by Tom Anderson
August - Death in exile of Empress Catherine of Russia, wife of Peter III.
1793:
February - La Pérouse and his crew return to France after their first epic exploration of La Pérouse’s Land [Australia]. Hoping to gain popular support from a national project, King Louis XVI agrees to fund a colonial venture there.
May - Captain Leo Bone and the HMS Diamond become famous for a hard-fought action against Algerine pirates off Malta.
Chinese heir Baoli is becoming as wayward as his dead brother; on prime minister Zeng Xiang’s advice, the Guangzhou Emperor sends him to Mongolia under General Tang Zhoushou to have his ways beaten out of him on the frontier.
June - Richard Wesley, who had fought in India for the BEIC against Burmese-Arakan and Mysore, returns home to Ireland as his father has died. He is now the Earl of Mornington.
July - The rejuvenated British Royal Africa Company, under Simcoe in Dakar, intervenes in the Koya-Susu War on the Koya side - in exchange for the Koyans ceding the Company key land, which becomes the site of the freed-slave black colony of Freedonia.
La Pérouse, with more ships and carrying the natural philosophers Lamarck and Laplace, sets off once more from France for La Pérouse’s Land.
August - Death of Abol Fath Khan, Shah-Advocate of Persia, from an illness. He is succeeded by his younger brother, who becomes Shah-Advocate Ali Zand Shah.
Chinese General Tang Zhoushou is called to Xinjiang to take advantage of the collapse of the Dzungars by the Kazakhs attacking from the west. However, he dies of a stomach ulcer, and his army - including the prince Baoli - comes under the commander of Yu Wangshan.
September - French Revolutionary thinker Jacques Tisserant, known as Le Diamant for his incorruptibility, publishes La Carte de la France, his pictorial manifesto for a new moderate and egalitarian French state.
October - Former slave Olaudah Equiano is appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the Crown Colony of Freedonia by the Governor of Dakar. This sets a precedent for the freed-slave colony to always be headed by a black leader.
1794:
February - The French Sans-Culottes, led by Le Diamant, march on the Palais de Versailles to present their demands to the King. Le Diamant’s charisma and general discontent mean that the palace guards refuse to fire on the crowd. Louis XVI gives in and agrees to recall the Estates-General. The French Revolution has begun.
March - The Imperial Mint, in Fredericksburg, mints the first golden Emperors. These coins, worth one British pound each, are intended to replace the Spanish dollar as the main currency of the Empire of North America.
In Oceania, La Pérouse’s fleet arrives in La Pérouse’s Land, in the region called New Gascony [OTL New South Wales/Victoria], and founds the town of Albi, starting the colony.
April - Act of Settlement (in North America) sees New England give up its westward expansion claims in exchange for the right to settle Canada with no restrictions.
In Corea, after the successful trade experiment with La Pérouse’s fleet, King Hyojang opens the port of Pusan for foreign trade - mainly that of the Dutch East India Company.
Birth of Frederick Paley, son of the philosopher and Christian apologist William Paley.
June - In the UPSA, Joseph Priestley and Henry Cavendish, together with many local Meridian scientists, found the Solar Society of Córdoba, a mirror to the old Lunar Society of Birmingham of their youth. The Solar Society will be a centre for collaborative scientific research and knowledge exchange in the UPSA.
July - The recalled French Estates-General conclude that their existing mediaeval system is inadequate, and create a National Constitutional Convention. The Third Estate renames itself the Communes.
August - Anglo-American agreement results in Michigan being turned into a penal colony, later known as Susan-Mary.
October - the Benyovsky-Lebedev Russo-Lithuanian mission sights Nagasaki from a distance, but does not land.
December - the French National Constitutional Convention publishes its constitution, abolishing the Estates-General and replacing them with a new National Legislative Assembly. The Kingdom of France and Navarre becomes the Kingdom of the French People of the Latin Race, a constitutional monarchy.
1795-1796: The Flemish War. Name for the early phase of the Franco-Austrian front of the Jacobin Wars, when the battleground was primarily Flanders and northeastern France. Revolutionary France vs. Austria, French royalists, Piedmont-Sardinia, and German allies from the various states of the Holy Roman Empire. Result: stalemate.
