Legacy of Metternich - Austrian AAR

[Forgiven]

Legacy of Metternich




Table of Contents
Prologue (1836-1838)
Chapter I (1838-1843)
Chapter II (1843-1844)
Chapter III (1844-1850)
Chapter IV (1850-1862)
Chapter V (1863)
Chapter VI (1863-1867)
Intermission, part I (1870)
Intermission, part II (1870)
Chapter VII (1870)
Chapter VIII (1870-1872)
Chapter IX (1873-1883)
Chapter X (1884-1888)
Chapter XI (1888)
Chapter XII (1889)
Chapter XIII (1889-1893)
Chapter XIV (1894-1897)
Chapter XV (1897-1899)
Chapter XVI (1900-1902)
Chapter XVII (1902-1903)


Prologue

We'll enter the story in 1836, with Klemens von Metternich having already reached age of 62, and still gathering more and more influence in matters of Austria and Europe in general. Yet despite being chancellor of Empire for Francis I of Austria, by the grace of God elected Roman Emperor, always August, hereditary Emperor of Austria, Metternich was still mostly involved in foreign matters while Francis I largely ran the internal affairs of Austria himself. Even now, 20 years after Congress of Vienna, Metternich was stubbornly seeking to maintain balance of power in Europe. With France as volatile as ever, even if last actual revolution was 6 years ago, and discussions of german unification gaining strenght Prussia might also be major threath to stability, should they seek such progress for their own benefit. Thus plethora of defensive alliances were signed in early 1836 with minor states of Germany, Italy and even Belgium to prevent it from joining with the French, better independent as clearly United Kingdom of Netherlands was unable to unify their country again...

Meanwhile, Francis I had been busy burying Austria in debt with his 'state industrialization plan' which included building at least one of these modern style manufactories in each of Austria's states.

The loans were rather short term, as policy of 'take everything for taxes' remained even if tax collectors had directions not to look too carefully so that what people managed to hide they could keep.

With nationalist winds blowing in Europe, Austria was in uncofortable position for it's population was very diverse. Indeed, a germanification program was agreed upon, seeing how this could turn against the state just as easily it didn't try to really force anyone to change and maintained that everyone should have decent living conditions. However, higher education would only be available in German and any agitators would be silently taken care of, while letting mass movements largely alone and leaving local police to deal with them. Unless, of course, things got badly out of hand.
Marjority of Austrians were employed in simple resource gathering so there might have been a point to the emperors industrialization drive.

Rest of 1936 was rather uneventful excluding failure of our botanical expedition...

...and a gold rush to Karlovac.

In January of 1837 however, a flaw in the policy of agreeing do defend 'every' small state became apparent, as William III of Netherlands finally found some guts and tried to retake Belgium. The defensive pact that had been signed of course never specifically said it was against the French, as Austria was not overtly hostile towards France, indeed, only Austro-French arguments were limited to courts of Piedmont, Baden and Switzerland. Thus we were now trapped to defend the Belgians against a conquest we had hoped would happen, but our prestige would not allow us to not defend Belgium. Luckily, we would not be alone in this as British were also willing to fight for Belgians.

Passage for a few Austrian armies was then negotiated.

In February, Metternich sought to secure rest of our borders while stuck in an ill prepared war in the Lowlands. Alliance with France was signed and Austria agreed to leave Sardinia-Piedmont to French influences.

Prussian reaction to our war was mild, yet they did not appriciate our efforts to steal away the Saxons from their sphere.

In April Austrian Armies finally arrived in Netherlands, to find the situation rather weird, a both countries own armies had crossed borders and were busy looting and pillaging but largely ignored each other, this looked rather promising and our troops agreed this was fine way to conduct a war.

Having received a word of our arrival, the Dutch did however, decide to seek decisive battle with the Belgians in Maastricht. As it became apparent they were likely to win, I. Armee joined the battle, if rather late.

In the end we managed to save remains of the Belgian army and drive the army of Elias Lucas away.

After assesing the situation, von Clam-Gallas chose to chase after the Dutch, engaging them again in Eindhoven, this battle, thou nominal Austrian victory, resulted in such heavy casualties that it was impossible for I. Armee to continue chasing Lucas, allowing him to recover a bit.

