The General European Wars: The House of Stuart Sequence, #4

By George Kearton

1851 – and, as a result of a double Royal suicide, England and France are at war.

The chosen battleground is northern Spain – but this is only the first part of Europe to feel the dreadful effects of The General European Wars.

Conflict spreads northwards, from Tyneside to Dunkirk and into Belgium and the Netherlands.

Denmark is threatened with conquest and, in the east, the Russian Tsar gathers an army of nearly 400,000 men to achieve a long-held desire; to turn the Baltic into a Russian lake.

British secret agents, nomadic Sami tribesmen and marauding Cossacks will all play their parts as Europe is plunged into nine years of bloody war.

A Stuart King will die and a new Stuart King will face challenges both at home and abroad as Kingdoms fall, new nations are created and the map of northern Europe changes almost completely.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sea Lion Press
• Release date: Oct 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386289760

Book preview

The General European Wars

Volume four of The House of Stuart Sequence

George Kearton

Introduction

In this, the fourth volume of The House of Stuart Sequence of alternative histories, we are in the Europe of 1851. For the first time in over fifty years there is open and declared war across the continent.

After over one hundred years in which the Stuart Doctrine has kept Britain isolated from European conflict, Great Britain has now gone to war to defend its new territory, the Kingdom of Spain, which has been inherited by King Francis Henry following the suicide of King Carlos.

Spain is under threat by the armies of France, which – on the orders of the French President (soon to declare himself Emperor) Louis Napoleon – are massing on the Franco-Spanish border. His belief is that, because of a proxy marriage to the late King Carlos of Spain, his cousin Princess Louise Marie Therese should inherit the Spanish throne.

France has also signed a treaty of non-aggression with Prussia, and a large Prussian fleet lies off the eastern coast of Great Britain between Tyneside and the River Humber.

Prussia is at war with Austria following her annexation, the previous year, of Austria’s last German ally, the Kingdom of Bavaria. Prussia has also been the undeclared paymaster of Italian nationalism. Revolts against Austrian domination have spread across the north of Italy during 1849 but all have been ruthlessly put down by the Austrians, with the last outpost of Italian nationalism, the Venetian Republic of San Marco, having been occupied by the Austrians in January of 1850.

The inter-linked and overlapping series of conflicts known as the General European Wars would have pivotal effects on world history. Their causes and course in Europe are traced in this book, together with details of North American involvement in them. Volume five of the House of Stuart Sequence (The Savage Years) will tell of the years of terror across Europe and North America which followed the wars and volume six (A World Turned Upside Down) will explore further developments and far-reaching effects in the Americas, Africa, the Middle and Far East and the Pacific.

The General European Wars – 1851-1852, The First Phase

King Francis Henry and the British Government were faced with two distinct threats in February of 1851. One, the gathering of French troops to the north of the Pyrenees, was an actual threat to what was now British territory; obviously a British military presence would be needed to bolster Spanish defensive moves.

Great Britain was ill-equipped to provide such a presence in the short-term. Unlike Prussia and Austria, she had no history of large standing armies. There was a County Regiment in each English county but these units were recruited at only half-strength, with between three and four hundred men in each Regiment. Their duties were almost exclusively ceremonial – only a very small contingent of troops from the Midlands had ever been involved in any type of military action, and that being when they defended a local hotel against a Welsh Chartist mob in Newport in early 1839. A royal proclamation was issued calling for volunteers, and by May of 1851 most Regiments were at a strength of over 1,000 men. All, however, were without any up-to-date military training, and providing this was to prove an expensive and time-consuming operation. The Royal Company of British American Traders had its own troops, but most of these were stationed outside Europe to protect trading interests. Scotland was a potential source of further recruits, but with a Prussian fleet lying in the North Sea the Government decided, for the time being at least, to retain the potential fighting strengths of the Scots against any threat of Prussian invasion.

In any event, Great Britain was not actually at war with Prussia; the declaration of war announced by the Prime Minister in February of 1851 was only against France. The Government was determined to cling to the established Stuart Doctrine for as long as possible; no intervention in European wars unless British territory was directly threatened. Spain was now British territory and under direct threat, but the presence of Prussian ships in the North Sea was not viewed as a direct threat and it was hoped that British firmness against France would persuade the Prussians to withdraw without there being a need for a declaration of war and a recourse to arms. This proved to be the case as, after a few weeks of posturing, the Prussian ships withdrew to their bases at Hamburg.

