such a class would develop was the cloth industry, with which Dytschland already had a long history. The power of the County of Flanders had always come from her strong economic relationship with England, from where wool was imported for her cloth industry, spurring on her revolts against the French crown to protect her economic power by preventing royal meddling. Coal mining throughout the realm had also seen a long history. The area comprising Loon, Limburg, Opper-Gelre and Aken had for example seen coal mining since the early medieval era. Whilst transport of coal was far from ideal as it chipped away at whatever little profit margin there was in this cheap source of fuel, bulk transport over water was improved by the geographical position and continual governmental investments in her waterways and their feasibility for easy transport. The most important legacy of Jan de Grote and the establishment of the Kamer der Waterschappen might not be the conquests made upon the water, but her taming of it. The availability of a cheap source of power, knowledge and capital of the textile industry, increasing quality and quantity of the produced cast irons and first practical applications of steam engines would come together for the industrial production of cloths.
A last small note on the reign of Johannes I must be on Great Britain. On the 27th of February 1767, the first pamphlet signed with the name “John Wilkes” was published, which echoed popular discontent with the “Parliament of Saints” that had been ruling ever since the elevation of Oliver Cromwell to the British throne. Secondly, is the heir of Oliver Cromwell, Alfred II, and his Parliament of Saints declaring war on France, supported by the Yuan dynasty. Europe was to see an upset than Karel I hadn’t even dreamed of causing.
Johannes I mainly represented a return to normalcy deeply desired by all classes within the new kingdom and Europe at large. He mainly helped re-establish a more “permanent” peace, despite the former Empire quickly descending into petty squabbles. He died on the 28th of August 1773, aged 47.
Johannes I, reigned from 1742 to 1773
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Karel II
The reign of Karel II
Johannes I had taken to his duties as husband and monarch rather well, as at age 17 his wife had given birth to the man who would be crowned Karel II in 1773. The date of his ascension to the throne at age 30 is often called the “heralding of the era of revolutions” and for proper reason. Since early that year Britain and France had been at war, and Britain was quickly gaining an overwhelming advantage through that year. By late October the fortress and port at Caux had fallen to a British assault. A year later, northern France was mostly under Cromwellian control. News of this was anxiously heard throughout Dytschland, especially in the corridors of the Volkskamer in Antwerp, who feared the British ability to cut of trade through the Channel, strangling Dytsch power which could also lead to the fall of their Scottish ally, which would result in the slow strangulation of Dytschland itself (or so it was thought at least). Sentiment for intervention grew, with the authorization for a ultimatum being confirmed by both houses of the Staten Generaal at the end of September 1774. On the 8th of October the Dytsch armies moved south from Kamerijk as the Staten Generaal officially declared for the French side. At the end of the month, the gathered armies of Britain and Dytschland would fight on the fields west of Troyes. The two day long Battle of Dierrey would be a crushing defeat for the British forces, who would only be able to haphazardly escape through the personal sacrifice of their leader Horatio Fairfax, who would be killed by Dytsch grapeshot whilst leading the rear guard. Whilst Alfred II, present as a observer, was able to escape, the army was forced to leave behind about three quarters of the cannons she carried. Severely disarmed, Alfred II, now forcibly in personal command of his army, decided to retreat to Brittany, as the region was secure and it would allow him to receive reinforcements in opposition to staying out east as Caux was now under siege by another Dytsch army. On Christmas Eve, a combined Dytsch-French force would find the British garrison throwing open the gates of the French capital. Even though the leadership of both parties were partially hostile to eachother because of the continuing cold relationship between both kingdoms, they would celebrate Christmas Mass together in Notre Dame. The winter in France would pass calmly with the exception of a clash in the snow at the 13th of January at Alencon, a small British force made up out of the collection of retreating garrisons from Normandy would be forced to surrender to a army under the leadership of the French king himself. By the melting of the snow at the end of March of 1775 the Willem II van Oranje-Nassau would besiege Les Mans, which would fall on 21st of May after a week-long artillery bombardment and the storming of the ramparts. Brittany now laid open, where on the 14th of June the remaining British forces would be surrounded and destroyed with Alfred II being taken captive. The main reason was unexpected, because whilst at the time the Dytsch and British navies were dancing around eachother, looking for a battle, the reinforcements Alfred II had hoped for were diverted by his parliament pressured by young radicals, who much more focused on the Scottish invasion going on rather than supporting the foreign ambitions of their monarch. The fields of Europe were, however, perhaps the only place where Dytschland was seeing success.
Over in the New World, in the battle between Olivaria and Zilverstroom Olivaria had found herself triumphant in the clashes at the border, forcing a Stroomse retreat south, leading to the capture of Sint Dimpna, Nieuw Grevelingen and in the end Denderburg, commanding the mouth of the Zilverstroom delta itself. Whilst not able to fully exert control over the delta, the position and the not insignificant British naval station at Olivaria were able to grind the trade to and from Sint Nicolaas to a halt. Further north, the British Caribbean station was able to cut off Suriname from any reinforcements coming from the mainland of New Saxony, leading to a party landing in the colony at the start of summer 1775 with Paramaribo falling at the 7th of September. The only bright spot in the war in the western colonies was in Periosia, where spring of 1775 had seen the overrunning of Georgia, which the soldiers had already jokingly started to refer to as “Jorisland” in anticipation of an annexation much similar as had happened to Remigia. There was one area where the war was going much worse than out west, and that was out east, as the VOC came into conflict with the Yuan. The Company was completely overwhelmed on her positions in mainland Asia. Around New Year 1775 the first Yuan assault was taking place on the different VOC factories at the Malabar coast. Which was, about a month later, followed up by the beginning of the Siege of Busan where the Yuan armies were backed up by banners provided by Manchu Ula Nara dynasty ruling over Korea and its ancestral home. The governor in Batavia at the time, as did most of the other board members in Batavia, panicked, concerned about the loss of the positions of the Company. The French, whilst under attack were much more secure dure to trading on a much lesser scale in the region, and the board in Batavia decided to start borrowing large amounts from them, to hire mercenaries to organize a defense. The counter would come about late in in 1775, driving the Yuan from their invasion attempt of the French posessions and to cut the Company from the posessions on Formosa and Japan.
