A House Divided: A TL
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#29: The Hills Are Alive
A House Divided #29: The Hills Are Alive
“I made history, and therefore I never found the time to write it.”
***
From “Austria: The European Chimera”
(c) 1961 by Dr. Harry Grossman
New York: Columbia University Press
With the Congress of Vienna, the powers of Europe committed themselves to restoring the old social order, but a few innovations of the Age of Revolutions continued in existence in spite of this. Most notably, no attempt was made to restore the Holy Roman Empire, and in its place the German states – now even further consolidated – were brought into a German Confederation (Deutscher Bund) based in Frankfurt, which was to serve as their dispute resolution mechanism. The Confederation was a weak body, even on paper, and its purpose was never to facilitate German unification – insofar as it had a purpose, it was to unite the German states against the prospect of unification. For most of the Restoration period, its powers were focused under the control of one man: Metternich… [1]
…Emperor Ferdinand was a man of contradictions. He had a warm disposition, was well loved by his subjects (particularly the Bohemians, who came to know him as “Ferdinand the Good”), and was known to be a witty and intelligent man in private life. If he’d been healthy, there was the potential in him for a great Emperor. However, as the son of double cousins, this was not to be. His most prominent ailment was a severe epilepsy that rendered him incapable of governing by himself, and dependent on the State Conference led by his uncle Ludwig, as well as Metternich, to make most day-to-day decisions. When the Viennese mob gathered outside the Hofburg in June 1849, a popular legend says that the Emperor turned to Metternich and asked what they were doing. “They’re making a revolution, sire,” said Metternich. The Emperor replied: “But are they allowed to do that?” … [2]
…The revolution began in Vienna. Although there had been some unrest for a number of years, when word arrived of the revolution in England, it was no longer controllable. The people rioted, and the Viennese liberal clubs, emboldened by the unrest, moved forward proposals for political liberalization, secularization, and German national unity. Most importantly though, they wanted Metternich to resign, and this demand was reiterated by the provincial estates of Lower Austria on June 26. With Emperor Ferdinand coming to view Metternich’s departure as the best way to keep Vienna stable, the die was cast, and the Chancellor duly resigned effective July 1. He went into exile in the Hague, where he would stay until his death from pneumonia two years later. [3] The new office of Minister-President was created to replace the Chancellor as the senior minister in the country, and the State Conference recommended Count Theodor Franz Baillet de Latour, the head of the army engineer corps, who was little known politically, but who the Conference hoped would be able to restore order in Vienna. [4]
This was a miscalculation, however, as Latour revealed himself to be staunchly conservative. He began making plans to send the cavalry into the capital, and while it’s unknown how willing he would’ve been to spill the blood of his fellow Austrians, the rumor went around that Latour planned to massacre everyone. In the panicked atmosphere of Vienna in 1849, this led to riots starting on the evening of the 4th, and continuing through the 5th and 6th – not unlike the “Three Glorious Days” that had precipitated the fall of the French Restoration. The Austrian court, however, was made of sterner stuff than Charles X, and responded to the riots by preparing both a carrot and a stick against the rebels.
As a carrot, a new ministry was appointed featuring several liberal standard-bearers, including Count Kolowrat [5] as minister-president, Karl Ludwig von Bruck [6] as finance minister and Anton von Schmerling [7] as interior minister. Prince Schwarzenberg also entered the ministry for the first time, serving as minister of defense – a position that would become crucial over the next months. The new ministry announced that over the course of August, elections would be held for an empire-wide parliament that would draft a constitution for Austria.
As a stick, the several regiments placed around Vienna were put on high alert, and the imperial court decamped from Schönbrunn to Pressburg (Pozsony), in Hungary, where they would remain for the next several months…
***
From “The Sons of Arpad”
(c) 1992 by Sandor Lowenstein
New York: New York United Writers
The Austrian monarchy had become more and more dependent on Hungary, its largest single component, and starting from the mid-1820s, a moderate policy of reform was carried out there. The Hungarian Diet, prorogued since 1812, was convened again in Pozsony in 1825, and Count István Széchenyi [8] caused a stir when he broke with tradition and gave the first-ever speech in Magyar to the upper house. [9] The head of a powerful and wealthy noble family, Széchenyi gave his full backing to the reform movement, donating a large part of his fortune to the newly-founded Royal Hungarian Academy of Science and expounding on the need for full Hungarian autonomy in a series of writings. The Diet continued to meet with some regularity throughout the period between 1825 and 1849, and whereas hardline conservatism and reaction reigned throughout most of the Habsburg domains, Hungary was allowed to flourish and grow under a moderately liberal régime…
These boots are made for reformin', and reformin's what they'll do
One of these days, these boots are gonna reform us away from you...
…By 1849, storm clouds were gathering in Hungary. On the one hand, spurred on by their country’s newfound prosperity, more and more Magyars began to openly question whether Habsburg rule was desirable, or whether Hungary should break off from Austria and go it alone. On the other hand, Vienna remained implacably against such moves, wanting instead to tie Hungary ever closer into the Austrian chimera. Most Magyars, though, found themselves somewhere in between. While they certainly identified strongly with Hungary rather than Austria as a whole and wanted some degree of self-government, most believed that this was the road they were already on, and that attempting to forcibly declare independence would just lead to a lot of unnecessary bloodshed.
And of course, Hungary is not only inhabited by Magyars. The Slovaks of the north, the Romanians and Ruthenians of the east, the Serbs of the south, and the Jews and Germans living all over the kingdom, were all skeptical toward the intentions of the Hungarian Diet, whose election rules meant that the national minorities were largely disenfranchised, and viewed increased Hungarian autonomy as a tool for the Magyars to exert even greater repression against them. The only part of the ancient Hungarian kingdom that retained a degree of autonomy was Transylvania, inhabited largely by Romanians with German and Magyar minorities, and even that was constantly embattled by demands for integration by nationally-minded Magyars.
It was perhaps a sign of things to come when the Magyar liberals under the influence of Ferenc Deák [10] published their ten-point petition to the Emperor on July 6. The points included freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, direct elections, responsible ministries, abolition of various noble privileges, and – significantly – the abolition of Transylvania’s special status. There were immediate rumblings of dissent against this in Transylvania, and when the Emperor accepted the petition and named Count Lajos Batthyány [11] Prime Minister in a new Hungarian responsible ministry, the rumblings were not soothed.
The Batthyány ministry took office on the 12th, and all of its members were moderate liberals except for Lajos Kossuth, the leader of the radical nationalists, who had been made interior minister for the simple reason that he was thought best capable of defending the ministry from his fellow radical nationalists on the streets of Pest. [12] Kossuth immediately set about creating the Honvédség (loosely translated as “corps of defenders of the fatherland”), a citizen militia modelled on the French National Guard, which only fluent speakers of Magyar could join. When the imperial court expressed its concerns about this, Batthyány forced Kossuth to include a pledge of loyalty to the House of Habsburg in the Honvéd oath of service and pledged that Hungary would send troops to shore up the Empire’s war in Italy.
Meanwhile, the ministry drew plans to integrate not only Transylvania, but also Croatia, into Hungary proper, and this would be met with even harder resistance. Croatia had a common language and identity, and had only been considered part of Hungary before by radical Magyar nationalists. They also had a strong military tradition, and a figure under whom they could all unite: their Ban (military governor), Josip Jelačić. Jelačić was a military man of conservative inclination, but he was also a supporter of Croatian independence, and he wasted no time resisting the Hungarian plans for integration. He initially had the support of Vienna in this, and indeed Croatia would remain separate from Hungary once the dust settled, but when he raised an army to march on Pest and depose the “traitorous” Hungarian ministry by force, any such alliance was dead in the water. [13]
The events that followed are generally known as the Jelačić Rebellion, and traditional Hungarian historiography depicts it as a noble struggle of the loyal, sensible Magyars against the rebellious Slavs. This is, of course, highly simplified. Firstly, the Slovaks mostly remained loyal Hungarian subjects, and while they contributed only a small number of volunteers to the Honvéd, the mostly Magyar nobility of the Uplands secured the support of their Slovak peasants by promising to abolish serfdom once the fighting was over. Indeed, Hungary would join the rest of Austria in ending feudal obligations in May 1850.
Secondly, as we know, a significant part of the Hungarian ministry – Kossuth most notably – had spent most of the 1830s and 40s agitating for Hungarian independence, while Jelačić was a loyal officer of the Emperor. Had things gone another way, it’s entirely possible to see the Magyars rise in rebellion and the Slavs remain loyal. [14] Of course, things did not go another way, and the invasion of Hungarian soil by the Croatian border army could not be ignored. The Honvéd was called to service against the invasion, and found itself soundly thrashed by the experienced Croat soldiers at Polgárdi, near the eastern shore of Lake Balaton, on September 3. [15]
Jelačić now had an open road to Pest, but he also had an open road to the imperial court at Pozsony. He stopped to regroup at Székesfehérvár, and some have attempted to portray this as indecision on his part over whether to attack the Hungarians or the Emperor. But it’s worth remembering that Jelačić consistently claimed to be the champion of the Emperor against the seditious Magyars, and would never have jeopardized his claim by attacking the imperial court. It’s more likely that he was simply trying to ensure that his forces were marshaled for the final battle, but this only gave the Hungarian government the time it needed to mount a defense.
North is to the right - Kelenföld is the area to the left of the Buda hills.
On the 13th, the Croatian army was sighted by scouts marching on Buda from the south, and the Honvéd massed on the Kelenföld plain, just southwest of the capital, to meet the invaders. Buda prepared to be occupied, Pest had the middle section of the newly-opened bridge across the Danube destroyed and prepared for a cross-river siege, and the government made plans to escape to Pozsony. But then something happened that none of them were expecting: under the leadership of Mór Perczel, the Diet delegate from Buda and a leader of the Hungarian radical movement, the Honvéd set up a defensive line along the Kelenföld from the river in the east to the mountains in the west, and throughout the day, the line held. Jelačić’s Croats, who had expected a quick campaign followed by coffee and cigars in Pest, proved impossible to rally for a second day of fighting, and the Ban was forced back to Székesfehérvár. [16]
The Battle of Kelenföld was the turning point of the Jelačić Rebellion. A relieved Batthyány sent a letter to the imperial court in Poszony, asking for reinforcements against the Slavic uprising engulfing the southern part of the kingdom. The new ministry under Felix von Schwarzenberg readily agreed, and in November, an army of seventy thousand regulars under Prince Alfred von Windisch-Grätz was sent into Hungary. For this, the imperial court placed just one condition: remove Lajos Kossuth from the ministry. Kossuth was known for being lukewarm at best on continued Habsburg rule, and it was feared that his presence in power might lead to a radicalization like that seen in Britain, Italy, and a few of the German states in recent months. [17]
Batthyány replaced him with the incumbent Minister of War and named Perczel to that post. With Perczel being an ally of Kossuth, this didn’t change the ideological makeup of the ministry, but nor was it possible for the Habsburgs to object to the elevation of the hero of Kelenföld. It was under his leadership that the Honvéd joined the Imperial Army in marching south, and it was under this ministry that Hungary came to join the reaction against the Slavic revolution breaking out all over Austria…
***
From “History 2: The Slavic Peoples and their Fates”
(c) 1954 by Prof. Jovan Djordjevich (ed.)
Belgrade: Central Education Commission
In April 1850, with the dust finally settled, Schwarzenberg and his ministry set about reforming the Austrian Empire. They did this with no regard for the self-determination of peoples; after all, their whole Empire was built on the principle of denying that right. Instead, the peoples of Austria were rewarded or punished according to how loyal they’d been to the Emperor during the crisis.
The Magyars, who had answered the Empire’s call and cut down the great Jelačić in his quest to free the South Slavic peoples, were richly rewarded for this duplicity. They received the blessing of the imperial court for their Magyarization policies, including common schools with Magyar as the language of instruction and an election system for the Diet that excluded non-Magyars from participation. [18] They also received, in full and without condition, Transylvania, which would see the very worst of the Black Decades to come.
The Slovaks and Romanians, who had not sent their own against the forces of liberation but also not joined the forces of liberation, received liberation from serfdom and many other feudal privileges. [19] The Empire had used this promise to crush the Polish uprising in 1847, after all, and in this instance, they proved true to their word.
The Czechs, who had briefly tried to rise up before accepting the false pipe dream of “Austroslavism” that would prove so devastating to the Slavist cause, did not receive the union of Bohemia and Moravia, because they weren’t trusted with it, but they did receive tacit permission to begin using their language for non-official purposes, and the succeeding years would see them given a provincial Diet and some degree of autonomy. They would never be Magyars in the eyes of the Habsburgs, but nor would they ever be Croats.
For the Croats, who had struck a blow for national liberation and defied the will of the Emperor, there would be no reward. The heavy hand of imperial governance and imperial taxes would continue, the Military Frontier with its particularly repressive regime would stay in place even as the Turkish threat subsided and vanished, and increasingly, the areas under civilian rule would come under Hungarian sway. Repression against Croatian or Slavic identity was swift and ruthless, and no light would be seen until the fall of the Empire half a century on. And even then, it was a light that would prove elusive…
***
[1] In a history book about Austria, Metternich would have been introduced earlier, but suffice it to say he was the State Chancellor of the Austrian Empire, and essentially the man behind the post-Napoleonic conservative order.
[2] This is an OTL legend, aside from obvious changes like the time shift.
[3] IOTL, Metternich went to London, returned to Vienna after the revolutionary period ended, and lived until 1859.
[4] IOTL, Latour was Minister of War in the moderate ministries of 1848, and when the October Uprising happened and the imperial court fled to Olmütz, he stayed behind in Vienna to keep order – a decision he’d soon regret, as the rebels cornered and lynched him. The army was forced to assault its own capital, with great loss of life, and the reaction of 1849 proved especially harsh in Austria.
[5] Franz Anton Graf von Kolowrat-Liebsteinsky (don’t you love Austrian names?) was a member of the State Conference for several years, and probably the most liberal among them (which really isn't saying much). He was constantly at loggerheads with Metternich over the direction of the empire, and this combination of closeness to the imperial court and high-profile opposition to Metternich obviously made him perfectly placed to take over when the revolution rolled around and Metternich resigned. As indeed he did in 1848 IOTL, but he was forced to resign very early on due to a health scare.
[6] Bruck was a consummate economic liberal who’d played a large part in founding the Österreichischer Lloyd shipping conglomerate, and one of his great political projects was to create a Central European customs union that would cover the entire Austrian Empire and German Confederation. However, when he was elected as Trieste’s representative in the Frankfurt National Assembly in 1848, he joined the conservative Café Milani faction, and so we can probably consider him a liberal-conservative (although with the obvious caveat that this really wasn’t a thing at the time).
[7] Schmerling was one of the great up-and-coming names in Austrian politics at this time, and IOTL he’d go on to briefly head the provisional government of the Frankfurt National Assembly before serving as Interior Minister of Austria during the early 1860s. In this role he tried to introduce a unitary constitution for the Empire but failed spectacularly because Austria was well into the process of descending into ungovernable chaos by this point. When the 1867 agreement was made, his constitution was nevertheless adopted for every part of the empire except Hungary and Croatia.
[8] “SE-chen-y-ee”. Or something like that.
[9] The previous official language being Latin, naturally.
[10] Deák was a lawyer and member of the Diet who played a key role in the liberal movement of the 1820s and 30s, He opposed the violent revolution of 1848, and because of this he became one of the more politically acceptable figureheads of Hungarian nationalism during the Austro-Hungarian period. Today he’s revered as one of the founders of the Hungarian nation, with a large square in Budapest (and the central metro station underneath it) named for him and his face adorning the 20,000-forint banknote.
[11] Batthyány was a liberal nobleman who’d been something of a protégé for Széchenyi during the late 1830s and early 1840s. He generally agreed with Széchenyi that liberal reform within Austria was the way forward, but nevertheless chose to throw his lot in with the revolution, for which he was executed by firing squad in 1849.
[12] IOTL, Kossuth was made finance minister, a position that would keep him out of the fray should the situation exacerbate. Fat lot of good that did in the end.
