by Tom Anderson
May - Thanks to Lisieux’s and Boulanger’s plotting, two deliberately inexperienced French armies under Paul Vignon and Jacques Pallière are sent to drive back the British in the Vendée.
Ottoman Empire declares war on Austria, invading Austrian-held Bosnia and sending troops under Dalmat Melek Pasha to seize the former Venetian territories in Dalmatia.
Battle of Carlow between Wesley’s Royalists and the USE. Wesley now has artillery to match the USE’s, and wins a limited victory. The USE, under the French General O’Neill, retreats. This is the end of the USE’s victory streak and raises enthusiasm for Wesley elsewhere.
With the Swedish armies besieging St Petersburg being stripped of forces for the home front, Romanovian generals Kamenski and Kurakin begin to drive back the reduced enemy forces.
Emperor Paul re-enters Moscow, held by Kautzman. Paul agrees to some of Kautzman’s demands for serf emancipation in order to secure his support. He exiles Ivan Potemkin and Sergei Saltykov to Yakutsk, and installs Alexander Potemkin as Duke of a restored independent Courland. End of the Russian Civil War.
June - The two French armies in the Vendée are decisively defeated by the British, although part of Pallière’s army escapes to the south. It is later defeated by a local militia organised by the shipwrecked Leo Bone and his crew, pressed into service using his ship’s guns as artillery. This launches Bone as a hero and celebrity in the Vendean imagination.
Richard Wesley’s army takes Kildare.
On North America’s Pacific coast, the fur-trading operation of the British adventurer John Goodman on the island of Noochaland [Vancouver Island] is stopped by a Spanish expedition out of New Spain, who place him under arrest. Goodman is eventually released, but the incident highlights the importance of claiming the Pacific seaboard to the Americans and Russians. Goodman eventually goes to Gavaji [Hawaii].
An attack by the Austrians on Lascelles’ troops, encamped on the Enns near Admont, is bloodily repulsed, demonstrating that Lascelles can fight.
July - The Apricot Revolution in France. Robespierre has no-one else left to blame for the failure in the Vendée. Lisieux smoothly maneouvres him out of power - he either commits suicide or is murdered - and Lisieux becomes sole Administrator of France. Having purged everything he can of Robespierre loyalists, Lisieux orders Boulanger to now send the full force of the Republican army against the British.
An Irish Royalist army under George Wesley (Richard’s younger brother) takes Wicklow. A USE army to the south panics, congregates on Wexford and then disintegrates or flees to France.
The Swedes have held the Scanian front against the Danes, but the Russo-Lithuanians have begun to roll up their armies in the Baltic lands.
General election in America returns a majority for the Constitutionalist Party. The Lord Deputy, the Duke of Grafton, asks Constitutionalist leader James Monroe to form a government as Lord President.
August - In Japan, Benyovsky’s Russo-Lithuanian ships attack Matsumae-town, defeat the defenders and install their own puppet Daimyo.
Leo Bone’s irregulars near Saint-Hilaire fight regular Republican troops for the first time, and win.
September - British forces take Caen in Normandy. Alain Carpentier, largely due to being in the right place at the right time, manages to become a hero by leading a successful cavalry charge against the Republican French, achieving grudging acceptance for himself and his drunkard son Joseph at the Royal French court. He is made Comte de Toulouse (a largely meaningless title for the moment) in recognition of this.
Last Swedish army in Livonia surrenders, leaving the Russians and Lithuanians in control of the Swedes’ former Baltic possessions. The Swedish army in Finland repulses an attempted attack by Kurakin.
After getting into numerous fights at King’s College over political and philosophical disagreements, Philip Hamilton is sent by his father to work for the Royal Africa Company.
Around this time, due to his strong Confucian beliefs, the Guangzhong Emperor of China starts leaning on the ‘Hongmen’ of Canton in an effort to discourage the foreign trade which he perceives as a weakness.