1795:
January - French Constitution comes into force. The Comte de Mirabeau becomes chief minister and struggles to implement it in the face of opposition from the nobles and the Church.
February - Benyovsky-Lebedev mission lands in Okhotsk.
The French astronomer Charles Messier discovers the seventh planet, which he initially names “Étoile du Diamant” (the Diamond Star) after Le Diamant. This name is not widely accepted and the planet eventually becomes known as Dionysus.
March - The Dauphin of France, Louis-Auguste, travels to Navarre in order to sort out the implications of the new constitution there. Thus he is not present in Paris when subsequent events occur.
Pennsylvania Confederal Assembly abolishes both slavery and the slave trade.
April - Death of the Comte de Mirabeau. France is plunged into a constitutional crisis. The moderates in the NLA favour Jacques Necker as new chief minister while the Jacobin radicals put forward Jean-Baptiste Robespierre.
May - King Louis XVI decides on Jacques Tisserant (Le Diamant) as a compromise candidate for chief minister. However, a miscommunication means that when Le Diamant is sent for, troops arrive to escort him and this is mistaken for Le Diamant being arrested. In the ensuing riot, Le Diamant is accidentally shot, and the radical Jacobins quickly play upon the popular outrage at this to launch the new violent phase of the French Revolution.
A few days later, with most of the French Army defecting to the Jacobins and Sans-Culottes, the Marshal of France Phillipe Henri, the Marquis de Ségur, takes loyal troops and fortifies the Bastille, intending to bring the King there to keep him safe from the mob, but it is too late for this. The Sans-Culottes arrest the royal family, and radical Jacobin troops led by Georges Hébert manage to take the Bastille from Ségur. Ségur is brutally beheaded by an unknown Revolutionary soldier who becomes the iconic image, L’Épurateur.
On the 15th, the King is executed after a show trial, by the new ‘Rational’ means of phlogistication in a gas chamber.
Coincidentally, on the same day in India, Nana Fadnavis, chief minister to Peshwa Madhavarao Narayan of the Maratha Confederacy, is assassinated. The loss of his administrative abilities means the young Madhavarao struggles to contain a rebellion led by the pretender Raosaheb.
July - The Parliament of Great Britain debates responses to the French Revolution as it takes this new radical turn. The ruling Portland-Burke Ministry is strongly opposed to the Revolution, while the Radical Whigs under Fox favour it.
In the Pacific, Lebedev and Benyovsky set off for Edzo again, but are blown off course, are unable to find the Matsumae Han, and their ship is wrecked in the north of the island. They are attacked by the native Aynyu [Ainu], but Benyovsky makes a parley and is able to convince the Aynyu to trade supplies and protection so that the ship may be repaired for some of the European goods it carries. Including guns.
August - Execution by phlogistication of Marie-Antoinette, wife of the Dauphin of France (who has fled to Spain from Navarre). Austria declares war on Revolutionary France in support of the exiled Dauphin.
The French mob targets the British Ambassador and American Consul, Frederick Grenville and Thomas Jefferson respectively. Grenville is badly wounded but escapes; Jefferson is killed. This provokes outrage in London and Fredericksburg.
In India, Raosaheb’s forces (backed by the Nizam of Haidarabad) run Madhavarao Narayan out of Pune and he flees to Raigad, where he seeks help from the Portuguese East In
dia Company.
September - First Austrian troops cross into French territory from Flanders and Baden. Furious battles against Revolutionary levies begin almost immediately.
The Parliament of Great Britain votes to declare war on France (by 385 to 164), although this news will not reach the Mediterranean for a while.
On the 17th, Royalist Toulon is besieged by Revolutionary armies led by Adam Phillipe, the former Comte de Custine. The French fleet there is led by the indecisive Comte d’Estaing, who hesitates over whether to fight or cleave to the new regime. He sends some of his forces to Corsica in order to bring back more supplies to relieve the siege, but exposure to Revolutionary ideas means that a large part of this force mutinies. Leo Bone, whose crew is having shore leave in Corsica, learns of the events in Toulon.