This is all ofcourse in contrast to the most important clash of the war. As mentioned earlier the Dytsch and British navy were dancing around each other since about the start of the war. Britain had much restored her strength since the Third Anglo-Saxon War, and both admirals were weary to put their navies to the test. Throughout 1774 and 1775, as the duty of the British navy remained the resupply and reinforcement of the armies on the continent, neither was willing to break the status quo, that being one of semi-innefective Dytsch blockade. But, with the end of spring had come the defeat of Britain in France, and the objective became the defence of Britain and the reinforcement of Scotland respectively. Both sides moved for action, which came on the 1st of September 1775. It was long past midsummer, and neither side was willing to completely commit to the battle that began past 5 that afternoon. Neither side could have been predicted that the battle would last, in total, 7 days. A true battle of exhaustion, it pitted a larger Dytsch navy against their British counterparts, but, starting the battle with the weather gage, the advantage of their own coast, but most importantly the experience of fighting the Spanish, and the drill and advanced construction techniques that had won them their hard fought status quo ante bellum, the British would slowly chip away at the advantage, till, just after combat had resumed on the 7th of September, the absolute number were about even but the remaining ships of the Dytsch navy were in a much worse shape, admiral Jakobus ‘t Hooft decided to retreat to port in Antwerp. The defeat was utterly humiliating, and shattered the image of the North Sea as the uncontested domain of the Dytsch navy. In Britain, which continued to suffer heavily under the strain of the war, the victory was seen as a gift from God, who spared England from a foreign invasion. When news of victory spread, it was immediately followed by the sounds of “Rule Britannia” coming from the town church. Originally written to commemorate that status quo against the Spaniards, it received a wholly new meaning with the victory at the Seven Day’s Battle.
Both sides, aware of the immense cost that continuing the war would entail, sought peace, coming to a quick agreement of status quo ante bellum. For Dytschland, the war meant a shattering of the political status quo. The army had performed her job perfectly, defeating the British forces in France. The navy had lost control of the North Sea, the Company had gone into utter disarray by an attack from her largest rival and even in the west the results hadn’t been spectacular. All of this meant that the merchants and the navy lost favour with the monarch. The most important part of this was the replacement of the king’s treasurer Laurens Schreurs, member of the Statenkamer for Flanders and a merchant in beer, by Frank von Kadelborg, a noble from the area of Arensperg. Not only that, but the young monarch continued to surround himself by/continued to be surrounded by more European focused aristocrats and military men. The navy would rally around to admiral ‘t Hooft, who despite the loss at the Seven Days Battle still held the confidence of the admiralty. ‘t Hooft would be the prime architect behind the reform plan, which would be achieved under heavy budgetary concerns as the government wouldn’t allow for the great sums of guilders to be divested to the program. Despite this, the engineers at the shipwrights of Antwerp and all lesser ports of the North Sea coast were able to decently retrofit the older ships, even if it was a very impractical solution. Besides this the reforms by ‘t Hooft would also unite the somewhat unorganized different units of the marines under the Royal Marines. Not only this, but those ousted from power in 1775 would begin to organize themselves to ultimately gain back the favours of the monarch and the levers of power, which started the move to the first party system of Dytschland. The unoficcial block that had formed behind the navy’s and merchants restoration of honour and power became mockingly known as the Zeeuwlui (a corrupted form of “sea lads”), who would adopt the term to themselves.
All of this falls into nothingness compared with the ramifications over in Britain. One of the few stipulations of the Peace of Caux was an effective bribe for the safe return of Alfred II, causing even greater unrest as the kingdom was effectively bankrupt after the war through losing her field armies, needing to raise more, loss of trade income and the lack of any reparations. Parliament had slowly grown into a split between the more “traditional” Puritan backers of the Cromwells and a more radical faction of Young Parliamentarians, a very loose coalition who favoured further extension of parliamentary perogatives, going from electoral monarchy to the abolition of the monarchy all together. The 1776 session of British parliament would be known as the Blood Stained Parliament, as Alfred II, with backing from the older Puritans and elements of the army forcefully disband parliament. The symbolism of this move was immediately noticeable to everybody, as the same move had, in the end, caused the downfall of the Hasting’s. Among those arrested was Barnaby Barker, member of parliament for Bristol, who was the one writing under the pseudonym John Wilkes. There had however been a fatal miscalculation by the king, he didn’t decapitate the Young Parliamentarians. Elements would flee to the Midlands and Yorkshire, where they would seize the arms stockpiles that had been built up to rally the defense of the north of England. The whole “affair” could have well turned into a bloody Second English Civil War, but it was the defection of Matthew Boscawen on the 30th of March 1777 that sealed the fate of the Cromwells. Boscawen would join with the revolutionaries held up at Birmingham to form the Council of the 12, a temporary government tasked with the taking of London. Alfred’s government was facing utter collapse at this point, as the defection of Boscawen indicated that the army wasn’t willing to fight their countrymen, especially with months’ worth of pay yet to be paid out. Whilst there was fighting over the course of 1777 and 1778, most of the seizing of land by the Council of the 12 was through negotiation with either nominally loyal soldiers or local councils made up of mutineering soldiers, local yeomanry and whatever local elite there was. Chatham was taken Boscawen on the 8th of April 1778, destroying parts of the navy and shattering the rest of it, who mostly fled to the ports of Southern Ireland before either leaving for the colonies or the reactionaries of continental Europe. The fall of Chatham opened the way to London, falling on the 4th of May, seeing Alfred II arrested and locked into the Tower, where he came face to face with Barnabey Barker, who was liberated from the Tower and hailed as “Citizen Wilkes.” There, hoisted on the shoulders of the soldiers, along with Boscawen, he proclaimed the republic.
It may be surprising to modern readers that the initial reaction to the arrest of “Citizen Cromwell” wasn’t as rash or shocked as a modern audience might think, especially in the context of future history. But the context is that this happened in a defeated Britain with a history of religious and political upheaval. If one were to take English history, from the Magna Carta onwards, the kingdom can be known to have a tradition of revolution, especially when foreign adventures fail. The Hastings driving out a foreign dynasty, the establishment of the Anglican Church and the English Civil War. At the time, there were also those who proposed the idea that the English Civil War and the Parliamentary victory had never been complete, as the Union returned to monarchy, and that this was simply the conclusion of the conflict that had only saw a truce from 1629 onwards, some 150 years ago by this point. But the point is that, despite the shock of the arrest, and later execution, of the British monarch and the proclaiming of the Republic of Albion, Europe, for lack of a better term, had other worries. But, this didn’t stop the Scots from, together with elements of the Dytsch navy (the admiralty saw renewed conflict as inevitable and was preparing for the occasion) smuggling arms into Britain to support the already brewing anti-revolutionary activity in Lancashire.