From the Prussian point of view, however, the North Sea ‘adventure’ had proved useful. Nominally, and at minimal cost, it had assured their new French allies of Prussian goodwill and had diverted international attention from the opening moves of their campaign against Austria. It had also given the Prussians the opportunity to test British defences down the east coast and measure what, if any, response there would be from Britain should war break out. That there was no immediate response from Britain beyond an exchange of ill-tempered diplomatic notes was closely noted in Berlin and would certainly be a contributory factor in future Prussian policy decisions over the next couple of years.

A vital point to be stressed in any consideration of the course of the General European Wars is that none of the participants had recent experience of large-scale military engagement. Two generations had passed since Bonaparte’s War and it was now nearly forty years since Sir John Moore had led Scottish and Spanish troops in the ill-fated Mexican Adventure. Even the simmering tension between Austria and Prussia had led to no major battles. All of the most senior officers who would command national armies in the 1850s had been, at best, newly-joined junior officers – if they had ever experienced actual battle previously.

Military training and theoretical strategy exercises had, of course, kept officers busy, and war-games on areas such as Salisbury Plain were common occurrences. Muzzle-loading muskets had, in the main, been replaced by breech-loading rifles and, to some extent, many other advances of the Industrial Revolution (railways and steamships for example) would be brought into play as Europe went to war. But there had been no pitched battles, no experience of dealing with high rates of casualties and none of the planning which would be needed to keep large bodies of troops in the field for any length of campaign.

Great Britain was, indirectly, the best prepared of the combatant nations; much of her military and naval power came from the men and troops of the Royal Company of British and American Traders, who had a long history of not always peaceful trade in the Caribbean and the Americas. This expertise would increasingly come into play as the European War progressed: inept ‘regular’ commanders would fail and be discharged; BAT officers, hitherto viewed by military society as less able or second-grade, would be brought to the fore. By the conclusion of the war, almost every senior British commander had formerly been in BAT service and a large number of these were American-born officers who had never even been to Europe before being called into direct royal service.

At the outset of the war however, command was firmly held by two men who were both from landed families with long histories of military service. In command of the infantry was General Henry Havelock. He was to take charge of some 12,000 men, mainly from Counties in the North and Midlands; Havelock himself was from the North East, having been born in Sunderland, County Durham. Though almost all his new recruits were without previous military experience, they had shown great enthusiasm during training; they were quickly christened (with a nod to historical Roman military prowess) The British Legion. Accompanying them, under the command of Brigadier James Scarlett, was a contingent of cavalry nearly 1,000 strong. Most were members of the elite Household Cavalry; the monarch’s personal escort and descendants (in many cases literally as well as figuratively) of Lord Elcho’s Lifeguards who had been the backbone of Jacobite cavalry in 1745. Like their comrades in the Infantry, however, they had no experience of actual combat.

Overall command of the Expeditionary Force was given to General Sir Colin Campbell, and by October of 1851 both infantry and cavalry, together with a small artillery train from Woolwich Arsenal, were ready to embark from Portsmouth and Plymouth in several specially-chartered BAT ships. These ships (unlike the entire Royal Navy of the time) were steam-powered and the troops had been moved to their ports of embarkation by the new railway network which was now spreading across Great Britain.

King Francis Henry had originally planned to take personal command of the force; but, at the age of 62, it was felt by his ministers that he was too old for the rigours of an overseas campaign, especially in the winter, and he was dissuaded from leading his British Legion into battle. To ensure royal legitimacy and to suitably impress the Spanish, his eldest son Edward Charles (heir to both the British and Spanish thrones) was very quickly commissioned as a Major and sent to join the troops now waiting to embark from Portsmouth. In view of the young Prince’s total lack of military experience he was to be accompanied and guided by a professional cavalryman, Captain Louis Nolan. A former BAT officer, Nolan had seen active service on the disputed borders between Mexico and British North America; but this had been more in the nature of police action and certainly not large-scale military endeavour. Despite his youth, however (he was only three years older than the Prince), he was already a noted writer on cavalry tactics and had been instrumental in developing a new and lighter saddle for the British army in North America where most of the states’ regiments were cavalry.