[13] By the equivalent point in the OTL revolution, Ferdinand had been pushed to abdicate and been replaced by his nephew Franz Joseph. The Hungarian nationalists, seeing an opportunity, refused to recognize him as King of Hungary until he’d made political concessions, and this poisoned relations between the Austrian and Hungarian governments to such an extent that, when Jelačić did march on Pest, it was in the name of the Emperor and with the Emperor’s tacit support. ITTL, events have moved a bit faster, and Ferdinand is not only still on the throne (with the remaining members of the State Conference acting as a de facto regency council) but reigning from inside Hungary with Batthyány trying his very hardest to butter him up.
[14] This is, of course, what happened IOTL. The Hungarians and Croats got over themselves amazingly well over time, but the Croats’ closeness to the Habsburgs (and later, of course, the formation of a Croatian puppet state under the Nazis) would form a core element in the hatred between Serbs and Croats after the formation of Yugoslavia.
[15] Again, the fact that Jelačić shows his hand so much sooner means that the Honvéd is much less organized – we tend to call it the Revolutionary Army by this point IOTL.
[16] The downside of writing about Hungary is that you have to do a lot of copy-pasting.
[17] Rest assured that we will get back to Britain as well as Italy, I just have so many things happening at once.
[18] The franchise used to elect the Diet is actually the same as that proposed IOTL during the moderate phase of the Hungarian Revolution and is based on a byzantine array of taxable wealth, taxable income, residency, and literacy requirements. Applied to the Hungarian situation, this obviously meant that nearly all non-Magyars were disqualified, but so were a huge proportion of Magyars – this, more than overt ethnic discrimination, was probably the goal of the system.
[19] As did the South Slavs living in the Empire, but if you think that’s anywhere near the point, I don’t think you understand what kind of source this is.
“I made history, and therefore I never found the time to write it.”
***
From “Austria: The European Chimera”
(c) 1961 by Dr. Harry Grossman
New York: Columbia University Press
With the Congress of Vienna, the powers of Europe committed themselves to restoring the old social order, but a few innovations of the Age of Revolutions continued in existence in spite of this. Most notably, no attempt was made to restore the Holy Roman Empire, and in its place the German states – now even further consolidated – were brought into a German Confederation (Deutscher Bund) based in Frankfurt, which was to serve as their dispute resolution mechanism. The Confederation was a weak body, even on paper, and its purpose was never to facilitate German unification – insofar as it had a purpose, it was to unite the German states against the prospect of unification. For most of the Restoration period, its powers were focused under the control of one man: Metternich… [1]
…Emperor Ferdinand was a man of contradictions. He had a warm disposition, was well loved by his subjects (particularly the Bohemians, who came to know him as “Ferdinand the Good”), and was known to be a witty and intelligent man in private life. If he’d been healthy, there was the potential in him for a great Emperor. However, as the son of double cousins, this was not to be. His most prominent ailment was a severe epilepsy that rendered him incapable of governing by himself, and dependent on the State Conference led by his uncle Ludwig, as well as Metternich, to make most day-to-day decisions. When the Viennese mob gathered outside the Hofburg in June 1849, a popular legend says that the Emperor turned to Metternich and asked what they were doing. “They’re making a revolution, sire,” said Metternich. The Emperor replied: “But are they allowed to do that?” … [2]
…The revolution began in Vienna. Although there had been some unrest for a number of years, when word arrived of the revolution in England, it was no longer controllable. The people rioted, and the Viennese liberal clubs, emboldened by the unrest, moved forward proposals for political liberalization, secularization, and German national unity. Most importantly though, they wanted Metternich to resign, and this demand was reiterated by the provincial estates of Lower Austria on June 26. With Emperor Ferdinand coming to view Metternich’s departure as the best way to keep Vienna stable, the die was cast, and the Chancellor duly resigned effective July 1. He went into exile in the Hague, where he would stay until his death from pneumonia two years later. [3] The new office of Minister-President was created to replace the Chancellor as the senior minister in the country, and the State Conference recommended Count Theodor Franz Baillet de Latour, the head of the army engineer corps, who was little known politically, but who the Conference hoped would be able to restore order in Vienna. [4]
This was a miscalculation, however, as Latour revealed himself to be staunchly conservative. He began making plans to send the cavalry into the capital, and while it’s unknown how willing he would’ve been to spill the blood of his fellow Austrians, the rumor went around that Latour planned to massacre everyone. In the panicked atmosphere of Vienna in 1849, this led to riots starting on the evening of the 4th, and continuing through the 5th and 6th – not unlike the “Three Glorious Days” that had precipitated the fall of the French Restoration. The Austrian court, however, was made of sterner stuff than Charles X, and responded to the riots by preparing both a carrot and a stick against the rebels.
As a carrot, a new ministry was appointed featuring several liberal standard-bearers, including Count Kolowrat [5] as minister-president, Karl Ludwig von Bruck [6] as finance minister and Anton von Schmerling [7] as interior minister. Prince Schwarzenberg also entered the ministry for the first time, serving as minister of defense – a position that would become crucial over the next months. The new ministry announced that over the course of August, elections would be held for an empire-wide parliament that would draft a constitution for Austria.
As a stick, the several regiments placed around Vienna were put on high alert, and the imperial court decamped from Schönbrunn to Pressburg (Pozsony), in Hungary, where they would remain for the next several months…
***
From “The Sons of Arpad”
(c) 1992 by Sandor Lowenstein
New York: New York United Writers
The Austrian monarchy had become more and more dependent on Hungary, its largest single component, and starting from the mid-1820s, a moderate policy of reform was carried out there. The Hungarian Diet, prorogued since 1812, was convened again in Pozsony in 1825, and Count István Széchenyi [8] caused a stir when he broke with tradition and gave the first-ever speech in Magyar to the upper house. [9] The head of a powerful and wealthy noble family, Széchenyi gave his full backing to the reform movement, donating a large part of his fortune to the newly-founded Royal Hungarian Academy of Science and expounding on the need for full Hungarian autonomy in a series of writings. The Diet continued to meet with some regularity throughout the period between 1825 and 1849, and whereas hardline conservatism and reaction reigned throughout most of the Habsburg domains, Hungary was allowed to flourish and grow under a moderately liberal régime…
These boots are made for reformin', and reformin's what they'll do
One of these days, these boots are gonna reform us away from you...
…By 1849, storm clouds were gathering in Hungary. On the one hand, spurred on by their country’s newfound prosperity, more and more Magyars began to openly question whether Habsburg rule was desirable, or whether Hungary should break off from Austria and go it alone. On the other hand, Vienna remained implacably against such moves, wanting instead to tie Hungary ever closer into the Austrian chimera. Most Magyars, though, found themselves somewhere in between. While they certainly identified strongly with Hungary rather than Austria as a whole and wanted some degree of self-government, most believed that this was the road they were already on, and that attempting to forcibly declare independence would just lead to a lot of unnecessary bloodshed.
And of course, Hungary is not only inhabited by Magyars. The Slovaks of the north, the Romanians and Ruthenians of the east, the Serbs of the south, and the Jews and Germans living all over the kingdom, were all skeptical toward the intentions of the Hungarian Diet, whose election rules meant that the national minorities were largely disenfranchised, and viewed increased Hungarian autonomy as a tool for the Magyars to exert even greater repression against them. The only part of the ancient Hungarian kingdom that retained a degree of autonomy was Transylvania, inhabited largely by Romanians with German and Magyar minorities, and even that was constantly embattled by demands for integration by nationally-minded Magyars.
It was perhaps a sign of things to come when the Magyar liberals under the influence of Ferenc Deák [10] published their ten-point petition to the Emperor on July 6. The points included freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, direct elections, responsible ministries, abolition of various noble privileges, and – significantly – the abolition of Transylvania’s special status. There were immediate rumblings of dissent against this in Transylvania, and when the Emperor accepted the petition and named Count Lajos Batthyány [11] Prime Minister in a new Hungarian responsible ministry, the rumblings were not soothed.
The Batthyány ministry took office on the 12th, and all of its members were moderate liberals except for Lajos Kossuth, the leader of the radical nationalists, who had been made interior minister for the simple reason that he was thought best capable of defending the ministry from his fellow radical nationalists on the streets of Pest. [12] Kossuth immediately set about creating the Honvédség (loosely translated as “corps of defenders of the fatherland”), a citizen militia modelled on the French National Guard, which only fluent speakers of Magyar could join. When the imperial court expressed its concerns about this, Batthyány forced Kossuth to include a pledge of loyalty to the House of Habsburg in the Honvéd oath of service and pledged that Hungary would send troops to shore up the Empire’s war in Italy.
Meanwhile, the ministry drew plans to integrate not only Transylvania, but also Croatia, into Hungary proper, and this would be met with even harder resistance. Croatia had a common language and identity, and had only been considered part of Hungary before by radical Magyar nationalists. They also had a strong military tradition, and a figure under whom they could all unite: their Ban (military governor), Josip Jelačić. Jelačić was a military man of conservative inclination, but he was also a supporter of Croatian independence, and he wasted no time resisting the Hungarian plans for integration. He initially had the support of Vienna in this, and indeed Croatia would remain separate from Hungary once the dust settled, but when he raised an army to march on Pest and depose the “traitorous” Hungarian ministry by force, any such alliance was dead in the water. [13]
The events that followed are generally known as the Jelačić Rebellion, and traditional Hungarian historiography depicts it as a noble struggle of the loyal, sensible Magyars against the rebellious Slavs. This is, of course, highly simplified. Firstly, the Slovaks mostly remained loyal Hungarian subjects, and while they contributed only a small number of volunteers to the Honvéd, the mostly Magyar nobility of the Uplands secured the support of their Slovak peasants by promising to abolish serfdom once the fighting was over. Indeed, Hungary would join the rest of Austria in ending feudal obligations in May 1850.
Secondly, as we know, a significant part of the Hungarian ministry – Kossuth most notably – had spent most of the 1830s and 40s agitating for Hungarian independence, while Jelačić was a loyal officer of the Emperor. Had things gone another way, it’s entirely possible to see the Magyars rise in rebellion and the Slavs remain loyal. [14] Of course, things did not go another way, and the invasion of Hungarian soil by the Croatian border army could not be ignored. The Honvéd was called to service against the invasion, and found itself soundly thrashed by the experienced Croat soldiers at Polgárdi, near the eastern shore of Lake Balaton, on September 3. [15]
Jelačić now had an open road to Pest, but he also had an open road to the imperial court at Pozsony. He stopped to regroup at Székesfehérvár, and some have attempted to portray this as indecision on his part over whether to attack the Hungarians or the Emperor. But it’s worth remembering that Jelačić consistently claimed to be the champion of the Emperor against the seditious Magyars, and would never have jeopardized his claim by attacking the imperial court. It’s more likely that he was simply trying to ensure that his forces were marshaled for the final battle, but this only gave the Hungarian government the time it needed to mount a defense.
North is to the right - Kelenföld is the area to the left of the Buda hills.
On the 13th, the Croatian army was sighted by scouts marching on Buda from the south, and the Honvéd massed on the Kelenföld plain, just southwest of the capital, to meet the invaders. Buda prepared to be occupied, Pest had the middle section of the newly-opened bridge across the Danube destroyed and prepared for a cross-river siege, and the government made plans to escape to Pozsony. But then something happened that none of them were expecting: under the leadership of Mór Perczel, the Diet delegate from Buda and a leader of the Hungarian radical movement, the Honvéd set up a defensive line along the Kelenföld from the river in the east to the mountains in the west, and throughout the day, the line held. Jelačić’s Croats, who had expected a quick campaign followed by coffee and cigars in Pest, proved impossible to rally for a second day of fighting, and the Ban was forced back to Székesfehérvár. [16]
The Battle of Kelenföld was the turning point of the Jelačić Rebellion. A relieved Batthyány sent a letter to the imperial court in Poszony, asking for reinforcements against the Slavic uprising engulfing the southern part of the kingdom. The new ministry under Felix von Schwarzenberg readily agreed, and in November, an army of seventy thousand regulars under Prince Alfred von Windisch-Grätz was sent into Hungary. For this, the imperial court placed just one condition: remove Lajos Kossuth from the ministry. Kossuth was known for being lukewarm at best on continued Habsburg rule, and it was feared that his presence in power might lead to a radicalization like that seen in Britain, Italy, and a few of the German states in recent months. [17]
Batthyány replaced him with the incumbent Minister of War and named Perczel to that post. With Perczel being an ally of Kossuth, this didn’t change the ideological makeup of the ministry, but nor was it possible for the Habsburgs to object to the elevation of the hero of Kelenföld. It was under his leadership that the Honvéd joined the Imperial Army in marching south, and it was under this ministry that Hungary came to join the reaction against the Slavic revolution breaking out all over Austria…
***
From “History 2: The Slavic Peoples and their Fates”
(c) 1954 by Prof. Jovan Djordjevich (ed.)
Belgrade: Central Education Commission
In April 1850, with the dust finally settled, Schwarzenberg and his ministry set about reforming the Austrian Empire. They did this with no regard for the self-determination of peoples; after all, their whole Empire was built on the principle of denying that right. Instead, the peoples of Austria were rewarded or punished according to how loyal they’d been to the Emperor during the crisis.
The Magyars, who had answered the Empire’s call and cut down the great Jelačić in his quest to free the South Slavic peoples, were richly rewarded for this duplicity. They received the blessing of the imperial court for their Magyarization policies, including common schools with Magyar as the language of instruction and an election system for the Diet that excluded non-Magyars from participation. [18] They also received, in full and without condition, Transylvania, which would see the very worst of the Black Decades to come.
The Slovaks and Romanians, who had not sent their own against the forces of liberation but also not joined the forces of liberation, received liberation from serfdom and many other feudal privileges. [19] The Empire had used this promise to crush the Polish uprising in 1847, after all, and in this instance, they proved true to their word.
The Czechs, who had briefly tried to rise up before accepting the false pipe dream of “Austroslavism” that would prove so devastating to the Slavist cause, did not receive the union of Bohemia and Moravia, because they weren’t trusted with it, but they did receive tacit permission to begin using their language for non-official purposes, and the succeeding years would see them given a provincial Diet and some degree of autonomy. They would never be Magyars in the eyes of the Habsburgs, but nor would they ever be Croats.
For the Croats, who had struck a blow for national liberation and defied the will of the Emperor, there would be no reward. The heavy hand of imperial governance and imperial taxes would continue, the Military Frontier with its particularly repressive regime would stay in place even as the Turkish threat subsided and vanished, and increasingly, the areas under civilian rule would come under Hungarian sway. Repression against Croatian or Slavic identity was swift and ruthless, and no light would be seen until the fall of the Empire half a century on. And even then, it was a light that would prove elusive…
***
[1] In a history book about Austria, Metternich would have been introduced earlier, but suffice it to say he was the State Chancellor of the Austrian Empire, and essentially the man behind the post-Napoleonic conservative order.
[2] This is an OTL legend, aside from obvious changes like the time shift.
[3] IOTL, Metternich went to London, returned to Vienna after the revolutionary period ended, and lived until 1859.
[4] IOTL, Latour was Minister of War in the moderate ministries of 1848, and when the October Uprising happened and the imperial court fled to Olmütz, he stayed behind in Vienna to keep order – a decision he’d soon regret, as the rebels cornered and lynched him. The army was forced to assault its own capital, with great loss of life, and the reaction of 1849 proved especially harsh in Austria.
[5] Franz Anton Graf von Kolowrat-Liebsteinsky (don’t you love Austrian names?) was a member of the State Conference for several years, and probably the most liberal among them (which really isn't saying much). He was constantly at loggerheads with Metternich over the direction of the empire, and this combination of closeness to the imperial court and high-profile opposition to Metternich obviously made him perfectly placed to take over when the revolution rolled around and Metternich resigned. As indeed he did in 1848 IOTL, but he was forced to resign very early on due to a health scare.
[6] Bruck was a consummate economic liberal who’d played a large part in founding the Österreichischer Lloyd shipping conglomerate, and one of his great political projects was to create a Central European customs union that would cover the entire Austrian Empire and German Confederation. However, when he was elected as Trieste’s representative in the Frankfurt National Assembly in 1848, he joined the conservative Café Milani faction, and so we can probably consider him a liberal-conservative (although with the obvious caveat that this really wasn’t a thing at the time).
