Parliament changes quickly and dramatically in this universe, eh?
Steam - is this right on the timeline or a little early? Esp. in the US?
Steam - is this right on the timeline or a little early? Esp. in the US?
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I was reading the Sources of the English Language piece, and I couldn't help thinkin: Gosh, if written English is like that... erm... who dares to hear Cockney accent? 
[RGB: Very, at least in this period. Things will settle down a bit soon enough, though. This is the story-version of the fact that I went through most of the last few decades of the game at -2 or -3 stability due to wars and events...
As for steam, that itself is right on time, actually. Fitch's steamboat didn't become commerically viable, but did exist; I suppose its existence as a practical thing is early. And he did actually design a locomotive, which as in this history went nowhere. The end of the slave trade, though, is quite early, if you're looking for something coming too soon.
Kurt_Steiner: I certainly don't. I'm not even going to try to figure out all the different dialects, at least not yet. :wacko:
Apologies that the map at the beginning is very hard to read, but it would have been much to large regardless.]
Countries involved in the War of the Second Coalition, with locations of notable battles.
The first action of the war was, naturally enough, at sea. The main French fleet, under Vice-Admrial Francois-Paul Brueys d'Aigalliers, had already set out to sea before Britain's declaration of war and was headed in the direction of the Netherlands, hoping to force the Dutch fleet out and crush it in preparation for a sea-borne invasion. The Earl Spencer, the First Lord of the Admiralty, hastily sent a message to an already-prepared squadron under Horace Nelson to set out and deal with them. Nelson was only glad to do so; a decade of peace had, he felt, dulled his skills, and he was hoping for a good challenge to start the war. He had his hope, and more; the twenty-ship French fleet, centred around the massive 120-gun Dauphin-Royal, did not outnumber but certainly outgunned him,* and Brueys was by no means an unskilled opponent. Spencer sent his regrets that more ships, and certainly larger ones, were unavailable, but Nelson was confident that he could make do with what he had.
Setting out without delay, Nelson met the French in the Straits of Dover late in the afternoon on 7 April 1797. In a vital moment of surprise, Brueys was at the beginning of the battle unaware that France was in a state of war with Great Britain, and therefore believed that the squadron was simply one sent out to keep an eye on him, and had blundered too close. When it became obvious that they were in line of battle and preparing to fight, the shocked Brueys hastily signalled his own ships to form a line and swat away the inferior British force. The signal came somewhat too late, however; two of the French ships of the line, and one frigate, were caught in between the lines and (while blocking any fire from the French line) torn to pieces by fire from the British ships. With them out of the way, the two lines could get after each other properly. Nelson was not about to let the battle be conventional, however, and had already split his ships into two separate lines. Rather than exchange the usual broadside, he sent them in perpendicular; after absorbing fire from the enemy line, this allowed his own ships to "cross the T" and fire all along the bows and sterns of the French line, as well as disrupting said line. It required trust that the less skilled French gunners would not be able to correct for the approaching motion of Nelson's ships, and that his own lead ships (of which his flagship was one) could stand the fire.
Fortunately for Nelson, it was a complete success. Although the two lead ships certainly took a decent amount of damage, the French gunners constantly under- or overshot, and both reached the French line in good enough condition to rake the two ships they sailed in between. The four French ships that were sailed between paid the price for receiving point-blank fire from most of Nelson's ships. One of them was the Orient itself; that ship caught fire, causing even more confusion as all nearby ships turned to put as much distance between them and the Orient as possible, in anticipation for what came a short time after. Once the fire reached the powder stores, the ship exploded entirely, killing Brueys and most of those on board. The explosion was followed by an eerie silence; those on both sides were too shocked by what happened to continue fighting for quite some time. Once they did, the battle was quickly resolved in Britain's favour, as many of the already-damaged French ships struck their colours once they realised their advantage in guns had long since dried up. Nelson himself did not come out of the battle unscathed; one of the hits to his ship while sailing to the French line shattered his right arm (which was amputated) and destroyed his right eye, along with more temprorary wounds. Nelson, true to form, returned to command before the battle even ended, as soon as his recovery allowed.
The destruction of the Orient, by George Arnald (date unknown).
With France once again swept away from the sea, Britain now had to take to land. The Army of Flanders was already prepared by the time the order to advance came, and set out southward towards the Champagne region. Under the command of the young James MacDonald, an adventurer who had left to join the fledgeling Dutch republic in 1785, the 40,000-strong army was to intercept a 35,000-man French force rushing eastward to push the Count Palatine out of Alsace. There was little delay, as both armies went at the fastest reasonable marching speed, one to try and catch the other. MacDonald proved the faster, however, and met the French under Louis du Portail at Savigny-sur-Aisne,** blocking their passage to the east. The two armies deployed in the farmland between that town and the bridge at Falaise to the north; in the large open space, it seemed as if the British advantage in cavalry, both in numbers and ability, might be decisive. However, as said cavalry approached, the French formed into squares - formations that prevented the cavalry from outflanking them by having guns and bayonets bristling from every side. Shocked, MacDonald, prevented from a quick victory, was forced to send in his infantry and artillery. The presence of the latter prevented the use of squares, but as the British cavalry were in no condition to attack again, that chance was lost. Worse, in the middle of this second attack, MacDonald himself was struck by a stray shell and mortally wounded. The British eventually pushed the French back, but the two armies recieved approximately the same number of casualties, meaning that the advantage gained by the Coalition was minimal.
With the opening moves done, the strategic position could be properly understood. As usual, the French myopically paid little attention to the army in Bretagne, but said army was ever smaller and slower, as the focus of the first part of the war was blocking French armies in the east. In that direction, the Coalition armies were slow in gathering together; at this early stage, only the Army of Flanders and a 20,000-strong Palatine force in Alsace had been deployed. At sea, the British had absolute naval superiority in the Atlantic thanks to Nelson's astounding victory in the Straits of Dover; a proper fleet was in the organising, placed under the command of Admiral John Jervis (with Nelson his most prestigious subordinate) and sent to the Mediterranean to add that to the seas under British control. The remaining ships were placed under the direct command of now Vice-Admiral William Bligh and given routine patrol duty, a task Bligh expected to be boring and easy as the French would not dare to sortie when so outnumbered.
William Bligh, by Alexander Huey (1814)
It was anything but. Unknown to any British intelligence, the French had another plan prepared in case the British entered the war, one which called for an invasion of Ireland, led by the Brigade irlandaise itself and intended to cause a general revolt among the Irish with French backing. The ships set out from the Bay of Biscay in mid-June of 1797, hoping that speed would prevent Bligh (as Jervis had already reached Portugal on his way to the Mediterranean) from realising their presence until it was too late. Unfortunately for the French, two factors played against them. The first was that Bligh had already ordered some of his frigates to patrol the French coast as an early-warning system against just such an attempt, and one spotted the fleet within sight of the French coast. Here, the other factor came into play: British ships were, on the whole, faster than their French counterparts, and Bligh was able to receive the warning and send a superior squadron into position before the French could reach Ireland. On 25 June 1797, at the Battle of Crookhaven near Bantry Bay, Bligh met the French and smashed their fleet, a storm after the battle adding to the losses for the scattered and havenless French. The rebellion in Ireland never arose, as without French support such an attempt would be hopeless.
Not all went well for the British in the opening stages of the war, especially behind the front lines. Despite the presence of the Levellers in government and the relative liberalism of the British government for the time, revolutionary sentiment was not entirely gone in the Empire. Colonial uprisings, especially in the Cape colony, had little to no effect on the war itself, but one struck closer to home in May of 1797. With the Army of Flanders out of position, and news from the south mixed (the death of MacDonald meant that some believed that the British had in fact lost the battle), many in the French-speaking parts of the region began to call for reunification with France or the creation of a separate country allied with France. The result was a sudden and general uprising known as the "Peasants' War", which the French gleefully supported with everything they had. The Army of Flanders was ordered to continue its operations in France, but would recieve no reinforcement as that was diverted to form an army to deal with the rebellion. Back in Britain itself, however, the Patriots began to protest the war, noting the Walloon rebellion as an example of the violence that the Levellers were supposedly encouraging with their support of the Batavian Republic. The Patriots were unable to stop the war or push Fox out of the government, but they did introduce a sizeable amount of confusion and contention into Parliament at a time when Fox desperately did not need it.
For France, however, any help was quickly becoming too late. The rest of the Coalition was arriving in Alsace and Lorraine; the main army alone, composed of soldiers from the Palatinate, Baden, Austria, and the Netherlands, reached well over 100,000 men by the middle of 1798, the largest single army ever organised in Europe to that point. With any need to screen such a large force well in the past, the Army of Flanders, now under the command of Charles Cornwallis, could strike further inland. His first goal was Paris, which he took on 5 May 1798; it was at the old Capetian capital that the war took an odd turn. The presence of a British army so deep within French territory suddenly reignited the old revolutionary fervour amongst the French, and soon after the capture of Paris, a group of the leading intellectuals of the country, headed by Jean-Francois Rewbell, an ethnically French lawyer from Lorraine, and Paul de Barras, an ambitious Provencal noble. With the support of several important administrators of Paris, the two declared a French Republic and sent a message to the British asking for their support. Cornwallis, of course, could not make such a decision, and so the matter was referred to Parliament. The result was yet another loud debate, as the Patriots felt that the addition of another republic to Europe would only make their spread faster, and warned that Britain might be the next country struck by anti-monarchist revolution. Elisabeth unofficially implied her support for the French republicans, while Fox did so more openly and directly.
The Patriots were rapidly losing power, however, as many of the upper middle class were becoming tired of their anti-Batavian standpoint. After several of them stormed out of Parliament and resigned their seats in disgust, on 23 July 1798 Parliament passed a somewhat compromise measure, recommending in quite diplomatic language that King Louis XI of France allow for a representative assembly for his own people; at the same time, the Council of State sent orders to the British armies in France to leave any intellectual and popular assemblies be until a more concrete understanding of what the post-war situation would be could be gained. Louis absolutely refused the former, obsessed as he was with his own divine right to absolute rule over his subjects, leading to the assemblies mentioned in the latter becoming more numerous and powerful. Even well outside of Coalition-controlled territory, revolutionary societies and direct rebellion began to appear, resulting in the diversion of vital forces from the front lines. Cornwallis pressed his advantage; on 21 May, a smaller British army under Arthur Wellesley, fresh from defeating the Walloons at Waterloo outside Brussels early in the year, attacked Calais and captured it easily. Calais had been a symbol of French resistance against the British ever since its success in holding off the Duke of York's assaults during the War of the Spanish Succession, and its loss was a huge blow to French morale. Cornwallis himself continued onward from Paris, and by 16 Nov Blois itself was in his hands.
Jervis and Nelson, in the meantime, had mostly been frustratingly idle. Based in Naples, they kept a close eye on the French Mediterranean coast, but the French fleet there aboslutely refused to sail out of Toulon, knowing that any attempt to do so would result in their own destruction. Nelson, for his part, had found a way to pass the time; he made the acquaintance of the British ambassador there, William Hamilton. More infamously, he met Hamilton's wife, Emma Hamilton, at the same time, and the two, entirely with William's knowledge and perhaps even encouragement, entered into an affair which resulted in the birth of a daughter, Horatia. The fact that the affair was so open only added to its shocking nature; Jervis was bothered that Nelson was paying more attention to Emma than he was to the French, but with the Toulon fleet entirely static he felt that it was an acceptable matter. Eventually, however, the two recieved new orders, as well as a small transport fleet with a few thousand soldiers: they were to seize the island of Corsica, joining with a Papal army and Corsican rebels in pushing the French off the island.
Emma Hamilton, by George Romney (1785)
The rebellion was led, militarily at least, by a young, revolutionary-minded Corsican noble, Napoleone di Buonaparte, son of the late Corsican representative to King Louis. Buonaparte had joined the French military and been well-educated in its ways; however, with the Batavian rebellion, his revolutionary opinions surfaced, and he fell out with Louis' government. With the main figure of Corsican resistance against France, Pasquale Paoli, in exile in Britain, it was Buonaparte who began agitating for an overthrow of the French, but it was not until the middle of 1798 that he finally had an opportunity. Noting the possibility of British aid, he sent a message to Paoli asking what might be needed to gain such assistance. Paoli relayed the message to Parliament and Elisabeth, along with the offer to make the latter Queen of Corsica in exchange for official guarantees of certain important rights. Parliament quickly agreed, and Paoli, along with what soldiers could be spared, was sent to the Mediterranean to meet with Jervis. Nelson, as soon as he was informed, quickly returned to military form, leaving the concerned and then-pregnant Emma Hamilton behind as he boarded Jervis' flagship, the 110-gun HMS Victory.
