Paradox AAR - Saga of the Slavs

[SilverLeaf167]

Well, I know this isn't a call for a vote, but I think they should actually try to reason with them in Amatica. We just had a ton of evidence that sending in the army over and over doesn't work in the long run, and with a newly fashioned Sejm, they'll be itching to prove to the local populace that they mean what they say, please don't rebel any more...

Even when there's no official vote, opinions are always welcome!

[InvisibleBison]

Even when there's no official vote, opinions are always welcome!

I also think that negotiating with the Amaticans is the best course. Moral and political issues aside, if Poland has to repeatedly suppress rebellions in its subject states it will soon reach a point where they're just not worth keeping around. It's better to give them some liberty and maintain economic ties than to either pour a never-ending flood of blood and treasure int suppressing revolts or losing and having them sever all ties with Poland.

[SilverLeaf167]

Chapter #56: The Free Nations (1847-1848)

Spoiler: Chapter

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22nd of March, 1847

Only a few months into its term, the more moderate Sejm led by Mariusz Nowak is put to the test. The grueling oppression and occasionally flaring up brutality of Polish rule before, during and after the previous Amatican Revolution hasn’t been forgotten, and recently, the martyr Bozydar Radziwill’s famous Eagle’s Claw Speech has been more popular than ever. The blight of the Colonials has been likened to that of Poland’s various minorities and “Amatican” turned into a nationality of its own (muddling the fact that they’re actually European settlers in Native lands). But now, with the entire colonial empire being swept by waves of liberalism and nationalism, the three voivodes – actually installed in a series of coups to replace their Krakow-assigned predecessors – have once again come together to declare their independence with overwhelming popular support. The grandchildren of the revolutionaries from 71 years ago have risen up to take their revenge.

The news is received in the Sejm with a cacophony of shock, anger and resigned “told you so”. Though the Royalists, true to their name, seem to be aching for a repeat of the Royal-Colonial war, the other deputies are more clear-sighted. Another conflict against the voivodeships, even if they could morally stomach it, is a daunting prospect. Slowly ferrying armies back and forth across the Atlantic would be inconvenient at the best of times, and simply unimaginable when they’re urgently needed to maintain peace in Europe. The logistical issues would only be exacerbated by the fact that, in this age of citizen armies, the Colonials would have the home field advantage and plenty of patriots to draw from – plus their population has grown and they’ve learned from last time’s mistakes. For a number of reasons, the time when the Crown Army could simply land anywhere in the world and sweep through all resistance is long gone, even if not everyone realizes it. And so the Sejm tries to negotiate.


(This option leaves our influence at Cordial rather than outright Hostile)

Turns out that the Colonials realize all this too, and when they said “declaration”, they meant it. After the past century or so, they would put little faith in any Polish promises anyway. As far as Buyania, Lukomoria and Jeziora are concerned, they’re already independent, and it’s only out of common courtesy that they’re giving Poland the opportunity to pull out its armies before they’re thrown out or worse. The only “negotiation” to be had is for Poland to decide whether it wants to do this the easy way – or the hard way.

But even if a number of small colonies in Africa and Asia have declared independence just recently, those are different. The idea of a New World colony, settled and built from the ground up over several centuries, breaking free is unprecedented. How will the three voivodeships, each with fewer people and less industry than, say, Bohemia, protect their precious independence against foreign powers like Asturias? How do they expect their (intentionally) lopsided economies to function without the colonial network? And do they really expect their own alliance to last once they no longer have a common enemy, seeing how often they used to squabble even with Poland keeping them in line?

Their answer to all of these questions is the Free Nations of Amatica.



The three-person Trojka, representing the former voivodeships, serves as co-equal heads of state. The Congress is a bicameral legislature, one house having proportionate representation and the other two senators from each state to protect the more rural regions. Together with an independent judiciary, they form a loose federal system where every settler and native state is on near-equal terms with the central government. All in all, it seems almost a little too intricate to last, clearly just cobbled together in such a way that no one would have anything to complain about. Over in Europe, the Bundesrepublik’s federal experiment has proven less than stable, but the Amatican view seems to be that it only failed due to reactionary elements and foreign invasion, both of which the Free Nations are sure they can avoid.



To that end, they immediately commit to the most liberal programme they can think of: political, religious and economic freedoms, universal suffrage, easy paths to citizenship for any past and future immigrants – for they see immigration as the secret to their growth, and want to make this refuge from tyranny open to all comers. Buyania and Jeziora had already all but abolished slavery, despite not having had the legal authority to do so, and now that ban is extended to Lukomoria; the number of slaves in the Free Nations is negligible compared to most non-Polish colonies anyway, but the specific areas they (or rather their owners) are concentrated in won’t necessarily take this so well. The government must be aware that all of this will provoke the aforementioned “elements”, but they’re counting on their plans to create a land of true freedom and equality where those movements are choked out simply by leaving the people no reason to turn to such extreme methods.

And last but not least, the Free Nations select a new federal capital: Radawiec (Kingston), about as close to equal distance as you’re going to get from the regional capitals without trampling on Native territory, is rebranded as Radziwill to honor the posthumous prophet of the revolutionary cult. Ambitious renovations are planned to turn the small town into a booming hub, accommodate the new government, and celebrate the colonies’ history and independence.



Much of this already transpires while the first messages are still being passed between Europe and Amatica, but for lack of a better option, eventually the Sejm orders the troops to ship out, at least for the time being. Many have lived all or most of their lives in Amatica, and some of them choose to desert rather than move to Europe, but Poland has little ability to prosecute them. In return, the Free Nations allow Poland to maintain a diplomatic presence in Radziwill, but this is almost a trap of sorts, as the locals start calling it an “embassy” and thus an open recognition of independence. Were all this not happening across the ocean, a full month’s travel away, Poland certainly would’ve responded much more harshly, but geography has left it little choice.

The Royalists call for an immediate change of course or otherwise a new election, while the Populists are actually mostly alright with this. From their perspective, it’s been a long time since Amatica was a net positive for the country, an equal partner is better than a rebellious colony, and the Trojka has actually achieved much of what they themselves couldn’t. Stuck in between the two, the Coalition can only accept the situation; and since there’s little fear of the Royalists actually withdrawing their support for them and thus ceding even more power to the Populists, they feel relatively safe doing so. Of course, the Populists aren’t charity workers either: they believe that the Free Nations are packed with natural resources that colonial status has held them back from fully exploiting, and if their economy really does start to grow, Poland’s industrial magnates are looking forward to giving them the Lotharingian treatment.

Desperate, the Royalists turn to the High King for support, urging him to override or dismiss the Sejm, but he also has little will to go against the nobles or the cold, hard facts. The 57-year-old Nadbor III began his reign a long time ago vowing to defend Poland against the revolution, but after it actually became relevant, he hasn’t taken a very active role in the matter – and now he’s forced to try and defend this humiliating compromise with Amatican revolutionaries as better for Poland in the long run. The African and especially East Indian colonies are more important anyway, providing perhaps less manpower but far more wealth, exotic goods and vital naval bases. Besides, out of the “settler” colonies, the Voivodeship of Nowa Straya is still there – and has also seen a steady flow of migrants from Europe and Asia lately, drawn in by free land, liberty and mineral discoveries in the desert.


(Population grown by roughly 25% since 1836)

Of course, by focusing on the numbers, he’s dancing around the real issue: that the Free Nations’ fait accompli independence is a humiliation, a matter of principle, and the symbolism alone could in the worst case have a destructive ripple effect across the world.

To distract from this and bring his own message to the people, as well as symbolize Poland’s entry into a new era of prosperity, he announces a daring and innovative plan: since the controversial Miedzymorze railway is all but finished (despite the disruptions), he will ride a train from Lvov up to Gdansk (thus avoiding some of the more restless areas) and give a public speech at every stop along the way. On a greater scale than ever before, commoners across the country will have a chance to see and hear their beloved sovereign speak in person. He has good reason to believe that the monarchs have languished in their courts and palaces for too long, become too abstract, letting the people forget who they are and what they represent. Of course, he is aware of the risks on paper – but seemingly doesn’t think anything will really happen on this little adventure.



And indeed, it goes off without a hitch, though not without a bit of effort. The High King (with an unsubtle number of guards) boards a glistening black train that slowly, though still faster than any horse cart, huffs and puffs its way northward. Whenever it rolls into town, a spectacle of its own, he can always expect an enthusiastic reception from the crowd waiting for him to step out to the platform, dressed in somewhat less ostentatious regalia reminiscent of a fancy military uniform, and start talking. Of course, security is working overtime to keep any dangerous or just unseemly groups from approaching the site, but if there is any threat then they do a good job containing it, since it never makes itself known. The speeches are rather unoriginal in content, and blessedly short, but it seems he still holds onto some of the inspiring charisma of his younger days. To a critical listener, though, they seem to meander a bit as he emphasizes all the glory of Poland and its historical monarchy rather than actually address any of the things going on, apart from a few short and spiteful references to “anti-Polish” groups. In the end, the campaign can be considered a success in that no one died and the train didn’t break down, but an inconclusive one at best, as the High King returns to a Krakow and a political situation not much changed from when he left.

There isn’t much time to ponder the practical or philosophical implications of losing Amatica, though: while the revolutionary government over there tries to get itself sorted out, Poland is already distracted with something else. The King of Novgorod, elated with his recent victory over Chernigov, seems to be riding that high to assert dominance over his other traditional rival as well: Uralia. Besides its much-publicized (even if occasionally exaggerated) mistreatment of the Russian minority, the republic is obviously a large and noisy nuisance in Novgorod’s backyard. “Backyard” is a good description of Uralia in general, being so vast but mostly empty, and thus Novgorod is mostly interested in harnessing its natural resources for its own industry. Much like happened between Poland and Lotharingia, attempts to do this more peacefully have been met with resistance and government interference, so the King has decided to turn to force of arms. Nadbor III sees little reason not to continue to humor him, showing that he is either confident in Poland’s stability or again trying to draw attention away from it. Possibly both.



Uralia may not be a very appealing place to invade, but as it happens, it has – after first cutting ties with the Bundesrepublik – decided to make a defensive alliance with the new Germany just in case something like this happened. Of course, looking over from Poland, it would seem like they’re both overestimating Germany’s military readiness, but the Poles don’t mind getting an excuse to invade again. If anything, some think they might be doing the Germans a favor by stomping any potential rebels deeper into the ground while they’re there.



For Scotland, which doesn’t even have anything to do with the war, the timing couldn’t be worse. Some years ago, around the same time that Poland was struggling with a particularly bad case of potato blight, the same disease happened to strike Scottish-ruled Ireland infinitely worse. The adoption of the potato as a staple crop has fueled massive population growth, but at the cost of supplanting other crops and making Ireland entirely dependent on it. Thus, the explosive outbreak of 1845 threatened the whole island with starvation. Scotland, despite being highly reliant on its Irish provinces, still had a budget to balance in the wake of the war with England, and thus failed to commit as much aid there as it rightly should’ve. Hundreds of thousands have already died while others have fled to the colonies, but in between, the people who couldn’t or wouldn’t leave have grown enraged with Scottish rule. As this mixes with the general trend of liberal nationalism that Poland is all too familiar with, in the summer of 1847, Scotland suddenly finds itself facing an island-wide rebellion with seemingly half the populace marching out waving something, be it banners, guns, or pitchforks and clubs. And due to the war with Germany, Poland doesn’t really have any forces to divert there - if they could put down such a large uprising to begin with. The Irish Revolution of 1847 is truly the wrath of a nation scorned.



Poland certainly doesn’t want Scotland to shrink or the Isles to destabilize again, but there’s little it can do. In October, that’s exactly what happens, with the Irish Republic killing or pushing out the last of the Scottish troops, declaring its independence, and taking with it more than half the population of the entire kingdom. After centuries of relatively peaceful life as second-class citizens, the Irish seem eager to emphasize their own identity in any way possible, including a return to their Waldensian state religion and formalizing Irish Gaelic as its own language. England is happy to furnish them with money and grain shipments to deal with the ongoing famine, to be paid back at a later date of course. But, eventually the Irish will have to address the elephant in the room, the natural result of years of cohabitation: the considerable pagan, Yorkish, and pagan Yorkish minorities still in the country.



That being said, flashing back a bit: the Slavic alliance doesn’t have too much difficulty in its own war, with Germany getting invaded from several directions just like it was back in the Third Revolutionary War. Since there are so many troops moving through the area anyway, Poland also puts the finishing touches on its “soft takeover” of Bavaria, basically turning it into a stronghold against German reunification and an extension of Bohemian industry. Any resentment in the autocratic Bavarian government is balanced out by the fact that they share both of those priorities.



Aaaand as it happens, the Polish invasion is all it takes for the military to seize power in Frankfurt again. This time Ulrich Crantz has actually been sent away on an “extended vacation”, being deemed a clear liability based on his track record, and the government is formed by a junta of his former supporters in the Nationale Partei. The score sits at Nationals, 3 – Liberal Democrats, 2. The view of the ‘40s as one extended civil war for Germany gets even more evidence to back it up, not that it needed any.



Much to the High King’s consternation, Poland’s own unrest shows no signs of dying down, no matter how much he tries to will it out of existence. The fact that it’s still spreading in regions as different and distant as Bohemia and Crimea, or Denmark and Hungary, shows how pervasive the issues truly are. Mariusz Nowak’s Sejm does its best to stick to its more tolerant streak, but Nadbor III often seems to undermine them with his own words and deeds, intentionally or not. He certainly doesn't have as good personal rapport with Nowak as he did with Wladislaw Sarna.



All in all, it just isn’t enough. If Germany is caught in an extended civil war, then arguably so is Poland at this point, even if the leadership for whatever reason refuses to acknowledge it. The third major uprising within four years occurs in September 1847, inspired by the victories of Amatica and Ireland, government inaction on the promised reforms, and a healthy dose of opportunism given the ongoing war. It is now even more imperative that the war be finished and the troops brought home as soon as possible.



If the Poles had any deeper plans for Germany, they are quickly scrapped, and within a week the junta approaches them with an offer to hand over Germany’s remaining West African outposts (which it has no ability to govern anyway) in exchange for a separate peace. They're all too happy to accept, and turn their guns towards their own countrymen instead. Uralia too decides to fold once Germany is out of the game, accepting Novgorodian dominance over its economy and foreign policy, similar to the Lotharingian model.



With the war hastily wrapped up in only 4 months and troops on both fronts marching back towards Poland, the defeat of the insurrection is only a matter of time – though time it takes, continuing well into 1848 as the Crown Army clears out the major cities but then spends what feels like an eternity chasing down bands of stragglers in the countryside, where the rest of the inhabitants are a little too happy to give them shelter. But for all that military success, politically Poland’s crisis is deeper than ever. After the previous Sejm’s hardline policies provoked the revolutionaries, the Populists got a windfall of votes and Mariusz Nowak was propelled to power under the assumption and hope that they could find a compromise with the bloodthirsty peasants. A year after their election, that clearly hasn’t happened, and they’re being bombarded from both sides: the traditionalist side believes that their “weak” rhetoric and failure to crack down on the rebels have only made things even worse, while the liberals point out that no amount of empty words and shallow gestures will satisfy the crowds as long as their actual demands – namely the right to vote, right to organize and end to state censorship – are blocked by the majority in the Sejm and Crown Council alike.

In 1848, the split between the upper and lower classes, the government and the people, seems to only be getting wider and less bridgeable. The government, simply unwilling to commit to the changes demanded, flips the other way and the seemingly suicidal hardline stance starts gaining more support once more. It's pushed along by some all too well written arguments from respected Polish thinkers.


(I forgot to remove the French Revolution references in these couple events, but oh well)

The revolutionaries, of course, can't help but notice this happening, and they too are faced with the same arbitrary choice: as the government has made it clear that it has no intent to act, they have exactly two options. Either they give up entirely, or accept that they’ll have to tear their rights out of the aristocrats’ cold dead hands or die trying. Liberty or Death. The stage is set for what might well become the worst period of the Polish Revolution, and the time that even the last doubters truly recognize it as one.



High King Nadbor III does not, in fact, have the legal right to force the Sejm to change its own rules, not that he'd necessarily do so even if he could. Though he too dreads the idea of a continuing, escalating revolution – even besides the part where he gets beheaded – in the end, as an elderly nobleman himself, it should come as no surprise that his sympathies lie with the nobility. He seems to have taken the people’s unwillingness to heed his magnificent speeches as a personal insult, and frankly can’t really see why these stupid changes are so important to them. Of course, he also has a rather reactionary Crown Council feeding those same talking points into his ear. As for Mariusz Nowak, his progressive programme has been totally discredited in record time, and thus the High King has him replaced with his personal favorite. However, while indeed a respected figure in most non-liberal circles, his pick Dariusz Zajkowski is an old aristocrat leaning heavily towards the reactionary end of the spectrum. Not only that, the fact that he’s gone out of his way to appoint a former general such as him seems like an ill omen of what is to come…

Spoiler: Meanwhile, Elsewhere

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[No new newspapers, actually. Hope that’s not a bug.]

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Having stabilized itself and pushed aside the counter-revolutionaries, the Latin Federation is showing the world what an Italy not turned against itself is truly capable of. Shaping up to be a new Bundesrepublik indeed, it has rebuilt its army into one of the largest in the world, easily annexed Provence and then turned its eyes on Burgundy, eager to reclaim all the territory it considers a rightful part of Italy or France. Lotharingia, perhaps a little too cocky after its last victory against the far weaker Italian Empire, has come to Burgundy’s defense, which it might well come to regret. Poland is obviously too busy to intervene.

Spoiler: Comments

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Barely one year, huh. But I figured that this was a good place to put a break, especially after such a text-heavy chapter.

The parliamentary mechanics, even when actually rather barebones, give me a lot more inspiration and tools for roleplaying internal politics than EU4 ever did. Of course, the world coming closer to the “current” day and “modernizing” in general also makes it easier to write walls of exposition about the political system, to me anyway. Does that make any sense?

[InvisibleBison]

Things aren't looking too good for Poland. At least they don't have to deal with this revolt with half their armies in Amatica, though.

Also, it makes perfect sense to me that you'd be more familiar writing about governments that more closely resemble the one you live under.

[SilverLeaf167]

Chapter #57: The Long Revolution (1848-1850)

Spoiler: Chapter

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1st of June, 1848

Anyone struggling to understand the exact nature of the liberal revolution, either in retrospect or even at the time, is not alone. For all the slogans of “Freedom, Equality, Solidarity”, the unhelpful truth is that the liberal movement means something different for everyone. Some will go on to argue that the movement stems from “disgust at the ageless injustices present in a hierarchical society”, but few people really have the vision, ambition or energy to try and rip out the entire system with its roots, and certainly not a real alternative to take its place – yet – so instead they take it on piece by piece. While the movement is indeed popular with the lower classes as well, its leaders are mostly burghers, intellectuals or even minor gentry, and the closest thing it has to allies in the Sejm are rich people interested in freedom from regulations more than anything else. The only thing they all have in common is that they’re fighting for some particular sort of freedom they care about, be it concrete or abstract, big or small, positive or negative, and that even if they’d collapse into infighting immediately afterwards, they all believe their immediate goals would be met by replacing the government with a more democratic one. They’ll cross that bridge when they get there, but for now they must fight together.

Of course, no one turns to revolution as their first choice: it only reached this point after all levels of the Polish government, from local authorities up to the High King, staunchly refused any real attempts at reform and seemingly left violent upheaval as the only option. While the people don’t necessarily realize how divided the Sejm actually is on the matter, the results (or lack thereof) speak for themselves. Every act of reprisal by the Crown Army just further convinces the rebels that the system is rotten to the core. And while it is obvious that with sufficient violence, one side must break eventually, it’s less obvious who it will be – and how long this cycle of revenge would have to continue until then, if truly no compromise can be reached.

As for the groups most opposed to the liberal movement – for obviously the nobles would be powerless without at least some sort of support – one can name the clergy and professional soldiers, both of them rather useful in maintaining control of the country. While the movement can count some folk preachers among its ranks, the organized priesthood (pagan and oddani alike) finds the more religiously and socially liberal wing quite distasteful, and the Archpriest of Perun is an avowed pacifist urging an end to violence on both sides – which as we have seen only favors the status quo. The rebels and the military, meanwhile, share a mutual cultural, political and personal hatred of each other, only fanned the longer the conflict goes on and maintained by the soldiers living in a violent echo chamber where their entire career choice entails swearing obedience to the Crown.

And what of the nobles, the defendants in this trial? They have few arguments to present that would convince a modern audience, but while it’s hard to deny that they’re mostly driven by self-interest (as individuals or as a ruling class), they do have the power of tradition on their side: the monarchy, the church, the military, and all the good that Poland has done for its people, even bringing up its status as the “Savior of the Slavs”. Words like “mob rule” and “anarchy” also get thrown around a lot, Germany being the prime example. The constant fighting, whoever is really to blame, allows them to paint liberalism itself as a threat to Poland and any compromise as a moral defeat. And tradition shouldn’t be underestimated: for most people, the world isn’t really a changing place, nor do they want it to be, their lives defined by following in their parents’ footsteps and just doing as they did. Thus it would be misleading to claim that the lower classes are all united against their oppressors – many of them, the majority in fact, only want the chaos to end so they can go back to how things were. And of course, not nearly every liberal is a rebel either.



As of June 1848, the Crown Army has been fighting for almost a year straight, with a short lull in the spring soon interrupted by the latest uprising. The most stubborn pocket at the moment is concentrated in Bohemia (and neighboring Silesia), which despite being one of the oldest parts of Poland has always been a cultural crossroads of Slavic, German and Christian influence. Given its urban and cosmopolitan nature, it makes sense that it would remain a stronghold of liberalism. It deserves to be noted, though, that Czech nationalism has yet to become a major problem – they still identify as Polish citizens trying to transform their home country from within.



After appointing the former general Dariusz Zajkowski as Premier, High King Nadbor III has largely withdrawn from public matters and scurried off to a more secure location. Leadership, and responsibility for whatever happens, is thus left to the Sejm. Of course, the immediate policy wasn’t in doubt anyway: marching in and defeating the rebels by force, as many times as it takes. Them being a lot more concentrated and organized than ever before makes that harder, though, turning the whole summer into a bloody game of cat and mouse as Crown and rebel forces both try to avoid battles they can’t win and instead make one tactical retreat after another in search of better positions. As the rebels abandon their plans of capturing Prague itself, they consolidate to the south and east, moving worryingly close to Krakow.



Indeed, as the Crown forces close in on them, in September the rebels make a desperate push for the capital, left woefully under-defended in a critical oversight on Zajkowski’s part as he focused on offense above all else. Only by the rapid action of General Boleslaw Lechowicz is a defensive line put together, able to hold long enough for reinforcements to arrive, some of them actually taking advantage of the railway system for the first time to arrive inside the city and flank the rebels from there.



And so yet another “wave” of the rebellion is seemingly put down, but once again a large portion of the revolutionaries manages to evade capture, while more are already crawling out of the woodwork. Much as Zajkowski tries to sell it as a final, decisive victory – for the umpteenth time – people around him are aware that this battle still isn’t over, and the next one is probably only going to be bigger. Thus the military is kept on high alert, taking up positions around the country and patrolling the streets almost as if all of Poland were occupied enemy territory. In many places this police action and the response to it are harsh enough that not everyone believes the fighting has paused at all.


(That’s 242 regiments waiting to rise up – twice as large as our European army)

Meanwhile, as England is struggling with a general rebellion in its Welsh provinces in an ironic echo of its support for the Irish, Scotland decides to try and reclaim some prestige by starting a colonial war in West Africa. Poland is, of course, less than interested in helping at the moment. Angered by their ally’s inaction both now and during the Irish Rebellion, the Scots break off their old alliance with Poland – but just like happened the last time they threw a similar tantrum, they come crawling back only a few months later.



In Poland, the first months of 1849 are spent repeating an all too familiar pattern, with both sides clearly gearing up for another go, certainly not helping deescalate matters by publicly harassing and beating citizens accused of backing the enemy. In addition, until now, the war has been between the ragtag rebels and the Crown Army (with occasional Frisian or Yugoslavian support), but now there are signs of a real counter-revolution starting to form. Those not flocking to join the army are forming militias of their own, unofficial but enjoying Zajkowski’s vocal support and even access to stockpiles of old weaponry. Soon, violent clashes between "red" and "white" patrols become common sights in every major city across the country. Of course, ideological enemies are easily dismissed as just another reason to continue the fight, but eventually it dawns on the revolutionaries that many of these militias consist not of sworn reactionaries and monarchists but scared, angry and tired peasants grouping up to protect their community.

Indeed, there is the more important change: some 8 years after the very first clashes in Brest-Litovsk, it seems like popular opinion is finally turning against the revolutionaries. Growing opposition may mean little to true idealists, but waning support certainly does. Most of their goals haven’t lost any of their appeal, but the revolution as a method has. Even people sympathetic to them fear for their health and property – which are anyway synonymous for those dependent on their fields, animals and tools in order to live – and whether they blame the rebels or the Crown, the end result is that they want the fighting to stop. To the average person, life in Poland doesn’t seem actively terrible, while the previous years' fighting has lasted longer and been more intense than ever before. In regions that the rebels managed to “occupy” for a month or more, there was already enough time for infighting and chaotic incompetence to raise their heads and disillusion many of the inhabitants. Most of the revolutionaries are just regular people joining a cause they believe in, but now they’re being met with increasing peer pressure to give it up, not to mention pleas from their families not to get themselves killed.

Of course, that alone wouldn’t stop all of them, and the liberal ranks are too divided for any one leader to “decide to stop” either. Despite that, if a specific date had to be chosen for the end of the revolution, it would be 30 March 1849, when a young man, looking to be in his late 20’s, takes the stage in front of the thoroughly ransacked Cloth Hall in central Krakow. He introduces himself as Lech Lisowski, the leader of the Red Eagle Army. The nebulous group has always been a Crown obsession more than a liberal one, but even as it was conspicuously absent from the battlefield, the Crown’s dramatic rhetoric made it an enigmatic icon of the revolution for the general population as well, inspiring several copycat or “branch” groups to pop up. As word of Lisowski's public appearance spreads, a crowd quickly gathers around him. It is only by the guard captain’s better judgment that it doesn’t get violently dispersed, and he is allowed to speak.

Lech Lisowski explains how he and a group of fellow students at the University of Krakow first started the group in 1844 (when the liberal movement was already underway) with the best of intentions, out of anger at the Crown and the genuine need to do something. After their flags were discovered at the site of the Railway Rebellion, people on both sides latched onto them as a symbol. He cannot take credit for the revolution, but he feels all too much responsibility for his small part in what it has become. All those other friends have since died in the fighting, he explains, making their own choice to rush to the front lines while he stayed back and watched in terror. Echoing the feelings of the nation, with tears in his eyes, he says he never stopped believing in the revolution, yet it must end, and as he has been made into a symbol against his will, he can only try and act like one. Otherwise he fears that when the dust settles, years or decades in the future, there won’t be a Poland or a Polish people left.

He turns himself in, and by the High King’s unexpectedly wise intervention, his execution is commuted indefinitely, letting him be seen as a hero rather than a martyr. The same treatment is offered to any other rebel “leaders” who choose to give up now. That’s pushing it a little, of course: while a lot of prominent revolutionaries do fall off the map in the days and weeks that follow, most of them simply take their movements underground, pop up fighting in some other rebellion elsewhere or even just go back to their lives. But while it would be naïve to say that everyone simply sees the error in their ways and goes home, it is clear that the Long Revolution of 1841-1849 has reached an armistice if nothing else. That name is doubly appropriate, since it seems that if the revolutionaries are to achieve any of their goals, they will have to play the long game from here. But for now, Poland has stepped away from the brink of destruction – depending on who you believe – and it is time, to borrow an old cliché, to rebuild.

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At first glance, it seems unlikely that the Sejm really learned its lesson in any way, having faced mounting resistance with more foolhardiness than courage and come out the other side without passing a single meaningful reform. If anything, at least right now, they feel more justified and vindicated than ever, and eager to return to business as usual.

Before this little distraction, they'd been dealing with the fallout of the loss of Amatica, and what they can do to stop that from happening elsewhere (or prepare for a future reconquest). Poland is only now looking into the “steamer” ships that are becoming more commonplace on the oceans of the world. Though largely untried in military use, being less dependent on the weather – even if it means burning coal instead – and more than twice as fast on long distances makes them a huge leap forward from traditional sailing ships, which haven’t really gotten much faster even as global empires continue to grow. Besides the peacetime benefits to trade and communication, they’d also let Poland respond to trouble in the colonies much more quickly. Private shipping companies have already been buying a few from abroad, but it’s about time that Poland jumpstarted its own production and began modernizing its merchant and military fleets. England and Scotland’s shipbuilding industries have gone all but bankrupt within the last few years, leaving Japan with a near-monopoly in a market that Poland is now looking to dip its toes into.



Poland also has a renewed interest in Africa, where it has generally kept only a minimum garrison. Out of the two armies that used to be stationed in Amatica, one will stay in Europe, but the other – together with the Atlantic Fleet – is rebased to Bissau, Senegal. Originally settled by Normandy in the 1600s, Senegal is one of the oldest and largest colonies in Africa, yet Poland has basically treated it as a glorified naval base and slave market (though due to a treaty signed with the locals, the slaves don’t come from the colony itself). With Asturias and England competing for the south, Sweden showing new interest in the Congo, and the Asian route around the continent becoming ever more important, Poland is not the only one starting to wonder how it could best exploit Africa. This also sparks new migration and investment in Senegal, including both military installations and the first (albeit modest) railway network south of the Sahara.



