Balance of Power

This is the first flag of the Federal Republic of Greater Peru from the ouster of Supreme Protector Marshal Andres de Santa Cruz until the admission of the first Ecuadorian province as a state of the republic after annexation in 1860.

Red and white are from the original Peruvian flag and represent the blood spilled for independence and the snow-capped Andes. Green and god from the original Bolivian flag and represent the wealth of the nation and the Amazonian resources beyond the Andes. The three stars are the three formative republics North Peru, Bolivia a.k.a. Alto Peru, and South Peru. The Sun disk represents the Incan god Inti for the history of the Peruvian nation before the Spaniards.

 

South America Jumps on the Bandwagon, Part II, 1843-1871

The Empire of Brazil, in this era, made progress in both social and political spheres, and all segments of society benefited from the reforms and shared in the increasing prosperity. Brazil's international reputation for political stability and investment potential greatly improved, starting with the abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade in 1850, a personal project of Emperor Peter II who threatened to abdicate over it. The Empire was seen as a modern and progressive nation unequalled in the Americas, with the exception of the United States. The economy began growing rapidly and immigration flourished. Railroad, shipping and other modernization projects were adopted. When slavery was outlawed in 1867, the Empire’s future seemed bright indeed, with many wondering if it might even eclipse the United States as the engine of the New World after secession of the Confederate States of America and resulting economic troubles.

Down in the former Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata, the states of Entre Rios and Corrientes seceded from the Argentine Confederation over a dispute with the state of Buenos Aires in 1851 and a year later at the Battle of Caseros, with the help of Brazil, they defeated Buenos Aires and send its governor, Juan Manuel Rosas, into exile in Great Britain. The governor of Entre Rios, Justo José de Urquiza, became the provisional president of the Argentine Confederation and he called a constituent assembly in in 1852 in order to write a new constitution but things remained as turbulent as ever. While Urquiza, who had had become the provisional president of the Confederation and governor of Buenos Aires was out of state for diplomatic reasons, the city rebelled on September 11, 1852 and proclaimed their secession from the Confederation. The capital is moved to Paraná, Entre Rios and armed conflict ensues as Buenos Aires attempts to stop the new government which puts the new constitution in place on May 1, 1853 and invites Buenos Aires to return. Instead, the city-state writes its own constitution in 1854. In 1856 the Confederation attacked Buenos Aires, only to be repulsed but the country was mostly at peace. On April 1, 1859, following the assassination of former San Juan Province Governor Nazareno Benavídez by a presumed Buenos Aires agent, the Confederation Congress passed a law by which President Urquiza was obliged to “reincorporate the dissident province of Buenos Aires", peacefully if possible but was allowed to make use of the national army to accomplish that purpose. Buenos Aires interpreted that law as a formal declaration of war and in May, the Legislature of the State allowed the Governor to repel any military aggression with the Province's militia. Colonel Bartolomé Mitre, in charge of Buenos Aires troops, was ordered to attack Santa Fe Province while the Navy was sent to blockade Paraná, the capital city of the Confederation.

Given the seriousness of impending conflict and its probable effect on trade, Brazil, Paraguay, the United States and the United Kingdom tried to prevent it by diplomatic means. The neighbouring country of Paraguay sent a young Francisco Solano López as a plenipotentiary minister to intercede in the emergency. But every attempt at resolution of the conflict failed since Buenos Aires demanded Urquiza's resignation as President, and the Confederation wouldn't comply to that. On the 23rd of October the Confederation attacked and eventually laid siege to Buenos Aires while seeking mediation through Solano. Bowing to the international pressure, Buenos Aires agreed to rejoin the Confederation on November 11, 1859, based on the passing of certain amendments to the constitution and that Buenos Aires would give up customs control to the federal government as well as management of foreign relations, all spelled out in the Pact of San Juan de Flores. The amendments are passed, but when President Derqui left for his home province of Córdoba to temporarily assume the governorship during a period of unrest, the Argentine Assembly threatened to reject the Buenos Airean delegates for not being elected as per Confederation laws. The foreign powers who pressured the Confederation into signing the Pact of San Juan de Flores indicated that they would see such a rejection as an abrogation of the pact and throw their support behind Buenos Aires and the Assembly backed down. In the ensuing scandal over foreign influence, Derqui, who was blamed by both unionists and federalists for letting the Assembly make such a rash move, is outed from the presidency in January of 1861. In a move that was designed to placate Britain, France and the other trading partners, the Assembly named Buenos Airean governor Bartolomeo Mitre as interim president after he committed to upholding the constitution and new amendments.