October - Battle of Caen. Boulanger, assisted by new Cugnot weapons, decisively defeats the British and Royal French. The Prince of Wales is killed in the battle, meaning Prince Henry William is now the heir apparent. The British are swept out of Normandy.
The Austrians draw up a new army under General Giuseppe Bolognesi to drive Lascelles’ rogue French troops farther away from Vienna. Lascelles, outnumbered, retreats through the Waldviertel. His troops perform a particularly vicious maraude as a scorched-earth policy against Bolognesi’s army, and in the process murder many civilians, including the family of Michael Hiedler. He was hunting at the time and escapes, but is driven catatonic by the experience.
Dublin besieged and retaken by Wesley’s forces. New York rifleman James Roosevelt shoots down General O’Neill; he later decides to stay and settle in Ireland.
Swedish King Charles XIII assassinated by a madman. His death, leaving no heirs, plunges Sweden into a constitutional crisis that only exacerbates the war defeats.
Death of Dharma Raja, King of Travancore. He is succeeded by his son Balarama Varma, but the Tippoo of Mysore declares he is too young to rule and uses this as a casus belli to invade. This belligerent move is part of a plan by Leclerc to force Rochambeau to back down or lose the FEIC’s trade interests in Kerala.
November - On hearing of his favourite son’s death, King George III of Great Britain descends into madness and is dead by December. At the same time, the ageing Prime Minister Rockingham works himself to death. The country is plunged into a constitutional crisis.
Boulanger’s advance is stopped at Mayenne by the British. The front stalemates as the armies settle into winter quarters.
Further south, Leo Bone defeats a Republican French army at Angers, later earning him the title Viscount d’Angers from Louis XVII.
The Danish Diet negotiates directly with the Swedish Riksdag to reach a peace settlement.
The Austrian army of Bolognesi defeats Lascelles on the Ischl, but Lascelles saves the majority of his army and retreats into Bavaria.
December - Henry William crowned King Henry IX of Great Britain.
Richard Wesley’s armies finally take Belfast, last city held by the USE. The aftermath of the siege is bloody and rapine, the frustrated armies unleashed on the populace.
Peace between Denmark and Sweden. The treaty restores a personal union between the kingdoms, with Johannes II becoming John IV of Sweden. However, aside from losing the most Danish-loyal part of Scania and her Baltic possessions, Sweden’s territorial integrity is respected. This ends the Great Baltic War, and leaves Denmark as the dominant naval power in the Baltic.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Also available from Sea Lion Press
The Curse of Maggie Tom Anderson
Since 1979 just four men and one woman have occupied Number Ten Downing Street and the office that comes with it, all but one serving for many years. But things could have been different. By contrast, since that same year of 1979, Japan has changed its Prime Minister 14 times and Italy 22 times. What if we lived in a world where Britain was just as much a land of mayfly Prime Ministers as those countries, where no-one since Margaret Thatcher has successfully held the office of Prime Minister for a full five-year parliamentary term? A world where one might almost think that Number Ten was… cursed.
The Curse of Maggie is the tale of another history, a history where our memories of the last three decades are hauntingly familiar yet subtly different, their events shaped by the decisions of many more men and women at the apex of power — but never for very long.
Available now.
Fight and Be Right Ed Thomas
Winston Churchill remains one of the most famous figures in modern history.
But if you had asked about Churchill in the late nineteenth century, another political giant would come to mind, one almost entirely forgotten
today. Like Winston, he had the ability to coin a memorable phrase and make a great speech; like Winston, he was also a mercurial opportunist with a fondness for drink who delighted in irritating his more genteel colleagues.
Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston’s father, had all of his son’s gifts, perhaps even more; but on the few occasions when history remembers him at all, it is as a tragic figure who died early and never quite fulfilled his vast potential.
So, what if?
In Fight and Be Right, Ed Thomas explores the other Churchill as he shatters the British party system, causes shockwaves in Europe, and brings about a very different 20th century…
Available now.