Meanwhile up north, the King of Sweden is forced to make a humiliating compromise with his rebellious subjects, turning Sweden into a constitutional monarchy where the once notoriously autocratic ruler struggles to hold onto what little influence he can. Much as happened with Italy, though, all his colonial subjects recognize the new government – but not without exploiting the power vacuum to grab a bit more autonomy for themselves. Yet at the same time, the liberal party, propelled to the top of the expanded Riksdag, starts preparing an array of reforms to alleviate the mistreatment of natives in the colonies. This is sure to cause no small amount of friction with the governors.



And at long last, after feelings have had some time to cool down and Zajkowski been mostly set aside by the Coalition once he'd served his purpose, the Sejm and Crown Council finally pass one of the Long Revolution’s three main demands; never mind that it’s arguably the least important one that least affects their own power. In January 1850, the Crown Censorship Bureau is officially shut down, abolishing systematic censorship of printing presses in Poland. Of course, it was never all that successful to begin with, but damn if it didn’t try, and harass or shut down a lot of publishers in the process. The bumbling bureau even played a key role in escalating the original Brest-Litovsk scandal, making it a symbolical target and convenient scapegoat for the government. Of course, the freedom of speech is still restricted by many laws, such as the bans on blasphemy, incitement to treason and lèse-majestè – as well as any kind of political organization – but assuming that the state doesn’t go entirely wild with its application of those, no longer is simply publishing something it doesn’t like considered a crime. Of course, it’ll take a while before the government gets over its old instincts, the situation will vary from time to time, and countless cases will be contested in court from here to eternity… but it’s still something.



The 1840s started off with the so-called Mad Year, but then more and more of those just kept coming, and in retrospect, the whole decade will be remembered as the Hungry ‘40s: hungry for change, hungry for liberty, in many places hungry for food. One can only pray that the ‘50s will be more pleasant.

Spoiler: Meanwhile, Elsewhere

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[Still no newspapers. Pretty sure it’s a bug, no idea what’s causing it, and no idea where to even look to solve it.]

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The Latin invasion of Burgundy was aborted for reasons unknown, but to make up for it, the Federation annexed Lombardy instead and is currently marching into defenseless Brittany. Meanwhile, Germany is sneakily gobbling up what’s left of the Rhineland. Poland’s rivals have taken advantage of its awkward situation, and the Latins in particular enter the new decade perhaps more powerful than they’ve ever been. Scotland and England's jockeying for power, on the other hand, seems to have ended up with both of them weakened and humiliated by their own populace.

Spoiler: Comments

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Half this chapter is basically an attempt to try and explain both the massive escalation and the sudden end of the revolution. I was actually wondering if that last rebellion would pop and probably steamroll me, but RNG spared me on this day. Of course, I as the narrator would have the power to simply smooth over things in retrospect and act like it never got that bad to begin with, but that feels both boring and somehow… disingenuous? Not to mention writing myself into a corner every now and then between chapters.

I think I’ve mentioned before that rebellions in Paradox games are one of those things that both the game and the players tend to treat as much less impactful than they “should” be, if you consider how IRL uprisings and civil wars often become cultural touchstones for centuries to come. Worth noting, though, that out of the actual 1848 revolutions only a few actually had any lasting effect, even if they still went down in history.

Anyhow. The way that Vic 2 stops you from passing reforms until enough of the finicky upper house agrees to them can be a pain in a regular game, but for an AAR it seems to be an excellent way to get some tension without going out of your way to shoot yourself in the foot and delay the reform just because. But it also gets a little silly when they’re just too damn obstinate to pass a single tiny law even when faced with impending doom.

[SilverLeaf167]

Chapter #58: World’s Unfair (1850-1852)

Spoiler: Chapter

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15th of January, 1850

A little less than a year after the unofficial end of the so-called Long Revolution, relations between the opposing factions have sufficiently thawed for the Sejm to pass its first major liberal reform and abolish the Crown Censorship Bureau, even over the protests of Premier Zajkowski. As previously shuttered printing presses reopen and new ones spring up like mushrooms, public discourse in Poland will soon become more vivid, diverse and colorful than ever, fighting a proxy war on the pages of newspapers even as political organizations remain outlawed. Of course, the liberal newspapers are balanced by a growing number of conservative, reactionary, loyalist, royalist, urban, rural, local, religious, and all kinds of other publications. That discourse will no doubt lead to continued demands for political action – but the people in power hope that opening this more peaceful outlet will at least placate them for the immediate future.

One long-standing international snarl is also resolved peacefully, when Sweden’s newly liberal government and the Alfmark governorship confirm the sale of the entire Tarnowski Bay (Hudson Bay) region to the Free Nations. Though land trades between nations are far from unprecedented, rather routine in fact, they usually concern much smaller border adjustments, not entire regions the size of Poland. Indeed, the only reason that this largest land trade in history is possible at all is because despite its size, the frozen wilderness has an absolutely negligible population. The Tarnowski Bay colony has been an unprofitable prestige project and source of needless tension since its inception, most obviously during the Amatican Revolutionary War when it was immediately occupied and a bunch of blood spilled for nothing (which, by the way, might well have happened again had the deal been refused). Sweden is all too happy to part with it in exchange for a hefty sum of money, free passage and fishing rights, and overall warmer relations with the Free Nations. Alfmark is freed from the burden of maintaining it, finally able to focus on its capital region. And while the inhabitants – coastal villagers, scattered woodsmen, and roving native bands – did not in fact receive a say in the matter, they’re mostly content with the Radziwill government’s promises of full civil rights and representation (and too few in number to cause much trouble if they tried). For their money, the Free Nations are left with uncontested control of the sea and basically all of northeast Amatica – a good trade for all.



From Poland’s point of view, this marks a serious recognition of the Free Nations as an independent country, and a major player at that. While few in the government maintain any real hopes of invading and restoring order to the Amatican provinces, the fact that it should be Sweden doing this seems to strike a nerve. While Poland narrowly averted a republican revolution, Sweden fell victim to the same, and the presence of a pagan constitutional monarchy just across the Baltic – or the land border from Scania – doesn’t sit well with a lot of people, digging up old grudges (such as Sweden’s support for the Bundesrepublik) and demand for some assertion of authority.

However, enthusiasm for needless military action – especially when Sweden remains allied to Chernigov, making any such war a two-front one – is quite low in the wake of Poland’s internal conflicts. Instead, a rather novel idea is suggested: as a demonstration of Polish prestige for domestic and international audiences alike, the country could host the very first World’s Fair, inviting all the great powers – and a slew of lesser ones, because why not – to put their artistic and technological splendor up for display. If successful, it could be a potent symbol of Polish influence and global goodwill, as well as a place to tie new treaties and trade deals.



Many dismiss the whole project as a frivolous pipe dream and a waste of time and money, especially when it comes to convincing rival and enemy nations to attend such a thing. However, it garners enough interest for a World’s Fair Committee to be tasked with seeing whether it could be done. Much to their surprise, the international reception is actually quite enthusiastic: even traditionally hostile countries like Germany and the Latin Federation, busy warring with their smaller neighbors no less, relish the opportunity for much the same reasons that the Poles do. After the upheaval of the Hungry ‘40s, the global hierarchy is in flux, and participation in such an event is seen as a mark of recognition (and a distraction) for relatively little investment. Once it is agreed that Poland will host the event, lesser nations actually start jockeying for the chance to send delegations as well. Construction of the appropriate venue, an international event in itself as every nation wants to build its own pavilion, begins immediately. The choice of location causes some debate in the Sejm, though, and in the end, Warsaw is chosen over Krakow in the name of national security and preserving the architectural sanctity of the ancient capital. Warsaw’s main competitors for the honor, Prague and Wroclaw, are both ultimately dismissed due to Bohemia and Silesia’s role in the Long Revolution and lingering concerns about any rebel presence there (though this aspect of the debate is kept under wraps).



Polish ships are heavily involved in moving all those participants and wares, providing a welcome boost for the related industries. Many of the enterprises formed in this period will go on to become mainstays in the field, not least HAPAG (Hamburg-Amatican Package Transport Inc.), founded by a Polish-German merchant family as one of the first devoted shipping lines to the independent Free Nations, thus a truly international company in many ways. Operating out of Hamburg at first but soon expanding to a number of Atlantic ports, it moves not just cargo and mail but also an unprecedented number of people as new steamer ships make the trip across the Atlantic a lot more palatable for emigrants, businessmen and diplomats alike. It is, of course, only a prime example of a wider trend: in the coming decades, similar companies will contribute to an exponential rise in emigration.



The Marynarka experiments with putting guns and thicker armor on commercial steamers. While it’ll take much more time for metal ships to outshine wooden ones in the Polish consciousness, the more forward-thinking parts of the navy are already proclaiming that frigates and galleons are a thing of the past and that while demolishing all of them is obviously unwise, no more should be built from now on, focusing entirely on steamers.



Meanwhile, having inadvertently put itself under a lot of pressure to appeal to the international audience, the Polish government finally passes a law with great symbolical but little practical effect (except for the people involved, anyway) that has been languishing at the bottom of the pile for a long time: the abolition of slavery. Most of Poland’s slaves and slave owners were in Amatica anyway, and as Sweden and England recently passed similar laws, leaving Asturias and Scotland as the only major slavers, what little demand there still was for them has also collapsed. Of course, enslavement through war has been illegal since the 1500s, but that just meant using African slave traders as intermediaries and not caring where they got their merchandise. This new legislation also leaves some major loopholes – not saying much about the other forms of forced labor used in the colonies – but still lets Poland boast of its credentials as a “civilized” nation.



Speaking of which, while Sweden managed to placate its colonies by leaving in even bigger loopholes and thus not actually changing much at all, in the case of England – already weakened by rebellion and war – demands for abolition have led to a major rift with the United Lordships, where as much as 38% of the population consists of Afro-Amatican slaves. Playing on both political and purely racist concerns, abolition was seen as not only an economic disaster but a threat to the very social fabric of the nation (which it certainly is, given that the nation is built on slavery) and a slippery slope towards the subjugation of the whites by a growing black population. As such, the colonial assembly (even the “liberal” majority) near-unanimously declared independence from England rather than give up their slaves, making the United Lordships the second former colony to accomplish such a feat.

What started out as a bureaucratic grouping of smaller colonies has thus become another federal nation, albeit with only 3 ½ states in contrast to the Free Nations’ 23 states and 7 territories. The eponymous Lordships – Elysia, Arcadia and Sudenia – form a confusing, staggeringly anachronistic, almost neo-feudal system with each of them ruled by a hereditary Lord, but also a National Diet elected by everyone above a certain wealth level and a House of Peers consisting of the country’s richest and most powerful. Fiorita, far to the south, is a federal demesne, as is the newly established Camelot City (Washington D.C.), which serves as the capital and neutral meeting ground. All in all, this bizarre political experiment and positively Arthurian aesthetic seem designed to preserve a supremacy of traditional values and, chief among them, the continuation of slavery. Their stated ideals are in many ways the polar opposite of the much, much larger Free Nations looming ominously over them.



Some months pass. England, with no hope of reclaiming the Lordships, invades Wales instead, anxious to reannex the country before it can build a proper army or secure too much international recognition (preferably before the World's Fair). Scotland, apparently inspired by this, wants to do the same with Ireland, not least because it actually has the capacity to become a real rival in the future if not taken out in its infancy.



Problem is, Ireland has already secured a powerful sponsor: the Latin Federation, whose conservative government is running on a platform of Christian unity. As they’re wont do, the Scots only inform the Poles of the declaration of war after it’s already been sent, putting them in quite a bind. On one hand, Poland obviously supports Scotland’s claim to the island, and wouldn’t mind seeing it reclaimed. On the other hand, over time it has become less and less useful as an ally and more of a liability, and there’s serious talk of simply abandoning the on-and-off alliance for good. On the other other hand, Scottish defeat in this war could well lead to a total collapse of pagan power in the British Isles, which have once again become a highly symbolical battleground for bitter religious warfare. But most importantly, Poland joining in the fight would mean pitting the two most powerful great powers against each other for the first time since the Treaty of Rome in 1738. History has deemed that originally controversial peace treaty vastly beneficial for both sides – are they really going to abandon it over something like this?

In July 1850, as has been done with similar decisions in the past, Nadbor III brings the question to the Sejm, where opinions over the complex matter are split even within factions. The Populists are almost uniformly opposed, being relatively uninterested in military adventures, afraid of the damage to diplomacy and trade all across Europe, quietly sympathetic to the Irish, and perhaps just a little bit spiteful. The Coalition, in true moderate tradition, is split almost perfectly in half. And even the Royalists, surprisingly enough, can’t entirely decide between aggressive jingoism and isolationist “slavocentrism”.

Premier Zajkowski, relegated to the back bench as the Sejm focused on more civil and peaceful matters for a while, sees his moment to shine. Besides being famously zealous, merciless and undiplomatic, he has a personal fondness for the Scots, having fought there alongside them during the Third Revolutionary War. He angrily admonishes those nitpicking the difference between Slavic and Nordic pagans, reminding them that the Scots are brave, loyal (?) friends of Poland who he knows from experience would surely come to their aid if the roles were reversed (thankfully he doesn’t launch into another of his rambling war stories). What message would it send to the world if Poland were to sit on its hands and abandon its allies in the face of the Christian menace? Clichés and platitudes aside, his passionate appeal helps shift the discussion from the practical details to matters of principle, making him feel like a true Premier and not just an old warhorse for perhaps the first time.

Rounded out by a few promises and political appointments behind the scenes, Zajkowski manages to secure a narrow majority in favor of war. Much like England’s invasion of Scotland brought about a historic clash between the great powers, Scotland’s invasion of Ireland is about to cause a possibly even bigger one. And as this one also involves Poland facing against a revolutionary republic, people can only wonder if it’ll end up earning the title of Fourth Revolutionary War.

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As is often the case, on paper the Polish alliance seems to have an advantage in numbers, but in reality the location of those troops is equally important. Poland and the Latin Federation are both global empires, and while the Latins’ situation is unclear, what is known is that a fifth of Poland’s land forces are stationed overseas, and even the ones in Europe are scattered across the country, many of them slated to take as long as five months just to reach the front (and leave the rest of the country undefended). The growing railway network makes this somewhat more bearable than it used to be, but technical problems and limited capacity mean that the issue remains. However, the good news (for defense) is that Germany is unlikely to allow passage for either side, as is Lotharingia, reducing the land border between the two to just Calais and nothing else. That leaves a naval invasion, most likely into Yugoslavia, as the other thing to worry about. Of course, on the offense, these difficulties apply for Poland in equal measure.



In terms of realistic options, the most preferable would be a rapid occupation of Ireland (which doesn’t have much of an army of its own) and something of a fait accompli victory, and to that end, a fleet of steamer transports sets off from Denmark while the Grand Marynarka takes control of the English Channel. However, the Latins seem unlikely to accept defeat that easily, so some invasion of their homeland might still turn out to be necessary.

At least the Italian colonies in West Africa and the Maniolas prove very lightly defended, making it easy for the Polish garrisons there to occupy them in just a few months, but this raises the concern that all those missing troops might be in Europe instead.



As maneuvering ramps up, both the Crown Army and the Marynarka give off the impression of being in very good shape after years of high recruitment, funding and overall attention.



But speaking of attention, in all this blustering for war, something else is quite totally forgotten: the World’s Fair. No one in the government has any time, effort or funding to spare for that parade of idealistic posturing, and those who even remember it exists mostly seem to laugh at it. The sudden outbreak of war actually causes a bit of a scuffle in Warsaw, as Polish forces try to arrest the Latin delegation and confiscate their goods; after a few days of tense negotiations, they’re allowed to leave with most of their things intact, but the incident causes many neutral parties to pull out of the event as well, be it due to outrage or just seeing the writing on the wall. Due to the sudden disappearance of both domestic and international support, the whole thing is doomed, much to the chagrin of its prime architects who’d gotten quite emotionally invested in it. In the end, the only countries that don’t pull out are Poland, Scotland and a somewhat confused Karnata. Needless to say, the so-called World’s Fair ends up being a farcical showcase of Polish-Scottish propaganda and not much else, which no one involved will soon forget – no matter how they wish they could. Some of the displays already built are left behind as an embarrassing reminder, to be later repurposed as galleries, gazebos or even just storage.



Internationally, the World’s Fair is even overshadowed by the German military junta’s declaration of war upon the “rebel province” of Switzerland. This also pulls in Lotharingia to Switzerland’s defense, meaning that there’s now a separate smaller war going on in Central Europe, surrounded on all sides by the Polish-Latin one.



Well, not that there’s much fighting going on. Polish and Scottish forces are marching across Ireland, but in Calais and the Adriatic the first seven months of the war are mostly a tense standoff (and a few naval skirmishes with minor losses), both sides waiting for the other to abandon their fortified positions and make the first move. At least this gives the troops ample time to move to the front. However, if no one does anything, the war might drag on for gods know who long, terrifying the more economically-minded parts of the government.

That breakthrough is finally made in February 1851 when amassed artillery blows a hole in the Latin defensive line, allowing Polish and Frisian forces to flood into northern France. However, that’s when the Latin army springs into action as well, starting to bring in its reserves – including tens of thousands of citizen soldiers – in an attempt to overwhelm the Polish forces and cut off their supply lines. Apparently threatened with invasion (and not a friend of Poland anyway), Lotharingia also chooses this time to break its neutral policy, allowing Latin troops military access and thus widening the front dozenfold. Poland angrily demands and receives the same, but this is by no means a welcome development right now.



At first, the situation remains broadly under control: Latin leadership on both the tactical and strategic levels leaves a lot to be desired, leading Polish analysts to suggest that the post-revolution purge in the Federation also ended up targeting a lot of the officer corps. Paris falls in May – a traditional milestone in any western war, if rarely a decisive one – and as usual, the new focus is on keeping it. However, it seems that even if the Poles can reliably win any battle they get to pick, there’s just so many Latin conscripts running around that whenever they're winning in one place, they’re almost inevitably getting caught out in another.



On another front, as the same old King of Novgorod has gotten even more full of himself and ended up breaking his alliance with Poland, he is left open to Chernihiv payback as the other kingdom declares its intent to reclaim the territory it lost only nine years ago. Moldavia stands by Novgorod, as per usual, but Chernigov has both Sweden and the similarly revanchist Madjid Caliphate on its side (as well as the Shan Empire, because why not), making this a gigantic land war stretching from the Arctic Sea to the Indian Ocean. Whatever happens, it seems that Novgorod’s brief time in the spotlight, achieved by ruthless aggression against its neighbors, is about to come to a brutal end. So much for the peaceful ‘50s indeed.



Ultimately, the Latin counteroffensive is sufficiently strong and constant that by August, the Crown Army decides it has no choice but to retreat back to its now much longer defensive line, i.e. square one. By October, basically all the progress in France has been undone. While a sound strategic decision, at home, this is seen a great humiliation for both the Crown Army and the armchair generals in the Sejm, not least Premier Zajkowski himself.

Out of sheer frustration, and as they actually have an election awaiting them in just a few months, the Poles (and their puppets alongside them) have no choice but to launch a fierce counterattack, no matter the cost in lives. The good news is, whatever the situation on the continent, they have Ireland sufficiently locked down that it has no choice but to accept reintegration at gunpoint (several of its defiant leaders already executed for their crimes in the revolution). Few really believe that the matter has been settled with this, obviously, but it has been pushed back underground by force of arms.

(No screenshot, apparently, but Ireland was fully annexed.)

The problem then remains whether the Latins will simply accept this, or keep fighting to liberate their Irish brothers in the faith. As it turns out, they and their voters have made a quick turnabout and decided that Irish independence (they’re not even Catholic!) isn’t worth making France into a battlefield for another several years, especially as there’s little hope of getting an army past the Marynarka and Poland’s failed offensives give a taste of what any attack into Frisia would probably look like as well. That leaves the ball in Poland’s court: peace out, or push for some of the Latin colonies it has occupied?

The goal of the war has already been accomplished, and the Coalition is anxious to get it over with. Their massive trouncing in the last election has led them to assume that stretched out hostilities aren’t necessarily good for them when it comes to getting votes. And so, on 20 November 1851, Poland and the Latin Federation agree to cease hostilities and recognize Scottish de facto rule in Ireland. Outcome: a return to the status quo of 1847. Casualties: a lot of good men and women, and the stillborn World’s Fair.

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In the end, to everyone’s great relief, the 17-month war didn’t really deserve the Fourth Revolutionary title, being remembered as the (end of the) Irish Revolutionary War instead. What it did was highlight some new military realities that the Poles will have to digest: that geography, tactical developments and the strength of the Latin army make land wars an increasingly imprudent way to conduct diplomacy, even before getting into the economic and highly contentious political side of it. On the other hand, the end of the war is seen by some as a sign that the great powers, even across the religious and ideological divide, can come to the negotiating table and coldly decide the fates of lesser nations when they decide that is more convenient for them.

There is considerable anxiety over what the first election since the end of the Long Revolution will look like. But as the debates and campaigns start picking up speed in early 1852, preparing for the late June election day, they seem to go rather smoothly, with only a few hiccups such as the Populists having to be given a firm reminder that any campaigning aimed at people not actually allowed to vote will be seen as rabble-rousing if not treason.



However, even if not violent, it’s clear from the start that the election will be an extremely close one, and in stark contrast to 1845 (when sheer complacency played a major role in the Coalition losing its dominance for the first time) every party acts like the election is theirs to win or lose. But precisely because the election only involves the upper classes, they’re able to avoid the most sensitive subjects of the last decade and focus on more topical ones instead, such as foreign and military policy. These questions also have a clear split among factional lines, but are not quite so obviously liberal vs. reactionary as to be directly associated with Poland’s internal conflicts. On matters that are, such as civil rights and religion, almost all debaters are careful not to rock the boat. The general public and the uncensored press are watching more closely than ever, reporting and commenting on their every move.

As the results start coming in, both the Coalition and the Populists soon start to claim victory by their own definitions. The Royalists are indisputably the losers here, having won only a few individual districts and given many vindicated conservatives a chance to snark that they can only get votes by appealing to people’s base instincts in a time of crisis. However, the popular vote (of the 2% allowed to participate) is where it gets dicey: it shows that the Popular Party "should" have won by a large margin were the Sejm based on proportional representation like any modern parliament, yet thanks to the way the voting districts happen to be laid out, the Coalition instead regains a full (if narrow) majority in the Sejm. In particular, the Populists note, they won a blow-out victory in almost all the largest cities and only lost by the narrowest of margins in others. It’s the first time that the electoral system has produced such a blatantly unfair outcome – warping not just the number of seats but even the overall winner – which brings it under fire from the Populists but also the Royalists, who feel they should've had ten times as many seats as they actually got. The fact that these things are being discussed in such stark terms is the final proof that party organization and identity have found their home in Polish politics, too – how else would all three parties be pulling up exact percentages of how much “their candidates” won?



The Coalition can hardly deny that its victory looks undeserved if that’s the way you choose to look at it, but counters that the system is only doing what it's meant to do and ensuring fair representation for all parts of the kingdom, rather than letting the disproportionately liberal cities dominate over the countryside. Of course, this just confirms to all in and outside the party that the system is in the Coalition’s favor and they have absolutely no motivation to change it.

But with a majority comes great responsibility: since 1846, the Coalition has been forced to work with either the Populists or the Royalists to get anything done, thus also allowing it deflect blame onto them for any missteps or compromises (such as Amatica or the suspiciously liberal-tainted reforms passed in the last couple years). For this upcoming term, as long as it can keep its own members together, the Coalition can do or not do anything entirely at its own leisure, but that also means answering for it – both to the voters and the increasingly critical rest of the population. It’s already been shown that unwillingness to pass any liberal reforms whatsoever can lead to disaster – but can the Coalition compromise with itself?

Spoiler: Meanwhile, Elsewhere

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Newspaper Gallery
[Only one, but at least it turns out they are working!]

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Unsurprisingly, England succeeded in reconquering Wales. Germany’s war was quite a bit longer and harder-fought, but successful nonetheless. As the unrest in Germany seems to be over at last, with the aggressively nationalist military government consolidating its power, Lotharingia has made a rather desperate alliance with both Burgundy and Bavaria and might also have to be more receptive to Polish diplomacy in the future.



Novgorod seems to have made some admirable progress into both Sweden and Chernigov at first, only to lose the initiative and be put firmly on the defensive (and not a very good one) since then. It’s hard to imagine the war here lasting very long.



Moldavia, on the other hand, is showing once more that it deserves its seat among the great powers, turning around Chernihiv-Arabian hopes of flanking it by successfully invading both of them at the same time. It has few options when it comes to directly saving Novgorod, though.



Unsurprisingly, China has fallen into an extremely messy struggle for dominance, with especially the Pratihara breakaway kingdoms invading and being invaded by each other in turn. Although, some observers say that it might end up being the stable and modern-ish Republic of Manchuria that reaps the greatest rewards from this chaos.

Spoiler: Comments

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I only now realized that I accidentally changed the name of the Royal Faction to Royalist Party at some point. It wasn’t intentional, but pretty appropriate, I suppose.

I expected this to be a bit of a breather chapter, shedding some interesting light on the world of international politics. Which I guess it did, just not the way I thought.

The 1800s were in many ways an era of great power conferences and treaties, which Vic 2 also plays with, but in this timeline they’ve obviously been a lot more violent and tumultuous so far, so I felt the need to lay some narrative groundwork for more amicable diplomacy in the future. But that doesn’t preclude the option of that diplomacy failing horribly, of course.

I keep bringing up the concept of “citizen soldiers” a lot, not really an established or mainstream term IRL but I think convenient in the context of this AAR. Any country can mobilize its population, and democracies aren’t even better at it or anything, but besides me finding it a hassle gameplay-wise, it is also true that it comes with notable downsides, downsides which combined with the unrest caused by a long and severe war can be a lot more significant for a more autocratic country with an unhappy population. Besides, drafting your citizens in a hurry and sending them off to the front wasn’t really the norm in this period like it became in the World Wars, so it makes sense to me to dress it as a republican peculiarity, especially as it was notably pioneered during the French Revolution – and to make them a bit more threatening in-universe.

Side note: In the preparation for this game, I added an event where the overlord country banning slavery triggers a choice in all of their colonial puppets, letting them either follow suit, or keep their slaves and declare independence (giving the overlord a casus belli). The event is coded so that if the country doesn’t have any slaves, like the Swedish colonies due to a technicality, they’ll always accept; meanwhile, the higher the support for slavery, the larger the chance of rebellion, as happened in the United Lordships. Whether a breakaway colony becomes a democracy or a constitutional monarchy is also random, heavily weighed towards democracy but also affected by reactionary ideology in the government and population.

The phrase of the week is fait accompli.

[InvisibleBison]

A reasonable showing by the Polish army, though they're unlikely to be dictating peace at the gates of Rome again any time soon.

And based on those election results, it looks like there's a good amount of gerrymandering going on as well.

[SilverLeaf167]

I don't really picture it as a matter of gerrymandering (yet, anyway), as the electoral districts are for now based on traditional town and county limits and whatnot (though those can obviously be pretty funky in their own unintentional ways). It's just that in a first-past-the-post system, a blowout victory in any given district brings you no benefit over a narrow one while a narrow defeat is as good as nothing, disadvantaging the liberals whose voters tend to be more concentrated than the conservatives'.

[IthilanorStPete]

InvisibleBison: As SilverLeaf said, it's more likely to be things like rotten boroughs, though gerrymandering's definitely possible.

This is definitely a bit more violent than either the historical period or your average Vic2 game (at least in my experience). I think I remember you mentioning that cores are a bit more widespread than they are in vanilla Vic2, which would account for the increased wars; the lack of good CBs is the main thing keeping intra-European wars in vanilla under control.

[SilverLeaf167]

This is definitely a bit more violent than either the historical period or your average Vic2 game (at least in my experience). I think I remember you mentioning that cores are a bit more widespread than they are in vanilla Vic2, which would account for the increased wars; the lack of good CBs is the main thing keeping intra-European wars in vanilla under control.

Yeah, that's true. Come to think of it, I think almost every major war in Europe so far has been over cores, be it longstanding border conflicts (York, Franche-Comté, Smolensk) or reclaiming rebel provinces (most of the German and Latin wars, Ireland). The wars in China, meanwhile, are both pretty appropriate (good old Chinese civil wars) and based on either the Reunify China CB or Japan just nabbing some colonies. I wonder if China's actually going to be reunified at any point. While that would be cool, having it become two or three "big but not ridiculous" countries would be nice too.

[SilverLeaf167]

Chapter #59: The Right to Party (1852-1856)

Spoiler: Chapter

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1st of July, 1852

The Noble Coalition is learning that though being a protector of the status quo can be rather easy, in that it mostly requires you to just not do anything, it places you in an awkward situation when some reforms might be necessary after all. Furthermore, as the name might imply, the Noble Coalition is barely a party of its own so much as a middle road for everyone who isn’t a Royalist or a Populist. While many of its members proudly and hilariously label themselves “unideological”, claiming to just do their duty rather than push any agenda whatsoever, on the edges there is always the risk of some of them jumping ship to the other parties should the leadership somehow offend either end of the spectrum. Inaction is arguably the only thing most of them have in common, making the party’s 51% majority in the Sejm extremely perilous.

