Changes in Europe Coalition War and Postwar period

[Galveston Bay]

(Place your writeups here Lefty and TLS) I will place additional information after I see what you guys have written

[Lefty]

German War Era to the Era of Metternich

1805-1813: Zweibund Era

The German Confederations began regular meetings in Nuremberg to better coordinate the war effort, paving the way for further integration. Austrian officers began attending the War College in Berlin, while German nationalism began to spread among the elites in the South and philosophers such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Ernst Moritz Arndt, and Friedrich Ludwig Jahn wrote in favor of German integration. The French Invasion in 1808 provided the final catalyst for spurring greater German integration. Following the Battle of Leipzig, the delegates agreed to a unified command to oust the French and prevent the division of the Zweibund. Only Austrian obstinance prevents further political or economic integration. The Prussian crown’s mistrust of the southern Catholics further impedes unification efforts, but the Bavarian Army’s actions after the Battle of Leipzig did much to quell most Germans’ concerns. In the meantime, Christian Graf von Haugwitz succeeds Baron vom Stein as Reichsprasident.

However, the population’s tolerance for war began to wane, with some German nationalists questioning the Rheinlanders’ Germanness. However, in 1809, Major Ferdinand von Schill, leading a Freikorps unit deep in the Rheinland, attempted to spark a rebellion among the Germans there. Though he was ultimately captured and executed, his story was shared by propagandists in Nuremberg, successfully spurring the German people to continue their support for the war and leading to the 1810 Campaign and the capture of most of the Rheinland.

During 1811, most of the Nuremberg Diet’s efforts were spent debating who would gain the Rheinland following the peace, with little plans to continue the war. The Austrians claimed they should take control and call for a final push to complete the liberation of the Rheinland. The Austrians insisted on the appointment of their Fieldmarshal Karl Mack von Leiberich to lead the final attack on the Saarland. This final, disastrous campaign was the final blow to Austrian prestige leading to their fall from grace in the following year.

In January 1812, the Austrian Emperor called the Hungarian Diet for the first time since the war began to demand more men and money. In response, the war hero István Széchenyi -- lauded for his daring, famous ride, through the enemy's lines in the middle of night to convey to Blücher the wishes of Russia and Austria that they should participate in the Battle of Leipzig -- gave a shocking speech in Hungarian calling for the abolition of serfdom. Though his speech was booed by the Hungarian nobles, it laid the foundation for rebellion. When Habsburg drafters visited Buda, they were attacked by an angry mob, which quickly armed itself and captured the city and rejected the rule of the Habsburgs. The Austrian army was unable to swiftly respond, focused instead on defending Trieste and reeling from the defeat at the Battle of the Saar.

By October 1812, the other German states became agitated, as most of the war aims were secured and the foundations for unified Germany were set, leaving the Habsburgs and Hohenzollerns opposed to greater integration. A pro-Confederation demonstration in Tyrol led by Andreas Hofer is quickly and bloodily put down by Austrian security forces, but it is the final straw for Emperor Francis who is forced to abdicate in favor of his young, disabled son Ferdinand. Hungary is granted independence and Austria agrees to join the (renamed) German Confederation, relinquishing its empire to the Presidency.

With the Austrians utterly humbled and occupied with the Hungarian uprising, the Hohenzollerns insisted on continuing the war and the annexation of the Rhienland by Prussia, which had become increasingly reactionary following the death of the hugely influential Queen Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Any other decisions are vetoed by Prussia at every meeting, including the proposal to invite the four southern states into the Confederation. When their veto is overruled by a nearly unanimous decision in the Konigsrat and the Nuremberg Diet, the Prussian King sends an angry notice to Nurmeburg insisting he will not recognize the new Confederation and ordering the Prussian army to commence an attack of Strasburg. On October 14, officers from the War College ride to the Hohenzollern Palace and order the arrest of the King, who is declared a traitor to the Confederation. While the palace guards are unwilling to arrest the King and a loyalist (who is later tried and executed) allows him and his family to escape, Von Hardenburg leaves retirement to serve as the regent of the crown of Prussia.

