Taleworlds Forum Victoria 2 Grand Campaign
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Spain's still a great power... somehow... we stopped in 1892 or something like that. I've managed to stay great power long enough to start building a sphere of influence, though I was too late to Panama. I annexed Morocco via event, started colonizing the Ivory Coast and Cameroon, and expanded and modernized my navy (got the academic administration "sea power and the merchant marine" as well as most of the techs and inventions available in the 1890s). Used that navy against the Italians for a humiliation war, which taught me how obsolete my army was. My economy's finally at the point where it's on auto-pilot, capitalists are doing most of the work now and its acceptably productive. As you can see.
The Ottoman Empire in 1875 had to deal with a massive jacobin rebellion which even managed to capture Istanbul, but was put down later on. Though in beating the rebellion i went bankrupt and lost all my prestige and stopped being a great power once again. However the construction of the suez was completed shortly after which i regained some prestige. Then i started my ironclad shipbuilding program and by now in 1892 i have 43 ironclads. Sadly, they werent ready for the war i made against the UK, Austria and the Netherlands.
Made a war against Austria to capture Dalmatia and further secure my balkans border while they were at war with Italy. Austria was soon put down in the war and so was their german allies, Wuttemberg and Baden. But the UK got complete naval superiority and invaded my East african colonies (which was just somaliland at the time), the suez and Libya with some 150.000. And as i had lost military access to egypt the suez fell quickly, but i managed to defeat the british invasion of palestine and destroyed 33.000 british soldiers. In libya, my 36.000 men army managed to separate and, after 2 setbacks where it was routed, defeat the british 30.000 army and later the dutch 20.000 army, as both were depleted because of their occupation in tripoli and etc.
In east africa, i managed to ship reinforcements while evading the british navy and destroyed 60.000 british with some 100.000 turks. Then the british finally gave up and Dalmatia was mine. But i followed that war with a war against Egypt for them managing to almost make me lose against the UK (because of no military access). So i got the Sinai and alexandria, joining the suez with my main territories.
Got to great power again with the prestige of that war and prestige techs + the ironclads, and then me and Pixel made war against Italy, with him as he said humiliating Italy and me taking up the regions they took from Ethiopia, war ended quite easily and after it i actually inherited Ethiopia. By the end of the session i had repaid all my debts (mostly to Russia) and had quite a big eletric gear, machine parts and telephone factories build up. My next plan was to grab Qatarra from Egypt and have a continuous territory, but France sphered it in the last minute!
Even though i had sent 50.000 turks to help the french quell their african rebellion! (wasnt very succesful though and pretty much all of french congo went independent lol. I destroyed the rebels but only managed to disoccupy a couple of french regions before they went independent).
Proclamation of the Third Empire:
Empress Evangeline I as the Protector of France
Empress Evangeline I as the Protector of France
The period between approximately 1880 and 1892, following the peak of French power and prestige in the North German Wars, has become known as the Époque des Troubles as France was riven by a ceaseless wave of revolution after attempted revolution, as the autocracy handed down by the new Empress's father, Napoleon III, was repeatedly challenged to the ruin of the Metropole and the Empire. Hundreds of thousands of lives, even millions, were lost in the vicious fighting in the major cities and the countryside, and huge swathes of the heartland would be lost to rebel control before government forces could return control. Meanwhile, and more critically for the prestige of France, these revolutions spread to revolts in the colonies, from Guyana in South America, to the new holdings in Africa in Senegambia and the Congo, to Pondicherry on the Indian coast. French Cambodia and St. Pierre on the Canadian Atlantic Seaboard also went up in revolt. With the bulk of the French Army tied down in harsh fighting in the Metropole, farflung Madagascar broke off, and then in the Congo Basin, half a dozen indigenous kingdoms and states arose in the flames of the hated French colonial administration, all in the wake of the disastrous Heart of Darkness report on the extraordinary brutality of the colonial regime that reigned in the Congo, further dragging France's name through the mud. Karnatica in India, Guyana in the Americas, even Algeria on the Mediterranean coast threw out colonial administrators and French garrisons, and France's reputation was at its absolute lowest.