Indeed, some politicians (a term many of them still aren’t even used to) have adapted to the greatly altered political culture much better than others. Some harken back to the days when the Sejm was just a (highly influential, but still) nobles’ club mostly left to its own devices, back before the general population decided to equate it with the more inclusive parliaments abroad or demand that it become one. At this point, some in the Sejm could even be willing to accept less power in exchange for less undue meddling, but unfortunately that’s not on the table. Public attention, party squabbling, serious election campaigns and all the other headaches of modern politics have come to stay.



Of course, despite having several old documents sometimes referred to as a constitution, it has to be noted that Poland still isn’t any kind of “constitutional monarchy”. Far from it: while a certain preference for “rule of law” over arbitrary abuse has been firmly entrenched for centuries now, the Sejm, Crown Council and the High King himself all have the right to pass legislation or veto anything coming from the lower levels. In practice, the monarch delegates much if not most of his power, but in theory everyone else only serves at his mercy. Anyone wanting to make big changes in the country should really be looking to the Crown Council, but its bureaucratic nature makes it a lot more nebulous and difficult to either read or influence, leaving the Sejm as the more popular battleground.



The end of press censorship was a significant change, but the newly freed papers aren’t going to waste a lot of ink praising the government for something they feel is their natural right; meanwhile, the abolition of slavery, ironically despite being perhaps the ultimate “liberal” issue, had never been very high on the average Pole’s priority list and only really mattered to a small, mostly academic core. Thus the previous government showed its willingness to pass some reforms in the wake of the Long Revolution, enough to keep people from taking up arms again, but there is growing pressure to do much, much more. The most central issue, in fact, isn’t even voting rights, but the right to gather and organize, seen as the key to any political movement’s success and an indispensable step towards more meaningful change in the future.



For better or worse, Premier Zajkowski gets to stay. Having been personally appointed by the High King makes him both something of an unwanted imposition from above and more awkward to remove, but despite still being profiled as a “one issue leader”, and an issue most of the Sejm doesn’t want to deal with at that (war), he did help Poland survive the Long Revolution, and also won some new respect with his handling of the Irish war. Being happy to sit out the topics he’s not personally interested in makes him a somewhat strange character to serve as Premier, but a relatively safe choice to keep around for a party looking to avoid internal division at any cost.

In September 1852, less than a year after the war between Poland and the Latin Federation was wrapped up, the Latins seem determined to fix one of the problems unveiled in that war: Gorizia (Ger. Görz), Germany’s one and only port and a thin strip of land separating the Federation and Yugoslavia. Of course, the main (and true enough) argument for the war is that Gorizia is mostly Italian-speaking and traditionally seen as part of the Venetian region, but the geopolitical reasons – and the Latins’ will to flex their muscles against the country that’s caused them so much trouble in the last century – are surely not insignificant either. Unable to defeat the Marynarka (for now), the Latins seem to believe that a second land border besides Calais is a necessity in any future war with the Slavs. Obviously the border will allow troop movement both ways, but given that Poland can already utilize naval invasions while they can not, they probably think the pros outweigh the cons. The war is over in just a few months, the German junta unwilling to wager its hard-fought position in an extended war it’s likely to lose. The loss of its only port is a major problem, though, as none of its neighbors are very forthcoming in letting it use theirs even for civilian matters – at least not without a high price.



Speaking of the great powers, while all sides still like to bring up religion in matters of war, peace and alliance, its importance has obviously faded greatly from its heyday in the medieval holy wars and crusades. A cynic might say that it’s only really brought up to justify decisions that have already been made for other reasons. In domestic politics, though, it genuinely is of great importance, as the average person regardless of class is still very religious, and thus likely to consider things in a religious light and associate with people who share not just their faith but also their level of devotion.

In Poland’s case, religious policies have been admirably “pluralist” arguably ever since the 1400s, the Slavic Church keeping its special status as the official religion but the minorities – oddani – getting comparatively good protection as well. As such, religious rights haven’t been as central to the liberal movement as they have been elsewhere. However, they haven’t been entirely absent either, and on the revolutionary fringe (in action or just in thought), actual atheism – not just the abolition of state religion, but religion altogether – has had a growing role since the German Revolution. This predictably causes great moral outrage and concern in other groups.



Polish politics remain relatively uneventful, though – which may or may not be a good thing. The economy has been in a bit of a slump ever since the Irish war interrupted it in the middle of a big boom, and the whole matter of political reforms or lack thereof aside, the most exciting thing happening in the country seems to be bureaucratic intrigue. With the Sejm’s political options heavily restricted for fear of losing its fragile majority, that leaves more shadowy, less eye-catching decisions and appointments as the only place to maneuver for influence. Despite Poland, again, having put an admirable amount of work into a more meritocratic system in its military and bureaucracy – mostly because it’s simply more effective – once in power, people still have a lot of space to appoint their friends, allies and relatives to all kinds of posts big and small in a manner often reminiscent of bald-faced corruption.



Still, even Poland’s nobility includes a considerable number of people (or descendants of people) who worked their way up in one way or another and then managed to stay there; and obviously the capitalists as a class only really emerged after the industrial revolution. But even if there’s more social mobility than there could be, that still leaves wealth and power as the realm of the tiny minority – a tiny minority which, through an ever-expanding web of bureaucracy and government institutions, exerts an ever-increasing amount of influence on people’s daily lives that even the most autocratic rulers of the past could only dream of. This, together with the growing popularity of newspapers, obviously makes people more and more invested in what the government is doing to or about them.



Some believe the government should do nothing at all: the already fractious liberal movement starts to more explicitly branch out, a small fringe of extremists openly embracing what they call “anarcho-liberalism”. In Poland they call themselves the Devolutionists, believing that all power should be passed down to the lowest possible local authority – such as city and village councils – while the country basically only exists as a voluntary association for military defense, and other overarching institutions like the Slavic Church are also stripped of influence. No one expects the Devolutionists to gather much mainstream support, but just as a matter of principle, they and anyone else calling for the abolition of the monarchy or the state itself are explicitly banned from the Sejm, or in fact any kind of public office.



At least the economy starts to show signs of growth again, thanks in no small part to trade with Amatica. Despite the obviously less than amicable circumstances of their departure, thanks to historical connections, shared language and Poland’s concentrated efforts, it has managed to remain the Free Nations’ largest trading partner by far. It’s certainly a case of both sides thinking they’re fooling the other: the Poles are pouring a lot of money into the burgeoning mining industry in particular, even buying some less interesting products like timber at a loss just to grow their monopoly, while the Radziwill government is confident that it knows exactly what Krakow is trying and can just take the free investment without giving up anything in return. Whether that is true remains to be seen, but Poland sure thinks that the reintegration of the Free Nations into its sphere of influence is proceeding as planned.

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Europe remains rather busy. In the east, the great pagan war that Poland managed to stay out of still continues. The Madjids have been forced out in a separate peace deal, but Sweden and Chernigov are actually doing better than ever, having even turned the tide in the south and pushed back into Moldavia. As the attackers expand their demands, Novgorod stands to be chopped apart quite badly at the end of this, but for that same reason will keep resisting to the very end.



The Latin Federation gives the invasion of Burgundy another go, and as Lotharingia springs to the defense, decides to add some of their disputed border provinces to the pot as well. The full extent of Polish interest in Lotharingia gets some discussion in the Sejm, but it’s a moot point, since even if they wanted to intervene, they have a truce in force until ‘56 that they’d rather respect. Unsurprisingly, the war is another quick one, the Federation adding another couple million to its population with alarming ease. It has now reclaimed all the lands it can easily take: anything will more inevitably pit it against either Poland or Asturias. There is understandable concern over whether the Latins will do just that, or finally settle down and consolidate their gains.



And if the German leaders believed that handing over Gorizia without a fight would help them stay in power, it actually ended up being their undoing, as even the people who used to see military power and “efficiency” as the regime’s only saving graces finally turn against them and the army that has shown itself to be a paper tiger. Some riots and coups later, by April 1854, Germany is at least nominally a republic yet again – but people both in and outside the country have developed a healthy sense of skepticism towards how long that will last. For their part, the Poles had actually been getting used to the Nationale Partei; at least they were predictable.



The Coalition is all too happy to stay out of foreign matters, and relieved that no one’s trying to pull it into them. Internal affairs, again, are a bit different. With its evasive, indecisive attitude towards either reforming unpopular laws or strictly enforcing them, those laws inevitably begin to slip. The establishment of de facto parties in the Sejm, eventually formalized in law even while keeping parties outside the Sejm illegal, has created a gaping loophole that lets people organize as long as they claim association with one of them. Once again the Populists are accused of encouraging this behavior, especially as most of these satellite groups are working in their name. Local authorities are powerless to act against them without facing popular outrage and political trouble with the parties themselves.

In July 1855, things come to a head with the so-called Kukulka Incident. First-term Populist deputy Alfons Kukulka is caught red-handed attending an underground theater that was performing the plays of Eustachy Strasz von Calw, one of the ideological architects of the German Revolution. Though officially an artistic group and thus not affected by the law to begin with (even if because of its political nature it should’ve been), the scandal quickly becomes associated with the wider problem. After Kukulka is expelled from the party and the Sejm, the law itself is finally put up for proper debate. None of the parties are entirely innocent of exploiting the situation, but now they’re forced to make a public stand for their supposed principles.

Unsurprisingly, the Populists demand that either the current “loophole” be formalized into law, or the whole mess be solved by finally removing the damn ban. The Royalists (all seven of them) demand stricter enforcement, and even penalties for the Populists. And true to its instincts, the Coalition rules in favor of the status quo. But its solution for how to apply the law just might be the worst of both worlds: party-associated organizations are allowed, but only for people allowed to vote and their families, as obviously no one else has any good reason to be a member.



Very literally saying that only the rich and powerful have the right to express themselves or even be involved in politics, everyone else being threatened with police action if they try to do so, it’s a spectacular display of an inability to read the room, blindly clinging onto party unity even at the expense of national stability. Protests and riots once again start popping up everywhere from the major cities to tiny village meeting halls, including groups that are in fact led by nobles or capitalists but suddenly stand to lose all of their non-voter members. The most enthusiastic on both sides are already proclaiming that the Long Revolution is back on. And indeed, for the first time since then, illegal political groups seem to be considering military means.

In practical terms, any such uprising would likely be a pale imitation at best, but that’s still not something to look forward to. As the Sejm is, or at least thinks itself to be, backed into a corner by party politics, the strangest thing occurs: something stirs in the upper echelons of the Crown Council. Usually content to keep things running behind the scenes and leave the bumbling Sejm to distract the public, that starts to change when there’s about to be actual country-wide repercussions. This whole mess over political organizations dates back to the ancient ban on “parallel parliaments”, the very first law passed by the Sejm back in 1504 and then expanded along the way. To the Crown, the law in question has never been too precious to begin with, as it has sometimes even seen such groups as a potential way to rein in the Sejm. Though that has somewhat changed with the Sejm becoming such a vital instrument of state, the fact remains that it’s not something they’re willing to risk more fighting over. And with such a crisis at hand, the Crown Council finally has to stop twiddling its thumbs and act.

Unlike the Coalition, even the more conservative members of the Crown Council don't answer to any voters or party leadership and are thus free to compromise with their liberal colleagues. Within weeks of the Kukulka Incident, they’ve taken their finished legislation to a mostly understanding Nadbor III, who gives it his blessing. Much as was done with the censorship laws, the overarching ban is removed but a wide array of restrictions left in place, such as the right to ban individual groups and movements at the Crown’s – not the Sejm’s – discretion. Fomenting rebellion, taking money from a foreign government and so on are still illegal, but for most intents and purposes, the evil has been defeated.



By so openly going over the Sejm’s heads, the Crown Council has reminded both them and the populace of the pecking order in place – and, as the law was presented by the High King, made it look like the Crown is once again standing up for the people against the oppressive nobility. That message wasn't fully intentional, but the blow to the Sejm’s prestige is the same. Even more so when the High King, for the first time this century, uses his power to dissolve the current Sejm and begin a new election a year and a half ahead of schedule.

After a lackluster term and its actually disastrous end, the Coalition has its work cut out. As the popular vote was already on the Populists’ side in the last election, it’ll only take a small shift in a few swing districts to land them the majority, and the Coalition is right to worry that this badly handled scandal might cause exactly what they feared and incite more liberally inclined voters to turn their coats. Thus they can’t hope to compete with the Populists on things like economic questions, but focus (ironically enough) on ideological ones instead, believing those to be the reason these swing voters had stuck with the Coalition until now.

Indeed, despite the Populists arguably causing the Kukulka Incident that was at the root of this near-rebellion, the scandal itself has taken a backseat to the Coalition’s bungled handling of it. Many loyal nobles also choose to interpret the Crown’s intervention as a motion of no confidence for the Coalition, but as voting for the Royalists is seen as throwing your vote away, most of these protest votes go to the Populists instead. After the customary six months of campaigning, on 24 February 1856, the results are finally in.

This time the district mathematics have swung in the Populists’ favor, netting them 60% of the seats with 46% of the vote; but in contrast to the Coalition, they do win the popular vote rather handily, giving them a much stronger mandate to go with their majority. To its credit, the Coalition actually reclaims a few big cities like Krakow, Bratislava and Berlin, but it’s nowhere near enough to make up for its other losses across the board. As a curiosity, the single most liberal city in the country seems to be Gdansk, where 66.5% of the votes went to the Populists, earning some callbacks to the city’s days as a merchant republic. The final analysis shows that the Populists did get a number of strategic votes from people who wouldn’t really identify as liberals; the Royalists, meanwhile, only have their hard ideological core to rely on, enough to win precisely zero districts as their counter-revolutionary appeal continues to fade.



For the first time, the Sejm has a true two-party system in place, with the Populists able to run the show entirely on their own terms while the Coalition sits in the opposition at last. And as divided as the liberal movement as a whole may be, the party has a much stronger consensus on exactly what it wants to do next.

Spoiler: Meanwhile, Elsewhere

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[No newspapers]

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While the Poles were busy with their election, the war in the east finally came to an anticlimactic end: thanks to a financial crisis in Sweden and a colonial conflict in Chernihiv India, the attackers decided to settle for just the restored border rather than keep going and push for their full ambitions. Still, Novgorod’s days as a great or even secondary power are over for the time being, even being overshadowed by Uralia in that department.



After the Moldavian offensive greatly weakened both the Arabian army and its government, a rebellion that had long been restricted to the Abyssinian mountains in the south was able to sweep across Sudan and even cross into Arabia proper. Eager to both oust the ruling Wahhabists and save the holy city of Mecca from falling into rebel hands, a palace coup managed to kill two birds with one stone. While the official story is that the Caliph was being held hostage by the fanatics – not completely untrue, if a little simplified – and the new government has made no open attempts to undermine him personally, in effect the Arabian Empire has turned into another constitutional monarchy, with the Caliph’s role as a spiritual leader emphasized over any political one.



Over in India, the Maratha Confederacy has gained some land from the Pratihara and lost some to Karnata. Karnata on the other hand is involved in two separate wars: having first annexed the Kingdom of Sri Lanka, it has set its sights on the rest of the island still held by Chernigov, while the Latin Federation declared its own war of subjugation against Karnata in return. Transporting and landing a large enough army is going to be easier said than done, though, and for now, Karnata is handily in control of the situation.

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In much the same way that the Cesira tried to borrow the legacy of the Roman Empire, the Latin Federation hasn’t entirely given up on reclaiming the Roman Republic. It elects two consuls every four years (one for Rome and one for Paris), calls its parliament the Senatus Populi, and has in general attempted to cut the Gordian knot of official language by simply using Latin. However, this is only one of many places where the Federation’s stated goals contradict each other, the use of Latin making politics substantially less approachable for the common citizen while still favoring Italian-speakers in the end. Needless to say, in practice this has created an explosion of demand for interpreters between Latin and the Federation’s numerous languages, including but not limited to French, Breton, Occitan and a dozen variations of Italian, and bogged down official business far more than necessary (in similarly multilingual Poland this problem has been avoided by Krakowian politics being conducted in Polish).

How much this has contributed to any kind of pan-Latin identity, an existential necessity for a federal state, is hard to measure, but another way they’ve gone against the archetypical revolutionary formula is by complementing it with a powerful state religion, seeing Catholicism as something the vast majority of the population does have in common. The blame for Italy’s past problems with the Pope (like shutting him out of the Vatican) is put squarely on the monarchy, with the Federation making a big show of embracing him with open arms. Yet at the same time, it can’t lean too hard on the Catholic angle either, as Waldensians and Lollards are both significant minorities (in northern France and the Alps respectively) and as much as the Latins might value cultural unity, political unity must surely come first.

That’s the thing: especially as many of the Federation’s member states were “forcefully integrated” only very recently, the most important argument for its existence is to protect them from being conquered literally or in spirit by someone worse, be it Germany or Poland. Whatever the downsides of membership in the Federation, seen by many as a foreign power, it’s hard to deny that the relative security and economic stability sure beat the constant threat of invasion by a more foreign power (not that secession is allowed even if they wanted it). But that means that, ironically much like the feudal kingdoms of old, the Federation might only maintain its shred of legitimacy as long as it proves able to provide both of those things. Such a strongly imperialist democracy seems in many ways contradictory in nature.

Another peculiar trait of Latin politics is naked disdain for the still existing monarchy, which one wouldn't be blamed for forgetting is even there. The federal constitution of 1840 ensured the continuation of the imperial family as an institution, yet provided no actual role for them and a whole slew of things that they can not do. In practice, Emperor Araslan I and his close relatives have spent most of their time in comfortable de facto exile on the island of Mallorca, as far away from politics as possible without literally sending them to the colonies. But in their time there, they’ve proven themselves rather harmless, and the dominant conservatives just haven’t “felt like” taking on the hassle of abolishing the monarchy altogether, seeing some political value in keeping it there even if the diehard monarchists are but a tiny fringe group in the Senatus Populi.

Spoiler: Comments

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I realized that I can just use Meanwhile, Elsewhere as a dump for world-building rambles that neither fit into the main chapter nor really work as a special of their own. And apparently I really like writing about fictional parliamentary politics. Blame my choice of academic subjects, and reading too much of the news… or Hearts of Iron AARs.

I get that the number of wars can be blamed on the cores, but I’m not entirely sure what’s causing the number of (successful) revolutions, especially as I quickly gave back the AI's militancy reduction. Might be just a side-effect of the same, with the constant large-scale wars driving up militancy as I’ve brought up a few times.

[SilverLeaf167]

Chapter #60: Smacked by the Invisible Hand (1856-1861)

Spoiler: Chapter

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25th of February, 1856

The Popular Party winning in both the popular vote and the final results is an unwelcome wake-up call for many that liberalism isn’t just a revolutionary movement threatening them from below, but something even the upper classes have actually started to embrace. The fact that the liberals won even while openly advocating for wider voting rights and so on seems to imply that those reforms, at least to some extent, have the support of the nobility itself (be it out of actual altruism, worry about continued instability or simply the assumption that those votes would go to them). Of course, more conservative nobles continue to blame the “merchants” for “infiltrating” the Sejm and twisting it to their will, but while the burgher-background members of the Sejm are indeed significantly more liberal than average, they form only a tiny portion of it and could never swing an election on their own. Not to mention that the division between noble and capitalist is a rather arbitrary one, many nobles also owning capital while capitalists by definition need a noble title (old or newly purchased) to be in the Sejm to begin with.

With their strong majority, the Populists immediately get to work, passing a radically different state budget and a laundry list of resolutions within the first few weeks. In their philosophy, based on a growing library of economic thinkers, state intervention in the economy not only distorts the market and tramples on individual rights but is in fact detrimental for the state itself, seeing as it’s wasting money to mess with a market that could achieve much greater efficiency and wealth for all if only left to its own devices. The Sejm lacks the ability to privatize any actual Crown property, such as the Crown Railway Company, but barring a Crown decision to show its disapproval by calling another election – legal but unlikely – what it can do is pare down if not completely eliminate state subsidies to unprofitable factories, restrictions on economic activity, and forced state involvement in private companies. If the Crown Treasury and National Bank want to participate in finance, they should do so through the same channels as any regular buyer, and preferably not with tax money.



Of course, all that money saved leaves room for a considerable reduction in taxes and tariffs – especially for industry and owners, but also the common people in order to buy their favor. In contrast to Poland’s traditionally protectionist attitude, using high tariffs and other restrictions to protect not just the country but also individual regions from undue competition, the Populists push a highly idealistic view of free trade, with tariffs set to the absolute minimum and trade agreements made for the purpose of drawing in foreign investment, not keeping it out. The idea is rather concerning for people familiar with Poland’s own strategy to effectively hijack smaller economies, but obviously there should be no country powerful enough to do the same to Poland, and it’s hard to dismiss foreign capital as an entirely bad thing either.



Meanwhile, the Crown Council stands as an arbiter against any too radical changes, just as it’s meant to do, but has only recently shown surprising willingness to take action when necessary. It has a decent mix of members who actively support liberal reforms, those willing to compromise, and those opposed to them no matter what, setting the bar for any such legislation relatively high but not insurmountable. Many otherwise conservative voters have purposefully supported the Populists with the assumption that they’ll pursue certain economic policies in the Sejm while their less desirable, more radical reforms will be shot down by the Crown. Only time will show whether they come to regret that.



Ironically enough for a liberal party, the Popular Party’s de facto leader and Premier of choice is one Agata Krysiak, known for her unusually strict party discipline and micromanagement. She is also a very passionate and arguably gifted ideologue, great at speaking in a way that enthralls her supporters, sways the undecided and strikes either fear or hatred into her opponents. Some of the credit for the party’s explosive growth can surely be attributed to her, but who knows how well she’s suited to actual government work. In addition to pursuing her party programme with no mercy, she certainly doesn’t mind acting smug about her victory and antagonizing the Coalition just because.

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To maintain its lead in the industrial arms race (including literal weapon production), Poland has so far used extremely generous and indiscriminate subsidies to support business for business' sake, accepting some budget deficit in order to increase development, jobs and simply the amount of goods produced. However, these subsidies have always come with strings attached, giving the state a say in how the company is run, and despite the capitalist class being their main beneficiary, now the Populists want to get rid of both – throwing out the baby with the bathwater, some might argue, but be it out of honest faith in their theories or just the assumption that they personally would benefit, that’s exactly the course they take.

The tax reductions and such get a warm welcome from everyone but the Treasury, and the Populists are cheered in the streets at first. But half a year into the liberals’ new policies, at a glance the effects seem flat out disastrous, enough to raise renewed calls for Crown intervention. Just as expected, a growing number of factories are downsizing, shutting or threatening to shut down, their business models built on the assumption of continued subsidies and unable to function without them. A necessary purge, say the more hardcore liberals, while the more soft-spoken promise that those businesses will bounce back better than ever after some renovations, and offer them all kinds of help (except financial) in making those.

Self-employed artisans are quite alright, having never received subsidies in the first place and actually benefiting as their industrial competitors stumble. Despite protectionist fears, farmers also aren’t terribly bothered, as Poland is already one of the world’s main exporters of food and thus not really threatened by the competition from cheaper imports (apart from some edge cases like Crimea, where it’s now more efficient to bring certain goods from Chernigov or Moldavia). But Wallachian wine to drown their sorrows is little comfort for the thousands of factory employees who suddenly find themselves without a job, fired with no protection and often losing their homes in the process, nor the miners and other raw resource workers worried about the ability of heavy industry to keep their workplace in business.

The factories that already made a profit on their own, of course, are making even more now. Indeed, if there’s one thing to learn from this, it’ll be which industries are self-sufficient and which are not. After that massive slump, to nearly everyone’s great surprise, the Populists’ promised rebound does arrive, with most of the factories in the country either staying afloat, starting to expand as their owners take advantage of the Populists’ laxer policies, or otherwise merging with (i.e. being purchased for pocket change by) more successful ones. The influx of new investment both domestic and foreign is a big boost for Krakow’s financial and banking sector, expanding its tendrils across Europe and encouraging foreign partners to also place their holdings there. However, the worst hit sector is one both traditional and vital to national security: arms and ammunition, and their associated metalworks such as steel and bronze. In particular, the massive privately-owned weaponworks around Krakow basically collapse in on themselves, leaving more than a fourth of Upper Poland’s industrial workforce stranded. The same trend on a smaller scale repeats elsewhere, but not quite everywhere: Bohemia’s heavy industries get to enjoy some unholy boom, further widening the distance between them and the rest of the country while also providing the Populists with some rhetorical proof that it all comes down to the companies’ own competence. Or “the company’s”, rather: much of Bohemia’s seeming success can be attributed to the rise of a single conglomerate, Škoda Works, to dominate the metalworks in the region.


(Note: That “Craftsmen” column there is the number of unemployed factory workers in each region.)

Some might suspect that the Populists aren’t all that displeased about the arms industry taking a hit: another divisive aspect of their agenda is their attitude towards the military. While open anti-militarism would be political suicide in most circles in Poland, the military being both culturally significant and very influential, they are notably lukewarm towards both wars themselves (unnecessary, unprofitable and overall unpleasant) and the massive chunk of the state budget the military eats up, duly reduced in the very first round of cuts. The Crown Army in particular should be happy that the last government quietly invested in expanding both it and its infrastructure, as the current one definitely wouldn’t do the same. In fact, the immediate cuts to those Army projects and the associated drop in demand probably haven’t done wonders for the industry either. The Marynarka and its naval bases are viewed much more favorably, though, given their economic significance even in peacetime.

But if the jury is still out on the Populists’ economic performance – much hinges on whether the growing industries can absorb the workers left behind by the failed ones – then their other policy goals are just getting started. There’s really no good time in a term to start pushing voter reform: too early and people will complain that you’re rushing huge decisions right out the gate, too late and they’ll say you’re just maneuvering for the upcoming election. Of course, that isn’t entirely false, as the Populists do expect it to work to their benefit. They decide to just ignore the inevitable haters and start to hammer out a compromise almost as soon as they’re in office; not with the other parties, whose support they don’t need, but with the Crown. As previously mentioned, the Crown and especially the Council aren’t nearly as attached to the noble-only nature of the Sejm as the nobles themselves may be, and so it largely comes down to figuring out a solution that’d cause only a manageable amount of conservative outrage.

The result is the Commissions Act of 1856, passed in late December. Rather than technically allow any more people to "vote", it creates a rather peculiar system where certain state-designated groups – officer corps, the clergy, the otherwise nearly defunct artisan and merchant guilds – form “commissions” to basically hold shadow elections of their own and then report their results, which are then factored into the increasingly messy district mathematics. While certainly not what anyone expected, it basically gives members of those groups the vote in all but name, a victory they’re happy to take and the Coalition powerless to resist. The church and army are included to legitimize the system and make it seem a little less one-sided, but in the end, the influence allocated to the more liberally inclined guilds is shaping up to be quite a bit larger. Similarly, though the voting power of an individual noble will still be roughly double that of a non-noble, that still leaves them outnumbered with roughly 12% of the population now allowed to participate in one way or another.



Some almost believe that the Populists created this mess of a system only so the others would get tired of it and accept more extensive reforms in the future just to get rid of it, and they themselves certainly think of it as a stepping stone. In any case, being introduced less than a year into the term means that all parties hopefully have plenty of time to figure out how it works and whether they can turn it to their advantage in any way.

As mentioned, guilds in the traditional sense have long been on the decline, fading from regulatory organs and powerful interest groups into pretty much archaic social clubs increasingly ignored by the government. Industrialization was seen as the final nail in the coffin. The Act, very much intentionally, gives them a new lease on life, making membership necessary in order to vote and granting them considerable lobbying power in the process. However, even while employers and the self-employed enjoy their new representation, employees are notably absent from the whole set-up. Not only are they not in the Populists’ core demographic, richer voters are vehemently opposed to their workers being able to organize against them. If anything, they demand new limitations on organized labor over and above the ones the party has so far been working to remove, especially now when there are so many old factories being shut down, new ones being built, and people on the street. So-called labor unions were previously banned as political organizations, and even now they remain banned by the decision of the Crown Council. This may yet become a weak point for the Populists’ “popular” image.



For now, though, they seem to be marching from victory to victory. Even if on the ground the situation depends entirely on who and where you happen to be, just looking at the numbers, after a couple years the economy has clearly recovered from its shaky start and turned into an outright boom for everyone who matters. For every businessman to lose their fortune there seem to be three who strike it rich (or richer), and whatever the general populace thinks or doesn’t think about the intricacies of The Economy, it’s hard to complain about the historically low taxes, especially after the job situation gets better and most people are, if not happily, then at least grudgingly employed.



The Populists’ intransigence does still cause the occasional problem, ideology getting in front of economic logic and even general sense of justice. One prime example of many is the government’s handling of an epidemic of bovine fever sweeping across the country and devastating one of the country’s main industries (Poland being the #1 producer of beef in the world, bigger than the next two combined). The Populists’ refusal to provide any concrete aid for the ranchers and their associated farmers, effectively telling them to pull themselves up by the bootstraps while their cows are dying around them, manages to offend just about the entire rural population – certainly not helping their image as out of touch city-slickers – and gives the Coalition a chance to refer back to their more compassionate response to similar crises in the past.



On the other hand, though it isn’t really thanks to the government in any way, agriculture gets to enjoy the fruits of some new inventions such as vaccination, improved machinery and artificial fertilizers.



But in spite of everything, Poland’s growth is, to everyone’s great concern, unable to match the even more explosive growth of the Latin Federation. Having finally stopped spreading out and started to build up, its natural resources, large population and relatively high urbanization seemingly make it grow as quickly as people are physically able to work. It also faces little competition within the Christian sphere: England is constrained by its size, and Asturias perhaps stable but isolationist and economically backwards. For the first time since industrialization really took off in the late 1700s, Poland is actually being surpassed as the industrial superpower of Europe and the world, with Japan as a close third.



