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Cinco de Mayo

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Royal Family Master List - Mid-1900
  • Index

    • KingSweden24

    Inspired by @Capibara's request for the Mexican royal family, I decided to just add a master list of important royals and their offspring as a "master list." (I have this all in a Word Doc but might as well have it in the TL, too).

    Mexican Imperial Family (House of Habsburg-Lorraine)

    • Maximilian I (1832- ) m. Carlota of Belgium (1840-)
      • Louis Maximilian (1868- ) m. Margarita Clementina de Habsburg (1870-)
        • Maria Clementina (1891-)
        • Francis Joseph (1893-)
        • Louis Philip (1895)
        • Charles Victor (1898 -)
        • Augustine Salvator (1901-)
      • Joseph Francis (1870-)
      • Maria Carlota (1872-) m. Dom Afonso of Braganza (1865-)
        • Luis Afonso (1898 -)
        • Maximilian Philip (1900-)

    British Royal Family (House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha)

    Same as OTL (I'm Lazy)

    German Imperial Family (House of Hohenzollern)

    • Frederick III (1833-1893) m. Victoria (1840-)
      • William, Crown Prince of Germany (1859-1880)
      • Charlotte of Saxe-Meiningen (1860-) m. Bernhard III, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen
        • Feodora of Russia (1879-) m. Tsesarevich Michael of Russia (187:cool:
      • Henry I (1862-) m. Irene of Hesse and by Rhine (1866-)
        • Wilhelm (1889 –
        • Friedrich IV (1893 -
        • Sigismund (1896 -
        • Heinrich (1898 -
        • Siegfried (1900 -
      • Sigismund (1864-66)
      • Waldemar, Prince of Prussia (186:cool: m. Victoria of Wales (186:cool:
        • Adelaide Mathilde (1895-
        • Friedrich August (1897-
        • Sophia Victoria (1900-
        • Louise Elisabeth (1900-
      • Sophia, Princess of Greece (1870-) m. Prince Constantine of Greece (186:cool:
      • Margaret, Landgravine of Hesse-Kassel (1872-) m. Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse (186:cool:

    French Imperial Family

    • Napoleon IV (1856-) m. Marie-Pilar of Bourbon (1861-)
      • Marie-Eugenie (1883-)
      • Alphonse-Napoleon (1886-)

    Austrian Imperial Family (House of Habsburg)

    • Franz Josef I (1830-)
      • Crown Prince Rudolf (1858-1898) m. Crown Princess Stephanie (1864-1898)
        • Elisabeth (1883-)
    • Maximilian I of Mexico (1832-) m. Empress Carlota of Mexico (1840-) (see Mexican Royal Family)
    • Karl Ludwig (1833-) (two marriages)
      • Franz Ferdinand (1864-) m. Maria Dorothea of Habsburg (1867-)
        • Karl Maximilian (1894-)
        • Josef Ferdinand (1896-)
        • Ludwig Rudolf (189:cool:
      • Otto Franz (1865-) m. Maria Josepha of Saxony (1867-)
        • Karl (1887-)
        • Maximilian Eugen (1895-)
      • Ferdinand Karl
      • Margarethe Sophie (1870-) m. Albrecht of Wurttemburg (1865-)
        • Seven Children
      • Maria Annunciata (1876-) m. Pedro III of Brazil (1875-1900)

    Brazilian Imperial Family (House of Orleans-Braganza)

    • Isabel I of Brazil (1846-)
      • Pedro III of Brazil (1875-1900) m. Maria Annunciata of Austria (1876-)
      • Luis I of Brazil (187:cool:
      • Dom Antonio (1881-)

    Spanish Royal Family (House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen)

    • Leopold I (1835-) m. Antonio of Portugal (1845-1890)
      • Crown Prince William Charles Joseph (1864-) m. Maria Teresa of Bourbon-Two Sicilies (1867-)
        • Augusta Victoria (1890-)
        • Victor Leopold (1891-)
        • Francis Joseph (1891-)
      • Ferdinand, Prince of Romania (1865-) m. Josephine Marie of Belgium (1870-)
        • Charles (1894-)
        • Leopold Ferdinand (1895-)
        • Nicholas (1897-)
        • Elisabeth (1898)
        • Maria (1900-)
      • Charles Anthony (186:cool: m. Caroline of Belgium (1872-)