October - Leo Bone goes to Toulon and successfully cons Admiral d’Estaing into believing that the British have concluded a deal with the Dauphin to fight the Revolutionaries and restore the throne, so the Royalist French fleet must go to Corsica and join with the British. Bone had intended to pull off the largest and most bloodless prize-taking ever, but is suprised to learn that his lie has become the truth by the time the fleet reaches Corsica. This is due to the implementation of the ‘Burke Strategy’, Edmund Burke’s plan to support French royalists and not snatch their colonies - arguing that the French Republic is too dangerous to allow to exist, even if it means allying with Britain’s old enemy the Bourbons.
The Sans-Culotte levies of the French Revolutionary army are defeated by General Johannes Mozart and his Austro-German army at the Battle of Laon. Mozart’s army occupies Maubeuge.
Colonel Ney swiftly rises to prominence as he commands a fighting retreat against a second Austro-German army in the Col de Sauverne, in Lorraine.
Death of Emperor Peter III of Russia. He is legally succeeded by his son, who steps down as Grand Duke Paul I of Lithuania to become Emperor Paul I of Russia. However, this is contested by the brothers Potemkin.
In India, Portuguese EIC forces under João Pareiras da Silva attack Raosaheb’s forces with the intention of restoring Madhavarao to the Peshwa-ship.
In Oceania, La Pérouse visits the Mauré for the second time, learning that the muskets the French sold them before have dramatically changed the pattern of warfare there, catapulting the Tainui to dominance, while they are opposed by the Touaritaux-Touaux Alliance. In order to help feed the new colony, the French give the Tainui not merely guns but the secret of making them, in exchange for crops and seed.
November - Continental Parliament votes 46-9 in favour for an American declaration of war on France.
In France, Pierre Boulanger wins his famous victory against Johannes Mozart at the Battle of Lille, using the new Cugnot-wagon technology to his advantage. This results in the French retaking Maubeuge and halting the Austrian advance into France.
The French inventor Louis Chappe, helped by the fact that his brother is a member of the NLA, receives French government funding to develop a semaphore communications network.
In Russia, the Potemkinites assemble their army and march on Moscow.
First rumours of the United Society of Equals, a republican movement in Ireland that is theoretically secular and in practice dominated by Protestants, especially Presbyterians.
December - On advice by General Sir Fairfax Washington, Viscount Amherst (commander-in-chief of the British Army) recommends that new regiments be raised in America. The Parliament of Great Britain passes the American Regiments Act (1795), which grants Fredericksburg plenipotentiary powers to raise troops.
After a series of indecisive battles along the Flemish border, the Austrian and Revolutionary French armies dig in for the winter.
Paul crowned Emperor of All the Russias in St Petersburg. However, news reaches him that the Potemkinites under General Saltykov have taken Moscow. Start of the Russian Civil War.
1796-1800: The Russian Civil War, which eventually broadens into the Great Baltic War. Romanovian Russians, Lithuania, and Denmark vs. Potemkinite Russians and Sweden. Result: Romanovian victory in Russia; Sweden defeated and forced into personal union with Denmark. The Ottoman Empire and Persia take advantage of the chaos to re-extend their influence into areas contested by Russia, primarily the Caucasus and also Bessarabia and the Khanate of the Crimea.
1796:
January - the people of Liège rise up and overthrow their Prince-Bishop, installing a copycat republic based on disseminated French propaganda.
February - General Mozart leaves winter quarters to besiege Liège, a miserable affair on both sides.
March - Jean de Lisieux, a French Revolutionary leader, publishes La Vapeur est Républicaine, ‘Steam is Republican’, a pamphlet which enshrines steam power as ideologically correct. Lisieux and Boulanger form a political alliance with Cugnot and other French engineers and radical warriors, such as Blanchard and Surcouf. This research cabal becomes known as La Boulangerie, ‘the Bakery’.
Paris sees the start of Robespierre’s Reign of Terror, after Royalists holed up in a church/powder store blow up Georges Hébert and his Guard Nationale. The Republican reprisal is swift, with men sent to the chirurgien or phlogisticateur for the most minor imagined crime against the People. Lisieux, using Cugnot’s new Tortue ‘Tortoise’ armoured steam-wagon, crushes part of the revolt and becomes a hero of the Jacobin mob. Lisieux replaces Hébert as third Consul, resulting in Danton being overlooked - he soon goes to the phlogisticateur himself, along with other personal enemies of Robespierre.
Meanwhile, Britain deploys an expeditionary force to Flanders under the command of the Prince of Wales, Frederick George.
