The Savage Years: The House of Stuart Sequence, #5

The Savage Years

Volume five of The House of Stuart Sequence

George Kearton

By 1861, Europe was exhausted. Over nine years of war had brought large parts of the continent to their knees.

The General European Wars had involved almost every part of the continent and in this, the fifth volume of the House of Stuart Sequence, the after-effects of the wars on Europe and North America are explored. But the ten turbulent years to 1871, despite the hopes of public and politicians alike, would not be peaceful either – and would usher in an entirely new and terrifying type of conflict.

As the Wars of the Giants ended, the Battles with the Pygmies would begin.

Spring, 1861

From the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean coast of Spain, from Tyneside to the River Elbe and beyond into the Balkans, the armies had advanced, retreated, fought and bled.

New countries had been born; Belgium and Holland were now free from Prussian occupation and had combined to establish the new Republic of the Netherlands. In the north and east of Europe, three new Grand Duchies now existed as Russian buffer states.

The Grand Duchy of Danubia comprised Hungary, Bulgaria and Roumania; but it was not, as Franz Josef, the last scion of the House of Hapsburg had planned, an independent central European power. Franz Josef was buried in a pauper’s grave in Budapest following his never-to-be-explained death in the midst of the Russian army which had marched into Hungary in his support, and his imagined Kingdom of Danubia was under direct Russian governance. Finland, after a heroic resistance, had been wrenched from the control of Sweden by the Russians and was now largely under their control as a Grand Duchy. Only in the far and frozen north would the semi-nomadic Sami tribes continue their lives without major interference from the Russians. But the major newcomer to the European stage was the Russian-controlled Grand Duchy of Poland; not just those parts of the former Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania which had been annexed by Russia, Prussia and Austria in the previous century, but now extending across most of Prussia to the River Elbe and also encompassing many other former states which had been members of the once-proud Confederation of Germany.

Germany had effectively been dismembered; its economy was in ruins, with most of its industrial capacity in the hands of Russians who had no idea how to use it. Prussia had ceased to exist; only Waldeck and Anhalt remained. Otto von Bismarck lay dead in the smouldering wreckage of the Brandenburg Gate and the King of Prussia was shortly to die in French exile. In the far northwest, Mecklenburg, Hamburg, Lubeck and Hanover huddled under military protection from Denmark and Great Britain, a glorious irony for the House of Stuart. The small surviving German states along the Rhine had already started negotiations with France for their future protection and Louis Napoleon, ever hankering for La Gloire, would be only too pleased to oblige. In the south, Austria, Bavaria, Wurttemberg and Saxony west of the Elbe were guarded by Prussian General von Roon’s small German Army Corps along with several thousand reluctant Austrian conscripts, the remnants of the Saxon Army and small and hastily-raised contingents of inexperienced troops from Bavaria and Wurttemberg. The survival of these fragments of Germany was only due to Russia’s inability to continue to supply troops so far from home. The dream of a German Empire, which had been spoken of by the members of the German Confederation in the early 1850s, was to remain a dream.

In the Balkans, Serbia, with Russian encouragement, had seized Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia from Austria. Serbia was now the dominant power in the Balkans and was already casting covetous eyes on Macedonia, Albania and the northern parts of Greece.

With their long-term strategic aim of turning the Baltic into a Russian lake now achieved, the Tsar and his advisers were now looking east; not just into Siberia but beyond, into Asia and across the Bering Strait to North America.

Only in Iberia had the changes to the political landscape been relatively modest, but even that preservation of the status quo had not been without fearful costs in lives.

Both the Basques and the Catalans had been encouraged by France to claim independence from Spain. British and American troops had joined with the Spanish to prevent this and, after years of fighting, both revolts were over and Spain was re-united. It must be said, however, that the final resolution owed more to the diplomatic and personal powers of Stuart King Francis Henry rather than the effectiveness of Anglo-American arms. In neighbouring Portugal, the regnant House of Braganza had all fallen victim to the effects of the Lisbon earthquake. Although King Francis Henry, by dynastic marital connections, was the de jure heir to the Portuguese throne, he passed over his rights, with the support of Portugal’s nobility, to his younger daughter Catherine, who with her Portuguese husband now ruled both Portugal and Brazil.

Thus, the United Kingdoms of Great Britain, North America and Spain had emerged relatively unscathed and under a common monarchy which had acknowledged the paramountcy of parliamentary systems. That these systems needed updating was not in doubt, and the first five years of the 1860s were to see major change in most of the Stuart realms. Gone, of course, was the Stuart Doctrine of non-intervention which had been introduced by James III over one hundred years earlier; the Stuarts were now intimately involved in matters European, not least as the only apparent counterweight in Europe to Russia which could no longer be viewed as a distant and exotic land of little consequence.