Around the same time as the unrest in the Argentine Confederation, the Greater Peruvian states of Amazonas, Loreto and Lima started to move settlers into the territories that it disputed with Ecuador and then in 1853 created the unofficial Maynas Department, overlapping with the Amazonian basin part of the Ecuadorian province of Pichincha . While there were diplomatic problems over this, there is no conflict on the ground as this is remote territory. In 1857 the Ecuadorian government, desperate for money, tries to sell title to some of the Amazonian lands claimed by Greater Peru who raises a diplomatic protest over this. After repeated diplomatic tiffs, Ecuador expels the Greater Peruvian ambassador in the summer of 1858. As a result, North Peruvian factions who have always been troublesome in the senate push for war with Ecuador to take the territory outright and work to stir up irredentist support as Ecuador falls into civil war. In October, President Linares declares war on Ecuador in alliance with the faction of Gabriel Garcia Moreno and sends the Greater Peruvian navy to blockade the port of Guayaquil. In 1859, one of the major factions in the Ecuadorian civil war - the Provisional Government of Quit - splinters and starts fighting against itself and Greater Peru throws its support behind General Guillermo Franco and sends the army to help him in Guayaquil. By early January, Greater Peruvian forces have reached Quito and the annexation of Ecuador is announced after a treaty is signed with Franco. With the except of Pichincha, all Ecuadorian provinces are made territories in Greater Peru under the interim governorship of Franco until they can be admitted as federal states by the senate. The eastern half of Pichincha is split off into Maynas Territory and is placed under the governor of Loreto. Linares, riding high on the victory and annexation, became the first president of Greater Peru to win reelection.

As things started to settle down in Greater Peru and the Argentine Confederation, tensions in Uruguay between the Colorado and Blanco political parties reaches new heights. Venacio Flores, leader of the Colorado party started the “Cruzado Libertadora” in April of 1863 and by that fall it had escalated into another crisis of international scope with factions in the Argentine Confederation supporting the two sides. Argentine president Mitre and his Unionist party covertly supported Flores and the Colorados but denied any involvement while the Argentine Federalist party supported the Blancos.

Paraguay, being land-locked, depended on the rivers that drained into the Rio Plata basin for trade, as did Brazil for access to southern interior districts due to the lack of roads, and any conflict in Uruguay threatened the free access to those rivers, especially if the Argentines were to become caught up in the conflict. President Solano of Paraguay had been entreating Uruguay and Riograndense since becoming dictator, fearing that the Argentines desired to recreate the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata. Brazil, for its part, had a history of covertly funding opposition parties in its former territories and in Argentina as it tried to keep itself as the preeminent regional power. Riograndense also had ties to Flores’ Colorados from the Ragamuffin War that had given it independence, but as their economy was in large part dependent of French trade the decided to stay neutral in the conflict.

When Uruguayan President Bernardo Berro asked Great Britain and France for their help in enforcing the Argentine promise of non-interference according to the Arroyo Grande treaty from 1842, naval ships from the French Empire were the first to show up in June and start a blockade of Buenos Aires but they were joined by British ships a few months later. Later that fall, both the governing Unionist party and the opposition Federalist party of the Argentine Confederation withdrew their support from the various Uruguayan factions as the trade damage to the newly stable nation became evident.