[7] Schmerling was one of the great up-and-coming names in Austrian politics at this time, and IOTL he’d go on to briefly head the provisional government of the Frankfurt National Assembly before serving as Interior Minister of Austria during the early 1860s. In this role he tried to introduce a unitary constitution for the Empire but failed spectacularly because Austria was well into the process of descending into ungovernable chaos by this point. When the 1867 agreement was made, his constitution was nevertheless adopted for every part of the empire except Hungary and Croatia.
[8] “SE-chen-y-ee”. Or something like that.
[9] The previous official language being Latin, naturally.
[10] Deák was a lawyer and member of the Diet who played a key role in the liberal movement of the 1820s and 30s, He opposed the violent revolution of 1848, and because of this he became one of the more politically acceptable figureheads of Hungarian nationalism during the Austro-Hungarian period. Today he’s revered as one of the founders of the Hungarian nation, with a large square in Budapest (and the central metro station underneath it) named for him and his face adorning the 20,000-forint banknote.
[11] Batthyány was a liberal nobleman who’d been something of a protégé for Széchenyi during the late 1830s and early 1840s. He generally agreed with Széchenyi that liberal reform within Austria was the way forward, but nevertheless chose to throw his lot in with the revolution, for which he was executed by firing squad in 1849.
[12] IOTL, Kossuth was made finance minister, a position that would keep him out of the fray should the situation exacerbate. Fat lot of good that did in the end.
[13] By the equivalent point in the OTL revolution, Ferdinand had been pushed to abdicate and been replaced by his nephew Franz Joseph. The Hungarian nationalists, seeing an opportunity, refused to recognize him as King of Hungary until he’d made political concessions, and this poisoned relations between the Austrian and Hungarian governments to such an extent that, when Jelačić did march on Pest, it was in the name of the Emperor and with the Emperor’s tacit support. ITTL, events have moved a bit faster, and Ferdinand is not only still on the throne (with the remaining members of the State Conference acting as a de facto regency council) but reigning from inside Hungary with Batthyány trying his very hardest to butter him up.
[14] This is, of course, what happened IOTL. The Hungarians and Croats got over themselves amazingly well over time, but the Croats’ closeness to the Habsburgs (and later, of course, the formation of a Croatian puppet state under the Nazis) would form a core element in the hatred between Serbs and Croats after the formation of Yugoslavia.
[15] Again, the fact that Jelačić shows his hand so much sooner means that the Honvéd is much less organized – we tend to call it the Revolutionary Army by this point IOTL.
[16] The downside of writing about Hungary is that you have to do a lot of copy-pasting.
[17] Rest assured that we will get back to Britain as well as Italy, I just have so many things happening at once.
[18] The franchise used to elect the Diet is actually the same as that proposed IOTL during the moderate phase of the Hungarian Revolution and is based on a byzantine array of taxable wealth, taxable income, residency, and literacy requirements. Applied to the Hungarian situation, this obviously meant that nearly all non-Magyars were disqualified, but so were a huge proportion of Magyars – this, more than overt ethnic discrimination, was probably the goal of the system.
[19] As did the South Slavs living in the Empire, but if you think that’s anywhere near the point, I don’t think you understand what kind of source this is.
From past experience, once caught up, you'll be fine dropping in every month or two.
Alex Richards
Donor
So Austria is more stable the Magyars are happy and the Slavs ever more shafted.
But I had this lovely guillotine ready for the bastard Nepomuk!
#thingsonlyaFrenchmanwouldsay
Yes, it is amazing how centuries of loyalty to Vienna IOTL still had them thrown under the bus to appease groups that were committing treason. Even less pleasant for them here.
@Utgard96 , will the Hungarians still claim Dalmatia like they did IOTL? Though that admittedly might be because they figured it was a carrot to throw to the Croats.
ANNOUNCEMENT: 2018 Turtledove Awards
Hi everyone.
Work continues to be slow, evidently telling myself "I'll finish this up and then move on" hasn't been enough to keep me from moving on prematurely. That's not to say this is being put on ice, but nor are updates likely to be quicker than the last few have been.
However, I do have some good news: A House Divided has been nominated for a Turtledove in the Best Colonialism and Revolutions Era TL category. I would encourage you to go look at the nominees, as the polls this year have made me realise how bad I've been at keeping track of what's been written on the board lately. I will appreciate any vote cast for this or The Only Winning Move (over in the Writer's Forum category), but it's up to you to decide which works you feel deserve the award.
Thanks.
Work continues to be slow, evidently telling myself "I'll finish this up and then move on" hasn't been enough to keep me from moving on prematurely. That's not to say this is being put on ice, but nor are updates likely to be quicker than the last few have been.
However, I do have some good news: A House Divided has been nominated for a Turtledove in the Best Colonialism and Revolutions Era TL category. I would encourage you to go look at the nominees, as the polls this year have made me realise how bad I've been at keeping track of what's been written on the board lately. I will appreciate any vote cast for this or The Only Winning Move (over in the Writer's Forum category), but it's up to you to decide which works you feel deserve the award.
Thanks.
#30: In the Halls of Montezuma
A House Divided #30: In the Halls of Montezuma
“Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States.”
***
From “The Mexican War”
(c) 1999 by Spencer Gage III
Athens: University of Georgia Press
The Battle of Monterey [1] was, without a doubt, the most significant of the war. Before it, the armies had been staring each other down, and while minor skirmishes had been fought as Taylor crossed the Rio Grande and Ampudia tried in vain to stop him, little real action had taken place. After it, the war began in earnest. Several more set-piece battles would be fought, all either tactical draws or American victories, but none changed much except to dig Mexico into an even deeper hole. The course of the war was decided at Monterey, and the remainder of the war would just be a series of additional Montereys…
…The city of Monterey was the largest in the region, and a major intersection of trade routes linking what were then Texas and the northern Mexican interior to the core of the country and the port of Tampico. It was also the capital of New Leon. Combined, these two factors meant that it controlled the Rio Grande states and made it the obvious place for Ampudia to make his stand against Taylor’s army. It helped that its location was relatively defensible – it lay in a river valley going from west to east, with tall mountains to the south and less dramatic but still formidable hills to the north. On the edge of the northern hills sat the “Black Fort”, the city’s main military stronghold.
In August, Ampudia received reinforcements from the south, putting his combined army at around seven thousand men – slightly outnumbering Taylor’s force. They established batteries at the eastern gate to the city and brought the Black Fort up to full strength. Between these, the advancing Americans would be funneled into a single road leading into the city from the northeast, within range of the heavy guns of the Black Fort. The Mexican infantry could be massed along these roads and have a territorial advantage over their enemy. It was a strategy straight out of Greek legend, but Taylor would prove equal to it.
Battle was finally joined on September 3, when Taylor’s vanguard came within sight of the Mexican artillery. They were battered by the initial strike, but continued onward, and Ampudia’s expectations seemed to be coming true – it was hard going for the four thousand or so U.S. troops pushing up against seven thousand Mexicans. They did hold out until the evening and were able to dig in on the eastern perimeter, so that the 4th was relatively quiet.
On the 5th, though, Taylor’s ruse was finally revealed, as the Texian volunteers under Brigadier General William Jenkins Worth descended on Monterey itself from the west, catching Ampudia completely unaware and forcing him to withdraw a sizable contingent to defend his rear. In the chaos that followed, [2] Taylor was able to advance into the city proper but was held up there. Worth’s men, far more experienced in house-to-house warfare than Taylor’s regulars, were able to clean up everything west of the plaza, at which point the remaining Mexican troops retreated to the south and gave a clear line of communication between the two American columns. From that point on, the battle was won. Ampudia negotiated a temporary armistice with Taylor, allowing him to withdraw the remainder of his army, but nearly five hundred of them would not return… [3]
…It is a great irony that, in the war whose primary lesson is held by most military historians to be the inefficacy of the U.S. volunteer system, volunteer troops were indispensable to the war’s most significant victory…
***
From “Santa Anna: The Man”
(c) 1971 by E.W. Swanton
London: Macmillan Publishers
Immediately on the outbreak of hostilities, Santa Anna sent a letter to President Bustamante, offering his services in the war against the United States. He claimed to be able to raise an army of twenty thousand to march on Texas, “defeating any army that should resolve to stand in my path and that of the Mexican nation”. To assuage fears that he would repeat his actions after Pueblo Viejo, [4] his letter continued: “For myself, I have learned the price of power: it is the reason I am now in Cuba, pleading to return to the country of my birth, and not already throwing myself into the struggle against those who threaten it. I pledge on my honour and God Almighty that my intention in writing to Your Excellency extends no further than the lending of a loyal sword in the service of the fatherland”.
But Bustamante was unconvinced – wisely, as history reveals. He’d spent the first two years of his rule fighting liberal and federalist uprisings and had no desire to invite back a man with a precedent of seizing power at the first opportunity. So, he disregarded Santa Anna’s letter, and proceeded to appoint Pedro de Ampudia (ironically Cuban by birth) to lead the armies in the northeast… [5]
…The defeat at Monterrey sent Bustamante scrambling for new military leadership. Finding none of his present corps of generals up to the task of beating Taylor back, he finally turned to the one man he felt had proved himself able to deal with invading armies – serial traitor or no. The presidential envoy arrived in Havana two days after Santa Anna received news of the battle, and just in time to hear the old general’s views: in his opinion, Ampudia should’ve made a stand at the more defensible city of Saltillo to the west, rather than risking his army in the open field. Somewhat difficult to believe, perhaps, from the man who had made a name for reckless attacks, but little was made of it by the envoy. [6] Santa Anna gladly accepted the offer to come home and lead the army, and set sail as quickly as he could, trusting a Cuban friend with the sale of his house.
Santa Anna around 1850.
Santa Anna made straight for Tampico, where he arrived in early November. With the fall of Monterrey, the port city of Tampico was the only major city in the northeast still out of American hands, and by landing there rather than in the less-contested Veracruz, he showed the nation that he intended to stand his ground. It was a skilful move, although undercut when he immediately moved inland to San Luis Potosi, where he set up his rear headquarters. Even that was quickly seeming like a frontline position – late in November, the Pacific Squadron of the U.S. Navy landed a company of Marines at Mazatlán, followed by another at La Paz. The Gulf of California was now effectively an American lake, and plans were already being made to march an army inland, joining Taylor from the east and Price from the north in a three-way encirclement of the Mexican army in the central highlands. [7]
Nothing would come of those plans, but Taylor’s army, now approaching Saltillo, was a genuine threat. Santa Anna marched north bringing six thousand men to reinforce the five thousand remaining troops under Ampudia. Dismissing Ampudia in mid-retreat had not been practical even to Bustamante, and he guarded his separate command fiercely. This would prove fatal, as Santa Anna and Ampudia did not get along with one another. At the battle for Saltillo in January, Taylor was able to exploit this division to break the Mexican army into its constituent parts and defeat each one in turn. Without the fortifications of Monterrey, there was a massive American artillery advantage, which helped turn unfavourable conditions into another American rout.
Santa Anna’s position was not helped by the immediate defeat, nor was Bustamante’s. Several generals began murmuring about the need to replace the President with someone less inclined to mess with the army, and some even mentioned Santa Anna’s name – but true to his word, he would have none of it. On the contrary, he began to present himself as Bustamante’s most loyal supporter and gave him credit for letting his view of the situation change as strategies proved unsatisfactory. He made a particular point of stressing that it was Bustamante’s leadership that directed the war “and will surely guide us to victory”. As ever, Santa Anna was playing the long game.
***
From “Henry Clay: Life of a Statesman”
(c) 1973 by Dr. Adam Greene
New Orleans: Stephens & Co.
The debates over the Mexican War, and the treaty that ended it, were Clay’s last hurrah as a senator and statesman. Word arrived of the peace when he lay on his deathbed, and ultimately, he would have precious little influence over the form it took…
…Clay had left the Senate in 1847, after the Republicans lost control of the House, in order to focus on his presidential bid. He nominated John Crittenden to succeed him, and the legislature agreed, but Crittenden soon resigned to run for governor. Clay, having lost the presidential race, allowed his name to be put forward to resume his Senate seat, and the legislature elected him by a wide margin. [8] By the time he returned to Washington, the Mexican War was in full swing, and Clay would become known as one of its chief legislative opponents.
He wasn’t alone, though. William Lloyd Garrison devoted an entire issue of The Liberator to the war, which he called a war of aggression. Adding that “It is certainly not a popular war; it was begun and is carried on against the deep moral convictions of the sober portion of the people; its real object, the extension and preservation of slavery, no intelligent man honestly doubts; still, the diabolical motto, “Our country, right or wrong,” gratifies national pride, appears in a patriotic garb, and obtains a sanction practically that is almost universal.” He was unusual among opponents of the war in openly calling for Mexican success, and as usual, won few friends outside the convinced abolitionist circle who were already on his side.
Mainstream Republican leaders like Clay opposed the war on more pragmatic grounds. In an 1850 Senate speech, Clay said that “the strength of our Union and the happiness of its people has depended until now on the stability of its political institutions, and the stability of its political institutions depends on the balance between its geographic regions as well as the interests within them… acquiring new territory threatens to shatter forever this delicate balance”. In other words: the slavery debate would change fundamentally if new territory were added south of the Missouri Compromise line. Clay was no abolitionist, and he regarded the stability of the Union as above all other concerns. And moreover, the vaunted stability brought by the Missouri Compromise had been his work in no small part.
President Benton asked the 1850 congressional session, the first to be held after the war’s outbreak, to approve a blanket appropriations bill raising $2 million for the prosecution of the war. This inevitably snowballed into the first significant legislative debate of the war itself, and its peak came when Representative Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, a Republican with anti-slavery leanings, moved to attach a rider to the bill requiring slavery to be barred from any territory acquired as a result of the war as a condition of the appropriation.
The relatively obscure Abraham Lincoln would return to Illinois after losing re-election in 1852.
The Lincoln Amendment, as it quickly became known, [9] sparked the first serious debate on slavery seen in Congress since the passage of the gag rule in 1835. [10] Lincoln himself was joined by fellow Republican Joshua Giddings of Ohio and Democrat John Parker Hale of New Hampshire – who had been Van Buren’s running mate in 1848 – in propagating the amendment, with Lincoln making perhaps the most succinct summation of the anti-slavery argument: “We must not interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists, because the Constitution forbids it, and the general welfare does not require us to do so. But we must prevent the outspreading of the institution, because neither the Constitution nor general welfare requires us to extend it… we wish to insure that the Republican principle of self-government – the white man governing himself – is not corrupted so as to give the white man dominion also over others.”
Even this relatively moderate anti-slavery argument came under heavy fire from the pro-slavery interest. The most outspoken representative of this standpoint, with John C. Calhoun having died earlier the same year, was Representative William Lowndes Yancey of Alabama. Yancey argued that it was impossible to ban slavery from any newly acquired territory, because this territory fell under the jurisdiction of the United States Constitution, and the Constitution protected property rights (while failing to mention slavery specifically). So, it would be impossible for either the federal government, the new territorial governments or the citizens, under the Constitution, to prevent slaves from being brought in. [11]
Yancey’s argument implicitly overturned the Missouri Compromise, and for that reason, it was ignored or refuted by all but the most intransigent pro-slavery representatives. But there were quite a few southerners, Democrat and Republican alike, who agreed with him deep down, and even more who agreed that the institution of slavery needed to continue to expand in order to retain its vitality. [12] Overall, the House was inclined to support restrictions, but the Lincoln Amendment went too far for most of them. So when a compromise amendment was introduced to add a rider, but instead require the extension of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean, it was passed by 81-78… [13]
***
[1] My spelling choice is very much deliberate, but this is nevertheless the city of Monterrey (spelled with two Rs IOTL) in Nuevo León, not the much smaller city of Monterey in California.
[2] Ruse or no, I’ve played enough Civil War strategy games to know that making line infantry break and reform ranks for any reason is bad news.
[3] This is pretty much a line-by-line recreation of the OTL Battle of Monterrey.
[4] See #9: All on the Plains of Mexico.
[5] Northeastern Mexico as commonly used, i.e. the states of Coahuila, Tamaulipas and Nuevo León. Slightly confusing, one might think, considering they’re due north of Mexico City, but Tamaulipas being on the eastern coast makes it a bit more logical. Swanton will have introduced the basic divisions of Mexico earlier in the book.
[6] Santa Anna said the same thing after Monterrey IOTL, and he was already in Mexico at the time.
