A New Alliance and A New War
Napoleon would marry Maria Louises and gain a powerful ally, in the Austrian Army. He would have a son with her, Napoleon Bonaparte II, and with an heir he would begin looking for a new target. Portugal was out of the question since the Americans would not join him, so that left either Africa or the German areas across the Rhine. He would choose the Rhine, and set a meeting with Emperor Francis II to discuss the splitting up of the territories. They decided that most of central Germany would return to Austria, while Prussia and Poland would both go to France.
But before their plan would even get off the ground, a Prussian Informant would get a hold of the information, and return to Berlin to warn them. This news would rattle the Prussians cage, and that was not a good idea. They would quickly write to England, and they would agree that if France was to go to war against Prussia, then England would support and help fight against them. They would write to both Sweden and Russia, Sweden would decline but Russia agreed to help at least fight against the Austrians. Together they would stand together against them, but this was all kept a secret from the French and Austrians. They silently were mobilizing the reserves and even Poland would raise their army. They developed a plan to open the war on as many fronts so that the French and Austrians would have to keep their armies smaller than the combined Allied Army, an Anglo-Portuguese Army fighting in Spain, A Russian-Prussian army in Austria, and an Anglo-Prussian army fighting France.
The one wild card would be the Mediterranean Republic, they had changed their name after the French Conquest of Spain, while they had no love for their French brothers they also didn’t want to support the English and Prussians either so Girard-Roux would sit on the sidelines for this war.
The French army would cross the Rhine River on the March 12, 1814 and would declare war on the Confederation of the Rhine, while the Austrians would take them on from the East. The Confederation would fall quickly, there army was no where near able enough to handle a war against two empires. The French would gain the Luxembourg, Hannover, Baden, Hessen-Kassel,and Oldenburg and the Austrians would gain Saxony, Bavaria, and Wurttemberg. The Prussians following this would move all troops to the hostile borders and began building fortifications. The Franco-Austrian Army would need to pacify the new German inhabitants, they were forced to wait till the summer before invading Prussia. This gave the Prussians time to create a massive and intricate series of Earthworks.
On June 22, 1814, the French would begin their invasion, the 1st French Army under the command of Auguste Jean Ameli crossed over the Prussian-French border at Boizenburg, but they would be immediately stopped by the Prussian army led by Prince Augustus and their Earthworks.The French army had taken over 25,000 casualties in the couple of days just trying to push back the Prussians at Neu Gulze. They would eventually succeed but they had taken too many casualties and were forced to wait for reinforcements. The Battle of Augustus as many referred to it, would be a pyrrhic victory, while they had pushed back and beaten the Germans, they had failed to truly beat the Prussians. Prince Augustus would fall back but his army was much more intact than his French Counterpart, and planned to retake New Gulze. To the South, the Austrians would launch their attack with the 1st Austrian and 3rd Hungarian Armies and both would meet similar fates to their French allies.
The declaration of war by both Austria and France would be followed by English and Russian declarations. English had transported 50,000 soldiers to assist the Portuguese army in releasing Spain, and had another 75,000 men to land in mainland France. The Russian army would punch in into Austria from Galicia. The
The Russian army would be the first to make contact at the battle of Brody, where the 1st Russian army would just march through the Hungarian and Ukrainian recruits who were stationed there. The Russians would push the lines over a hundred miles in the first couple of days, till they began to face up against a true Austrian Army at the battle of Krase, there they would be halted.
On the other hand, the Spanish Front would be not go well for the French. While they still had a military presence there, the populace hated French control, and after the allied army crossed over into French land, people began to rise up and join the English and Portuguese army. The Iberian peninsula would be ablaze within the first month of the war, with both the Anglo-Portuguese army marches towards Madrid and the Spanish Nationalist Forces had small skirmishes against the French army tasked with hunting them down.
The one thing that would save the French is that the English navy was busy with a blockade around most of France and Spain, so the English couldn’t begin the amphibious landing that would open up yet another front in the war. But the blockade would also lead to a problem with the Americas. An American transport ship with trade stuffs heading for Marseille would be opened up upon by the HMS Leopard in the Strait of Gibraltar. This act would be enough of a spark that would bring the Americans into their own war with England.