Jervis had a special role in mind for Nelson. Although Nelson had made his fame fighting the French and Dutch at sea, Jervis knew that the young man had a true genius for coordinating naval and land actions, as he had shown in putting down the Caribbean rebellions in the 1780s. Nelson, therefore, would recommend to Jervis precisely how best to support Buonaparte and Paoli's land armies by sea. Nelson noted several potential landing points, emphasised the importance of capturing the major fortresses at Bastia and Calvi, and screening the invasion against the almost inevitable desperate attack by the fleet in Toulon. Most of this was simple common sense, but Nelson also insisted that Jervis keep in close contact with Buonaparte and Paoli and listen to their requests rather than attempting to use his rank against them, as proper coordination between the two would lead to either the success or failure of the campaign.*** Calvi was decided to be the first target, and British and Papal soldiers, along with Paoli, landed there in November of 1798, quickly overruning the fortress. Buonaparte and Paoli were given command of the army, capturing Corte in mid-December and moving to Bastia as Jervis' fleet screened the coast.
Pasquale Paoli, by Richard Cosway (date unknown) and Napoleone di Buonaparte, by Antoine Gros (1801)
On 3 January 1799, both fleet and army reached the large garrison at the same time. The Toulon fleet was nowhere to be seen - it never set out, even with this imminent threat - and so both forces could direct their attention at the fortress. Nelson pressed for an immediate attack, as did Buonaparte; Jervis and Paoli were more cautious, but agreed to the attack the next day once the others made their case. Once the two forces attacked, the result was barely in doubt; Jervis and Nelson easly took the seaside forts out of commission with their cannon, while the tactically brilliant Buonaparte overran the landward garrisons with apparent effortlessness. The fighting, however, cost Nelson his life; at one point, a sniper in one of the fortifications pierced his lung and broke his back, mortally wounding him. Still, Corsica was safely and solidly in British hands, Paoli being appointed President of the Corsican assembly and Buonaparte the commander of the Corsican military. Nelson's body was preserved, returned to Britain, and buried, after a state funeral, at Saint Paul's, in a coffin made from wood salvaged from the Orient.
The Apotheosis of Nelson, by Scott Legrand (1810s); in an error, the painter showed Nelson as having lost his left arm, rather than right.
The war was, of course, not yet finished, as a large French army under the Marquis de la Fayette marched north to try and retake Blois and Paris. By this point, the Batavian Republic was in no danger, and Alsace and Lorraine likely to return to Palatine control (as well as Calais and Corsica likely to become British), but the Coalition was tired of constant trouble from the French monarchy, and intended to put France to rest once and for all. This goal could not be achieved until the French military was entirely destroyed, and the Blois-Navarre monarchy could be replaced throught the entire country with whatever post-war regime the Coalition agreed to. On 5 May 1799, la Fayette's army, having pushed north of the Loire river in an attempt to cut Blois off from supply lines from Bretagne and the Channel, was met at Vermeil in Maine by the British under Wellesley, and the latter swept the former aside with surprising ease. Wellesley was able to use the folds of the land to his advantage, surprising the French attack with a withering volley at close range from a previously-hidden line of soldiers. This was followed by the arrival of a German cavalry force, combined from all the states of the Empire, under Gebhard von Bluecher, who swept the field clean of French soldiers.
France now lay defenceless, and the Coalition continued southward. General revolt in southern France removed Louis' last stronghold, and the king himself was captured by revolutionaries in late June, sent north under heavy guard to stand trial in Blois. The revolutionary government itself signed several agreements: Corsica and Calais were surrendered to Britain on 10 July, Alsace and Lorraine to the Palatinate on 17 November, and portions of the Free County of Burgundy to Helvetia on the same day. After two years of bloody and wide-ranging war, and a decade and a half of revolution throughout western Europe, the situation in that region had been changed permanently and shockingly. Two new republics now stood where monarchies had been, and the various nations of Europe met in Vienna to put forth a permanent agreement on how the whole continent would look going into the 19th century.
_________
*Nelson had only frigates and third-rate 74-gun ships, including his flagship the HMS Vanguard and the decidedly poorly-named HMS Goliath.
**The fact that the town had the same name as the site of d'Audley's infamous 1397 defeat was not lost on the well-educated MacDonald.
As for steam, that itself is right on time, actually. Fitch's steamboat didn't become commerically viable, but did exist; I suppose its existence as a practical thing is early. And he did actually design a locomotive, which as in this history went nowhere. The end of the slave trade, though, is quite early, if you're looking for something coming too soon.
Kurt_Steiner: I certainly don't. I'm not even going to try to figure out all the different dialects, at least not yet. :wacko:
Apologies that the map at the beginning is very hard to read, but it would have been much to large regardless.]
Countries involved in the War of the Second Coalition, with locations of notable battles.
The first action of the war was, naturally enough, at sea. The main French fleet, under Vice-Admrial Francois-Paul Brueys d'Aigalliers, had already set out to sea before Britain's declaration of war and was headed in the direction of the Netherlands, hoping to force the Dutch fleet out and crush it in preparation for a sea-borne invasion. The Earl Spencer, the First Lord of the Admiralty, hastily sent a message to an already-prepared squadron under Horace Nelson to set out and deal with them. Nelson was only glad to do so; a decade of peace had, he felt, dulled his skills, and he was hoping for a good challenge to start the war. He had his hope, and more; the twenty-ship French fleet, centred around the massive 120-gun Dauphin-Royal, did not outnumber but certainly outgunned him,* and Brueys was by no means an unskilled opponent. Spencer sent his regrets that more ships, and certainly larger ones, were unavailable, but Nelson was confident that he could make do with what he had.
Setting out without delay, Nelson met the French in the Straits of Dover late in the afternoon on 7 April 1797. In a vital moment of surprise, Brueys was at the beginning of the battle unaware that France was in a state of war with Great Britain, and therefore believed that the squadron was simply one sent out to keep an eye on him, and had blundered too close. When it became obvious that they were in line of battle and preparing to fight, the shocked Brueys hastily signalled his own ships to form a line and swat away the inferior British force. The signal came somewhat too late, however; two of the French ships of the line, and one frigate, were caught in between the lines and (while blocking any fire from the French line) torn to pieces by fire from the British ships. With them out of the way, the two lines could get after each other properly. Nelson was not about to let the battle be conventional, however, and had already split his ships into two separate lines. Rather than exchange the usual broadside, he sent them in perpendicular; after absorbing fire from the enemy line, this allowed his own ships to "cross the T" and fire all along the bows and sterns of the French line, as well as disrupting said line. It required trust that the less skilled French gunners would not be able to correct for the approaching motion of Nelson's ships, and that his own lead ships (of which his flagship was one) could stand the fire.
Fortunately for Nelson, it was a complete success. Although the two lead ships certainly took a decent amount of damage, the French gunners constantly under- or overshot, and both reached the French line in good enough condition to rake the two ships they sailed in between. The four French ships that were sailed between paid the price for receiving point-blank fire from most of Nelson's ships. One of them was the Orient itself; that ship caught fire, causing even more confusion as all nearby ships turned to put as much distance between them and the Orient as possible, in anticipation for what came a short time after. Once the fire reached the powder stores, the ship exploded entirely, killing Brueys and most of those on board. The explosion was followed by an eerie silence; those on both sides were too shocked by what happened to continue fighting for quite some time. Once they did, the battle was quickly resolved in Britain's favour, as many of the already-damaged French ships struck their colours once they realised their advantage in guns had long since dried up. Nelson himself did not come out of the battle unscathed; one of the hits to his ship while sailing to the French line shattered his right arm (which was amputated) and destroyed his right eye, along with more temprorary wounds. Nelson, true to form, returned to command before the battle even ended, as soon as his recovery allowed.
The destruction of the Orient, by George Arnald (date unknown).
With France once again swept away from the sea, Britain now had to take to land. The Army of Flanders was already prepared by the time the order to advance came, and set out southward towards the Champagne region. Under the command of the young James MacDonald, an adventurer who had left to join the fledgeling Dutch republic in 1785, the 40,000-strong army was to intercept a 35,000-man French force rushing eastward to push the Count Palatine out of Alsace. There was little delay, as both armies went at the fastest reasonable marching speed, one to try and catch the other. MacDonald proved the faster, however, and met the French under Louis du Portail at Savigny-sur-Aisne,** blocking their passage to the east. The two armies deployed in the farmland between that town and the bridge at Falaise to the north; in the large open space, it seemed as if the British advantage in cavalry, both in numbers and ability, might be decisive. However, as said cavalry approached, the French formed into squares - formations that prevented the cavalry from outflanking them by having guns and bayonets bristling from every side. Shocked, MacDonald, prevented from a quick victory, was forced to send in his infantry and artillery. The presence of the latter prevented the use of squares, but as the British cavalry were in no condition to attack again, that chance was lost. Worse, in the middle of this second attack, MacDonald himself was struck by a stray shell and mortally wounded. The British eventually pushed the French back, but the two armies recieved approximately the same number of casualties, meaning that the advantage gained by the Coalition was minimal.
With the opening moves done, the strategic position could be properly understood. As usual, the French myopically paid little attention to the army in Bretagne, but said army was ever smaller and slower, as the focus of the first part of the war was blocking French armies in the east. In that direction, the Coalition armies were slow in gathering together; at this early stage, only the Army of Flanders and a 20,000-strong Palatine force in Alsace had been deployed. At sea, the British had absolute naval superiority in the Atlantic thanks to Nelson's astounding victory in the Straits of Dover; a proper fleet was in the organising, placed under the command of Admiral John Jervis (with Nelson his most prestigious subordinate) and sent to the Mediterranean to add that to the seas under British control. The remaining ships were placed under the direct command of now Vice-Admiral William Bligh and given routine patrol duty, a task Bligh expected to be boring and easy as the French would not dare to sortie when so outnumbered.
William Bligh, by Alexander Huey (1814)
It was anything but. Unknown to any British intelligence, the French had another plan prepared in case the British entered the war, one which called for an invasion of Ireland, led by the Brigade irlandaise itself and intended to cause a general revolt among the Irish with French backing. The ships set out from the Bay of Biscay in mid-June of 1797, hoping that speed would prevent Bligh (as Jervis had already reached Portugal on his way to the Mediterranean) from realising their presence until it was too late. Unfortunately for the French, two factors played against them. The first was that Bligh had already ordered some of his frigates to patrol the French coast as an early-warning system against just such an attempt, and one spotted the fleet within sight of the French coast. Here, the other factor came into play: British ships were, on the whole, faster than their French counterparts, and Bligh was able to receive the warning and send a superior squadron into position before the French could reach Ireland. On 25 June 1797, at the Battle of Crookhaven near Bantry Bay, Bligh met the French and smashed their fleet, a storm after the battle adding to the losses for the scattered and havenless French. The rebellion in Ireland never arose, as without French support such an attempt would be hopeless.
Not all went well for the British in the opening stages of the war, especially behind the front lines. Despite the presence of the Levellers in government and the relative liberalism of the British government for the time, revolutionary sentiment was not entirely gone in the Empire. Colonial uprisings, especially in the Cape colony, had little to no effect on the war itself, but one struck closer to home in May of 1797. With the Army of Flanders out of position, and news from the south mixed (the death of MacDonald meant that some believed that the British had in fact lost the battle), many in the French-speaking parts of the region began to call for reunification with France or the creation of a separate country allied with France. The result was a sudden and general uprising known as the "Peasants' War", which the French gleefully supported with everything they had. The Army of Flanders was ordered to continue its operations in France, but would recieve no reinforcement as that was diverted to form an army to deal with the rebellion. Back in Britain itself, however, the Patriots began to protest the war, noting the Walloon rebellion as an example of the violence that the Levellers were supposedly encouraging with their support of the Batavian Republic. The Patriots were unable to stop the war or push Fox out of the government, but they did introduce a sizeable amount of confusion and contention into Parliament at a time when Fox desperately did not need it.