Instead III. Armee, having occupied Leeuwarden and Zwolle, took over chasing the Dutch, and with Lorenz Wittmann pushing the first half fast to battle, the second half arrived rather late. You may also note, that a Russian Army has arrived Maastricht, they did not, however, intervene on behalf of Netherlands, this is simple opportunism from them. Austria, sharing rather long border with Russia and being far from prepared for such a large scale war, choose to stay out of this conflict, leaving it to the British and Belgians, indeed, Austria would largely be in charge the Netherlands portion of war with Belgians securing Belgium and British blockading Russia.

This lead to another Pyrhic victory for Austria, indeed, when news of this reached Vienna another armee was sent towards the Lowlands. Elias Lucas was also gaining quite a fame with his succesful attrition tactics, even while he was always forced to withdraw.

Von Clam-Gallas had arrived from Eindhoven, leaving I. Armee for subordinate, to take over the more intact part of III. Armee and continued chasing Lucas to Rotterdam.

This time, Lucas was forced to withdraw towards Breda, but alas, with such losses to III. Armee, it was forced to join it's halves together again and occupation of Rotterdam was abandoned in favor of Utrecht.

The year had already progressed to November and Austrians were recovering from prior battles when Belgians, having beaten the Russians out of Belgia, chose to engage the Dutch again in Breda. (To give proper impression of how beat up those Austrian armies are, they should have 24 strenght, 2 cavallery divisions and 6 infantry)

Meanwhile, in austria, process of assimilating the 'minorities', ever so slowly, had ran into few minor problems, indeed, it was decided that when it comes to education, it's better to provide it for even them, just with right mix of Austrian unity propaganda.

By January of 1838 von Brudermann had arrived with the V. Armee and engaged the Dutch army still in Breda. At this time, there was talk in Vienna about reclaiming some part of the lowlands for the Austrian Empire, but Metternich convinced Francis I that such demands would probably not be appriciated by even their current allies.

With Dutch set in place, I. and III. Armee also joined in to flank and surround the Dutch army, however, Lucas managed to evade again, arriving in Utrecht.

While V. Armee stayed in Breda, the I. and III. Armee, now almost fully reinforced, chased after Lucas to Utrecht and then Amsterdam.

Finally, in June, a white peace was signed with all participants, by heavy urging of the British and some medling from the French. This was most timely as pressure in court to start presenting demands of territory to the dutch was growing. The lesson learned from this war was that Austrian officer corps were severely lacking.

 

[GrenadierSchube]

excellent an austrian AAR, i will be monitoring this closely, how does the political situation look? what are your goals?

 

[Baltasar]

Good to see an Austrian AAR, will be interesting especially considering all those different nations within the Hapsburg realm.

Those losses in the Lowlands were quite horrific, did you lose brigades out there?

Has the Holstein question been adressed alraedy?

 

[hoi2geek]

Let's have a vote!

Should Poland be given its independence or not?

 

[Forgiven]

GrenadierSchube: Oh my, it's barely 1838, Political situation hasn't changed all that much, jugling with Sphere against France and Prussia (and Russians show passing interest in Krakow). I didn't have all that clear goals, exluding one day forming Germany...

Baltasar: I think I lost brigade or two in the lowlands, I should probably have commited larger force form start but I had not actually expanded army at all when the war started. And no, Holstein question will remain unadressed for quite a while yet (I didn't even realize it existed..)

hoi2geek: what, independent poland? Hmm, We'll see.

Edit: Poltical situation as in domestically, ah, well, yes, being absolute monarchy and to follow Emperors plan, a Reactionary ruling party is in power currently... (just doesn't fit that well to remove 'Metternich's Faction' from power in the AAR so I had skip over that part)

Edit2: oh how wrong was, Prussia had actually already solved the Holstein question for it's own benefit.

 

[Ivir Baggins]

No Poland.

 

[Forgiven]

Legacy of Metternich - Chapter Two

Chapter One​

With the campaign in Netherlands having left Austrian military short in trained manpower, the Budget of 1839 included a rise to the wages of soldiers in hopes this would attract some of the nations poor to join the military despite the now apparent risks involved. Not everything was going so badly though, indeed, Switzerland had been included in our Sphere of Influence late in 1938 and almost all of the 'state factories' were now completed, leading into an influx of craftsmen in some areas. Rather suprisingly, it was Eastern Siebenbürgen where the Romanian minority really found factory work to their liking. Second area where the factories had no problem with hiring sufficient workforce were the Northern Italian provinces of Venetia and Lombardia.

If there was one profession that had truly gained experience in the war though, it would be the cutters and occasional doctor of Austrian army, having dealth with high atrition and numerous combat wounds a plenty. Slowly they managed to gather the improvised techniques and other bright ideas into comprehensive treatise.