As the British troops prepared to embark, Spanish forces (mainly conscripts but strengthened by the Irish Regiments in Spanish service, some of whom had fought alongside Sir John Moore’s Highland Brigade in the Mexican adventure of 1815) moved northwards to defend the Pyrenees from French invasion. Thus far, the French had made no moves beyond calling a mass conscription of some 40,000 troops. Many of these men were stationed in and around Paris for reasons which would soon become very apparent; President Louis Napoleon was in the process of declaring himself Emperor of the French. His declaration and subsequent coronation passed without incident and, by December of 1851, two of his military supporters, Generals Canrobert and Saint Arnaud, were each given command of armies of 20,000 men with the order to march south into Spain for the glory of the new Empire.

The weather, however, was no respecter of either Emperors or Kings; the winter of 1851/52 was to be one of the harshest ever in Western Europe. A cold front swept down from the Arctic, and the 10th of December was the first of over one hundred days of snowfall in Great Britain. The River Thames froze over for the first time since 1814 and, at Herne Bay in Kent, the English Channel was frozen for three miles out from the shore. The blizzards and high winds extended across the continent; Prussian, Austrian, French, Spanish and British troops all retired into hastily thrown-up and improvised winter camps. Over one hundred thousand men shivered their way through the terrible weather which would carry on until the end of February. The two French armies ground to a halt in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Canrobert had planned to lead his eastern army across the Coll de Panisars following the ancient Roman Via Augusta; his strategy was to cross into Spain and proceed through Catalonia towards Barcelona. For Saint Arnaud, the route was to be via Roncesvalles following the old pilgrim route toward Santiago de Compostela. Neither route over the Pyrenees was passable in the winter, though. Louis Napoleon’s invasion of Spain was halted before it had even left France.

For the British army, economic considerations were also a factor. The ships due to carry Campbell and his men to Spain were owned by the Royal Company of British and American Traders. Despite the urgings of the King (the monarchy was a shareholder in the Company), the Directors of the BAT refused to let their new and expensive steamships sail until the weather improved. Only the Spanish armies managed some limited movement before the weather closed in. The initial Spanish strategy had been to occupy a short defensive line on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees stretching from San Sebastian to Girona. But, by the end of December, they had only established positions across the north of Spain on a much longer line from Gijon to Lerma and then on to Zaragoza, Lerida and Girona. The various towns along this line all had old but serviceable fortifications which provided some shelter from the elements, but they were, as the Spanish and British were to realise in the spring, too far back from the Pyrenees if the French were to be denied a foothold in Spain. The revised Spanish line also abandoned the important port of San Sebastian which would have been the easiest landing point for British troops. If the French were successful in capturing it in the spring (it was only a few miles inside Spain) then the British would be forced to make a longer voyage to La Coruna, from where they would have much farther to march in order to reach even the middle of the extended Spanish lines.

The weather may have halted the armies, but it did not halt the politicians or plotters. Catalan nationalists, based in and around Barcelona and under the secret leadership of General Juan Prim, had long harboured hopes of separation from Spain in a re-awakening of Aragonese glory. Their movement, El Renaixensa, now made secret contact with French General Canrobert and offered to support the invaders in exchange for self-government for Catalonia. Other political scheming was also taking place elsewhere in Western Europe. A fledgling Dutch independence movement was determined to throw out the Prussians, who had conquered the country during Bonaparte’s War. An attempted rising in the south of the country had been ruthlessly crushed at Risquons-Tout in 1848, but the nationalists now made secret contact with the British Government in view of the newly-signed treaty of non-aggression between Prussia and France. For the time being the British Government kept the Dutch cooling their heels, but this policy would change within the next two years as the European conflict became more widespread.

Winter’s gradual retreat at the end of February was a signal for the armies to advance. The French were the quickest to move, crossing the Pyrenees, capturing San Sebastian and advancing on the Spanish garrison at Girona. The city, initially garrisoned by two of Spain’s Irish Wild Geese regiments, held out against a series of French attacks for over five weeks; Girona quickly became the main focus of conflict, with French troops elsewhere across Spain only advancing slowly and cautiously. For the British troops, now sailing from Portsmouth and Plymouth, the indication was that there was no immediate crisis in Spain which required their immediate