by Tom Anderson
1784-1786: Third Mysore-Haidarabad War between Mysorean and FEIC forces on one side and Haidarabad and BEIC forces on the other. Due to poor communications between the BEIC and Haidarabad, the Mysoreans win a significant victory with blatant French help. The Nizam ejects the French from the Northern Circars in response and puts the British in charge there. The BEIC fights off the French and the British-Haidarabad alliance is subsequently strengthened.
1784:
March – Having caught wind of reports that the Franco-Spanish intend to occupy Malta, the Royal Navy quickly makes its move first and turn the island into what will become an important British naval base. Controversy is sparked throughout Europe at this preemptive strike, even though the British allow the Knights of St John to carry on in a ceremonial role.
April – The Spanish retake Lima from Tupac Amaru II.
Prince Lee Boe of Palau visits the Netherlands and is an instant celebrity, leading to renewed European interest in the South Sea islanders.
May – Disintegration of Franco-Spanish common policy as Louis XV attempts to use the Royal Navy’s defeats as an opportunity to invade England. The French armies have still not assembled by the end of the war.
The Hanoverian-British composer and astronomer William Herschel dies while taking part on an astronomical mission in the South Seas.
June – Start of the Canadian Rebellion (by Québecois) against Britain and America.
The rebels in Rio de la Plata announce the abolition of slavery.
July – A French fleet commanded by the Comte d’Estaing, Jean-Baptiste Charles Henri Hector, defeats the British in a dramatic but strategically largely meaningless victory at the naval Battle of Bermuda.
August – Anglo-American siege of New Orleans defeated by the colonial French.
1785:
February – Anglo-American-Platinean-Chilean combined forces take La Paz from the Spanish.
March – In Britain, Shrapnel and Philips develop the hail shot (known as case shot in OTL), a potent anti-infantry weapon that remains a British military secret for a generation.
Birth of Thorvald Nielsen, a legendary adventurer, in Trondheim.
May – After a complicated amphibious invasion from Florida, American (mainly Carolinian) troops take Havana in Cuba.
Michael Hiedler, third son of a Bavarian printer, moves to Lower Austria in order to seek his fortune by enlisting in the Austrian army.
July – Canadian Rebellion crushed by British and New England troops. This revolt will result in Britain ceasing its policy of appeasing Québecois interests, instead giving a green light to the New Englanders to settle the land. Many Québecois are forcibly ejected, or choose to leave, and eventually go to Louisiana, where they become known as Canajuns.
August – The Treaty of London is signed, ending the Second Platinean War. The settlement represents a severe defeat for Spain, which is forced to concede the independence of what will become the UPSA with the loss of a third of its colonial empire. The ENA retains Cuba, although its exact status remains up in the air for the moment. France loses little on paper, just the largely unpopulated hinterland of Louisiana, but has drained its treasury, and this will have severe consequences…
September – King Charles III of Spain is forced once again to flee to France as the mob rules the streets of Madrid. Bernardo Tanucci is killed in the violence. When Charles returns, with the help of French troops, he is forced to appoint the liberal reformer José Moñino y Redondo, conde de Floridablanca, as chief minister.
October – British chemist Joseph Priestley publishes On the Nature of Phlogiston, in which he attempts to reconcile the established phlogiston-based theory of combustion with Scheele’s discovery of elluftium [oxygen].
November – Admiral Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse sets out on a voyage of discovery financed by the King of France. The voyage included La Pérouse’s new flagship, D’Estaing, followed by four frigates and a supply ship.
1786 March – John Pitt achieves a Colonelcy in the BEIC army.
May – Death of King Peter III of Portugal in a hunting ‘accident’. He is shot down in front of Queen Maria, who is driven mad by the experience. Within a year, power passes to her son, who becomes Peter IV.
June – An attempt by the French East India Company to conquer the town of Masoolipatam, in the Northern Circars, is defeated by the British East India Company and Haidarabad. John Pitt fights heroically at the battle, is wounded, and achieves fame and fortune.
July – Death of King Uthumphon of Ayutthaya. He is succeeded by his son, Maha Ekatotaphak, who places much power in the hands of his minister Prachai Tangsopon (possibly his bastard half-brother). Prachai tames rebellious nobles, establishes the Kongthap Bok (Royal Army) and establishes more state control over trade.
August – Lieutenant Leo Bone is promoted to Master and Commander, and is given the almost obsolete 28-gun frigate Coventry. He is soon marked out as a man to watch by the Royal Navy as he transforms the ship and its crew into a lethal fighting machine with a mixture of discipline, charisma, and unorthodox tactical ideas.
December – La Pérouse’s fleet reaches Easter Island and the Galapagos. Lamarck and Laplace, who accompanied the voyage, observe the wildlife of the Galapagos, eventually resulting in their landmark book for Linnaeanism, Observations on the Fauna of the Iles Galapagos.
1787:
Death of King Christian VII of Denmark. He is succeeded by his son, who becomes King Johannes II.
Discovery of the habitable regions of Antipodea by La Pérouse, who names the land New Gascony.
Death of the Daguo Emperor of China. He is succeeded by his third son Yongli, who becomes the Guangzhong Emperor.
1788:
March – George III returns to North America.
June – King Peter IV of Portugal appoints Jaime de Melo el Castro as Viceroy of Brazil. Melo becomes a reforming viceroy and is responsible for effectively creating a unitary Brazilian colonial entity, Brazil formerly having been a loose arrangement of separate colonies.
