Recent content by avernite

No chance for Orange, that was French since a while. Nassau also seems unlikely. It's far off and irrelevant. Getting pieces of Gelre, East Frisia, or such, in exchange for Nassau, would seem more likely - those had been to various extents part of the Dutch Republic. But of course, with...

Some. Others read the Odyssee, the Iliad, theater.

Well, Dutch Gymnasium routinely teaches Dutch plus English, French, German, Latin, and Ancient Greek. Of course noone gets conversational in Latin and Greek, and the levels of German and French are always open to debate (and dependent on where; I live near the German border so German gets more...

He also determined the Dutch grand strategy, to some extent, because that was THE Dutch Army (of course for Blenheim it was split, between Marlborough and his recommendation for Dutch commander, Overkirk). And he was William's Ambassador-Extraordinary for the second Grand Alliance. In 1709...

Will it, though? In the grand scheme of things, plenty of riots get suppressed brutally - and Paris has had more than its fair share. Yet how many non-history-inclined remember the Paris Commune? The revolution that follows, sure, they'll remember. But the spark that lit the fuse? I mean, even...

Of course he also filled half those roles for the Dutch republic, sometimes unwillingly (for the Dutch). With him removed sooner, the Republic will need to kick itself into gear rather than be scrambling when his removal and British drop-out were basically simultaneous. It might lead to the quip...

Not sure how it would work though - after Indonesian independence the Netherlands lost most ability to deploy troops in the archipelago. A handful in Papua, sure, but the numbers deployed in the 40's? No way. So it wouldn't be much of a war.

I would agree with the other posters - It took a century or more of Roman neighbours getting stronger, making inroads as foederati or raiders, expanding their influence, and THEN conquering huge swathes of the Empire (and even then the Empire didn't get mortally wounded until the...

Sure, but that's about their opinion of theirown government. Hardly the same topic as their opinion about the British. That said I agree having foreigners come to police the mutineers would look terrible for the French government.

In OTL WW2 the Brits blew up a French fleet and invaded (with the Americans) French North Africa. And while the French grumpiness about the 'Anglos' certainly wasn't irrelevant, it also wasn't that bad.

I was thinking about Indonesia, since it's not mentioned as settled - could the Dutch drive it into a 'Francafrique' direction, where (apart from Java with maybe half of Sumatra) various smaller states are essentially subsidiaries of the Dutch government, even as they are also independent? That...

I imagine it'll be somesort of British-German wheeling and dealing until a suitably reformed-but-not-communist French Republic is declared that's more trouble to destroy than to leave around. Because I agree Germany, Britain, and Italy all won't want a communist France - and the current war is...

The blockade OTL got much more ironclad after America started to squeeze at the source. ITTL they won't, so the Netherlands and Scandinavia will have much easier world-wide trade relations. Nowhere near pre-war, because there IS a blockade, but much better than OTL after the American DoW.

Nice (pun intended) update. And good to see what happens when competent commanders respond to the crises on the battlefield in ways that make perfect sense - for once. Of course it helps that Cordonnier and Giraldi both have sensible options.

As Bismarck rightly noted, that ship sailed when the USA succeeded. Or maybe when Napoleon failed. Either way, I don't see it as a real possibility in the early 20th century. You need a different early 19th century (or, of course, even earlier).