Optimistic fervor combined with the urge to compete pushes Polish financiers to make ever blinder investments in riskier endeavors. Out of these, the Berlin Stock Exchange will go down as an especially infamous and far-reaching failure. Founded with the stated purpose of pulling in foreign investors who might have an aversion towards Krakow, it does find an enthusiastic audience – in Poland. Believing that this will give them a chance to expand abroad, many Krakow-listed companies transfer to and others dual-list in Berlin before the project even gets off the ground, and it also gets the government’s tacit support, eager to strengthen Poland and weaken the Latins at the same time. This also causes a brief, but all the sharper, spike in speculation and property prices in the city of Berlin itself.

However, within months of the BSE actually opening for business, it becomes clear that it can’t compete with London in the west, Stockholm in the north or even quickly growing München in the south. Having attracted a mainly Polish investor base, it is rightly seen as a strictly worse Krakow and duly ignored, especially as the first signs of corruption and mismanagement start to emerge. Finally, on 8 June 1859, rumors start to spread that the owners of the failing BSE have just taken the money and run for it. Thanks to the also recent adoption of the telegraph, that rumor reaches every part of the country within hours, and the orders to “Sell, sell, sell!” come back just as fast. Meanwhile, it’s only days later that the rumor is proven a pure fabrication, but by then it’s too late. The BSE has completely collapsed, taking many companies down with it and causing widespread panic and shockwaves even in Krakow.

Poland has suffered its first modern stock exchange crash, caused by human hubris but also the very nature of the market economy.



This doesn’t cause an immediate crash of the entire economy, but it does dampen the positive trend and cause some serious debates about the true merits of the Populists’ inherently unstable policies that the upper classes have quite uncritically adopted in just a couple short years. Industries and individuals alike become more cautious with their money, preferring to save up and invest in what they have rather than embark on any new adventures.

That is still the dominant mood as Poland enters a new election season, the first one with the Commissions Act in place. This ought to be a good opportunity to undermine the liberals, but the other parties feel the system is stacked against them. Of course, the Populist counterargument is that if someone sees wider voting rights as a personal attack, maybe they should reconsider if they really have the best interests of the Polish people at heart.

Indeed, the Noble Coalition has had a few years to contemplate its strategy. In all honesty, at one point almost everyone believed that the party would (or maybe even should) accept its internal divisions and split in two to be able to form a more coherent programme, but in Poland’s electoral system that would just ensure that neither of the resulting parties gets a seat in the Sejm ever again. The other option being to once again change nothing and also accept a fate of irrelevance, the party finally decided to grit its teeth and reshape itself to suit its new reality. For a start, it renamed itself the National Coalition, a shallow but nonetheless humiliating change to try and court the middle-class vote. Furthermore, making an educated guess of how to appeal to the voters while also sharpening its own identity, it decided to approach the Populists on some issues and the Royalists on others, hoping to leech voters from both of them: moving slightly to the left in terms of free trade and low tariffs (while still advocating for government intervention and subsidies) and to the right in terms of strong religious values (without quite the same level of alienating slavocentrism). The Coalition remains a “big tent” party, but at least has a central platform its members can all agree to promote. And though it doesn’t know it quite yet, Poland is seeing the first signs of a future where such socially conservative yet economically liberal parties become increasingly common worldwide for many of the same reasons.



But the final results in the spring of 1861 are a surprise to all sides in how they are skewed. The entire political scene seems to have veered a bit to the left: Royalists moving to the Coalition, Coalitionists moving to the Populists, and some Populists unironically starting to like the Devolutionists – but continuing to vote for the Populists, as they aren’t on the ballot. Furthermore, the Commissions Act hasn’t actually affected the Populists’ total vote so much as equalized it: their support has fallen in many regions where it used to be especially strong, but risen across the board just enough to give them a narrow victory in nearly every district. The others are left banging their heads against the wall as the Popular Party, far from losing, wins a staggering 94% of the Sejm – a total reversal of the conservative status quo that used to dominate only a few decades ago.

Spoiler: Meanwhile, Elsewhere

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[No newspapers]

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Overshadowed by Europe’s economic navel-gazing, an ancient empire continues its sharp decline. Mere months after the liberal coup in the Arabian Empire and the formation of a parliamentary monarchy, the last Madjid Caliph was assassinated by a Wahhabist, plunging the country into a succession crisis at a very vulnerable time. All of the Caliph’s potential heirs were considered politically inept, compromised or otherwise unacceptable to some faction or other, and after half a year of regency, the Majlis (the Arabian parliament) accepted a provisional constitution, following the example of other former empires and forming the federal United Arab States. This confused and improvised decision wasn't quite unanimous, the finer details of how the UAS would function even less so. An opportunistic invasion by the Shahdom of Persia basically plunged the country into civil war with several independence movements in the south and one in Iraq. To their credit, the Arabs managed to repel the invasion and defeat some of the rebels, but still lost a lot of ground to both the Christian state of Ethiopia and the Sultanate of Abyssinia. They continue to struggle with new uprisings, and recently defaulted on their loans.

Spoiler: Comments

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Actual weighted voting is highly unusual, historically speaking, and the Commissions Act here is similarly pretty ridiculous in its own way. But at least that’s intentional. It has some traits of corporatism, I suppose. But man, first-past-the-post is the real nonsense here, huh? Though at least part of it is because Vic 2 isn’t always so great at creating the regional differences that usually end up driving an FPTP system. Instead, parties tend to rise and fall all across the board in roughly equal measure, especially as the voter base grows to smooth out any statistical outliers. On the other hand, POPs don’t actually practice strategic voting like real life people do, so smaller parties still have some chance to shake up the status quo (by stealing someone else’s votes if nothing else). If it gets too stagnant for too long, I may in fact opt for some reforms there too, but it isn’t actually too unrealistic or disastrous for the same party to be in power for several decades if it comes to that (and the lack or presence of minority parties doesn’t actually have gameplay effects either, only narrative).

Full disclaimer: Economics is actually one of my least favorite things to study (and do take my understanding with an appropriate level of salt), but its principles are weirdly fun to apply to fictional scenarios. Which of course is basically what economists are also doing.

Tariffs are a bit funny in Vic 2. In real life (in modern times), leaving aside how well they work, their main purpose is to protect domestic industries from foreign competition by putting an extra tax on imports and making them more expensive. But in Vic 2, prices are universal and everyone automatically buys domestic (or sphere of influence) whenever available anyway, so tariffs don’t actually affect consumption preferences. Instead, high tariffs are a source of money for the country at the cost of making it harder for import-dependent citizens and factories to fulfill their needs, while low (or even “negative”) tariffs make imports cheaper at the cost of less money for the country. As a player, you just want to keep them as low as you can afford. But for roleplay’s sake, I’ll keep adjusting them back and forth depending on the ruling party.

Factories are rather intricate, in that they really do need to run a profit after considering things like availability and cost of inputs, production efficiency, sales price, maintenance, and minimum wages, with the profits then distributed among the owners and employees in a less than balanced fashion. If unprofitable, they need state subsidies or they will first downsize and then shut down. However, for the player, the cost of the subsidies is always far smaller than the benefits of having more factories, and Laissez-Faire – which makes factories slightly more efficient and cheaper to build, in exchange for completely disabling subsidies and player control and lowering maximum taxes by half – is universally hated (as far as I know). I think I actually got off with very little damage because I’d been on Interventionism all this time, which meant the AI had been in charge from the start and so there wasn’t as large of a difference.

[IthilanorStPete]

* Yeah, tariffs certainly are odd. I don't usually use them; I find it's usually better to grow the economy and have more revenue to tax.
* Last time I checked the Paradox forums, Laissez-Faire wasn't universally hated, but you definitely wanted to guide factory setup yourself. The AI has a tendency to go for arms industries when they spike in price, not knowing that they're not dependable over the long run. Once you get set up with solid basic industries and a decent number of capitalists, though, the LF bonuses are nice.

[SilverLeaf167]

Chapter #61: High Queen Wieslawa (1861-1864)

Spoiler: Chapter

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25th of March, 1861

There’s a widespread if hazy feeling that Poland is on the brink of a new era, with a liberal regime cementing its power in the Sejm, society continuing its rapid transformation, and rival powers starting to catch up once more. What that era might be, no one can really tell, but as always, the sense of change creates both hope and anxiety. It is only strengthened by the passing of High King Nadbor III shortly after the election.

His death from an aneurysm is sudden, but at 71 years old, not entirely unexpected. As an avowed opponent of “the revolution”, he found himself with little to say when the nobility started to cautiously reform from within instead, and remained a relatively complacent “rubber stamp” ruler for much of his reign, following the advice of his Crown Council. But he also managed not to personally bloody his hands in the Long Revolution, enjoyed a boost in image during his final years, and was a decent public speaker and popular figurehead if nothing else. As usual, whatever his personal accomplishments, having inherited the throne in 1805 means that he’s the only national leader most Poles can remember – his death a national tragedy, and his funeral a spectacle. But it doesn’t take long for eyes to turn to his successor: the 26-year-old Wieslawa.

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Around a century ago, High King Aleksander II became notorious for spending nearly all of his time at various luxury estates far from Krakow, poor health feeding into political passiveness and fueling no shortage of personal conflict, intrigue, and political crises big and small (not to mention material for historical dramas). But his successors haven’t spent much more time at Wawel Castle, either: the 1000-year-old fort holds a great deal of symbolical value and history in its hallowed halls, of course, but for that same reason it is just too dark, drafty, cramped, and as the various riots in Krakow demonstrate, unsafe for the most powerful person in the world to voluntarily live in. No amount of renovations can change that, and though the move basically already occurred in Nadbor III’s time, High Queen Wieslawa is the one to formalize it and abandon Wawel for good. Part of the castle is made into a military garrison, while the rest (including the medieval temple) is opened to the curious public for the first time.



The High Queen and her court, meanwhile, move to the luxurious Grazyna Palace a short distance from the capital: dazzling new, built in a Neo-Renaissance style for luxury rather than war, and surrounded by a sprawling estate – a worthy symbol of Polish prestige for a new age, not to mention quite a bit harder for undesirables to reach.



Moving outside the capital doesn’t mean that Wieslawa is going to pull an Aleksander and be any less active, though – far from it. She spends remarkably little time at her royal retreat. Instead, she focuses on mapping out the political field, meeting with councilors and ambassadors, and making a highly unusual state visit to the Prince of Yugoslavia, by which the ruler and populace alike are extremely flattered. It’s telling that such a seemingly simple gesture is given such great importance: Yugoslavia has long languished in diplomatic limbo, being neither an official part of Poland nor an independent nation, that ambiguity knowingly maintained by Krakow. During the High Queen’s visit, Prince Lucjan Lechowicz is treated almost like a foreign ruler, and even though they then sign a pact reaffirming all the ways that Yugoslavia is very much a Polish vassal, the meeting manages to raise popular support for both governments. Shortly after, she pays a similar visit to the Grand Duke of Frisia (to much less excitement, given the state’s longer and rockier history with Poland).

Before her succession, Wieslawa completed a rotation of diplomatic postings across pagan nations: touring Scotland, paying special attention to Sweden’s constitutional reforms, even going on a little adventure in Moldavian Egypt. There she clearly built a list of things to do the instant she inherited. However, though she may be a cunning and skillful diplomat (and full of youthful enthusiasm), she is still a sworn imperialist dedicated to maintaining Polish power beyond her borders and across the world. Other than that, she doesn’t consider herself bound by any lesser ideology, claiming to consider every question on its own merits rather than label herself as pro- or anti-reform. She’s happy to undermine the aristocracy if she believes it will protect Polish interests and the monarchy itself. In her view, upheavals like the Long Revolution or the Amatican Crisis weren’t caused by faulty principles per se but the way that they were or weren’t applied, and the High King leaving all the work to either self-interested nobles or uninterested bureaucrats. That is the gist of her agenda: to clarify and strengthen Polish positions where they may be ambiguous or failing, and to make concessions on matters of little importance in order to “nail down” the larger system and stop it from slipping.

This all means that she and Premier Agata Krysiak, a proud ideologue, certainly don’t get along as people, but can very well work together as long as the Populists keep the economy running despite the occasional shock. However, this is accompanied by thinly veiled threats to replace Krysiak or even the Populists if they ever go against her, as well as forcing them to keep the military properly funded for Wieslawa’s own “projects”.

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As a leftover from ages past, or a check against aristocratic tyranny if you want to see it that way, the High Queen still has nearly absolute authority in Poland, with the legal ability to override almost any decision or make someone else do it for her. Of course, doing so can be impractical and unpopular, and Nadbor III for one certainly preferred a more hands-off (or just plain passive) approach. In particular, however, the Crown has maintained close control of Poland’s foreign relations and questions of war and peace; whenever such things are discussed in the Sejm, it is only because the monarch makes an exception to consult them before making the final decision. Well aware of the Populists’ anti-military sentiment – undisturbed trade over messy conquest and a balanced budget over “power projection” – Wieslawa knows what their response to any such question will be, knows that it’s unlikely to be one she likes, and so will not bother asking.

The military situation in Europe is a shifting mess of alliances, the same old religious and cultural spheres still dominating people’s minds but realpolitik reigning supreme when it comes to actual diplomacy. Small nations cling to their masters for dear life, but for those great powers, conflicting priorities make it difficult for more than two or so to remain formal allies at any given time. Poland and Moldavia for instance have long had something of a “tacit alliance”, enjoying warm relations and fighting on the same side in many a war, but a proper pact just hasn't worked out. After Moldavia’s bloc with Novgorod proved lacking due to the latter’s weakness, it has decided to secure its Mediterranean situation… by allying with its main rival, the Latin Federation, and agreeing to split the sea in two rather than argue over it. While it must be a great relief for them, for Poland the Latin-Moldavian alliance is disturbing to say the least. Poland is assured, of course, that the alliance is only a defensive one and Moldavia would never join in any invasion of its “brother nation”. High Queen Wieslawa can only grind her teeth, understanding the logic even if she doesn’t appreciate it. The Latin Federation isn’t her target of choice anyway: too big, too powerful to be worth the trouble.



She looks further abroad: to the East Indies. While almost completely under Polish control, there are still a couple native sultanates; the Italian Maniolas; the Venetian republic-in-exile on Bangka Island; outlying Swedish and Asturian bases; and a smattering of English territories. England is actually the most troublesome out of these, fussing over the details as second-rate powers often do, constantly clashing with the East India Company (KWO, Kompania Wschodnio Indyjska) over monopolies, shipping lanes and particularly the Malacca Strait. But as much as Wieslawa would like to make an example out of England to “reactivate” Poland’s colonial policy, it is allied with Japan, one of the foremost naval powers in the world, which would be fighting on its home turf no less. The same goes for the other colonial powers: much as she hates to hand it to the Populists, the sad reality of the diplomatic scene is that a couple small islands aren’t necessarily worth the effort of a large war. Not at the moment, anyway. She is determined, however, to make at least some show of force in the region.



Thus, while still keeping the other options in mind for the future, she turns to a weaker first target as something of a wake-up call for the nation, to draw more attention to the east. The Sultanate of Ligor, or rather what’s left of a once sprawling state, has remained independent for this long only due to its low priority while the lands all around it were gobbled up. As more and more of the world has already been colonized, the great powers – Poland included – are effectively fighting for scraps. When the garrisons are ordered to gear up and move towards the border, newspapers back in the homeland are quick to pick up the story and start speculating on it. They’re not particularly critical of the idea or anything, but while the attention is welcome, their gossipy tone (surely for lack of anything better to talk about) isn’t exactly what Wieslawa would’ve preferred. Well, it is Poland’s first offensive war in a while. By the time the troops are in position, what was meant to be a quick and clean invasion is already an open secret, but she still expects it to be a mostly local affair.



Poland doesn’t present much of a casus belli for the war, colonial conquest being an activity that all the great powers engage in on a regular basis (even at the moment, in both India and China), but at least has the decency to present an ultimatum and declaration of war first. The two East Indian armies – composed of natives and relatively naturalized Polish colonists, with a few unlucky officers on duty from Europe – march across the border, one going slower to secure the region while the other makes a headline for the Ligori capital Nakhon Si Thammarat for a knockout blow. It should be noted at this junction that while considered backwards compared to Europe, Ligor is in fact decently advanced, with a "modern" military and even a few experimental factories thanks to Japanese investment.



The Japanese ambassador in Krakow protests against the invasion, as does the Japanese consul in Singapura from the day he hears about it, Japan having recently launched an initiative to become the defender (i.e. master) of the independent states of Asia. However, Japan doesn’t seem willing to go to war over it either, and so can do little more than urge restraint in the treatment of the Ligori people and their Sultan.

The High Queen was already planning on it, actually. General Chodkiewicz in charge of the offensive has a prewritten peace treaty to hand to them: some border adjustments in the south, but beyond that, just the Sultan swearing allegiance to the High Queen as a Polish vassal and protectorate. He’s not the first: the East Indies already include a number of local emirs, sultans, kings and so on allowed to keep their titles with little to no real authority. Given the mentioned unimportance of the land itself, this lets Wieslawa appear both assertive and (supposedly) reasonable at the same time without having to worry about what to do with the people living on it.



The Populists in the Sejm are actually rather ambivalent or even contradictory when it comes to colonialism itself: colonies don't really fit into their free trade and industry-based image of the world, but they also would rather not linger on where the raw materials for it come from. Now that the East Indies are in the spotlight, though, the newly relevant question of the KWO is right up their alley. The KWO is best described as a Crown-chartered trading company, private military, feudal domain and the world’s most powerful cartel all in one. Starting as a stopgap measure that ended up becoming permanent, it has largely filled the role of a voivodeship to govern a large and complex region too distant to be run from Krakow, and from the Crown’s point of view has fulfilled that duty loyally enough, probably because it was best for the company’s own bottom line. To that end, its treatment of the natives has actually been a fair bit more brutal than any other Polish colony, but the government also hasn’t exactly intervened despite being well aware of the situation.

To the Populists, the KWO’s whole existence is somewhat heretical, and as its role in terms of Ligor comes under discussion, they actually start pushing for either the company’s detachment from the Crown or otherwise its full dismantlement, making the East Indies into a normal colony while letting other companies rush in and take its place in the market. Almost to her own surprise, Wieslawa actually agrees with the latter idea, with something of a twist: citing both its past misdemeanors and its overall outdatedness, she orders all KWO property nationalized “for a fair price” over a 5-year grace period rather than literally auctioned off as the Populists wanted. After that, of course, they are free to invest in the East Indies like they would any other plot of land. The exact government arrangements of the colony will be determined at a later date, but the KWO’s relatively quiet rule has come to a similarly quiet end, and Wieslawa’s plans of nailing down the empire have taken a step forward.

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At the same time as the uneventful war in the east, Poland has a different news story to focus on in the west: following the pathetic, best forgotten failure of the Warsaw World’s Fair in 1850, the Free Nations have decided to organize one of their own. While the event could be seen as an attempt at one-upmanship, due to their cordial relationship and economic ties it is obvious that Poland will attend. The Fair is held in Radziwill, which has indeed received quite the makeover and grown considerably in only 14 years. The trip there is part of the experience, with overseas visitors being instructed to dock in Ledenesz and take a decorated train (built with Polish money) along the Oginski River up to the capital. To some confusion on the Polish delegation’s part, it turns out to be more of an Amatican Fair, with Asturias, Scotland and Sweden telling their nearby colonies to handle it for them, the most distant other delegation being from Santa Croce, and no other countries actually bothering to show up (the United Lordships also boycott the event). With Poland the only non-colony in attendance, the implications there of the Free Nations still being a Polish colony are actually rather humiliating for the hosts as well.

The event itself isn’t horrible for what it is, with a wide array of interesting scientific, cultural and culinary displays from across the continent. But while the Poles feel like they do decently well for themselves, their latest steam engine design attracting a good deal of attention and even some interested buyers, they later get to read from the papers that Europeans mostly see the whole event as living proof of why the Free Nations are far from becoming a serious contender on the world stage.



A different event that gathers perhaps less press but far more government attention is the one convened in the snowy Alps in the early months of 1863. Colonies aside, Europe itself has seen a great deal of turmoil, war and general brutality between nations and fellow citizens in the all too recent past, and will surely see more in the future. No one’s pointing fingers here. But Jean Colladon, a Swiss businessman, was personally shocked by the neglect and active abuse perpetrated by both sides in the war where Switzerland was reintegrated into Germany. Worse, it was in no way exceptional, but simply the way wars in general are fought. He sat on his thoughts for a while, but after Germany became a relatively liberal republic again (knock on wood), he approached the government with his concept. And after the brief was sent to the other great powers, they too have decided to at least send their delegations to Geneva, whether to accept what was being proposed or to try and influence it.

Unlike the World’s Fair, the Geneva Convention isn’t really a prestige event, but the guest list (or rather exclusion from it) is still seen as a matter of honor: besides the great powers, Bavaria, Lotharingia and Scotland are all invited to attend, while the Free Nations for instance are notably absent. Premier Krysiak is sufficiently excited about the whole thing to try and attend personally, but Wieslawa (who gets to decide about international treaties) vetoes this and sends some lesser diplomats instead. She's worried not so much about any deals Krysiak could make, but what else stupid she might say while she was there.



The main goals of the convention are twofold: protections for prisoners of war, the wounded, and medical personnel – and the founding of the International Red Shield, a neutral organization allowed to provide medical and humanitarian aid in warzones in addition to the countries’ own efforts. The reaction is somewhat divided at first: while no country can too openly defend its right to wanton brutality, and they all know this would protect their own people as well, there’s little precedent nor appetite for willingly tying your country to such a treaty with others you might consider your enemies. The terms are relayed back home for consideration. For the High Queen, the decision is relatively easy: Poland has for centuries liked to depict itself as an exemplar of “civilized warfare”, however true that might be, and she feels that the upsides of the treaty vastly outweigh any theoretical downsides, not to mention what it would look like not to sign. Getting to engage in some high-profile humanitarianism in between colonial conquests suits her perfectly. Once it comes out that Poland intends to sign, allies and enemies alike largely follow suit, and the Geneva Convention can – at least at this stage – be considered a great success. Most countries that weren’t able to attend get around to joining in the near future too, including of course the Free Nations, which try and fail to make a big publicity stunt out of it.



And indeed, while the convention was never meant to end wars but only make them more humane, there is still a certain irony in the fact that merely a few months later, a new war breaks out only some 200 miles from Geneva. The Latin Federation has come back for a likely very one-sided rematch with Lotharingia to retake the rest of the territory illegally joined to it by the rebels back during the Third Revolutionary War. The “merits” of the Federation’s claims, to the extent that such a thing even matters, are hard to deny, but more importantly, the Latins have brought friends, far more than they actually need… including Moldavia.



Much like the Scottish invasion of Ireland, this once again puts Poland in a diplomatic dilemma. First things first: in practical terms, the land being fought over isn’t worth it. However, Lotharingia isn’t merely in the Polish sphere of influence: after the last Latin war, an official and public alliance was signed between them, meaning that the Latins can not feign ignorance. This is a knowing act of aggression that might as well be directed at Poland itself. They must either expect Poland to back down or imagine that they can win if it doesn’t. Similarly, the Moldavians’ participation could mean either that they don’t expect Poland to intervene, that they’re pressuring it not to, or that they’re openly stabbing it in the back. The Poles were under the impression that their friendship was real, and the High Queen had a good relationship with the King, so the feeling of betrayal is indeed palpable.

Facing the Latins and Moldavia in a serious war is going to be tough no matter what; and without the official alliance, Wieslawa could at least consider bowing to reality and letting this slide. But as it stands, the Latins are openly questioning Poland’s willingness to back its words with action, and this naked provocation cannot be allowed to pass. And so, on 4 May 1863, Poland goes to war with two other great powers (and a slew of lesser ones).



Wieslawa does her best to sell this as the defensive war it in fact is. Thus even the Populists have trouble protesting too much, and due to their continued unwillingness to raise taxes, have no choice but to reduce other spending and fiddle with the tariffs wherever they can to make space for the military budget.

At least some of the armies were already on war footing, Wieslawa having unsubtly kept them ready to start a colonial war on short notice. Furthermore, however, she finally gives the order to put in arms every available conscript. It’s only a matter of time before the Latins mobilize their citizen army, so Poland should preempt them and get its own peasants to the front as soon as possible.



It takes less than a week for the English to leap on the opportunity to have another go at York while the Poles are distracted. Poland has little choice but to come to Scotland’s defense, because alliances are what this war is already about, and what’s even the difference at this point? At least Japan doesn’t get involved, still not really caring about European disputes.



Some will say that the Geneva Convention couldn’t have come at a better time. Others will grumble that it’s exactly what gave the Latins a carte blanche to wage war at less perceived risk to themselves. Whatever the case, out of nowhere, Europe has been plunged into another massive war.



Willing to take whatever help they can get, the Poles expand it further: the Free Nations have actually been angling for an alliance for a while now, seeing it as a recognition of their independence and military value. While the Atlantic is a little inconvenient to say the least, Buyania’s contribution to the Third Revolutionary War has not been forgotten, and at least the Free Nations' mere presence in the conflict makes the Latins’ life that much harder. If they want recognition, as they clearly desperately do, this is their chance to earn it on the field of battle.



While always up for a well-placed war, Wieslawa can’t claim to be an expert in how they’re actually fought, nor could she hope to micromanage everything in real time, so she must rely on her generals to make the right choices. The first priority is to stop Lotharingia from being defeated in a fait accompli the way Ireland was, which will take some doing as the Latins unsurprisingly flood across the border. The second is to knock Moldavia out of the war, preferably without too much fighting and bloodshed, and handle the diplomatic ramifications of this whole mess later. And only then comes defeating the Latin Federation itself. Some kind of lasting punishment is in order.

The Moldavian capital Belgorod, located only some 20 miles from where the Army of Odessa is stationed, is taken out in less than a month. The first battles in the colonies, England and Lotharingia also show promise, but both sides are only getting mobilized. And down south, the Latins are making good use of their Gorizian corridor, sending a huge army into Yugoslavia to strike Poland right in its soft underbelly. Squeezed between the Federation and Moldavia, Yugoslavia is in a rather awkward position.



Good news is, Poland’s own shock offensives are highly successful. After resistance proves to be stiffer than expected (i.e. Polish and Scottish troops marching into the Midlands), the Queen of England decides to cut her losses rather than risk all of England’s treasury and built-up industry being thrown to waste in a full occupation. Poland even gets a colony out of it, solidifying its hold on the region around Ligor. Meanwhile in the east, the near-total lack of troops on the Moldavian border also adds support to either the “bluff” or the “honest mistake” theory, though in public the royal government can obviously admit neither, and despite being presented with the chance to make a white peace with relatively little loss of face, some stubborn urge forces them to keep fighting now that they’ve started it.



More 3RW parallels continue to emerge in August, as Germany declares war on the Latins, trying to reclaim the same old Franche-Comté no less. However, the Germans' understanding of history might be a little lacking, given that the last time that Italy did the same to them, the distracting parties made peace shortly after and left Germany and Italy locked in a mutually destructive stalemate.



The most important battle of the whole war in both location and sheer size, effectively lasting through the whole summer and only ending in early September, is the Battle of Charleroi. It starts out between Lotharingian and Latin forces, only to see several waves of retreats and reinforcements and end up with mostly Poles and Frisians on the defending side. It is only when another army is shipped over from across the Channel (the whole English war having started and ended during this one long battle, effectively more of a siege) that the Poles finally get a decisive advantage and the Latins are pushed back with grievous losses, having lost three fifths of their participating soldiers in repeated assaults against the fortified city.


(This doesn't actually cover "the whole battle", only the last phase of it.)

Credit where credit is due: Santa Croce’s navy contests the Marynarka more than Latins’ own Classis Militum ever does. Unfortunately, they do so after having sailed their transport ships waaay across the Atlantic and then tried to land too close to the front rather than pick a safer spot in western France. Good news is, after sinking some of the warship escorts, the Marynarka offers the now defenseless and surrounded convoy an opportunity to surrender in the spirit of the Geneva Convention. The prisoners are unloaded on the Frisian coast and, mostly to inflate the Marynarka’s track record, the ships then scuttled, leaving someone else to deal with the logistics of getting all those men back to Alcadra once the war is over.



In the north, the front never manages to move to either side of Lotharingia, but in the south, the Latins make gross miscalculations of their own, some 90,000 troops rushing deep into the Yugoslavian countryside only to see Polish reinforcements cut off their supplies and Moldavian support fail to manifest. Indeed, it’s fair to say that enthusiasm is all the Latins have going for them: even over the long term, the previously discussed purges to their officer corps and even official doctrine seem to have cut off their “military tradition” and left their new commanders to pretty much learn on the fly. Furthermore, much like the 3RW, the involvement of a third party – even a somewhat weaker one – forces them to spread out their troops and starts swinging the balance further in Poland’s favor. Beyond the current situation on the ground, though, the real deciding factor is the constant humiliation after humiliation of the glorious Legions at the hands of the more organized and established Crown Army. The Alcadran prisoners being paraded across Poland in an ongoing propaganda campaign are only the worst of the bunch.




Thus, after roughly half a year, peace is made on Poland’s relatively lenient terms, restoring Lotharingia to its rightful borders while also taking one of the Latins’ West African colonies just so this isn’t a total return to status quo. The war is over quickly enough that only about half of Poland’s own citizen army has managed to mobilize, and out of that, only less than half has actually seen battle. Wieslawa ended up getting her colonial war, though in a rather unexpected manner, and now she tries to balance the depiction of this victory as a show of Polish dominance and mercy at the same time. But the details aside, it is true that within three years of her succession, she can boast of victory in three separate wars and three new colonies in Ligor, English Malaya and Latin Gambia.