For France, however, any help was quickly becoming too late. The rest of the Coalition was arriving in Alsace and Lorraine; the main army alone, composed of soldiers from the Palatinate, Baden, Austria, and the Netherlands, reached well over 100,000 men by the middle of 1798, the largest single army ever organised in Europe to that point. With any need to screen such a large force well in the past, the Army of Flanders, now under the command of Charles Cornwallis, could strike further inland. His first goal was Paris, which he took on 5 May 1798; it was at the old Capetian capital that the war took an odd turn. The presence of a British army so deep within French territory suddenly reignited the old revolutionary fervour amongst the French, and soon after the capture of Paris, a group of the leading intellectuals of the country, headed by Jean-Francois Rewbell, an ethnically French lawyer from Lorraine, and Paul de Barras, an ambitious Provencal noble. With the support of several important administrators of Paris, the two declared a French Republic and sent a message to the British asking for their support. Cornwallis, of course, could not make such a decision, and so the matter was referred to Parliament. The result was yet another loud debate, as the Patriots felt that the addition of another republic to Europe would only make their spread faster, and warned that Britain might be the next country struck by anti-monarchist revolution. Elisabeth unofficially implied her support for the French republicans, while Fox did so more openly and directly.
The Patriots were rapidly losing power, however, as many of the upper middle class were becoming tired of their anti-Batavian standpoint. After several of them stormed out of Parliament and resigned their seats in disgust, on 23 July 1798 Parliament passed a somewhat compromise measure, recommending in quite diplomatic language that King Louis XI of France allow for a representative assembly for his own people; at the same time, the Council of State sent orders to the British armies in France to leave any intellectual and popular assemblies be until a more concrete understanding of what the post-war situation would be could be gained. Louis absolutely refused the former, obsessed as he was with his own divine right to absolute rule over his subjects, leading to the assemblies mentioned in the latter becoming more numerous and powerful. Even well outside of Coalition-controlled territory, revolutionary societies and direct rebellion began to appear, resulting in the diversion of vital forces from the front lines. Cornwallis pressed his advantage; on 21 May, a smaller British army under Arthur Wellesley, fresh from defeating the Walloons at Waterloo outside Brussels early in the year, attacked Calais and captured it easily. Calais had been a symbol of French resistance against the British ever since its success in holding off the Duke of York's assaults during the War of the Spanish Succession, and its loss was a huge blow to French morale. Cornwallis himself continued onward from Paris, and by 16 Nov Blois itself was in his hands.
Jervis and Nelson, in the meantime, had mostly been frustratingly idle. Based in Naples, they kept a close eye on the French Mediterranean coast, but the French fleet there aboslutely refused to sail out of Toulon, knowing that any attempt to do so would result in their own destruction. Nelson, for his part, had found a way to pass the time; he made the acquaintance of the British ambassador there, William Hamilton. More infamously, he met Hamilton's wife, Emma Hamilton, at the same time, and the two, entirely with William's knowledge and perhaps even encouragement, entered into an affair which resulted in the birth of a daughter, Horatia. The fact that the affair was so open only added to its shocking nature; Jervis was bothered that Nelson was paying more attention to Emma than he was to the French, but with the Toulon fleet entirely static he felt that it was an acceptable matter. Eventually, however, the two recieved new orders, as well as a small transport fleet with a few thousand soldiers: they were to seize the island of Corsica, joining with a Papal army and Corsican rebels in pushing the French off the island.
Emma Hamilton, by George Romney (1785)
The rebellion was led, militarily at least, by a young, revolutionary-minded Corsican noble, Napoleone di Buonaparte, son of the late Corsican representative to King Louis. Buonaparte had joined the French military and been well-educated in its ways; however, with the Batavian rebellion, his revolutionary opinions surfaced, and he fell out with Louis' government. With the main figure of Corsican resistance against France, Pasquale Paoli, in exile in Britain, it was Buonaparte who began agitating for an overthrow of the French, but it was not until the middle of 1798 that he finally had an opportunity. Noting the possibility of British aid, he sent a message to Paoli asking what might be needed to gain such assistance. Paoli relayed the message to Parliament and Elisabeth, along with the offer to make the latter Queen of Corsica in exchange for official guarantees of certain important rights. Parliament quickly agreed, and Paoli, along with what soldiers could be spared, was sent to the Mediterranean to meet with Jervis. Nelson, as soon as he was informed, quickly returned to military form, leaving the concerned and then-pregnant Emma Hamilton behind as he boarded Jervis' flagship, the 110-gun HMS Victory.
Jervis had a special role in mind for Nelson. Although Nelson had made his fame fighting the French and Dutch at sea, Jervis knew that the young man had a true genius for coordinating naval and land actions, as he had shown in putting down the Caribbean rebellions in the 1780s. Nelson, therefore, would recommend to Jervis precisely how best to support Buonaparte and Paoli's land armies by sea. Nelson noted several potential landing points, emphasised the importance of capturing the major fortresses at Bastia and Calvi, and screening the invasion against the almost inevitable desperate attack by the fleet in Toulon. Most of this was simple common sense, but Nelson also insisted that Jervis keep in close contact with Buonaparte and Paoli and listen to their requests rather than attempting to use his rank against them, as proper coordination between the two would lead to either the success or failure of the campaign.*** Calvi was decided to be the first target, and British and Papal soldiers, along with Paoli, landed there in November of 1798, quickly overruning the fortress. Buonaparte and Paoli were given command of the army, capturing Corte in mid-December and moving to Bastia as Jervis' fleet screened the coast.
Pasquale Paoli, by Richard Cosway (date unknown) and Napoleone di Buonaparte, by Antoine Gros (1801)
On 3 January 1799, both fleet and army reached the large garrison at the same time. The Toulon fleet was nowhere to be seen - it never set out, even with this imminent threat - and so both forces could direct their attention at the fortress. Nelson pressed for an immediate attack, as did Buonaparte; Jervis and Paoli were more cautious, but agreed to the attack the next day once the others made their case. Once the two forces attacked, the result was barely in doubt; Jervis and Nelson easly took the seaside forts out of commission with their cannon, while the tactically brilliant Buonaparte overran the landward garrisons with apparent effortlessness. The fighting, however, cost Nelson his life; at one point, a sniper in one of the fortifications pierced his lung and broke his back, mortally wounding him. Still, Corsica was safely and solidly in British hands, Paoli being appointed President of the Corsican assembly and Buonaparte the commander of the Corsican military. Nelson's body was preserved, returned to Britain, and buried, after a state funeral, at Saint Paul's, in a coffin made from wood salvaged from the Orient.
The Apotheosis of Nelson, by Scott Legrand (1810s); in an error, the painter showed Nelson as having lost his left arm, rather than right.
The war was, of course, not yet finished, as a large French army under the Marquis de la Fayette marched north to try and retake Blois and Paris. By this point, the Batavian Republic was in no danger, and Alsace and Lorraine likely to return to Palatine control (as well as Calais and Corsica likely to become British), but the Coalition was tired of constant trouble from the French monarchy, and intended to put France to rest once and for all. This goal could not be achieved until the French military was entirely destroyed, and the Blois-Navarre monarchy could be replaced throught the entire country with whatever post-war regime the Coalition agreed to. On 5 May 1799, la Fayette's army, having pushed north of the Loire river in an attempt to cut Blois off from supply lines from Bretagne and the Channel, was met at Vermeil in Maine by the British under Wellesley, and the latter swept the former aside with surprising ease. Wellesley was able to use the folds of the land to his advantage, surprising the French attack with a withering volley at close range from a previously-hidden line of soldiers. This was followed by the arrival of a German cavalry force, combined from all the states of the Empire, under Gebhard von Bluecher, who swept the field clean of French soldiers.
France now lay defenceless, and the Coalition continued southward. General revolt in southern France removed Louis' last stronghold, and the king himself was captured by revolutionaries in late June, sent north under heavy guard to stand trial in Blois. The revolutionary government itself signed several agreements: Corsica and Calais were surrendered to Britain on 10 July, Alsace and Lorraine to the Palatinate on 17 November, and portions of the Free County of Burgundy to Helvetia on the same day. After two years of bloody and wide-ranging war, and a decade and a half of revolution throughout western Europe, the situation in that region had been changed permanently and shockingly. Two new republics now stood where monarchies had been, and the various nations of Europe met in Vienna to put forth a permanent agreement on how the whole continent would look going into the 19th century.
_________
*Nelson had only frigates and third-rate 74-gun ships, including his flagship the HMS Vanguard and the decidedly poorly-named HMS Goliath.
**The fact that the town had the same name as the site of d'Audley's infamous 1397 defeat was not lost on the well-educated MacDonald.
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With the war ended, the Holy Roman Emperor, Franz of Austria, invited the various nations of Europe to engage in proper peace negotiations in his capital of Vienna. His main representative, and the leader of the thus-named "Congress of Vienna", was Clemens Wenzel von Metternich, a young diplomat already becoming respected by the various major powers with which he was constantly sent to treat. Metternich himself had spent several years in Britain early in the 1790s, partially in order to speed the negotiations of a possible alliance against France while Fox' government was still in power at the time. The fall of said government in 1794 meant that Metternich returned empty-handed, but as this was quite obviously not his fault it did nothing to tarnish his growing reputation. However, he would not find his goal of humiliating and hamstringing France easy; said young republic sent, if such is possible, an even more respected and certainly more skilled diplomat: Charles Maurice de Talleyrand. Talleyrand knew that nothing short of direct divine intervention could restore France to its pre-war boundaries, but he could easily play the various powers of Europe off each other to his own, and France's, advantage.
He needed all the advantages he could get. The Congress had the authority of readjusting the territorial changes made, but some matters were considered as simply natural and not in need of debate: Corsica in personal union with Britain, Alsace and Lorraine back to the Palatinate, and at the very least some portions of the Free County of Burgundy to the Helvetian Confederation. Metternich, along with most of the other German nations, wanted something more: division of the various parts of France, particularly making Provence and the various Occitan regions into independent states, as well as further expansion of the British Netherlands. Talleyrand's defence against this possibility was his neighbour to the north; he stated that if France were to be divided, he would "unfortunately" be "forced" to recognise Elisabeth's long-standing and generally considered long-dead claim to the French throne, placing half of western Europe under Britan's control. This, obviously, went over very poorly with the other powers, who were justifiably afraid that such a powerful Britain would rapidly dominate Europe as a whole. Talleyrand, however, also knew that Britain would never accept such an outcome, as she needed now-friendly France to be able to stand up for herself as an ally against the very real possibility of a surge in German nationalism.
The Metternich proposal
William Grenville, by John Hoppner (1800)
Britan's ambassador to the Congress was William, Baron Grenville, a former ally of Pitt who, while remaining a Patriot, had since shown more affinity for Fox' goals. Fox, as usual, wanted to protect the spread of popular representation that was occuring throughout western Europe, and as such a reasonably intact France was well near the top of his goals, a standpoint with which Elisabeth strongly agreed. Talleyrand was therefore overjoyed but not particularly surprised when Grenville put up his own proposal for the disposition of France. Elisabeth would officially drop her claim to the royal title, and the various states of Europe would agree to consider the title of King of France entirely and permanently dissolved, a matter of the past. The idea that such a dissolution, rather than a title becoming part of another, was even possible was itself a radical departure from the practice of previous eras. Calais, as the County of Guines, would be restored to the Duchy of Flanders, and the Verdun region would itself be restored to Upper Lorraine (and thus the Rhineland Palatinate), and the border between France and Helvetia would only reach the Saone north of Auxonne. Aside from those border adjustments, however, most of France would remain intact under the new republican government.
Such a proposal would require some tradeoffs, of course. The scope of the Congress was well outside that of France, and intended to make adjustments to borders throughout Europe. Grenville, along with the Dutch ambassador, Rutger Jan Schimmelpennick, had made a proposal to deal with ongoing chaos in Italy by creating another republic from the various states north of the Papal lands. Spain, who controlled much of the territory and was making an attempt to retain control amongst considerable unrest, obviously did not like the idea; neither did Helvetia, who would suddenly have a large state to its south with a potential claim on some of its territory. The proposal was entirely dropped, and the Congress in fact never touched Italy again, partially due to the fact that Austria and Spain knew they had much to lose from any potential solution. Helvetia's territory in France was also expanded, to make the border run along the Saone all the way from Macon north. The various great powers - though it had taken nearly two years of back-and-forth negotiation and agrument - finally decided upon the modified plan as an acceptable option.