    Russian Imperial Family (House of Romanov)

    • Alexander III (1845-) m. Maria Feodorovna, born Dagmar of Denmark (1847-)
      • Nicholas (1868-91)
      • Alexander (1869-70)
      • George (1871-91)
      • Xenia (1874-) m. Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (1866-)
        • Irina (1895-)
        • Andrew (1897-)
        • Feodor (189:cool:
        • Nikita (1900-)
      • Tsesarevich Michael (187:cool: m. Feodora of Saxe-Meiningen (1879-)
      • Olga (1882-)

    Dutch Royal Family (House of Nassau-Weilburg)

    • Adolf I of the Netherlands (1817-) m. Adelaide-Marie of Anhalt-Dessau (1833-)
      • Prince William Alexander (1852-) m. Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont (1858- )
        • Adelaide (1885-)
        • Georg-Adolf (1887-90)
        • Helena Sophia (1888- )
        • Willem Adolf (1890-)
        • Emma Maria (1894-)
        • Hendrik Alexander (1894-)
      • Prince Frederick of Nassau (1854-55)
      • Princess Marie of Nassau (1857)
      • Prince Francis Joseph of Nassau (1859-1875)
      • Princess Hilda of Nassau (1864-)

    Belgian Royal Family

    • Leopold II of Belgium (1835-1888) m. Marie Henriette of Austria (1836-)
      • Princess Louise of Saxe-Coburg (185:cool: m. Philipp of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1844-)
      • Leopold III of Belgium (1859-) m. Marie-Anne of Braganza (1862-)
        • Marie-Adelaide (1884-)
        • Leopold, Duke of Brabant (1886-
        • Stephane Clement (1887-
        • Philippe I (1890-
        • Jean Albert (1893-
        • Henriette (1895-
      • Crown Princess Stephanie of Austria (1864-1898) m. Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria (1858-1898)
        • Elizabeth, Grand Duchess of Austria (1883-)
      • Clementine, the Princess of Montfort (1870-) m. Victor Napoleon of Bonaparte, the Prince of Montfort (1862-)
        • Marie-Clementine (1892-)
        • Louis Victor (1894-)
        • Stephanie (1899-)

    Swedish, Danish and Italians are all same as OTL.
     
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  • Index
    • Pitchforks, Peasants and Palmetto Politics: The Rise and Fall of Benjamin Tillman
  • Index

    • KingSweden24

    "...Lee's Presidency at the turn of the century may as well have been occurring in two dissonant parallel universes; in Richmond, and the Upper South more generally, the Morgan Machine seemed to hum on, a more crudely nationalist version of the all-powerful political juggernaut first built twenty years earlier by James Longstreet and tweaked to incorporate revisionist and resentful sentiment as an added fuel to the firing pistons of single-party domination. Lee, belying his original sympathies with the liberal National Reform League, was largely a more soft-spoken Morgan once in office; his commitment to the Naval Lobby was perhaps even greater than Morgan's, what with coming from the state that housed the Hampton Roads naval facilities (Lee was very conspicuously at the christenings of both of the British-built destroyers CSS Alabama and Georgia, in 1901 and 1902 respectively), and though his foreign policy under Wilkinson Call was a calm, stay-the-course path of moderation, Lee did little to reign in the increasingly nationalist language in Congress regarding "the damned Yankee."

    However, outside of Richmond and the triad of Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky, politics after the long, debilitating economic and agricultural depression of the 1890s that had decimated the livelihoods of the yeomanry and industrial labor force alike had become utterly poisonous, and into that void stepped the "Tillman gang." South Carolina's top export ceased being cotton or peaches and now seemed to be the pitchfork [1]; Tillmanism, which had been dismissed at the 1897 convention that near-unanimously nominated Lee to the Presidency, was now a potent force. 1898 was the first test in statewide elections, and it was a rousing success; not only was it South Carolina that delivered supermajorities of Tillmanites to their state legislatures or could handpick Senators at will, but now also Arkansas, Mississippi and Florida, too, and a coalition of "Pitchforkers" and NFLPers came to control the legislatures of Georgia and North Carolina in the aftermath of those elections, too. Only in Texas did the Tillman surge not materialize, and that was in large part thanks to a different insurgent party, specific and peculiar to Texas' particular grievances, led by former Vice President Roger Q. Mills, which dominated in that state.