[7] These plans were obviously somewhat grandiose, what with the whole “to get more troops into the Pacific than we already have, we’d have to sail them around Cape Horn” situation, but it’s the thought that counts. Especially so in the Mexican-American War.
[8] Kentucky was fiercely loyal to Clay in all things, in a way that I don’t think is possible today. Indeed, even as the Whig Party was collapsing in the other slave states, almost everyone in Kentucky was a Whig while Clay was still alive – it was only from the time of his death onward that the state began to turn Democratic.
[9] This is equivalent to OTL’s Wilmot Proviso, sponsored by David Wilmot of Pennsylvania. The most notable difference for our purposes is that Wilmot was a Democrat at the time.
[10] A year ahead of OTL, mainly because the Democrats of the time were somewhat more in a hurry than IOTL.
[11] Calhoun made very similar arguments IOTL, but because the war happens later ITTL, he’s dead. The Senate tended to have fewer rabid fire-eaters just as it tended to have fewer abolitionists, so it’s Yancey who passes into history as the most vocal supporter of expanding slavery.
[12] This sounds very Lebensraum to us now, but it was a fact that the growth patterns of the North and South were very different. Where the North grew both westward and in density, the southern plantation economy (post-cotton gin) only allowed for a certain population density before it simply had to move west. By the OTL Civil War, it had almost reached its limit, and this explains a great deal about the degree of urgency and radicalization in the actions of the pro-slavery interest at the time.
[13] This exact proposal failed IOTL, and by a fairly broad margin (though with poor attendance – the margin was 89-54, or 143 out of 228 members attending) at that. However, ITTL there’s concerns over the nature of the amendment – Wilmot was a Democrat, so he could be trusted to be acting out of principle. Lincoln, however, is a Republican, and there’s a compact Democratic majority that views him with some suspicion.
“Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States.”
***
From “The Mexican War”
(c) 1999 by Spencer Gage III
Athens: University of Georgia Press
The Battle of Monterey [1] was, without a doubt, the most significant of the war. Before it, the armies had been staring each other down, and while minor skirmishes had been fought as Taylor crossed the Rio Grande and Ampudia tried in vain to stop him, little real action had taken place. After it, the war began in earnest. Several more set-piece battles would be fought, all either tactical draws or American victories, but none changed much except to dig Mexico into an even deeper hole. The course of the war was decided at Monterey, and the remainder of the war would just be a series of additional Montereys…
…The city of Monterey was the largest in the region, and a major intersection of trade routes linking what were then Texas and the northern Mexican interior to the core of the country and the port of Tampico. It was also the capital of New Leon. Combined, these two factors meant that it controlled the Rio Grande states and made it the obvious place for Ampudia to make his stand against Taylor’s army. It helped that its location was relatively defensible – it lay in a river valley going from west to east, with tall mountains to the south and less dramatic but still formidable hills to the north. On the edge of the northern hills sat the “Black Fort”, the city’s main military stronghold.
In August, Ampudia received reinforcements from the south, putting his combined army at around seven thousand men – slightly outnumbering Taylor’s force. They established batteries at the eastern gate to the city and brought the Black Fort up to full strength. Between these, the advancing Americans would be funneled into a single road leading into the city from the northeast, within range of the heavy guns of the Black Fort. The Mexican infantry could be massed along these roads and have a territorial advantage over their enemy. It was a strategy straight out of Greek legend, but Taylor would prove equal to it.
Battle was finally joined on September 3, when Taylor’s vanguard came within sight of the Mexican artillery. They were battered by the initial strike, but continued onward, and Ampudia’s expectations seemed to be coming true – it was hard going for the four thousand or so U.S. troops pushing up against seven thousand Mexicans. They did hold out until the evening and were able to dig in on the eastern perimeter, so that the 4th was relatively quiet.
On the 5th, though, Taylor’s ruse was finally revealed, as the Texian volunteers under Brigadier General William Jenkins Worth descended on Monterey itself from the west, catching Ampudia completely unaware and forcing him to withdraw a sizable contingent to defend his rear. In the chaos that followed, [2] Taylor was able to advance into the city proper but was held up there. Worth’s men, far more experienced in house-to-house warfare than Taylor’s regulars, were able to clean up everything west of the plaza, at which point the remaining Mexican troops retreated to the south and gave a clear line of communication between the two American columns. From that point on, the battle was won. Ampudia negotiated a temporary armistice with Taylor, allowing him to withdraw the remainder of his army, but nearly five hundred of them would not return… [3]
…It is a great irony that, in the war whose primary lesson is held by most military historians to be the inefficacy of the U.S. volunteer system, volunteer troops were indispensable to the war’s most significant victory…
***
From “Santa Anna: The Man”
(c) 1971 by E.W. Swanton
London: Macmillan Publishers
Immediately on the outbreak of hostilities, Santa Anna sent a letter to President Bustamante, offering his services in the war against the United States. He claimed to be able to raise an army of twenty thousand to march on Texas, “defeating any army that should resolve to stand in my path and that of the Mexican nation”. To assuage fears that he would repeat his actions after Pueblo Viejo, [4] his letter continued: “For myself, I have learned the price of power: it is the reason I am now in Cuba, pleading to return to the country of my birth, and not already throwing myself into the struggle against those who threaten it. I pledge on my honour and God Almighty that my intention in writing to Your Excellency extends no further than the lending of a loyal sword in the service of the fatherland”.
But Bustamante was unconvinced – wisely, as history reveals. He’d spent the first two years of his rule fighting liberal and federalist uprisings and had no desire to invite back a man with a precedent of seizing power at the first opportunity. So, he disregarded Santa Anna’s letter, and proceeded to appoint Pedro de Ampudia (ironically Cuban by birth) to lead the armies in the northeast… [5]
…The defeat at Monterrey sent Bustamante scrambling for new military leadership. Finding none of his present corps of generals up to the task of beating Taylor back, he finally turned to the one man he felt had proved himself able to deal with invading armies – serial traitor or no. The presidential envoy arrived in Havana two days after Santa Anna received news of the battle, and just in time to hear the old general’s views: in his opinion, Ampudia should’ve made a stand at the more defensible city of Saltillo to the west, rather than risking his army in the open field. Somewhat difficult to believe, perhaps, from the man who had made a name for reckless attacks, but little was made of it by the envoy. [6] Santa Anna gladly accepted the offer to come home and lead the army, and set sail as quickly as he could, trusting a Cuban friend with the sale of his house.
Santa Anna around 1850.
Santa Anna made straight for Tampico, where he arrived in early November. With the fall of Monterrey, the port city of Tampico was the only major city in the northeast still out of American hands, and by landing there rather than in the less-contested Veracruz, he showed the nation that he intended to stand his ground. It was a skilful move, although undercut when he immediately moved inland to San Luis Potosi, where he set up his rear headquarters. Even that was quickly seeming like a frontline position – late in November, the Pacific Squadron of the U.S. Navy landed a company of Marines at Mazatlán, followed by another at La Paz. The Gulf of California was now effectively an American lake, and plans were already being made to march an army inland, joining Taylor from the east and Price from the north in a three-way encirclement of the Mexican army in the central highlands. [7]
Nothing would come of those plans, but Taylor’s army, now approaching Saltillo, was a genuine threat. Santa Anna marched north bringing six thousand men to reinforce the five thousand remaining troops under Ampudia. Dismissing Ampudia in mid-retreat had not been practical even to Bustamante, and he guarded his separate command fiercely. This would prove fatal, as Santa Anna and Ampudia did not get along with one another. At the battle for Saltillo in January, Taylor was able to exploit this division to break the Mexican army into its constituent parts and defeat each one in turn. Without the fortifications of Monterrey, there was a massive American artillery advantage, which helped turn unfavourable conditions into another American rout.
Santa Anna’s position was not helped by the immediate defeat, nor was Bustamante’s. Several generals began murmuring about the need to replace the President with someone less inclined to mess with the army, and some even mentioned Santa Anna’s name – but true to his word, he would have none of it. On the contrary, he began to present himself as Bustamante’s most loyal supporter and gave him credit for letting his view of the situation change as strategies proved unsatisfactory. He made a particular point of stressing that it was Bustamante’s leadership that directed the war “and will surely guide us to victory”. As ever, Santa Anna was playing the long game.
***
From “Henry Clay: Life of a Statesman”
(c) 1973 by Dr. Adam Greene
New Orleans: Stephens & Co.
The debates over the Mexican War, and the treaty that ended it, were Clay’s last hurrah as a senator and statesman. Word arrived of the peace when he lay on his deathbed, and ultimately, he would have precious little influence over the form it took…
…Clay had left the Senate in 1847, after the Republicans lost control of the House, in order to focus on his presidential bid. He nominated John Crittenden to succeed him, and the legislature agreed, but Crittenden soon resigned to run for governor. Clay, having lost the presidential race, allowed his name to be put forward to resume his Senate seat, and the legislature elected him by a wide margin. [8] By the time he returned to Washington, the Mexican War was in full swing, and Clay would become known as one of its chief legislative opponents.
He wasn’t alone, though. William Lloyd Garrison devoted an entire issue of The Liberator to the war, which he called a war of aggression. Adding that “It is certainly not a popular war; it was begun and is carried on against the deep moral convictions of the sober portion of the people; its real object, the extension and preservation of slavery, no intelligent man honestly doubts; still, the diabolical motto, “Our country, right or wrong,” gratifies national pride, appears in a patriotic garb, and obtains a sanction practically that is almost universal.” He was unusual among opponents of the war in openly calling for Mexican success, and as usual, won few friends outside the convinced abolitionist circle who were already on his side.
Mainstream Republican leaders like Clay opposed the war on more pragmatic grounds. In an 1850 Senate speech, Clay said that “the strength of our Union and the happiness of its people has depended until now on the stability of its political institutions, and the stability of its political institutions depends on the balance between its geographic regions as well as the interests within them… acquiring new territory threatens to shatter forever this delicate balance”. In other words: the slavery debate would change fundamentally if new territory were added south of the Missouri Compromise line. Clay was no abolitionist, and he regarded the stability of the Union as above all other concerns. And moreover, the vaunted stability brought by the Missouri Compromise had been his work in no small part.
President Benton asked the 1850 congressional session, the first to be held after the war’s outbreak, to approve a blanket appropriations bill raising $2 million for the prosecution of the war. This inevitably snowballed into the first significant legislative debate of the war itself, and its peak came when Representative Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, a Republican with anti-slavery leanings, moved to attach a rider to the bill requiring slavery to be barred from any territory acquired as a result of the war as a condition of the appropriation.
The relatively obscure Abraham Lincoln would return to Illinois after losing re-election in 1852.
The Lincoln Amendment, as it quickly became known, [9] sparked the first serious debate on slavery seen in Congress since the passage of the gag rule in 1835. [10] Lincoln himself was joined by fellow Republican Joshua Giddings of Ohio and Democrat John Parker Hale of New Hampshire – who had been Van Buren’s running mate in 1848 – in propagating the amendment, with Lincoln making perhaps the most succinct summation of the anti-slavery argument: “We must not interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists, because the Constitution forbids it, and the general welfare does not require us to do so. But we must prevent the outspreading of the institution, because neither the Constitution nor general welfare requires us to extend it… we wish to insure that the Republican principle of self-government – the white man governing himself – is not corrupted so as to give the white man dominion also over others.”
Even this relatively moderate anti-slavery argument came under heavy fire from the pro-slavery interest. The most outspoken representative of this standpoint, with John C. Calhoun having died earlier the same year, was Representative William Lowndes Yancey of Alabama. Yancey argued that it was impossible to ban slavery from any newly acquired territory, because this territory fell under the jurisdiction of the United States Constitution, and the Constitution protected property rights (while failing to mention slavery specifically). So, it would be impossible for either the federal government, the new territorial governments or the citizens, under the Constitution, to prevent slaves from being brought in. [11]
Yancey’s argument implicitly overturned the Missouri Compromise, and for that reason, it was ignored or refuted by all but the most intransigent pro-slavery representatives. But there were quite a few southerners, Democrat and Republican alike, who agreed with him deep down, and even more who agreed that the institution of slavery needed to continue to expand in order to retain its vitality. [12] Overall, the House was inclined to support restrictions, but the Lincoln Amendment went too far for most of them. So when a compromise amendment was introduced to add a rider, but instead require the extension of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean, it was passed by 81-78… [13]
***
[1] My spelling choice is very much deliberate, but this is nevertheless the city of Monterrey (spelled with two Rs IOTL) in Nuevo León, not the much smaller city of Monterey in California.
[2] Ruse or no, I’ve played enough Civil War strategy games to know that making line infantry break and reform ranks for any reason is bad news.
[3] This is pretty much a line-by-line recreation of the OTL Battle of Monterrey.
[4] See #9: All on the Plains of Mexico.
[5] Northeastern Mexico as commonly used, i.e. the states of Coahuila, Tamaulipas and Nuevo León. Slightly confusing, one might think, considering they’re due north of Mexico City, but Tamaulipas being on the eastern coast makes it a bit more logical. Swanton will have introduced the basic divisions of Mexico earlier in the book.
[6] Santa Anna said the same thing after Monterrey IOTL, and he was already in Mexico at the time.
[7] These plans were obviously somewhat grandiose, what with the whole “to get more troops into the Pacific than we already have, we’d have to sail them around Cape Horn” situation, but it’s the thought that counts. Especially so in the Mexican-American War.
[8] Kentucky was fiercely loyal to Clay in all things, in a way that I don’t think is possible today. Indeed, even as the Whig Party was collapsing in the other slave states, almost everyone in Kentucky was a Whig while Clay was still alive – it was only from the time of his death onward that the state began to turn Democratic.
[9] This is equivalent to OTL’s Wilmot Proviso, sponsored by David Wilmot of Pennsylvania. The most notable difference for our purposes is that Wilmot was a Democrat at the time.
[10] A year ahead of OTL, mainly because the Democrats of the time were somewhat more in a hurry than IOTL.
[11] Calhoun made very similar arguments IOTL, but because the war happens later ITTL, he’s dead. The Senate tended to have fewer rabid fire-eaters just as it tended to have fewer abolitionists, so it’s Yancey who passes into history as the most vocal supporter of expanding slavery.
[12] This sounds very Lebensraum to us now, but it was a fact that the growth patterns of the North and South were very different. Where the North grew both westward and in density, the southern plantation economy (post-cotton gin) only allowed for a certain population density before it simply had to move west. By the OTL Civil War, it had almost reached its limit, and this explains a great deal about the degree of urgency and radicalization in the actions of the pro-slavery interest at the time.
[13] This exact proposal failed IOTL, and by a fairly broad margin (though with poor attendance – the margin was 89-54, or 143 out of 228 members attending) at that. However, ITTL there’s concerns over the nature of the amendment – Wilmot was a Democrat, so he could be trusted to be acting out of principle. Lincoln, however, is a Republican, and there’s a compact Democratic majority that views him with some suspicion.
Last edited:
Alex Richards
Donor
We're really seeing the balance tipping away from the North with this. Unless Southern California just sees lots of antislavery settlers disrupt the plans...
Very nice update. Any chance we'll get a map of the United States after the Mexican War?
Once it ends and we have the *Compromise of 1850, we certainly will.
Deleted member 109224
The California Republic was established with representatives arriving from Shasta in the north of OTL's California state and Ensenada in the north of today's Baja California. The country's constitution acknowledged a "peculiar bond" with the US but the folks there opted against joining the union IIRC.
The constitutional convention of the California Republic had a firm majority in favor of independence. Borders were to be negotiated with the US, but Upper and Lower California were to be included. There was mention of a "University of South California Press" based out of San Pedro, which was annexed into LA in 1909 so that could mean a variety of things.
The only place mentioned as being US-dominated was the Gulf of California, not California proper. The Battle of Monterrey was in Nuevo Leone not California. I think it is more likely that we will see the US getting its pacific coast via Sonora. Coahuila, Nuevo Leone, Tamaulipas, Sonora, and Chihuahua were all desired by Polk OTL and it was Nicholas Trist going rogue that left them Mexican.
#31: The Last Lithuanian Foray
A House Divided #31: The Last Lithuanian Foray
“God of Justice; Thou who saved us
when in deepest bondage cast,
Hear the voices of Thy children,
Be our help as in the past.”