In the spring of 1864, the new interim president of Uruguay, Atanasio Aguirre, asked for Paraguayan help against the Argentine and Riograndense allies of the Colorado rebels. At the same time, Brazil sent Jose Antonio Saraiva as an ambassador to try and mediate an end to the conflict and ensure the safety of Brazilian citizens. Saraiva eventually managed to get the British and French consuls Montevideo involved, but the talks went nowhere. In August, Saraiva relayed an ultimatum from the Brazilian government which was rebuffed by the intransigent Aguirre and Brazil starts openly supplying the Colorado rebels though war is not declared. There was talk in Rio de Janeiro about sending a Brazilian troops and a fleet to Montevideo in support, but that would mean another conflict with France and the last one did not go so well. Instead, sent military ships under flag of truce up the rivers to protect Brazilian citizens though the guns were opened and hypothetical reprisals were mentioned. Solano of Paraguay sent an ultimatum to Brazil to stop, and when that was ignored, the Paraguayan steamer Tacuari captured the Brazilian ship Marquês de Olinda in November of 1864. In response, two British ships left over from the Buenos Aires blockade travel up the Paraguay River and force the Tacuari to relinquish its hostage. To try and prevent the conflict from spreading spreading back to Argentina, Great Britain pressured Brazil into withdrawing support from the Colorados as the price for maintaining the Arroyo Grande navigation rights.

With external support removed from the Uruguayan civil war, except for the French and Paraguay, the Colorados still continued to gain control of the departments. When moderate Blanco Tomás Vilalba is elected as president on February 15th, 1865, he requests French troops which land at Montevideo. Villalba entered into talks with Flores and Paranhos. With the Sardinian resident minister Raffaele Ulisse Barbolani serving as intermediary, an agreement was reached. Flores and Manuel Herrera y Obes (representing Villalba's government) signed a peace accord on 20 February at the Villa de la Unión. A general amnesty was granted to both Blancos and Colorados, and Villalba handed over the presidency to Flores on an interim basis until elections could be held.

The seizure of the Marquês de Olinda, however was to have other consequences. After being forced to relinquish the ship by the British, the dictatorial president of Paraguay, Solano declared war on the British as well and on 14 december 1864 they invaded Brazil’s Mato Grosso. When the Argentine Confederation refused Solano’s request to cross an army through Corrientes province, Solano declared war on Argentina as well and in April the Paraguayan army invaded Corrientes and the Riograndense Republic. This action caused the Argentine Confederation, the Brazilian empire, the French Empire, Riograndense and Uruguay to secretly sign what later became known as the Treaty of the Quintuple Alliance to stop Paraguayan aggression.

Until June, the Paraguayan army scored several victories in spite of being poorly trained and equipped with inferior weaponry. The tide was turned at the Battle of Riachuelo where the Brazilian navy all but obliterated the Paraguayan navy. By the fall of 1865 the Quintuple Alliance had finally moved enough troops to the region to match the Paraguayan numbers and had begun began to push them back into their own nation. On April 16th of 1866 the Alliance armies crossed the Paraná River and began to take on the Paraguayans on their home turf. While the Paraguayans were defeated at the end of May at the Battle of Tuyuti which has come to be known as the bloodiest battle in South American history, they rebounded and defeated the Alliance at Curupayty in September. Bickering among the Allies as to who was to blame for this loss to poorly trained troops with inferior weaponry was to stop their progress for nearly a year, which the Paraguayans used to recover. Under the Brazilian Marques of Caxias, the Allied troops restarted their offensive in July of 1867, but were matched by such fierce resistance from the Paraguayans that they were not able to conquer the capital of Asunción until New Years Day, 1869, though Solano had fled on Christmas Eve. Solano lead a guerrilla resistance for the next year.

As a result of the war, Paraguay was occupied by Brazilian, French and Argentine troops for several years and forced to cede its northern departments from the Miranda and Ivinheima Rivers to the Empire of Brazil and to give up its claim to the area known as the Missiones, which was annexed to Correntes province. The area north of the Bermejo River, part of the region known as the Gran Chaco, was also supposed to go to Argentina.