July – King George III, in his capacity as Emperor George I of North America, opens the first Continental Parliament.
August – Lithuanian Patriotic Fleet, carrying ambassador Moritz Benyovsky, visits the Empire of North America as part of its flying-the-flag world tour.
1789-1791: Fourth Mysore-Haidarabad War between Mysorean and FEIC forces on one side and Haidarabad and BEIC forces on the other. Both sides fight hard and competently in the last of the Mysore-Haidarabad Wars. In the end, Tippoo Sultan of Mysore emerges with a victory, having taken Carnool and Guntoor from Haidarabad.
1789:
March – The British Admiralty grants American shipyards the right to build ships of war for the Royal Navy.
April – Charles Darwin (not that one) discovers light-sensitive silver salts, the beginning of the science of asimcony (photography).
May – Under pressure from the French and Spanish, Pope Gregory XV issues the papal bull Discidium which condemns the separation of the UPSA from Spain. This drives many Meridians towards Jansenist Catholicism, as any Catholic clergyman in the UPSA who rejects the bull is effectively considered a Jansenist by default.
June – The Great Famine strikes France. A failure by the King’s government to respond coherently, coupled with the fact that the nobles continue to eat well, stokes the resentment of the French people towards the ancien régime.
July – In Portugal, a plot by the Duchess of Lafões against Peter IV is uncovered; Peter’s response is another round of executions and land confiscations, further cowing the Portuguese nobility vis-à-vis royal power.
Maverick Chinese general Yu Wangshan defeats an attempt by the exiled Burmese Konbaung dynasty, led by Avataya Min, to retake Ava from the Chinese-backed Tougou dynasty. The Guangzhong Emperor, fearing Yu’s alignment with neo-Manchu political factions, exiles him to the eastern forts of the “New Great Wall”.
The city state of Toungoo support
ed Avataya Min during the war, so its ruler Shin Aung is toppled by the Chinese and replaced by his more pliable (but unpopular) nephew Hkaung Shwe.
August – In North America, the Continental Parliament passes the Anti-Transportation Act, barring the forced transportation and settlement of British convicts in areas claimed by American colonies.
HMS Raisonnable, under the command of Captain Robert Brathwaite, visits Naples. Her first lieutenant, Horatio Nelson, meets Sir John Acton. Nelson is initially offended by Acton’s career of fighting for the Mediterranean powers rather than his British homeland.
October – General Assembly of New England passes a law abolishing slavery by gradual manumission.
1790:
February – Convention of Córdoba officially establishes the United Provinces of South America.
March – John Pitt becomes Governor-General of the BEIC (based in Calcutta).
Charles Town, capital of the Confederation of Carolina, is officially renamed Charleston.
April – Peter IV of Portugal revives the Cortes, using the commoners as another stick to beat the nobility into line with.
May – China under the Guangzhong Emperor begins tightening trade restrictions with Europeans in Canton, irritating the various East India Companies.
June – The Continental Parliament of North America passes a bill instituting an American Special Commissioner to be sent to Britain and Consuls to be sent to France and Spain, essentially a backdoor project for exploring the possibility of independent American ambassadors.
1791:
April – Death of Grigory Potemkin, former lover of Empress Catherine of Russia.
May – British general election returns a majority for the ruling Portland Ministry, in which real power rests in Edmund Burke. The ruling party is known as the Liberal Whigs, while Charles James Fox’s Radical Whigs also increase their vote share.
Imitating his idol the Kangxi Emperor, the Guangzhong Emperor of China has his wayward son and heir Baoyu stripped of his position and relegated to a lowly position in an attempt to teach him humility; however, Baoyu hangs himself, the Empress dies from a miscarriage upon hearing the news, and Guangzhong withdraws into seclusion with only two heirs, Baoli and Baoyi, left.
June – While making observations of sunspots, the Neapolitan astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi accidentally discovers paraerythric (infra-red) light. His discovery will remain controversial for years to come.
July – France is thrown into a panic due to rumours that a comet is due to strike the country.
At the height of a cursory Austro-Wallachian border war, cavalryman Michael Hiedler is slightly wounded, decorated, and given the noble title of Edler von Strones. He settles near the village of Strones, marries, and fathers two children.
August – Persecuted by an angry mob for his radical political sympathies, Joseph Priestley flees Britain for the United Provinces of South America, where he will set up a very profitable soda water business.
La Pérouse visits the Kingdom of Corea, performing a little trade with King Hyojang. This includes artillery.
September – HMS Coventry is paid off. Commander Leo Bone, taking most of his crew with him, is made post and given command of the frigate HMS Diamond.
1792:
May – A joint Russo-Lithuanian mission, commanded by Moritz Benyovsky and Pavel Lebedev-Lastoschkin, sets off for Okhotsk from the Baltic the long way around, assisted by Dutch navigators.
June – Captain Horatio Nelson, commanding HMS Habana, visits Naples for the second time. Sir John Acton is now effectively the prime minister to King Charles VI and VIII, and Nelson reaches a rapprochement with him. He also meets the King’s daughter, Princess Carlotta, for the first time. The nature of their relationship is subject to many rumours, but she begins to argue for Nelson’s interests at court.
July – British scientist Henry Cavendish, disappointed in fading interest in electricity research in his home country, goes to the UPSA to join his acquaintance Joseph Priestley.
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.
De
cember – 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.