After those three busy years, though, it’s hard to deny that Poland could probably use a break, if nothing else then to avoid looking like such a constant warmonger that the others start forming coalitions against her. Wieslawa is fine with that, believing that superiority has been sufficiently asserted. And while Germany predictably finds itself facing the wrath of the Latins all alone, Wieslawa adjusts course towards hopefully “softer” foreign policy projects.

Spoiler: Meanwhile, Elsewhere

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Newspaper Gallery

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The wars in India have ended for the time being, but most of the issues not really resolved: the Federation lost its colony, but Chernigov kept its own, and the same tiny Sri Lanka became independent again.

Spoiler: Comments

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I always seem to forget how unlike EU4, most wars in Vic 2 really are pretty quick and done affairs once the war goal has been secured (until great wars are enabled and they become fights to the death, anyway). I was originally worried about the difficulty buffs being unfun or misleading by just straight-up making AI troops stronger, but clearly they need the help after all, so I’ve ramped all the AI buffs up to standard Hard levels (or actually beyond, since I previously added a reduction to material usage so they can afford a decent army).

We have the option of turning Malaysia, Indonesia and/or the Maniolas once we conquer them into voivodeships (i.e. released puppets) about ten years from now if we feel like it. To me that seems like a purely roleplay decision, though, since even if it enabled them to keep armies and build factories of their own (and released a bit of colonial power that we already have plenty of), we’d lose the ability to upgrade their forts and naval bases or build ships there (though I’d probably keep at least Singapore for myself if we decided to go down that route). Roleplaying is a valid reason, of course, and it could be an interesting replacement goldfish for the Amatican colonies. Opinions?

Oh, and if anyone's wondering, the reason I was able to use a colonial CB against a civilized nation is because due to the high number of them in Africa and Asia (there's like a single-digit number that weren't civilized), in the prep work for the game I modded the CB so the colonial scene wouldn't be too stagnant for the entire game.

Grazyna Palace is fictional. The place in the photo is actually Schwerin Castle, Germany, built around roughly the same time.

* Last time I checked the Paradox forums, Laissez-Faire wasn't universally hated, but you definitely wanted to guide factory setup yourself. The AI has a tendency to go for arms industries when they spike in price, not knowing that they're not dependable over the long run. Once you get set up with solid basic industries and a decent number of capitalists, though, the LF bonuses are nice.

Well, makes sense. I'm probably projecting a bit since I like, or at least used to like, micromanaging what factories to build with State Capitalism. On which note, the capitalists haven't actually felt like building steamer shipyards and they've become a bit of a bottleneck at times, and I'm trying to see if national focuses could push them in that direction. I don't really have an impression of how effective that actually is. Although, I guess if they aren't building them, there's a good chance it's because they wouldn't be profitable.

[InvisibleBison]

The Sejm's been more or less running Poland for the past half century. I imagine there's a good amount of uncertainty about this assertive new High Queen. It will be interesting to see what comes of that.

All things considered, that war could have gone a lot worse. It wasn't a particularly decisive conflict, though, so I fully expect the Latins to try again a few years down the road.

[Keraunograf]

Personal thought that it depends on the political state in ten years. This new queen seems very aggressive, but in a very realpolitik way. I think if she thinks the colonies would stick with the nation longer given more independence, she'd do it.

It's also a great way to show humanitarianism, which seems to be the political posturing of "we have enough power to do this" of the day.

[SilverLeaf167]

Chapter #62: Red Flags (1864-1870)

Spoiler: Chapter

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4th of April, 1864

The mood in Stadnicki Palace, the Popular Party headquarters – located on prime real estate between Wawel Castle, the Temple of Blessed Lechoslaw and Krakow University – has been sour for almost a few years now. The party’s economic policies seem to have been vindicated, yes, even weathering the slowdown caused by the Berlin disaster and muffling their critics with continued growth and low taxes. However, those were mostly introduced in their first term, whereas after achieving their historic 94% victory they feel like they have little new to show for it. They’re all too aware that this majority was nowhere near as overwhelming on the ground, and that the smallest push could swing the next election against them. Even in many of the largest cities, the Populists’ current “lead” is within the margin of error and doesn’t even need any particular reason to go wrong.



Besides the usual low-level grumbling over this and that (often in contradiction with each other), there’s been no pressing demand (i.e. riots) for any major reforms, and thus the Crown Council has been rather complacent about pushing or accepting any either. Meanwhile, even though the Populists certainly could dictate some large changes to the Sejm itself, the last election has left them wondering whether doing so would be straight-forwardly in their favor after all. They have strong support from the professional middle class, but certainly not a monopoly, and they’ve quietly agreed that they do not want the lower classes to have the vote: the manual workers of Poland have been labeled variously as short-sighted fools, anti-progress luddites and/or conservative hicks, and this disdain seems to be mutual. The Commissions Act voting system, clunky as it is, is actually rather suited for the Populists and their business contacts as it makes it easier to negotiate and deal with specific interest groups directly.

As for internal problems, it is an open secret that some deputies have been actively courting the Devolutionist vote and could even be “crypto-Devolutionists” themselves, working within the Populists due to their own group being banned, while the party is reluctant to lose their support either. Meanwhile, the small but noisy pacifist and anti-colonialist wing of the party has been dismayed by the others’ failure to speak up against this new High Queen’s bellicose rhetoric and lackadaisical attitude towards use of force. During the latest war, conveniently started by the Latins, she got to castigate the Populists for supposedly weakening the people’s will to fight and also forced them to bend the budget to her liking.

Ah, yes. High Queen Wieslawa. In the Noble Coalition governments of the past, the Premier hasn’t really been the “leader” of their party, but Agata Krysiak certainly is, and her problems with Her High Majesty are well known. Wieslawa basically treats her as a bureaucrat, or a sheepdog as some have put it, left to tend to her flock while the High Queen makes the real decisions and quickly shoots her down whenever she tries to get involved in even the most benign fashion, such as with the Geneva Convention. She doesn’t openly insult or denigrate the Sejm, but does so more subtly by only seeing its leader as a useful servant to be kept in line. The Populists have never been anti-monarchist per se, but at this point, Krysiak herself very well could be. After a long career in politics, having joined the party back when it didn’t have a single seat in the Sejm and then worked her way up, she can’t see why some younger woman not even past 30 should have absolute power just because the previous High King selected her back as a preteen.

The worst part is that Wieslawa does hold all the cards in this game, and Krysiak absolutely hates it. At any point, she could dismiss Krysiak and force the party to pick a more pliable Premier – or, more likely, call an election and throw her weight behind the Coalition, likely swaying the majority of the population that still has great respect for their ruler. Krysiak has no choice but to grit her teeth and do as much as she can…

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High Queen Wieslawa was suitably pleased with the swift and victorious end of the latest war, but it left some lingering questions. In her days as a diplomat (a.k.a. “royal tourist”), she spent some time as a guest in the court of King Nadbor VI of Moldavia, making the recent stab in the back doubly painful and personal. After sending out some discreet feelers to the King to let him explain the situation privately, she can certainly sympathize with the urge of a great power to stand up and not back down from a fight (and though she doesn’t say it, Moldavia’s track record in the war shows that it really does need to stay in the Latins’ good graces, especially as the Latins have also taken the Arabs under their wing). For that same reason, the King still needs to keep up the alliance, or it would be obvious that he bowed to Polish pressure – not unlike the Free Nations, Moldavia has a bit of an inferiority complex towards Poland thanks to their common history. This means that a similar situation might well emerge a second time. But it really says something about both of them as people, as well as the general aloofness of the ruling classes, that they can discuss a recent war and even likely future ones on such amicable terms. Despite the Latin question pitting them against each other, Wieslawa would rather keep relations with Moldavia as warm as politics will allow.

While she can’t complain about Krysiak and the Populists’ economic performance, especially after they loosened some of their free trade principles to prioritize shipments for Poland’s own damn army, their attitude is definitely holding the country back and undermining Wieslawa both internationally and among her own subjects. Krysiak has the good sense not to put her name on it, but Wieslawa knows who and what party are to blame for the significant increase in “colony-critical” press lately, be it about the Ligori war or the nationalization of the KWO. It will blow over, and the High Queen has plenty of more sympathetic papers on her side as well, so all it really does is further infect the relationship of the two most powerful people in the realm.


(People start randomly declaring war on you at 25…)

The alliance with the Free Nations, formalized during the war that ended up being too short for it to make a difference, remains somewhat controversial as well. While the idea of reclaiming Amatica has been quite thoroughly buried, entertained only in the fringest of circles, any sign of official recognition and endorsement still grinds some people’s gears, as does the idea of allying with a highly liberal democracy in general. To some, this runs the risk of legitimizing such dangerous ideology in people’s eyes, while others believe in “de-ideologizing” the debate and convincing people that liberalism and the Polish system are not in fact enemies or opposites. Once again, Wieslawa and the Populists both find themselves in the latter camp for different reasons. On a side note, the alliance with the Free Nations has spurred a rather ambitious project to lay more than 2,500 miles of telegraph cable across the seabed from Calais to Beothuk Island, shortening the weeks-long communication delay down to mere minutes. Wild concerns about sharks gnawing on the cables are given little notice.

Politically, the year 1864 is an uneventful one for Poland. To the west, the German-Latin war continues its grueling grind, much as expected. To the east, however, something much more impactful occurs in the very final days of the year. The mutual enmity between Novgorod and Chernigov is known to all, having barely gotten along even in the days when the Moscow Pact still held some sway, and obviously descended into intermittent fighting during the last couple decades. Thanks to Chernigov’s resources and manpower, it emerged superior in that rivalry as soon as Novgorod foolishly broke its alliance with Poland, and in the years since those wars, has come to dominate both Novgorod and Uralia politically and economically.

A year ago, the autocratic misrule of the King of Novgorod led the country to go fully bankrupt, the King having died of cancer just in time to avoid seeing the fruits of his incompetence. At the same time, though, Chernigov’s colonial adventures have been proving increasingly untenable, lacking a single real base between the Black Sea and India yet still trying to expand its territory in China. As that latest war proved a massive drain on both money and prestige, only to end with Wu taking back Chernigov’s treaty port in Macau, Chernigov too found itself at the brink of economic disaster.

Now that the King of Chernigov has also died with what can only be considered good timing, passing the throne to his daughter, both kingdoms are left with a new generation of rulers faced with internal crises and relatively indifferent to past conflicts. They can either keep fighting each other forever, or join forces and actually get something done. So it happens that in December 1864, out of desperation and ambition alike, the King of Novgorod and Queen of Chernigov enter a diplomatic marriage and their respective parliaments both sign the Acts of Union. Mutual debts are forgiven, foreign ones shared, and the United Kingdom of Russia created. They remain the rulers of their respective countries, but their eventual heir will inherit both. Suppose that’s one way to solve a border dispute.



Uralia, a primarily Ugrian republic, is unsurprisingly not interested in this arrangement. However, it also signs a treaty with the new government, giving up the disputed territories around Moscow and Borodino in exchange for the Russians relinquishing their claim on Vladimir. In the interest of compromise between Novgorod and Chernigov, the Russian capital is placed in Moscow, with the added benefit of fostering closer relations with the Uralian capital only 100 miles away (basically next door by Russian standards).

The result is an even larger land empire than before - combining Chernigov’s sprawling steppes with Novgorod’s more industrialized Baltic provinces - and a much greater military power with fewer regional rivals. The move to Moscow carries an undertone of putting some distance between themselves and the Polish border, and while the Russians have never had any particular need to feud with Poland, their relationship has been fraying recently and may well continue to get worse if they feel too confident in their new power. At 48 million, Russia is the third-most populous country (partially) in Europe, and sure to become a major player one way or another.

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Concerning changes in the Slavic sphere do not end there. The school of thought known as “socialism” has been stewing since at least the start of the century, covering a variety of very different ideologies with economic equality and some form of shared (“social”) ownership of property as the main common thread between them. Politically speaking, however, the movement has been very niche, generally lingering at the edges of the wider liberal movement and never attracting much attention. Until now.

Reuben Stern, a Bohemian Jew, originally chose to leave Poland for fear of retribution after his, albeit relatively minor, involvement in the Long Revolution. In Bavaria, the Latin Federation, and through some twists and turns Moldavia, he has made contacts with the local socialists, observed the local politics and gathered what could be called a cult following with his somewhat eclectic but compelling ideological writings. He and his small group of friends have both made sharp observations about economics and social structures, in particular the blight of the working class or “proletariat” (borrowing an old Roman term), and offered radical solutions for them. His contribution to socialist thought, together with spreading disillusionment towards mainstream liberalism – finding that its dismissive treatment of the lower classes isn’t necessarily much better than the conservatives’ – has inspired a group in Belgorod to form the world’s first real Socialist Party, hoping to get elected to the Moldavian Sejm.



Krakow follows soon after: there are still several branches of socialism, various levels of radical, but the Social Democratic Party gearing up to participate in the next election advocates for peaceful change within the rules of the system. While they and the Populists share many goals in terms of social and political freedom, in economic questions they're unlike any other. Believing (correctly) that all the current parties, including or especially the liberals, favor the owner at the worker's expense and the rich above the poor, they demand wide-spanning state intervention such as workplace regulations, minimum wages, social security, progressive taxation, universal education and more. In their view, a capitalist society left unchecked will simply revert to the tyranny of the privileged, making a powerful and vigilant but righteous state a necessity if you are to have liberty for all. They also dream of a state not merely tolerant but officially detached from religious matters, which appeals to some oddani and less zealous pagans but infuriates the Slavic Church, pushing even the Archpriest of Perun to make a rare public denouncement of the whole movement.



Most Populists, Krysiak included, respond to the news of the SDP’s founding with laughter and a scoff, if they react at all. While plenty of self-declared parties have been popping up in Poland since they became legal in 1855, the reason there are only two or three that people take seriously is that none of the others have stood the specter of a chance of winning a single district (a category the Royalists are also rapidly slipping into). As the SDP so openly contradicts the tried and true economic lessons of the past decade and mostly appeals to a demographic that the Populists are now doubly determined to keep unable to vote, it is justifiably expected not to be a real contender, comparable to the Devolutionists at best.

The socialists sure are good at making noise, though, and take their notes from Stern when it comes to writing speeches. They do have plenty to complain about, considering that the Populists have done their best to gut what few industrial regulations Poland had in the first place, and the very concept of a welfare state is just as alien as it is in most of the world. But if anything, thanks to the voting issue, even if the SDP itself claims to be peaceful, some people are more worried about the socialist movement as a potential insurrection than as electoral competition.



Indeed, there are also more nefarious forces afoot, taking a more literal reading of Stern’s works and setting their aims on a total, violent revolution of the proletariat, redistribution of property, and installment of a communist regime from the top down. Some of them even take the SDP’s secularism a few steps further to demand enforced atheism and the abolishment of organized religion. Unsurprisingly, they’re banned both from the Sejm and from organizing in general. All they would do if they somehow won a seat or two is sabotage and soapbox the best they could.



As the 1866 elections approach and the rallies pick up speed, the Populists don’t necessarily have much to campaign on besides promising to maintain their heretofore successful economic policies. Perhaps luckily for them, the Coalition also doesn’t have a very convincing platform beyond “what they said except better”, including promises for a huge (artificial) expansion of industry to catch up with the Latins and a rather weak attempt to paint the Populists as godless heathens similar to the socialists.

The Populists’ fears fail to come to pass: thanks in large part to the increasingly divided opposition, their majority actually grows and even gets more comfortable in many important districts. There are signs of internal division too, though: the voters, whether intentionally or not, end up electing a total of four Populist deputies that the party leadership has secretly labeled as Devolutionist moles. How much Krysiak and the party establishment really are opposed to their ideas may be unclear, but also irrelevant: though increasingly confident that their majority would be secure even if they purged the Devolutionists and their sympathizers, doing so at this junction risks drawing attention to the fact that the party has been knowingly harboring them until now and even allowed them to run. The topic will have to be revisited if they do something dumb enough to out themselves, at which point the party can act surprised and then boot them; and if they don’t, good.

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High Queen Wieslawa has been keeping busy, making as many public appearances as humanly possible to both feel and look like she’s doing something, as well as coordinating constant but rather low-profile efforts in the Crown Council to reword and amend archaic legislation (with relatively few real changes to the content). She has also been active diplomatically, even personally attending the Russian royal wedding. Not having to worry too much about its eastern border has always been a big relief for Poland, and even if a full alliance is out of the cards, she’d much prefer to at least maintain peace with the United Kingdom. With the Dvina-Dniepr line clearly marking the vast majority of their border, there should be little basis for either side to dispute it.

After the election, she’s actually very surprised to see Krysiak seemingly following her lead a lot more, yet at the same time, making many more foreign connections for herself. Obviously this is rather concerning, but the Populists have a lot of business contacts to draw on and Krysiak, in her usual brainwashing fashion, proves stunningly effective at improving Poland’s international image, so Wieslawa once again sees enough reason to keep her around.



In April 1866, the German-Latin war finally ends in a white peace, a massive waste of money and lives for both sides, all because Germany thought it saw a good opportunity. It is doubly humiliating for Germany that this war was started and led by the supposedly moderate Zentrum party, originally trying to exploit the growing gap between the Liberals and the Nationals but now probably in for a very tough next election.



In the absence of more direct action, Wieslawa aims to flex her power projection in other ways, such as negotiating a permanent military presence in Yorkshire, an extra degree of protection warmly welcomed by the Scottish crown. The same is discussed with the Free Nations, but they unsurprisingly prove less enthusiastic: Polish armies marching through the streets seems liable to dredge up some unpleasant memories, so the matter is shelved for now.

Furthermore, the Marynarka finally approaches her with tested and combat-ready plans for revolutionary new ship designs (that is to say, adapted from Japan’s already world-famous Kurofune, “Black Ships”). After experimenting with armor-plated wooden ships, they’ve finally settled on full-metal vessels, being both more durable and ultimately simpler to build and maintain. They’re also better suited for their new-fangled weapons, namely gun turrets and perhaps even torpedoes, currently in the testing phase. Fascinated with the smoke-belching beasts, and certain that others will be as well, the High Queen immediately orders a massive expansion campaign to add these “ironclads” to every Polish fleet (and, critically, eventually start phasing out the old sailships).



As Poland at last fully enters the age of the metal ship, the Marynarka must discuss the fate of OKP Radogost (Okręt Korona Polskiej, "Vessel of the Crown of Poland"). Since the legendary Polish flagship was first put to sea in 1447, it has been refitted and fully rebuilt many times over, but never actually sunk, its name carried on as something of a ritual to let the ship’s “soul” and power move into its new vessel. Presently the largest warship in the world with four gundecks, 150 cannons and three massive mortars, it is a terrifying but, alas, ponderous leviathan, and it might be for the best that it hasn’t seen much serious action this century. However, given the question of whether to repeat the ritual once more, its elite crew – the only people with the right to make such a choice – decides that whatever their military merits, no ship of iron and fire can replace the wood and wind of the Radogost. Instead, it will dock near the Szczecin shipyards where it was first built and become a floating monument to the Marynarka, much of its crew choosing to stay and maintain it.

In its place, a successor shall be built: OKP Swarog, named for the god of blacksmithing and flame. Gods be willing, it too can avoid being sunk and pass its name forward far into the future.

Once that first wave of new ships is finished, which might well take a couple years, Wieslawa is sure to be looking for a place to use them. Perhaps the time will be ripe for another colonial adventure…

Spoiler: Meanwhile, Elsewhere

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[No newspapers, for some reason]

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Asturias finally broke its long silence by marching into its de facto protectorate Murcia and annexing it with little resistance, and even some degree of popular enthusiasm. The Basque nation of Navarra, feeling much less kinship with the Asturians, fears for its own fate.



As the Chinese Chaos seems to be reaching its climax, the winner appears increasingly clear: the foreigners. At the same time that the Manchurians cement their dominance, their allies in Japan have been proactively splitting apart the Kingdom of Wu just to make it easier for them. Once considered the prime candidate to unify China, Wu has now all but collapsed. England, once more allied to Japan, has begun outright colonizing the south of the region, apparently to take direct control of the lucrative tea trade.

Spoiler: Comments

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Okay, so apparently a party “not being allowed” in a form of government just means you can’t manually appoint them, but they can still win seats in the election. I was not sure how they affected the vote. In the narrative I’ll just depict those exceptions as moles in other parties, like I did here. If they somehow won, then that’d mean an internal takeover of said party.

The Russian marriage is one of those things that may seem abrupt given their usual hostilities, but rather closely mirrors the real-life formation of countries like Spain or the United Kingdom in my opinion. More importantly though, I’m just trying to make up explanations for the (not added by me) decision that Chernigov took. It works the same way as the German or Italian decisions in vanilla, only requiring them to have the other Russian cores, i.e. Novgorod, in their sphere of influence. Speaking of Russia: I can't decide if those borders look weirdly nice or terrible.

Agata Krysiak’s name was originally given by a random generator, by the way. Any similarity to Agatha Christie is coincidental (and certainly only name deep), but also part of the reason I picked it. I'm pretty lucky that her Prince of Terror trait got balanced out by the Expert Diplomat one right afterwards. I forgot how damn slowly infamy can tick down in this game.

One subtle world-building fact that hasn’t really come up (and still didn’t) is the Moldavian language. The actual real-life Moldovan language is the same thing as Romanian, but in this timeline, Moldavia was thoroughly settled by Poles and thus should probably speak a Slavic language (Romanians as we know them are represented by the Wallachian culture). So in the same vein, I suppose Moldavian should just be Polish, with some fine differences too small for us to be concerned with. But I didn’t really consider this until recently, so they’ve been using Romanian names throughout EU4 and Vic 2. I’ll just keep it in mind when we reach HoI4 and I need to make up names for a bunch of people…

[IthilanorStPete]

Oof, 24 infamy. Yeah, that's going to put the roadblocks on further expansion for a while.

I'm curious what the colonization of Africa's going to look like in this game; it'd start happening in the next update, with Machine Guns unlocking. Not sure what's going to happen here.

[SilverLeaf167]

Oof, 24 infamy. Yeah, that's going to put the roadblocks on further expansion for a while.

I'm curious what the colonization of Africa's going to look like in this game; it'd start happening in the next update, with Machine Guns unlocking. Not sure what's going to happen here.

Well, thanks to Expert Diplomat, we're actually down to something like 6 by now (1870).

I also wonder how Africa's going to look, or more specifically, how judiciously the AI will use its casus bellis. With so much more of the continent covered by native countries, even though I adjusted the CBs to work on them, who knows if the AI knows how to use them.

EDIT: Should clarify: PDM adds special events and CBs to make the Scramble for Africa more efficient/intense/whatever, and they're also included in my game. They won't come online before 1880 though.

[SilverLeaf167]

Chapter #63: Power Projects (1870-1874)

Spoiler: Chapter

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23rd of April, 1870

Recently, the age-old question of “why we should conquer them” has been rearing its head with a new, novel answer. Ideas of racial or cultural superiority, religious conversion, far-fetched claims of belonging and all the other classics still play a role depending on the country, but with the twist of “bringing progress and civilization” to the lesser peoples of the world. This progress can be more abstract, or very concrete in the form of material welfare, modern technology and new infrastructure; but most importantly, the people on the receiving end may not always realize what's best for them and might even resist by force of arms. At the very least, any given conqueror can claim to be protecting them from less pleasant alternatives, real or imagined, who would inevitably do the same.



Poland has already experimented with similar ideas in the context of pan-paganism, but only now are they really getting revitalized as a political tool. This way of thinking isn’t necessarily restricted to the colonies, either, with the Latin Federation arguably wielding similar rhetoric all within Europe. It also appeals, whether sincerely or merely as a convenient excuse, to the ruling groups in basically any expansionist country, including High Queen Wieslawa and the Populists, who are both pleased to have a more palatable way to present their colonial exploitation. Really the only consistently anti-colonial groups are the Devolutionists, Socialists and Communists, and they too obviously vary in their reasons and proposed alternatives. As this school of thought is refined, even academics and some actual humanitarians taking to it with surprising enthusiasm, it may well end up driving a whole new era of even more intense colonialism.

Whether or not it has anything to do with the above, Wieslawa’s first real power move in Africa is a rather benign one: a military alliance with the Sultanate of Abyssinia, largely a check against the United Arab States (and by extension their Latin allies). The UAS has already reannexed the breakaway state of Ethiopia (which had quickly fallen under the dictatorship of a local warlord) and made aggressive moves against Iraq, Persia and the Pratihara, so Abyssinia is right to be worried. From Poland’s point of view this serves as a snap at the Latins, an East African presence that it otherwise lacks, and also an alternate route into the inland wilderness.



The Latins are busy elsewhere, though – namely fighting other “Latins”. Asturias has long been an edge case in whether it should be considered a great power at all, but tradition and its global empire have mostly kept it there. Unfortunately, the under-industrialized homeland has been overly dependent on not just resources but also precious metals from the colonies, using them to prop up its failing economy in a way that inevitably led to massive inflation. In that mess, the crown has become increasingly indebted to just about every other great power, the Populists encouraging Poland's own banks to give generous loans in hopes of future influence. It shouldn’t come as a surprise when in July 1870 the crown declares bankruptcy, defaulting on its loans, and mere weeks later the Latins declare war on Asturias ostensibly to reclaim their possessions by force. In truth, of course, it’s obvious that they’re just savoring the opportunity to decisively humiliate the other Catholic great power once and for all. The English soon join in the fun, for largely the same reasons and to cement their shaky position as a rising star.



Speaking of the Populists, though, that relatively unimportant but widely reported miscalculation becomes one weapon of many wielded against them in the run-up to the 1871 election. There’s been other problems too, such as their unrestricted agricultural policies draining the land in many places at the same time that upriver factories dump their waste straight into the water, but especially for the voting classes, ideological questions actually seem to be the more relevant ones. While the liberals and socialists have actually become each other’s worst enemies, the more conservative parties still associate them with each other, and they certainly serve to highlight each other’s worst failures. Furthermore, the Populists’ failure to actually do anything about the SDP firebrands, whom many are starting to see as a real threat or at least a nuisance, seems to drive many swing voters back towards the Coalition.

More pressing matters appear on the agenda in November 1870, as the Free Nations decides its opportunity has come and jumps on the Asturian dogpile. They have long been eyeing Asturian Alaska, another large chunk of frozen wilderness in northern Amatica, referring back to some old papers where the entire region down to the Pacific Ocean (unexplored at the time) was indeed a Buyanian claim. As attempts to negotiate for or even purchase Alaska have fallen through, that leaves invasion as the “only” option, and now the enemy is thought to be sufficiently distracted.



The Populists urge her not to, but Wieslawa accepts the Free Nations’ call to arms. However, while not expected to be a meatgrinder the likes of Lotharingia, it is undeniably large in scale, involving both the vast colonies south of the Free Nations – Caliphania, the Union of South Amatica, Tayshas and the Zanaras – and Asturias’ other outposts around the world. Luckily the Amatican colonies have neither had nor expected to have a war for many decades, and the Free Nations are rather confident that they can handle them.



An invasion of Esperanza is deemed a little too big for now, but the Army of Bissau is nonetheless shipped into position to prepare for the possibility. The East Indian armies do go on the offensive, though, preparing to invade both on foot through Ligor and with a naval landing in Cambodia. One army is also sent to the Free Nations as a precaution, but the Crown Army isn’t really prepared to commit more troops to a continent-wide war just for Alaska.

The attempted landing near Qui Nhon, the main Asturian port in Cambodia, meets unexpectedly stiff resistance and initially even finds itself outnumbered. However, while led by a competent commander, the local garrison has been cobbled together from conscripted natives and also lacks proper artillery support, something the Poles always have in droves. As the cannons manage to set up on a nearby cape with a clear shot at the Asturian positions, the infantry need only bide its time until the defenders are sufficiently pulverized and then push off the beach. Jan Chodkiewicz, promoted to Marshal of the Indies after his tidy handling of the Ligori war, gets the glory for skillful use of the limited forces assigned to him.



As much as the Populists would like to distract from them, the maneuvers of war capture the minds of the Polish populace. Glorious victories like Qui Nhon make for excellent press, and for once the people seem both attentive and broadly-speaking positive towards the war. Wieslawa capitalizes on this, organizing a military parade in Krakow and making sure the Crown Army’s famous motto “Bring Down the Thunder” is drilled into everybody’s skulls. Krysiak makes some uncharacteristically feeble protests against committing too deeply to what isn’t really a Polish war, but Wieslawa just turns that into an anti-Populist tract of her own.



That final push proves enough to decide the election: the National Coalition ekes out the narrowest possible majority. With metropolitan areas actually swinging for the Coalition much harder than rural ones, the reverse of what people generally expect, one suggested explanation is that after 15 years as the ruling party, the Populists eventually took the Coalition’s place as the “default” that less politically aware people vote for without thinking about it too hard, whereas the well-connected voter base in the cities is the fastest to adapt to new trends and circumstances. And to some extent, the Poles might be starting to understand that it’s a natural part of politics for the pendulum of popularity to swing back and forth. While they obviously grieve their loss, the Populists still have a very strong power base in the Sejm, and also look forward to their eventual return to power after spending a while resting in the opposition.