The Limpid Stream Jack Tindale
In the spring of 1917, Vladimir Lenin was taken from his exile in Switzerland, loaded onto a sealed train, and taken to the Russian capital of Petrograd – a city where all manner of revolutionary ideas were in the air. Sent by the German government to add his radical voice to the chaos of the post-Tsarist regime, few would have expected that Lenin would soon preside over the establishment of the world’s first communist state and inexorably change the course of human history.
But what if he had never arrived?
In The Limpid Stream, Jack Tindale postulates a world where Lenin’s assassination on his arrival at Finland Station leads to a divergent Russian Revolution. With the Bolshevik cause robbed of its most charismatic leader, a very different nation emerges. From the bumbling actions of Alexander Kerensky, to the autocratic modernisation of Pyotr Wrangel, to the staunch liberalism of a very different Ayn Rand, The Limpid Stream shows a vision of an almost unrecognisable 20th Century.
Available now.
For Want of a Paragraph Tom Black
In July 2008, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, wrote an article in the Guardian that many perceived to be a veiled attack on Gordon Brown, then Prime Minister and Labour Party leader. In the days and weeks that followed, Whitehall was awash with rumours that Miliband was testing the water for a leadership challenge. It never materialised.
What if it had?
In this romp through the heart of the collapsing Labour government in 2008, Tom Black presents familiar faces – the Miliband brothers, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Alistair Darling and more – in unfamiliar scenarios. Can David pull off his coup? Will he have to co-ordinate the whole thing from a train to Manchester? And does Gordon have a secret weapon up his sleeve?
With a little poetic license taken in the name of an interesting story, this tale of Whitehall skulduggery will delight political geeks and amuse fans of House of Cards, The Thick Of It, and A Very British Coup.
Also includes an afterword exploring the real world backdrop of the story, and an examination of why the events of the book did not come to pass.
Available now.
The Fourth Lectern Andy Cooke
What if UKIP were given a lectern in the debates in 2010?
They weren’t, of course. Not in our world. But in a world very similar to our own, where the tiniest of changes happened, they were. And things turned out rather differently.
Ahead of the United Kingdom’s General Election in 2015, the populist right-wing, Eurosceptic United Kingdom Independence Party (commonly known as UKIP) was big news. What if their surge had happened earlier, in the dying days of a Labour Government?
What if four-party politics had taken hold in the last election, in the last moments before the campaign began?
What if the BBC, in attempting to close down arguments over whether the SNP and Plaid Cymru should be in the debates without excluding the Liberal Democrats, accidentally opened the door to UKIP?
The campaign would have been rather different. Election night more so. And the aftermath?
Andy Cooke’s counterfactual of a four-way election depicts a world eerily similar to our own.
Available now.
The Fifth Lectern Andy Cooke
What if UKIP were given a lectern in the debates in 2010?
That was the starting point of The Fourth Lectern. That book covered the few weeks around the alternative 2010 General Election, but what would have happened next?
In The Fourth Lectern, the door for the UKIP surge opened in 2010, just before the General Election that year, rather than a few years after it, as in our world. The resulting Government was fragile and a new election seemed inevitable – but was it? For how long could the embattled Prime Minister eke out his time? How long would it be until the next General Election?
And when it was to come around – well, the rules for having a lectern at the debates now seemed clear. And another Party wanted in…
In this full-length sequel to The Fourth Lectern, Andy Cooke continues his story of a world that – had a few ballot boxes arrived on time on a snowy December in 2007 – could have been ours.
Available now.
Zonen Tom Black
What if in 1946, an overstretched British occupying force had called on Denmark to aid in the occupation of post-war Germany? Would the world today be radically different? Or would it be mostly the same?
Tom Black’s short story, told as a series of newspaper interviews, explores a present-day Denmark with a slightly different past. An examination of how alternate history need not only focus on great men and decisive battles, Zonen tells a simple human story. Our anonymous narrator meets characters aplenty, from family historians to TV executives and hard-right politicians.