***
From “Poland: The Country in the Middle”
(c) 2001 by Thaddeus Sikorski
Chicago: Illinois United Writers
The short-lived rights enjoyed by the Polish people under the Congress of Vienna would be decisively ended after the November Uprising. The Uprising had started when Tsar Nicholas I refused to swear to uphold the Polish constitution, and with the rebels thoroughly crushed, the Russian government was not about to let go of the principle at stake. The Polish army was dissolved, and the Polish civil service was placed directly under the namiestnik. [1] The Sejm was not only dissolved and disbanded, its chamber was physically demolished along with its entire wing of the Warsaw Castle, which was rebuilt in Russian style without the Sejm chamber. From 1832 on, the autonomy of Russian Poland was severely restricted, but Greater Poland remained an autonomous grand duchy within Prussia, and Krakow persisted as a free city. Poland was not yet lost…
…The revolutions of 1849 are unusual insofar as the only part of Poland that didn’t revolt on a large scale was the Russian partition. Indeed, the Lesser Poland Uprising of 1846 is usually considered one of the most important preludes to the cycle of revolutions as a whole. It was focused on the Free City of Krakow, the single independent Polish polity that had survived the partitions. The city had become something of a focal point for Polish nationalism away from the repressive environment of the Restoration era, although the presence of all three partitioning powers on the doorstep prevented any sort of revolutionary turn. Poles in exile, in Krakow and in the Austrian partition continued to plan a return to national independence, however, and there was a revolutionary mood during the Bloody Forties in the Austrian partition. The nobles and bourgeoisie wanted to see Polish independence restored, to be freed from the oppressive social climate, heavy tax burden and constant military levies of Metternich’s Austrian Empire. The peasantry wanted nothing so much as to be free from the shackles of serfdom, and would accept being ruled by any authority that gave them their freedom.
Initially, the two groups were able to cooperate. When a revolutionary coterie seized control of Krakow in February 1846, the peasants of the surrounding region happily declared their allegiance to the new liberated Poland. The Austrian Habsburgs, however, had great experience playing divide-and-conquer, and later the same month the rumor started going around Galicia that the Austrians were going to abolish serfdom within a few years. Any national sympathies felt by the peasantry died there and then, as the nobles’ rebellion was recast as a desperate attempt to cling to ancient privilege in a changing world. Even though the Lesser Poland Uprising’s goals were to form a modern, liberal society – prominently including the abolition of serfdom – the peasants were all too happy to take out their anger on the masters who had mistreated them over the years. For most of March, Galicia was in chaos as the nobles tried to break free from Austrian control, only for their serfs to revolt against them and proclaiming themselves liberated from noble tyranny loud enough for the neighboring villages to hear them. All this while the Austrians stood by and watched, no doubt pleased with their success.
Over the course of the summer, the Lesser Poland Uprising and its accompanying peasant rebellion was finally put down, not without a degree of brutality. There are reports of rebellious peasants being flogged or arrested, some were exiled, and all were forced to resume their feudal obligations. The Austrian Empire initially tried to settle back into its old order, just as it had after 1815; however, the tides of revolt would soon spread to Vienna itself, and an imperial decree finally abolished serfdom on August 3, 1849. When the 1849 revolutions proper reached Poland, they would be centered not in Galicia but in Greater Poland – the Prussian partition. [2] As for the Free City of Krakow, Austria and Russia had signed a secret treaty in 1835 that would allow Austria to take over the city if it ever got restive; this was invoked in 1846, and the city was annexed into the Austrian Empire. For the first time since 1795, there was no Polish state of any kind.
***
From “Gott Mit Uns: The History of Prussia”
(c) 1996 by Rudolf Holzmann
London: Macmillan Publishers
The course of the 1849 revolutions was irrevocably changed by the events of the 7th of July. Having made preliminary noises about reform, Frederick William IV decided to present himself to his people, in line with his Romanticist views, by riding through the streets of Berlin with only two trusted guards accompanying him. This was heavily discouraged by Gerlach and Prince William both, but the King was unflappable. He would ride among his people, see their lives for himself, and this would serve both as a way for him to get in touch with them and for them to know he was on their side.
In the minds of the King’s coterie, this was a perfect set-up for regicide. Doubtless there were men in Berlin in those heady days who would’ve liked to see the King dead, and doubtless they could’ve succeeded on that day, but in the end, it wasn’t necessary. Frederick William’s own weak constitution did the work for them. He was riding through the poor quarters on the east bank of the Spree when a group of young men accosted him from the right and shouted republican slogans. According to the official account of events, the specific words were “Death to the King – long live the free German people!”, but it’s impossible to know whether that was true. The original account also spoke of a “mob”, but later historical research has determined that the number was probably no greater than ten. In any case, the sudden and fierce shout caught the King by surprise. He had a violent spasm, then slumped down in his saddle, only being kept from falling off by the timely intervention of one of his guards.
He was taken back to the Palace, where it was determined that the stroke would not be fatal, but he would also never quite recover. For the remaining five years of his life, King Frederick William IV would rule almost entirely by advice; in September, the Landtag formally declared Prince William regent…
…The next day, the Prince made a statement which was circulated among the people. It rejected calls for a full constitution unambiguously and declared that the army would be deployed in Berlin to maintain order “for as long as necessary”. While Berlin’s radical milieu carried on its activities and occasionally caused disarray in the capital, most of its people heeded the warnings and eventually turned away from the revolution. [3] The Prussian revolution had been stopped in its tracks, but the trouble was not over…
***
From “History 2: The Slavic Peoples and their Fates”
(c) 1954 by Prof. Jovan Djordjevich (ed.)
Belgrade: Central Education Commission
The triumph of the Serbian cause in 1817 was followed by tragedy. In July of that year, Karadjordje [4] returned to his homeland after four years in exile. The Turks feared his influence on Serbia and believed he would try to foment a third national rising. Miloš Obrenović, sharing their worries and wishing the agreement of 1815 to be upheld, decided to get rid of him. He secretly paid Karadjordje’s kum [5] Vujica Vulićević a large amount of money to betray the great man and lead him into a trap where Obrenović’s assassins could get to work. The deed was done not two days after his return to Serbian soil, and historians argue over the detailed course of events – there are those who believe Vujica killed Karadjordje with his own hands. [6]
Miloš Obrenović ruled Serbia for the next thirty years, and for all his treachery against the great liberator, some things must be conceded to him. He obtained broader recognition from the Turks in 1830, allowing him free rule over an area bounded by the Danube in the north, the Drina in the west, and the mountain ridges south of Kruševac in the south and east. [7] The same agreement ended Turkish landowners’ claims against their former Serbian serfs, and in 1835 a decree was passed declaring all slaves and others held in bondage free from the moment of stepping on Serbian soil.
For all that, though, Obrenović remained an autocrat. Repeated calls for a constitution were quashed with brutal force, and in the late 1830s it became clear that he was more concerned with his own power and pleasing the Turks and Austrians than he was with securing the happiness of the Serbs. This was a time of great national revivals throughout Europe, and Serbia was no exception. [8]
The leadership of the reform movement was soon taken up by Aleksandar Karadjordjević, the youngest son of the great liberator, who mixed his father’s love for the Serbian people with the modern ideas of liberal reform flourishing in France and the United States at the same time. Aleksandar became the hope of a generation of Serbs living under Obrenović who saw that there was no hope for the country while the Turks remained dominant over it, and this view grew throughout the 1840s as the rapid improvements promised by independence failed to appear.
Finally, in 1847, an assembly of notables convened in Belgrade and declared their allegiance to Aleksandar as Prince of Serbia. Obrenović attempted to fight back, but his enemies were in control of Belgrade before he could mass support against them. The Sultan accepted the fait accompli, and recognized Aleksandar rather than trying to fight to restore the man who had, after all, been the mastermind behind the second national rising in Serbia.
Aleksandar Karadjordjević’s ascent to power was part of the foreshadowing of the great revolution of 1849, and he spent his first two years in power sponsoring a great reform of the state. He proclaimed a constitution almost immediately on coming to power, and in March 1849 the first Serbian law code was promulgated. The University of Belgrade, [9] National Library and National Museum owe their existence to this initial spurt of reforms, as does the army that fought the Austrians both in 1849 and in the Great War and defeated the Turks multiple times over.
But the liberation and modernization of Serbia could never be completed while large parts of the nation lived under Turkish and Austrian rule. Aleksandar avoided antagonizing the Turks, largely due to their continuing hatred of his father, but he supported the national revival efforts of Serbs in Austria. When the Batthyány government came to power in Pest and started its Magyarization efforts, the Serbs of the Vojvodina proclaimed the restoration of their ancient principality. A local army officer named Šupljikac was elected voivode of the territory, and a proclamation was made declaring solidarity with Jelaćić’s Croatian rising.
Aleksandar quickly declared his support for both Šupljikac and Jelaćić, sending a large volunteer force across the Danube led by Stevan Knićanin, a reliable ally with little to no military experience. He turned out to be a skilled commander, leading an army of some ten thousand in the field against the Austrian and Magyar forces. He won great victories at Pančevo and Veliki Bečkerek in the autumn of 1849, and soon became a great national hero.
But the strength of the Austrian army, once fully massed, proved impossible to resist. In May of 1850, General Windischgrätz pushed east from Slavonia, taking the Vojvodina’s capital at Sremski Karlovci on the 11th and moving on to Zemun, just across the river from Belgrade.
From there, the agents of Obrenović struck once more. As had been done thirty years before, the leader of the Serbs was cut down in his time of trials. Aleksandar Karadjordjević was poisoned by a servant who was most likely in the employ of Obrenović, and with the Austrian army across the river, the assembly quickly voted to recognize Obrenović as Prince for the second time. The family of Aleksandar quickly fled the country, and his son Svetozar would grow up in exile still carrying the claim to the Serbian throne.
***
Script excerpt from “History Hour”, episode 503
Aired on UAR-13 (New York), January 23, 1986
The 1849 revolutions reached nearly every corner of Europe. As we’ve now learned, the British monarchy was briefly overthrown, Italy was permanently liberalized, the German states erupted into revolution and only survived by granting limited constitutional rights, the Austrian empire came to the brink before surviving thanks to its Hungarian Policy, and the dominant eastern half of Prussia was permanently estranged from the western half. But what about the rest? What about those countries that weren’t rocked by revolution? Well, to begin with, there was France… [10]
…In the Netherlands, there was some limited unrest among the Walloons, some of whom wanted to join France and begin recreating the Republic of 1797. This position won very little support, as the Walloons had never been very comfortable in revolutionary France, but plenty were willing to take out their anger against what they saw as Dutch domination. A revolt in Liège on July 14th, a highly symbolic date for the French nationalists, was put down by military force, and very little happened after that.
Spain had spent most of the 1830s in civil war between liberals and conservatives, and the liberals had come out on top. Although it’s perhaps more accurate to call the two sides constitutionalists and reactionaries, because once safely in power, the Spanish liberal government didn’t look that different from the conservative regimes in Britain or Austria. But the Spanish opposition remained focused within the Carlist movement, which fought to restore the male line of the House of Bourbon and to protect the ancient privileges of the various regions – mainly the north and northeast – that supported them. No liberal uprising would occur, then, though there was a brief Carlist rebellion in and around Barcelona that, like the Walloon rising, was quickly and easily put down.
The one country in all of Europe where there was absolutely no unrest of any kind was Russia. Russian Poland continued to seethe, yes, but even as Galicia and Greater Poland burned around them, no violent action was taken against the repressive Russian rule. In Russia itself, the only people who heard about the revolutions and cared were small cliques of liberal intellectuals in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and they had absolutely no power or influence over Russian politics. The peasants and the army were both completely indifferent, [11] and through this indifference, the Tsar was able to maintain his hold on power.
And as for the First United States, aside from abolishing slavery, it had already carried out the democratic reforms most of Europe was fighting for. There was no 1849 unrest in the US, although the Young America movement of the 1850s would take heavy inspiration from the European radicals…
***
[1] The namiestnik, or viceroy, was the governor of Poland, appointed by the Tsar personally. The office could be held by either a Pole or a Russian, and the first holder, Józef Zajączek, was generally content to give the Sejm some degree of leeway in internal affairs. When he died in 1826 (just before our PoD) though, all bets were off, and every subsequent namiestnik was Russian.
[2] Everything up to here is as per OTL.
[3] I would like to make clear that I’m not trying to say deploying the army stops popular discontent in general, or even that it would’ve helped against the OTL 1848 revolutions. However, ITTL, the fact that Prussia already has a legislature (of sorts) and was beginning to make moves toward reform before the revolution happened means that fewer Berliners support the revolution to begin with.
[4] “Black George” in English. Technically the Serbian orthography is Karađorđe, but ITTL, Ljudevit Gaj’s original orthography survives and the Đ is never adopted.
[5] A kum, short for the Greek word kumbaros, is the sponsor and best man of the groom in an Eastern Orthodox wedding. He is expected to pay most of the expenses for the wedding, but in exchange becomes a ceremonial relative of the couple and customarily also the godparent of their first child.
[6] This is all pre-PoD. The Obrenović and Karađorđević families would continue to fight over Serbia for most of the next century, and if the Obrenović family hadn’t died out in the male line when King Alexander was assassinated in 1903, they’d probably still be fighting to this day.
[7] Now we’re past the PoD, but Serbia’s boundaries are still what they were IOTL at this point.
[8] IOTL, Obrenović did grant a constitution in 1835 before backing down under Turkish pressure and replacing it with a tamer document. ITTL, even these initial moves don’t happen.
[9] Technically, the precursor institution was founded in 1808.
[10] You didn’t think I’d leave France’s fate to a throwaway sentence, did you? Just wait for the next update…
[11] There’s a story from the Decembrist revolt of 1825 that I think illustrates this quite well. The Decembrist officer Pavel Pestel gave a speech to a crowd of soldiers who’d gathered at Senate Square in Saint Petersburg during the revolt, in which he laid out his radical program of serf emancipation and land reform. At some point, Pestel got carried away and moved over to talking about the republic, the system he truly believed in, where all would be equal, and every citizen would have a voice in government. To this, the soldiers were completely baffled, and one of them is alleged to have simply asked “But then who will be tsar?”
“God of Justice; Thou who saved us
when in deepest bondage cast,
Hear the voices of Thy children,
Be our help as in the past.”
***
From “Poland: The Country in the Middle”
(c) 2001 by Thaddeus Sikorski
Chicago: Illinois United Writers
The short-lived rights enjoyed by the Polish people under the Congress of Vienna would be decisively ended after the November Uprising. The Uprising had started when Tsar Nicholas I refused to swear to uphold the Polish constitution, and with the rebels thoroughly crushed, the Russian government was not about to let go of the principle at stake. The Polish army was dissolved, and the Polish civil service was placed directly under the namiestnik. [1] The Sejm was not only dissolved and disbanded, its chamber was physically demolished along with its entire wing of the Warsaw Castle, which was rebuilt in Russian style without the Sejm chamber. From 1832 on, the autonomy of Russian Poland was severely restricted, but Greater Poland remained an autonomous grand duchy within Prussia, and Krakow persisted as a free city. Poland was not yet lost…
…The revolutions of 1849 are unusual insofar as the only part of Poland that didn’t revolt on a large scale was the Russian partition. Indeed, the Lesser Poland Uprising of 1846 is usually considered one of the most important preludes to the cycle of revolutions as a whole. It was focused on the Free City of Krakow, the single independent Polish polity that had survived the partitions. The city had become something of a focal point for Polish nationalism away from the repressive environment of the Restoration era, although the presence of all three partitioning powers on the doorstep prevented any sort of revolutionary turn. Poles in exile, in Krakow and in the Austrian partition continued to plan a return to national independence, however, and there was a revolutionary mood during the Bloody Forties in the Austrian partition. The nobles and bourgeoisie wanted to see Polish independence restored, to be freed from the oppressive social climate, heavy tax burden and constant military levies of Metternich’s Austrian Empire. The peasantry wanted nothing so much as to be free from the shackles of serfdom, and would accept being ruled by any authority that gave them their freedom.
