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Bryan McThread

BryanIII

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Previously established history and maps

The Establishment of Napoleonic Greece

At the beginning of 1798, the War of the First Coalition had come to an end and following the Treaty of Campo Formio, where Napoleon Bonaparte decreed the final dissolution of the Venetian Republic, the city of Preveza (like other Venetian possessions in Greece and Albania) was ceded to Revolutionary France. 280 French grenadiers arrived in Preveza under the commands of General La Salchette. The people of Preveza welcomed the French troops, and formed a pro-French civic militia. Around this same time the poet Rigas Feraios was combining support for the ideas of the French Revolution with calls for a Greek uprising against Ottoman rule and arrived in the town to begin rudimentary discussion with French commanders. Napoleon Bonaparte, however, focused his attention in another direction, launching the French Campaign in Egypt and Syria, giving little thought to the fate of the small Preveza garrison exposed on the edge of Ottoman territory. The local Ottoman governor Ali Pasha Tepelena attacked Preveza with an overwhelming force. In the Battle of Nicopolis the 7,000 Ottoman troops of Ali Pasha and his son Mukhtar completely overwhelmed the 280 French grenadiers and their local allies, the 200 Preveza Civil Guards and 60 Souliote warriors under Captain Christakis. Over the next two days, a major massacre of the French troops and the local Greek population which defended the city took place in Preveza; during which Feraios was killed, Christakis and General La Salchette however managed to escape to French Corfu.

Napoleon, being on Malta at the time, diverted his fleet towards Corfu. There he met with General La Salchette, Christakis and local Greek leading figures. While French and Ottoman Fleets were facing off in the Ambracian Gulf, the negotiations on Corfu became a secret congress Including several Greek rebel leaders and Russian officials, who saw in Napoleon a potential solution for their Greek Question. In 1799 both France and Russia committed ground troops to the Conflict. With the might of the Russian Imperial army crashing down from the Caucasus, the Russian Black Sea Fleet causing havoc in the Black sea and in thinking fighting in the Balkans would be the same old stomping of disorganized Greek Rebel Factions, the defence of the Balkans was almost entirely left to Ali Pasha and his son Mukhtar; save for a 6000 strong Army left to protect Athens commanded by Omer Vroni (Its former commander was born in the Caucasus and was therefor ordered to that front to use his knowledge of the land, in doing so took 2000 of the finest troops with him) . Those two had been almost constantly been retreating since the Battle of Ioannina in February of 1799 where they were unprepared to face the French Corfu Garrison (strengthened with Greek Militia), an organized Souliote Army and a full French Army. The situation worsened for the Ottomans when the Ottoman 3rd Army commanded by Omer Vroni was obliterated near Corinthe in April 1799 by an unexpected Maniot Army, who had been slowly moving up and gaining support in the Peloponnese, and a Psarian fleet providing canon fire from the sea. With the way cleared there was nothing stopping them and Athens was liberated on the 19th of April 1799.

After the Battle of Monastirion (OTL Bitola) on the 7th of May Ali Pasha’s strategy switched to the defence of Thessaloniki and since then avoided large skirmishes. After the Siege of Thessaloniki in July of 1799 had ended Ali Pasha realized that he would in fact have to defend Constantinople and send word to the Sultan in the hope to get more forces sent to the Balkan Campaign. He ordered his son to take half the forces and hold the Varbitza pass and if that would fall to go and hold Adrianople for as long as possible, while he himself positioned his army across the Evros River in hopes that the river would hold of the invaders. On the 3rd of September The British Philhellenic Legion landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula, while just before deposing the Sfakian Army on the Dardanalia coast and slowly they pushed up the coasts.On the 21st of September the Verbitza Pass was taken by the Maniot and Souliot armies who had joined up together. The Siege of Philippopolis (OTL Plovdiv) ended on the 3rd of October and Napoléon's Main Army moved towards the Evros River to meet up with the joint Maniot-Souliot Army, who had indeed been held back by the Evros River. The same river was no obstacle for Napoléon as he had crossed it a few days before to the north of the battlefield. Realizing defeat Ali Pasha retreated when he saw the first French troops flanking his Army from the North. On the 29th of October The French Corfu Garrison finally arrived at Adrianople (OTL Edirne) and began the siege.

While retreating, Ali Pasha noticed the joint Greek Armies heading to the North instead of following him, thinking they were being diverted to help with the Siege of Adrianople he made his fatal decision to face the French Army head on to try and weaken it; which was a bad decision because the joint Greek Armies were only liberating Arkadioupolis (OTL Lüleburgaz) before meeting back up with the Main French Army and lead to his famous last stand at Cerkezkoy (no Greek name given because it will be a Turkish exclave) on the 23h of December 1799.What followed was a siege of Constantinople that lasted until the gates of Constantinople were breached by March 1800. In the following Treaty of Adrianople, who was chaired by the UK, the Kingdom of Greece was proclaimed and Napoleon (or rather Napoleonidas) was crowned King of Greeks. His coronation was essentially a bribe to not further involve him and his army in the French Revolutionary wars while also providing a safe heaven for fleeing French Revolutionary thinkers.