Much of this territory had been implicitly given to Paraguay in an 1852 treat that had never been ratified by the Argentine Assembly, and since that time Greater Peru had also gained an interest in the Chaco. Because none of the three nations had any real presence in between the Verde and Bermejo Rivers, the area was left out of the final reparations forced upon Paraguay and would not be resolved for decades. The Emperor Peter II of Brazil, who had disliked that his representative to the Treaty of the Quintuple Alliance had given all the Paraguayan Chaco to Argentina, started referring to it as “The Bolivian Chaco” and implicitly acted as if the area were already under Peruvian control.

 

After the elevation of Guayaquil territory to statehood in the Federal Republic of Greater Peru in 1861, the the original two gold stars and one green stars were replaced with four white stars representing the four conceptual (but not actual) republics that form the nation.

 

To the modern day, eventually. But that last bit with Prussia in the alternate Second Schleswig War getting pwned by France is a major butterfly. Porbbaly the biggest individual single buttferly so far, even bigger than the USA/CSA split as so much of global history depends how Europe reacts, interacts, and impacts at home and abroad.

I'm working on African and Asia up to 1871, that's still (relatively) easy, but going forward will require a lot of investigative reading and thought on my part.

 

In my Balance of Power ATL, Canada's flag is the so-called "Pearson Pennant", so in honour of the Canada 150 celebrations this year here is what the Canada 150 logo might look like in that universe.

Canada - Pearson Pennant - 150 - 96dpi by Bytor posted Aug 11, 2017 at 4:14 PM

Full resolution on DeviantArt

 

In early 1826, the northeastern region of the Kingdom of Spain formerly known as León join in the rebellion against the centralisation of Spain along French revolutionary and Bonapartist lines by the Progresista Cortes that have been running the country in the name of King Ferdinand VII fore last six years. Upon declaring independence on February the 2nd, 1826, the rebels are forced to elect a king by the great Powers of Europe who are wary of any republican sentiment. One of the first official acts of Leopoldo Bourbon, Prince of Salerno, after his election was to restore the traditional lion rampant gules as national standard but with a border to distinguish itself from the kingdom of old. Leopold's second official act was to restore the Leónese language, long overcome by Castilian, to official status in the newly independent Cortes as an attempt unify his new nation against Castile and secure a position of favour in the eyes of the common people.

 

A little bit of image editing, et voilà, an #alternatehistory postage stamp for the Texian centennial!

 

The words, the star, and all the lines behind to replace "United States of America" with "Republic of".

 

Europe and the Balance of Power
The Austrian Civil War

Over the years since the end of the Euxine War, Austria’s Imperial Reichsrat had become increasingly polarised between pro-German and non-German political parties thanks to the centralisationist policies of Interior Minister Alexander von Bach and Minister-President Karl-Ferdinand von Buol. The Hungarian Diet often contended that policies enacted by those two senior members of Emperor Franz Joseph’s government were contrary to the April Laws from 1848. When push came to shove the Hungarian Diet supported Vienna for their own problems were a microcosm of the Empire in general but with Magyars on top instead of Germans. Other regions and nationalities within the Empire also wanted the same type of agreement that was given to the Magyars, and both protests and newspaper closings were becoming more and more common. Maygar regiments as often as German ones help prevent anything from getting out of control. More and more Magyar agents were being recruited by the k.uk. Evidenzbureau, the imperial secret police.

In 1869, a small uprising occuring in the village of Krivošije in the Kingdom of Dalmatia over newly implemented conscription was to be the harbinger of things to come, even though it went unnoticed across the rest of the continent. The rebels soundly defeated the small platoon sent after them as the military modernisations started by Radetzky had stagnated since his death and were incomplete or even regressed across the Imperial forces. The rebels are given amnesty in an attempt prevent the news from spreading and embarrassing the Empire, but it is already too late for that.

