An Ending Of Empires: The House of Stuart Sequence, #3

This is a work of fiction. While ‘real-world’ characters may appear, the nature of the divergent story means any depictions herein are fictionalised and in no way an indication of real events. Above all, characterisations have been developed with the primary aim of telling a compelling story.

Published by Sea Lion Press, 2017. All rights reserved.

Introduction

This book is an alternate history.

Like its predecessors The Year of the Prince and The King Shall Have His Own Again, it charts a course of potential historical and political developments following the restoration of The House of Stuart to the thrones of Great Britain in 1746 after a successful military campaign by Jacobite forces in Ireland, Scotland and England led by Prince Charles Edward Stuart.

This book has as its introduction an overview of the state of affairs and the affairs of state in Europe and North America in our imagined world from 1790 onwards.

The main body of the work tells the story of the turbulent years from 1800 to 1851 and of the part played by the reigning Stuart monarchs of The United Kingdoms of Great Britain and North America.

The United Kingdoms of Great Britain and America

King James III had ascended to the throne in 1746. His reign was to be cut short by his assassination at the hands of an embittered army officer in 1751, but during his short reign his achievements were many.

Religious toleration for Catholics and non-conformist Protestants was established, the Scottish Parliament was brought back into existence and vast tracts of land in North America were secured from France in exchange for a British withdrawal from trading in India.

At the same time, James and his ministers had overseen the introduction of free trade into the economies of Great Britain and North America, had ensured the beginnings of North American representation in the English Parliament and had extricated Britain from involvement in the wars of Europe by the establishment of the Stuart Doctrine.

The first challenge facing Prince Charles Edward Stuart, even before his accession to the throne, was a Hanoverian invasion of Scotland. Whilst the Prince was in London following his father’s death a loyal Scots army defeated the invaders at the battle of Drumossie Moor in May of 1751.

Charles was to occupy the throne for over 35 years; a golden age of economic prosperity for Great Britain and her erstwhile colonies in North America as the benefits of free trade were more clearly felt. The establishment and success of the newly-formed Royal Company of British American Traders in the Caribbean and the expansion westwards of British North America merely added to the prosperity; refugees from European conflict were welcome in North America (more so than they were in the eastern counties of England) and were encouraged to settle by the prospects of very cheap (or in many cases free) land over the Alleghenies.

Both King Charles and his son Prince Victor Francis had visited America together in 1768, and Victor Francis was to return for the opening of the American parliament in 1785. They both had realised the enormous potential of North America and were determined to keep the continent in British hands. Thus, America was pivotal to Stuart foreign policy. This perceived importance led to what was by far the major political achievement of King Charles and his ministers; the abolition of slavery, not just in Great Britain but also across British North America. The abolition had taken over fifteen years to bring about and internal conflict in North America over the issue was only avoided by the personal intervention of a former officer from the Jacobite Manchester Regiment.

The effects of abolition were to quickly extend beyond North America and were to be felt in the Caribbean, in South America and in Africa as the next century passed. The British abolition was also to be copied by other European countries but, in some cases, this movement towards freeing slaves came too late for the countries concerned – or at least for their empires and overseas possessions.

The abolition of slavery in North America also hastened the establishment of a new parliament; the former American colonies and Canadian provinces were now to be known as states and were to have their own parliament by 1785.

In its first few years, the new American parliament was led by Benjamin Franklin, the first American-born King’s Deputy for North America. Upon his death in 1790, King Victor Francis summoned Virginian George Washington, a former slave owner who had exiled himself to Mexico following the passage of abolition in 1780, to return and take up the post left vacant by Franklin’s death.

Washington proved himself an able administrator and held the post until his death in 1799. His successor was to be John Adams of Boston, a strong admirer of the Stuarts, who had once commented:

hereditary monarchy or aristocracy are the only institutions that can possibly preserve the laws and liberties of the people

Adams was also implacably opposed to slavery and was a leading advocate of making free land in the western states available to freed slaves. His view on slavery, stated as he steered the abolition bill through the Massachusetts state assembly, was:

I have, through my whole life, held the practice of slavery in such abhorrence, that I have never owned a negro or any other slave, though I have lived for many years in times, when the practice was not disgraceful, when the best men in my vicinity thought it not inconsistent with their character, and when it has cost me thousands of dollars for the labor and subsistence of free men, which I might have saved by the purchase of negroes at times when they were very cheap.

Adams was an inspiring leader who would hold the post of King’s Deputy until his death in 1826 at the advanced age of 90. From a formerly Puritan family with strong links to many merchants in New England, one of his many abilities was to be able to work closely with the Royal Company of British American Traders which, throughout the closing years of the 18th century, was to gradually assimilate an overwhelming majority of Spain’s Caribbean colonies into de facto British ownership.