Sadly, it was of little help when Tuberculosis broke out in Slovakia late in 1939. Thankfully it did not spread outside the state and rest of Austria was saved of the horror.

During 1839 Austria also signed alliances with Switzerland and Denmark, Denmark had already lost it's Holsteinian provinces to Prussia while Austrian attention had been in the lowlands, but both Metternich and Francis I were determined to oppose futher Prussian expansion. Army was under minor reorganization as Artillery was now added in to the normal Austrian Armee, thus the I. II. III. and V. Armees were now composed of 2 cavalry regiments, 6 infantry regiments and 2 artillery regiments, this would remain the standart composition for a long time.

Following 3 years were rather peaceful time, in Austria and in Europe in general.
Around new year of 1842, Belgium had overtaken Spain in power and was now considered to be 8th strongest nation in the world.

Politically Prussia had most of North German states under it's thumb, was allied with Sweden in the north and tentatively with Ottoman Empire. Russia had Sweden in it's sphere and had managed alliances with Netherlands and Spain. Ottoman Empire had a tentative alliance with Prussia, but not much else. Belgium with it's minor military power found strenght from it's alliances with Austria and British Empire. France and Austria were allied and in friendly competition in Italy as both sought to keep it disunited but peaceful, French having brought Sardinia Piedmont and Papacy into their Sphere and Austria maintaining Parma, Tuscany and Lucca under it's control, Austria, however, had allied whole of Italy including Two Sicilies while French only maintained alliances with it's sphere.

In Austria attention was mostly on industrial expansion, with Siebenbürgen and North Italy still showing the way.

In June of 1842 Hungarian parlament began speaking only Hungarian, while this was supposed to strenghten the 'independence' of Hungary within Austria, it in fact lead to diminishment in influence of Hungarians as such decision meant Viennese rarely bothered to hear anything from them due to linquistical problems.

In March of 1843 there was problem with Slavs, these nationalist movements withing Austria were continuous problem, but attempt was made to concentrate this movement on Ottoman side of the border, success in this regard, was minimal, but in the end the Slavic part of nation still remained peaceful.

In April, Prussia went step too far and forced a reaction from Austria, by seeking to aquire Jylland from Denmark. Belgium and Austria chose to honor their agreements with Danes and joined the war against Prussia.

 

[Alexspeed]

Thank you for taking part in the contest and good luck!
Linked your thread in the contest list, i will follow of course

Some of the images dont load for me completly, might be an imageshack problem and only temporary tough.
Thank you for abiding to the rules of the contest with your prolouge.
You could also include a chapter list at the start for easier navigation if you want to

 

[Qorten]

An excellent AAR, I'll be happy to follow it.

 

[Forgiven]

Alexspeed: Aye, seems to be imageshack thing, some of them don't load for me either all the time, but with enough refreshing I got all of them to load eventually...
I'll see about the chapter list once there are actually few chapters to link to, or few more pages of thread so things get hard to find...

Qorten: We aim to please, and if things go well I'll raise the quality a bit, I'm not quite happy with how this story is forming yet.

 

[Alexspeed]

I think the imageshack problem is that, when you try to load too many images from them at once, some of them will fail.
If you open the posts in single post view they work for me.

 

[Forgiven]

Legacy of Metternich - Chapter Two (for the second time, don't mind that =)

Chapter Two​

When the call from Denmark came, neither side had been expecting a war, Prussians confident that Austria would not interfere, and Austrians confident Prussia would not push them to interfere, thus neither had positioned their troops to the border in mass.

The war began with a Prussian army under Karl Behneke immediately crossing border to Troppau, V. Armee under von Brudermann moved in from Brno to engage them while the armies futher away from Prussian border began to move closer. Francis I advocated careful approach, acknowledging that Austrian army still wasn't up to war on this level, and it's reserves were still depleted from the previous war 5 years ago, amazing lapse in recruitment this, but alas, too late to worry about it now. Thus, Austria took a mainly defensive stance, hoping to draw Prussian army to fight on their terms. As the battle in Troppau raged, Prussians swithed fresh troops in. III. Armee had the opportunity to relieve Austrian troops in similar manner, but von der Tann, an Eccentric Genius commanding the Armee chose to go around the battle and chase after the retreating Prussians across the border instead, to Oppeln. This left it to I. Armee under Beck-Rzikowsky to hasten to aid to the V. but unfortunately, they did not make it in time. Thus, as usual, Austria began the war with a heavy losses, this time however, thanks to von der Tann, victory of similar size followed soon after in Oppeln.

