Done Like a Scot
1726
The Empress Sophie’s eldest daughter, Sophie the Younger, is married to Frederick the Younger, the son and heir of Frederick the Prince of Ansbach and the son of the last Hohenzollern emperor, Charles I. In this way, she hopes to repair the dynastic rivalry between Wettins and Hohenzollerns.
1731
Sophie makes a peace overture to the Ottomans: under the proposed terms, the Ottomans would restore elective monarchy to Wallachia and Moldavia and dispense with the appointment of rulers from Istanbul; the Great Eastern Company would keep Egypt. The offer is of course rejected.
Alarmed by the maneuvering that occurred during his last illness, Edward VIII seeks to strike a deal with his sons. Edward and the Prince of Wales come to an agreement by which the king will permit Richard to succeed his father, on the fulfillment of several conditions: that Richard accepts no attempt by Parliament to abridge or limit his powers, or those of his successors; that Richard accepts no condition from Parliament to his succession; that Ulrike Eleonore be crowned Queen of England, and not set aside; that Charles excludes his younger brother William from the succession; that he insist on being crowned King of England, France, Ireland and America. This is believed sufficient to end the Brandon succession crisis.
Francis II Rakoczi of Hungary announces a match between his son Joseph and the House of Orleans, specifically the younger Louise Elisabeth.
The town of Sudenstadt is found in Neuprussia at the north side of the mouth of the Rio Grande. It is intended to guard the frontier of Neuprussia from the Spanish and to provide an entry point for German settlers ascending the Rio Grande.
Thomas Gillingham publishes the first systematic schema for categorizing the known chemical elements.
Ahmed Karamanli, Pasha of Tripolitania, who has exploited the chaos the Fourth General War brought to North Africa by spreading his rule into the eyalet of Cyrenaica, launches his own attack on the occupiers of Lower Egypt from the west. He believes by conquering Egypt he might possibly establish a new empire.
Coffmann, easily the most skilled Saxon general since the First General War, receives warning of the Karamanli’s advance only when the latter takes Matrouh. Scrambling to move sufficient forces west of the Nile to meet the Tripolitanian threat, Coffmann meets the advance at El Alamein. Because of the necessity of keeping forces in the east to head off an Ottoman attempt to capitalize on Karamanli’s campaign, Coffmann is outnumbered at El Alamein by Karamanli’s forces 4 to 1.
Nevertheless, because of his use of air bombardment, Coffmann wins at El Alamein a historic victory for Germany. The last existential threat to the eastern enterprise is believed eliminated.
Coffmann however is mortally wounded in the encounter.
Despite the Karamanli campaign, Sophie does not delay her planned trip to Egypt. She travels first to Vienna, where she confers with the Austrian Emperor and is warmly received by the Habsburgs. An emotional moment in the visit occurs when she tours the fire-scarred St. Stephen’s Cathedral, expressing regret for the destruction, although stopping short of an apology.
From there she travels to Venice, where she boards a special-built steam galley deliberately crafted to evoke images of antiquity. Accompanied by a giant fleet of German, Austrian and Venetian ships, she crosses the Mediterranean to Egypt.
There she is crowned at Thebes Queen of Upper and Lower Egypt. The ceremony deliberately avoids references to Chrisitianity or Islam.
While there, Sophie receives many members of the commercial elite of Egypt, civic leaders and Islamic scholars, attempting to convince them all that she means not to infringe on Islam and intends to inaugurate a new era of prosperity.
The Earl of Anglesey has his first child, a daughter, Elizabeth.
Philip, Duke of Orleans returns to France, having reconciled with King Philip, and is warmly welcomed at his cousin’s court.
The Duke of Bavaria spurns a potential match with Sophie’s daughter Christina.
1732
Philip, Duke of Orleans dies at Versailles from what the doctors call a stroke, which is odd given that he is less than thirty years old.