1813-1825: Großdeutschland

In the summer of 1813, the Bavarian Maximilian von Montgelas was elected Reichsprasident, ending the long line of Prussian leaders. With talks in Koln ongoing, he formalized the integration of Baden, Wurttemburg, Bavaria, and Austria into the German Confederation, leading to 3 years of territorial changes. As part of their terms of admission, Bavaria is granted the Duchies of Ansbach, Bayreuth, and Franconia while Baden is granted the Hohenzollern lands in the south. Habsburg lands outside of the Confederation are placed under the administration of the Reichsprasident, and Trieste and Cracow are granted Free City Status. With the loss of its other territories Austria agrees to reduce in rank to an Archduchy. A rump Swiss Confederation is admitted as a state, and Liechtenstein successfully advocates for admission, largely out of spite towards the Austrians.

With the flight of the Hohenzollerns, the Kingdom of Prussia is declared defunct. In its place Brandenburg, Pomerania, and Silesia are declared the Kingdom of Brandenburg, and William of Nassau is invited to take the throne, as he is the husband of the Prussian King’s sister Frederica Louisa Wilhelmina. The Dutch are dutifully informed that William entertains no claims over his father’s old domain in the Netherlands. East Frisia is granted status as a state, and a local Diet is convened. After researching ancient Frisian lines of succession, it is determined that the Dukedom should go to the husband of Countess Eleonore von Kaunitz-Rietberg, Klemens von Metternich, who had successfully orchestrated the Peace of Koln. The Westphalian province is granted to Charles Thomas, Prince of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg who’s lands in Franconia were absorbed by Bavaria.

Governance of the Rheinland up to this point had been largely a combination of local governance and Reichsprasident control. Following an extensive lobbying claim, the Rheinland is granted its own state, but with a special political status. The French Departments remain, with a tetrarchy of locally elected magistrates leading interstate matters. However, to guarantee their rights and in recognition of Bavarian claims to the Palatinate, the Bavarian King is made constitutional monarch with the title Stadthalter, borrowed slightly from the old Dutch United Provinces.

This finalizes the Konigsrat as 20 members and the Bundesversammlung as 150 members, as well as two observers from German vassal states. Croatia and Dalmatia, now free from the Hungarian Crown, are unified under the Kingdom of Croatia and Dalmatia, with a Croatian Sabor being granted the right to approve the German-appointed Bans of Croatia, beginning with Franjo Vlašić. Upper Hungary, which remained loyal to the Habsburg Crown continued to exist, as it was unconquered by Hungarian nationalists. The Diet in Pressburg retained the claim to legitimacy of the Crown of Hungary, placing Germany in a conundrum. Unwilling to release Upper Hungary to empower any of its neighbors, or to let the Habsburgs maintain control, even as they remain popular, a compromise is reached. The lands are declared the Captaincy of Nitra, highlighting its ancient history, and the popular Habsburg deputy of the King, Archduke Joseph of Austria, retains his title of Palatinate of Hungary and Captain of Nitra. While this angers those in Buda, the Diet in Pressburg is delighted at the turn of events. Lastly, the Free City of Cracow becomes a haven for Polish refugees fleeing increasing Hohenzollern oppression, leading to a flourishing of Polish culture, centered on the reopened Jagiellonian University.

By the election of 1819, the Bund was stable, thanks to the three pillars of the Confederation. First, the Army had rebuilt itself after a decade of war. The Army had proven itself loyal to the Confederation above the states with its actions in ousting the Hohenzollern. Additionally, the Berlin War Academy was the finest institution in Europe, and the admission of officers from every state and universal conscription furthered integration among those who served. The second pillar was the growing financial sector, which spurred industrialization and a growing bourgeois class. Standardization of tolls among the various states, and effective governance structures led by the Ministry of Finance fueled growth of the economy and middle class influence. The third pillar, the German education system, had all but copied the Prussian model pioneered by Hardenburg, and a strong Ministry of Education provided the growing economy the high-quality workers needed to run an advanced economy.