Initially, the two groups were able to cooperate. When a revolutionary coterie seized control of Krakow in February 1846, the peasants of the surrounding region happily declared their allegiance to the new liberated Poland. The Austrian Habsburgs, however, had great experience playing divide-and-conquer, and later the same month the rumor started going around Galicia that the Austrians were going to abolish serfdom within a few years. Any national sympathies felt by the peasantry died there and then, as the nobles’ rebellion was recast as a desperate attempt to cling to ancient privilege in a changing world. Even though the Lesser Poland Uprising’s goals were to form a modern, liberal society – prominently including the abolition of serfdom – the peasants were all too happy to take out their anger on the masters who had mistreated them over the years. For most of March, Galicia was in chaos as the nobles tried to break free from Austrian control, only for their serfs to revolt against them and proclaiming themselves liberated from noble tyranny loud enough for the neighboring villages to hear them. All this while the Austrians stood by and watched, no doubt pleased with their success.
Over the course of the summer, the Lesser Poland Uprising and its accompanying peasant rebellion was finally put down, not without a degree of brutality. There are reports of rebellious peasants being flogged or arrested, some were exiled, and all were forced to resume their feudal obligations. The Austrian Empire initially tried to settle back into its old order, just as it had after 1815; however, the tides of revolt would soon spread to Vienna itself, and an imperial decree finally abolished serfdom on August 3, 1849. When the 1849 revolutions proper reached Poland, they would be centered not in Galicia but in Greater Poland – the Prussian partition. [2] As for the Free City of Krakow, Austria and Russia had signed a secret treaty in 1835 that would allow Austria to take over the city if it ever got restive; this was invoked in 1846, and the city was annexed into the Austrian Empire. For the first time since 1795, there was no Polish state of any kind.
***
From “Gott Mit Uns: The History of Prussia”
(c) 1996 by Rudolf Holzmann
London: Macmillan Publishers
The course of the 1849 revolutions was irrevocably changed by the events of the 7th of July. Having made preliminary noises about reform, Frederick William IV decided to present himself to his people, in line with his Romanticist views, by riding through the streets of Berlin with only two trusted guards accompanying him. This was heavily discouraged by Gerlach and Prince William both, but the King was unflappable. He would ride among his people, see their lives for himself, and this would serve both as a way for him to get in touch with them and for them to know he was on their side.
In the minds of the King’s coterie, this was a perfect set-up for regicide. Doubtless there were men in Berlin in those heady days who would’ve liked to see the King dead, and doubtless they could’ve succeeded on that day, but in the end, it wasn’t necessary. Frederick William’s own weak constitution did the work for them. He was riding through the poor quarters on the east bank of the Spree when a group of young men accosted him from the right and shouted republican slogans. According to the official account of events, the specific words were “Death to the King – long live the free German people!”, but it’s impossible to know whether that was true. The original account also spoke of a “mob”, but later historical research has determined that the number was probably no greater than ten. In any case, the sudden and fierce shout caught the King by surprise. He had a violent spasm, then slumped down in his saddle, only being kept from falling off by the timely intervention of one of his guards.
He was taken back to the Palace, where it was determined that the stroke would not be fatal, but he would also never quite recover. For the remaining five years of his life, King Frederick William IV would rule almost entirely by advice; in September, the Landtag formally declared Prince William regent…
…The next day, the Prince made a statement which was circulated among the people. It rejected calls for a full constitution unambiguously and declared that the army would be deployed in Berlin to maintain order “for as long as necessary”. While Berlin’s radical milieu carried on its activities and occasionally caused disarray in the capital, most of its people heeded the warnings and eventually turned away from the revolution. [3] The Prussian revolution had been stopped in its tracks, but the trouble was not over…
***
From “History 2: The Slavic Peoples and their Fates”
(c) 1954 by Prof. Jovan Djordjevich (ed.)
Belgrade: Central Education Commission
The triumph of the Serbian cause in 1817 was followed by tragedy. In July of that year, Karadjordje [4] returned to his homeland after four years in exile. The Turks feared his influence on Serbia and believed he would try to foment a third national rising. Miloš Obrenović, sharing their worries and wishing the agreement of 1815 to be upheld, decided to get rid of him. He secretly paid Karadjordje’s kum [5] Vujica Vulićević a large amount of money to betray the great man and lead him into a trap where Obrenović’s assassins could get to work. The deed was done not two days after his return to Serbian soil, and historians argue over the detailed course of events – there are those who believe Vujica killed Karadjordje with his own hands. [6]
Miloš Obrenović ruled Serbia for the next thirty years, and for all his treachery against the great liberator, some things must be conceded to him. He obtained broader recognition from the Turks in 1830, allowing him free rule over an area bounded by the Danube in the north, the Drina in the west, and the mountain ridges south of Kruševac in the south and east. [7] The same agreement ended Turkish landowners’ claims against their former Serbian serfs, and in 1835 a decree was passed declaring all slaves and others held in bondage free from the moment of stepping on Serbian soil.
For all that, though, Obrenović remained an autocrat. Repeated calls for a constitution were quashed with brutal force, and in the late 1830s it became clear that he was more concerned with his own power and pleasing the Turks and Austrians than he was with securing the happiness of the Serbs. This was a time of great national revivals throughout Europe, and Serbia was no exception. [8]
The leadership of the reform movement was soon taken up by Aleksandar Karadjordjević, the youngest son of the great liberator, who mixed his father’s love for the Serbian people with the modern ideas of liberal reform flourishing in France and the United States at the same time. Aleksandar became the hope of a generation of Serbs living under Obrenović who saw that there was no hope for the country while the Turks remained dominant over it, and this view grew throughout the 1840s as the rapid improvements promised by independence failed to appear.
Finally, in 1847, an assembly of notables convened in Belgrade and declared their allegiance to Aleksandar as Prince of Serbia. Obrenović attempted to fight back, but his enemies were in control of Belgrade before he could mass support against them. The Sultan accepted the fait accompli, and recognized Aleksandar rather than trying to fight to restore the man who had, after all, been the mastermind behind the second national rising in Serbia.
Aleksandar Karadjordjević’s ascent to power was part of the foreshadowing of the great revolution of 1849, and he spent his first two years in power sponsoring a great reform of the state. He proclaimed a constitution almost immediately on coming to power, and in March 1849 the first Serbian law code was promulgated. The University of Belgrade, [9] National Library and National Museum owe their existence to this initial spurt of reforms, as does the army that fought the Austrians both in 1849 and in the Great War and defeated the Turks multiple times over.
But the liberation and modernization of Serbia could never be completed while large parts of the nation lived under Turkish and Austrian rule. Aleksandar avoided antagonizing the Turks, largely due to their continuing hatred of his father, but he supported the national revival efforts of Serbs in Austria. When the Batthyány government came to power in Pest and started its Magyarization efforts, the Serbs of the Vojvodina proclaimed the restoration of their ancient principality. A local army officer named Šupljikac was elected voivode of the territory, and a proclamation was made declaring solidarity with Jelaćić’s Croatian rising.
Aleksandar quickly declared his support for both Šupljikac and Jelaćić, sending a large volunteer force across the Danube led by Stevan Knićanin, a reliable ally with little to no military experience. He turned out to be a skilled commander, leading an army of some ten thousand in the field against the Austrian and Magyar forces. He won great victories at Pančevo and Veliki Bečkerek in the autumn of 1849, and soon became a great national hero.
But the strength of the Austrian army, once fully massed, proved impossible to resist. In May of 1850, General Windischgrätz pushed east from Slavonia, taking the Vojvodina’s capital at Sremski Karlovci on the 11th and moving on to Zemun, just across the river from Belgrade.
From there, the agents of Obrenović struck once more. As had been done thirty years before, the leader of the Serbs was cut down in his time of trials. Aleksandar Karadjordjević was poisoned by a servant who was most likely in the employ of Obrenović, and with the Austrian army across the river, the assembly quickly voted to recognize Obrenović as Prince for the second time. The family of Aleksandar quickly fled the country, and his son Svetozar would grow up in exile still carrying the claim to the Serbian throne.
***
Script excerpt from “History Hour”, episode 503
Aired on UAR-13 (New York), January 23, 1986
The 1849 revolutions reached nearly every corner of Europe. As we’ve now learned, the British monarchy was briefly overthrown, Italy was permanently liberalized, the German states erupted into revolution and only survived by granting limited constitutional rights, the Austrian empire came to the brink before surviving thanks to its Hungarian Policy, and the dominant eastern half of Prussia was permanently estranged from the western half. But what about the rest? What about those countries that weren’t rocked by revolution? Well, to begin with, there was France… [10]
…In the Netherlands, there was some limited unrest among the Walloons, some of whom wanted to join France and begin recreating the Republic of 1797. This position won very little support, as the Walloons had never been very comfortable in revolutionary France, but plenty were willing to take out their anger against what they saw as Dutch domination. A revolt in Liège on July 14th, a highly symbolic date for the French nationalists, was put down by military force, and very little happened after that.
Spain had spent most of the 1830s in civil war between liberals and conservatives, and the liberals had come out on top. Although it’s perhaps more accurate to call the two sides constitutionalists and reactionaries, because once safely in power, the Spanish liberal government didn’t look that different from the conservative regimes in Britain or Austria. But the Spanish opposition remained focused within the Carlist movement, which fought to restore the male line of the House of Bourbon and to protect the ancient privileges of the various regions – mainly the north and northeast – that supported them. No liberal uprising would occur, then, though there was a brief Carlist rebellion in and around Barcelona that, like the Walloon rising, was quickly and easily put down.
The one country in all of Europe where there was absolutely no unrest of any kind was Russia. Russian Poland continued to seethe, yes, but even as Galicia and Greater Poland burned around them, no violent action was taken against the repressive Russian rule. In Russia itself, the only people who heard about the revolutions and cared were small cliques of liberal intellectuals in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and they had absolutely no power or influence over Russian politics. The peasants and the army were both completely indifferent, [11] and through this indifference, the Tsar was able to maintain his hold on power.
And as for the First United States, aside from abolishing slavery, it had already carried out the democratic reforms most of Europe was fighting for. There was no 1849 unrest in the US, although the Young America movement of the 1850s would take heavy inspiration from the European radicals…
***
[1] The namiestnik, or viceroy, was the governor of Poland, appointed by the Tsar personally. The office could be held by either a Pole or a Russian, and the first holder, Józef Zajączek, was generally content to give the Sejm some degree of leeway in internal affairs. When he died in 1826 (just before our PoD) though, all bets were off, and every subsequent namiestnik was Russian.
[2] Everything up to here is as per OTL.
[3] I would like to make clear that I’m not trying to say deploying the army stops popular discontent in general, or even that it would’ve helped against the OTL 1848 revolutions. However, ITTL, the fact that Prussia already has a legislature (of sorts) and was beginning to make moves toward reform before the revolution happened means that fewer Berliners support the revolution to begin with.
[4] “Black George” in English. Technically the Serbian orthography is Karađorđe, but ITTL, Ljudevit Gaj’s original orthography survives and the Đ is never adopted.
[5] A kum, short for the Greek word kumbaros, is the sponsor and best man of the groom in an Eastern Orthodox wedding. He is expected to pay most of the expenses for the wedding, but in exchange becomes a ceremonial relative of the couple and customarily also the godparent of their first child.
[6] This is all pre-PoD. The Obrenović and Karađorđević families would continue to fight over Serbia for most of the next century, and if the Obrenović family hadn’t died out in the male line when King Alexander was assassinated in 1903, they’d probably still be fighting to this day.
[7] Now we’re past the PoD, but Serbia’s boundaries are still what they were IOTL at this point.
[8] IOTL, Obrenović did grant a constitution in 1835 before backing down under Turkish pressure and replacing it with a tamer document. ITTL, even these initial moves don’t happen.
[9] Technically, the precursor institution was founded in 1808.
[10] You didn’t think I’d leave France’s fate to a throwaway sentence, did you? Just wait for the next update…
[11] There’s a story from the Decembrist revolt of 1825 that I think illustrates this quite well. The Decembrist officer Pavel Pestel gave a speech to a crowd of soldiers who’d gathered at Senate Square in Saint Petersburg during the revolt, in which he laid out his radical program of serf emancipation and land reform. At some point, Pestel got carried away and moved over to talking about the republic, the system he truly believed in, where all would be equal, and every citizen would have a voice in government. To this, the soldiers were completely baffled, and one of them is alleged to have simply asked “But then who will be tsar?”
I'm excited to see when the First Republic is going to collapse and what challenges the Second Republic will face. I'm guessing slavery is going to serve as the catalyst for the fall of the First Republic given the context above aswell as the ATL discussion of the ATL Nullification Crisis.
#32: Do You Hear the People Sing?
A House Divided #32: Do You Hear the People Sing?
“A man lives in order to be useful to the people. And the value of a man is determined by his usefulness to his fellow human beings. To be born, to live, eat, drink, and finally die – an insect can do this as well.”
***
Palais du Luxembourg
Paris
7 September 1848
Ferdinand was shaking.
All in all, it was probably a good thing that Father had thrown out the old, ostentatious Bourbon rituals, including the coronation. He would’ve had to travel to Reims, go into a strange cathedral and get smothered in oil by a bishop with all his relatives and peers just on the other side of a curtain. As it was, all he had to do was swear the oath before the Chambers.
Father had done many things right, but his belief in modernity and democracy had only gone so far. He was happy to support Casimir Périer and Guizot, who loudly proclaimed their liberal credentials but couldn’t go so far as to give people the vote. Or food when they were starving. He supported Egypt when they would let him build a canal, but not Italy when they were crying out from under the Austrian bootheel. The ancient enemy of France and of liberty, and he would support them over his brother nation.
And now, Father was gone.
He looked over at the painting on the wall. Liberty leading the people. [1] That was how the Bourbons had fallen, and why he was now where he was. It would be foolish of him to disavow them as Father had nearly done. No, his would not be another Bourbon monarchy. He would reign for the people of Paris – the people of France.
The duc de Pasquier, President of the Chamber of Peers, honorary Chancellor of France, and certified crony of Father, [2] rose and addressed the assembled chambers.
“Your Royal Highness, Your Graces, my Lords, Most Honourable Peers of the Nation, Most Honourable Ministers of the Nation, Honourable Deputies of the Nation, guests and citizens of France,
“The Chambers of Parliament are convened today, with sorrow in our hearts, to acknowledge the passing into eternity of His Majesty, King Louis-Philippe I, by the Grace of God and the Constitutional Law of the State, King of the French. We pay tribute to his seventeen years of faithful service to the state and the people of France, the first citizen-king of the French, and her first citizen in death as he was in life.”
That wasn’t true, Ferdinand thought. Louis XVI, his late cousin, had been King of the French for a few months during the great Revolution, before ruining everything at Varennes and ushering in the great darkness of 1792.
“We additionally pay our respects to his family, Her Majesty Queen Marie-Amélie, Their Royal Highnesses the Duke of Orléans, the Duke of Nemours, the Prince of Joinville, the Duke of Aumale and the Duke of Montpensier, Their Royal Highnesses the Princess Louise, the Princess Marie and the Princess Clémentine, in this time of trials for the royal house as well as the Nation.
“As one King passes, another must take his place.”
Here it comes, thought Ferdinand. The moment of truth.
“This, my Lords, Deputies, is the most solemn of all our duties today. We must oversee the transfer of royal power. In the ancient times, this was done before God in his abode at Reims. Today, it is done before the Nation in its abode, this chamber of the National Parliament. We are honoured to be in the presence of Ferdinand Philippe, the heretofore Duke of Orléans, who will swear before us the oath of kingship and become, in the eyes of the Chambers and those of the Nation, Philippe the Seventh, King of the French.”
Ferdinand rose and stood opposite Pasquier at the centre of the hall.
“Place your left hand on the Bible and recite the oath.”
Ferdinand placed his still trembling hand on the large family Bible, which he had chosen to swear on. This was still a new enough ceremony that few rules or traditions existed around it, but Father thought it prudent to swear on his Bible, and so did Ferdinand. There was some filial respect in him after all.
“I, Ferdinand Philippe Louis Charles Henri Joseph,” Ferdinand began. He’d never been gladder that he’d decided to go against the old family tradition and give his own two sons only three names each.
“In the presence of God, do swear to faithfully observe the Constitutional Charter as revised in the year 1830, not to govern except by the laws, to ensure that good and exact justice is given to all according to their right, and to act in all things in sole view of the interests, the happiness, and the glory of the French people.”