The first years following 1778 were focused on the Baltic, as the Finnish nobles had sought foreign support to free them from the yoke of the ex-Swedish king that now ruled from Åbo. To the Teutons, the Fins provided a much more useful ally against the Rus threatening their hold on the areas of Smolensk and Novgorod, not only to mention somebody less interested in their Baltic possessions. As for the Dytsch, Finland offered a large source of cheap timber, something that had come to be a large need for the reconstructing Dytsch navy. The war provided a good first testing for the new marines, which saw the navy regain some prestige with the fall of Åbo. But, all in all, the war provided to be a side show compared to what was going on in Germany. Despite the best efforts that the greater powers surrounding the shattered heart of the continent, the destruction of the HRE had left a power vacuum that the many former princes were hoping to fill. Along with this came war, destruction, famine and depopulation. Many at the time likened the time with the religious wars that killed around a third of the population in the southern Empire. Outside intervention also prevented power from coalescing around one singular power, as the aim of intervention was the maintenance of the balance of power. The result was that where once many had hoped for a bright, post Imperial future, freed from old superstitions and feudal institutions, now there was discontent, rebellion and the search for a alternative. The Republic of Albion continued to manifest her claim on Scotland, aiming to liberate it from foreign control, preaching unity to overcome the foreign oppressor. (Loyalty to London wasn’t unheard of, especially in Cumberland and Northumbria, but also in the Lowlands as Anglicans of both more traditional and Puritan leanings faced persecution by the Scottish crown.) Discontent would boil over in October 1781, in the city of Frankfurt, which had shed her republican institutions more than a century before. When Joachim I’s plans for a campaign up the Main river leaked, the local intelligentsia, inspired by what had happened in England, used it to rile the peasant and city dwellers up into anger for yet another war to be waged. On the 26th of October the order to fire on the masses was given, but “Bloody Frankfurt” would only prove to be the downfall of the duke. Much like in London, on the 28th the duke was dragged from his palace followed by a proclamation of a republic by a group of intellectuals led by Manfred Betz. The next month, the same happened in Vienna, where Hermann III von Habsburg was arrested by the citizens of Vienna after a devastating loss to the Duchy of Tyrol. December 12th saw a meeting of the leadership of both revolutions in Frankfurt, where they invited the rest of the former HRE to partake in what they christened the Council of the Germans, which stated goal was the creation of a citizens republic spanning all Germanic peoples to overthrow and protect against the forces of reaction. This was the act which brought the fear of revolution to Broenswiek. For the start of the 1782 session of the Staten Generaal, one seat was left unexpectedly unoccupied in such a time of crisis, Benjamin Paasche, a member of the Volkskamer from Breemn. On May 3rd, it became clear he had left for Frankfurt to partake in the Council, which lead to the immediate demand to have the Republic of Frankfurt deliver him back to Broenswiek in chains, a ultimatum which was refused, leading to a declaration of war on both Frankfurt and Albion, starting the Revolutionary Wars. The Frankfurter Republic, despite being the nominal gathering of all Germanic peoples of the continent, was unable to make a fist against the forces which invaded in the summer of 1782, so those who did not retreat behind the walls of Wiesbaden, Frankfurt or Mainz, dispersed into the wider countryside outside of the duchy. There, as missionaries of the revolution, they would convert the local population to their side, and began plundering whatever they could to strengthen their mishmash of an army. On the 8th of October, the Dytsch armies would storm the ramparts of Frankfurt, a strange day as the city was filled with, among many other things, the sounds of the organs playing music, among which was what would become the anthem of the German revolutionaries.
Der Gott, der Eisen wachsen ließ,
Der wollte keine Knechte,
Drum gab er Säbel, Schwerdt, und Spieß
Dem Mann in seine Rechte,
Drum gab er ihm den kühnen Muth,
Den Zorn der freien Rede,
Daß er bestände bis aufs Blut,
Bis in den Tod die Fehde.
Besides the political upheaval, the revolution also brought a renewed round of religious upheaval to Europe, as, much like 3 centuries before, a part of the clergy would side with the revolutionaries. The first phase of the German Revolutionary War would last until late 1784, when the eradication of the revolutionaries was deemed sufficient and the local authorities were left to handle for themselves again. What this meant was that as Dytsch troops marched north, to face the worsening situation Scotland, that there would be internal coups in the restored monarchies of Nassau, Frankfurt and Hesse, which would place the German revolutionaries again in control of the levers of power, but would keep the nominal façade of a monarchy alive, forming the Secret Confederacy, what was to be a basis for a Germanic state and future revolutionary conflict. For now, the German revolutionaries would lay low, but their whispers could be heard between the Meuse and the Bohemian Forests.
At this point in time, it was Britain that still stole the show. The Dytsch invasion of Lancashire was met by a jubilant population. Lancashire, much like centuries before it had been the last bastion of the Hasting’s, was the hotbed for royalist sentiment, along with Ulster in Ireland. Easily suppliable from Scotland, both regions had been in a state of low intensity rebellion for 2 years. The Dytsch-Scottish invasion was seen as the sign to rise in proper fashion. The great tragedy was the compliance that came along with it, as command assumed that the Republic of Albion was disorganized rabble that had inherited the mess left behind by the Cromwell’s. Truth was that the revolution had immediately began to arm itself, the revolution had cleared away the chaff and the anti-reactionary campaigns had also provided a fair bit experience. The implementation of a crude system of conscription also opened up a much larger manpower pool than her contemporaries. The invasion of Lancashire was met by a counter invasion of the Scottish border counties. Luckily for the Dytsch, the Christian and Royalist Army of Lancashire was able to infiltrate Lancaster and open up the city, restoring the flow of supplies after a short secession. The counterattack on the Scottish invasion of Ulster was, however, a much more devastating affair. The Battle of Moira saw the Scottish-Ulsterite army able to avoid complete collapse, but the evacuation of the Scottish army became necessary to avoid complete destruction. The Anglican Army of Ulster dispersed into the countryside, but their fight was a lost cause following Moira, their strength depleted and no help available from Scotland. It was even the case that the Albionic crossed into the Lowlands, forcing both the invading force in Lancashire and the reinforcements that had just arrived from the Dytsch mainland to be diverted to see of the invasion. The separation of the Leger van Holland from the Christian and Royalist Army of Lancashire allowed for the peasant army to be destroyed on its own, and would bring a decisive end to the invasion of England, as the Albionic armies simply held too great a numerical advantage. Lancashire would fall back in the hands of the revolutionaries on the 19th of January, by than only the marines that had served in Finland had become available to be sent to Scotland as the final “independent king of Sweden” had agreed to a exile in a castle in Oppland. The other armies of Dytschland still held the responsibility of having to conduct anti-revolutionary manoeuvres in mainland Europe. All of this meant that the authorities in London were able to direct their program of “anti-reactionary suppression” unhindered, a deeply divisive action to this day as many have labled the actions in Lancashire and Ulster as a genocide, but they’re still defended by the inheritors of the revolution to this day. Problems would continue throughout 1783, with the Dytsch-Scottish forces simply lacking the numbers to resist the revolutionary advance. The fortress at Newcastle would fall, followed by a defeat at the Battle of Kettleholme, which forced a retreat to the Highlands. After that, more reinforcements finally arrived but the momentum laid with the Albionic. The counteroffensive on the western Scottish coast would meet disaster just east of Ayr, where despite the disproportionately larger Albionic losses, their line held and the exhausted army of, by now demoralized Dytsch and ever badly equipped Highlanders, was barely able to escape the counterattack, leading to the fall of Aberdeen, the Scottish capital, during the winter of 1784-1785. Whilst by the summer 1785, reinforcements had arrived, it proved too little too late, as too late. The Battle at Loch Ness, would see the partial destruction of the Dytsch army and the retreat further northwards, where a line of defences would be built through the remaining free Highlands. Despite the situation, neither side was willing to sign a peace yet. On the 1st of July, both sides would meet at Inverness, and on the 5th a truce would be announced, where both sides would retreat forces from the Highlands, but it effectively surrendered the Lowlands and large tracts of the Highlands to Albion. The revolution would live on, and it started to consume all that surrounded it and itself…