British North America, which had suffered no direct damage from the European Wars, was still prospering with large tracts of land widely available for emigrants and new settlers. The discovery of gold in California during the 1850s had only added to this prosperity. Further discoveries of gold in South Africa and in Kingsland Australis ensured a strong economy for all the Stuart realms and, in one of its first moves in 1861, the British government set about taking the best possible advantage of this by creating a common currency for all the Stuart realms which would also be offered to Denmark, Sweden, Portugal (including Brazil) and the Netherlands as members of the Western European Free Trade Area (WEFTA). All the members of WEFTA accepted the British invitation to join this strong currency, backed as it was by substantial gold reserves. The combination of the new currency, called the Pound Sterling, and the continuing success of low-taxation and free-trade regimes led the members of WEFTA to totally dominate the economy and trade of Europe, the Americas and, eventually, the Far East; a domination which would last well into the twentieth century as other nations in South America were also, over the years, welcomed into membership.

The Stuart realms, 1861

From the 1820s to the 1840s there had been widespread calls for governmental reforms, mainly in Great Britain, which had been led by the Chartist movement. Most of these had been peaceful, though there had been armed unrest in Scotland in 1820 and a short-lived uprising in Newport, South Wales, in 1839.

As war erupted across Europe, the King and government entered into private discussions with the Chartist leaders, urging them to withdraw their demands until such time as the war had ended. This was agreed to by the Chartists, and for the whole of the 1850s the concentration was on a successful prosecution of the government’s war aims. In fact, the wars were not altogether bad news for Great Britain economically; production increased considerably and wages also went up. Working conditions had generally improved in the interests of productivity, and education especially was beginning to be made available to the children of working class parents in large numbers. Hundreds of schools, sponsored by all denominations of the churches (Anglican, Presbyterian, Nonconformist and Roman Catholic), by employers and trades guilds, were opening across the country and both education and teaching were recognised as being of vital importance to the future of the country. Gone were the days when the contract of the newly-appointed Head Teacher of Muirkirk Primary School in Ayrshire had to include the seeking of an undertaking that the Head would not sell gin to the pupils.

With improvements in education came improvements in literacy. With improvements in literacy came an increase in the circulation and production of newspapers and books. Above all, there was the emergence of a middle class within the population which now had aspirations, ambitions, some leisure time and increasing amounts of money to spend in that leisure time. Society, in short, now had a ‘respectable’ element, sandwiched between the factory workers and farm labourers and the traditional upper class of land and factory owners. Widely viewed as the epitome of the new society were the royal family. James Louis had come to the throne upon the death of King Francis Henry, and he and his Danish wife Sophie were widely admired. By 1861, the Stuart succession seemed assured by the birth of three children – Victoria in 1855, Edward in 1857 and Charles in 1859.

With the accession of a new King, there was a general feeling that it was time to review and renew the arrangements of government. From 1746 onwards, the restored Stuarts had built intelligently on existing structures. The parliament of Scotland had been re-established, the Irish Parliament had been given extra powers and in both Wales and Cornwall, local assemblies (the Senedd in Wales, the Stannary Parliament in Cornwall and Devon) had been set up. The major change, however, had been the establishment of an American Parliament in 1748.

Distinct from the Parliaments and local assemblies were the offices of King’s Deputies (one for North America, one for Kingsland Australis and one each for the ‘home’ countries) and the network of King’s Lieutenants (one for each county in Great Britain, one for each state in North America). These appointed officials were meant to ensure a direct route to royal justice, accessible to anyone living in the Stuart realms. The offices had undergone change; though the King’s Lieutenants were still appointed by the monarch freely and on the basis of ability, or in some cases local acceptability, the King’s Deputy offices in Scotland, Ireland and Wales were now, in practice, held by the leaders of the largest parties in the appropriate parliament or assembly. As far as North America and Kingsland Australis (including the Queen’s Islands) were concerned, the appointments were, by and large, still free of political connections.

There was no consistency to the way in which the various parliaments were elected. In the home countries, constituency sizes varied widely and the ownership of land to a certain value was essential for inclusion on the voters’ roll. In North America and Kingsland Australis, the franchise had been extended to include all males over the age of 21, regardless of property ownership; but in both these cases, Native Americans and Aboriginals were deliberately excluded.

All of the parliaments had responsibility for matters affecting their territories only. Taxation, trade and foreign affairs were the prime responsibility of the English parliament but were subject to ratification by the other parliaments (but not by the Senedd or Stannary Parliament, as both Wales and Cornwall already had their own parliamentary representation in the English parliament).

At the apex of power was the Royal Council. In the 18th century it had consisted of the King and his appointed Deputies only, but by the 1850s its membership had increased to include the leaders of each political party in the parliaments and the Presiding Officers of the Senedd and Stannary Parliament.

Spain, of course, had its own parliamentary system based on a nation-wide Cortes; but this system was also in need of change, not least because the peaceful resolution of the revolts in both the Basque Country and Catalonia had only been achieved by royal promises of increased democracy in both areas.

Women had no say in government, but an interesting (some would say dangerous) precedent had just been set in the Netherlands, where women over 21 had been given the vote at the initial referendum confirming the form of government and in the subsequent election which had led to the appointment of Virginia-born James Langstraet as President of the newly-established Republic.

Francis Henry had