The next two parts on the Congress' agenda - Scandinavia and Poland - went by relatively quickly. The former had been a battleground between Sweden and Finnland for the previous three centuries, and the Congress wished to create a final treaty that would end the matter once and for all. Finnland and Sweden finally agreed to a Palatine proposal, which gave Norway to Sweden, Lappland to Finnland, and restored Denmark's independence as a protected state. Sweden was forced to restore the various Finnish islands it had seized, including Aland. Both sides considered it a reasonably equitable solution, particularly as it divided Scandinavia along broadly ethnic lines rather than the rapidly-shifting and overlapping claims of the two nations. Finnish hopes to create a united Scandinavia under their rule, which had seemed an inevitability in the 16th and 17th centuries, had finally come to an end. Poland, however, was only brought up at the end and quickly dropped; neither Austria nor Prussia were willing to give up an inch of their claims, and in the end the Congress finally declared uti possidetis, not wanting to even try to pick apart the various conflicting factors in the region. The final treaty was agreed upon on 23 December 1801, and most of the European rulers were reasonably happy with the result.
Britain, in particular, had good reason to be pleased. With France suddenly an ally, her influence in Europe was unparalleled and her position in Bretagne and Flanders absolutely secure. In general, she was by far the largest country not only at that time but, as was realised, in the history of the world, exceeding even ancient Rome and the medieval Mongol empire in extent. Most of this (the interior of America, the southern portions of Columbia, and Australia) was sparsely settled or uninhabitated, but at least held good potential for future settlement, with the happy side effect that Britain could send excess population to those regions and still gain the benefit from them. Malthus' explicit statement of this idea was still two decades in the future, but he was simply lobbying to make offical policy what was already being practiced. The Spanish settlers of Patagonia, and the French in Quebec, were quickly outnumbered by those from more crowded regions looking for space, food, and opportunity. In America proper only Louisiana stubbornly maintained a French majority simply due to their preexisting numbers.
To make room for the many people from not only Britain but to a smaller extent other European nations, the American dominion once again began pushing into native territory, particularly that owned by the Iroquois and Shawnee, still banded together to oppose such encroachment. Between 1779 and 1811, the European-descended settlers and the native inhabitants fought several outright wars; at first, the two tribes managed to succeed in defending their lands, particularly due to the defeat of Arthur St. Clair's expedition in the Iroquois lands in 1790. In the end, however, simple weight of numbers and organisation made the outcome inevitable. On 27 August 1810, at the Battle of Tippecanoe, the American governor of the "Ohio Territory", William Henry Harrison, shattered the final Shawnee resistance under the brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa. By this point, most of the Iroquois lands had been overrun, and the final outposts of resistance there were taken by the end of 1811. The entirety of America east of the broad north-south line defined by the Mississippi River was solidly in European hands.
The Battle of Tippecanoe, by Alonzo Chappel (1879)
The west coast was also beginning to be settled by the British, partially to contain Spanish and later Mexican encroachment from the south. The first crossing of America by land was commissioned by the Frobisher Bay Company, and led by Samuel Hearne. Hearne's original hope was to determine whether the Missouri River would allow near-direct riverborne passage from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean; the mouth of the later-named Redivia River* had already been found, and it was hoped that the two came close enough together for easy portage. Between 1775 and 1778, Hearne made two attempts at such a crossing; the first, actually coming south from the Company's territory along the Frobisher Bay, was forced to turn back due to lack of supplies before reaching the Rocky Mountains. The second was much larger (nearly 2,000 men) and succeeded, with the help of native guides, in reaching the Pacific coast on 12 November 1778. Along with aid from a ship under Lieutenant George Vancouver sent to help establish a British claim to the region, he established Fort St. Michael on Nootka Island, the first British settlement on the west coast of America, on 7 May 1779. A second settlement would come in 1805, at Yerba Buena in Upper California, through the work of the American-born explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.
Samuel Hearne, by an unknown engraver (1796)
The expansion to the west would have caused trouble with Spain, but by 1805 that nation's control over her American and Columbian colonies was rapidly dissolving. The first great rebellion was that of Mexico, with preliminary rebellions starting in the late 1790s, and full-scale revolt by 1806. Upon hearing of the "Cry of Dolores" in August of that year, the New Orleans** region also rose up soon after. Spain had already been in negotiations with the British regarding the American-Mexican border, and this only sped the matter; fearing that Florida would be overrun by Mexico, the Spanish government offered to sell it to the American dominion. James Madison, as the American Foreign Secretary, negotiated with his Spanish counterpart, Luis de Onis, as to the particulars, and in October of 1807 the sale was made. Mexico, which succeeded in gaining independence, also accepted the treaty's borders in 1821, but New Orleans never did, a matter that would become contentive in later years and decades.
Australia was a very different matter from America. Due to its isolation, often harsh climate, and lack of previous settlement, it was seen as an ideal location for a penal colony. It was not until 1793 that free men arrived to settle it, and for much of the early period there were far more convicts than free men, a matter which did not help discipline. Worse, the unit charged with guarding the colony, the New South Wales Corps, was corrupt and involved in the production and smuggling of rum out of Australia. Attempts were made several times in the 1790s and later to stop them; finally, in 1805, the British government sent William Bligh, thanks to his reputation as a strict disciplinarian, to stop them. Bligh, however, only succeeded in sparking a revolt, mostly unrelated to the rum itself; in 1808, the Corps rose up and, on 28 March, arrested Bligh and established a military government. The British government sent Lachlan Macquarie to replace him as soon as news arrived, but it was not until 1812, with the legalising of the rum trade, that the colony settled down somewhat.
Bligh captured during the Rum Rebellion (1810)
Elsewhere, colonisation either had finished or continued at a slow pace. New Zealand was first settled in 1805, with the establishment of Dunedin on the South Island on 24 March. Early settlement was slow, however, as the climate of the region was harsh; at first, only whalers based themselves out of the islands. India remained especially quiet - the various sates were generally happy to trade with the East India Company on the latter's terms - although a revolt among the Dutch holdings in the region, led by Velu Thampi, eventually resulted in the East India Company coming in and establishing their control over Travancore for the sake of order and continued trade. Other events included the successful establishment of a settlement on Hawai'i Island, largest of the Sandwich Islands, with the approval of the islands' First Minister, Ka'ahumanu, on 25 August 1820. After the creation of more such colonies on the other islands, and several incidents over the next decade, the British government stepped in and established a protectorate over the Sandwich Islands in 1828.
__________
*Named after the ship, the America Redivia (America Revived), which explored a portion of its length in 1792.
**The name coming from the fact that it was originally settled by France, and seized later.
[Whew... one more update after this one and we'll have gotten everything to 1820. I can't believe I'm so close to finishing this already... ]
He needed all the advantages he could get. The Congress had the authority of readjusting the territorial changes made, but some matters were considered as simply natural and not in need of debate: Corsica in personal union with Britain, Alsace and Lorraine back to the Palatinate, and at the very least some portions of the Free County of Burgundy to the Helvetian Confederation. Metternich, along with most of the other German nations, wanted something more: division of the various parts of France, particularly making Provence and the various Occitan regions into independent states, as well as further expansion of the British Netherlands. Talleyrand's defence against this possibility was his neighbour to the north; he stated that if France were to be divided, he would "unfortunately" be "forced" to recognise Elisabeth's long-standing and generally considered long-dead claim to the French throne, placing half of western Europe under Britan's control. This, obviously, went over very poorly with the other powers, who were justifiably afraid that such a powerful Britain would rapidly dominate Europe as a whole. Talleyrand, however, also knew that Britain would never accept such an outcome, as she needed now-friendly France to be able to stand up for herself as an ally against the very real possibility of a surge in German nationalism.
The Metternich proposal
William Grenville, by John Hoppner (1800)
Britan's ambassador to the Congress was William, Baron Grenville, a former ally of Pitt who, while remaining a Patriot, had since shown more affinity for Fox' goals. Fox, as usual, wanted to protect the spread of popular representation that was occuring throughout western Europe, and as such a reasonably intact France was well near the top of his goals, a standpoint with which Elisabeth strongly agreed. Talleyrand was therefore overjoyed but not particularly surprised when Grenville put up his own proposal for the disposition of France. Elisabeth would officially drop her claim to the royal title, and the various states of Europe would agree to consider the title of King of France entirely and permanently dissolved, a matter of the past. The idea that such a dissolution, rather than a title becoming part of another, was even possible was itself a radical departure from the practice of previous eras. Calais, as the County of Guines, would be restored to the Duchy of Flanders, and the Verdun region would itself be restored to Upper Lorraine (and thus the Rhineland Palatinate), and the border between France and Helvetia would only reach the Saone north of Auxonne. Aside from those border adjustments, however, most of France would remain intact under the new republican government.
Such a proposal would require some tradeoffs, of course. The scope of the Congress was well outside that of France, and intended to make adjustments to borders throughout Europe. Grenville, along with the Dutch ambassador, Rutger Jan Schimmelpennick, had made a proposal to deal with ongoing chaos in Italy by creating another republic from the various states north of the Papal lands. Spain, who controlled much of the territory and was making an attempt to retain control amongst considerable unrest, obviously did not like the idea; neither did Helvetia, who would suddenly have a large state to its south with a potential claim on some of its territory. The proposal was entirely dropped, and the Congress in fact never touched Italy again, partially due to the fact that Austria and Spain knew they had much to lose from any potential solution. Helvetia's territory in France was also expanded, to make the border run along the Saone all the way from Macon north. The various great powers - though it had taken nearly two years of back-and-forth negotiation and agrument - finally decided upon the modified plan as an acceptable option.
The next two parts on the Congress' agenda - Scandinavia and Poland - went by relatively quickly. The former had been a battleground between Sweden and Finnland for the previous three centuries, and the Congress wished to create a final treaty that would end the matter once and for all. Finnland and Sweden finally agreed to a Palatine proposal, which gave Norway to Sweden, Lappland to Finnland, and restored Denmark's independence as a protected state. Sweden was forced to restore the various Finnish islands it had seized, including Aland. Both sides considered it a reasonably equitable solution, particularly as it divided Scandinavia along broadly ethnic lines rather than the rapidly-shifting and overlapping claims of the two nations. Finnish hopes to create a united Scandinavia under their rule, which had seemed an inevitability in the 16th and 17th centuries, had finally come to an end. Poland, however, was only brought up at the end and quickly dropped; neither Austria nor Prussia were willing to give up an inch of their claims, and in the end the Congress finally declared uti possidetis, not wanting to even try to pick apart the various conflicting factors in the region. The final treaty was agreed upon on 23 December 1801, and most of the European rulers were reasonably happy with the result.
Britain, in particular, had good reason to be pleased. With France suddenly an ally, her influence in Europe was unparalleled and her position in Bretagne and Flanders absolutely secure. In general, she was by far the largest country not only at that time but, as was realised, in the history of the world, exceeding even ancient Rome and the medieval Mongol empire in extent. Most of this (the interior of America, the southern portions of Columbia, and Australia) was sparsely settled or uninhabitated, but at least held good potential for future settlement, with the happy side effect that Britain could send excess population to those regions and still gain the benefit from them. Malthus' explicit statement of this idea was still two decades in the future, but he was simply lobbying to make offical policy what was already being practiced. The Spanish settlers of Patagonia, and the French in Quebec, were quickly outnumbered by those from more crowded regions looking for space, food, and opportunity. In America proper only Louisiana stubbornly maintained a French majority simply due to their preexisting numbers.
To make room for the many people from not only Britain but to a smaller extent other European nations, the American dominion once again began pushing into native territory, particularly that owned by the Iroquois and Shawnee, still banded together to oppose such encroachment. Between 1779 and 1811, the European-descended settlers and the native inhabitants fought several outright wars; at first, the two tribes managed to succeed in defending their lands, particularly due to the defeat of Arthur St. Clair's expedition in the Iroquois lands in 1790. In the end, however, simple weight of numbers and organisation made the outcome inevitable. On 27 August 1810, at the Battle of Tippecanoe, the American governor of the "Ohio Territory", William Henry Harrison, shattered the final Shawnee resistance under the brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa. By this point, most of the Iroquois lands had been overrun, and the final outposts of resistance there were taken by the end of 1811. The entirety of America east of the broad north-south line defined by the Mississippi River was solidly in European hands.
The Battle of Tippecanoe, by Alonzo Chappel (1879)
The west coast was also beginning to be settled by the British, partially to contain Spanish and later Mexican encroachment from the south. The first crossing of America by land was commissioned by the Frobisher Bay Company, and led by Samuel Hearne. Hearne's original hope was to determine whether the Missouri River would allow near-direct riverborne passage from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean; the mouth of the later-named Redivia River* had already been found, and it was hoped that the two came close enough together for easy portage. Between 1775 and 1778, Hearne made two attempts at such a crossing; the first, actually coming south from the Company's territory along the Frobisher Bay, was forced to turn back due to lack of supplies before reaching the Rocky Mountains. The second was much larger (nearly 2,000 men) and succeeded, with the help of native guides, in reaching the Pacific coast on 12 November 1778. Along with aid from a ship under Lieutenant George Vancouver sent to help establish a British claim to the region, he established Fort St. Michael on Nootka Island, the first British settlement on the west coast of America, on 7 May 1779. A second settlement would come in 1805, at Yerba Buena in Upper California, through the work of the American-born explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.