The ceremony went on, with Pasquier expressing further the goodwill and high hopes of the chambers and the people, but Ferdinand – he should probably start thinking of himself as Philippe, everyone else would from now on – paid scant attention. Instead, he began thinking of whom he should appoint to his first ministry. He’d already planned to appoint a liberal ministry and then dissolve the Deputies, hoping that the times would give them the approval of even those few elite who had the vote. But who would lead such a ministry?
There was always Molé. [3] Father’s pet liberal was approaching his seventieth birthday, but he was still an active man, and choosing him might help provide some continuity. Stop the right from thinking he was about to provoke another 1792.
But then again, this wasn’t a time for continuity and calm. Italy was rumbling once more. The Germans had held a mass meeting in Offenburg calling for national revival. The King of Prussia had almost been overthrown before granting a permanent diet. There might be unrest coming, and he was not eager for France to join it. [4]
Then there was Barrot. He’d been a good friend to Ferdinand – Philippe – over the years. He was a reliable liberal and a man of good credentials, but… no. He could never be President, not even in light of the situation. Wanting someone more forceful than Molé was one thing, but Barrot would be a bridge too far. [5]
He looked at Thiers. Never a man he’d personally liked – as far as he knew, the only great friend of Adolphe Thiers was Adolphe Thiers – but he’d certainly been effective in Egypt. The right would hate him, the Austrians would throw a hissy fit, but the army would be delighted, and so would the people. Yes, maybe it was time once more.
***
From “France after Napoleon”
(c) 1982 by Gerard Cooper
Boston: United Writers of Massachusetts
Philippe VII announced the appointment of Adolphe Thiers as Minister of Foreign Affairs and President of the Council on the 9th of September 1848, two days after his formal accession and less than a week after his father’s death. It was a calculated move in terms of domestic politics, and Thiers retained enough of a following to make his ministry stable, but the international reactions were immediate and concerned. Austria sent a diplomatic missive to Paris requesting confirmation that Philippe intended to continue his father’s policy of peace, and the King of the Netherlands, who held most of the republican French territory between the Rhine and the post-1815 border, requested and received a large increase in the military budget.
Thiers, who no longer actually wanted a general European war, was quick to reassure his fellow European leaders. The ministry collectively signed a declaration stating that “the Kingdom of the French wants peace”, and Philippe himself echoed this with a statement of his own, which was published in Le Moniteur [6] and the major Paris newspapers on the 13th…
***
From “Between Scylla and Charybdis: Italy in the Age of Empires”
(c) 1983 by Francis Guadagno
Philadelphia: Historical Press
On May 18, the Turinese council proclaimed the “restoration” of the Subalpine Republic. The Napoleonic fraternal republic of that name had been even more paper-thin than the others, surviving for barely two years before France annexed it outright, but it was a name with pedigree for Italian democrats. Although claiming immediate authority only over the territories of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, the declaration included language referring to “the inexorable advance of Italian freedom and national revival” and affirmed that the Republic could be extended to any territory in northern Italy that had resolved to join it “according to the sovereignty of the people”. [7]
The declaration established a provisional government led by a triumvirate, with Urbano Rattazzi [8] as its principal figure. Rattazzi had been one of the principal liberal activists in Turin in the Albertine years, and his support was crucially important for the young republic. At the same time, he was a staunch patriot, and when Milan rose up in support of liberation and unification, he announced the formation of the “Subalpine Guard” to defend the new state. A general amnesty was given to members of the old royal army, who were invited to join the new force, and around two-thirds of them did. Any other able-bodied Italian man between ages 18 and 40 was eligible for service and would be trained by experienced members.
The Guard crossed the Ticino River at the start of July, at which point Milan was under siege by the Austrians, and camped at Magenta. Its commander, the Napoleonic veteran Eusebio Bava, [9] concluded that the lightly-trained Guard troops, who only just outnumbered the Austrians, would be unable to carry out a direct assault. Instead, he relied on civilian allies of the cause to bring news into Milan and coordinate a joint, clandestine plan of action. On the 9th of July, the Milanese, having gathered what weapons and ammunition remained in the city, assaulted the Porta Tosa, the most lightly-guarded of the city gates, at the easternmost point of the walls. The Austrians did not see the attack coming, and were forced back from their positions around the gate, at which point the Milanese broke through to find Bava’s army on the other side, backed up by armed peasants from around Lombardy who had joined the fight at the last minute… [10]
…The liberation of Milan was celebrated all over Italy, and with the Austrians falling back to the Quadrilateral, [11] all of Lombardy was soon under republican control. The Milanese provisional government under Carlo Cattaneo [12] declared itself the government of the Lombardian Republic, despite pressure from Bava and the Turinese government to merge into the Subalpine Republic…
…In the weeks after the victory at Milan, two more events shifted the balance in favor of the Italians. Firstly, General Pepe arrived with his Neapolitan army, who were committed to the struggle for liberation and unification, setting up camp in Ferrara. From there, he corresponded with Bava in Crema, and the two agreed to jointly assault the Quadrilateral in the middle of August. However, the action was delayed by uncertainty over the Pope’s stance (Ferrara being in the Papal Legations, and a large portion of Italians being loyal to the Pope above all secular governments) [13] and with the momentum lost, the two generals agreed to wait for an opportunity.
Such an opportunity presented itself when, on August 21, the people of Venice rose up in revolt. The governor was forced out of the city, and on the 24th the Republic of Saint Mark [14] was proclaimed, with popular lawyer and patriot Daniele Manin [15] as its President. This was a more centrally-led revolt than the Milan one, perhaps explaining why the Austrian garrison were speedily driven off – the city’s unusual geography meaning that it could not be besieged, but had to be blockaded…
***
From “France after Napoleon”
(c) 1982 by Gerard Cooper
Boston: United Writers of Massachusetts
Word of Venice’s request for aid arrived in Paris at the beginning of September. President Manin was not unjustly famous for his political and rhetorical savvy, and the open letter to King Philippe was a masterstroke.
Firstly because of the letter itself. It made a stirringly composed appeal to “the great name of France, hailed by all in these days as the hope of the peoples of Europe”, and went on to invoke “liberty, that greatest and most ancient of French values”. It was calculated to appeal to the kind of French nationalist liberal who clamored to see the French nation on the march once again, to liberate their brother peoples and reclaim its natural place as the leading nation of Europe. The kind of liberal, in short, that Adolphe Thiers had shown himself to be on repeated occasions.
This could’ve been the end – Manin could’ve appealed directly to Thiers and probably got his way – but he wanted to be sure. So, he had it published in Le National, as an open letter, nominally addressed to the King, in practice mainly directed at Thiers, but also available in the public record. There would be no way for the government to ignore the Venetian cause, or the broader Italian one. The gambit relied on the majority opinion being in Venice’s favor, but if those inclined to support the cause congregated around any one newspaper, that was Le National – it had, after all, been founded by a young Thiers.
Paris spoke of little else in the days following the letter’s publication on September 3rd. Neither did the ministry, which found itself divided on the issue. Everyone supported the liberation of Italy in theory, but not everyone would go to the point of risking war against Austria. Goudchaux, [16] the Finance Minister, was supportive, as was Lazare-Hippolyte Carnot, Education Minister and son of the legendary Lazare Carnot. [17] Opposed were Crémieux, the Justice Minister, [18] and Faucher, the Interior Minister, [19] both of whom believed that it was too rash to go to war before the viability of the Italian rising was known. Cavaignac, the War Minister, [20] was neutral in the matter. There remained Thiers himself, who had lost some of his old bellicosity, but eventually came down cautiously in favor of intervention after convening with the King.
The declaration of war on Austria was put before the Chamber of Deputies on the 10th, passing with a large majority, and moved to the Peers where it was narrowly pushed through with the help of royal patronage on the 13th. France readied her armies once more, and Europe trembled…
***
[1] Louis-Philippe actually did have Delacroix’ painting put up in the Luxembourg, but after the 1832 rebellion (that’s the Les Misérables one) he suddenly found it very impolitic and sent it back to Delacroix, who put it deep in storage. It was only in 1874 (after the Third Republic had finally shown its staying power) that it went on permanent exhibit in the Louvre.
[2] Pasquier was one of several Napoleonic ennobled civil servants who were able to maintain their titles in the Restoration and, finding the Bourbons a touch too reactionary for their own good, threw their lot in with Louis-Philippe and served him loyally. IOTL, toward the end, they were arguably his staunchest allies. The King was known to fear the republican rabble more than he did the Bourbons, and shaped his politics thereafter, leading to the February Revolution that proved his undoing.
[3] Louis-Mathieu, comte de Molé, has been mentioned before in this TL, but never in depth. He was one of the leaders of the party of movement in the July Monarchy, and President of the Council from 1836 to 1839. His father was guillotined in the Terror, so he was always a liberal rather than a radical. He was President of the Council from 1836 until 1839, chronically unable to control his ministry, and came to be regarded as a bit of a pushover – Louis-Philippe was dissuaded from replacing Guizot with him in 1847 when he was reminded that “Molé gives way to Thiers”.
[4] IOTL, nobody saw the 1848 revolutions coming, but ITTL’s ones have a much longer period of incubation. Plus, Ferdinand might be a bit more willing to picture a great national awakening than most European royalty.
[5] The thing that makes Barrot impolitic as a presidential prospect is that during his youth in Napoleon’s Paris, he briefly studied at Saint-Cyr and was enrolled in the National Guard. He was also the son of a National Convention member, albeit a non-regicide.
[6] Le Moniteur universel (The Universal Monitor) had been the official organ of the National Convention, the Directory, and Napoleon’s Empire, and carried on as a private newspaper during the Restoration. After July 1830, Louis-Philippe made a point of buying it out and giving it the sole right to print legislative debates, restoring its official role and making it one of the principal republican trappings adopted by the July Monarchy.
[7] This is a bit diffuse, but I can see an actual republic wanting to play it safe to at least some small extent.
[8] Rattazzi was one of the main parliamentary radicals in 1848 but drifted to the center in the period between 1848 and 1861. By the time Italy finally unified he was the key to Cavour’s parliamentary majority. After Cavour’s untimely death, he briefly served as President of the Council. Around the same time, he married Napoleon’s great-niece Marie-Laetitia Bonaparte-Wyse, twenty years his junior, who had an incredible life in her own right.
[9] Bava had been a common soldier in the Peninsular War and was briefly held prisoner of war by the British, which made him one of Sardinia’s most experienced soldiers by 1848. He was also known for his short temper, which made his relations with the King strained at times, so I consider his choice to cast his lot in with the Republic a reasonable stretch.
[10] The Porta Tosa was the place where the Five Days of Milan were won by the insurgents, and after unification it was renamed the Porta Vittoria, which it remains to this day.
[11] The Quadrilateral, consisting of Mantua, Verona, Legnago and Peschiera, was the main Austrian defensive fortification in northern Italy. The cities were all heavily fortified and close enough to be able to deny access to any army attempting to move through the area between the Po River and the Alps.
[12] Cattaneo, in addition to being one of the main Lombard leaders of the 1848 revolution, was also one of the most important Italian federalists. This may be connected to his Lombardian identity, as Lombardy was and is a very distinct region and its language was only just barely mutually intelligible with standard Italian. He was also a fervent republican, and utterly loathed the Savoyards, to the point where he cheered on their defeat at Novara and hailed it as the beginning of the true Italian people’s war.
[13] IOTL, Pope Pius IX, who had previously been thought to be supportive of the Italian project, issued a bull condemning the war and denouncing infighting among Catholic nations. This turned him from the most popular man in Italy into a pariah overnight, and eventually led to his exile, the declaration of the Roman Republic, and the loss of whatever foreign support the Italian cause may previously have had.
[14] Saint Mark, or San Marco, being the patron saint of Venice. The OTL 1848 uprising in Venice did call itself that – I don’t know why they didn’t use the name of the Venetian Republic, but I’m guessing its oligarchical nature might have had something to do with it.
[15] Manin was an interesting character – he was a Sephardic Jew by ethnicity, and the family name was originally Medina. However, his grandfather converted to Catholicism in 1759, sponsored by city patrician and future Doge Lodovico Manin, whose name the family took. Daniele was one of the brightest stars in his generation of Venetians, passing the law exams at the University of Padua when he was 17 years old and writing fluently in seven different languages. He was also a staunch Italian nationalist, probably not a full-fledged revolutionary but about as radical as they came short of that.
[16] Michel Goudchaux was another one of the liberal bankers who were instrumental in the overthrow of the Restoration. However, he fell out with Louis-Philippe when the latter began to shift rightward, and eventually joined the provisional Second Republic cabinet as its first finance minister. By then he was a staunch republican, but his original departure from the July Monarchy was due to disputes over economic management, so I think it’s possible to keep him on side ITTL.
[17] Carnot was, as mentioned, the son of the great Carnot, who built the French revolutionary army in the 1790s. He too was a radical opposed to Louis-Philippe, and joined the Second Republic, throwing himself into the project of universal education. However, he managed to piss off his backers by coming out against secular universal education, arguing that “the priest and the schoolmaster are the pillars on which the Republic rests”. This somewhat weird stance makes him a decent fit as the token radical in Thiers’ cabinet.
[18] Crémieux was one of the few objective success stories to come out of the July Monarchy’s political scene IOTL – a Jewish lawyer and orator who advocated for the rights of his people and of humanity, his firebrand speeches in the Chamber of Deputies contributed to both Jewish emancipation and the emancipation of the slaves in French colonies. He went on to set up the Alliance Israélite Universelle in 1860, to support the rights of Jews in the rest of the world. However, he also laid the groundwork for some of the controversy surrounding the Algerian question in the 20th century, when he successfully lobbied the 1870 provisional government to recognize the Jews, but not the Muslims, of Algeria as full citizens.
[19] Well, I’m really going overboard with the biography footnotes in this update. Anyway, Léon Faucher was a political economist who became one of the leaders of moderate liberalism in the late July Monarchy, a time when moderate liberalism was becoming increasingly discredited, and when the Second Republic was established he was sidelined and formed part of the right opposition. He eventually found his home in the early populist form of Bonapartism (as Barrot did), and Louis-Napoléon appointed him to several different ministries. He did not prove a successful minister and went back to economics for a few years before dying of typhoid in 1854.
[20] Cavaignac was… you know what, Google him if you don’t know. He’s important enough to the OTL 1848 events that I feel comfortable leaving this biography out.
“A man lives in order to be useful to the people. And the value of a man is determined by his usefulness to his fellow human beings. To be born, to live, eat, drink, and finally die – an insect can do this as well.”
***
Palais du Luxembourg
Paris
7 September 1848
Ferdinand was shaking.
All in all, it was probably a good thing that Father had thrown out the old, ostentatious Bourbon rituals, including the coronation. He would’ve had to travel to Reims, go into a strange cathedral and get smothered in oil by a bishop with all his relatives and peers just on the other side of a curtain. As it was, all he had to do was swear the oath before the Chambers.
Father had done many things right, but his belief in modernity and democracy had only gone so far. He was happy to support Casimir Périer and Guizot, who loudly proclaimed their liberal credentials but couldn’t go so far as to give people the vote. Or food when they were starving. He supported Egypt when they would let him build a canal, but not Italy when they were crying out from under the Austrian bootheel. The ancient enemy of France and of liberty, and he would support them over his brother nation.
And now, Father was gone.
He looked over at the painting on the wall. Liberty leading the people. [1] That was how the Bourbons had fallen, and why he was now where he was. It would be foolish of him to disavow them as Father had nearly done. No, his would not be another Bourbon monarchy. He would reign for the people of Paris – the people of France.
The duc de Pasquier, President of the Chamber of Peers, honorary Chancellor of France, and certified crony of Father, [2] rose and addressed the assembled chambers.
“Your Royal Highness, Your Graces, my Lords, Most Honourable Peers of the Nation, Most Honourable Ministers of the Nation, Honourable Deputies of the Nation, guests and citizens of France,
“The Chambers of Parliament are convened today, with sorrow in our hearts, to acknowledge the passing into eternity of His Majesty, King Louis-Philippe I, by the Grace of God and the Constitutional Law of the State, King of the French. We pay tribute to his seventeen years of faithful service to the state and the people of France, the first citizen-king of the French, and her first citizen in death as he was in life.”