The failure to extinguish the revolution would see Europe dragged into war for decades. At home, the political upheaval was massive. Dytschland would face agitation by radical liberals, seeking the destruction of noble privileges, the abolition of serfdom and a part of them would agitate for the dissolution of the nation itself in favour of a Germanist policy. On the level of the existing political status quo, the noble’s downfall was set with the disaster that was the campaign in Scotland, whereas the navy (which had had a admittedly easier job as the Albionic Revolution had been a lot more devastating to the British navy and it had seen little effort to rebuild) was able to preform her duties, keep Britain under blockade, conduct a closing campaign in support of the Finnish nobles and protect the trade routes to the east and west. The army was able to partially shift the blame for the failures in Scotland to the navy (lacking ability to reinforce, a responsibility of the navy, and the combat ability of the marines hadn’t been excellent in Scotland either) and on its commitments on the continent. The Zeeuwlui were however to regain a listening ear with the king and were able to see a structural increase in funding the admiralty would receive in the 1786 budget.
As for the developments in Britain, the new peace would see the shattering of Europe’s religious status quo. What to this moment hasn’t been mentioned is the religious undertones of the Young Parliamentarian Rebellion. Puritanism had never enjoyed the full support of the British population. Northern England maintained a more traditional Anglican majority, and was heavily influenced by the efforts of the Catholic Church and its prostylization efforts in the English Mission organized from Edinburgh. The same was the case in Ireland, where the only part of the island where the Puritans held a proper sway over the structures of the Anglican Church of Ireland was in the Pale surrounding Dublin. The 18th century was, for continental Europe at least, a time of a partial libertine culture. Within Britain, this resulted in Puritan crackdown, but also a escalating counterreaction. This counterreaction was tied to the Young Parliamentarians and was let loose with their victory, and finally allowed to “bloom” following 1785. Clergy from all parts of (mainly northern) Europe would travel to Britain and both leave their small print on but take back the new theological positions proposed by, what was quickly developing into Veritatianism. A great (Catholic) reflection on the nature and development of Veritatianism would come during the political upheaval of the Interbellum. “In the end, all heresy is based on truth stretched out of proportion. The radical called “heretic” just loves his own partial truth more than the Truth that wider humanity (read: the Catholic Church) has found. It’s not strange that Veritatianism developed as a counterreaction to Puritanism with its destructive and suffocating tendencies. “Merry Olde England” provided to be almost a “Garden of Eden” from which the Englishman had fallen, now bound by the chains imposed by the Parliament of Saints and the kings that they had elevated. The Puritans certainly didn’t make it easier on themselves that they styled themselves after the Old Testament (like Protestant Europe in general does more) and the political and religious institutions of the Jews from before Christ, the old laws and customs from which He had set them free. “The revolutionary called Christ” provided to be the excellent vessel for political and religious discontent not only in the lands affected by Puritanism, but also in the rest of Europe as a vent for discontent coming from the counter-reformation, Enlightenment and secularisation that had taken place in the preceding centuries.” Whilst the focus is laid on England, this is only because Veritatianism only found herself “unleased” through what happened there, to say it is an offshoot of Puritanism or Protestantism in general isn’t quite correct, it should be seen as another offshoot of Western Christianity (as defined by the Great Schism of 1054). Throughout Europe, large parts of the clergy would again turn their backs on Rome too, with Veritatianism finding herself quickly in Scandinavia, France, the Po Valley and many urban centres in the Germanic lands.
Scandinavia is especially of note, as the curtailed ambitions came back to bite the Estrid-Roderlo. Scandinavia had always been partially dependent on foreign food imports, with harvests failing and the Teutonic Order in another ravaging war with the Rus. Blame fell squarely on the Estrid-Roderlo’s, not helping was their foreign origin, of the country that had helped negotiate peace treaties that had ended Scandinavian ambitions and could have placed Scandinavia in control over the Baltic food supply (the full extent of the treachery was of course unknown). As for Scandinavia, they also lacked what can be considered a pressure release valve on overpopulation that settlement colonies provided to be. On the 4th of April 1787 the discontent boiled over in the youngest part of the young kingdom, as in multiple cities in Central Sweden the urban citizenry rose. The situation would quickly deteriorate throughout the summer as draught struck and food prices continued to increase and the revolt spread to Skåne and soon to Denmark proper. Throughout the fall and winter of 1787, the government was eager to keep known as The Reaction going. Revolutionary warfare had already crossed into the New World by now, as the Albionic colonies found themselves in revolt against London, as it attempted to levy harsher taxes but also when it proclaimed the abolition of slavery following its victory in Scotland in 1785. The revolts would turn out to be bloody affairs as the Albionic ability to project power into her colonies was severely diminished, especially as the colonies were joined by elements of the former Royal Navy. There were however plenty loyalist sentiments, not to forget that where the authority of the loyalist troops was present, they would be inevitably bolstered by the slaves who were freed by them. The colonies in turn would also receive foreign support from those either opposed to the Albionic Revolution or the British in general. To finish off, the assembly that governed Olivaria had also invited Edgar Cromwell, nephew of the late Alfred II, to head the government, and was expected to be made king after victory. As for continental Europe this was also the time of Dytsch intervention in Austria to crush the republic set up in Vienna and restore the Von Habsburgs. The conflict in Scandinavia provided a threat as the loss of a major ally of strategic importance, but by the start of 1788, despite what was the practical begging of the representatives of Karel II, Fredrik I Estrid-Roderlo continued to refuse the assistance, but not without good reason, as it would only reinforce the idea as his rule as foreignly imposed one. This would change throughout the spring, as revolt also came to Pommerania and the recent acquisitions taken from Brandenburg. The revolutionaries, eager to make gains, decided to strike Holsteen on the 14th of April, which forced the Dytsch hand. The incursion was quickly defeated and the Army of Holsteen would march into Jutland, doing battle at Skjern on the 21st of May and restoring the authority of Göteborg in Jutland and Denmark as a whole. In Pommerania, the Army of Eastphalia would be joined by a unlikely ally, the Brandenburgers, motivated by a desire to hopefully regain recent losses but also a genuine willingness to combat the revolution. (Again making the point that Veritatianism cannot be qualified as Protestant.)