Samuel Hearne, by an unknown engraver (1796)
The expansion to the west would have caused trouble with Spain, but by 1805 that nation's control over her American and Columbian colonies was rapidly dissolving. The first great rebellion was that of Mexico, with preliminary rebellions starting in the late 1790s, and full-scale revolt by 1806. Upon hearing of the "Cry of Dolores" in August of that year, the New Orleans** region also rose up soon after. Spain had already been in negotiations with the British regarding the American-Mexican border, and this only sped the matter; fearing that Florida would be overrun by Mexico, the Spanish government offered to sell it to the American dominion. James Madison, as the American Foreign Secretary, negotiated with his Spanish counterpart, Luis de Onis, as to the particulars, and in October of 1807 the sale was made. Mexico, which succeeded in gaining independence, also accepted the treaty's borders in 1821, but New Orleans never did, a matter that would become contentive in later years and decades.
Australia was a very different matter from America. Due to its isolation, often harsh climate, and lack of previous settlement, it was seen as an ideal location for a penal colony. It was not until 1793 that free men arrived to settle it, and for much of the early period there were far more convicts than free men, a matter which did not help discipline. Worse, the unit charged with guarding the colony, the New South Wales Corps, was corrupt and involved in the production and smuggling of rum out of Australia. Attempts were made several times in the 1790s and later to stop them; finally, in 1805, the British government sent William Bligh, thanks to his reputation as a strict disciplinarian, to stop them. Bligh, however, only succeeded in sparking a revolt, mostly unrelated to the rum itself; in 1808, the Corps rose up and, on 28 March, arrested Bligh and established a military government. The British government sent Lachlan Macquarie to replace him as soon as news arrived, but it was not until 1812, with the legalising of the rum trade, that the colony settled down somewhat.
Bligh captured during the Rum Rebellion (1810)
Elsewhere, colonisation either had finished or continued at a slow pace. New Zealand was first settled in 1805, with the establishment of Dunedin on the South Island on 24 March. Early settlement was slow, however, as the climate of the region was harsh; at first, only whalers based themselves out of the islands. India remained especially quiet - the various sates were generally happy to trade with the East India Company on the latter's terms - although a revolt among the Dutch holdings in the region, led by Velu Thampi, eventually resulted in the East India Company coming in and establishing their control over Travancore for the sake of order and continued trade. Other events included the successful establishment of a settlement on Hawai'i Island, largest of the Sandwich Islands, with the approval of the islands' First Minister, Ka'ahumanu, on 25 August 1820. After the creation of more such colonies on the other islands, and several incidents over the next decade, the British government stepped in and established a protectorate over the Sandwich Islands in 1828.
__________
*Named after the ship, the America Redivia (America Revived), which explored a portion of its length in 1792.
**The name coming from the fact that it was originally settled by France, and seized later.
[Whew... one more update after this one and we'll have gotten everything to 1820. I can't believe I'm so close to finishing this already...
]
Where exactly is "New Orleans"? Or, wait a minute, is that the name Texas has in this world?
A few miles inland of the mouth of the Mississippi River, in a low-lying area between that and Lake Ponchartrain.
It's also the name for the region around it.
[ RGB There is the 1820 half-century report, which I almost forgot about, but that'll be easy enough. And I know about the wars... it really just always ends up being everyone and their kitchen sink ganging up on France. ]
While Britain was active abroad, it was hoped that the defeat of France might finally bring an end to the various troubles Britain had been going through during the 18th century. Pitt's faction had seemingly been thoroughly discredited, not only in Britain but in America as well, where the Federalists, who generally perferred Pitt's somewhat conservative style, found themselves steadily pushed out by the Anti-Administration Party, a loose coalition developed specifically to oppose them. At home, the Levellers solidified their position in Parliament, and Fox had an opportunity to push through almost anything he wished. At his side was was the Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who in the period after 1800 became the main essayist for the Levellers. Among the reforms the two called for and succeeded in getting through were the official disestabishment of the Church of England (1803), voting rights for those with a significant income but not enough landed property, as well as for women (1804), the introduction of the decimal metric system already in use in the Netherlands and France (1805), institutions for the education of women, and the compensated abolition of slavery outside America (both in 1806).*
Notably absent was the main goal that both Fox and Bentham had in mind, universal adult suffrage. Many of the Levellers had identified as such more due to support of the Batavian and later French republics, rather than to the party's main goal of expanding voting rights. These, along with the remaining Patriots and Whigs who certainly had no intention of changing anything, were enough to block the matter for the time being. Fox finally died on 13 September 1806, disappointed at the failure of his attempts at that one final reform, despite the fact that Pitt the Younger had died at the beginning of the year. The new First Minister after his death was Baron Grenville, who organised a ministry which he hoped would heal the divisiveness of the previous years by using people from all three of the parties that had developed by that time. The "Ministry of All the Talents" that resulted managed to hold together remarkably well; without Fox to direct them, the Levellers in Parliament became content to rest for a time with what they had gained, and save further reform for a better time. The founding principle of the Leveller movement from the Civil War, that "the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he", was for a time forgotten by all but the most radical voices.
In America, matters played out in a much more contentious manner. Madison and Hamilton had, after the death of Baron Washington in 1799, become the leading political figures in the dominion. Hamilton was easily the more conservative of the two, and quickly gained the emnity of a prominent New York Foxite, Aaron Burr. The rivalry between the two grew rapidly, culminating in the contentive lobbying over the appointment of the steadholder of New York in 1804. Hamilton supported Philip Schuyler, member of one of the most important Dutch families in the province and not coincidentally his brother-in-law, for the position; Burr, on the other hand, was bothered by the whole concept of appointed steadholders and wanted the position to be elected by the people of the province. Unsurprisingly, Hamilton had his way; more importantly, however, Burr accused Hamilton of having spoken ill of him at a dinner, and the two began exchanging ever more spiteful letters. This resulted in a challenge from Burr, and on 11 July 1804 the two fought a duel; Burr was uninjured as Hamilton intentionally missed, but Burr had no qualms, and mortally wounded his opponent. Burr was charged in both New York and New Jersey, but in both cases the charges were dropped; he lost what credibility he had, however, and after a private attempt to intervene in New Orleans and take the city for America, he fled the country for the Netherlands in 1808.
The duel between Hamilton and Burr (1902)
Economically, Britain was in as good a position as ever. Canal building had slowed some since the high times of the late 18th century, mostly as the major routes had already been covered, but even as they were completed a new form of transportation arrived to supplement them. Fitch's plans for a steam-powered locomotive might not have been immediately taken up, work on the concept continued even during the War of the Second Coalition; this culminated in the work of Richard Trevithick, who successfully tested a full-scale steam locomotive on 3 October 1800. The locomotive carried a 10-ton load of iron, along with some passengers, over a distance of more than 15 kilometres without undue strain. The only difficulty was that early railed tracks were built for wagon loads, and unable to hold the weight of a locomotive; over the next decade, until finally, in 1808, the Middleton Railway began running the "Salamanca" regularly, and the technology slowly spread across Britain. By the time of the celebrated running of the "Rocket" in the Rainhill Trials in 1829, early locomotives were already something of a commonplace matter. Steam power was also quickly spreading by sea. In May of 1810, the Margery successfully crossed the English Channel, travelling from Newhaven in Sussex, then up the Seine to Paris. The various Directors of the French Republic had been informed of the attempt, and were all present for its arrival; Empress Elisabeth had been invited to attend its depature, but she declined to do so as she was attending to a political matter at the time.
The political matter was the result of four contentious years under Grenville. The "Ministry of All the Talents" alternated between settled contentment and infighting; any attempt at getting anything done, by either side, was met by immediate and steadfast opposition by everyone else. The main effect of the time period was the absorption of the Patriots by the Whigs, as the former, without Pitt's leadership, slowly lost its middle-ground sentiment and drifted in a more conservative direction. The Levellers slowly drifted that way as well, evolving over the next two decades into the Liberal Party, devoted more to maintaining the reforms of the Fox period than to pushing for the universal suffrage that had been the party's main platform. Naturally, Bentham, along with other radicals such as Admiral Thomas Cochrane and Sir Francis Burdett, was distinctly displeased with this development, and by 1809 it was obvious that some sort of rift would appear.
The catalyst for trouble came late in that year with the arrest of John Gale Jones, an otherwise unnotable radical politician, on minor charges. Francis Burdett rushed to his defence, stating that the House of Commons had no authority to send out a warrant for arrest on their own, and that doing so was a breach of due legal process. The matter was something of a constitutional void, as no known major document covered the matter; Burdett's objection was mostly predicated on the theory of separation of powers between the various sections of government, leaving warrants for arrest to the judiciary alone. In response, the House stated that his protest was a breach of priveledge as a member of Parliament, and put out a warrant for him as well. Burdett fortified his house and refused to accept the warrant, and he was soon met by his fellow member for Winchester, Admiral Cochrane. The latter looked at the defence of the house with a military man's eye, intending to fight back violently. It was here that Burdett realised what was happening, and he immediately surrendered rather than risk the chance of injury on either side.
Sir Francis Burdett, by Thomas Lawrence (1793)
Although Burdett surrendered, the matter was certainly not settled. By early 1810, it became obvious that the coalition government was coming apart rapidly, the conservative challenge to the Leveller-led government coming mostly from the until then quiet Spencer Perceval, who argued that the Levellers had supported Burdett. Along with Burdett's arrest, the main scandal was the duel between the conservative Viscount Castlereagh and the liberal Foreign Secretary, George Canning, in late 1809, specifically over political matters, resulting in Canning being wounded and both resigning. Elisabeth knew that the situation could only get worse; fortunately, elections were scheduled for April of 1810, and she was therefore not required to dissolve Parliament to resolve the matter. The elections returned strongly for the Whigs, and by their recommendation Perceval became the new First Minister.
It seemed that, with one party so solidly in power, Britain could settle more permanently into the peace and economic growth hoped for after the turbulent 18th century. Over the next two years, Perceval and the Whigs mostly delivered on this; most of the voting population of Britain was content with the state of affairs in Britain at the time and Perceval had promised not to alter it. That trouble was growing amongst the lower classes and even some merchants was a mostly invisible matter to the nobility and rich merchants at the time, as they were mostly focused on ventures in India and the other colonies. Some of the discontent did come to the front, especially as mobs came out in support of Burdett, requiring the application of the Riot Act to deal with them. Perceval himself paid this little attention, and when a Huntingdonshire merchant named John Bellingham was constantly turned away from petitions for compensation after being mistreated in Russia, the First Minister had no idea what consequences that could have. Bellingham, angered by the constant refusal, waited in the House of Commons on the evening of 11 May 1812 and, when Perceval arrived, shot and killed him.
The assassination of Spencer Perceval, by an unknown artist (1812)
It was feared that Bellingham might have been a conspirator in a plot to overthrow the government, but when it became obvious that he had acted alone most of this fear calmed. Many Levellers were still viewed with some measure of suspicion - the recently-released Burdett particularly - and the action did cast more radical politics in a poor light, much as Burr's killing of Hamilton had in America, despite the lack of involvement by any Levellers. Perceval was succeeded in his position by Robert Jenkinson, the Earl of Liverpool, a man somewhat more conservative than Perceval had been. An act to subvert the Smithian free-trade policies of previous years, by introducing a stop on the importation of foreign wheat (meant to enrich the landowners who had profited by the enclosure movement) was passed in 1815; these infamous "Corn Laws" resulted in an immediate reaction. Liverpool's Whigs barely managed to keep power in the next election, and in response began to try and move to turn back the reforms of previous times. In 1816 they succeeded in removing the provisions of the 1804 voting act that had allowed for female suffrage; response, from both women and men, was immediate and sharp.