In this year Europe suffers its most extreme demographic and economic dislocation since the Great Plague of 1348. Essentially the profusion of widely affordable mechanical seed drills greatly increases cereal production in England, Scotland, Germany, Bohemia, the United Provinces, and Scandinavia. What was formerly the lucrative export market for the farmers of Poland-Lithuania evaporates almost overnight. Worse still, feudal landowners eager to reduce costs have begun buying the seed drills themselves, with the result that agricultural productivity increases dramatically even in the states with more traditional rural economies, including France, Spain, southern Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Poland. As a result, peasants find themselves turned out en masse from their lands, with great landowners attempting new cash crops, planting new woodlands, or letting the fields go idle.
The result is known as the “Year of Ten Thousand Fires”, as violence and disorder spreads throughout Europe. Some of the anarchy comes when peasants throughout Europe begin attempting to seize the offending seed drills and destroy them. Similar movements, such as one organized by farmers near Dieppe, attempt to march to Essen to confront and kill the suddenly wealthy manufacturers of the drills (in the case of the Dieppe peasants, they are stopped at the German border at the army long before they have the opportunity to menace Herr Arnschwanger). However, in many cases the criminality is the result not of any explicitly political motive but mere survival. German forces mobilize along the Brandmauer on the country’s eastern border to stop the migration of starving Polish peasants over the frontier.
Quickly, public relief and religious charity become exhausted, especially in the most affected areas. Almost universally, the sovereign response to the crisis is protectionism to keep cheap grain from outside the country from undercutting domestic production. However, both King Philip V of France and Charles III of Spain continue to robustly encourage the adoption of the new seed drills, believing the pain is a necessary consequence to modernization.
Emigration is held out everywhere as the salvation of the peasants. This is especially the case in France, where Philip refuses to offer free or subsidized bread except on ships leaving for the French colonies of the New World. The effect is dramatic: in 1732 alone more French subjects leave for the kingdom’s mainland North American colonies—Acadia, New France, Louisiana and the Illinois country—than in the entire previous history of the colonies’ existence. Louisiana’s capital of Philipsbourg held 300 souls at Christmas 1731. One year later it was a bustling town of 6,000 people.
To some extent, like much earlier and much later periods of consolidation in the rural economy, the landless peasants provided an ample supply of cheap labor for the factories of the new commercial centers. And even where there was not work sufficient to employ all those who needed it, the perception of opportunity drives huge increases in town population. Over the course of the decade German industrial centers like Essen, Dortmund, Breslau, and Magdeburg would double their population, as did other cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Brussels, Antwerp, Liege, Birmingham, and Milan.
In the extremes of privation, word spreads of depravity and exploitation unmatched even in the colonies. In Poland, fearing the destabilizing effects of wandering dispossessed gangs of peasants, a few great landowners begin surprising their superfluous tenants in the middle of the night, capturing them by force, and smuggling them to the slave markets of Istanbul.
Of course at the center of the maelstrom stood the new European bourgeoisie, enjoying simultaneous rising income, falling prices for necessities, improved medical care and new products to buy.
Sophie’s response to the crisis in Germany is to encourage the planting of new crops and a shift to livestock, as the falling grain prices make feed for beef cattle, pigs and poultry more affordable than ever.
In London, Josiah Franklin starts the first subscription library by which individuals could pool their money to buy books for all to read. The result is the immediate spread of the institution.
Declining health forces Peter the Great to make peace with the Ottomans, which in turn leads the Hungarians and Poles to make their own peace with the Ottomans by which Ottoman control over Wallachia and Moldavia is maintained for the time being.
1733
With Ottoman North Africa in more disarray than ever following the death of Karamanli, Philip V launches a new expedition against Algiers, which is of course hardly a new thing for a European power to do. However, what is new is that this is supposed to begin the complete and permanent conquest of Algeria.
The crisis in Germany outstrips Sophie’s proposed solutions, though remembering the demonization of Christian I for the Clearances she refuses to countenance the forced removal of paupers to the colonies. Instead she continues to publicize the Year and the Month policy to new emigrants to Neuprussia and Friedrichsland.
King Edward VIII of England dies. He is succeeded by his son, Richard IV.