But Prussian made their own mistakes as well, twice they sent troop of only 2 regiments to Olomoue to be easily defeated by the I. Armee, which then moved into Brno to take care of yet another Prussian army, the remnants of that first army to invade at Troppau. He then chased them to Hradec Kralove and forced them to surrender. Meanwhile, von Grünne had brought II. Armee to the front from Venetia, but the soldier were tired after the long march, to be finally defeated, once again in the already infamous province of Troppau. Beck-Rzikowsky however did not believe in ghosts of the past and engaged the now weakened Prussian army again at Troppau, reclaiming it for Austria, though not without again acruing some heavy casualties.

As result of these battles, Prussia had managed to Occupy Aussig in the north, and both sides had taken heave losses in process, indeed, the four Austrian Armees originally 30000 men strong each were now down to:
I. Armee 16475 men
II. Armee 17005 men
III. Armee 4952 men, effectively unable to engage any Prussian forces.
V. Armee 15195 men
However, situation was not as bad as that sounds, for while we knew nothing of Prussian divisions stationed against Denmark or Belgium, there were now only 2 Prussian forces left in Austria or near it's borders, one fresh troop of ~16 thousand and another beat up force of 12 thousand soldiers. And yes, once again, there was a battle of Troppau in progress.

Once again losses in Troppau were high, but having defeated the Prussians, Austrian generals pressed on, seeking to finally reach a decisive battle. Horst von Grünne had drawn every convict and beggar from Brno to reinforce his II. Armee, and now took lead in that hunt, first engaging them in Hradec Kralove, when they sought to link up with the other Prussian Armee now in Prague, the Prussians broke through, but were chased to Prague, again defeated there, chased futher to Aussig and Gorlitz. Being too stubborn to surrender, the last 2230 were finally wiped out in Cottbus, having dragged themselves in near continous retreat for last 4 months. With Prussia now open to Austrian troops, they moved in, as desperate attemp to distract us, Prussia managed to get Baden to throw out our advisors (France having earlier managed to get them out of our sphere.).

In April 1844, the already strained realm was thrown in turmoil as Francis I finally gave up on life at age of 76 (yes, the 67 in picture is vanity), having barely hung on for last year to make sure Austria would not fall due to his death, and indeed, transfer of power to Ferdinand I passed with minor complaints, even those were mainly from the royal family who were hoping that Ferdinand would accept being passed over in succession in favor of his nephew. Metternich however, managed to convince Ferdinand to take the throne. He was rather looking forward to this, as managing Francis had been rather challenging, he expected this to be a lot easier, and indeed, soon the running of Empire was practically left to Mettenich and few other ministers.

 

[Forgiven]

Ah, could be...
I used to use xs.to for images but it tends to be even more unreliable (lot of people's ISP's are blocking it...)

 

[Alexspeed]

Thank you for your second update, looks very nice

The picture of Franz the first, you cut it out of an original image and pasted it over the screenshot?
Or are you using a mod that replaces event pictures? (i dont know one that does that besides the africa mod i think)

 

[Forgiven]

I happened to be browsing histories of said monarch and happened to see the same picture in color so I did little cut and pasting
Confusingly though, that's picture of Ferdinand, not Franz...

 

[Alexspeed]

I happened to be browsing histories of said monarch and happened to see the same picture in color so I did little cut and pasting
Confusingly though, that's picture of Ferdinand, not Franz...

Ah you are right, the famous picture of Franz is the one where he sits on his throne, i remember now.
That picture is the one that was alittle strange and unfit to rule and gave the throne to Franz Josef

EDIT: I think the picture relates to the event text where Ferdinand is mentioned, now that i look at it

 

[Forgiven]

Legacy of Metternich - Chapter Two the Third

Chapter Three
​

By the time Austrian Army began occupying eastern Prussia, it's numbers had dropped from 40 regiments down to 25, but recruitment for a few more ones had begun, to speed up the job. Prussian army in the east had been truly beat and only occasional freshly raised regiments attempted to oppose the occupation, those were easily swatted aside. However, the occupation itself was a slow job, and it took a year to arrive in the following situation (March 1845).