As 1892 dawned, the Empress and her government convened to shift the paradigm on how her Empire was to be run, and decisively alter the course of French history and its benighted wind of revolutions and social unrest. The autocracy of the Bonapartist dynasty could be sustained no longer, and as the Empress came fully into her own reign, she decreed that the authoritarian regime would come to an end. France would have a representational government once more for the first time since 1858, under a constitutionally bound monarch. The pronouncement was made publicly before a gathering of nobility, senators, and notables within the Tuileries Palace: the Second Empire of Napoleon III was over. The Third Empire, of Empress Evangeline I, had begun. The conservatives were subsequently, if briefly, swept from power and a new liberal party brought in to officiate the reforms to reintroduce voting rights to the public of France, and the Third Empire Proclamation made law on May 3rd, 1984, as France officially became a constitutional monarchy, if only belatedly.
Our troubles were not over immediately, but with the concessions to the people of France, the radicals and revolutionaries lost the bulk of their backing, and they knew it. A couple of Communist uprisings, followed by a more significant Jacobin uprising, in the following years were attempted as their last attempt to radically change the government to Communist dictatorship or democracy before the institution of constitutional monarchy could take hold, but the government troops put them down easily, the ranks having been transformed into crack anti-revolutionary troops in the previous decade of turmoil. Happiness, and prosperity, returned to France, and with the way to the Senate opened to the voices of the people, a wave of reforms rapidly modernized French political and social law, freeing up public expression and the press, and reinvigorating the lights of Parisian society. Slavery was finally abolished for the last time in 1895, and subsequently became a motivation for further colonial expansion to stamp out the last remnants of the institution in the few remaining dark corners of the earth. And all the while, contributing to the widespread exuberance at the end of the era of government repression and the flowering of a new, freer society, was the booming economic prosperity of the Third Empire: the treasury reported an increase of 5,000 francs in daily government revenue year after year, and this opulence poured from the palaces and salons of the Empress and the nouveau rich into the streets and pockets of the common people.
With the newfound prosperity and popular social optimism came a renewed interest and enthusiasm in the colonies and their expansion. Madagascar awaited to be reclaimed for the third, and last, time as France restored its dominion over that restless and mysterious island, the legendary roost of the Roc of Arab myth. Remnants of the great Jacobin revolutions in France still prowled the Sahel in Senegal, which were put down systematically with the arrival of reinforcements from the Metropole and the raising of new indigenous regiments. The most daunting prospect, however, was the restoration of peace and order to the Congo Basin: riven by corruption, colonial excesses, including the infamous harvesting of hands, and then the uprising of natives that led to widespread destruction and disorder, it had been divided into some half dozen entities, from the civilized Congo republic of Brazzaville, to the Kuba, Mongo, Luba, and Kongo in the Heart of Africa. Wadai and Azande meanwhile had broken off in the far distant borderlands in the East.
-Restoring French Colonial control over the breakaway kingdoms of the Congo Basin
The Imperial government tackled the restoration of authority with decisiveness. The breakaway states were systematically reduced and brought to heel one after another in rapid succession, beginning with Kongo on the coast (before Belgium could exploit the disorder and make inroads on our rightfully claimed colonial possessions along the Congo River), then the Mongo on the river's middle reaches, and then subduing the nations of the South-East. French troops barely managed to seize half of the Kuba kingdom before British expeditionary forces, sent by the British government to take advantage of the chaos in Central Africa, marched in and claimed the other half, one of the few concessions made from the borders of the original French Congo colony to outside powers. By the time Azande and Wadai were to be subdued, the Imperial forces had been forged into extremely effective colonial columns: many of the troops had been drawn from veterans of the revolutionary conflicts in France, and were aided by locally raised units who developed a proud esprit de corps of their own, with whom they cooperated and fought alongside closely. There would be no repeat of the inefficiencies and excesses (including the widely publicized, infamous massacres) of the previous administration and colonial force. The New French Congo was to be a model colony to all the world, the example of conscientious administration and prosperous development, to bring the benefits of civilization to the savage peoples of the Basin. And so, it would be to all a symbol of the Third Empire, in every way an improvement upon the Second that preceded it.