1824: The Future

As Bourgeois power grew, a growing cry to provide greater political rights followed. In 1819, only Hanover, the Free Cities, and the Rheinland had universal male suffrage. Most states had their Diet members appointed directly by their king. Despite these calls, the surprise election of Duke Metternich provides little opportunity for the advancement of liberal causes, at least from on top.

Abroad, Germany begins to utilize its growing influence to intervene first in the Serbian and then the Greek Crisis. Overtures are made to the Swedes and Danes about ceding their German territories, but little progress is made. Polish exiles, many of whom have served in the German Army, plot in Cracow to liberate their lands from the Prussians.

After several years of lobbying for both economic and prestigious reasons, Duke von Metternich established a Trade Office under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to manage a growing call to establish a greater overseas presence. It is decided that greater oversight and management of trade and colonial affairs will be more effective at managing relations, while companies will be allowed to bid for contracts. Rumors circulate that the Trade Office aims to establish a presence in Africa by 1830.

In the Summer of 1824, Duke von Metternich broke tradition and sought a second term. Citing unprecedented stability and growth, he is backed by the Bavarian crown. A disunited opposition is divided between a Hanoverian liberal faction candidate with little support, and an Austrian traditionalist who is vehemently opposed by the Protestants of the north.

[TLS]

France From 1804 to 1825

The Coalition War: 1804 to 1813

The Orleanist Regime, always an unstable alliance between urban revolutionaries, bourgeois lawyers and traders, the military and the House of Orleans, finds its fate inextricably tied up with the increasingly brutal war with the Germans. Though he had purchased some degree of legitimacy through managing to control the bloodiest urges of the revolutionary class and by nominally presiding over the victory in the Revolutionary War, this newer, larger and bloodier war against the Germans came before Philippe had been able to truly cement his independent authority and legitimacy. The intervening years between the two wars against the Germanic peoples had not strengthened his hand, but rather that of his feuding generals and their puppets in the National Assembly.

The French had grown confident on the back of their near-miraculous victories over Prussia and Austria in the first war, but the realities of the Coalition War were bleak. The first year of the conflict saw France continue to triumph over the Germans, but at far bloodier and nearer cost than they had expected. Whereas in the first war they had been propelled by a series of motivating incidents -- their own revolution, a foreign invasion, the threat of becoming dominated by Teutonic overlords-- there were no such motivators in this new fight. Instead, the French were up against a people dearly motivated by that most burning desire: revenge.

After the bloody opening year of the war, a tense stalemate held in 1805 and 1806, with brutal mountain fighting in the Swiss lands and a series of violent recriminations in Northern Italy. The key player in this drama was Napoleon Bonaparte -- or, as he had been publicly referring to himself, Napoleone Buonaparte. Bonaparte was engaged in a high-stakes game for power. Clearly France’s most capable general, he had been responsible for knocking Austria out of the first war and was poised to do the same in this second. However, his sights were clearly set on higher office, either at home or in Italy. He had been fastidiously cultivating a cult of personality in Italy, had become de facto ruler of the puppet Kingdom of Italy through his title of “Steward” -- continuously blocking or impeding the selection of a new king. Eventually, rumors of his excesses in Italy filtered back to the King and his inner circle, and a critical mass of the other generals presented Philippe with an ultimatum: sack Napoleon, or else. Most importantly for the king, his most able defender, Lafayette, was in Switzerland protecting Geneva, and was unable t provide him with the support he needed. Philippe folded, and Napoleon was ordered to resign.

Enraged, Napoleon attempted to cash in his chips in the Italian peninsula, but found that his groundwork had been undone by the fierce Austrian purges the years before. While he retained the loyalty of a large number of his officers and the Italian populace, he was unable to convince his army to rise in revolt against the French government in the middle of a war against foreign powers. He was this ignominiously forced to flee France for foreign shores, leaving the young general Joachim Murat in charge of the Italian front.