One meeting to protest both the Corn Laws and Liverpool's attempts to turn back reform was scheduled to be held at Manchester on 1 November 1817. The organiser, Henry Hunt, insisted to the crowd that they remain peaceful, and the vast majority were carrying no weapons and wearing only normal clothes. The turnout was massive: at least 75,000 appeared in the field, with some estimates as high as 150,000, a huge proportion of the population of the region in either case. Aside from its popularity, the meeting was a masterpiece of organisation, as the various groups from specific regions were first gathered in groups and then brought to the meeting place, St. Peter's Field. Despite the peaceful and orderly nature of the gathering, the British government was afraid that there was something else at work; those less inclined to be trustful said that it was an extension of the same supposed plot that had led to the death of Perceval five years earlier. Cavalry units were sent in, and arrested Hunt; they then set upon the crowd, killing at least ten (and possibly more) and wounding hundreds. The crowd dispersed, as hoped, as none among them had any intention from the start of fighting back.
The St. Peter's Field Massacre, by Richard Carlile (1818)
It took less than three months for the matter to collapse the Liverpool government, with Elisabeth deciding as early as December to remove him and the Home Secretary from their positions for gross mismanagement of their priveledge. The matter was seen with disgust across Britain, and, had Elisabeth not acted quickly to remove Liverpool, and the possibility of the Whigs being voted out of power not existed, it would likely have led to a full-scale revolt. As it was, few had any intention to vote for what was seen as a murderous and oppressive group, and all but the most conservative newspapers, both in Britain and abroad, insisted that the Whigs not spend one more moment in power. Unsurprisingly, the Liberals, as they were now called, firmly took their place in control of Parliament, with Burdett appointed as First Minister. The Corn Laws were repealed that same year, and property and wealth (but not income) qualifications for voting removed in 1819, along with the reinstatement of the 1804 provison allowing women to vote. It was not quite universal suffrage, but it was nearly as advanced as could be expected for the time.
Burdett's ministry also attempted to prevent the surprising decay of the system the Congress of Vienna had set up on the Continent. The French and Scandinavian provisions had held up quite well, but there were two places, Italy and Germany, where trouble appeared almost immediately. In the former, war broke out again between Sicily and Spain, along with further revolts in the Babenburg holdings of central and northern Italy. The former war had resulted in Spain being pushed out of southern Italy entirely by 1805, but the latter continued bloodily for many years after. Elisabeth, along with Burdett, gathered the various interested powers to a meeting in London in 1819, but Spain continued to insist upon control over the region, and negotiations on the matter continued for years until, by 1825, it was obvious that her position was untenable and Spanish armies retreated from the peninsula, leaving a collection of small states south of the Po River. The matter of Germany was somewhat more surprising. War broke out yet again between the Helvetia - Palatinate - Netherlands alliance and the Kingdom of Baden; fortunately, working out a solution in that area was much simpler, and the war's main effect was to highlight the powerlessness of the Holy Roman Emperor to prevent infighting. The Treaty of Vienna, on 1 July 1819, offically dissolved the Empire and replaced it with the German Confederation, a looser but more respected alliance between the various, now officially independent, German states.
Britain herself had gone through a major reorganisation three years previous. Unrest in Ireland and Flanders had led Liverpool to introduce the second Act of Union in 1816; this made Ireland fully part of what was now the Empire of Britain and dissolved its Parliament, as well as adding Bretagne offically to the Empire with some lesser measure of autonomy. Flanders, Wallonia, and Luxemburg were also reorganised; the Walloons had been pushing for some recognition of their rights for years, and had proposed creating a separate kingdom out of the British Netherlands. The Duchy of Flanders was therefore altered into a dual Duchy of Flanders and Wallonia, with a proper legislature, and the capital moved from the strongly Flemish and Calvinist city of Brugge, inland to the more Catholic and Walloon city of Brussels. This was followed the next year by the acceptance of Newfoundland as a separate self-governing dominion, separate from the American one. The various reforms finally settled Britain into a period of calm and prosperity, one expected to last for quite some time; indeed, it would be many years before the next crisis struck the country.
And I know about the wars... it really just always ends up being everyone and their kitchen sink ganging up on France. ]While Britain was active abroad, it was hoped that the defeat of France might finally bring an end to the various troubles Britain had been going through during the 18th century. Pitt's faction had seemingly been thoroughly discredited, not only in Britain but in America as well, where the Federalists, who generally perferred Pitt's somewhat conservative style, found themselves steadily pushed out by the Anti-Administration Party, a loose coalition developed specifically to oppose them. At home, the Levellers solidified their position in Parliament, and Fox had an opportunity to push through almost anything he wished. At his side was was the Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who in the period after 1800 became the main essayist for the Levellers. Among the reforms the two called for and succeeded in getting through were the official disestabishment of the Church of England (1803), voting rights for those with a significant income but not enough landed property, as well as for women (1804), the introduction of the decimal metric system already in use in the Netherlands and France (1805), institutions for the education of women, and the compensated abolition of slavery outside America (both in 1806).*
Notably absent was the main goal that both Fox and Bentham had in mind, universal adult suffrage. Many of the Levellers had identified as such more due to support of the Batavian and later French republics, rather than to the party's main goal of expanding voting rights. These, along with the remaining Patriots and Whigs who certainly had no intention of changing anything, were enough to block the matter for the time being. Fox finally died on 13 September 1806, disappointed at the failure of his attempts at that one final reform, despite the fact that Pitt the Younger had died at the beginning of the year. The new First Minister after his death was Baron Grenville, who organised a ministry which he hoped would heal the divisiveness of the previous years by using people from all three of the parties that had developed by that time. The "Ministry of All the Talents" that resulted managed to hold together remarkably well; without Fox to direct them, the Levellers in Parliament became content to rest for a time with what they had gained, and save further reform for a better time. The founding principle of the Leveller movement from the Civil War, that "the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he", was for a time forgotten by all but the most radical voices.
In America, matters played out in a much more contentious manner. Madison and Hamilton had, after the death of Baron Washington in 1799, become the leading political figures in the dominion. Hamilton was easily the more conservative of the two, and quickly gained the emnity of a prominent New York Foxite, Aaron Burr. The rivalry between the two grew rapidly, culminating in the contentive lobbying over the appointment of the steadholder of New York in 1804. Hamilton supported Philip Schuyler, member of one of the most important Dutch families in the province and not coincidentally his brother-in-law, for the position; Burr, on the other hand, was bothered by the whole concept of appointed steadholders and wanted the position to be elected by the people of the province. Unsurprisingly, Hamilton had his way; more importantly, however, Burr accused Hamilton of having spoken ill of him at a dinner, and the two began exchanging ever more spiteful letters. This resulted in a challenge from Burr, and on 11 July 1804 the two fought a duel; Burr was uninjured as Hamilton intentionally missed, but Burr had no qualms, and mortally wounded his opponent. Burr was charged in both New York and New Jersey, but in both cases the charges were dropped; he lost what credibility he had, however, and after a private attempt to intervene in New Orleans and take the city for America, he fled the country for the Netherlands in 1808.
The duel between Hamilton and Burr (1902)
Economically, Britain was in as good a position as ever. Canal building had slowed some since the high times of the late 18th century, mostly as the major routes had already been covered, but even as they were completed a new form of transportation arrived to supplement them. Fitch's plans for a steam-powered locomotive might not have been immediately taken up, work on the concept continued even during the War of the Second Coalition; this culminated in the work of Richard Trevithick, who successfully tested a full-scale steam locomotive on 3 October 1800. The locomotive carried a 10-ton load of iron, along with some passengers, over a distance of more than 15 kilometres without undue strain. The only difficulty was that early railed tracks were built for wagon loads, and unable to hold the weight of a locomotive; over the next decade, until finally, in 1808, the Middleton Railway began running the "Salamanca" regularly, and the technology slowly spread across Britain. By the time of the celebrated running of the "Rocket" in the Rainhill Trials in 1829, early locomotives were already something of a commonplace matter. Steam power was also quickly spreading by sea. In May of 1810, the Margery successfully crossed the English Channel, travelling from Newhaven in Sussex, then up the Seine to Paris. The various Directors of the French Republic had been informed of the attempt, and were all present for its arrival; Empress Elisabeth had been invited to attend its depature, but she declined to do so as she was attending to a political matter at the time.
The political matter was the result of four contentious years under Grenville. The "Ministry of All the Talents" alternated between settled contentment and infighting; any attempt at getting anything done, by either side, was met by immediate and steadfast opposition by everyone else. The main effect of the time period was the absorption of the Patriots by the Whigs, as the former, without Pitt's leadership, slowly lost its middle-ground sentiment and drifted in a more conservative direction. The Levellers slowly drifted that way as well, evolving over the next two decades into the Liberal Party, devoted more to maintaining the reforms of the Fox period than to pushing for the universal suffrage that had been the party's main platform. Naturally, Bentham, along with other radicals such as Admiral Thomas Cochrane and Sir Francis Burdett, was distinctly displeased with this development, and by 1809 it was obvious that some sort of rift would appear.
The catalyst for trouble came late in that year with the arrest of John Gale Jones, an otherwise unnotable radical politician, on minor charges. Francis Burdett rushed to his defence, stating that the House of Commons had no authority to send out a warrant for arrest on their own, and that doing so was a breach of due legal process. The matter was something of a constitutional void, as no known major document covered the matter; Burdett's objection was mostly predicated on the theory of separation of powers between the various sections of government, leaving warrants for arrest to the judiciary alone. In response, the House stated that his protest was a breach of priveledge as a member of Parliament, and put out a warrant for him as well. Burdett fortified his house and refused to accept the warrant, and he was soon met by his fellow member for Winchester, Admiral Cochrane. The latter looked at the defence of the house with a military man's eye, intending to fight back violently. It was here that Burdett realised what was happening, and he immediately surrendered rather than risk the chance of injury on either side.
Sir Francis Burdett, by Thomas Lawrence (1793)
Although Burdett surrendered, the matter was certainly not settled. By early 1810, it became obvious that the coalition government was coming apart rapidly, the conservative challenge to the Leveller-led government coming mostly from the until then quiet Spencer Perceval, who argued that the Levellers had supported Burdett. Along with Burdett's arrest, the main scandal was the duel between the conservative Viscount Castlereagh and the liberal Foreign Secretary, George Canning, in late 1809, specifically over political matters, resulting in Canning being wounded and both resigning. Elisabeth knew that the situation could only get worse; fortunately, elections were scheduled for April of 1810, and she was therefore not required to dissolve Parliament to resolve the matter. The elections returned strongly for the Whigs, and by their recommendation Perceval became the new First Minister.
It seemed that, with one party so solidly in power, Britain could settle more permanently into the peace and economic growth hoped for after the turbulent 18th century. Over the next two years, Perceval and the Whigs mostly delivered on this; most of the voting population of Britain was content with the state of affairs in Britain at the time and Perceval had promised not to alter it. That trouble was growing amongst the lower classes and even some merchants was a mostly invisible matter to the nobility and rich merchants at the time, as they were mostly focused on ventures in India and the other colonies. Some of the discontent did come to the front, especially as mobs came out in support of Burdett, requiring the application of the Riot Act to deal with them. Perceval himself paid this little attention, and when a Huntingdonshire merchant named John Bellingham was constantly turned away from petitions for compensation after being mistreated in Russia, the First Minister had no idea what consequences that could have. Bellingham, angered by the constant refusal, waited in the House of Commons on the evening of 11 May 1812 and, when Perceval arrived, shot and killed him.
The assassination of Spencer Perceval, by an unknown artist (1812)
It was feared that Bellingham might have been a conspirator in a plot to overthrow the government, but when it became obvious that he had acted alone most of this fear calmed. Many Levellers were still viewed with some measure of suspicion - the recently-released Burdett particularly - and the action did cast more radical politics in a poor light, much as Burr's killing of Hamilton had in America, despite the lack of involvement by any Levellers. Perceval was succeeded in his position by Robert Jenkinson, the Earl of Liverpool, a man somewhat more conservative than Perceval had been. An act to subvert the Smithian free-trade policies of previous years, by introducing a stop on the importation of foreign wheat (meant to enrich the landowners who had profited by the enclosure movement) was passed in 1815; these infamous "Corn Laws" resulted in an immediate reaction. Liverpool's Whigs barely managed to keep power in the next election, and in response began to try and move to turn back the reforms of previous times. In 1816 they succeeded in removing the provisions of the 1804 voting act that had allowed for female suffrage; response, from both women and men, was immediate and sharp.