    State legislative elections may have attracted a bit of attention among the planter class surrounding Lee but it was not until 1899, when Congressional elections across the country were held, that it became apparent to much of the Confederate elite that the problem was acute. Tillman barnstormed the country, often delivering four or five of his famously incendiary "stump" speeches per day, speaking at county fairs, agricultural expositions, church picnics, lynchings [2] and even weddings. He was a sensation, easily the most in-demand but also polarizing figure in Confederate history, even more so than the Wizard of the Saddle, Nathan B. Forrest. Tillman rallies took on an uncontrolled carnival atmosphere that often descended into violence, from mild shouting and punching to full-on riots. The first Pitchfork paramilitary formed in the Arkansas Delta during those tense climes, and a number of sheriffs and judicial officers were murdered starting in 1900 when they pushed back. His acolytes failed to properly imitate his talent for demagogy but nevertheless got the point across - since the foundation of the Confederacy, the white farmer had been "but a step above the Negro," and that the same planter class that held the Black man in bondage had captured the yeomanry "in that strange purgatory between slavery and mastership." [3] The 1899 elections were a disaster for the "Consensus Democrats" [4], halving their position in Congress. Tom Watson, elected to the Senate jointly by the NFLP and Pitchforkers, joined Tillman and Gary in the upper house as their newest ally; a fiery bunch of new Congressmen including John Fowler, John Atwater, and Albert Goodwyn.

    1900 may have been Tillman's best year yet, then, by finally introducing the grievances of the Reform League and the NFLP (which caucused separately with dwindling numbers but served as a coalition partner for the still-Democratic Pitchforkers), most importantly the reapportionment ahead of 1901; the House of Representatives had not been expanded since 1871, when every state was arbitrarily given an extra two seats, and had not been apportioned according to population since the founding of the Confederacy, which particularly harmed the political influence of fast-growing Texas and Arkansas or industrial, urbanizing Kentucky. Tillman was lucky that the Consensus, on its back heels, inadvertently anointed a moderate Speaker, John Sharp Williams, who was willing to cut deals with the new, substantive bloc in Congress rather than grind business to a halt; Tillman priorities were often traded for Army and Navy financing, which suited both Williams and Tillman just fine. The slow start of reforms in Richmond, as it was in the states, made Tillman something of a folk hero - and by the end of 1900, his movement won even more state races, including powering fiery demagogues like Jeff Davis in Arkansas or Joseph F. Johnston of Alabama to the Governorships of those states, ending Consensus control of both. With the turn of the century, the Tillman Era had arrived..."

    - Pitchforks, Peasants and Palmetto Politics: The Rise and Fall of Benjamin Tillman

    [1] Please pardon my purple prose and tortured metaphors!
    [2] This TL is only going to get darker
    [3] Of course, this being the Confederacy, nobody stops and asks "hmm maybe we should free the slaves and unite with them against the planter oligarchy?"
    [4] Hat tip to @Curtain Jerker for coming up with this name in our last DM
     
  • Index

    • Curtain Jerker

    KingSweden24 said:
    [3] Of course, this being the Confederacy, nobody stops and asks "hmm maybe we should free the slaves and unite with them against the planter oligarchy?"
    Click to expand...
    "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you" - LBJ. [1]

    Excited to see a new CSA reapportionment! I've been using the 1873 numbers for all the subsequent elections on the spreadsheet you have access to - curious to see how states like FL, AR, LA, and TX shape up.

    [1] Hyped to see how this timeline's LBJ plays out. He'd probably be a lot more racist but I get the feeling that his deep love of trying to help poor people would stick around as well. Then again, he might just be a popular schoolteacher in central Texas and live out his days in obscurity.
     

    KingSweden24

    Curtain Jerker said:
    "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you" - LBJ. [1]

    Excited to see a new CSA reapportionment! I've been using the 1873 numbers for all the subsequent elections on the spreadsheet you have access to - curious to see how states like FL, AR, LA, and TX shape up.