That wasn’t true, Ferdinand thought. Louis XVI, his late cousin, had been King of the French for a few months during the great Revolution, before ruining everything at Varennes and ushering in the great darkness of 1792.
“We additionally pay our respects to his family, Her Majesty Queen Marie-Amélie, Their Royal Highnesses the Duke of Orléans, the Duke of Nemours, the Prince of Joinville, the Duke of Aumale and the Duke of Montpensier, Their Royal Highnesses the Princess Louise, the Princess Marie and the Princess Clémentine, in this time of trials for the royal house as well as the Nation.
“As one King passes, another must take his place.”
Here it comes, thought Ferdinand. The moment of truth.
“This, my Lords, Deputies, is the most solemn of all our duties today. We must oversee the transfer of royal power. In the ancient times, this was done before God in his abode at Reims. Today, it is done before the Nation in its abode, this chamber of the National Parliament. We are honoured to be in the presence of Ferdinand Philippe, the heretofore Duke of Orléans, who will swear before us the oath of kingship and become, in the eyes of the Chambers and those of the Nation, Philippe the Seventh, King of the French.”
Ferdinand rose and stood opposite Pasquier at the centre of the hall.
“Place your left hand on the Bible and recite the oath.”
Ferdinand placed his still trembling hand on the large family Bible, which he had chosen to swear on. This was still a new enough ceremony that few rules or traditions existed around it, but Father thought it prudent to swear on his Bible, and so did Ferdinand. There was some filial respect in him after all.
“I, Ferdinand Philippe Louis Charles Henri Joseph,” Ferdinand began. He’d never been gladder that he’d decided to go against the old family tradition and give his own two sons only three names each.
“In the presence of God, do swear to faithfully observe the Constitutional Charter as revised in the year 1830, not to govern except by the laws, to ensure that good and exact justice is given to all according to their right, and to act in all things in sole view of the interests, the happiness, and the glory of the French people.”
The ceremony went on, with Pasquier expressing further the goodwill and high hopes of the chambers and the people, but Ferdinand – he should probably start thinking of himself as Philippe, everyone else would from now on – paid scant attention. Instead, he began thinking of whom he should appoint to his first ministry. He’d already planned to appoint a liberal ministry and then dissolve the Deputies, hoping that the times would give them the approval of even those few elite who had the vote. But who would lead such a ministry?
There was always Molé. [3] Father’s pet liberal was approaching his seventieth birthday, but he was still an active man, and choosing him might help provide some continuity. Stop the right from thinking he was about to provoke another 1792.
But then again, this wasn’t a time for continuity and calm. Italy was rumbling once more. The Germans had held a mass meeting in Offenburg calling for national revival. The King of Prussia had almost been overthrown before granting a permanent diet. There might be unrest coming, and he was not eager for France to join it. [4]
Then there was Barrot. He’d been a good friend to Ferdinand – Philippe – over the years. He was a reliable liberal and a man of good credentials, but… no. He could never be President, not even in light of the situation. Wanting someone more forceful than Molé was one thing, but Barrot would be a bridge too far. [5]
He looked at Thiers. Never a man he’d personally liked – as far as he knew, the only great friend of Adolphe Thiers was Adolphe Thiers – but he’d certainly been effective in Egypt. The right would hate him, the Austrians would throw a hissy fit, but the army would be delighted, and so would the people. Yes, maybe it was time once more.
***
From “France after Napoleon”
(c) 1982 by Gerard Cooper
Boston: United Writers of Massachusetts
Philippe VII announced the appointment of Adolphe Thiers as Minister of Foreign Affairs and President of the Council on the 9th of September 1848, two days after his formal accession and less than a week after his father’s death. It was a calculated move in terms of domestic politics, and Thiers retained enough of a following to make his ministry stable, but the international reactions were immediate and concerned. Austria sent a diplomatic missive to Paris requesting confirmation that Philippe intended to continue his father’s policy of peace, and the King of the Netherlands, who held most of the republican French territory between the Rhine and the post-1815 border, requested and received a large increase in the military budget.
Thiers, who no longer actually wanted a general European war, was quick to reassure his fellow European leaders. The ministry collectively signed a declaration stating that “the Kingdom of the French wants peace”, and Philippe himself echoed this with a statement of his own, which was published in Le Moniteur [6] and the major Paris newspapers on the 13th…
***
From “Between Scylla and Charybdis: Italy in the Age of Empires”
(c) 1983 by Francis Guadagno
Philadelphia: Historical Press
On May 18, the Turinese council proclaimed the “restoration” of the Subalpine Republic. The Napoleonic fraternal republic of that name had been even more paper-thin than the others, surviving for barely two years before France annexed it outright, but it was a name with pedigree for Italian democrats. Although claiming immediate authority only over the territories of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, the declaration included language referring to “the inexorable advance of Italian freedom and national revival” and affirmed that the Republic could be extended to any territory in northern Italy that had resolved to join it “according to the sovereignty of the people”. [7]
The declaration established a provisional government led by a triumvirate, with Urbano Rattazzi [8] as its principal figure. Rattazzi had been one of the principal liberal activists in Turin in the Albertine years, and his support was crucially important for the young republic. At the same time, he was a staunch patriot, and when Milan rose up in support of liberation and unification, he announced the formation of the “Subalpine Guard” to defend the new state. A general amnesty was given to members of the old royal army, who were invited to join the new force, and around two-thirds of them did. Any other able-bodied Italian man between ages 18 and 40 was eligible for service and would be trained by experienced members.
The Guard crossed the Ticino River at the start of July, at which point Milan was under siege by the Austrians, and camped at Magenta. Its commander, the Napoleonic veteran Eusebio Bava, [9] concluded that the lightly-trained Guard troops, who only just outnumbered the Austrians, would be unable to carry out a direct assault. Instead, he relied on civilian allies of the cause to bring news into Milan and coordinate a joint, clandestine plan of action. On the 9th of July, the Milanese, having gathered what weapons and ammunition remained in the city, assaulted the Porta Tosa, the most lightly-guarded of the city gates, at the easternmost point of the walls. The Austrians did not see the attack coming, and were forced back from their positions around the gate, at which point the Milanese broke through to find Bava’s army on the other side, backed up by armed peasants from around Lombardy who had joined the fight at the last minute… [10]
…The liberation of Milan was celebrated all over Italy, and with the Austrians falling back to the Quadrilateral, [11] all of Lombardy was soon under republican control. The Milanese provisional government under Carlo Cattaneo [12] declared itself the government of the Lombardian Republic, despite pressure from Bava and the Turinese government to merge into the Subalpine Republic…
…In the weeks after the victory at Milan, two more events shifted the balance in favor of the Italians. Firstly, General Pepe arrived with his Neapolitan army, who were committed to the struggle for liberation and unification, setting up camp in Ferrara. From there, he corresponded with Bava in Crema, and the two agreed to jointly assault the Quadrilateral in the middle of August. However, the action was delayed by uncertainty over the Pope’s stance (Ferrara being in the Papal Legations, and a large portion of Italians being loyal to the Pope above all secular governments) [13] and with the momentum lost, the two generals agreed to wait for an opportunity.
Such an opportunity presented itself when, on August 21, the people of Venice rose up in revolt. The governor was forced out of the city, and on the 24th the Republic of Saint Mark [14] was proclaimed, with popular lawyer and patriot Daniele Manin [15] as its President. This was a more centrally-led revolt than the Milan one, perhaps explaining why the Austrian garrison were speedily driven off – the city’s unusual geography meaning that it could not be besieged, but had to be blockaded…
***
From “France after Napoleon”
(c) 1982 by Gerard Cooper
Boston: United Writers of Massachusetts
Word of Venice’s request for aid arrived in Paris at the beginning of September. President Manin was not unjustly famous for his political and rhetorical savvy, and the open letter to King Philippe was a masterstroke.
Firstly because of the letter itself. It made a stirringly composed appeal to “the great name of France, hailed by all in these days as the hope of the peoples of Europe”, and went on to invoke “liberty, that greatest and most ancient of French values”. It was calculated to appeal to the kind of French nationalist liberal who clamored to see the French nation on the march once again, to liberate their brother peoples and reclaim its natural place as the leading nation of Europe. The kind of liberal, in short, that Adolphe Thiers had shown himself to be on repeated occasions.
This could’ve been the end – Manin could’ve appealed directly to Thiers and probably got his way – but he wanted to be sure. So, he had it published in Le National, as an open letter, nominally addressed to the King, in practice mainly directed at Thiers, but also available in the public record. There would be no way for the government to ignore the Venetian cause, or the broader Italian one. The gambit relied on the majority opinion being in Venice’s favor, but if those inclined to support the cause congregated around any one newspaper, that was Le National – it had, after all, been founded by a young Thiers.
Paris spoke of little else in the days following the letter’s publication on September 3rd. Neither did the ministry, which found itself divided on the issue. Everyone supported the liberation of Italy in theory, but not everyone would go to the point of risking war against Austria. Goudchaux, [16] the Finance Minister, was supportive, as was Lazare-Hippolyte Carnot, Education Minister and son of the legendary Lazare Carnot. [17] Opposed were Crémieux, the Justice Minister, [18] and Faucher, the Interior Minister, [19] both of whom believed that it was too rash to go to war before the viability of the Italian rising was known. Cavaignac, the War Minister, [20] was neutral in the matter. There remained Thiers himself, who had lost some of his old bellicosity, but eventually came down cautiously in favor of intervention after convening with the King.
The declaration of war on Austria was put before the Chamber of Deputies on the 10th, passing with a large majority, and moved to the Peers where it was narrowly pushed through with the help of royal patronage on the 13th. France readied her armies once more, and Europe trembled…
***
[1] Louis-Philippe actually did have Delacroix’ painting put up in the Luxembourg, but after the 1832 rebellion (that’s the Les Misérables one) he suddenly found it very impolitic and sent it back to Delacroix, who put it deep in storage. It was only in 1874 (after the Third Republic had finally shown its staying power) that it went on permanent exhibit in the Louvre.
[2] Pasquier was one of several Napoleonic ennobled civil servants who were able to maintain their titles in the Restoration and, finding the Bourbons a touch too reactionary for their own good, threw their lot in with Louis-Philippe and served him loyally. IOTL, toward the end, they were arguably his staunchest allies. The King was known to fear the republican rabble more than he did the Bourbons, and shaped his politics thereafter, leading to the February Revolution that proved his undoing.
[3] Louis-Mathieu, comte de Molé, has been mentioned before in this TL, but never in depth. He was one of the leaders of the party of movement in the July Monarchy, and President of the Council from 1836 to 1839. His father was guillotined in the Terror, so he was always a liberal rather than a radical. He was President of the Council from 1836 until 1839, chronically unable to control his ministry, and came to be regarded as a bit of a pushover – Louis-Philippe was dissuaded from replacing Guizot with him in 1847 when he was reminded that “Molé gives way to Thiers”.
[4] IOTL, nobody saw the 1848 revolutions coming, but ITTL’s ones have a much longer period of incubation. Plus, Ferdinand might be a bit more willing to picture a great national awakening than most European royalty.
[5] The thing that makes Barrot impolitic as a presidential prospect is that during his youth in Napoleon’s Paris, he briefly studied at Saint-Cyr and was enrolled in the National Guard. He was also the son of a National Convention member, albeit a non-regicide.
[6] Le Moniteur universel (The Universal Monitor) had been the official organ of the National Convention, the Directory, and Napoleon’s Empire, and carried on as a private newspaper during the Restoration. After July 1830, Louis-Philippe made a point of buying it out and giving it the sole right to print legislative debates, restoring its official role and making it one of the principal republican trappings adopted by the July Monarchy.
[7] This is a bit diffuse, but I can see an actual republic wanting to play it safe to at least some small extent.
[8] Rattazzi was one of the main parliamentary radicals in 1848 but drifted to the center in the period between 1848 and 1861. By the time Italy finally unified he was the key to Cavour’s parliamentary majority. After Cavour’s untimely death, he briefly served as President of the Council. Around the same time, he married Napoleon’s great-niece Marie-Laetitia Bonaparte-Wyse, twenty years his junior, who had an incredible life in her own right.
[9] Bava had been a common soldier in the Peninsular War and was briefly held prisoner of war by the British, which made him one of Sardinia’s most experienced soldiers by 1848. He was also known for his short temper, which made his relations with the King strained at times, so I consider his choice to cast his lot in with the Republic a reasonable stretch.
[10] The Porta Tosa was the place where the Five Days of Milan were won by the insurgents, and after unification it was renamed the Porta Vittoria, which it remains to this day.
[11] The Quadrilateral, consisting of Mantua, Verona, Legnago and Peschiera, was the main Austrian defensive fortification in northern Italy. The cities were all heavily fortified and close enough to be able to deny access to any army attempting to move through the area between the Po River and the Alps.
[12] Cattaneo, in addition to being one of the main Lombard leaders of the 1848 revolution, was also one of the most important Italian federalists. This may be connected to his Lombardian identity, as Lombardy was and is a very distinct region and its language was only just barely mutually intelligible with standard Italian. He was also a fervent republican, and utterly loathed the Savoyards, to the point where he cheered on their defeat at Novara and hailed it as the beginning of the true Italian people’s war.
[13] IOTL, Pope Pius IX, who had previously been thought to be supportive of the Italian project, issued a bull condemning the war and denouncing infighting among Catholic nations. This turned him from the most popular man in Italy into a pariah overnight, and eventually led to his exile, the declaration of the Roman Republic, and the loss of whatever foreign support the Italian cause may previously have had.
[14] Saint Mark, or San Marco, being the patron saint of Venice. The OTL 1848 uprising in Venice did call itself that – I don’t know why they didn’t use the name of the Venetian Republic, but I’m guessing its oligarchical nature might have had something to do with it.
[15] Manin was an interesting character – he was a Sephardic Jew by ethnicity, and the family name was originally Medina. However, his grandfather converted to Catholicism in 1759, sponsored by city patrician and future Doge Lodovico Manin, whose name the family took. Daniele was one of the brightest stars in his generation of Venetians, passing the law exams at the University of Padua when he was 17 years old and writing fluently in seven different languages. He was also a staunch Italian nationalist, probably not a full-fledged revolutionary but about as radical as they came short of that.
[16] Michel Goudchaux was another one of the liberal bankers who were instrumental in the overthrow of the Restoration. However, he fell out with Louis-Philippe when the latter began to shift rightward, and eventually joined the provisional Second Republic cabinet as its first finance minister. By then he was a staunch republican, but his original departure from the July Monarchy was due to disputes over economic management, so I think it’s possible to keep him on side ITTL.
[17] Carnot was, as mentioned, the son of the great Carnot, who built the French revolutionary army in the 1790s. He too was a radical opposed to Louis-Philippe, and joined the Second Republic, throwing himself into the project of universal education. However, he managed to piss off his backers by coming out against secular universal education, arguing that “the priest and the schoolmaster are the pillars on which the Republic rests”. This somewhat weird stance makes him a decent fit as the token radical in Thiers’ cabinet.
[18] Crémieux was one of the few objective success stories to come out of the July Monarchy’s political scene IOTL – a Jewish lawyer and orator who advocated for the rights of his people and of humanity, his firebrand speeches in the Chamber of Deputies contributed to both Jewish emancipation and the emancipation of the slaves in French colonies. He went on to set up the Alliance Israélite Universelle in 1860, to support the rights of Jews in the rest of the world. However, he also laid the groundwork for some of the controversy surrounding the Algerian question in the 20th century, when he successfully lobbied the 1870 provisional government to recognize the Jews, but not the Muslims, of Algeria as full citizens.
[19] Well, I’m really going overboard with the biography footnotes in this update. Anyway, Léon Faucher was a political economist who became one of the leaders of moderate liberalism in the late July Monarchy, a time when moderate liberalism was becoming increasingly discredited, and when the Second Republic was established he was sidelined and formed part of the right opposition. He eventually found his home in the early populist form of Bonapartism (as Barrot did), and Louis-Napoléon appointed him to several different ministries. He did not prove a successful minister and went back to economics for a few years before dying of typhoid in 1854.
[20] Cavaignac was… you know what, Google him if you don’t know. He’s important enough to the OTL 1848 events that I feel comfortable leaving this biography out.
So did the 1848 revolutions not happen in France? Which would leave Louis-Philippe on the French throne. What caused Orleans France to survive?
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