The Dissolution of France

With Napoleon being the Greek King, the Directory never was overthrown during the coup of 18 Brumaire. With a massive exodus of French military leaders and Revolutionaries to Napoleon’s Greece, The war with Austria was a complete disaster. The Austrians Restored the Bourbon after the Congress of Vienna (not the same one as OTL obviously) in March 1800 and France was reduced to its 1792 size. With many Revolutionary leading political and military leaders leaving the restored French Kingdom for Napoleonic Greece, the populace who were too poor to travel and were stuck under oppressive Royalist rule again rose up for a second time. Although returning Paris to Royalist Rule was relatively simple, they had problems regaining control of the edges of the Kingdom; especially in the North, Brittany and Normandy who had become accustom to the equality instead of being run as food production areas of the Aristocrats. The French Kingdom reached out to his neighboring states to help 'deal with the problem' by promising small but reasonable land concessions. The said Concessions were enacted by the 1803 Treaty of St-Germain-en-Laye where Britain was given the Calais and Cherbourg areas, The Holy Roman Empire got Straßburg as a Free Imperial City and its member states Bavaria and Luxemburg got the Wardnt and Thionville/Diedenhofen area respectively. The Calais Act of the same year made Calais a direct part of England while Cherbourg, in recognition of the shared heritage with Guernsey and Jersey, was made a 4th Crown Dependency.


With a failed harvest in the Autumn of 1805 and the Crisis in the Low Lands causing havoc since the Spring of 1805 (see next chapter); the hungry and disgruntled populace rebelled again, only with this time the equally starving army joining the rebellion. By the Winter of 1805, with Royalist Control limited to the Loire Valley with it's castles, the King of France once again cried out for help to his neighbors; who being rather reluctant to go keep the peace in France once again only did so after the promise of yet more land concessions. In the Congress of Orléans, which took place before foreign intervention as to assure favorable conditions, the Dukedom of Normandy was restore as a British royal fief and the said Dukedom was extended to include most of the Cotentin Peninsula and the Bayeux region; Caledshire was extended with the rest of the Opal Coast; The Kingdom of Sardinia were ceded the so-called 'Provençal Tripolis'-area (OTL Grasse, Cannes and Antibes); the Duchy of Trier and the Bavarian Palatinate got equal parts of the Moselle Département; the borders of the County of Namur and the Principality of Liege were extended to the Meuse River; (other parts of the congress would be to spoilery but will be updated at a later point).

In December of 1806, not so long after the Congress of Orléans was implemented, even Monarchists became disgruntled with the continued loss of French territory; so much so that Southern lords struck a deal with Orléanists to try and overthrow the Bourbon Monarchy and set up a legitimate, Constitutional Monarchy. Starting in April of 1807 they soon had relative controle of everything south of the Loire River. With France in bloody civil war again, the other European great powers regarded France as a lost cause and intervened in June of 1807. (only Sardinia's POV is given because it is the only one already established, again more will be updated soon) Sardinia advanced from Savoy and Nizza (OTL Nice) towards the Rhône River, getting help from the Orléanist Southern Lords along the way. During the 1809 Congress of Frankfurt peace talks the European great powers decided to incorporate as much French territory as was possible into strong and stable nations. The Sardinians annexed everything East of the Rhône; The Papal States were regiven the Comtat Venaisin and some direct control of Monastic lands; Britain extended it’s grip on the mainland by enlarging it’s direct holding with Ponthieu and the rest of Normandy and Maine, both of with were added to the Dukedom of Normandy which was at the same time elevated to a Grandduchy, while Wellesley's Continental Army occupied most of Northern France; the Duchy of Luxemburg and the Principality of Liege co-occupied the Verdun region; the former Champagne province became an Imperial Territory and the Sardinians and Spanish backed an Orléanist, Constitutional state in Occitania. What was still left of France was left to its own devices and at the 1809 Christmas Assembly of Parisian politicians the Radical Revolutionary Republic of France was declared. British forces also controlled Brittany and Anjou at the time of the Congress of Frankfurt, here British parliament decided on another type of control for those areas. As they had been key area's of civil unrest the fear was that they would also rise up against a British occupation like in Picardy or direct British hegemony like in Normandy, it was instead decided to implement the 'Princely State'-entity already used on the Indian subcontinent. Brittany was thus allowed to form and elect it's own head of state who would pay tribute to the British Crown. the first independent Breton elections were held under British supervision in 1810 and George Cadoudal was elected it's 'Civil Commissioner'. His government, under British incentive, started anti-French nationbuilding focussing on Celtic culture and Breton language; prompting a defrenchification of the South-Western areas.