    [1] Hyped to see how this timeline's LBJ plays out. He'd probably be a lot more racist but I get the feeling that his deep love of trying to help poor people would stick around as well. Then again, he might just be a popular schoolteacher in central Texas and live out his days in obscurity.
    Click to expand...
    Yeah I’ll have to do some math on what the CSA shakes out like! Your spreadsheet inspired me to try to be more data driven on elections for other places than just the US and UK lol
     

    naraht

    While there appear to be significant posts on each of the USA's elections, there don't seem to be for the CSA. Most are just mentioned in passing, the Confederacy in the 1880s and 1890s being almost a one party state. Can we have a list of the Confederate Presidents? I *think* Lee was elected in 1898 and will serve 1899-1905? (The confederacy has 7 year terms???)
     

    KingSweden24

    naraht said:
    While there appear to be significant posts on each of the USA's elections, there don't seem to be for the CSA. Most are just mentioned in passing, the Confederacy in the 1880s and 1890s being almost a one party state. Can we have a list of the Confederate Presidents? I *think* Lee was elected in 1898 and will serve 1899-1905? (The confederacy has 7 year terms???)
    Click to expand...
    Yeah, I haven’t gone into that much detail on the Confederacy for exactly that reason; one party stages (effectively) aren’t that interesting!

    Lee was elected in 1897 for a 6 year single term.
    1. Jefferson Davis (I-MS) 1862-68
    2. Nathan Forrest (KK-TN) 1868-72
    3. John Breckinridge (KK-KY) 72-74
    4. Isham Harris (KK-TN) 74-80
    5. James Longstreet (CD-VA) 80-86
    6. Lucius QC Lamar (CD-MS) 86-92
    7. John T. Morgan (CD-AL) 92-98
    8. Fitzhugh Lee (CD-VA) 98-

      KK = Kuklos Klan (informal party)
      CD = Consensus Democrat
     

    naraht

    Also, what are the current Electoral Votes for the President? I noticed that iOTL, by 1900 Texas had almost 50% more electoral votes than the next largest state that seceeded. Texas had 18, Kentucky & Georgia had 13, Virginia, Tennessee and NC 12, Alabama 11, Mississippi 10, SC, Arkansas and Louisiana 9 and Florida 5. For a total of 133.

    *IF* the states have these EV in 1904, I figure maximum chaos would be... Upper South (VA, KY, TN, NC) + FL for the CD (54 votes), Lower South (SC, GA, AL, MS, AR, LA) for the Pitchforkers (61 EV) and a Texas specific candidate getting the balance (18EV) with the CD winning (shades of the US 1824 election) or even more fun, move Florida to the Pitchforkers and have them be *one* EV from winning (pick your favorite pieces of 1824 & 1876 OTL)

    USA vs. CSA/Mexico/Brazil & Chile would be *interesting*.
     

    KingSweden24

    naraht said:
    Also, what are the current Electoral Votes for the President? I noticed that iOTL, by 1900 Texas had almost 50% more electoral votes than the next largest state that seceeded. Texas had 18, Kentucky & Georgia had 13, Virginia, Tennessee and NC 12, Alabama 11, Mississippi 10, SC, Arkansas and Louisiana 9 and Florida 5. For a total of 133.

    *IF* the states have these EV in 1904, I figure maximum chaos would be... Upper South (VA, KY, TN, NC) + FL for the CD (54 votes), Lower South (SC, GA, AL, MS, AR, LA) for the Pitchforkers (61 EV) and a Texas specific candidate getting the balance (18EV) with the CD winning (shades of the US 1824 election) or even more fun, move Florida to the Pitchforkers and have them be *one* EV from winning (pick your favorite pieces of 1824 & 1876 OTL)

    USA vs. CSA/Mexico/Brazil & Chile would be *interesting*.
    Click to expand...
    That’s the math I’ll have to do ahead of 1903. ITTL they just gave every state 2 extra regardless in 1871 and called it a day, so the last few elections have been crazy malapportioned (especially but not exclusively Texas)
     

    naraht

    KingSweden24 said:
    That’s the math I’ll have to do ahead of 1903. ITTL they just gave every state 2 extra regardless in 1871 and called it a day, so the last few elections have been crazy malapportioned (especially but not exclusively Texas)
    Click to expand...
    What were the numbers at the end of the Civil War? I'm having problems finding the numbers for the states that weren't in the original Confederate Constitution...
     