One meeting to protest both the Corn Laws and Liverpool's attempts to turn back reform was scheduled to be held at Manchester on 1 November 1817. The organiser, Henry Hunt, insisted to the crowd that they remain peaceful, and the vast majority were carrying no weapons and wearing only normal clothes. The turnout was massive: at least 75,000 appeared in the field, with some estimates as high as 150,000, a huge proportion of the population of the region in either case. Aside from its popularity, the meeting was a masterpiece of organisation, as the various groups from specific regions were first gathered in groups and then brought to the meeting place, St. Peter's Field. Despite the peaceful and orderly nature of the gathering, the British government was afraid that there was something else at work; those less inclined to be trustful said that it was an extension of the same supposed plot that had led to the death of Perceval five years earlier. Cavalry units were sent in, and arrested Hunt; they then set upon the crowd, killing at least ten (and possibly more) and wounding hundreds. The crowd dispersed, as hoped, as none among them had any intention from the start of fighting back.
The St. Peter's Field Massacre, by Richard Carlile (1818)
It took less than three months for the matter to collapse the Liverpool government, with Elisabeth deciding as early as December to remove him and the Home Secretary from their positions for gross mismanagement of their priveledge. The matter was seen with disgust across Britain, and, had Elisabeth not acted quickly to remove Liverpool, and the possibility of the Whigs being voted out of power not existed, it would likely have led to a full-scale revolt. As it was, few had any intention to vote for what was seen as a murderous and oppressive group, and all but the most conservative newspapers, both in Britain and abroad, insisted that the Whigs not spend one more moment in power. Unsurprisingly, the Liberals, as they were now called, firmly took their place in control of Parliament, with Burdett appointed as First Minister. The Corn Laws were repealed that same year, and property and wealth (but not income) qualifications for voting removed in 1819, along with the reinstatement of the 1804 provison allowing women to vote. It was not quite universal suffrage, but it was nearly as advanced as could be expected for the time.
Burdett's ministry also attempted to prevent the surprising decay of the system the Congress of Vienna had set up on the Continent. The French and Scandinavian provisions had held up quite well, but there were two places, Italy and Germany, where trouble appeared almost immediately. In the former, war broke out again between Sicily and Spain, along with further revolts in the Babenburg holdings of central and northern Italy. The former war had resulted in Spain being pushed out of southern Italy entirely by 1805, but the latter continued bloodily for many years after. Elisabeth, along with Burdett, gathered the various interested powers to a meeting in London in 1819, but Spain continued to insist upon control over the region, and negotiations on the matter continued for years until, by 1825, it was obvious that her position was untenable and Spanish armies retreated from the peninsula, leaving a collection of small states south of the Po River. The matter of Germany was somewhat more surprising. War broke out yet again between the Helvetia - Palatinate - Netherlands alliance and the Kingdom of Baden; fortunately, working out a solution in that area was much simpler, and the war's main effect was to highlight the powerlessness of the Holy Roman Emperor to prevent infighting. The Treaty of Vienna, on 1 July 1819, offically dissolved the Empire and replaced it with the German Confederation, a looser but more respected alliance between the various, now officially independent, German states.
Britain herself had gone through a major reorganisation three years previous. Unrest in Ireland and Flanders had led Liverpool to introduce the second Act of Union in 1816; this made Ireland fully part of what was now the Empire of Britain and dissolved its Parliament, as well as adding Bretagne offically to the Empire with some lesser measure of autonomy. Flanders, Wallonia, and Luxemburg were also reorganised; the Walloons had been pushing for some recognition of their rights for years, and had proposed creating a separate kingdom out of the British Netherlands. The Duchy of Flanders was therefore altered into a dual Duchy of Flanders and Wallonia, with a proper legislature, and the capital moved from the strongly Flemish and Calvinist city of Brugge, inland to the more Catholic and Walloon city of Brussels. This was followed the next year by the acceptance of Newfoundland as a separate self-governing dominion, separate from the American one. The various reforms finally settled Britain into a period of calm and prosperity, one expected to last for quite some time; indeed, it would be many years before the next crisis struck the country.
I'm doing my best to take all this in (thats what she said!)
But what I've read so far is absolutely amazing
Great AAR
But what I've read so far is absolutely amazing
Great AAR
[asd21593: Well, this is the last story post of this portion of the AAR, and I'm waiting until Vicky 2 comes out to continue further into the 19th century, so you have plenty of time to catch up. ]
Europe
Click for large map
Though in most of Western Europe, the borders have barely shifted, the governments are all radically different. France and the Netherlands are both republics, Britain has further centralised and liberalised, and even Spain, once a bastion of absolutism, has adopted a very liberal constitution, though it has not slowed the country's rapid loss of authority outside the Iberian peninsula. Still, there is a very strong sense of optimism among the people of those countries that a new and permanent age of prosperity, peace, and liberty has begun.
The largest territorial changes have come in eastern Europe, with the collapse of the Polish and Abesanid states that once dominated the region. Both occured in the first half the 18th century; Poland was already reeling after a shocking victory by the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1710, followed by the Lithuanian nobles accepting said ruler, now King of Prussia, as their king. The latter portion of the century brought about the Partition of Poland in 1795, where Prussia and Austria agreed to divide the country between them. Tensions have of course grown since then, especially as Austria believes that Prussia has taken more than her fair share. The Abesanid collapse was more of an internal affair, with both Christian and Muslim subjects rising up in their various regions through the 1720s and 30s. By 1745, the Abesanids had been reduced to essentially the borders shown. There has been remarkably little infighting between the new states, but that might not last.
In Scandinavia, a reasonably equitable solution in the long-running Great Northern War has been found, and relations between Finnland and Sweden have thawed considerably. Denmark has also once again appeared on the map, and is likely to stay this time as it has the protection of the various European great powers.
Central Europe
1. Duchy of Holstein
2. Republic of Mecklenburg (Prussian protectorate)
3. County of Oldenburg
4. Free City of Bremen
5. Free City of Frankfurt
6. County of Parma
7. Republic of Etruria
8. Republic of Romagna
9. County of Montenegro (to Sardinia)
Most Central European borders have shifted slightly more than radically moved, but some areas deserve special note. The first is the disappearance of the Republic of Genoa not too long after its sale of Corsica to France, absorbed into the Kingdom of Sardinia. Corsica itself was, of course, later placed into personal union with the British monarchy; Malta itself was soon taken by the King of Sicily. Said King has also succeeded in finally forcing the Spanish off the southern portion of the Italian peninsula; in the centre, a long-running rebellion is growing outward from Tuscany and Romagna, and it is unlikely that Spain will be able to hold for long. Austria is too preoccupied with ensuring that its possessions across the Po remain theirs to send any aid.
Further to the north, the Helvetian Confederation has again expanded out from its western Alpine heartland; whether it can hold these lands this time is of course an entirely different question. The various German states are now officially independent after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire; Austria is still a short time away from declaring herself an Empire, but Hanover has already become a kingdom after the loss of its electoral status. There are still several small states buried within the larger ones, however, particularly in the north where trading cities still have some power, despite the fact that the Hanseatic League is long since defunct. The Palatinate itself retains the high dignity of a county palatine despite the end of the Empire, mostly due simply to the large area of land the Wittelsbach counts have carved out for themselves.
Colonies and other nations
Click for large map
America has exploded into a rainbow of new nations, beginning with the declaration of the Brasilian dominion in 1767. Joining it and the other two British dominions of America and Newfoundland are four former Spanish possessions, since independent: Mexico and New Orleans have already gained broad recognition even from Spain, while the United Provinces of South America, and New Granada in Columbia, continue to fight. La Plata, the Spanish region on the east coast of the continent, is also uneasy and likely to follow the others, as is the Yucatan.
In Africa, only two changes of note have occured. The first comes from the seizure of the Portuguese colonies by Britain; the latter now has a practical monopoly on the southern portion of the continent. The second is the colonisation of coastal Madagascar by the French Republic, claiming that large island as a new colonial empire. Songhay has developed into a remarkably strong and stable empire in the West African plains, even expanding somewhat in recent years. Their hope is to hold off European encroachment for as long as necessary to become an accepted state in the world order, but that may be a quite difficult task if one powerful nation turns its eye in that direction.
Britain is now the only European power to control any portion of India directly, and the only native states of any size are Mysore in the south and Gujarat in the north. The Marathis have fallen under British rule after their defeat in the 1740s, and the Mughal Empire has collapsed into a large collection of small principalities and states. The East India Company's authority in the subcontinent is accepted as fact by all other European nations. To the east of India, Taungu remains strong, despite a successful rebellion in Siam, and on-and-off rebellions in the country's eastern provinces. Indonesia is a patchwork of Dutch, British, and Portuguese possessions, with the Dutch generally dominant in the west and north, Britain in the centre and south, and Portugal in the east.
][HALF-]CENTURY REPORT 1820
Europe
Click for large map
Though in most of Western Europe, the borders have barely shifted, the governments are all radically different. France and the Netherlands are both republics, Britain has further centralised and liberalised, and even Spain, once a bastion of absolutism, has adopted a very liberal constitution, though it has not slowed the country's rapid loss of authority outside the Iberian peninsula. Still, there is a very strong sense of optimism among the people of those countries that a new and permanent age of prosperity, peace, and liberty has begun.
The largest territorial changes have come in eastern Europe, with the collapse of the Polish and Abesanid states that once dominated the region. Both occured in the first half the 18th century; Poland was already reeling after a shocking victory by the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1710, followed by the Lithuanian nobles accepting said ruler, now King of Prussia, as their king. The latter portion of the century brought about the Partition of Poland in 1795, where Prussia and Austria agreed to divide the country between them. Tensions have of course grown since then, especially as Austria believes that Prussia has taken more than her fair share. The Abesanid collapse was more of an internal affair, with both Christian and Muslim subjects rising up in their various regions through the 1720s and 30s. By 1745, the Abesanids had been reduced to essentially the borders shown. There has been remarkably little infighting between the new states, but that might not last.
In Scandinavia, a reasonably equitable solution in the long-running Great Northern War has been found, and relations between Finnland and Sweden have thawed considerably. Denmark has also once again appeared on the map, and is likely to stay this time as it has the protection of the various European great powers.
Central Europe
1. Duchy of Holstein
2. Republic of Mecklenburg (Prussian protectorate)
3. County of Oldenburg
4. Free City of Bremen
5. Free City of Frankfurt
6. County of Parma
7. Republic of Etruria
8. Republic of Romagna
9. County of Montenegro (to Sardinia)
Most Central European borders have shifted slightly more than radically moved, but some areas deserve special note. The first is the disappearance of the Republic of Genoa not too long after its sale of Corsica to France, absorbed into the Kingdom of Sardinia. Corsica itself was, of course, later placed into personal union with the British monarchy; Malta itself was soon taken by the King of Sicily. Said King has also succeeded in finally forcing the Spanish off the southern portion of the Italian peninsula; in the centre, a long-running rebellion is growing outward from Tuscany and Romagna, and it is unlikely that Spain will be able to hold for long. Austria is too preoccupied with ensuring that its possessions across the Po remain theirs to send any aid.
Further to the north, the Helvetian Confederation has again expanded out from its western Alpine heartland; whether it can hold these lands this time is of course an entirely different question. The various German states are now officially independent after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire; Austria is still a short time away from declaring herself an Empire, but Hanover has already become a kingdom after the loss of its electoral status. There are still several small states buried within the larger ones, however, particularly in the north where trading cities still have some power, despite the fact that the Hanseatic League is long since defunct. The Palatinate itself retains the high dignity of a county palatine despite the end of the Empire, mostly due simply to the large area of land the Wittelsbach counts have carved out for themselves.
Colonies and other nations
Click for large map
America has exploded into a rainbow of new nations, beginning with the declaration of the Brasilian dominion in 1767. Joining it and the other two British dominions of America and Newfoundland are four former Spanish possessions, since independent: Mexico and New Orleans have already gained broad recognition even from Spain, while the United Provinces of South America, and New Granada in Columbia, continue to fight. La Plata, the Spanish region on the east coast of the continent, is also uneasy and likely to follow the others, as is the Yucatan.
In Africa, only two changes of note have occured. The first comes from the seizure of the Portuguese colonies by Britain; the latter now has a practical monopoly on the southern portion of the continent. The second is the colonisation of coastal Madagascar by the French Republic, claiming that large island as a new colonial empire. Songhay has developed into a remarkably strong and stable empire in the West African plains, even expanding somewhat in recent years. Their hope is to hold off European encroachment for as long as necessary to become an accepted state in the world order, but that may be a quite difficult task if one powerful nation turns its eye in that direction.