The reimagined National Coalition has seemingly learned from its mistakes, choosing to criticize the Populists for their neglect of the people without touching the parts of their programme that have proven popular. They’ve made a public alliance with the Slavic Church and organized large charity drives to undermine both the Populists and the various socialists. But perhaps most importantly, they’ve sworn to maintain taxes and tariffs at the level set by the Populists while bringing back subsidies and other support without most of the associated restrictions. Promising the best of both worlds doesn’t always work out as planned, but it is a good way to get votes.



And High Queen Wieslawa now has a much more amicable Premier to work with: Jadwiga Pruska, a former admiral, long-time loyalist and outspoken supporter of the Marynarka’s modernization program (plus one of the only 10 Coalition members in the Sejm during the last term). With her in charge, the military and the Crown can rest assured that they'll have all the money they need regardless of taxes, taken from cuts to other programs if need be. From Wieslawa’s point of view, her plan has worked: she’s managed to outlast Krysiak without getting into too many open spats with her, and now she has exactly the Sejm she needs. Well, as long as Pruska can keep her 151-149 majority in line.



With the positive coverage and a more supportive Sejm, Wieslawa decides to order an invasion of Esperanza after all. Ciudad de Esperanza (Cape Town) occupies a supremely strategic spot at the southern tip of Africa, but despite sailing right past it all the time, the Poles have never really contested it due to having decent enough bases on both sides of it. This also isn’t an attempt to take whole colony, mind you – just a bargaining chip for the peace treaty. But the invasion proves pleasantly easy, as the few Asturian forces in the region are busy occupying English Transvalo.



Rather than sit around in port, the army in Amatica under Zofia Brochwicz also participates in the wide-fronted invasion of the USA. All the viceroyalties combined have fewer troops than the Free Nations, and apparently more trouble getting them to the front.



It can’t be nice being the world’s punching bag: at the same time that the Free Nations invade Alaska over land, Japan (helping England in its war against Asturias) actually lands an army in Ptolemais (San Francisco) and starts fanning out across Caliphania. Asturias itself is under full Italian occupation, the royal family having long since fled from Burgos. Under normal circumstances they might have hidden in the colonies, but right now, the best they can do is the Azores.



Once the Esperanzan forces do arrive, the Army of Bissau gives them a thorough trouncing. As of late 1871, the war is proceeding swimmingly in all theaters and being fought mostly by the colonial garrisons, so life in Europe is hardly even disturbed.



At the same time, another very different kind of African adventure unfolds: after two failed attempts, the first party having returned empty-handed and the second just never heard from again, an expedition setting off from Abyssinia has discovered the source of the Nile, the longest river in the Old World. Going up the Nile would probably have been easier, but the UAS was less than cooperative; but regardless, no European has ever reached the great lake from which the river flows, “the Eye of Africa”. The Poles don’t let the fact that the lake is actually controlled by native states such as the Kingdom of Rwanda tarnish the glory of their “discovery”. The natives may have their own names for the lake – 'Nnalubaale, Nyanza, Nam Lolwe, and more – but on international maps, it will always be marked as Lake Wieslawa. Perhaps the locals should be happy that the discovery is all they’re claiming.



By April 1872, what will be remembered as the Anti-Asturian War – half the great powers having decided to invade it for little real reason but to chop it apart – is over on Poland’s part. The Slavs’ terms might be harsh, but on the other hand, they might just be putting on paper what is already inevitable. In addition to Alaska being made one of the Free Nations, the Asturian crown will make obligations to pay back Polish loans (unlikely to actually happen) and immediately accept the USA and Tayshas’ demands for independence. The colonies themselves have already been wanting it for a long time, but however low the motherland might’ve fallen, they never had the muscle to take it by force. What better timing than now, when the oppressor's armies have already been driven off by invaders (Asturias' other viceroyalties not getting the same treatment is partly because they’re under occupation by someone else). Of course, they might have good reason to fear how long their independence will last, but the treaty offers at least some vague promises of Slavic protection for their new buffer states.




Obviously, both nations have been brought quite low both by their long subjugation and by this latest invasion. However, having been freed of the Asturian yoke – and probably with a lot of “investment” to look forward to – these two newborn republics might yet go on to become productive members of world society. So say the Poles, anyway.



Within the next two months, the other aggressors make similar peaces demanding the repayment of their loans, a number of colonies, and perhaps most humiliatingly, temporary but heavy restrictions on the size of the Asturian army. The once mighty Asturian – or Francian, if you prefer – empire has been well and truly decimated. At least Caliphania, the Zanaras and Juliana remain part of it for now.

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The sight of Poles and Amaticans fighting side by side in the field makes for great propaganda, and they even get to ship home afterwards. Poland enters, for the time being, another period of peace. The same can’t be said for newly independent Tayshas: while the USA is relatively stable, partly due to having a larger percentage of actual Asturians in its population, Tayshas consists of a large Andalusian and Native Amatican majority ruled by a small, also slave-owning minority. The colony already has a long history of religious and ethnic violence and rebellion, and now with pretensions of democracy falling short and no colonial power to provide backup, this situation proves quite untenable. In January 1874, a revolution orchestrated by the allied minority groups takes place in Matamurus and announces the immediate secession of the central provinces under the old Andalusian name, Salsabil. The Hernandez (Houston) government, still in control of most of the military, declares this illegal and effectively begins the Tayshan Civil War. Poland hardly even needs to renege on its promises of protection, hazy as they were to begin with, and decides to consider this an internal matter.



The Tayshan army quickly defeats the mutinying units within its own ranks, but to the south, the provisional republic is hard at work putting new men to arms. And even farther south, the overwhelmingly (94%) Mayan and hardly really integrated provinces of Yucatan also decide to break off. They form a constitutional monarchy under a man they consider the direct heir of their last independent king, and the civil war grows a second front, with the loyalist (or perhaps just “not yet rebelled”) regions separated by both the rebels and New Svea between them.



No rest for the wicked, though – which apparently includes Poland. Seemingly still riding the high of how effortlessly they swept over Asturias, in June 1874, the Latins seem to want (another) rematch over Lotharingia. They seem to be confident that the curse is finally lifted and the new generation of officers far more competent than they were 11 years ago. It really doesn’t feel like 11 years, though – the notion makes Wieslawa herself feel almost nostalgic somehow. She doesn’t really think Poland needs another war in Europe, but as usual, she believes it’s prepared for one. It’s a good time for her and Premier Pruska to start brainstorming ways to stop this from being a regular occurrence, though.



Perhaps it only makes sense that intermittent Polish-Latin wars would become a fixture of European life as the Latins grew in power and the Germans fell by the wayside. Some recall the constant state of pseudo-war that used to reign between Poland and the Francian Empire so many years ago, although today the peacetime really is peaceful while the fighting periods are more intense. The Latins having a clear aggressive streak earns Poland some sympathy even from countries it’s not otherwise on the best terms with. However, the fact that it’s always aggression towards (or by, in the case of Scotland) some Polish ally, not Poland itself, makes many people wonder whether this would be avoidable after all, were Poland not so dead set on maintaining its hegemony. At least fellow pagans are one thing, but what does the common Pole have to do with Lotharingia, other than the Crown wanting to use it as a buffer state and economic puppet? Why fight, why die for that and maybe some new colonies to add to the pile? The socialists in particular are able to draw on this sentiment, inciting the lower classes who are generally the ones made to fight for “the lords” or “the bourgeoisie”. Luckily, wars aren’t exactly started – or won – by referendum.

Then again, the fact that the Polish-Latin wars so far have been very short and restricted to the frontier region might be one reason that leaders on both sides seem to treat them so lightly. Furthermore, the Latin-Moldavian alliance proved unable to glaze over their disagreements regarding Poland, Arabia and the Mediterranean and ended up being broken after all, leaving Poland with one less thing to worry around in this war. Meanwhile, Sweden has slipped out of the Russian sphere and into Poland’s. With Sweden, Scotland and the Free Nations (plus Abyssinia), Poland’s circle of friends is leaning towards the North Atlantic… perhaps the mix-and-match alliances should all be combined into a treaty organization of some sort.



Similar to Poland’s, the Latin Federation’s economy, industry and culture are highly militarized, though in a somewhat different manner, perhaps due to the unique difficulties of selling the idea to a divided and ostensibly democratic nation. Where the Crown Army builds on sheer tradition and prides itself on its (official) separation from politics and even most of society, the Latin Legions have a strong regional identity and work closely with the Catholic Church, even including community events and youth programs to maintain a popular image and raise ready soldiers for the future. The professional army is “voluntary”, but all males must go through military training and be ready to take up arms in the Auxilia when duty calls. On paper, the equipment and doctrine of the Latin army have progressed in leaps and bounds and just about caught up with Poland’s, but only trial by fire will show whether that is true on the ground.


(Polish vs. Latin military research)

Mere days after word gets out, the neighboring countries seem eager to recreate the last war with alarming alacrity: England declares war on Scotland and Germany on the Latins, over the same old Yorkshire and Franche-Comté respectively. It’s starting to look like the peace in between was just an extended armistice.



Well, the first months of the war are also rather similar to the last one, with Poland clearly dominant in England and the colonial theaters while the actual brunt of the fighting takes place in continental Europe. The papers follow the adventures of folk heroes such as Zofia Brochwicz and Jan Chodkiewicz, whose veteran troops are also fresh from the Anti-Asturian War. Due to the Yugoslavians too having learned from the last war and not having Moldavia to worry about, the Latin force trying to invade through the narrow corridor is met by just about the entire Yugoslavian army.



A good chunk of the English Royal Navy’s fighting force is caught and sunk in the Channel, still stuck using old wooden ships of the line against ironclads whose armor they can hardly penetrate.



The first major land battle with Polish involvement, which takes place in Cambrai over late July and August, starts with a fearsome Latin offensive against Lotharingian lines but turns into a total rout when Polish reinforcements start arriving en masse. Post-battle analysis of the equipment scattered across the battlefield shows that the Latins have arguably surpassed the Poles in both rifle and artillery design, but that wasn’t enough to make the difference against sheer numbers in this particular battle. All salvageable specimens are sent back to Poland for study.



However, the real spearhead of the Latin invasion is a bit to the east in Charleville. A massive force equal to almost four of Poland’s standardized “armies” has seized the city and immediately gotten to work securing it, filling the flat and open countryside with a vast semicircle of trenches – a technique developed and mastered largely on these same Lotharingian battlefields. The Polish generals make sure to take their sweet time amassing the forces needed to dislodge this makeshift fortress – it’s not going anywhere.



The Battle of Charleville, another good contender for the largest land battle in European history, is finally launched in September. The attack is preceded by days of artillery bombardment, which the Latins answer in kind to their best ability; they’ve placed their artillery within the city itself, making the Poles both unable and unwilling to bombard them but sacrificing much of their own accuracy in turn. At night, both sides send out raiding parties to probe and harass the other. When the time finally comes for the mass charge, it becomes clear that despite having had weeks to prepare, the trenches are poorly designed and poorly protected in such a way that they don’t really cover each other and capturing just one part leaves the rest highly vulnerable. Furthermore, even the Latins' advanced rifles are still single-shot and can only manage a few volleys before the enemy is already upon them. Trench doctrine is still undeveloped on both sides, and the technology doesn't quite support it. However, while the massive Polish-Lotharingian force’s casualties are proportionally smaller than the Latins’, they’re still grievous, and neither side is looking forward to this kind of fighting becoming a staple of warfare.



As the Latins are so focused on the north, the combined forces of Poland, Yugoslavia, Bavaria and Germany get increasingly aggressive in the south, putting the Latins in a devilish dilemma of which front to reinforce. The idea of Poles knocking on the gates of Rome once more is both frightening and infuriating.



Much like last time, England is quick to drop out once the war turns against it (not that it looked good to begin with). However, unlike last time, Wieslawa doesn’t just pick off some random colonies but makes a more strategic decision: the treaty stipulates the removal of military installments in Lancashire and on the Isle of Man (a job largely done for them by Polish artillery) and forbids the construction of any new ones. This basically turns the provinces, already vulnerably positioned, into a Scottish hostage in the case of war, which should hopefully be a good deterrent.



And as the bloody, bloody offenses push deeper into Latin territory, they too make peace in record time in November 1874. From them, Poland demands their half of the Maniolas: not only is the current division of the islands notoriously messy, Polish and Latin claims being separated by less than a mile of water in some places, the Poles are getting tired of invading the exact same places for the umpteenth time in a row.



Another swift victory for the Crown Army, but not a cheap one; and while it is reassuring to see that the Federation is still something of a paper tiger, they’re certainly getting better every time, and it’s clear even to jingoists like Wieslawa and Pruska that this cycle of revanchism – the Latins invade, the Latins lose, they get increasingly determined to try again – is utterly pointless for both sides. In the aftermath of the war, and as the German-Latin one still rages on, they decide to be the bigger man women and put into action their plans for what should hopefully be a long-term solution…

Spoiler: Meanwhile, Elsewhere

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Newspaper Gallery

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The UAS is consolidating its position, annexing the rump state of Iraq, the entire Shahdom of Persia and parts of Pratihara Afghanistan. Like many other parts of the UAS, the latter two are neither Arabian nor in fact even Muslim.



Much to the Karnata Kingdom’s frustration, the Maratha Confederacy – still effectively a military dictatorship – has continued to expand and even catch up in terms of industry and population, though it’s not quite yet equal. As Japan has made promises to protect the Confederacy from any undue aggression, the competition between the two has turned into a race to see who can eat into the Pratihara Empire the fastest.



A new challenger has also appeared in China: under pressure from all directions, the Kingdom of Yan – already dismissed as a lost cause by many – has managed to not only expand once more but actually start a program of rapid modernization in its government, military and economy. Both the would-be Emperor and his otherwise highly reactionary advisors have seen this as the only way to compete or even survive against the foreign barbarians invading what should be the Chinese Empire. Given the somewhat ridiculous population density of the region, Yan is actually the most populous country in the world at 135 million people, and continues to grow as it invades its neighbors. Currently it’s still rather backwards by great power standards, but the speed of its reforms has been remarkable, and should it survive all threats both internal and external, it might well become a world player one day.

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The Kingdom of Sweden, Finland and Norway, usually just known as Sweden, is despite its name a unitary state ruled directly from Stockholm (as much as distance allows). However, following the revolution in 1849, it has been a constitutional monarchy, King Johan III Inger being mostly a figurehead for the Riksdag. The Riksdag has actually existed since the 1400s and even been unusually inclusive, counting peasants as the fourth estate alongside nobles, priests and burghers, but since all estates had equal representation despite peasants making up 95% of the population, it still wasn’t exactly balanced. The Riksdag faded in influence over the years as power was centralized under the King, only reemerging after the revolution and now with elected, proportional representation. However, whereas the Latins' revolution has led to their mighty resurgence as a great power, in Sweden’s case it was largely seen as another nail in the coffin, the materially weakened country no longer even having the same tradition and prestige to draw on.



The colonial governorates are still nominally subjects of Sweden, but increasingly referred to as the Nordiska förening, a hazy term variously translated as “alliance”, “league”, “federation”, “union” or “society” but the official English term being “Nordic Union”. As Sweden couldn’t stop them from seceding if they felt like it, the Union is largely treated as a voluntary alliance for mutual economic benefit. Sweden also has a respectable number of smaller colonies around the world, but has acquired no new ones since the revolution – other great powers feel that these outposts have been “left to fallow”, Sweden being too weak to really do anything with them, but they’ve been left alone so far due to some other great power always offering Sweden its protection.



In a starker variant of the same kind of thinking displayed by all the colonial powers to some extent, even Poland, Swedish colonial rule has been based on hierarchical ranking of “races” with Nords (not including Sami) at the top and Africans, Amaticans and Alcadrans at the bottom. This has been used to justify their conquest, exploitation and overall needless cruelty towards them. And though the post-revolution governments have been softening this attitude somewhat, enough to draw protests from the colonies, even they haven’t truly abandoned it, merely adapted it to the new “White Man’s Burden” philosophy. Emerging research in genetics, evolution and anthropology is readily adapted into eugenics, providing what looks like scientific backing and applications for this kind of thought.

The Polish-Swedish alliance can be credited largely to the new government, which doesn't really care about old grudges, and the fact that the United Kingdom of Russia cut its alliance with Sweden the moment it no longer needed a check against Novgorod. Of course, the most important factor is probably just the sad truth that Swedish military power isn't what it used to be, and it needs someone to protect what's left of it.

Spoiler: Comments

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Obviously the Tayshan Civil War was coded by me, more specifically to happen if Tayshas became independent at any point (unless it was late enough that they’d managed to take a decision to make Andalusian an accepted culture). It’s the kind of thing that I honestly wish I had the patience and/or creativity to script all over the place, but eh. Inspired by the fact that Tayshas is indeed a large country with a tiny ruling minority and a history of rebellion. And yes, it did feel kind of cheaty to be the one who released them, but the chance was right there…

Meanwhile, the core issues in Europe are becoming a real nuisance. This war being such a carbon copy of the last one is kinda what sealed the deal. I’m going to code a continent-wide conference to deal with some of them, maybe make a few land trades, since it feels reasonable enough to me that countries on both sides would eventually get tired of fruitlessly fighting over them too. Certainly better (and probably more “realistic”) than this endless stream of half-year wars over the exact same provinces. However, spoiler alert, I’m also going to add the possibility of restoring those cores once we get into the great war era.

I think one big problem with the military AI might be that it doesn’t use enough gun... uh, artillery. Because of that, despite the Latins having similar or superior tech and the difficulty buffs on top of that, I seem to have the advantage even in battles with equally large armies. The optimal build is, broadly speaking, 50/50 frontline and backline units, with maybe a few extra frontliners to provide a buffer in case of large casualties.

And, one bizarre bug I’ve had for a long time but forgot to mention: for some reason, every country has every political party unlocked at once, including several parties of the same ideology that are normally supposed to replace each other at given points in time (i.e. four different Conservative parties or something). On Poland's part, I muddle through by manually tweaking the party list whenever a new one should be unlocked; for other countries, I just set up an automatic event to fix things if a party of an ideology that hasn’t been unlocked yet (currently only fascism) somehow gets in power. Oh yeah, and every now and then a few countries' ruling parties will get shuffled, even countries' that aren’t supposed to be able to appoint them. Good times.

[IthilanorStPete]

Interesting update! Seems like military thinking is advancing a bit faster in this game than in OTL, with early trench warfare starting and generals not senselessly ordering their armies into the meat-grinder...makes sense with the increased frequency of wars, though.

With Sweden, Scotland and the Free Nations (plus Abyssinia), Poland’s circle of friends is leaning towards the North Atlantic… perhaps the mix-and-match alliances should all be combined into a treaty organization of some sort.

I see what you did there.

The UAS is consolidating its position,annexing the rump state of Iraq, the entire Shahdom of Persia and parts of Pratihara Afghanistan. Like many other parts of the UAS, the latter two are neither Arabian or in fact even Muslim.

What religion are they, Zoroastrian? I've forgotten how religion evolved in that corner of the world in this game.

...Yan is actually the most populous country in the world at 135 million people...

How's it compare to Wu? I thought most of the population in China was closer to the coast.

Meanwhile, the core issues in Europe are becoming a real nuisance. This war being such a carbon copy of the last one is kinda what sealed the deal. I’m going to code a continent-wide conference to deal with some of them, maybe make a few land trades, since it feels reasonable enough to me that countries on both sides would eventually get tired of fruitlessly fighting over them too. Certainly better (and probably more “realistic”) than this endless stream of half-year wars over the exact same provinces. However, spoiler alert, I’m also going to add the possibility of restoring those cores once we get into the great war era.

Not quite sure how I feel about this; it makes some sense, but the Latins and Poles don't really seem on speaking terms these days. Maybe add some possibility of internal tension due to revanchists on both sides?

The optimal build is, broadly speaking, 50/50 frontline and backline units, with maybe a few extra frontliners to provide a buffer in case of large casualties.

Yep, that's about how I usually build armies; my standard early/mid-game army is 30k, 4 inf/1 hussar/4 art/1 eng.

[SilverLeaf167]

Interesting update! Seems like military thinking is advancing a bit faster in this game than in OTL, with early trench warfare starting and generals not senselessly ordering their armies into the meat-grinder...makes sense with the increased frequency of wars, though.

To some level that's definitely just me describing what I see happening in game, but you're right, I also feel that even if machine guns, improved artillery and whatnot are what made trench warfare as infamous as it is, once guns get decent enough to cover a bit of distance, there's nothing inherently advanced or technological about grabbing a shovel and digging a hole in the ground to stand in. Doctrine too is just a matter of seeing what works or doesn't and taking notes. Especially as the bloodiest battlefields by far have had hundreds of thousands of soldiers fighting in the wide open flatlands of the Low Countries and Northern France, the exact same place where trench warfare got its reputation in real life and there's no other cover available.

The entrenchment bonuses themselves are at roughly half of what they're likely to reach by the time of the great wars.

What religion are they, Zoroastrian? I've forgotten how religion evolved in that corner of the world in this game.

Hindu, due to being conquered and converted by the Pratihara pretty early in CK2.

How's it compare to Wu? I thought most of the population in China was closer to the coast.

It is, but most of that coast is under Manchurian, Japanese, Ning or English rule these days. Still, despite how broken up it is, Wu manages to clock in at a respectable 101 million. We're hitting the halfway point of Vic 2 soonish (1886), and population numbers will probably be one of the things discussed in the world overview then.

...When I started Vic 2, I definitely didn't expect such chronologically short chapters to become the norm for me, but on some level I'm glad they did, since I was worried we'd whisk past the whole game way too quickly.

Not quite sure how I feel about this; it makes some sense, but the Latins and Poles don't really seem on speaking terms these days. Maybe add some possibility of internal tension due to revanchists on both sides?

Fair. Though I'm mostly fixing the mess I made myself with too liberal core placement, I do feel a tinge of possibly misplaced guilt whenever I script any favorable events into the game, but the plausibility is perhaps the bigger thing I worry about. As you probably know, the gameplay stat of "revanchism" will actually go down due to having fewer cores in other people's territory (and there's no way to raise it manually), but I'll try to brainstorm some way to represent that. Some balance of jingoism and straight-up militancy boost is a likely solution.

[SilverLeaf167]

Chapter #64: Art of the Deal (1875-1880)

Spoiler: Chapter

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13 November, 1875

As has happened several times before, the Germans get off to a good start in their war against the Latin Federation, only to soon come to a halt once the Latins are no longer distracted with Poland. The war threatens to turn into another gruesome meat-grinder, probably lasting for several years before both sides ultimately leave empty-handed. High Queen Wieslawa and Premier Pruska have taken the liberty of organizing a diplomatic solution to end these constant border conflicts in Western Europe, but it’s up to the participants to actually make it happen.

To that end, the Congress of Charleroi is called in January 1875, while corpses still litter the battlefields of Lotharingia and the war rages only some 60 miles to the south. Despite that, Germany agrees to send its foreign minister, while the Latins are represented by the Paris Consul himself – it costs nothing to come and listen. Pruska and the foreign minister will stand for Poland. England, Scotland, Yugoslavia (in some pretension of independence) and obviously Lotharingia are also accounted for, but outside observers have been kept out to leave all parties free to negotiate with less need for useless posturing. None of the participants besides Poland are entirely sure what even to expect, and the terms will indeed go through many mutations before they're acceptable to all sides.



The Latins and the English are initially outraged by the deal suggested, seeing it as blatantly unfair and stacked against them; however, they’re forced to face the facts that not only have they lost every war so far, they’ve usually been the aggressors, and are actually losing one as they speak. This is a better deal than they can ever expect should they continue to fight the same fight over and over. Germany is also somewhat reluctant at first, but ultimately decides that it’s worth it to gain something material today in exchange for giving up some future plans. The final, agreed terms of the Congress of Charleroi are as follows:

1. Germany and the Latin Federation will immediately cease fighting, make peace and retreat from the other’s territory not included in this treaty. This mostly applies to Germany, as the Latins occupy no German land at the moment, but do have troops moving there.
2. The provinces of Udine and Gorizia (Weiden and Görz) conquered in 1854 will be returned to Germany, and the Federation will renounce its claims to them. This also takes care of the mutually dangerous border between the Latins and Yugoslavia.
3. Germany will renounce its claims to the Franche-Comté region (Federation) and county of Luxembourg (Lotharingia). In return, it will be granted the presently occupied border province of Metz, which will be acknowledged as an integral part of Elsass-Lothringen.
4. The Federation will renounce any and all claims to Polish, Lotharingian and Yugoslavian territory. They will do the same in return, not that they really have any. Also, the Poles will not keep a permanent garrison in Lotharingia or a war fleet in Yugoslavia. Despite Latin demands, Calais remains a military base due to its vital and vulnerable location.
5. England and Scotland will renounce any and all claims to each other’s territory. The Lancashire disarmament clause of the previous peace will be withdrawn. Poland will no longer keep a permanent garrison in Scotland.
6. As long as the terms of this treaty remain unbroken, Poland will refrain from any offensive wars against the other signatories or their immediate allies. (As it already did…)

The last one-sided condition, restricting Poland and no one else, is necessary to sweeten the deal, but the Polish leadership actually sees it as a masterstroke. Whether the others see it that way or not, it effectively places Poland a notch above the other great powers as overseer and enforcer of the treaty, and makes it look like the others are desperately trying to appease it. But even with that added, it’s striking that Poland’s only real concessions in this treaty involve promises not to do this or that “unless the others force it to”. However, this is a result of the simple fact that there are few things the Latins could, justifiably or given their current standing, demand from them – the one such option, the return of colonies like Gambia or the Maniolas, isn’t really even discussed, as the treaty is restricted to Europe to keep it from bloating out of control. More importantly, in the end, the closed-door nature of the negotiations means that everyone gets to go home and give the treaty their own positive spin, hopefully allowing them to end this particular cycle of conflict without anyone losing too much face. If someone was worried about Polish aggression, they can sell this as a victory, while the Poles have a good excuse not to be aggressive. Perhaps projecting a little bit, Wieslawa is under the impression that the other great powers also keep invading each other at least partly because they need to do so in order to be considered great powers. No side can deny that these wars have been a fruitless drain on everyone’s resources; any chance of ending them, even if it means gritting your teeth and making some compromises, is mutually beneficial.

But then again, one reason that the treaty seemed to be accepted with relative ease might be that since much of it consists of promises and little else, anyone can very well break it once they feel like it…

And despite the seemingly favorable terms, the treaty doesn’t actually pass without controversy in Poland either. To people who don’t quite understand Wieslawa’s theatrical logic, it can easily seem like she’s just eaten her word and not only negotiated a shady backroom deal with the Christians, but actually tied down Poland’s foreign policy and military movements within its own sphere of influence in return for promises that those devils will never keep. It is in many ways reminiscent of the controversial Treaty of Rome. While not exactly on the verge of rebellion, there’s a sizable amount of people both in the streets and in the government either demanding or pleading her to tear up the treaty and… well, they’re actually rather hazy on what to do after that. Though it seems like such protests should be restricted to a few hardcore reactionaries, the overall debate regarding foreign policy and even Poland’s place in the world ends up escalating and infecting a lot of people who regularly wouldn’t give a damn about the subject. Intelligence from abroad suggests that similar things are happening in most of the other signatory countries.

Wieslawa can only sigh and rub her temples. So do they want to die for Lotharingia or not?

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In the aftermath of the Anti-Asturian War, Asturias has rapidly gone down the path of many other failed empires and succumbed to a popular revolution. Much like Italy, it already saw a few attempts at the start of the century, but back then the imperial military was still strong enough to put them down. Not so much anymore. In the spring of 1875, after already taking over most of the country, the revolution finally reaches Burgos. However, partly because they have little interest in imitating the Federation, the resulting system is a more conventional kind of constitutional monarchy in the vein of Sweden, with the King still present in politics but just greatly weakened. Most of the power lies with the parliament, the Cortes Generales.



The Cortes sets out to discuss greater political and religious rights for the Andalusian Muslim minority, but in a country as staunchly Catholic as Asturias, even the liberals are far from unanimous on this. More immediately, though, the national capital is moved down to Toledo, a more central, accessible, and perhaps even somewhat defensible location. It has stayed in Burgos all the way until now largely for traditional reasons that the new government doesn’t put too much weight on.

Speaking of Andalusians, though, in all this mess, Caliphania decides to abandon the sinking ship and unilaterally declare independence. With Tayshas and the USA leaving the empire and the nearest Asturian territory thus an ocean’s worth of sailing away, it sees little reason to stay either. The Asturians who have settled in the territory since its conquest fear for their rights, but partly in order not to provoke its neighbors, the government in Ptolemais promises them equal treatment. The Zanaras and Juliana still choose to stay, though, weak and with plantation economies highly dependent on their European connections.



More shockingly, a similar revolution takes place in Yan. As its war with the rival state of Ning has proven to be less one-sided than expected, the populace has taken the opportunity to force its terms on the government. The Chinese Chaos, if you consider it to have started with the Pratihara collapse, has lasted for almost forty years now, basically one long and gigantic civil war between claimants to the Chinese Empire that has already claimed millions upon millions of lives – all at the hands of warlords, oligarchs, old nobility and foreign conquerors. The people themselves finally want a say in it. They don’t want to have to choose between despots at home and republicans from abroad: they want a real democratic China. Much like Japan, China needs an emperor, but not a tyrant. The real question will be whether Yan turns out to be just another of those “failed empires”, or if it will in fact become stronger from this like the Latins did.



All this only seems to reinforce the Polish doctrine that even a short lapse in monarchical power can and will lead to a rapid snowball effect. Combined with the disgruntlement over the Congress, there’s actually an idea brewing in some royalist circles that the Crown might not know what’s best for itself. As Poland is, despite its minor liberal reforms, still staunchly monarchist, it’s hard to see these ultra-monarchist circles gaining much traction with their demands of even greater government power, at least in any way that would threaten the state – but it must be a sign of the times that they even exist.