Near simultaneously, France finds itself enmeshed in a fate it had struggled hard to avoid: a war with Britain. Philippe, a noted Anglophile, had presided over a decade and a half of strong ties with Albion. This had never been particularly popular, but it had allowed France to fund its war against Prussia and Austria and cemented her merchant class’ wealth. Now, not only had Philippe been shown to be “hoodwinked by the lying John Bull,” one of his key constituencies was plunged into ruin almost overnight. The news was made incalculably worse with the defeat of France’s navy -- which Philippe had controversially neglected due to the perceived low risk of naval war with England -- at Trafalgar.

France had thus exchanged the cowardly Dutch (who sued for peace near instantaneously with the British victory at Trafalgar) for the fatally-wounded Spanish, in large part due to Philippe’s torn priorities of trying to balance his Anglophilia with his adherence to the old Bourbon family alliance. Nearly from the moment France entered the war, Spain proved to be a hindrance far more than an asset. After expensively and painfully rebuilding its shattered armies and building a commerce raiding fleet to replace its devastated navy, France attempted to regain the initiative through a successful campaign in Italy. Though it did achieve dominance in the southern part of the peninsula, it had fatally weakened its forces along the Rhine. Wellington’s masterful victory over the French, while hard-won, blew open the kingdom’s defenses and forced the cream of the French crop back from the frontier. The prize had been lost to the Germans, funded by British financiers.

By 1811, just when things seemed to be at their worst, they deteriorated further. Spain was knocked out of the war by a series of crippling blows in the Americas by the British and Russians. The situation deteriorates further in 1812, withJoachim Murat succeeded where his mentor Napoleon had failed and staged a nationalistic uprising among the Italians to force a neutral and independent Italian kingdom onto the world stage. The prestige of the ruling king plummets even further, as nearly every single benefit from the previous war and revolution was now lost. France had lost the Rhineland, lost most of Italy, her Spanish ally had abandoned her, and the Germans and British are poised to march a beat deep into the heart of France itself.

In 1812, when all hopes seemed lost, France’s last defense was once more entrusted to her most loyal son: Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette. With most of the army’s highest-ranking generals sacked following the disastrous Rhineland campaign or tarnished by Napoleon and Murat’s treasonous Italian escapades, Lafayette takes command of the Grand Army of France and stands firm at the Saar. This far and no further seems to be his battle cry, as the French throw the last of their might into one desperate gamble to save their country from the cresting tide of Germanic rapine, Teuton and Anglo-Saxon joined together in one murderous band to ravage the French people. After the litany of defeat after defeat, Lafayette finally gives the French a feeling to which they had become unaccustomed: a victory, a decisive victory, on the field of battle.

1813 sees the war wind down as Lafayette’s victory at the Saar marks the high water mark of the German-British advance. Even the seemingly endless pools of Albionite lucre have an end, while the Germans have achieved nearly all of their aims and Philippe is desperate to not lose what remains of their European gains in the Netherlands and the Alps. Philippe, represented ably by Talleyrand, attempts to spin the peace as an honorable and just accord for a nation that had acquitted itself with valor on the field of battle. To many in France, however, the peace is an abomination. For some, the peace came far too late -- why had France bothered to fight at all, or why did it defend Spain? For others, it came far too early -- what a great shame it was for France to surrender when not one single battle had been fought on French soil proper.

The Revolution Returns in Blood: 1814

The unstable Orleanist regime is completely and utterly discredited by the Peace of Cologne. Each of the legs of the stool upon which it had been propped up -- the army, the mercantile class, the urbanites -- had either been wiped out, bankrupted or enraged by the outcome. Philippe, who claimed no Divine Right other than that of the will of the people, found that he was completely and utterly routed. The winter of 1813-1814 saw intense economic hardship, as the rapid demobilization of the armies lead to widespread poverty and unemployment, the lack of state spending saw a rapid decrease in economic activity and the rise in taxes to pay for the late war flew counter to the people’s lone hope that the end of the war might bring some respite.