The victory in Demark, intervention in Scandinavia and the quashing of the self-styled Austrian Republic would be the last events of the reign of Karel II, as he would die on the 28th of August 1789.
Karel II, reigned from 1773 to 1789
Johannes I had taken to his duties as husband and monarch rather well, as at age 17 his wife had given birth to the man who would be crowned Karel II in 1773. The date of his ascension to the throne at age 30 is often called the “heralding of the era of revolutions” and for proper reason. Since early that year Britain and France had been at war, and Britain was quickly gaining an overwhelming advantage through that year. By late October the fortress and port at Caux had fallen to a British assault. A year later, northern France was mostly under Cromwellian control. News of this was anxiously heard throughout Dytschland, especially in the corridors of the Volkskamer in Antwerp, who feared the British ability to cut of trade through the Channel, strangling Dytsch power which could also lead to the fall of their Scottish ally, which would result in the slow strangulation of Dytschland itself (or so it was thought at least). Sentiment for intervention grew, with the authorization for a ultimatum being confirmed by both houses of the Staten Generaal at the end of September 1774. On the 8th of October the Dytsch armies moved south from Kamerijk as the Staten Generaal officially declared for the French side. At the end of the month, the gathered armies of Britain and Dytschland would fight on the fields west of Troyes. The two day long Battle of Dierrey would be a crushing defeat for the British forces, who would only be able to haphazardly escape through the personal sacrifice of their leader Horatio Fairfax, who would be killed by Dytsch grapeshot whilst leading the rear guard. Whilst Alfred II, present as a observer, was able to escape, the army was forced to leave behind about three quarters of the cannons she carried. Severely disarmed, Alfred II, now forcibly in personal command of his army, decided to retreat to Brittany, as the region was secure and it would allow him to receive reinforcements in opposition to staying out east as Caux was now under siege by another Dytsch army. On Christmas Eve, a combined Dytsch-French force would find the British garrison throwing open the gates of the French capital. Even though the leadership of both parties were partially hostile to eachother because of the continuing cold relationship between both kingdoms, they would celebrate Christmas Mass together in Notre Dame. The winter in France would pass calmly with the exception of a clash in the snow at the 13th of January at Alencon, a small British force made up out of the collection of retreating garrisons from Normandy would be forced to surrender to a army under the leadership of the French king himself. By the melting of the snow at the end of March of 1775 the Willem II van Oranje-Nassau would besiege Les Mans, which would fall on 21st of May after a week-long artillery bombardment and the storming of the ramparts. Brittany now laid open, where on the 14th of June the remaining British forces would be surrounded and destroyed with Alfred II being taken captive. The main reason was unexpected, because whilst at the time the Dytsch and British navies were dancing around eachother, looking for a battle, the reinforcements Alfred II had hoped for were diverted by his parliament pressured by young radicals, who much more focused on the Scottish invasion going on rather than supporting the foreign ambitions of their monarch. The fields of Europe were, however, perhaps the only place where Dytschland was seeing success.
Over in the New World, in the battle between Olivaria and Zilverstroom Olivaria had found herself triumphant in the clashes at the border, forcing a Stroomse retreat south, leading to the capture of Sint Dimpna, Nieuw Grevelingen and in the end Denderburg, commanding the mouth of the Zilverstroom delta itself. Whilst not able to fully exert control over the delta, the position and the not insignificant British naval station at Olivaria were able to grind the trade to and from Sint Nicolaas to a halt. Further north, the British Caribbean station was able to cut off Suriname from any reinforcements coming from the mainland of New Saxony, leading to a party landing in the colony at the start of summer 1775 with Paramaribo falling at the 7th of September. The only bright spot in the war in the western colonies was in Periosia, where spring of 1775 had seen the overrunning of Georgia, which the soldiers had already jokingly started to refer to as “Jorisland” in anticipation of an annexation much similar as had happened to Remigia. There was one area where the war was going much worse than out west, and that was out east, as the VOC came into conflict with the Yuan. The Company was completely overwhelmed on her positions in mainland Asia. Around New Year 1775 the first Yuan assault was taking place on the different VOC factories at the Malabar coast. Which was, about a month later, followed up by the beginning of the Siege of Busan where the Yuan armies were backed up by banners provided by Manchu Ula Nara dynasty ruling over Korea and its ancestral home. The governor in Batavia at the time, as did most of the other board members in Batavia, panicked, concerned about the loss of the positions of the Company. The French, whilst under attack were much more secure dure to trading on a much lesser scale in the region, and the board in Batavia decided to start borrowing large amounts from them, to hire mercenaries to organize a defense. The counter would come about late in in 1775, driving the Yuan from their invasion attempt of the French posessions and to cut the Company from the posessions on Formosa and Japan.
This is all ofcourse in contrast to the most important clash of the war. As mentioned earlier the Dytsch and British navy were dancing around each other since about the start of the war. Britain had much restored her strength since the Third Anglo-Saxon War, and both admirals were weary to put their navies to the test. Throughout 1774 and 1775, as the duty of the British navy remained the resupply and reinforcement of the armies on the continent, neither was willing to break the status quo, that being one of semi-innefective Dytsch blockade. But, with the end of spring had come the defeat of Britain in France, and the objective became the defence of Britain and the reinforcement of Scotland respectively. Both sides moved for action, which came on the 1st of September 1775. It was long past midsummer, and neither side was willing to completely commit to the battle that began past 5 that afternoon. Neither side could have been predicted that the battle would last, in total, 7 days. A true battle of exhaustion, it pitted a larger Dytsch navy against their British counterparts, but, starting the battle with the weather gage, the advantage of their own coast, but most importantly the experience of fighting the Spanish, and the drill and advanced construction techniques that had won them their hard fought status quo ante bellum, the British would slowly chip away at the advantage, till, just after combat had resumed on the 7th of September, the absolute number were about even but the remaining ships of the Dytsch navy were in a much worse shape, admiral Jakobus ‘t Hooft decided to retreat to port in Antwerp. The defeat was utterly humiliating, and shattered the image of the North Sea as the uncontested domain of the Dytsch navy. In Britain, which continued to suffer heavily under the strain of the war, the victory was seen as a gift from God, who spared England from a foreign invasion. When news of victory spread, it was immediately followed by the sounds of “Rule Britannia” coming from the town church. Originally written to commemorate that status quo against the Spaniards, it received a wholly new meaning with the victory at the Seven Day’s Battle.