Reorganisation in the Low Lands and the Holy Roman Empire

After TTL's Congress of Vienna in 1800, the former United Belgian States (with Charles de Brouckere Sr. as its president) became the main controller of power in the area, as the Kingdom of Holland had been an ally of Revolutionary France and because of their unwillingness to part with their Bonaparte King. The United Belgian States struck a deal with the Holy Roman empire granting them control of most of the Prince-bishopric of Liege, Limburg and Luxemburg for their independence. The Kingdom of Holland meanwhile ceded the Generaliteitslanden to the United Belgian States in order to be able to keep their Bonaparte King, against which some Orangist strongholds (Mainly Zeeland, Breda and Den Helder) rebelled and they were subsequently put under British protection.

In the Spring of 1805 the Kingdom of Holland invaded and annexed United Belgian States and the Orangist strongholds under British protection. At first Britain was unwilling to resort to war again and tried the Diplomatic way, But with the Kingdom of Holland unwilling to agree to a comprise and the 2nd Jacobin Revolt hitting France in the Autumn of the same year, war became a certainty. The conflict was resolved as part of the Congress of Orléans by splitting the United Belgian States; The Holy Roman Empire was awarded the Duchy of Brabant and the County of Namur as well as annexing Friesland from the Kingdom of Holland while the rest of the former United States of Belgium became a British Protectorate under command of Arthur Wellesley and his Continental Army, annexing French Flanders in the progress.
In early 1813 there was a surge in nationalism on the Western Bank of the Rhine; those states had known a period of unification either under the French Empire or under it’s sister-republic the Republic of the Rhine. Fearing a spread of Nationalism to the other side of the Rhine and beyond and desperate to retain the newly acquired territory in the West the Holy Roman Emperor ordered a reorganization of the Empire, getting rid of exclaves and centralizing power into larger states by 1815. Brabant, Luxemburg and Namur were absorbed by the Principality of Liege and Prince Karl Theodor von Wittelbach became it’s sovereign. The States along the Rhine who had retained their Liberal constitutions met in Frankfurt and chose to federate themselves under an elected Kanzler who would represent the federation in the Reichtag. A similar reorganization took place in the British Low Lands in 1818; following the death of Princess Charlotte her husband, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha who was a nationalized British citizen, was installed as the sovereign of Flanders under the Low Lands Act; upgrading the large part of the British Low Lands from a Protectorate to a Lesser Kingdom in the Empire, reducing the area that had to be controlled by Wellington’s Continental Army to just Picardy. The Area of Antwerp and the Zeeland under British protection were granted to the East India Company because of their strategic location and trade value; and the ‘Geuzen Cities’ were granted independence as the ‘Republic of the Geuzen’ with Britain as a Guarantor.

In 1835 the ‘Geuze-city’ Den Helder voluntarily returned to Holland. In 1837 there was revolution in the air in the Principality of Liege; it had been 10 years since Prince Karl Theodor had his last child and with his inability to make a male heir, the Principality was on its way to be absorbed into the Kingdom of Bavaria. The French-speaking inhabitants were also fed up with being treated as second class citizens, preferring the bilingual status of the Kingdom of Flanders. Lastly Brabant felt that they should be the prime holding instead of Liege and the entire principality preferred self-rule rather than a German ruler. Prince Karl Theodor was forced to abdicated during a coup in March but Bavarian and Austrian armies were send to deal with the crisis. Lodewijk of Holland (aka. Louis Bonaparte) saw this instability as the ideal change and invaded Brabant in April. Facing invasions from two sides, the provisional government rode under a white flag to meet with the arriving Austrian army hoping to reach a compromise. In the following Protocol of Schengen the Austrians agreed to self-rule as long as the candidate was approved by the Emperor, bilingual status and a name-change to reflect that status, Kingship was to be granted to the future Sovereign in exchanged that they would not leave the Holy Roman Empire and there was to be a combined offensive against Holland. Holland was defeated in the following year and in the 1838 Congress of Brussels the United Kingdom of Belgian Provinces (in English more commonly known as the United Belgian Duchies) was declared with Brussels as it’s capital and Filip de Merode was crowned King, Dutch Gelderland was annexed by the Federation of the Rhine and the Zwolle area became a new Hanseatic City. Holland however had stubborn garrisons occupying Venlo, Mederijk and Cleves who refused to return home; combined with the Dutch closing of the Rhine for ‘German’ ships this let to the decision of the Federation of the Rhine to give in to Dutch demands and gifted Kleefsland to the Kingdom of Holland on January 1st of 1840 in order to be able to resume trade via the Rhine.


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