Funny, interesting and poignant, this short story may also teach you a thing or two about the real Denmark.
Available now.
Shuffling the Deck Jack Tindale and Tom Black
They’re Prime Ministers. But not as we know them.
Once called ‘the most intellectual parlour game around’, alternate history doesn’t have to be about Nazi zeppelins and steampunk empires. In this dry and witty re-imagining of post-war British politics, the authors take turns to place a familiar Prime Minister in an unfamiliar environment. James Callaghan, the darling of post-war prosperity and Britain’s first ‘television PM’? Anthony Eden, the hero who won the Second World War? To say nothing of the place in the history books held by Margaret Thatcher…
A self-styled ‘bit of fun’, Shuffling The Deck is nevertheless a must-read for alternate historians interested in whether circumstance is more important than ‘great man theory’ would have us believe.
Available now.
Meet The New Boss Tom Black
"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." - The Who
Many alternate history pieces explore Britain's fate if the United Kingdom fell to Nazi Germany. But few consider what might come afterwards. The chaos of an overextended Third Reich would not last forever. Europe would eventually be liberated. But with no staging post in the Atlantic, isolationism might take hold in the United States, and the role of 'liberator' would be played by Hitler's greatest foe - Stalin himself.
In Meet The New Boss, Tom Black considers a world in which all this came to pass, and Britain found herself squarely in the Soviet sphere of influence. Would Britain's communist leaders be Dubčeks or Honeckers? How would the British national character respond to Soviet, not home-grown, leftism? Through biographies of the various First Secretaries of the Communist Party of the Commonwealth of Great Britain (many of whom may seem strangely familiar), a picture of this different Britain emerges that will please some readers and horrify others.
Available now.
Boristopia Tom Black
Boris Johnson is, perhaps, the most well-known 'character' among British politicians today. Once seen as a jovial buffoon with no future in high office, he sought the Mayoralty of London and, through his campaign and then his time in office, became a national figure talked about as a future PM. Widely recognised as one of the canniest minds in politics, Boris has made the most out of every opportunity - and every challenge - that has come his way.
So, what if his rise had been different?
In Boristopi
a, Tom Black begins the story with the thwarting of Boris' Mayoral ambitions. But rather than being a permanent blow, Boris soon finds that remaining in Parliament has its own advantages. His career path thus altered, he finds himself in cabinet during the Coalition, trading blows with Lib Dems and, eventually, squaring up to David Cameron himself. What follows is a rip-roaring ride on the back of power, the media, and uncontrollable blonde hair. As Boris faces off against Euroscepticism, Scottish nationalism, and parliamentary democracy itself, readers will wonder quite how far Britain will let its PMs go if they can crack a good joke.
Also features an 'alternate ending', for fans of the absurd.
Available now.
A Greater Britain Ed Thomas
Today, Oswald Mosley is remembered as one of Britain’s most unpleasant and despised political figures. Yet at the opening of his career he was a rising star of British politics. Charismatic, talented and intelligent, it seemed that that Mosley was destined for greatness. If he had not abandoned mainstream politics for his journey towards fascism, he could have reached 10 Downing Street.
So what if things had turned out differently?
In A Greater Britain Ed Thomas charts the alternative career of a successful Oswald Mosley, who scales the heights of power in inter-war Britain, becoming one of the 20th century’s most influential – and divisive – figures in the process. As Mosley entrenches himself in power, befriends Benito Mussolini and reforms Britain along his own, corporatist lines, it quickly becomes apparent that world history will never be the same again.
Available now.
The Bloody Man Ed Thomas
Oliver Cromwell occupies a unique place in British history. While other great, flawed figures of our past such as Winston Churchill, the Duke of Wellington, Elizabeth I or Henry V are proudly remembered as national heroes, Cromwell - one of England's finest generals, and the person who arguably did more than any other to establish the foundations of modern Britain -commands no such unanimity.