In early 1871, Karl Sigmund von Hohenwart is appointed Minister-President with the intention of federalising the Empire as the various nationalities were calling for. That fall, Emperor Franz Joseph issues a rescript to the Bohemian Diet to prepare a new constitutional charter based on the Fundamental Articles and Nationality Laws Hohenwart had negotiated with them. While protests continue across the Empire, they are more subdued and some newspaper columns even wonder if the protests hurt the cause of federalisation rather than help it. On October 7th, a revolt breaks out in Rakovica, Croatia, lead by Eugen Kvaternik, one of the founders of the Party of Rights, an ethnic party in the Imperial Reichsrat focused on Croatian autonomy. It spreads to the surrounding villages the next day and an Austrian Imperial army regiment arrives in town on the 10th and quashes the revolt with prejudice, hanging Kvaternik and three other leaders in the public square on the 11th. The following day, Ante Starcevic, the other founder of the Party of Rights is also arrested along with everybody with the same last name in Rakovica and surrounding townships. Starcevic’s jailing along with his family members provokes violent protests across the Empire when a new paper prints that the Evidenzbureau knew he had no knowledge of Kvaternik’s plans. Eight days later, Emperor Franz Joseph, under severe pressure from the pro-German parties in the Reichsrat and his own government plus pro Habsburg parties in the Hungarian Diet rescinds the agreement Hohenwart had worked out with the Bohemian Diet and cancels the entire process towards federalisation started by the Fundamental Articles and Nationality Laws, sayin in a speech to the Reichsrat ”Diese vielen verschiedenen Völker sind offensichtlich nicht bereit, ihre eigene Regulierung zu übernehmen, und brauchen dringend eine feste Hand, um sie in die Reife zu führen.”

As the news of the cancellation travels throughout the Empire, carrying with it story of Rakovica and the Emperor’s comments, more revolts break out across Croatia as well as Dalmatia, Bohemia and even Galicia and Transylvania. Hohenwart’s government is pushed out by pressure from the Reichsrat for failing to contain the spreading rebellions and Adolf von Auersperg is appointed Minister-President. He immediately makes nationalist parades illegal and starts cracking down on papers expressing sympathies with the movement, no matter how slight. The protests die down as central Europe heads into the harshest winter in several decades, but the Habsburgs and their Magyar pawns see it as vindication of the necessarily firm hand.

In the spring of 1872, it becomes obvious that it was merely the firm hand of winter that had kept the protesters quiet, not the machinations of the Evidenzbureau or the new laws prohibiting assembly and free speech. The protests start the day after Easter Sunday, and the military response snowballs as traditional May Day parades in Agram, Laibach and Kadar are fired upon by German and Hungarian regiments attempting to shut them down. The conflict flashes across the Empire, even to Lombardy and Venetia, considered to be Habsburg supporters since General Radetzky had been made governor in 1850. This catches the Imperial army off guard as they had been using Italian troops to shore up the Imperial regiments when Magyar ones were tied up elsewhere, and the entry of Servian troops into Austrian Servia and the Banat of Temeschewar takes resources that could be used elsewhere. As civil war breaks out across the empire, the non-German and non-Magyar soldiers desert their regiments, some returning home to fight and others joining the militias where they had been stationed.

By early 1873, the Imperial Army has been reduced to half its former size through the desertions and the fighting moves from the subsidiary kingdoms into Hungary and the core Austrian duchies. Since the Treaty of Világos in 1849, Emperor Franz Joseph and his government had played the various factions of the Hungarian Diet against each other and the polarisation that had developed over the last 25 years explodes in his face. Two thirds of the delegates proclaimed the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Hungary free from the Habsburgs as the other third avowed their loyalty to the Habsburg Monarchy. As had happened to the Imperial Army over the last year, the Hungarian Honved splintered, but across political lines in addition to the rebellion of the Transylvanian and Slovakian regiments. Because Magyar troops have been used to quash the protests in the other kingdoms, the rebellion in the minds of many was as much against the Hungarian Diet as it was against the Habsburg Monarchy. To avoid a three-way civil war and to preserve themselves, the Independentist Hungarian Diet promises to recognise the sovereignty of any region that wished to break away from Empire and to coordinate militarily. One by one, the diets of the subsidiary kingdoms proclaim the deposition of Franz Joseph and their own freedom.