As the winter turned to spring, the rising temperatures and longer days were accompanied by increasing agitation. The older and long-embittered former Jacobins and enrages saw the opportunity to complete the task that had been left undone, betrayed by the effete bourgeois, the complicit liberals and the decadent monarchists. Their frail bodies but fierce minds were bolstered by the returning mass of embittered veterans of the recent defeat, violent street thugs and generally unhappy urban poor. Demonstrations against the National Assembly and the king picked up and became increasingly violent, with the writ of royal rule limited at times to only Paris’ major thoroughfares and the Tulieres Palace. By June 5, 1814, the situation finally reached a boiling point. A demonstration against the monarchy predictably turned violent, but a volley of fire from the beleaguered royal guards unexpectedly unintentionally killed a pregnant mother observing the fracas from a nearby shop. This spark lit a fuse that had been lain by revolutionary groups throughout the spring, stockpiling weapons and planning an insurrection of their own. When the crowd protesting outside the Tulieres was whipped into a frenzy, the insurrectionists flew into action.

The red banner of radicalism was unfurled across the city as revolutionaries distributed arms and took flames to every symbol of the House of Orlean they could reach. The demobilized and under-equipped army garrison in the city either melted away or returned fire at random, serving only to kill more bystanders and escalate the situation. Before Philippe was even aware of the scale of the unrest, he found the Tulieres besieged. Like his cousin Louis, he was trapped in his palace with only a small band of loyal followers fighting bitterly to defend him. Unlike his cousin Louis, however, Lafayette was not nearby to ride to his rescue. Instead, the hero of France had retired to his estate in the Château de la Grange-Bléneau, a day’s ride away. Philippe’s honor guard was overwhelmed by the attacking mob, and the king was seized by the arch-Jacobin Joseph Fouché.

Fouché had been a leading Jacobin figure before Lafayette’s purge, though he had escaped formal retribution and had, in fact, risen through the Orleanist state to become Minister of Police. When the winds changed and the Orleanist cause became doomed, he believed he had an opportunity to position himself as the redemptor of the old cause and to finally avenge the betrayal of the revolution. Over the course of the evening of June 5-6, Fouché organized the leaders of the various insurrectionist bands in Paris to congregate at the Tulieres -- now the center of the revolutionary movement -- with his prize in tow. With his two assets, the king and the palace, in hand, he made a bold play for dominance over the revolutionary movement: he declared that, like in the Roman Republic of old, he should be declared Consul by the assembled “senate” of the people. The assembled leaders quickly acquiesced, knowing Fouché’s penchant for bloodshed and awed by his achievements. He then moved to quickly deal with the Orleanist king.

Fouché had seen how the process of a trial had given the defendants of Louis enough time to mount an effective strategy to spare him from madame la guillotine. He had no intention of giving Philippe the same opportunity. Early the morning of June 6, the king was dragged before the self-declared “Senate of the French Republic” and, after a perfunctory reading out of the charges of treason and high-crimes against the French nation, was sentenced to death by “Consul” Fouché. Though Fouché was persuaded by some of the more kind-hearted “senators” to allow Philippe a chance to confess his sins and receive last rites from his personal confessor, Philippe received no further leniency. Rather than stay the execution for long enough to bring a guillotine to the palace and stage a public execution, Fouché was committed to moving quickly and to ensure no possible escape could be managed. After being sentenced to death at 8:30 am, the sentence was carried out by firing squad by 9:00 am. By 9:30 am, his head was mounted on a pike in front of the Tulieres.

News of the regicide spread through the city like wildfire, presaging an actual fire that was soon to rage through the cramped streets of the city. The death of the king in such a brutal and quick manner led to chaos among the revolutionary groups and the citizenry. Though Philippe had not been popular by the end of his life, not by any stretch, to kill a king was a crime that still seemed beyond the pale for much of the populace. The bourgeois, already uneasy at the outbreak of violence, fully rejected the insurrection at this point. Many of the armed groups put down their arms in shock or disgust, while most of the crowds dissipated in anticipation of the expected reactionary fury. Meanwhile, the groups that remained loyal to Fouché and his self-proclaimed consulship doubled-down on their violent means. Open season was declared on officials affiliated with the Orleanist regime -- if the king was within their reach, so must every other citizen of France.