Britain is now the only European power to control any portion of India directly, and the only native states of any size are Mysore in the south and Gujarat in the north. The Marathis have fallen under British rule after their defeat in the 1740s, and the Mughal Empire has collapsed into a large collection of small principalities and states. The East India Company's authority in the subcontinent is accepted as fact by all other European nations. To the east of India, Taungu remains strong, despite a successful rebellion in Siam, and on-and-off rebellions in the country's eastern provinces. Indonesia is a patchwork of Dutch, British, and Portuguese possessions, with the Dutch generally dominant in the west and north, Britain in the centre and south, and Portugal in the east.
Oh, happy day! The only true Scandinavian country has reappeared, albeit without a third of its original homeland. Dare I hope that in lack of better options, now that Denmark is under the protection of several great powers, the British will bombard Stockholm instead of Copenhagen and give Norway to their southern brothers?
Too bad we have to wait so long for the next part, and Victoria 2
But there seems to be a great setup for the next part. Great stuff!
But there seems to be a great setup for the next part. Great stuff!
Judas , I can't help but say that you are a master worker of historical AARs . Your quality has never decreased and I am almost nostalgic that this section of your AAR is coming to a close . I would seriously encourage you to think about writing historical narratives or accounts sometime . Maybe even in the vein of Shelby Foote . What do you think ? I'd totally read you for fun and knowledge !
The political aspects of the last update was fascinating. I always love that part of your story.
As for the half-century review:
1. The Russians are even more anaemic than IRL, although it appears they're making inroads to the Illi/Altai?
2. Taungu is insanely big...that could have really interesting demographic implications too; just look at how much Siamese domination IRL shifted ethnic borders in just a couple of centuries or so.
3. Poor Abesanids - although I'm pleased about the ahistorically large Bulgaria.
Is this the end and is there a Vicky installment of the tale?
As for the half-century review:
1. The Russians are even more anaemic than IRL, although it appears they're making inroads to the Illi/Altai?
2. Taungu is insanely big...that could have really interesting demographic implications too; just look at how much Siamese domination IRL shifted ethnic borders in just a couple of centuries or so.
3. Poor Abesanids - although I'm pleased about the ahistorically large Bulgaria.
Is this the end and is there a Vicky installment of the tale?
Kurt_Steiner: It'd be more than one shire, I'd think.
Milites: I don't see the British bombarding any Scandinavian cities at this point, but then again I haven't played through the 19th century yet so who knows?
I will tell you that there's a Scandinavian city that'll end up having huge problems within a century, but I'm not saying which one or why, not yet.
asd21593: Yes, a shame on both counts... I'd rather Paradox take their time and release something playable, not that time always helps with that *indicates Crusader Kings*
RGB: 1. Mongolia is pretty much solidly Russian. And technically all of Siberia and perhaps Alaska is theirs, I'm just showing the areas that have a direct and settled Russian presence.
2. No kidding. That's definitely one of the things I'll have to look up in the intervening period (along with what a thriving Incan Empire could cause in South America, and plenty of other fun things).
3. That came out of the blue for me, really. Ah, well, I suppose the Sick Man of Europe was that way for a reason...
And as I've mentioned a couple times already, once Vicky 2 comes out Britain will continue her march through history.
Widder: Thank you. Shame you caught the tail end of it...
canonized: Oh, but that would require proper research and sticking to the real facts... speaking of which...
Sigh... only half a year and I already have to look up how to do Chicago style citations again...
Appendix A: Bibliography
Keen, Maurice, English Society in the Later Middle Ages (1348-1500). London: Penguin Books, 1990.
- Very useful, particularly as regards the reforms of Henry VII / II after the Wars of the Roses. Of course, there is plenty before that as well, particularly in the Hundred Years' War period, to work off of.
Ross, Charles, Edward IV. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974.
- This book essentially got me through the Wars of the Roses by itself. It's an excellent biography and covers the political matters involved in the Wars most admirably. Having an insight into Edward's personal character was quite welcome as well, of course.
Taunton, Ethelred L., Thomas Wolsey: Legate and Reformer. London: Thomas Lane, 1902.
- Old, but well worth the look, if nothing else than for the fact that its age means it's in the public domain and is thus more easily available. The focus is specifically on how Wolsey's actions affected the upcoming break of the Church of England with Rome.
Phillips, Margaret Mann. Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance. New York: Macmillan Company, 1965.
- Sadly, this book only ended up really informing part of one side-post, but it's much better a book than that would indicate.
Bagchi, David and David C. Steinmetz, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology. Cambridge: University Press, 2004.
- I didn't find this book in time for the Reformation itself, but there was information on Calvin, the Church of Scotland, and the Puritans that did help with the post-Civil War period.
Ashton, Robert, The English Civil War: Conservatism and Revolution. New York: Norton, 1979.
- This was particularly valuable for the information on the Levellers, although as you may have noticed that their efforts during the Civil War and Commonwealth were downplayed in this AAR as there were other things to talk about at the time.
Sherwood, Roy E., Oliver Cromwell: King in All But Name 1653-1658. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997.
- If nothing else, it was this book that inspired having Cromwell become Emperor, simply as Sherwood notes how close Cromwell came to doing so even in real history. The information on the "Second investiture" also was extrememly useful for that time period.
Plumb, J. H., England in the Eighteenth Century (1714-1815). London: Penguin Books, 1950.
- This mostly informed the first two decades of the 1700s, but other parts found their way throughout the time period.
Kidd, Thomas S., The Great Awakening: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2008.
- Very useful for the title time period, although as the book's focus is on America there is very little information about John Wesley and the Methodists, sadly enough.
Almond, John, ed., A Collection of Papers Relative to the Dispute Between Great Britain and America. London: Burlington House, 1777.
- This book is actually a pro-American treatise from the time of the American Revoltion, documenting in considerable detail the various abuses that led to the outbreak of fighting. Despite, or perhaps because of, the strong bias, this book is exteremely useful for gaining information on the views of the opposition to George III and Lord North, which despite the lack of either of those two people in this AAR still had plenty of use.
Court, W. H. B., A Concise Economic History of Britain from 1750 to Recent Times. Cambridge: University Press, 1964.
- As might be expected, this book begins with an account of the early Industrial Revolution, and as such it was very useful for that section. The information on population pressures in the late 18th century also informed the AAR, if only in the background.
Pocock, Tom, Horatio Nelson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
- Ah, the book that inspired me to start this one up again - I couldn't bear not to document Nelson's adventures. An excellent read in and of itself, certainly.
Milites: I don't see the British bombarding any Scandinavian cities at this point, but then again I haven't played through the 19th century yet so who knows?
I will tell you that there's a Scandinavian city that'll end up having huge problems within a century, but I'm not saying which one or why, not yet.
asd21593: Yes, a shame on both counts... I'd rather Paradox take their time and release something playable, not that time always helps with that *indicates Crusader Kings*
RGB: 1. Mongolia is pretty much solidly Russian. And technically all of Siberia and perhaps Alaska is theirs, I'm just showing the areas that have a direct and settled Russian presence.
2. No kidding. That's definitely one of the things I'll have to look up in the intervening period (along with what a thriving Incan Empire could cause in South America, and plenty of other fun things).
3. That came out of the blue for me, really. Ah, well, I suppose the Sick Man of Europe was that way for a reason...
And as I've mentioned a couple times already, once Vicky 2 comes out Britain will continue her march through history.
Widder: Thank you. Shame you caught the tail end of it...
canonized: Oh, but that would require proper research and sticking to the real facts... speaking of which...
Sigh... only half a year and I already have to look up how to do Chicago style citations again...
Appendix A: Bibliography
Keen, Maurice, English Society in the Later Middle Ages (1348-1500). London: Penguin Books, 1990.
- Very useful, particularly as regards the reforms of Henry VII / II after the Wars of the Roses. Of course, there is plenty before that as well, particularly in the Hundred Years' War period, to work off of.
Ross, Charles, Edward IV. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974.
- This book essentially got me through the Wars of the Roses by itself. It's an excellent biography and covers the political matters involved in the Wars most admirably. Having an insight into Edward's personal character was quite welcome as well, of course.
Taunton, Ethelred L., Thomas Wolsey: Legate and Reformer. London: Thomas Lane, 1902.
- Old, but well worth the look, if nothing else than for the fact that its age means it's in the public domain and is thus more easily available. The focus is specifically on how Wolsey's actions affected the upcoming break of the Church of England with Rome.
Phillips, Margaret Mann. Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance. New York: Macmillan Company, 1965.
- Sadly, this book only ended up really informing part of one side-post, but it's much better a book than that would indicate.
Bagchi, David and David C. Steinmetz, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology. Cambridge: University Press, 2004.
- I didn't find this book in time for the Reformation itself, but there was information on Calvin, the Church of Scotland, and the Puritans that did help with the post-Civil War period.
Ashton, Robert, The English Civil War: Conservatism and Revolution. New York: Norton, 1979.
- This was particularly valuable for the information on the Levellers, although as you may have noticed that their efforts during the Civil War and Commonwealth were downplayed in this AAR as there were other things to talk about at the time.
Sherwood, Roy E., Oliver Cromwell: King in All But Name 1653-1658. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997.
- If nothing else, it was this book that inspired having Cromwell become Emperor, simply as Sherwood notes how close Cromwell came to doing so even in real history. The information on the "Second investiture" also was extrememly useful for that time period.
Plumb, J. H., England in the Eighteenth Century (1714-1815). London: Penguin Books, 1950.
- This mostly informed the first two decades of the 1700s, but other parts found their way throughout the time period.
Kidd, Thomas S., The Great Awakening: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2008.
- Very useful for the title time period, although as the book's focus is on America there is very little information about John Wesley and the Methodists, sadly enough.
Almond, John, ed., A Collection of Papers Relative to the Dispute Between Great Britain and America. London: Burlington House, 1777.
- This book is actually a pro-American treatise from the time of the American Revoltion, documenting in considerable detail the various abuses that led to the outbreak of fighting. Despite, or perhaps because of, the strong bias, this book is exteremely useful for gaining information on the views of the opposition to George III and Lord North, which despite the lack of either of those two people in this AAR still had plenty of use.
Court, W. H. B., A Concise Economic History of Britain from 1750 to Recent Times. Cambridge: University Press, 1964.
- As might be expected, this book begins with an account of the early Industrial Revolution, and as such it was very useful for that section. The information on population pressures in the late 18th century also informed the AAR, if only in the background.
Pocock, Tom, Horatio Nelson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
- Ah, the book that inspired me to start this one up again - I couldn't bear not to document Nelson's adventures. An excellent read in and of itself, certainly.
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Appendix B: Miscellaneous maps, 1820
Britain in 1820, with semi-offical subdivisions of the Empire proper.
London in the early-to-mid 19th century; the red line marks the border of Evelyn's rebuilt city centre.* Only the main streets are shown, there are of course plenty of smaller streets and alleys in between.
Notable locations:
- St. Paul's, of course, the white blob where Cheapside and Aldersgate meet.
- The main Bank of England office is at the Moorgate-Cheapside square
- The circle in the middle of the "spiderweb" is Farringdon Circus, centred around a lovely 15th-century equestrian statue of King Alderic that survived the Great Fire.
America in 1820. Remember that Newfoundland is a separate dominion. The regions northwest of Huntingdon's Land are also claimed by Britain, but also by Russia, and there are no permanent settlements by either nation yet.
__________
*This was an absolute pain, by the way, since the Thames doesn't bend correctly in Evelyn's map and thus the streets get all messed up west of St. Paul's. I can see why the plan was rejected in real life.
Britain in 1820, with semi-offical subdivisions of the Empire proper.
London in the early-to-mid 19th century; the red line marks the border of Evelyn's rebuilt city centre.* Only the main streets are shown, there are of course plenty of smaller streets and alleys in between.
Notable locations:
- St. Paul's, of course, the white blob where Cheapside and Aldersgate meet.
- The main Bank of England office is at the Moorgate-Cheapside square
- The circle in the middle of the "spiderweb" is Farringdon Circus, centred around a lovely 15th-century equestrian statue of King Alderic that survived the Great Fire.
America in 1820. Remember that Newfoundland is a separate dominion. The regions northwest of Huntingdon's Land are also claimed by Britain, but also by Russia, and there are no permanent settlements by either nation yet.
__________
*This was an absolute pain, by the way, since the Thames doesn't bend correctly in Evelyn's map and thus the streets get all messed up west of St. Paul's. I can see why the plan was rejected in real life.
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Love the London map.
And yes, the Thames is odd, although...did it change course since, or did they keep it contained?
Also...Cornwall...is a generous slice.
And yes, the Thames is odd, although...did it change course since, or did they keep it contained?
Also...Cornwall...is a generous slice.