Because Richard is the elder son and heir apparent, Parliament need pass no judgment on whether the succession is lawful despite the years of debate over whether Edward could restrict the succession among his heirs.
However, Parliament refuses to accede to his insistence that he be crowned king of the English Peoples of America.
Tsar Peter the Great also dies. He is succeeded by his grandson Peter Alexeivich. Peter II is of age to rule without a regent. The matter of his marriage having been neglected in the declining days of Peter the Great, he is now the most sought-after bachelor in Europe.
Prince Joseph of Hungary marries Louise Elisabeth of Orleans.
Philip V of France recognizes the administrative problems created by the surge of French immigrants into Louisiana and announces it will be divided into three colonies: Louisiana will now be what has heretofore considered Lower Louisiana, Upper Louisiana east of the Mississippi will become Illinois, and the constellation of new colonies on the Missouri will be Philipiana.
The new Jewish settlers of Edwardsland strike up a profitable trade with the Ausrissers in an effort to stabilize the relationship between the colony and the lands to the west and create a new source of revenue.
The first steam-powered vessel to cross the Atlantic, the Mary II, travels between Bristol and Beaufort, Maryland.
Peter II forms a new league with Francis II of Hungary in an effort to force the issue in the Balkans while the Ottomans are still struggling on multiple fronts.
The Earl of Anglesey has a second daughter, Louise.
In Poland, the Wojna o ziemie erupts as the nation’s peasants revolt against the possibility of being evicted from the land or forced to adopt to cash crops. At the height of the rebellion, the king is forced from Warsaw and almost killed. Several thousand szlachta, collectively owning as much as a third of the country, are murdered.
The revolt only loses steam when Ludwig II issues a bill of peasant liberties, which includes a right to stay on the land so long as rents are paid and traditional rules obeyed. The nobility recognizes this buys time more than it ends the problem. Estates in Poland go up for sale as the szlachta begin to find other ways of making money or emigrating outright.
1734
The impasse over the Fourth Kingdom leads to unrest in the English colonies in North America, including a massive tax boycott. The First Minister, Alexander Stockton, responds by threatening to impose England’s own boycott on the colonies: a refusal to commit troops to their defense against the other colonial powers and the Ausrissers. The unrest abruptly ends.
With his own kingship unchallenged, Richard IV follows through on his promise to his father and announces that in his will he excludes his brother the Earl of Anglesey from the succession. With an intervening election having ended the crown parties’ majority in the Commons, Parliament is able to pass an Act of Succession stripping the monarch of the unilateral right to name his successor. A second Act of Succession, which would then specifically name the Earl of Anglesey the king’s successor, fails because of fears of the Catholic influence of a Queen Louise-Adelaide. Stockton emerges as the key figure in these maneuvers.
Sophie directs the founding of Kettlerstadt in a newly explored, verdant region of Friedrichsland.
Francis II Rakoczi dies and is succeeded by his son Joseph, who rules as Joseph I.
Negotiations are undertaken by the Grand Duchess Sybille to marry Peter II to the Princess Marianne of France, daughter of Philip VII, who hopes to use the match to forge a new alliance in the east and thus shift the balance of power.
Sophie begins strenuously protesting to Sybille the undesirability of a French alliance with Russia, which she feels cannot help but prejudice German interests.
The iron-road connecting Paris to Lyons is completed.
French armies exploit the chaos of the eyalets of Tunis, Tripolitania, and Cyrenaica by moving aggressively to seize them all, creating an empire on the south shore of the Mediterranean.
Sophie begins negotiations with Philip VII for a plan of mutual recognition by which German and French interests in the Mediterranean would not be averse to each other.
At the same time, the Ottomans launch a new attempt to recover Egypt. They defeat the Germans on the southern shore of Lake Bardawil despite the German use of airships by dint of sheer numbers.
Simultaneously, Peter II invades Moldavia with an army of 80,000. Determined to prove his military prowess and take Constantinople, he crosses the Prut. Simultaneously, Joseph I invades Wallachia.
Finally, Sophie’s grand strategy works as intended: just as the Ottomans and Germans fight an inconclusive battle at Lake Timsah, word arrives that Peter II has defeated a smaller Ottoman Army at Barlad.