Lafayette had begun to coordinate with nearby officers and army garrisons as soon as he learned of the insurrection late in the evening of June 5, but when he learned of the king’s death on the afternoon of June 6 he collapsed to the ground in a near-catatonic state. More than any other man, perhaps even more than the king himself, Lafayette had been the agent who had most assuredly fought to create a constitutional monarchy to provide the most rational form of government. By bridging the old regime and the new, the renaissance with the enlightenment, Lafayette thought he had ensured France’s stability and prosperity for ages to come. Instead, all he had done was postpone the inevitable. One king may have been saved from execution following a trial, but another had been lynched at the hands of a  mob.

The aging general shortly thereafter recovered and sprung into action. He quickly marched out of his chateau and rode with great haste to the assembling regulars of the Army of the Loire encamped to the east of Paris. While only a few thousand men had responded to their summons by the evening of June 6, Lafayette made plans to act at dawn the next day. Meanwhile, he sent couriers into the city to spread the news that General Lafayette was summoning the National Guard to the defense of France and that he would arrive in the morning.

The insurrectionist cause continued to fracture and collapse at this news. While Philippe had been hated by nearly all, and Lafayette was, to be certain, the man who had enabled Philippe’s rise to the throne, his victor at the Saar had saved France and made him, once again, France’s hero. Many of the older insurrectionists had even served in Lafayette’s National Guard, while the younger ones (especially the veterans) may have even served under him at the Saar itself. Fouché attempted, with increasing brutality, to keep his men in line. Summary executions to maintain discipline had counteractive effects, and the “consul’s” reign descended into an orgy of violence and excess as the night proceeded. Nearly all pretense of revolutionary government collapsed, and the increasingly burned-out city became more a mass looting-ground for criminal elements than the site of political agitation.

As Lafayette’s forces marched into the city on the morning of June 7, they met minimal resistance. Small bands of insurrectionists attempted to fight the regular troops, but were more likely to defect to the general or to melt away into the chaos. More armed resistance was, in fact, put up by the criminal gangs trying to stall for time to make good their escape with loot. By noon on June 7, Lafayette’s army had reached the Tulieres and prepared for a bloody battle like that of a new nights before. Instead, they found a generally-deserted husk, littered with bodies, blood, destroyed furniture, broken windows and covered in a haze of smoke, tattered red banners flapping limply in the breeze. As Lafayette and his men approached the throne room, they found Fouché’s body limp in the chair -- apparently as eager to avoid facing justice as he had been in ensuring that Philippe faced it, he shot himself clear through the head some time earlier that morning.

The Principate: 1814 to 1825

For the second time in his life, Lafayette found himself holding the future of France in his hands. He was even more unrivaled than the first time, as there were no other generals able to stake such a claim and there was no natural king waiting in the wings. The Bourbons still lived in exile in the antipodes, while the Orleanists were discredited -- though Philippe’s son Louis-Philippe had survived the orgy of violence by being out of the country on a trip to London, taking advantage of the opportunities presented by peace. The violence by the far-left radicals had shaken France to its core, but news of the insurrection would take days to reach the furthest reaches of France. Mini uprisings followed in some of the cities of the kingdom when news of the first uprising reached them, but shortly thereafter were quelled as news of the regicide and collapse of Fouché’s abortive regime followed suit.

Fundamentally, Lafayette had seen his worldview shattered. Something changed in Lafayette as he stood in the gilded hall of the Tulieres, littered with burnt papers, torn niceties, pock-marked with bullet holes. As he stared at the corpse of Fouché perched upon the royal throne, another revolution was taking place -- not in the streets of Paris, but in the mind of its new master. Lafayette had thought for years that he could thread the needle between the forces that buffeted France, and that he could forge a rational and enlightened regime that empowered the citizenry. Instead, he had seen this vain attempt to embrace “modernity” plunge France repeatedly into violence, destruction and defeat. He had spent almost his entire adult life fighting for liberty, and here he stood once again.