La Belle France, clamoring for the reclamation of its glories lost in the Époque des Troubles, would not be sated by mere reconquest of lands already owned. The borders of her Empire must be expanded in every direction, and Empress Evangeline would generously grant the wishes of her people. Massina, in Western Africa, was once a proud Empire itself, that dominated the heart of the Niger river valley, and blocked further French expansion inland from its stronghold in Senegal. Its unfortunate ruler would see the relentless advance of French colonial columns strip territory after territory from its grasp, until its heartland itself was annexed and the kingdom dissolved entirely. With the announcement of the 1901 World Fair in Istanbul, France then redoubled its efforts in expansion, and so raised itself to its very height in territorial conquests and concessions in the Dark Continent of Africa, and the tricolor was planted in every land from Mauretania to the ancient shores of Lake Tchad at the heart of the Sahara, the Greatest Desert. The French Foreign Legion followed up the conquests and claims heading East from our territories in West Africa, with new expeditions Northwards from the French Congo colony, claiming for France the colony of Equatoria in the Sudd of Sudan, bringing our administration in direct contact with our client government in Egypt. By January of 1903, the glories of our colonies were anointed like a laurels upon France and our plans brought to fruition: a contiguous territory curving around the span of Africa, from the Atlantic coast of Senegal to the legendary Mountains of the Moon on the banks of the African Great Lakes, to the delta of the Congo and the waters of the Atlantic once more. Of those territories that broke away in the later 1880s, only the Republic of the Congo remains, a unique if stubborn representation of a civilized city-state Republic in the heart of Africa.
Our attentions would be drawn elsewhere, however. Although the Époque des Troubles brought severe domestic unrest, it also saw the culmination of our international influence and the ambitions of our desired sphere. But with the assumption of our superiority came its own commitments, and beginning with the assumption of a new administration in allied Bavaria seeking to unify South Germany, states near and far required the aid of the Bonapartes in resolving conflicts in arms. The legacy of Napoleon I and his legend was not let down, but with the lending of an aiding hand to Brazil in their war of honor against the slights of Peru, we have been brought into conflict with the rising star in the West: the United States. Once more French arms are required to be raised against the American menace, and after a lengthy, and initially costly, campaign against an expeditionary force sent by the United States into Algeria, the Imperial Guard and accompanying forces have been landed in Brazil itself. This is a new challenge all its own as the Amazon Campaign unfolds, as the French Tricolor is carried deep into the jungles of the World's Greatest River, into the deepest, steaming heart of the Americas, in our best chance yet to reclaim all that we had lost in the glory of France, and bring the prestige of the Third Empire to new and dazzling heights.
Alma's internet started to be terrible.
Anyway Spain is somehow still a great power in 1903. In 1900 it was the first to grab steam turbines and unlock dreadnoughts and cruisers, which were a huge boost to my prestige, and I started building these ships immediately. The navy is the strongest it's ever been, but unfortunately was put to the test against the UK's navy over a colonial affair in Africa. Although the UK had four times as many ships, they also took 10 times as many losses, scattered throughout several naval battles in Europe and Asia. Portugal, an ally of the UK, was invaded and occupied completely, but we accepted status quo ante bellum with them. For a while the UK didn't give up, though, we kept fighting and the attrition rate favored Spain, but despite the high warscore in my favor they would not white peace until several years later. The UK did win the war because they were able to make gains in the colonial affair, but Spain itself was untouched aside from a brief landing in the Philippines.
Meanwhile the economy isn't the juggernaught it used to be, with Russia surpassing me in the production of steel (they make twice as much >: U) AND iron, a sad day, I am no longer steel king. I am not even steamer convoy king, because somehow the Ottomans make more than me again. It's okay though, no one else is using them to make dreadnoughts.
Canada is a great power but not Italy.
*
intensifies*