Peter II and Joseph I had both relied on Sophie’s commitment that she would not make a separate peace with the Ottomans if they re-entered the war. Of course that was the only way to persuade them to re-enter it, and with them now full committed Sophie makes peace with the Ottomans by which the Great Eastern Project is recognized in its control of Egypt, and Germany, Austria and Venice swear to make war against the Ottoman Empire no more.
When news of the Treaty of Istanbul reaches the courts of Europe, the result is outrage in St. Petersburg and Budapest and hysterical laughter elsewhere.
“Like a promise from the very empress” becomes a proverbial saying describing a flagrant lie.
A Scottish scheme of public finance for ironroad construction is founded.
1735
As a final compromise, the Treaty of Malta is reached among France, Spain, Germany and Venice. The Great Eastern Project’s conquest of Egypt is ratified by all the powers, as is France’s seizure of Algeria and Tunis. France surrenders Cyrenaica and Tripolitania to Austria, but in return receives a ten percent share of the Great Eastern Project out of Austria’s portion. All Malta powers win the rights to trade freely with each other’s colonies on the south shore of the Mediterranean. Morocco is reserved for Spain, should it successfully make the attempt at conquest.
Believing he has secured Moldavia, Peter II returns north. His marriage to the Princess Marianne is celebrated in Moscow. Peter uses the occasion to restore Moscow as the Russian capital. Sophie protests in a letter to Sybille that it may as well be “a marriage consummated on the corpse of Germany.”
In truth, the situation is far more complex: to be of practical significance the French must either set aside their alliances with Russia’s rivals Poland and the Ottoman Empire, or else Russia must make common cause with them.
The lingering dispute over the English succession gains an additional wrinkle when the ambassador of King David III of Scotland expresses to Richard the Scottish king’s intense hope that Margaret Gordon, Lady Huntly not be named the heir. The fear in Scotland is that an English king with extensive lands in the Highlands would ultimately destabilize the Scottish monarchy.
The Gordons do not know of the king’s position.
The Maria Luisa River is fixed as the boundary between French Louisiana and German Neuprussia in the Treaty of Metz, as European powers reduced to penury by the perpetual war of the past fifty years begin frantically cutting deals to minimize conflict in the colonies.
Ausrissers come into contact with English settlers in Queensland moving north into previously unsettled territory. The English immediately retreat.
Samuel Richardson writes Alice Kendal, the story of a wife who is infected with syphilis by her husband and then denied by him access to treatment. The story shocks the conscience of England.
With the Ottomans now focused on the Balkans, Joseph I is defeated by a larger Ottoman Army in the Battle of Mihailesti, ending for the time being Hungarian ambitions in Wallachia.
After two miscarriages and three children dead in infancy (which has become unusual in recent decades due to improvements in medical treatment), the Princess Elizabeth finally bears Prince Alexander, Margrave of Meissen and Sophie’s heir as both Empress and Queen, a son. Sophie names him after the Emperor Frederick I.
1736
Fearing incursions in his newly conquered Moldavia, Peter II returns to resume war against the Ottomans. He suffers a humiliating defeat at Tecuci, barely just escaping being captured by the Ottomans himself. His initial success is now taken to be the result of Ottoman surprise and distraction, and he is now widely rumored to be incompetent at warfare.
Whereas Sophie vehemently continues to block any effort to Christianize Egypt, believing it too risky, France and Austria begin full-scale efforts to evangelize Roman Catholicism is northern Africa, triggering a revolt against their rule by virtually every element of those societies.
France and the United Provinces sign the Treaty of Louvain, by which they agree that the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam will occupy the southern shore of Lake Ontario between the Niagara in the west and the Black River in the east. The United Provinces in return agrees to respect French rights to commerce and fishing on Lake Ontario and to French settlement of the shore to the north and west of their territory. In truth, the ongoing war with the Mohawks means that the Dutch cannot even take the possession of that territory allotted to them for granted.
An attempt at a transatlantic balloon flight departs the Great Hook Cape.