Lafayette’s first port of call, as it were, was not the National Assembly, a body of aimless and frantic cowards that had largely fled the city as the chaos had engulfed it. Instead, he went to visit his old friend and rival, Talleyrand, with whom he shared little except a professed desire to do what was best for France. Talleyrand had long dismissed Lafayette as an hopeless romantic, but he could tell that something had changed. As Lafayette outlined his plans for a restored French state, gone was the wild-eyed idealism, replaced with something sterner but no less ardent. Lafayette was tired of the machinations of unruly generals, vying to outdo one another for political power and influence among the halls of the Tulieres. He was tired of the nattering nabobs of negativism in the National Assembly, wheeling and dealing for petty positions and feuds while France stumbled into catastrophic defeat and humiliation. He was tired of a population that had been so consumed by their small-minded differences during the war -- Catholic and Protestant, German and French, Peasant and Noble -- that they had allowed a foreign people to vanquish them.

By the time the National Assembly attempted to reconvene on June 20, the reassembled delegates found themselves once again subject to the bursting of an armed host led by Lafayette. Unlike his previous Cromwellian move, however, Lafayette did not simply remove the most radical members to create a compliant host. Instead, he simply abolished the assembly by thunderous pronunciamento. Before disbursing the former notables, he also notified the assembled delegates that, henceforth, the executive authority of the French nation would be vested in him alone, as Princeps of France. The few who attempted to resist were arrested, violently, while the rest cowered and fled.

Throughout the subsequent weeks and months, Lafayette was able to restore order to France by dint of his personal reputation and the exhaustion of the French people. Philippe was dead, Louis and Louis-Philippe were in exile, the radical republicans were again disbursed by the quick and decisive action of Lafayette, and the generals were either discredited, swayed or exiled. After a decade of war, and over two decades of chaos, the French people saw that Lafayette promised stability and order. Gone were the days of political agitation and the flurry of activity around meaningless elections. Gone were the days of endless total war against enemies foreign and domestic. Lafayette promised peace and stability, and all he demanded in return was obedience.
Over the coming years, Lafayette’s regime solidified into a “principate” consciously modeled on that of Augustus. The Kingdom of France was dead, but a French Republic to model the Roman was not declared in its place. To sidestep the contentious political debates of the previous decades, Lafayette’s regime simply styled itself “The French State.” Beyond taking the title “Princeps,” he assumed no outwardly regal style. He did not go as far as his supposed namesake and formally eschew holding positions of power, but nor did he completely disestablish constitutional government.

A Senate was established, entirely appointed by Lafayette, and staffed with key members of the military, nobility, business and even religious elite. They were given minimal legislative powers but were entitled to elect a system of dual consuls each year and hefty financial and prestigious benefits. Lafayette employed a team of legal scholars to draft a uniform civil code to ensure consistency across the state. The code was vague and unclear as to the political nature of the state, as befitting Lafayette’s quasi-official position as Princeps, but was remarkably clear on the manner in which a wide range of legal disputes were to be adjudicated.

Most radically, however, Lafayette turned his attention to something more nebulous than constitutional structures or judicial disputes. Fundamentally, Lafayette’s diagnosis was that France had been betrayed by its own people. Its leaders, its peasants, its soldiers, its priests, its traders, its journalists, its scholars, its lawyers, its generals, its diplomats. All had betrayed France, because they did not elevate France above all. They held onto their petty differences of tongue, creed, thought, occupation. It was no coincidence that the war had started over the Rhineland, a land where foreign thought and tongue predominated over that of France, but even the French people had betrayed France. Who was it that rose in the Vendee? The French. Who was it that killed Philippe? The French. Who was it that had invited the Austrians in to restore the Bourbons? The French. If even the core people of the French nation, French-speaking Catholics, had betrayed France, what hope was there for the peripheral peoples? How could France rely upon the Bretons, the Huguenots, the Flemish, the Saarlanders, the Swiss, the Italians, if the French themselves were unreliable?