Still, the National Coalition is able to enter the 1876 election with an easy mind. While the Royalist resurgence obviously eats into the conservative vote a little bit, making the Populists more competitive that way, it certainly doesn’t help their vote either. The general (perhaps hopeful) impression among conservatives is that the liberal swing of the Hungry ‘40s was just an ideological craze that is now starting to fade, and indeed, the Coalition ultimately expands its majority from 151 to 240. Its middle-of-the-line compromise between conservative ethics and liberal economics seems to be doing rather well, having even managed to surpass the Latins in terms of industry again; though many are quick to note that this was achieved by propping up otherwise unprofitable enterprises for the sake of numbers.

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It sure would be nice if nostalgic old men and armchair generals grumbling in their smoky chambers were the country’s biggest problem, though. If the liberal boogeyman has started to fade, then it’s been replaced by a new one. Most of the strange radicalization happening on both ends of the political spectrum can be traced back to the communist agenda and everyone else’s reactions to it. Though still very marginal in terms of actual membership, the communists are disproportionately noisy and their ideas frightening to the rest of society, many popular newspapers also liking to use them as a source of cheap outrage. Should the communists get a real foothold with the working class, whether those people can vote or not, they could potentially vote with their feet and paralyze all of society simply by refusing to work.



In fear of this, some groups of both conservatives and especially reactionaries are starting to organize into specifically anti-communist movements. The aforementioned nationalists demand state crackdowns and protection of traditional values, and if the state can't or won't put down the red menace then they'll do it instead. Two distinct Guards are forming: Red and White, very small for the time being but, some believe, with potential to grow into an actual civil war if they get out of hand. They both hate each other, and the Crown doesn’t like either of them either.



Policing has a long and storied history in Poland – indeed, the more common term is still “city guard” – but to the people being policed, that mixed bag of practices is hardly a good thing. While the Crown Army has been the only “army” allowed in the country for a long time now, most other security arrangements have been left to the local authorities to figure out. In many places they work with or are even part of the military, yet also cooperate with state-sanctioned but independent militias, while large businesses the likes of the Crown Railway Company, Škoda Works, Gdansk Arsenal and HAPAG have been allowed to keep lightly armed (but still armed) security forces of their own. Especially as investment into “security” has been on the rise ever since the German Revolution - obviously spikes during any period of unrest - law, order and property have usually been better protected than the citizens themselves. And when push has come to shove, the government has seen nothing strange about deploying even the Crown Army against its own citizens.

The predecessors of both of the current Guards played a prominent role on either side of the Long Revolution, and indeed, the Whites were among those militias approved by the government, but for fear of things escalating out of control, Wieslawa and Pruska – the Coalition proving its worth as the Crown’s chief ally against extremists of all kinds – work together on a long-awaited and wide-reaching set of police reforms. For one, the entire country’s law enforcement is standardized and split into a “police” and a “gendarmerie”, only the latter of which carries firearms. The police is still organized locally, but led centrally from Krakow, while the gendarmerie is a branch of the Crown Army. This is accompanied by a number of ground-level changes to how they operate, mostly to what could be called the citizens’ benefit, compared to the previous system that is.

More vitally, independent militias – including the Guards – are all outlawed, though the full impact of this is hobbled somewhat as much of the White Guard is quietly absorbed into official law enforcement while both continue to operate in secrecy or under other names. After some debate and much lobbying, exceptions are also made to allow corporations to keep their security forces. Furthermore, while openly carrying or “stockpiling” (an ambiguous term) firearms is outlawed, they can’t be fully banned in the countryside, nor can the Crown touch the knives, axes and other potential weapons that many if not most citizens still carry for work, dress or tradition.

But the most controversial reform, which few people notice at the time, is hidden in the margins: the nondescriptly named Second Department of Crown Army General Staff or “Dwójka”, formerly dealing only with foreign military intelligence, is given the new task to “cooperate with law enforcement on request or command of the Crown”. This will eventually lead the Dwójka to take an ever greater and more proactive role in tracking and capturing potential rebels, conflating domestic dissidents with foreign agents, and overall becoming Poland’s very own secret police.

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With Latin help – or, in fact, leaving almost the entire job to the Latins – the United Arab States keep striving to live up to their name, annexing the Barbary States based in Tunis. Thanks to Moldavia, there’s no land or even sea connection between Tunis and Mecca without going around all of Africa, and so it stands that despite Arab administrators eventually arriving to take over the region, this is in many ways a Latin proxy war to strengthen its allies’ and its own control of the Mediterranean. That goes double, as the Barbary States had long been in the Moldavian sphere of influence, and Belgorod’s failure to intervene is a show of weakness. In addition, the UAS is going to be more motivated than ever to reclaim Egypt and Tripolitania.



In August 1877, the Tayshan Civil War is finally over after three years of guerrilla warfare in the mountains, deserts and jungles of the vast country. With outgunned Native Pagans and Andalusian Muslims fighting an asymmetric war against the Asturian Catholic military, it had all the look of a colonial conquest, but with economic support from the USA, finally ended in government victory. Many of those guerrillas weren’t caught, though, but simply vanished – many of them into Caliphania or New Svea – and the government lacks both the ability and the will to continue hunting down its own citizenry. Time will show whether it ends up pursuing reconciliation or indeed retribution, but despite some level of sympathy for the rebels, geopolitically a united Tayshas is in Poland’s best interest. With the war over, Poland can resume its influence over the Hernandez government with supposedly clean hands.



Only two months later, though, another potential civil war is already about to boil over – in the UAS. Following its failure to break free during the revolution that brought the Majlis to power, a provisional government (i.e. rebel group) in Darfur, Sudan, has been undertaking an active campaign to win international support against its longtime Arab oppressors. While the issue is in many ways unremarkable from Poland’s point of view, this campaign has succeeded in gaining some visibility in the Polish media, mostly due to the rebels' proximity to Abyssinia and shared opposition to the Arab regime and its Latin patrons. The moment of truth arrives in October 1877, when a Latin “peacekeeping” force sails past Abyssinia and lands in the UAS, officially pledging its support to the Arab government but also seeming to foreshadow a greater military presence in the region.

At Abyssinia’s urging, Poland (quite hypocritically) puts out an official protest against military intervention in the region and effectively throws its weight behind the Darfuri rebels. In one fell swoop, the matter has been taken out of the hands of the locals themselves, and will be decided by tense negotiations between Poland and the Latins directly.



Two years after the Congress of Charleroi and the backlash to it, neither side is terribly eager to stand down in what has half-accidentally become a matter of national pride, but neither do they really want to break the peace over what they both view as a bunch of insignificant desert. Wieslawa gets to play her favorite game, that of military maneuvers and public posturing. Anticipating, though not hoping for, a potential war over the matter, one African and one East Indian army set off towards Abyssinia, while in Europe, troops reenter Lotharingia and start digging in along the Latin border. The High Queen believes that displaying Poland’s readiness for war will make the Latins less eager to play brave and actually start one.

It turns out that with the Congress, she might have created her own worst enemy: never did she expect that settling the border dispute between the Latins and Germany would lead the two archenemies to gang up on Poland. Yet in November, Germany announces that it would consider Poland’s intervention in the Latin sphere of influence a violation of Clause 6 of the Congress and join the Latin side should it come to war. German involvement would indeed lock down much of the Polish army, leave the Lotharingian front horribly flanked and threaten the Polish mainland directly. Things only get worse when Russia, not even a signatory of the treaty, seconds this statement. Poland is supposed to have good relations with the Russians; yet they make clear that this in effect a heavy-handed reminder for Wieslawa to simply back down and not do anything she might regret.



Pruska also cautiously recommends letting the matter slide, but whether Wieslawa intends on listening to the voices of reason around her, forces beyond her control seem to insist on making the decision for her. The Polish ambassador to the January meeting of the great powers, held in Moldavian Alexandria and hoping to replicate the miracle of Charleroi, is both a staunch Wieslawa loyalist and a heavy drinker who doesn’t hesitate to tell the other participants just what his High Queen will do to them if they don’t back down while they still can. If neither side backs down, the Darfuri Crisis of all things seems to be veering straight towards the most severe war in modern Polish history.



Considering those facts, even Wieslawa is ultimately forced to concede. As much as it hurts, she believes in maintaining prestige and power projection to protect the country, not blindly sacrificing the country to protect her own pride. The Latin-German cooperation was unexpected but not entirely out of character, but the Russian betrayal – not unlike the Moldavian one in the past – feels very personal to her, and becomes a grudge she will carry to her grave. In any case, by approaching the Latins directly she is able to reach a status quo agreement: Poland will drop the matter, quietly withdraw from the border, and try to sell this whole thing as proof that the treaty works, not a minor dispute that nearly came to a war between four great powers. If anything, it’s rather magnanimous of the Latins not to demand any further concessions at this point. The Darfuri people themselves have been largely forgotten and left to whatever the Latins and Arabs will do to them.



While a wise decision, it is indeed a major blow to Polish prestige, angering many of the same people as the Congress did. If only she hadn’t insisted on making it such a public matter to begin with, and just let the UAS handle its internal matters like any other country. The very idea of such a war also floated the terrifying possibility of Poland’s otherwise mutually hostile neighbors managing to join forces, a possibility that once demonstrated like this might well shadow every similar crisis in the future.

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The Darfuri Crisis and its political fallout tragically overshadow a grand feat of engineering taking place in Poland itself. As the Jutland peninsula so frustratingly juts out of the continent, acquiring a faster path from Polish ports in the Baltic to ones in the North Sea has been a prime interest since time immemorial, and indeed, a canal connecting the two seas along the Eider River has already existed for almost a hundred years now. However, the Eider Canal is narrow and very shallow, basically only navigable for small sailboats or flat-bottomed barges and totally useless to most ships even at the time it was built, even more so today. As engineering skill, tools and materials have improved, so has the ambition for a larger canal able to accommodate shipping and military traffic between the major ports of Kiel and Hamburg – the Kiel Canal. Time is money, and though expensive in itself, the canal could save hundreds of miles in travel for countless ships far into the future.



The project is met with some skepticism, but even more so enthusiastic funding from the Crown and private sources alike. In the spring of 1878, briefly delayed by the threat of war, construction is finally able to begin. The 60-mile-long canal is excavated by a mixture of modern Polish machinery and the manual labor of over 9,000 workers, and the earth is moved out by a series of purpose-built train tracks. The sheer novelty and scale of the construction site make it a tourist attraction for both gawking locals and wealthy visitors with too much time on their hands.



The second-greatest canal in the world, after the fully hand-dug Grand Canal in China which has fallen into disrepair during the Chaos, quickly starts to take shape. Once it is finally completed sometime in the next decade, the company formed to maintain it will be able to collect a toll from shipping companies wishing to use it, which they can easily calculate is still much cheaper than going around. Any profits are then distributed among investors, including the Crown. Marynarka vessels are exempt from the toll, though.

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Poland manages to stay at peace for at least another few years. However, given the lessons of the Darfuri Crisis, Wieslawa has no choice but to keep expanding the Crown Army. Being able to defend Poland and its allies’ 1500-mile land border in the west has always been its main baseline, which it has generally met, but adding the 1000-mile eastern border to the equation makes it a real headache. Russia can’t exactly be handled by the token garrisons usually stationed in the region for the past several centuries, and Poland finds itself going right back to the crises of the post-German Revolution era, when the fear of a multi-front war in Europe completely paralyzed its foreign policy. With the High Queen's deepening distrust of the Russians, the border becomes increasingly militarized, which history shows can just as well cause wars as prevent them.

Premier Jadwiga Pruska, well-acquainted with the military, has an active role in this process, willingly playing right-hand woman to Wieslawa. However, in March 1880, a year before the next election, Pruska is found dead in her office one morning. She had been working through the night, as she often did, and the guards at the door had been told not to disturb her – not that they heard anything strange. The old admiral is deemed to have gone to her armchair to rest and then died of some sort of seizure in her sleep.



The 46-year-old High Queen Wieslawa is struck with grief both personal… and political. As Premier and leader of her party, Pruska heroically committed herself and the entire Coalition to the Crown’s decisions, even when questionable, and unlike perhaps with Krysiak, Wieslawa is neither able nor willing to blame any of her so-called failures on her late friend. Furthermore, Pruska was really the first proper leader the modern Coalition has ever had, and her line of succession is less than clear-cut. Certainly not the best time to be dealing with any intra-party squabbling.

If Pruska was a tireless old warhorse, then her eventual successor Cyryl Zaworski is a diligent diplomat and advocate of proactive foreign policy, but seen by many detractors as a member of the “appeasement club” who puts great faith in the power of congresses like Charleroi and Alexandria to replace huge wars as a way of solving small squabbles. Were it not for his economic and social policies, he would probably be labeled a yellow-bellied Populist. As it is, his selection as a Premier has to be settled by a vote among the Coalition deputies, and the competition between him and a more hardline opponent is extremely close, putting the cobbled-together nature of the Coalition on full display.



As the Populists smell blood in the water, they approach the coming election with renewed enthusiasm. However, they’re also under attack from their left, the communists having done such a shockingly good job consolidating their support that the SDP is rumored to be secretly turning to them for help. And in the midst of all this, the Scots seem insistent on dragging Poland into a whole new diplomatic snarl…

Spoiler: Meanwhile, Elsewhere

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Newspaper Gallery

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Even after the nominal end of the civil war, Tayshas has had to combat repeated insurrections by Salsabili rebels, and to the south of Yucatan, the Guatemalan natives actually managed to push out the government and declare their own independence. Tayshas almost immediately declared war on them too, seeing this as an extension of the civil war.



If anyone had high hopes for constitutional Yan, they seem to have been dashed by the parliament’s early stumbles and much of its territory deciding it was tired of these insane reforms for reforms’ sake and would rather be part of Wu, even if it meant less “advancement”. However, right next door in what is now the Zhenhua People’s Republic (the little gray rectangle), a perhaps even more remarkable revolution has taken place: a communist party (or People's Liberation Army, rather) has managed to rally the tired population to overthrow the local warlord, promising rapid liberalization, industrialization and the spread of the revolution to all of China by what is supposedly the world’s first socialist state. Given the poor communications, overall confusion, audience fatigue and quick turnover rate of any given regime in the region, this isn’t given much if any attention in Europe, but whatever happens there might serve as a lab experiment for what to expect when communists seize power. And Yan isn’t entirely out of the game, either.

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Lech Lisowski, 59, lives a quiet life at his brother’s farm out near Poznan, mostly writing poetry and introspective philosophical works that he is too afraid to share. He hides them in his study, actually half-expecting, half-hoping that someone will dig them out far in the future and publish them posthumously. The delay of his execution went from “indefinite” to “permanent” and he was released from prison once the Long Revolution had well and truly calmed down, both as a nod towards reconciliation and because his jailors realized just how little he truly mattered. However, he has remained paranoid ever since: about the Crown changing its mind and coming after him, yes, but somewhat delusionally also the dangerous impact his words could have on others.

With that in mind, he has stopped reading the papers and reacts to any news about the Social Democratic Party with extremely mixed feelings. They and other socialists the world over wave red flags and have made “red” itself into their symbol, which of course fits quite well into the Polish national aesthetic. But he is in fact not delusional to think that this is all thanks to his accursed Red Eagle Army: indeed, the half-fictional group’s most lasting impact by far has been the permanent association of red and white with revolution and monarchy respectively, originally referencing the Polish flag but smoothly adopted in other countries and given new meaning regardless of its origin. The blood of the workers; the flames of revolution; the red clay that they plow. And of course, it is delightfully eye-catching and simple.

The color is where Lisowski’s contribution to the socialist ideology begins and ends, but sometimes he can’t help but wonder what could’ve been. He’s pretty sure he met Reuben Stern a few times when they were both studying in Krakow in the ‘40s, maybe even exchanged a few words with him, who knows. Had he done what Stern did, or perhaps traveled with him, maybe he could now be the prophet of the masses, the harbinger of change read and quoted on all continents… as well as the People’s House just down the road, which was built by volunteer work and hosts red-tinted events every week.

But then he remembers – or tells himself, rather – that that’s exactly what he didn’t want to happen, sips his tea and goes back to writing.

Spoiler: Comments

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Finally, the first diplomatic crisis that actually came to anything worth mentioning (even if it was a white peace), not counting the liberation of the Uyghur Khanate that ended so quickly I hardly noticed it.

I actually forgot about the Social Liberals (visible in one of the election screenshots). They’re a PDM addition, basically just people who support both social and political reforms to compensate for the greater number of them added in the mod. They don’t have any parties associated with them, so they only show up in the Upper House and don’t really do anything else.

It’s somewhat funny to me that republican rebels in a monarchy only ever turn it into a constitutional monarchy. It makes it feel like there’s a few too many of those floating around, but I guess that’s just how this world works then. However, if they then get another republican revolution, they finally become a proper democracy.

For some mysterious reason, sources on the internet can’t agree on something as simple as the distance saved by the Kiel Canal. Of course there’s gonna be some variance, but the numbers I could find range between 250 and 500 nautical miles, and a very rough estimate on Google Maps is much closer to the latter. Just a weird tidbit.

[IthilanorStPete]

Germany and the Latins teaming up, even for a temporary crisis? Politics makes strange bedfellows indeed.

The Congress of Charleroi seems interesting, though given that Scotland and England are going right back to war, we'll see whether it has much of any lasting effect...

[SilverLeaf167]

Chapter #65: Break Some Eggs (1880-1886)

Spoiler: Chapter

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24th of September, 1880

Since the Congress of Charleroi in 1875, England and Scotland have done a diligent if somewhat grudging job following the text of the treaty. With Polish observation (i.e. supervision), after a great deal of verbal and bureaucratic squabbling, they managed to agree on a border that both sides would accept “in perpetuity”, a phrase that diplomats like to throw around with great optimism. The process saw a few empty moors change hands, but little more, and everybody went home.

However, whatever piece of paper the two kingdoms signed or even sincerely accepted, it could never erase the literal millennium of conflict, enmity and rivalry on the British Isles. Colonies aside, within the context of Europe the Scots are conquerors (Celts, Nords or both) and the English one of their would-be victims, with the tacit understanding that the nation of England only still exists because the Scots’ Polish patrons didn’t care enough to wipe it off the map. Though the English have since started to get the upper hand in terms of colonies, trade and industry, they still view themselves as the righteous underdog desperately trying to beat back the Scots to a point where they won’t pose a threat anymore. Although, from England’s point of view, the true military threat doesn’t come from Scotland itself, but the Scottish-Polish alliance.

As such, the border may be clearer now, but remains very tense and militarized. From Scotland’s perspective, their recent wars have been a series of crushing victories for them and the Poles, and the English have to be either maniacs or fools to keep trying again and again. This… subsidized sense of superiority fuels a certain jingoism in the Scottish mentality, proving the English right on at least one point: if they won’t start wars all the time, the Scots will.

The so-called Shepherd’s War begins with the pettiest possible of border conflicts. In August 1880, after the countries make a tentative treaty regarding the free movement of civilians, a major step forward in itself, a shepherd near Carlisle, Scotland, gets the impression that it won’t be a problem if he and his flock wander across the border just a little bit. Around a quarter mile into English territory he is stopped by a passing cavalry patrol that treats him with perhaps exaggerated suspicion but soon just escorts him back across the border, as he didn’t cross at an official checkpoint or have any papers on him. Altogether routine and unremarkable – handled pretty well, even – if not for an overeager military captain in Carlisle hearing about the incident and deciding to escalate it out of all proportion and push it up the chain of command.

Within a couple weeks, the original “incident” has been forgotten and overshadowed by the Scots taking this opportunity to bring up every similar dispute they can think of and the English, a little confused, answering in kind. By September 24, the matter has escalated to war, the Scots claiming that the English are harassing their citizens while not obeying the various treaties any better themselves. They demand indemnities, apologies and reparations – a rather poor excuse for the coming death of thousands – and who knows, maybe some adjustments to those other deals. It is, by all means, an act of naked aggression for its own sake that has nothing to do with its stated reasons.




The Poles don’t have all the information – at this point, no one does – but it is blatantly obvious that whether the Scots are “in the wrong” or not, they’re the aggressors here. High Queen Wieslawa has little interest in sending her troops to fight such a war or enabling the Scots’ dysfunctional behavior, even before considering the fact that it would definitely be seen as a violation of Clause 6 of the Congress. She cites this treaty as the reason for her refusal, but also makes it known that she doesn’t approve of the war either. She isn’t too worried about dishonoring, if you can call it that, her alliance with the Scots; they always come crawling back pretty quickly. Better let this farce stay as local as possible.

This turns out to be a doubly wise decision, as the war ends relatively quickly after the Scots occupy Lancashire and the English decide, as they so often do, to cut their losses and accept the Scots’ demands before they get any more outrageous. That must get old after a while. Some credit must be given to Scotland for “defeating” England on its own; most of the English military must have been stationed overseas. Peace is made already in January 1881 and no territory changes hands, but many feel that the Congress of Charleroi has already been violated, in spirit if not in text, or at least proven to be meaningless. Still, as expected, Poland’s good relations with Scotland are quickly restored and everything is seemingly back to normal.

---

Poland has bigger things to worry about within its own borders. The Crown and the mainstream parties alike seem to have badly underestimated the socialists’ persuasive (or manipulative) powers by assuming that they would only ever appeal to the lower classes. While the nobles, capitalists and priests are still quite unconvinced or even disgusted, the white-collar workers, artisans and even some officers often come from lower-class backgrounds or are at least more sympathetic towards them. This makes them more receptive to carefully crafted and moderated socialist arguments – sweetened by promises that would apply to them as well, such as state pensions and education reform (one of the biggest hot-button issues at the moment). There’s also a generalized backlash and will to “protest” against both the Coalition and the Populists, and to explore new options.

At the same time, the state is increasingly convinced that the Social Democratic Party is just a front organization for hardcore communists: the line is hard to draw, as they obviously can’t present themselves as revolutionaries in public, but the Dwójka says it has good reason to believe that despite tensions between the communists and socialists themselves, communist agitators are encouraging people to vote for the SDP in order to gain visibility, destabilize politics and perhaps control the party from behind the scenes. Worse, the SDP is aware of and compliant in this, seeing it as the only way they’ll ever get seats.

And so, the results of the 1881 election take most people completely off-guard and greatly alarm even those in the know. For decades now, the Sejm has been basically a two-party system between the Populists and the Coalition. Only the occasional Royalist has poked their head in, and most people assumed that any possible changes to the Sejm would come from that direction. Instead, while the Coalition still maintains a firm majority (though smaller than before), the Social Democrats rush past the Populists to become the second-largest party. In a twist that must have surprised even the SDP itself, however, most if not all of their deputies now in the Sejm are classified by the Dwójka as "communist infiltrators”. Their whole voter base is a flock of sheep being led by wolves.



Opinions are split on how to respond to this. Wieslawa personally doesn’t pay that much attention to the intricacies of the Sejm, as long as the ruling party does what she wants, but is certainly worried if the Dwójka’s reports are really accurate. The Coalition would like nothing more than to see socialists of all kinds barred from the Sejm, something they and the Populists can agree on, but to their frustration they realize it’s not so straightforward. A ban of specific parties would be possible, but easily circumvented by simply founding a new one; a ban on new parties in general is legally possible but inadvisable, and would require a retraction of reforms made after the Long Revolution; and a ban on an entire ideology, as long as the particular group can’t be proven to cross certain lines, is deemed practically impossible. There’s also debate on whether direct action against the socialists, who clearly have at least some real support with the voters, would only radicalize them further, or if the threat they pose within the Sejm is in fact greater than without.

As soon as the Sejm gets to work, the so-called SDP deputies almost immediately start questioning, debating, soapboxing and disrupting it to the best of their ability, but at least their impact is limited by being in the minority. For lack of a better option, the Dwójka starts trying to connect as many deputies as possible to illegal communist groups so that they can be removed from the Sejm, perhaps justifying action against the SDP as a whole if enough evidence can be gathered. In the meantime, Premier Cyryl Zaworski’s Coalition will do all it can to stand up to the communists and warn everyone of the danger they pose.

---

Wieslawa leaves them to it. She has, in her mind, more important things to take care of. Within a mere couple weeks of the first openly anti-colonial party being admitted into the Sejm, Poland is to once again organize an international conference, this time in Krakow itself. The Darfuri Crisis and almost disastrous Congress of Alexandria a few years back demonstrated that Africa, the “dark continent” seen first and foremost as a roadblock on the way to Asia, is ripe with great power flashpoints of its own, which have continued to surface ever since – and at the same time, expeditions such as the one to Lake Wieslawa have ignited a growing interest in the potential prestige and scientific, economic and military benefits of further colonization.

With the exception of Esperanza, European colonies in Africa have been relatively small and restricted to the coast and extracted most of their value from trading with the inland nations, or “tribes” as many choose to call them. While there are some large, relatively modern and recognized countries like Kanem-Bornu, Benin, Abyssinia, Sofala and Betsimisaraka, others like Kongo and Rwanda are both blurry in their borders and seen as societally backwards, and most of the continent is teeming with smaller traditional tribes just minding their own business. The philosophy of the White Man’s Burden provides justification, nay, a responsibility to conquer these people for their own good – and as the great powers start to drool over the real or imagined treasures of the continent, even the more “advanced” countries in Africa quickly start getting painted with the same broad brush.



The Krakow Conference of 1881, in the vein of the somewhat shaky but still holding Congress of Charleroi, is intended to resolve a number of smaller disputes, delineate territories belonging to each great power, and most importantly, create a precedent and framework for handling similar matters in the future. Countries have been claiming territory in Africa for centuries now, but due to low reward and high risk, from both natives and tropical diseases, haven’t actually waded too far inland. Now that huge leaps forward have been made in terms of things like vaccination, treatment and logistics (as well as weaponry), the topic is relevant again.

The immediate success of the Krakow Conference is middling at best, but its cultural significance will be remembered centuries into the future: the powers already present on the continent feel encouraged to go ahead with their claims, and even those that previously weren’t interested have had their curiosity piqued. The Scramble for Africa has, by hand of the High Queen, officially begun.



As a general rule, the great powers will start expanding inland from their preexisting coastal bases. Poland itself has, south to north, three main regions of interest: the Namib and Angolan shrublands, the Cameroon region south of Kanem-Bornu, and Guinea. The last one is the most troublesome: the Latins and Scotland also have plausible claims to it, but Poland would very much enjoy a land connection between Senegambia (the combined Senegal-Gambia-Bissau colony) and the Gold Coast. Scotland’s relationship with Poland makes it both harder and easier for them to argue, and as each starts encroaching from different directions, a final agreement has yet to be reached.



Progress in Central Africa is faster than anyone dared expect, though. Due to colonies on both sides of it, the Kingdom of Kongo has long had a presence of Polish merchants and even a Polish embassy in the capital Mbanza-Kongo, a rare “honor” for a country of its status. After the Krakow Conference, other foreigners quickly start pulling out of the region, while more and more Poles arrive. Already in July the King is informed in the softest of terms, with seeming politeness made possible only by Kongo’s inferiority, that Poland considers everything south of the Congo River to be in its “protection”. The Poles wish for closer and warmer relations with the Kingdom as well, including military bases, ports, and a say in its foreign relations. The King is no fool: he knows what conquest looks like. But he also realizes that he’s being offered a choice between the easy way and the hard way. The process is in many ways reminiscent of Poland’s expansion in Amatica, though even less equal. With great reluctance, he chooses the easy way. For his compliance, he will keep his status and Kongo remain nominally autonomous, present on maps if nothing else, but in every way that matters, it is now a Polish colony – home to several million people, and what the Poles hope are massive quantities of various metals.



Poland and the other great powers also start expanding in another region given less attention: the Pacific. As steamer ships have made transpacific traffic more viable, the small and far-flung islands generally only remembered as a graveyard of explorers have also gained new relevance. Partly to avoid the hassle of fighting wars over such a remote region, Polish colonists setting off from the East Indies agree to focus on the so-called Micronesian islands between the Maniolas and Hawaii (the oldest Pacific colony, presently a part of Caliphania).



None of this comes for free, of course. Up and above the relatively small material costs of building a colony, there’s the personnel: every little outpost will need constant supply runs and some kind of garrison to keep in check natives and rival colonists alike. No matter the treaty, an unenforced colony isn’t a colony at all. Besides those smaller detachments, it is estimated that at least one full army will need to be stationed in Kongo, bringing the number of armies permanently stationed in Africa up to three – at the same time that the Crown was already considering one in Abyssinia. Poland’s European manpower is starting to get stretched a little thin, possibly forcing it to start using more of those colonial conscripts it considers both risky and ineffective.

Furthermore, some would argue that this isn’t the best time to be sending loyal troops overseas: much as happened during the Long Revolution, sharpened left-right divides and general agitation are also causing an increase in separatist activity. The starkest example would be on 1 December 1881 in the Bremen Voivodeship, a.k.a. the North Sea corridor, when a railway bridge over the Weser River suddenly explodes. A major tragedy is only averted because the explosion was apparently a few critical moments late (if the purpose was indeed to kill), occurring seconds after a passenger train has crossed safely. As the middle of the bridge goes crumbling into the river, in the initial panic it’s assumed to be a German attack, which is only half-wrong: it's soon tracked down to one of several small groups that have adopted a more aggressive approach to German reunification. Foreign support is suspected, but not yet proven. As the corridor’s most important role is as a military and economic thoroughfare between Poland and Frisia, disrupting the single railway running through it is the most obvious way to fight Polish occupation.