By 1795, the Caribbean was practically a British lake; only Cuba and the eastern half of Hispaniola remained in Spanish hands. Ships of the Royal Company provided easy and quick transportation of goods across the islands and back to Europe and Company troops could always be relied on to preserve the peace. Only on one occasion were they to fail – but this failure by inaction was to lead to the establishment of two permanently free and independent Caribbean states governed by former slaves.

Europe and beyond

For Spain, the 1790s were to see a further decline in her Empire and, before the turn of the century, the installation of a puppet king controlled by France. Her territories in the New World were under constant and increasing pressure by the Portuguese – as well as by the Royal Company of British American Traders, who mounted a successful and almost bloodless invasion of Florida in 1794.

The Portuguese were expanding westward out of Brazil, and the distant Spanish monarchy seemed unable to stop them. Spain attempted an invasion of Portugal in 1790, but her troops were defeated practically as soon as they crossed the border. Within Iberia an uneasy truce then prevailed – but it was to be a truce shattered by French actions in effectively annexing Spain in 1795. Even the sale of vast Spanish possessions in the west of North America to Britain could not help Spain; the sale had come too late and payment for the sale was, in any event, never paid over to Spain beyond a paltry allowance paid to their exiled King Charles and his family who had taken refuge in London.

The acquisition of these North American territories gave Great Britain access to the entire continent, all the way across to the Pacific. Only in one area was there opposition to British control; Russian possessions to the north would, for a long time, refuse to accept the very small numbers of British troops and administrators who reached their lands.

For France, the turn of the century would see calamitous change. The powerful regency of Queen Marie Antoinette may well have gained all practical power in Spain, but internal events were soon to see the end of Hapsburg and Bourbon power in France for a period of nearly seven years.

The Austrian Hapsburgs were still engaged in vain attempts to halt the advance of Prussia. Frederick the Great’s German Confederacy amassed more power year on year and was rapidly moving towards an internal union of the patchwork of German states in the north and central areas of the country.

After a shattering defeat at Sadowa in 1777 the Austrian army would never recover its former reputation. True, Austria, like Prussia and Russia, had benefitted territorially from the partitions of Poland, but her position at the turn of the century was one of defence, especially in view of Ottoman resurgence in the Balkans. This Ottoman resurgence was also to affect Russia, now relatively united under strong rulers and looking south for expansion rather than westward toward Prussia, Scandinavia and Germany.

The Ottoman Empire had reached its high-water mark in Europe with the attempt to capture Vienna in 1683. This had of course failed, but Ottoman power in the Balkans and in the Middle East was to remain strong throughout the 18th century despite a succession of ineffectual Sultans. These Sultans had been unable to extend Ottoman power beyond the conquest of Malta in 1787, but under the reign of Selim III from 1789 things were to change – the Ottoman Empire would once again become a force to be reckoned with.

Beyond Europe and the Americas, India was still in the iron grip of France; but the whole of Africa would start to undergo a period of massive change as the continent came increasingly to the attention of the ‘Great Powers’. The British First Fleet had set up a number of trading posts and small settlements down the west coast, all the way to the Cape of Good Hope (which had been seized from the Dutch). The fleet had gone on to discover, map, explore and establish the first British settlements in a hitherto almost unknown continent, which they christened Kingsland Australis in honour of the Royal House of Stuart. Kingsland Australis was to become the starting point for British explorers travelling to the Far East and to the Empires of China and Japan, lands from which foreigners had been banned for nearly two hundred years.

Such was the state of the world at the beginning of A Stuart Century.

The first Victorian Age – Great Britain and the Americas, 1800

The turn of the century saw Great Britain both prosperous and peaceful under the reign of Stuart King Victor Francis, who had come to the throne in 1788 on the death of his father. It was nearly 50 years since the Stuart kingdoms had been challenged – and that challenge, by the exiled Hanoverians, had been defeated in a single battle at Drumossie Moor in 1751.

Since Drumossie Moor, the Stuarts had, by a combination of pragmatic policies and with the parliamentary support of intelligent and loyal ministers, stayed clear of European entanglements, encouraged a highly successful policy of free trade between Great Britain, North America and the various Caribbean islands which had fallen under British control, and concentrated on the peaceful expansion westward of their possessions in North America. These new lands had been acquired almost entirely without warfare; initially the French had surrendered all their territorial claims in North America in exchange for a British withdrawal from India, and the Spanish colonies (except Florida) had been sold to Britain by a Spanish government in desperate need of funds to stave off a French invasion of Spain itself.  The sale, however, had come too late to stop a French army from occupying Madrid in 1795. With King Charles of Spain in exile and with Florida taken over by the Royal Company of British American Traders in 1794, it would appear that Spain’s independent existence was over.

The French annexation of Spain did, however, cause several problems for Great Britain. Firstly, the King was married to a Spanish Infanta and King Charles of Spain had escaped to London