The lost of the Honved hurts Habsburgs immensely and Franz Joseph appeals to the other German states for help later that spring. Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, at a conference in Weimar remarks that this is an internal Austrian conflict and should remain so and that outside interference would only serve to make things worse. His further remarks about Prussia protecting its territorial integrity are laughed off by the other attendees as Prussia had not been seen as threat by anyone since their humiliating defeat by the French Empire in 1864. Later that summer, the armies sent by Bavaria, Saxony and Württemberg are shown to be ill-equipped and ill-managed¸ still fighting like they did in the days of Napoleon having learned nothing from the Euxine or Franco-Prussian wars. A particularly disastrous retreat by a Saxon and Bavarian army in late May into Prussian Silesia and the sacking of Glatz for supplies catapults Prussia into the war.

A week later, Prussian armies cross into Bohemia and Austrian Silesia to chase the Saxon and Bavarian army in coordination with the independentist Magyars. The Kingdom of Hanover, long allied with the Habsburgs to counter Prussian influence in the German Confederation of old, calls the Prussian attack into Austrian territory and alliance with the rebellious Magyars unjustly grievous and sends an army down the Elbe to join in the Austrian defense. Sending the now famous telegram “Ich hab es Sie doch gesagt” to King George V, Bismarck sends the Prussian armies, rebuilding and modernising since the French defeat, lancing into Hanover and Saxony. By July, Hanover has fallen and George V flees on the 19th from the port of Emden to Great Britain where he pleads with his cousin, Queen Victoria, for assistance. Though uneasy about a new war on the continent, Prime Minister Gladstone and the Earl of Derby advise Victoria to stay her hand. So far the Prussian armies have only retaliated, not initiated, even going so far as to give up tactically superior positions to avoid Austrian forces while chasing only the Saxons and Bavarians.

At the beginning of August, with the bulk of the Saxon armies fighting in Austria, Prussian armies lay siege to the Saxon capital of Dresden. News from Egypt reveals that the Ottoman Empire, also uneasy about the conflagration in Austria has moved more troops into the Balkans than it has had there since the end of of the Euxine War and Galician rebels send word that Russia has been doing the same in the east. When a Prussian detachment monitoring the Hungarian rebel army is captured by the Austrian Imperial army outside of Laibach and executed, Bismarck proclaims that Prussia can no longer stay neutral towards Austria as they have broken the unspoken agreement of German brotherhood.

A renewed Prussian offensive in Saxony causes King Albert of Saxony to capitulate barely more than a month from assuming the throne after his father’s death during the siege of Dresden. This frees up the Prussians to move into Bavaria and head towards Munich as the Bavarian tries to unsuccessfully fight its way out of Styria away from the Croatian and Hungarian pincers closing in on it. Prussian forces, backed by the steel and coal of Silesian industry and itching to undo the French humiliation, start to chew through what remains of the demoralised Austrian and the inadequate Bavarian forces as Franz Joseph calls upon the Great Powers for the first Congress since the end of the Euxine War.

When the remaining Austrian and Bavarian forces collapse in the summer of 1874, Great Britain and France finally agree to a new Congress. Worried that the collapse of Austria will mean war between the Russian and Ottoman empires over the territories now claiming independence, an armistice is signed in Vienna on August the 22nd to start on the 1st of September, the same day the new Congress will start to meet in Brussels.