Over the coming years, several more terrorist cells there and in other disputed regions will adopt similar tactics, making sudden attacks against military or civilian targets, though few on such a large scale as the bridge explosion. How they expect the Crown to buckle under random violence is as enigmatic as with any other rebels. If their goal is to provoke a reaction out of the police, gendarmerie and even the Dwójka, that they certainly achieve, inviting increased surveillance, harsh crackdowns, curfews and armed raids in problem areas.



The investigations end up implicating communist involvement as well: while they shouldn’t have any reason to care about German nationalism, they’re believed to be whipping up chaos and any rebel cause they can find in an effort to weaken the state. However, this line of questioning quickly dries up and proves inconclusive at best, and even the Crown is starting to suspect that the Dwójka might be exaggerating a bit when it comes to the red menace. That feeling is also becoming more widespread among the populace, who if anything are starting to feel like a lot of the official press about socialism is just fearmongering and should be duly ignored. This witch-hunt mentality might even end up helping the communists in the end – whatever they are or aren’t planning.


(Only the latter part actually affected anything, because despite the votes given to communist deputies, the ideology itself has like 5% support...)

As for Guinea, eventually the Scots and Poles reach a compromise: Scotland (which has no other colonies in Africa) takes the south while Poland reserves the rights to a narrower strip in the north. However, another similar dispute has emerged near the Latin colony of Serra Leoa (Sierra Leone), and this one has the potential to go wrong in a lot of ways: the Latins’ claim to it is fair enough, but it’s not like Poland wants to admit that. This relatively tiny area happens to have outsized importance because of its awkward location.



Wieslawa actually considers circumventing the problem by just conquering a chunk of Kanem-Bornu. It was easy enough with Kongo, right? However, even before getting bogged down in any debate on how “civilized” the Sultanate might be, it certainly has a respectable amount of machine industry and, more importantly, a standing army of 210,000, making any war a large investment if nothing else – probably larger than the issue deserves. Instead, the colonial authorities manage to negotiate military passage on Kanem-Bornu’s own, somewhat lacking but at least functional, railway through the region, as has been done with Benin next door. The conservative government refuses any foreign help to improve the railway or any other part of its industry, taking great pride in its self-made modernization and feeling justifiably wary of European “investment”.

Speaking of passage, as work on the Kiel Canal makes steady progress (despite the occasional terror scare), in late 1883 the English announce a similar project in Panama, except even more ambitious: whereas Jutland is blissfully flat and almost at sea level, the planned Panama Canal (on the narrow but uneven isthmus between Amatica and Alcadra) requires a ship to pass through a total of six locks to go up and down over a distance of just some 30 miles. However, if successful, it will save not just hundreds but thousands of nautical miles that it presently takes to sail all the way around Alcadra. The English themselves don’t even have any particular need for it: they just want to show off their engineering (and get rich off the tolls). However, even beyond the technical side, there’s a certain hiccup with the plan: the isthmus belongs to Ingerland.

Ingerland, a Swedish colony and part of the Nordic Union but also a major beneficiary of the promised canal, doesn’t see any reason to make that a problem. It signs a deal with England, leasing it the land and local support needed for the construction in return for an advance payment and a cut of the profits. After Poland protests to its ally Sweden, telling it to keep its colonies in check and give the project to the Poles if it has to, the response from Stockholm is a rather embarrassed note that Sweden doesn’t really have that sort of power over its dominions – the full reason being that the colonies don’t hesitate to use the threat of secession as a bartering chip in any and all of their negotiations with the motherland.

---

While the Sejm is busy dealing with communists, the military with colonies, law enforcement with terrorists, and Wieslawa with all of the above, the Crown Council once again takes the initiative to at least alleviate some of the problems Poland is facing. Though officially unpolitical, many members of the Council have sympathetic or at least pragmatic attitudes towards social issues and more leeway to act accordingly. While giving away any territory is out of the question, the goal of maintaining Poland’s image as a tolerant multicultural state is rather uncontroversial. Hoping to undermine rebel grievances without directly giving in to their demands, the Nationality Act hammered out in ‘83-’84 makes it easier to immigrate and gain full Polish citizenship (not a large-scale issue, as most of the world’s migration is directed at the colonies) while also addressing some, but not all, issues with cultural and religious inequality that have been brought up in recent decades. Like any other large state, Poland has to strike a precarious balance between tolerance, nationalism, and keeping down separatist movements, and its behavior in times of crisis makes many feel that the pretense of equality is quickly cast aside when push comes to shove.



The Crown remains unwilling to address most of the deeper reasons for unrest in the country, and unable to dictate things like the composition of the Sejm even if it wanted to. And so it happens that between Whites, Reds and separatists, Poland also has to deal with the same old liberals who apparently haven’t gotten the note that the ‘40s were forty years ago. Partly thanks to Russia next door going on a sudden reformist streak and vastly expanding voting rights and the power of its new parliament – the Duma – people in Poland are once again demanding the same. Though the official position is that what happens in July 1884 is just a series of riots that got out of control, the fact that even the gendarmerie can’t handle them and has to call in the Crown Army shows that although ultimately hopeless, what occurs is a real armed rebellion.



Beset by enemies and critics on all sides, is the very idea of moderate “semi-parliamentarism” doomed to fail? Is it unsustainable to give the people a voice and then ignore it when it doesn't please you? Those critics would certainly say so, and the SDP still stands as a prime example of a group that can be neither excluded from the Sejm nor truly accepted into it. There’s no particular crisis going on – in fact, by the Crown’s own metrics, Poland is thriving – and all these groups are attacking various real or perceived flaws in the very fundamentals of the state, making it hard to dismiss as them just venting their frustrations over something else and going home soon enough.

High Queen Wieslawa herself was raised as a strong believer in the current system, and remains one even after decades of first-hand experience. Unfortunately, even less so than a regular parent, being the Mother of the Nation doesn’t necessarily mean understanding how your children feel, and she has become the sort to get either defensive or more likely aggressive when confronted with the idea that some of their demands might even be reasonable and justified, not just necessary evils. Her original policy of “nailing down” the status quo through small reforms has proven incapable of satisfying the hungry masses in the long run, but her own reaction has been to become stricter, not more lenient. At this point, she could well align with the Whites if she didn’t find them so personally off-putting. As long as the military power of the state is powerful enough to put down any and all uprisings, traitors can be treated as just that, while she focuses on the good of the loyal Polish people. However, she is increasingly aware of the fact that even the Crown Council’s lack of ideological vetting is working against her – another reason that she’s becoming more distrustful of it.



Both she and the Coalition approach the ’86 election with some dread, understandable given the communist surge in the last one and the supposedly unrelated unrest that has tormented the nation ever since. The SDP, its most popular candidates once again suspected communists – can the two really be distinguished at this point? – has gotten even bolder in its rhetoric. Their ideologues have found that painting a vivid image of capitalist atrocities (real or exaggerated) allowed by the total lack of government control is even more effective than going into the nitty-gritty of how to fix them. Worse, they’re suggesting that this isn’t just a place for a change of policy, but proof that the system – be it the Sejm, the Crown or both – heartily approves of this behavior and any incremental change it might agree to is thus inherently disingenuous.

The final results bring small gains for the hardcore SDP, a new wind for the Populists, and a corresponding drop for the Coalition, but it manages to keep its lead. That’s just the electoral system talking, though: thanks to the increasingly fragmented political field, in the popular vote it wouldn’t take much of a swing for the communists to take the lead altogether, or possibly usher in another Sejm where no party has the majority. Though Wieslawa has already made it clear in private conversations that she would never accept a communist government and Premier, that kind of declaration is grounds for a crisis in itself. One can only hope that Poland isn’t stuck too deep in a pit of denial.

Spoiler: Meanwhile, Elsewhere

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Newspaper Gallery

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Until recently, the Asturian colonies in Amatica had done an admirable job honoring one particular treaty: that with the Pueblo Nation, allowing it to remain independent while squeezed in between the USA and Tayshas and attracting many native refugees from both. However, for a number of reasons – their own newfound independence, the discovery of oil in neighboring regions, the worldwide surge in colonialist thinking – the USA finally decided to sweep that old piece of paper under the rug and boldly march right into Pueblo territory with little real justification, annexing it as a frontier territory.

Spoiler: Comments

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Gameplay or even story-wise I certainly don’t mind it, but the middle and upper classes being so weirdly willing to vote for the communists keeps forcing me to trip over myself to explain it. Anyway, after some tweaking by me, the communists have some pretty interesting behavior in the government: while in the opposition, they support political reforms (which expand the vote, raise the demand for social reforms etc.) but despite their promises oppose social reforms, calling them a weak compromise to forestall the revolution. Once in power, they finally support social reforms but quickly start rolling back political reforms to create a one-party state. Socialists always support both kinds of reforms.

I forgot about that PDM-added “The [Country] Protectorate] event, which triggers when an uncivilized country in Africa falls into a sphere of influence and (after some force calculations) decides to submit rather than be conquered. For a moment, I actually considered rejecting it as “too easy”, but ultimately decided that if I had them in my sphere anyway, it would only mean doing the same thing more tediously piece-by-piece. However, it gives me such a big head start that I’ll stick to these specific regions rather than just colonize everything in sight. Speaking of, I hate colonizing the Pacific. So many tiny, weirdly laid out islands that you gotta spend a minute clicking through every time you want to upgrade your buildings. That’s why you should always pick the biggest, easiest to click ones!

I’m not sure why my writing style changed or when – somewhere around the Amatican Revolution? – but, full disclosure, I often find myself writing like a page and a half of the next chapter before even opening up the game, just talking about whatever was going on when we last left. Next thing I realize I’m like a full chapter’s length and only two years in. But it comes naturally, and some way into an AAR a little rambling kinda feels necessary to stop it from becoming just a bullet-point list of events – I’ve also practically stopped doing world-building “specials”, just shoving the same info into the main chapters instead. Guess I’ll keep doing that, since it’s not like anyone’s complained or anything.

That being said, the next chapter will be the 50-year world overview.

[IthilanorStPete]

Eventful update!

• The Scottish-English conflict was a bit of an anticlimax; I was expecting it to build into a much bigger problem. I expect more disputes in the future, though...
• That is a weird level of Communist support; any idea what's causing it?
• Curious changes to the Communist party behavior; what's their behavior normally like in PDM?
• Hope the Polish Kongo works out better for the Kongolese than the Belgian Congo did...
• Where are Kanem Bornu and the other African countries at in the country rankings? Any chance of any of them becoming a GP?
• Looking forward to the 50-year overview!

[SilverLeaf167]

Eventful update!

1. The Scottish-English conflict was a bit of an anticlimax; I was expecting it to build into a much bigger problem. I expect more disputes in the future, though...
2. That is a weird level of Communist support; any idea what's causing it?
3. Curious changes to the Communist party behavior; what's their behavior normally like in PDM?
4. Hope the Polish Kongo works out better for the Kongolese than the Belgian Congo did...
5. Where are Kanem Bornu and the other African countries at in the country rankings? Any chance of any of them becoming a GP?
6. Looking forward to the 50-year overview!

1. Yeah. That's partly from me ending the previous chapter there (and not knowing myself what was going to happen), and then proceeding to go on that ramble about their troubled relations before the war even began.
2. I'm not entirely sure, but first and foremost it's because voters aren't hard-coded to hate or fear them in any way and just vote for them on the same criteria as any other party. Upper-class citizens are coded to be unlikely to become reds, but apparently don't mind voting for them should the situation allow. The biggest of their draws would be Protectionism, which after the Coalition's slide towards Free Trade is only offered by the Royalists, Socialists and Communists – protectionists are in the minority, but apparently very passionate about it, as it's the second-largest dominant issue right after Free Trade. Our Consciousness has also stayed remarkably low for some reason, which (if it works as it claims to) means that voters prioritize issues over ideologies.
3. Standard PDM (or vanilla) Communists always support rolling back political and expanding social reforms, whether they're in power or not, which is the polar opposite of what's strategically sound for them. Similarly, standard Socialists will only back political reforms under pressure (same as Conservatives) but always support social reforms. I consider my approach more accurate and functional.
4. Yeah, well... Probably somewhat better, given the Poles' track record (which is what it is partly because I don't want to spend all this time roleplaying that), but "softer" colonialism is still colonialism.
5. Benin and Kanem-Bornu are at a very respectable #20 and #21, equal in industry score despite the size and population difference between them, with Benin leading in prestige and Kanem-Bornu in military. Benin is the world's top producer of... boots? GP is a long shot, but they're still higher than for instance Sweden, Arabia, or any New World country other than the Free Nations. They're both in our sphere, too, so probably safe for the time being. The other African nations are much lower, and most of their immediate future's not looking so good...

[SilverLeaf167]

Special #7: The New Millennium (1886)





(Link to 1836 for convenience)

Spoiler: Overview

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Excerpt from the preface of Liberty or Death: Peace and Unease in the Revolutionary Age by Samuel Moss (2004)

[…]

More generous and less Eurocentric writers have placed the beginning of the Revolutionary Age, or sometimes a separate ‘First’ Revolutionary Age, as far back as the Kanmei Restoration in 1756. This saw the Japanese Shogunate overthrown and, after some twists and turns, replaced by what many consider the first modern constitutional monarchy. This was indeed a key inspiration for consequent revolutions in Yan China (1756), Cambodia (‘71), Amatica (‘76) and Germany (‘81), but actually rather different in nature, resembling more a bloodless palace coup that only gradually ended up ushering in proper democracy. Furthermore, out of these initial regime changes the Japanese one was the only one to prove lasting, the others either backsliding into tyranny, being toppled by foreign invasion or even failing to reach their goals in the first place. Indeed, the Japanese contribution deserves to be acknowledged, but later revolutionaries themselves would say that they drew their inspiration from somewhere in the chain of events that began with the bombing of the Mlody Orzel in Ledenesz Harbor on 27 February, 1776.

To follow that logic further, however, after the German Revolution ended and the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) was formed in 1783, for more than fifty years other countries experienced only brief and abortive attempts at revolution, not counting those where the Germans enforced it through military means. By the method-based definition of a revolution, for our purposes ‘mass insurrection by the non-ruling social classes’, this can hardly be considered an Age of them, even though due to the German example’s monumental cultural footprint there’s been a natural desire for historians to include it. There is no lack of excellent reading to be found on the details and impact of all these earlier revolutions. In this more narrowly defined book (in the interest of not making it even thicker than it is) the proper Revolutionary Age, which saw more of them in rapid succession than any period before or since, is considered to have started in 1840.

But to make any sense of the Mad Year of 1840, one must start at the top of that downward spiral, back in 1836.

[…]

---

In 1883, the Kingdom of Poland celebrated its own millennial birthday and the year 1000 in the Slavic Calendar. It’s a common and very natural illusion for more recent history to seem more eventful and important, but it’s hard to deny that, in many ways, the changes to all aspects of everyday life have been far more rapid in the last century than any similar era before it.

In one sense, the global megatrends of the 19th century (A.D.) have included things like industrialization, urbanization and the rapid introduction of technological marvels, but on the other hand, there’s the revolutions. Broadly speaking, the entire world has drifted towards liberalism and democracy in such a way that absolute monarchies have gone from the clear majority to an exception and a sign of backwardness. Among the 69 widely recognized countries in the world, there are:

• 12 traditional monarchies, all but two of them in Asia or Africa
• 8 semi-parliamentarist monarchies, mostly Poland and friends
• 30 constitutional monarchies, though this includes sixteen colonial governments that are in themselves republican
• 17 full republics
• 1 military dictatorship (Maratha Confederacy)
• 1 communist state (Tibet; see the section on Asia)

In some countries, this shift has been achieved by violent uprising – notably the Latin Federation, Sweden, Asturias, Arabia and much of East Asia – but others such as Russia, England, Moldavia and Karnata have simply seen the change in the wind and chosen to bend rather than snap. The role of the monarch varies accordingly from simple figurehead to chief executive, typically retaining more power the more compliant they were in the process.

If anything, Poland stands out as unusually pig-headed for its complete lack of reforms to monarch power, only making some small tweaks to the Sejm, but from the Polish point of view (and especially that of High Queen Wieslawa herself) this is a sign of strength. It is also apparent in the Poles’ rather traditional view of the role of the state: to collect taxes, wage wars and maintain order. Partly thanks to the surge of socialism in the past couple decades, other countries have started putting more attention on “the welfare of the people”, and at least some basic things like minimum wages, pensions and public education have become the norm in most European nations, especially those where the lower classes are able to vote. Meanwhile, industrial subsidies have become the second-largest expense in the Polish budget (right after naval upkeep – ironclads aren’t cheap), yet barely a zloty is spent on social security or public services, which many rightly see as a great injustice. The rich get free money so they can stay rich, while their employees have to scrape by on a starvation wage. The Long Revolution is still ongoing.



Also over the past few decades, the vast majority of countries have finally banned chattel slavery. While other forms like wage traps, prison labor, indentured servitude and even just black market slavery still exist, and former slaves are generally second-class citizens, the practice of owning and selling human beings as property has been quite unanimously condemned. Although, the rather undramatic and outwardly almost casual nature of this change has allowed many countries to heavily whitewash the practice – and their own role in it – in retrospect. The last major holdouts to give it up were the United Arab States, the Union of South Amatica, Tayshas, the Zanaras and the United Lordships, all highly reliant on slave labor but ultimately forced to bend to internal and external pressure. Though about twenty countries (mostly in Asia and Africa) have yet to explicitly ban it, the only ones where slavery remains a major presence are Kanem-Bornu and Abyssinia.

In terms of technological development, Poland has just about kept pace with the others, but that’s in stark contrast to its old tendency to present itself as an innovative forerunner. It was a shock when the Latins first fielded more advanced weaponry than was used by the Poles at the time. Telegraph lines can reach almost anywhere in the world (or at least the major cities), railway lines cover each continent even if they don't quite connect them (Russia’s “Trans-Tartary Railway” is still a work in progress), electrical lighting and machinery are becoming more commonplace, and the internal combustion engine has been invented but not yet put to use. Poland is well-positioned to exploit that coming boom, though: great quantities of rubber and oil have been discovered in the colonies, and subsidies have allowed even otherwise unprofitable fuel refineries to get a head start setting up.

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Some countries in the circle of great powers are old acquaintances, whereas others have only risen recently. Sweden and Asturias have decisively fallen off the map, but at the same time, England has firmly entrenched itself as a major player (albeit one that still lost to Scotland), as have the Free Nations. Germany has also managed to recover from its long civil war as a full-blooded democracy, but its awkward location and loss of all its colonies mean it’s still at the back of the pack when it comes to global influence.



The so-called secondary powers include some that stand a real chance of joining the big leagues one day, and some that are simply coasting by under Polish protection and focusing on economic or cultural development over military might.



As might be expected, many of the most populous countries have gotten there simply by conquering chunks of China; in terms of “home” population, Wu is the clear leader, not that this is stopping it from being torn apart. In the developed countries, reduced infant mortality and increased life expectancy have led to a massive spike in population growth even as actual fertility has somewhat declined due to lifestyle changes: even before factoring in colonial conquests, Poland’s European population has almost doubled within the last 50 years. Meanwhile, the Marynarka is the largest navy in the world by far, but the Latin Federation’s standing army (357 brigades) is actually bigger than Poland’s (349). The next runners-up in army size are Russia (299), Japan (266), the Free Nations (195), Moldavia (176), Germany (172) and England (160). Both Japan and England draw a lot of their cannon fodder from China – England more than half.

Spoiler: Europe

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Almost all of Europe either belongs to a great power or is allied with one – Navarra, Bolgharia and Armenia are the only “neutral” countries, and only because no one wants to make an alliance with them for little benefit and the risk of being dragged into war with their larger neighbors. This web of alliances means that the smallest change in borders requires a huge amount of blood spilled and international outrage, so at the same time that entire continents are being partitioned at the coffee table, it took a huge congress and mutual concessions for just a few towns in Europe to change hands (and people are still not entirely happy). The balance of power shifts through economic, cultural and political upheaval, not territorial expansion. It also makes for a nice double standard between Europe and the rest of the world. That’s why it was such a huge event when Chernigov and Novgorod entered a personal union and created a whole new, never before seen great power with ambitions to expand its borders and hegemony towards the east – thankfully not towards the west, for the time being, though Poland’s anxiety over this new front to defend is well-documented.

Spoiler: Amatica

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Despite their initial foreign policy stunts being a series of embarrassments, the Free Nations eventually managed to be recognized as a great power after all, albeit a regional one whose influence is restricted to the New World. The Anti-Asturian War was a good showing for the Free Army, and economically speaking the country’s population, natural resources and industry have allowed it to dominate its neighbors. Its main weakness, militarily speaking, would be its rather piddly navy, which makes it difficult to send its sizable army anywhere outside Amatica. Both of the major parties officially identify as liberal, their defining trait being whether they support more power for the central government (Federal Party) or the states (Commonwealth Party). Socialism is also growing in popularity, but is somewhat held back by the state-based voting system's tendency to favor the more conservative countryside.



To address the elephant in the room: less than a year ago, a native separatist movement managed to break free of Alfmark, claiming most of the colony’s territory as the Mikmaq Kingdom and leaving the colonial forces controlling only the capital Alfsvik. Neither government officially recognizes the other, making it something of a cold civil war. In the confusion, and out of outrage towards Sweden’s failure to intervene, the Socialist Party in charge of Alfmark has left the Nordic Union and declared independence – never mind that this makes it much harder to fight the rebels. The rebel Kingdom’s own population is only about 34% Mikmaq, but its official stance is that the colonialists having moved onto native land gives them no right to rule it, and if they don’t want to live in a Mikmaq country then they’re encouraged to leave it.



The former Asturian colonies have mostly gotten their things in order, abolishing slavery and whatnot, and even Tayshas has worked out some sort of peaceful solution with its myriad ethnic groups; hopefully it'll last. Caliphania stands out as another rare country with an elected socialist majority, the Hizb al-Eummal – Labor Party. The socialists have implemented massive and massively popular reforms to working conditions, immigration and more, and as a result, drawn in an almost overwhelming flood of migrants, growing Caliphania’s (relatively small, but still) population by 50% in only a decade. At least they have plenty of empty (or Native) land to settle them on.



New Svea remains an oddity, within the Nordic Union and in general: quickly cobbled together from what used to be Tayshan territory, it’s a native nation in all but name, with a roughly 1,4% European minority. That minority happens to hold all the top government positions, but the need to keep the colony together ends up creating a huge mess of compromises, benign neglect and local autonomy. Many believe New Svea’s situation to be rather similar to Tayshas’, with only (quickly waning) colonial power keeping the ragtag confederation together.

Spoiler: Alcadra

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Alcadra remains, to put it bluntly: peaceful at best, stagnant at worst. The closest thing to a border or government change on the whole continent has been England’s recent decision to grant its small Guyanan colony some autonomy as a viceroyalty. Alcadra also receives much less immigration than either Amatica or even other colonies in Africa or Asia. Other than that, Andeland, Vanaland and Santa Croce have been able to industrialize somewhat – and though the Poles mostly remember Santa Croce for its farcical performance in 1863, when its entire invasion force got captured and paraded around Poland, it has actually done a decent job helping out in other Latin wars since then. There are no independent countries on the continent (other than the Nordic Union being de facto autonomous), and they aren’t given much notice on the world stage.


(Nice party name…)

Spoiler: Africa

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The trendy destination of the decade. The Krakow Conference was held only 5 years ago, and already more of Africa has been colonized by European powers than in all the time before then. Poland itself has focused on its (tragically not connected by land but still closely linked) colonies in Senegambia, the Gold Coast and Central Africa. All of them are on the west coast, but at least Poland has Poniatowski (Île Bourbon), the Sambojas (Seychelles) and Hollhavai (Diego Garcia) for bases in the Indian Ocean. Great metal deposits have in fact been found, while other areas have been put to use growing the same old cash crops like sugar or new ones like rubber. Much of the territory claimed hasn’t actually been explored at all – by Europeans, anyway – somewhat like the early days of Amatican colonization, and much of its value remains speculative. Very exciting for all involved.

The other major landgrabber would be England, which has claimed much of the southeast and tried to build a land connection across the center of the continent, only to run into disagreements with the Latins in the east around Lake Wieslawa. Having reached the Rwandan border, England quickly annexed the entire country after a rather one-sided war. The Latins themselves are in the process of invading Betsimisaraka, a war which started as a local conflict over their provinces on the continent but has since expanded to the point that the Federation is also expected to annex Madagascar itself by the end of it.

Sofala for instance may well face a fate similar to its neighbors, but Kanem-Bornu, Benin and Abyssinia are all under various levels of Polish protection – for now. The former two are actually rather advanced, which even the colonial powers have had to acknowledge after getting over their initial enthusiasm to conquer all of Africa. If anything, this highlights how artificial and arbitrary the idea of African inferiority is to begin with, but that won’t save the rest of the continent. While the sheer hopelessness of any open battle between tiny African tribes and the great powers has actually made the conquest seem less violent on the outside, almost like drawing lines on the map, on the ground the colonial masters often resort to brutal methods to keep their huge tracts of land and new subjects in check and maximize productivity. The promised “civilization efforts” aren’t entirely absent, but an afterthought at best, and often actually performed by non-government volunteers who may even be appalled by their fellow colonialists’ behavior.

Spoiler: Asia

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The so-called Chinese Chaos has been going on since the Pratihara Empire lost control over the region, throwing new fuel into the battle for dominance that had already mostly calmed down. New factions and factions within factions rise and fall by the year, and though there are obviously periods of “peace” in any given area, they’re always broken by another invasion. There’s little certainty where a given border may run, even less where it might be next year, and so foreign observers and cartographers have pretty much given up on keeping track, only labeling the whole region as “China” and deciding to come back once the dust finally settles. With Yan’s promising rise and equally sudden collapse, it seems increasingly likely that the ultimate result will be a partition of China between Manchuria, Japan, England and the Shan Empire – unless they then start fighting each other, anyway. Russia also came in over land to annex the Uyghur Khanate in the west, but has yet to get involved beyond that.

As the nearest mostly neutral country, Tibet has become the natural destination for many Chinese refugees, be they regular civilians or political exiles. This includes communists from several failed revolutions, or from Zhenhua – even Zhao Qiang, the first and last Chairman of the Zhenhua Communist Party and now a founding member of the same in Tibet. Whereas orthodox Sternism assumes a natural progression from feudalism to capitalism to socialism, and places great emphasis on industrial workers as “the proletariat”, Zhaoism says that the agrarian peasants of less developed countries have neither time nor any need to wait and should rise up in revolution as soon as possible. If anything, socialism is easier to enact by “skipping” capitalism before the bourgeoisie can lay its roots of cultural and economic hegemony any deeper.

Tibet, which only five years ago was still a feudal, theocratic state ruled by the Bön pagan clergy, proved to be fertile ground for upheaval, and it didn’t take long for the strongly anti-clerical People’s Republic of Tibet to be born. In a country lacking any republican tradition or political parties to begin with, after the revolution it was only natural for the Communist Party to become the only one allowed, and whereas the concentration of power under the party is obviously questionable, many of its planned reforms in terms of communal ownership, free healthcare and education etc. seem great… on paper. As Zhenhua only existed for a few years and spent all of them being invaded, the full party agenda has yet to be tested in practice. Time will tell whether a small (population-wise) and poor country like Tibet can actually get it to work. It’s already been forced to admit that it’ll be dependent on imports and foreign contacts at first to get its own system running.



The same way that Japan can be considered the grandfather of the republican revolution, it’s quite peculiar that the first communist revolutions should also occur in East Asia. Of course, this may not be completely coincidental: the tradition of successful revolutions, independence movements and other uprisings in Cambodia, the Pratihara Empire, China itself and so on has certainly instilled in the locals a certain awareness that such things are not only possible, but a lot more desirable as a way out of their already wartorn conditions.

Spoiler: Comments

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I didn’t fully realize how many social reforms other countries have been passing before I started looking around for this update, geez. Are we the baddies? I've never had an upper house willing to enact any social reforms so far – guess those strict voting laws are doing something after all – whereas with the political reforms I've decided that the Sejm and the Crown Council can only change their own rules, and neither really wants to.

I’m not sure why my military score is so much higher than everybody else’s. I have the biggest navy, sure, but my “Soldiers & Army” score is 612 whereas the Latins’ is 112, even though their army is larger than mine. I think this might be because army size is measured partly in how many supplies they’re consuming, and they have both a smaller portion of expensive troops like artillery, and modified AI buffs giving them a huge reduction to supply consumption. Point is, the military score is very misleading.

A lot going on in some places, absolutely nothing in others. I tried to cover or at least mention things that caught my eye, but as usual, feel free to ask additional questions about whatever.

[Corvus]

Just finished making my way through the whole thread - I just wish I had the time and patience and knowledge to try something like that. I know CK2 very well, but have barely touched the other games in the series, despite owning them and wouldn't know where to start on converting it all over. Hopefully with CK3, Paradox will build in the ability to do it with EUV and VIC3 (come on, we know they are coming.)

Looking forward to see where the play-through goes from here.

[SilverLeaf167]

Glad to have you! And yeah, the conversion part is both one of my favorite things about a megacampaign and the most laborious one. Well, besides the sheer amount of writing, but that all happens a chapter a time.

At this point I'd almost feel weird writing a non-megacampaign AAR, given just how much worldbuilding (and artistic liberty) it allows, but on the other hand, a years-long undertaking is kind of rough to do over and over. I feel like when/if I finish this one day, we might well have gotten another game or two by then.