Both sides, aware of the immense cost that continuing the war would entail, sought peace, coming to a quick agreement of status quo ante bellum. For Dytschland, the war meant a shattering of the political status quo. The army had performed her job perfectly, defeating the British forces in France. The navy had lost control of the North Sea, the Company had gone into utter disarray by an attack from her largest rival and even in the west the results hadn’t been spectacular. All of this meant that the merchants and the navy lost favour with the monarch. The most important part of this was the replacement of the king’s treasurer Laurens Schreurs, member of the Statenkamer for Flanders and a merchant in beer, by Frank von Kadelborg, a noble from the area of Arensperg. Not only that, but the young monarch continued to surround himself by/continued to be surrounded by more European focused aristocrats and military men. The navy would rally around to admiral ‘t Hooft, who despite the loss at the Seven Days Battle still held the confidence of the admiralty. ‘t Hooft would be the prime architect behind the reform plan, which would be achieved under heavy budgetary concerns as the government wouldn’t allow for the great sums of guilders to be divested to the program. Despite this, the engineers at the shipwrights of Antwerp and all lesser ports of the North Sea coast were able to decently retrofit the older ships, even if it was a very impractical solution. Besides this the reforms by ‘t Hooft would also unite the somewhat unorganized different units of the marines under the Royal Marines. Not only this, but those ousted from power in 1775 would begin to organize themselves to ultimately gain back the favours of the monarch and the levers of power, which started the move to the first party system of Dytschland. The unoficcial block that had formed behind the navy’s and merchants restoration of honour and power became mockingly known as the Zeeuwlui (a corrupted form of “sea lads”), who would adopt the term to themselves.
All of this falls into nothingness compared with the ramifications over in Britain. One of the few stipulations of the Peace of Caux was an effective bribe for the safe return of Alfred II, causing even greater unrest as the kingdom was effectively bankrupt after the war through losing her field armies, needing to raise more, loss of trade income and the lack of any reparations. Parliament had slowly grown into a split between the more “traditional” Puritan backers of the Cromwells and a more radical faction of Young Parliamentarians, a very loose coalition who favoured further extension of parliamentary perogatives, going from electoral monarchy to the abolition of the monarchy all together. The 1776 session of British parliament would be known as the Blood Stained Parliament, as Alfred II, with backing from the older Puritans and elements of the army forcefully disband parliament. The symbolism of this move was immediately noticeable to everybody, as the same move had, in the end, caused the downfall of the Hasting’s. Among those arrested was Barnaby Barker, member of parliament for Bristol, who was the one writing under the pseudonym John Wilkes. There had however been a fatal miscalculation by the king, he didn’t decapitate the Young Parliamentarians. Elements would flee to the Midlands and Yorkshire, where they would seize the arms stockpiles that had been built up to rally the defense of the north of England. The whole “affair” could have well turned into a bloody Second English Civil War, but it was the defection of Matthew Boscawen on the 30th of March 1777 that sealed the fate of the Cromwells. Boscawen would join with the revolutionaries held up at Birmingham to form the Council of the 12, a temporary government tasked with the taking of London. Alfred’s government was facing utter collapse at this point, as the defection of Boscawen indicated that the army wasn’t willing to fight their countrymen, especially with months’ worth of pay yet to be paid out. Whilst there was fighting over the course of 1777 and 1778, most of the seizing of land by the Council of the 12 was through negotiation with either nominally loyal soldiers or local councils made up of mutineering soldiers, local yeomanry and whatever local elite there was. Chatham was taken Boscawen on the 8th of April 1778, destroying parts of the navy and shattering the rest of it, who mostly fled to the ports of Southern Ireland before either leaving for the colonies or the reactionaries of continental Europe. The fall of Chatham opened the way to London, falling on the 4th of May, seeing Alfred II arrested and locked into the Tower, where he came face to face with Barnabey Barker, who was liberated from the Tower and hailed as “Citizen Wilkes.” There, hoisted on the shoulders of the soldiers, along with Boscawen, he proclaimed the republic.
It may be surprising to modern readers that the initial reaction to the arrest of “Citizen Cromwell” wasn’t as rash or shocked as a modern audience might think, especially in the context of future history. But the context is that this happened in a defeated Britain with a history of religious and political upheaval. If one were to take English history, from the Magna Carta onwards, the kingdom can be known to have a tradition of revolution, especially when foreign adventures fail. The Hastings driving out a foreign dynasty, the establishment of the Anglican Church and the English Civil War. At the time, there were also those who proposed the idea that the English Civil War and the Parliamentary victory had never been complete, as the Union returned to monarchy, and that this was simply the conclusion of the conflict that had only saw a truce from 1629 onwards, some 150 years ago by this point. But the point is that, despite the shock of the arrest, and later execution, of the British monarch and the proclaiming of the Republic of Albion, Europe, for lack of a better term, had other worries. But, this didn’t stop the Scots from, together with elements of the Dytsch navy (the admiralty saw renewed conflict as inevitable and was preparing for the occasion) smuggling arms into Britain to support the already brewing anti-revolutionary activity in Lancashire.