Remnants of the gondola are found off Labrador several months later.
Ludwik II dies, triggering a new election for the kingship of Poland.
Through the mediation of First Minister Antony Yarmouth of England, Germany and the Ottoman Empire reach an accommodation. Fearing that the emboldened Germans might push into Palestine and the Levant, and fervently desiring some end to the constant warfare, the Ottomans finally relent in the matter of Egypt.
Margaret Gordon, last surviving child of Frederick II, dies at the age of seventy. She passes her place in the English succession to her eldest son, Henry Gordon, Earl of Huntly. Margaret had been politically astute and cautious with respect to the English throne, never presumptuous towards the prospect, never overtly angling to supplant her dear nephews. Henry Gordon begins immediately receiving leaders of the English Parliament at Huntly Castle, to the chagrin of the English Brandons.
Hungary and the Ottoman Empire agree to a separate peace. This leaves Peter II alone against the Ottomans. He begins fearfully attempting to win the intercession of France or Germany against the Ottomans. Both refuse.
Peter II suffers a second terrible defeat at the hands of the Ottomans at Cantemir. An attempt by Peter to win a peace with the Ottomans by conceding to them Wallachia and setting the Prut River as the frontier is refused, especially given that the Ottoman army is now already east of the Prut.
France abolishes the last vestiges of feudalism, less as a means of reform granting rights to the peasantry than a way to free the nobility of their obligations now that more efficient mechanical replacements for human labor have arrived.
Sophie directs ambassadors to seek an alliance with the peshwa Baji Rao of the Maratha Empire in India. Rao has faced irritations from the Portuguese in India, and Sophie hopes that by siding with him against the Portuguese the Germans may win the Portuguese possessions there.
She is also eager to begin exploiting the German presence in Egypt.
In advance of the Polish monarchical election, Sophie enthusiastically supports the Piast candidate, Kazimierz of Teschen, the great-grandson of Indjski Kazimierz and great-great grandson of Kazimierz V. With the bloom finally fading from the Sobieski dynasty and the Bourbons as little able to fund bribes to the szlachta as the Germans, Kazimierz is favored.
1737
Peter II’s bete noirs at the Russian court, the influential Dolgorukovs, use his absence in the south as the opportunity to retrieve his father Alexei Petrovich from the monastery and install him as a puppet Tsar. Russia is now threatened with civil war.
Adding to Peter II’s misfortunes, his Tsarina, the former Marianne of France, dies. Horrified by the Russian court, and ill virtually the entire time she had spent in Moscow, she produced no heir for Peter.
The presumptuous attitude of the Earl of Huntly to the English throne leads to speculation that an English Brandon outside the sons of Edward VIII should perhaps step forward. Frederick, third Duke of Exeter, the 39-year-old great-grandson of Henry X and a boisterous proponent of the Old Good Cause, becomes the focus of this camp. He argues for a return to the Brandons’ policies of the mid-seventeenth century: aggressive expansion in the colonies, a return to a policy of Clearance and Implantation in Ireland, and a resistance to freebornism.
Ulrike Eleonore of Sweden, Queen of England, long spurned by her husband Richard IV, dies. She immediately becomes an object of national pity.
Frustrated with the incursions onto their territory from the south, the Mohawk attack New Bohemia. They are surprised by the ferocity of the response. As a result, the Mohawks’ military fortunes decline precipitously.
Abner Ashford of England invents the thrashing machine, which mechanically separates grains from stalks and husks. It is believed this will greatly reduce the amount of human labor needed for harvest.
Gerrit Jansen builds the first transatlantic steam ship.
The new prosperity of the urban bourgeoisie in Europe leads to a boom in private home building, financed by the new church-affiliated “building societies.” Scotland, England, and the United Provinces lead the way in the financial innovations.
Louis I of Spain suspends payments on the kingdom’s debt. The joke becomes that his father, Philip VII of Spain, had left him “with a kingdom of notes.”
While Baji Rao accepts Sophie’s gracious offer of aid, he declines to make a formal alliance, preferring to play the European powers against each other.
