Diverge and Conquer (Look to the West Book 1)

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...

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