The first years following 1778 were focused on the Baltic, as the Finnish nobles had sought foreign support to free them from the yoke of the ex-Swedish king that now ruled from Åbo. To the Teutons, the Fins provided a much more useful ally against the Rus threatening their hold on the areas of Smolensk and Novgorod, not only to mention somebody less interested in their Baltic possessions. As for the Dytsch, Finland offered a large source of cheap timber, something that had come to be a large need for the reconstructing Dytsch navy. The war provided a good first testing for the new marines, which saw the navy regain some prestige with the fall of Åbo. But, all in all, the war provided to be a side show compared to what was going on in Germany. Despite the best efforts that the greater powers surrounding the shattered heart of the continent, the destruction of the HRE had left a power vacuum that the many former princes were hoping to fill. Along with this came war, destruction, famine and depopulation. Many at the time likened the time with the religious wars that killed around a third of the population in the southern Empire. Outside intervention also prevented power from coalescing around one singular power, as the aim of intervention was the maintenance of the balance of power. The result was that where once many had hoped for a bright, post Imperial future, freed from old superstitions and feudal institutions, now there was discontent, rebellion and the search for a alternative. The Republic of Albion continued to manifest her claim on Scotland, aiming to liberate it from foreign control, preaching unity to overcome the foreign oppressor. (Loyalty to London wasn’t unheard of, especially in Cumberland and Northumbria, but also in the Lowlands as Anglicans of both more traditional and Puritan leanings faced persecution by the Scottish crown.) Discontent would boil over in October 1781, in the city of Frankfurt, which had shed her republican institutions more than a century before. When Joachim I’s plans for a campaign up the Main river leaked, the local intelligentsia, inspired by what had happened in England, used it to rile the peasant and city dwellers up into anger for yet another war to be waged. On the 26th of October the order to fire on the masses was given, but “Bloody Frankfurt” would only prove to be the downfall of the duke. Much like in London, on the 28th the duke was dragged from his palace followed by a proclamation of a republic by a group of intellectuals led by Manfred Betz. The next month, the same happened in Vienna, where Hermann III von Habsburg was arrested by the citizens of Vienna after a devastating loss to the Duchy of Tyrol. December 12th saw a meeting of the leadership of both revolutions in Frankfurt, where they invited the rest of the former HRE to partake in what they christened the Council of the Germans, which stated goal was the creation of a citizens republic spanning all Germanic peoples to overthrow and protect against the forces of reaction. This was the act which brought the fear of revolution to Broenswiek. For the start of the 1782 session of the Staten Generaal, one seat was left unexpectedly unoccupied in such a time of crisis, Benjamin Paasche, a member of the Volkskamer from Breemn. On May 3rd, it became clear he had left for Frankfurt to partake in the Council, which lead to the immediate demand to have the Republic of Frankfurt deliver him back to Broenswiek in chains, a ultimatum which was refused, leading to a declaration of war on both Frankfurt and Albion, starting the Revolutionary Wars. The Frankfurter Republic, despite being the nominal gathering of all Germanic peoples of the continent, was unable to make a fist against the forces which invaded in the summer of 1782, so those who did not retreat behind the walls of Wiesbaden, Frankfurt or Mainz, dispersed into the wider countryside outside of the duchy. There, as missionaries of the revolution, they would convert the local population to their side, and began plundering whatever they could to strengthen their mishmash of an army. On the 8th of October, the Dytsch armies would storm the ramparts of Frankfurt, a strange day as the city was filled with, among many other things, the sounds of the organs playing music, among which was what would become the anthem of the German revolutionaries.
Der Gott, der Eisen wachsen ließ,
Der wollte keine Knechte,
Drum gab er Säbel, Schwerdt, und Spieß
Dem Mann in seine Rechte,
Drum gab er ihm den kühnen Muth,
Den Zorn der freien Rede,
Daß er bestände bis aufs Blut,
Bis in den Tod die Fehde.
Besides the political upheaval, the revolution also brought a renewed round of religious upheaval to Europe, as, much like 3 centuries before, a part of the clergy would side with the revolutionaries. The first phase of the German Revolutionary War would last until late 1784, when the eradication of the revolutionaries was deemed sufficient and the local authorities were left to handle for themselves again. What this meant was that as Dytsch troops marched north, to face the worsening situation Scotland, that there would be internal coups in the restored monarchies of Nassau, Frankfurt and Hesse, which would place the German revolutionaries again in control of the levers of power, but would keep the nominal façade of a monarchy alive, forming the Secret Confederacy, what was to be a basis for a Germanic state and future revolutionary conflict. For now, the German revolutionaries would lay low, but their whispers could be heard between the Meuse and the Bohemian Forests.
At this point in time, it was Britain that still stole the show. The Dytsch invasion of Lancashire was met by a jubilant population. Lancashire, much like centuries before it had been the last bastion of the Hasting’s, was the hotbed for royalist sentiment, along with Ulster in Ireland. Easily suppliable from Scotland, both regions had been in a state of low intensity rebellion for 2 years. The Dytsch-Scottish invasion was seen as the sign to rise in proper fashion. The great tragedy was the compliance that came along with it, as command assumed that the Republic of Albion was disorganized rabble that had inherited the mess left behind by the Cromwell’s. Truth was that the revolution had immediately began to arm itself, the revolution had cleared away the chaff and the anti-reactionary campaigns had also provided a fair bit experience. The implementation of a crude system of conscription also opened up a much larger manpower pool than her contemporaries. The invasion of Lancashire was met by a counter invasion of the Scottish border counties. Luckily for the Dytsch, the Christian and Royalist Army of Lancashire was able to infiltrate Lancaster and open up the city, restoring the flow of supplies after a short secession. The counterattack on the Scottish invasion of Ulster was, however, a much more devastating affair. The Battle of Moira saw the Scottish-Ulsterite army able to avoid complete collapse, but the evacuation of the Scottish army became necessary to avoid complete destruction. The Anglican Army of Ulster dispersed into the countryside, but their fight was a lost cause following Moira, their strength depleted and no help available from Scotland. It was even the case that the Albionic crossed into the Lowlands, forcing both the invading force in Lancashire and the reinforcements that had just arrived from the Dytsch mainland to be diverted to see of the invasion. The separation of the Leger van Holland from the Christian and Royalist Army of Lancashire allowed for the peasant army to be destroyed on its own, and would bring a decisive end to the invasion of England, as the Albionic armies simply held too great a numerical advantage. Lancashire would fall back in the hands of the revolutionaries on the 19th of January, by than only the marines that had served in Finland had become available to be sent to Scotland as the final “independent king of Sweden” had agreed to a exile in a castle in Oppland. The other armies of Dytschland still held the responsibility of having to conduct anti-revolutionary manoeuvres in mainland Europe. All of this meant that the authorities in London were able to direct their program of “anti-reactionary suppression” unhindered, a deeply divisive action to this day as many have labled the actions in Lancashire and Ulster as a genocide, but they’re still defended by the inheritors of the revolution to this day. Problems would continue throughout 1783, with the Dytsch-Scottish forces simply lacking the numbers to resist the revolutionary advance. The fortress at Newcastle would fall, followed by a defeat at the Battle of Kettleholme, which forced a retreat to the Highlands. After that, more reinforcements finally arrived but the momentum laid with the Albionic. The counteroffensive on the western Scottish coast would meet disaster just east of Ayr, where despite the disproportionately larger Albionic losses, their line held and the exhausted army of, by now demoralized Dytsch and ever badly equipped Highlanders, was barely able to escape the counterattack, leading to the fall of Aberdeen, the Scottish capital, during the winter of 1784-1785. Whilst by the summer 1785, reinforcements had arrived, it proved too little too late, as too late. The Battle at Loch Ness, would see the partial destruction of the Dytsch army and the retreat further northwards, where a line of defences would be built through the remaining free Highlands. Despite the situation, neither side was willing to sign a peace yet. On the 1st of July, both sides would meet at Inverness, and on the 5th a truce would be announced, where both sides would retreat forces from the Highlands, but it effectively surrendered the Lowlands and large tracts of the Highlands to Albion. The revolution would live on, and it started to consume all that surrounded it and itself…