While Austria was still bit confused, not quite sure who really was deciding what nowdays, and various claims and demands to be presented to Prussia when they'd finally acknowledge the defeat. In the end Metternich presented demands for Prussian part of Madgeburg and they conceded Hanover to Austrian Sphere.
Danes, having reclaimed their piece of Holstein were demanding it back from Prussia, and rather ambitiously, they also demanded Pommern. Belgians, not to be completely outdone, were demanding Rheinland. Inevitably with long war having weakened all the participants, other powers in Europe saw this as their opportunity to start their own wars. Luckily, they chose not to be entangeled in this war, but rather chose the moment to make other claims, now certain that we would not interfere. First to start were the Ottomans, relclaiming another bit of land from Egypt. Then came the Dutch, once again trying to unite the Lowlands, even Belgiums allies abandoned it to fight that war alone, Austria did privately admitting that it did not have anything to send over. Why the British too abandoned Belgium, is unknown. French felt it to be wrong that someone in europe wasn't in war, and declared war on Spain, who had been guaranteed by Prussia and Ottomans, but, well, they were otherwise occupied by now, and thou they did join the war, there was little they could do to help Spanish.

Considering the outrageous claims of everyone, Austria signed a separate peace treaty in July, where it was granted both Madgeburg and influence over Hannoverians.
The Danes would shortly after accept a peace for the rest of them, just granting them back the control of Danish Holstein.

The Austrian claim had naturally been part of a long term plan to reduce Prussian influence within Germany. Madgeburg had not only futher cut Prussia in half, it had brough Austria next to the awfully named states of Saxe-Weimar, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Hesse-Kassel, Braunschweig, Anhalt and naturally Hanover. Bringing them closer to Austria would however, have to wait a bit longer, as during the war we had actually lost Baden from the Austrian sphere, and pressure was mounting to keep our influnce within courts of Krakow, Switzerland and Saxony was also becoming harder and harder. It would indeed take all the way up to 1852 for Metternich to recover confident control over the old Austrian Sphere with Hanover now included, never mind getting the new neighbors out of Prussian influence. (August 1845 for this picture)

While the last years of Francis I had been those of Cultural growth, indeed literacy had more than doubled in the last decade, Ferdinand showed fashination in the concept of railways. Thus over a year long competition into design of Austrian railways began in June of 1846 and a year later there a plan for 'Kaiser Ferdinands Nordbahn' was approved and building of rudimendary railway from Vienna to Krakow was begun. Soon, the concept was taken on by the capitalists who by now had lots of steel to use and transport and there were rails going everywhere.

In 1848, Prussians tried to provoke us to declare war on them, but as this was so soon after previous war, we had to let this go as we still had an actual written truce in force.

Later in 1848, Tirol was struck by Smallpox, leading some to consider actually using those vaccination ideas that had been developed years earlier, however, it was deemed too expensive for general use.

With futher inventions in being made in field of Industry, among them Clean Coal and Mechanical Production, our industry was blooming. But with year turning to 1850, it was time to turn attention back to the state of the army, as after the war III. Armee had been dissolved, leaving Austria with only three standing armies, a study of how to improve our armies was ordered from the Military Academy. In other news, Denmark had taken Belgiums spot as a great power, even though the Netherlands had been forced to accept Status Quo once again.

Austrian Sphere in 1850:

 

[Alexspeed]

Another Update so soon, thank you Forgiven

I hope to read many more Chapter Two´s

Its an interresting Strategy you have done here by taking Madgeburg.
When i played Austria i normally start with getting Silesia, but i see your reasoning behind it to get the influence better up.
You maybe complemet that with researching the Techs that boost diplomatic influence?

 

[Forgiven]

I have gotten 'a bit' ahead of my writing by playing this one too far, must write while I still remember the events...

In hindsight, it might have been even better to get that one south german Prussian province of Württenberg the create the federation, I wasn't really able to capitalize on those neighborly relations with the new states for a long time as I had to spend so much of my influence to 'defend' the existing sphere. Thou I must confess I wasn't very efficient in defending it, had those lapses of attention when 'has been removed from your sphere' was first notice that I'd need to do something about it, not a big fan of the 'stare at diplomacy and let the game run'...

And I'd eventually come to research those technologies for futher influence, however, the idea actually did not come to me this early. And probably wouldn't have done much good, the aim to bringing those nations to sphere would after all be forming germany, and, well, as long as Prussia remains great power, that's not going to happen.

 

[Alexspeed]

Did you play this with 1.1 still or 1.2 allready? (sorry if you said it before but i dont think you said anything bout it)
Because the Ledger in 1.2 has a very helpfull addition for the influence that helpes enormously in keeping track about your SOI