Thus, Lafayette embarked most aggressively upon a campaign of radical conformity. As the Acts of Uniformity had forced the subjects of princes of the Holy Roman Empire to abide by the beliefs of their Sovereign, Lafayette would do the same to the very culture of his subjects. The tolerance showed by the Orleanist regime to public displays of heterogeneity was replaced by an insistence of propriety and homogeneity. The French language was made the sole legal language of public communication and discourse. All interactions with the state, be it through the courts, the executive, the military, the tax collectors, the surveyors, the state-run transportation networks or contracts had to be carried out in French. Particular emphasis was placed on the francification of the periphery, the Flemish, German and Italian speaking lands that were most susceptible to foreing invasion, but also to the internal divisions and myriad patois tongues of France itself.

Religion was treated with a more nuanced hand, in that the state showed favoritism to Catholicism but placed no formal bars on foreign faiths, but it was clearly self-evident that the state demanded subjugation and loyalty. Private beliefs went unchallenged by the regime, but any pretense to public loyalty above that of the French state was curtailed. Lafayette thus built upon the edifice of the Civic Constitution of the Clergy and expanded it to cover places like Geneva, where a new crop of compliant Calvinist preachers were promoted. To cover the Jews, in 1818 Lafayette issued three decrees that both granted them integration into French life and  provided them with a modicum of official recognition but placed strict demands on the, such as that they must take family names not derived from the Bible and also barred them from usury and moneylending to non-Jewish Frenchmen.

In foreign affairs, Lafayette worked in tandem with Talleyrand to build a system of balance in the international stage. Lafayette personally, and thus France nationally, held a series of bitter grudges against nearly every neighbor. The Dutch had been treacherous backstabbers, the Italians were led by a treasonous lout, the Germans were power-hungry upstarts, the Spaniards had dragged France into a war and collapsed into anarchy and the British were globe-dominating tyrants. However, Lafayette knew Talleyrand was right -- France might hold grudges, but it could not afford to let them bind their actions. Yesterday’s wars had been fought and lost, and tomorrow’s wars had to be fought on a different calculus lest they end the same way.

France moved cautiously to engage with the wider world. French explorers and colonists set out into the orient, to see if France couldn’t build a new empire in India, the spice islands or the antipodes. French diplomats hurried across the Atlantic to build ties with the successor states of the Spanish Empire in the Americas. French traders reintegrated into the trading networks of North America, the British Isles and the North Sea. Even the Germans and Italians were, if not embraced, at least politely negotiated with and treated by Lafayette’s ministers. French agents are particularly active in Spain, seeking to leverage the chaos on the Iberian Peninsula to finally secure France’s southern flank from any meaningful threat.

Thus, by 1825, Lafayette’s Principate has worked to reintegrate France into the global order. The ten years of peace after two decades of uncertainty has been, to some, his crowning achievement. This peace and prosperity has not been sustained by the magnetism of his personality and legend alone, however. The dark hand of his secret police has become ever more visible over the last few years, and Talleyrand’s network across the country and the continent has become adept at ferreting out dissidents and opponents. Lafayette governs in many ways above the law, and the system he has built is precariously situated in light of his advanced age.

At 68 years old, Lafayette is a venerable figure. While his health is not yet a cause for concern, all know that a sudden bout of illness is hardly unlikely for a man of his age. His son Louis Gilbert is 46, and has served both as an able soldier, a Senator and even as Consul, but his temperament for national leadership is uncertain. Two exiled scions of the House of Bourbon, one Legitimist and one Orleanist, wait for his death and the chance to return to the throne. The radicals of Paris, a decade after their last attempt to seize power, seem certain that they are just one push away from finally installing the republic of their dreams. For now, however, Princeps Lafayette’s efforts to reshape France in his image -- a France that is united, strong, and respected -- proceeds unimpeded.

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