As for the developments in Britain, the new peace would see the shattering of Europe’s religious status quo. What to this moment hasn’t been mentioned is the religious undertones of the Young Parliamentarian Rebellion. Puritanism had never enjoyed the full support of the British population. Northern England maintained a more traditional Anglican majority, and was heavily influenced by the efforts of the Catholic Church and its prostylization efforts in the English Mission organized from Edinburgh. The same was the case in Ireland, where the only part of the island where the Puritans held a proper sway over the structures of the Anglican Church of Ireland was in the Pale surrounding Dublin. The 18th century was, for continental Europe at least, a time of a partial libertine culture. Within Britain, this resulted in Puritan crackdown, but also a escalating counterreaction. This counterreaction was tied to the Young Parliamentarians and was let loose with their victory, and finally allowed to “bloom” following 1785. Clergy from all parts of (mainly northern) Europe would travel to Britain and both leave their small print on but take back the new theological positions proposed by, what was quickly developing into Veritatianism. A great (Catholic) reflection on the nature and development of Veritatianism would come during the political upheaval of the Interbellum. “In the end, all heresy is based on truth stretched out of proportion. The radical called “heretic” just loves his own partial truth more than the Truth that wider humanity (read: the Catholic Church) has found. It’s not strange that Veritatianism developed as a counterreaction to Puritanism with its destructive and suffocating tendencies. “Merry Olde England” provided to be almost a “Garden of Eden” from which the Englishman had fallen, now bound by the chains imposed by the Parliament of Saints and the kings that they had elevated. The Puritans certainly didn’t make it easier on themselves that they styled themselves after the Old Testament (like Protestant Europe in general does more) and the political and religious institutions of the Jews from before Christ, the old laws and customs from which He had set them free. “The revolutionary called Christ” provided to be the excellent vessel for political and religious discontent not only in the lands affected by Puritanism, but also in the rest of Europe as a vent for discontent coming from the counter-reformation, Enlightenment and secularisation that had taken place in the preceding centuries.” Whilst the focus is laid on England, this is only because Veritatianism only found herself “unleased” through what happened there, to say it is an offshoot of Puritanism or Protestantism in general isn’t quite correct, it should be seen as another offshoot of Western Christianity (as defined by the Great Schism of 1054). Throughout Europe, large parts of the clergy would again turn their backs on Rome too, with Veritatianism finding herself quickly in Scandinavia, France, the Po Valley and many urban centres in the Germanic lands.
Scandinavia is especially of note, as the curtailed ambitions came back to bite the Estrid-Roderlo. Scandinavia had always been partially dependent on foreign food imports, with harvests failing and the Teutonic Order in another ravaging war with the Rus. Blame fell squarely on the Estrid-Roderlo’s, not helping was their foreign origin, of the country that had helped negotiate peace treaties that had ended Scandinavian ambitions and could have placed Scandinavia in control over the Baltic food supply (the full extent of the treachery was of course unknown). As for Scandinavia, they also lacked what can be considered a pressure release valve on overpopulation that settlement colonies provided to be. On the 4th of April 1787 the discontent boiled over in the youngest part of the young kingdom, as in multiple cities in Central Sweden the urban citizenry rose. The situation would quickly deteriorate throughout the summer as draught struck and food prices continued to increase and the revolt spread to Skåne and soon to Denmark proper. Throughout the fall and winter of 1787, the government was eager to keep known as The Reaction going. Revolutionary warfare had already crossed into the New World by now, as the Albionic colonies found themselves in revolt against London, as it attempted to levy harsher taxes but also when it proclaimed the abolition of slavery following its victory in Scotland in 1785. The revolts would turn out to be bloody affairs as the Albionic ability to project power into her colonies was severely diminished, especially as the colonies were joined by elements of the former Royal Navy. There were however plenty loyalist sentiments, not to forget that where the authority of the loyalist troops was present, they would be inevitably bolstered by the slaves who were freed by them. The colonies in turn would also receive foreign support from those either opposed to the Albionic Revolution or the British in general. To finish off, the assembly that governed Olivaria had also invited Edgar Cromwell, nephew of the late Alfred II, to head the government, and was expected to be made king after victory. As for continental Europe this was also the time of Dytsch intervention in Austria to crush the republic set up in Vienna and restore the Von Habsburgs. The conflict in Scandinavia provided a threat as the loss of a major ally of strategic importance, but by the start of 1788, despite what was the practical begging of the representatives of Karel II, Fredrik I Estrid-Roderlo continued to refuse the assistance, but not without good reason, as it would only reinforce the idea as his rule as foreignly imposed one. This would change throughout the spring, as revolt also came to Pommerania and the recent acquisitions taken from Brandenburg. The revolutionaries, eager to make gains, decided to strike Holsteen on the 14th of April, which forced the Dytsch hand. The incursion was quickly defeated and the Army of Holsteen would march into Jutland, doing battle at Skjern on the 21st of May and restoring the authority of Göteborg in Jutland and Denmark as a whole. In Pommerania, the Army of Eastphalia would be joined by a unlikely ally, the Brandenburgers, motivated by a desire to hopefully regain recent losses but also a genuine willingness to combat the revolution. (Again making the point that Veritatianism cannot be qualified as Protestant.)
The victory in Demark, intervention in Scandinavia and the quashing of the self-styled Austrian Republic would be the last events of the reign of Karel II, as he would die on the 28th of August 1789.
Karel II, reigned from 1773 to 1789
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Whilst it might seem that I've been absent for a while, the truth is that I've actually put quite a bit of work into this. I've finished the actual game a while ago and threw it through the convertor, giving me a fine base to start working off of. There's much left to be done, but one thing I can present as a "final product" is the cultural map of Europe.
Pretty much the only thing finished on this map is culture and political borders, everything else still needs work.
As of now, there is one chapter left for EU4, spanning from 1789 to 1814, following that there will be a intermission, containing the second half of the reign of Johannes II. It won't be tied to either game, allowing me to "clean up" a bit and set up for 1821, where he will die and his son will be coronated, from where I'll pick up with Victoria 2
Pretty much the only thing finished on this map is culture and political borders, everything else still needs work.
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