Kazimierz Duke of Teschen is elected by the Sejm Kazimierz VI of Poland. Stabilizing the country’s economy and keeping the peasants in hand are seen as the first priorities for the coming reign.
Louise-Adelaide gives birth to a son for the Earl of Anglesey, who then dies after a few weeks. Since her own life was endangered by the pregnancy, they forego further children.
1738
In the Battle of Shumyachi, Peter Alexeyevitch defeats Alexey Petrovitch, his father. The victory is owed to the incompetence of Alexey, the disorder of the rebels, and the superior military experience of the son.
At the end of what comes to be known in Russia as the Filial War, Alexey Petrovitch is executed along with the Dolgorukovs.
Fearing their encirclement by the growing colonies of Edwardsland, New Kent and Queensland, the Ausrissers launch a war to remove the English settlements from Queensland.
Henry Earl Huntly travels to England in what is an all but open effort to court support to succeed Richard IV. David III expresses great worry over the continuing prospect of a king of England being one of the largest property owners in Scotland.
Fortunately for David, the problem is resolved when, a few weeks after his return, Henry is killed while hunting. It is at first believed an accident, until letters are found by agents of David that implicate Henry’s younger brother, Edward Gordon.
Edward Gordon protests his innocence, but then kills himself in his cell while imprisoned at Stirling Castle. With Edward found posthumously guilty of murder and treason (because apparently he planned also to kill the kings of England and Scotland, per more letters found at Huntly), David III confiscates the Gordons’ earldom and all their lands.
Nonetheless, David III as a show of mercy to the beleaguered Gordons, betrothes Mary Gordon, the eldest of Margaret Gordon’s surviving daughters, to his son James, Duke of Rothesay. This would mean that the Gordon claim to the English claim would henceforth belong to the future kings of Scotland.
Richard IV, with events in Scotland having totally thrown his dynastic plans askew, dies of stomach cancer. This leaves the English succession controverted for the first time since the death of Elizabeth I. Parliament is seen as backing the Earl of Anglesey’s claim because it sees in him a willingness to compromise royal powers to win the throne. The Protestant establishment sides with Frederick the Duke of Exeter.
William the Earl of Anglesey styles himself King William III but finds he cannot win an official proclamation by parliament of his rule and finds Richard’s ministers loathe to recognize him. Instead, the Duke of Exeter begins a frantic effort to negotiate with Parliament the terms of his accession.
Europe is shocked by the spectacle of Parliament “auctioning off” the English crown to the highest bidder. William himself cannot reconcile himself to his last-minute defeat. Swearing to raise an army, he finds himself without support.
Parliament declares Frederick, the Third Duke of Exeter, King Frederick III. William assents to the critical conditions: (1) kings of England must henceforth seek parliamentary approval for changes in the succession; (2) kings of England must henceforth seek parliamentary approval for state marriages. Paraphrasing Henry IV of France, Frederick declares “London is worth a bill.”
William the Earl of Anglesey and Louise-Adelaide flee to the United Provinces, and from there to Sweden.
With Egypt still far from generating the necessary revenues, with the costs of holding the country still astronomical, and with the reorganization of the country into a plantation economy becoming increasingly hopeless, Chancellor Ostermann hits upon the notion that Egypt could be used as a captive market for German manufactured goods. Sophie enthusiastically embraces the idea.
Peter II marries Maria Menshikov, his mistress since before his marriage to Marianne of France and the mother of his three children, who are all legitimized and placed in the Russian succession. This decision, which his mother Sybille opposed, signifies that her influence at court has gone into eclipse.
1739
Grand Duchess Sybille, mother of Peter II, attempts to flee Russia but is intercepted by Peter and imprisoned for fear she might if she escapes successfully betray state secrets.
Parliament passes the king’s plan to make Ireland support the full cost of its administration by greatly imposing new taxes and fines, including an accumulation formula of penalties on back taxes. The goal of this is clearly a new round of clearances, though without the mechanism of bondage servitude. Instead the goal is simply to force the remaining Irish property owners to leave their lands. What becomes of them after they do is not considered.