In India, the Portuguese General Pareiras defeats Raosaheb’s forces in the epic Siege of Gawhilgoor. This breakthrough restores Madhavarao to the Peshwa-ship (in truth, now only ruling the land of Konkan) but Portuguese ‘guidance’, expressed through a resident in Pune, now truly controls that region.
April - General Boulanger’s deputy Thibault Leroux leads an army to relieve the siege of Liège. Mozart’s starving army forced back into Flanders, and ravages the Flemish countryside with its marauding. Charles Theodore of Flanders and his minister Emmanuel Grosch take note, and fear for the resentment provoked by the Imperial presence. They enter secret negotiations with Boulanger and with Statdholder William V of the Netherlands.
Robespierre reduces the suffrage of the French Republic to Sans-Culottes only, growing ever more paranoid about there being enemies everywhere. The powers of the National Legislative Assembly are undermined daily.
In North America, the American Preventive Cutter Service is created. This coastguard’s main role is to prevent smuggling and piracy, in particular the illegal private transportation of convicts to America. The Continental Parliament also authorises the creation of the Commission for Continental Regiments, the first American ‘ministry’, which operates out of Cornubia Palace in Fredericksburg.
On the 25th (Gregorian calendar) or 14th (Russian calendar), in Russia, the Potemkinites successfully take the city of Smolensk from the Romanovians in an important victory. Emperor Paul retreats into Lithuania.
May - Full gearing-up of the spring campaign in Flanders. Mozart’s Austrians make a second, more half-hearted siege of Liège, but the main force attempts to push deeper into France. Mozart fights Boulanger again at Cambrai and wins a pyrrhic victory with considerable Austro-German losses.
Retreating army of Emperor Paul of Russia is attacked by a Potemkinite force under Suvorov near Vitebsk. Perhaps one-third of Paul’s army is destroyed. It is assumed by many that a Potemkin victory in the Russian civil war is now assured.
In America, the Treaty of Sandusky ends the Ohio War. This scattered conflict had been going on since the end of the Third War of Supremacy, and results in the defeat of the Lenape, Huron and Ottawa Indians with the victory of Pennsylvania, New York and the Iroquois. The Lenape and Ottawa are virtually destroyed, but the Huron confederacy fragments into separate tribes, some
of which go west to join the Lakota, some go south and are allowed to settle in French Louisiana, and one - the Tahontaenrat - joins the Iroquois, forming the Seven Nations.
Alain Carpentier, wastrel son of Louis XVI’s physician Henri Carpentier (who had risen from common birth to riches) escapes Robespierre’s reign of terror and arrives in Nantes, much to the displeasure of many aristocrats like the Duke of Berry.
June - Mozart orders a retreat and regroup of the Austro-German army, resupplying from Flanders. However, Charles Theodore makes a shock announcement that Flanders is seceding from the Empire, and is supported by William V’s Dutch Republic. Cut off and low on supplies, there is little prospect of the Austrians being able to fight their way through (after failing to force a Flemish border fort or retake Liège), so Mozart orders the army to wheel southwards in order to retreat to Trier.
Meanwhile, in North America, HMS Marlborough under Captain Paul Wilkinson and the naturalist Erasmus Darwin II perform the first survey of Michigan, which had been named as a potential penal colony.
In Sweden, the Hat party takes control of the Riksdag for the first time since the 1760s. The Hats fear a future war of the Swedish succession - King Charles XII has no children - and therefore vote to intervene in Russia on the Potemkinite side, to secure Potemkinite Russia as an ally in any future conflict.
July - The Flemings eject the British expeditionary force from Flanders due to their declaration of neutrality. This embarrassment, coupled with Edmund Burke’s death, leads to the fall of the Portland Ministry. It is replaced by a new war government under the ageing Marquess of Rockingham, while the Radicals and Radical-leaning Whigs under Charles James Fox become the main voice of opposition.
Meanwhile, the Flemings and Dutch fight to eject the Bavarian army ‘of occupation’ from Flanders, where it had been waiting to reinforce the Austrians.
August - Bavarian army retreats into the Empire. The Netherlands and Flanders formally sign their alliance into being with the Maastricht Pact. Mozart’s army reaches Trier, by now a shadow of its former self after having been harried by the French enroute.