The Earl of Derby, Foreign Secretary of Great Britain and Victoria’s plenipotentiary to the Congress declares that the purpose of the Congress is the disposition of the territories of the now defunct Austrian Empire, and Franz Joseph is furious. There is little he can do about it, however, when France and Russia agree. The last remaining forces loyal to him are in tatters and barely able to mount a ceremonial guard at Schönbrunn palace.

Bismarck puts forth a complex plan for the Great Powers to approve. In return for Prussia only gaining Hanover, Saxony and Austrian Silesia, it will withdraw from everywhere else and allow the Zollverein, which had taken the place of the German Confederation as the main way of keeping stability in Central Europe since 1848, to be dissolved. Lombardy and Venetia will be independent. Based on ethnic compositions, the territory of Cracow will go to the Kingdom of Poland, under Russian control, Bukovina will go to the Principality of Rumania, and Servia will get the Voidvodeship and Banat which it has controlled since the start of the civil war.

To ensure stability in Central Europe, two new confederations will be set up. The first, a renewed German Confederation made up of the old members (excluding the Duchy of Holstein, the Duchy of Limburg, and the now-republics of Baden, Hesse, Palatinate and Westphalia) plus the so-called western crownlands of the Habsburgs. The second, composed of the remaining lands of the Austrian Empire and of the same format as the German one which will adjudicate the final boundaries of the newly independent nation-states and conduct their foreign affairs with its capital at Pressburg.

The talks are almost derailed in early September when the Slovak people, oppressed by the Hungarian Diet since the failed 1848 revolution, declare themselves independent from Hungary and troops move in to quash the rebellion. Riots break out in Pressburg and Kosice against the Hungarian regiments in those cities, threatening the armistice. Bismarck says that if the Hungarians cannot keep their agreement to respect the autonomy of the other nations that made up the Austrian Empire, then Prussia cannot, in good faith, honour their treaty with them and will instead support Slovak independence. Depending on Prussia's support to lend it's claim legitimacy, the Hungarian Diet backs down and talks in Brussels resume.

The only addition made to Bismarck's plan is the suggestion by France that the former Austrian lands that will be joining the New German Confederation each be required to chose their own duke and no longer be held in personal union by Franz Joseph. The rationale, says Joseph Bonaparte, Regent of the French Empire, is to make sure the divided Habsburgs are incapable of executing any revanchist fantasies and plunging Central Europe back into war. Privately, though, he hopes to constrain the Prussians as the leaders of the New German Confederation by ensuring more votes against them.

Great Britain supports Bismarck’s proposition as it appears to remove most of the nationalist and ethnic tensions that had caused the Civil War which they were worried could cause a new continental conflict. France supports the proposition as the dissolution of the Zollverein as it should now be able to more fully integrate its German satellites into the French economy. Russia opposes the deal, claiming that Galicia and Lodomeria should also join Poland because of historic ties. Neither Great Britain nor France want Russia to gain any more territory through Poland, feeling that it will only antagonize the Ottomans, but Britain needs to walk a fine line over the thirty year old Central Asian buffer agreement and decides to abstain from the vote. Bismarck suggests letting the minor European powers, including the new ones, cast the deciding vote for the Congress, having cunningly worked behind the scenes. On September 30th, 1874, the Treaty of Brussels Dissolving The Austrian Empire is signed by France, Great Britain, Russia, along with Prussia as a renewed Great Power, with the accessory signatures of the minor powers and Austrian nation-states.

On August 1st, 1875, the Interim Diet of the Former Austrian Territories dissolves itself and meets the next day as the Diet of the Confederation of the Danube, the borders of it's nation-states approved by the 4 Great Powers. A year later on that same date, the German Confederation, having revived the talks of the Frankfurt Parliament from 1848, votes to adopt a new constitution reorganising the Confederation into an empire and offers the crown to King Wilhelm of Prussia who accepted as his elder brother had not, 26 years previously. Otto von Bismarck is appointed Chancellor of the new empire in recognition of his work for the past two years as President of the Diet of the New German Confederation.