In the Battle of Fort Percy, the Ausrissers burn the settlement that is the strategic lynchpin to supplying and maintaining the farms in what’s called Upper Queensland.
When word reaches London, King Frederick II calls for a war to eliminate the Ausrisser menace once and for all. It is understood he means a war of extermination, and that goal is embraced by the English public.
Parliament prevails upon King Frederick to not lead the war personally, though he is eager to do so.
The great iron road linking Venice and Wittenberg, the infrastructure corollary to the Great Eastern Project, is completed. For an ailing Sophie, the trip to Venice is a personal triumph. What is hidden though is that the cost of fifty years of constant war, the subduing of Egypt, and all her building projects, is the near-bankruptcy of the German state even with the booming urban economy.
Poland quietly concludes an alliance with the Ottoman Empire against Russia.
Kazimierz’s plan is to use large peasant armies to restore Poland’s territories in the east and simultaneously provide an external focus for the energies of the farming classes.
Karl von Innhausen publishes an influential volume recording his observations concerning the behavior of electricity.
The Ausrissers lay siege to Fort Gloucester, the capital of Queensland.
Polish peasants riot against increases in their feudal duties to the szlachta, increases which the nobility interpret as being part of their traditional rights, but which the peasants interpet as a way to force them off the land.
Following the lead of Scotland, the Netherlands develops its own scheme to fund the building of ironroads.
1740
Surveyors are sent to the Sinai to begin scouting routes for Sophie’s proposed iron road linking the Red Sea to the Mediterranean and for the eventual canal.
Germany builds a large naval base at Suez on the Red Sea to give them a port from which it can project power south towards the Indian Ocean. The German Estates General balk at the full cost of the base and the planned Red Sea fleet, and Sophie is forced to scale back her plans dramatically.
In the Second Battle of Pasaiste, an English army crushes the Ausrissers and opens Ausrisserland to English invasion.
A delegation of three judges from the Ausrissers are received at Versailles by Philip VII. Though they are disgusted to find their old ally the French king is nothing but “a perfumed sitbackman” they agree to renew the alliance in order to prevent the Ausrissers’ extinction.
The first multi-story building with elevators is built in Hamburg.
Using experiments crafted during conversations with von Innhausen, Rudolf von Plotho invents the magnetometer.
Despite the agreements to the effect that the powers will not attempt to undercut one another’s colonial empires, France, fearing Germany plans to use Egypt as a stepping stone to build an empire in India, establishes a presence at Zeila, at the entrance of the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean.
Hunting in the Erzebirge, Sophie experiences chest pains and falls from her horse. Panicked, her knights and courtiers struggle to get her to physicians and the safety of the nearest Wettin castle, the Konigstein. As word emanates through the empire of her illness, the resulting panic destabilizes German finances.
King Frederick III of England acts upon an original proposal by Sir Robert Hooke and charters a royal semaphore system for communication over distances. His goal is that this system will be used domestically to transmit news of state and vital military developments, and overseas to help safeguard colonial settlements without resident military regiments by giving them a means of sending for help quickly. This gives rise to the English colloquial phrase “reading the shutters.”
Sophie makes several grand displays of her recovery, which mask the truth that her health is fast fading.
Steam-powered construction machinery comes into service in Hamburg and Prague.
In the Kingdom of Angola, a coalition of veterans who had served in various overseas armies comes to power, determined to adapt what they had learned in the service of the European powers to Angolan society.
As English efforts to repulse the Ausrissers from the vicinity of Port Gloucester fail, the English navy evacuates the settlement.
Simultaneously, English efforts to advance into Ausrisserland from the east meet a surprise defeat in the Battle of Iomproidh Ceann, as English supply lines (which have been developed redundantly both up the Kosulu and overland across Edwardsland) become overextended. It is estimated that with raids fully a fourth of the supplies sent to the English forces find their way to the Ausrisser hands, thus ironically making England the largest benefactor of the Ausrisser, with the values of these takings exceeding the Bourbon kings' aid.