    KingSweden24

    naraht said:
    What were the numbers at the end of the Civil War? I'm having problems finding the numbers for the states that weren't in the original Confederate Constitution...
    Click to expand...
    That’s a great q. For my purposes I’ve just used the numbers from the original Confederate Congress (with Kentucky, sans Missouri)
     

    naraht

    KingSweden24 said:
    "...General Miles had what he wanted: a peaceful settlement in Utah that satisfied himself, the Provisional (and, soon thereafter, official) Governor William King, and those in Washington who wanted the six-year insurgency formally ended before elections in 1900, first and foremost President Foraker who regarded the Utah Crisis as a massive political headache and anchor for Liberal political fortunes across the West. That the settlement did not do much to satisfy either Congressional leadership that still fiercely opposed polygamy, or Mormons who considered it a crucial component of their beliefs, mattered little to the Sutherland Commission that largely spearheaded the development of the compromise. King, a Democrat, would become Territorial Governor and the Utah Legislature, to be a unicameral body, would be elected popularly in 1902. Polygamists would be banned from the ballot but, in a climbdown by the government, their citizenship would not be stripped nor their assets seized, and the Church of Latter-Day Saints would not be disincorporated. The latter was in despite of Supreme Court precedent - in a polemic opinion by the notably and fiercely anti-LDS Chief Justice George Edmunds [1] - upholding the disincorporation of the Church, making it a major concession by the government that passed Congress by only bare margins. However, any "man or woman" who "knowingly" raised arms against the United States would be heretofore banned from not only elective public office but serving on juries, serving as "judicial officers of appointment" (in other words, not only judges but policemen, sheriffs or territorial marshals) or serving in the State Militia, thus eroding the possibility that Mormon fundamentalists from the conflict could infiltrate the machinery of the territorial government. Plural marriages would not be legally recognized as valid by the state, requiring them to be performed in secret as Utah would now have bigamy laws in accordance with the rest of the country, and most controversially, the territory was formally barred from seeking statehood despite having the requisite population for a period of twenty years, the first and last time that a territory has been so legally restricted in United States history.

    King soon became portrayed in cartoons as his namesake; "the Mormon King of Utah" was his moniker, and he helped build a Mormon Democratic machine on the shores of the Salt Lake and held office as Territorial Governor in rigged elections for the next 20 years, creating in place of the prior pseudo-theocracy an oligarchy with him and non-fundamentalist Mormons atop it instead until the cessation of Utah's controversial statehood ban in 1921, when it was finally admitted to the Union - with King as its first senior Senator. The LDS hierarchy, given a stay of execution by the number of non-polygamist Mormons on the Sutherland Commission - including its sympathetic Liberal namesake chairman - and a General Miles who wanted to to east with a victory to buffet his Presidential aspirations, split down the middle. Most of the Quorum of Twelve begrudgingly accepted the status quo but declined to formally condemn plural marriages conduct discretely, but a faction led by Moses Thatcher angrily protested and even threatened a schism within the church. Outside of the formal church, opinions were even more hardened; a large plurality of Mormons had been radicalized by over half a decade of atrocities committed against them by the Union Army, for many of them the second time in living memory they had been attacked by their own government, and survivors of the remote, disease-ridden camps that had killed nearly three thousand civilians were particularly hardened. To them, it was instead Brigham H. Roberts, the English-born historian and politician, who became a leader, who thoroughly opposed the LDS' decision to cease backing political candidates without permission, and became a fervent opponent of what was seen as a corrupt political and church establishment that had quit on the people of Utah and "abandoned their flock to the Eastern wolves"..."

    - How the West Was Won: The Conquest and Settlement of the North American Frontier

    [1] Edmunds was, IOTL, the author of the Edmunds-Tucker Bill that did precisely this
    Click to expand...
    In other words, the Mormons neither create Official Declaration 1 as a hard policy of the Church nor gain Statehood only 6 years after that. I wonder how the Territory of OTL Arizona & NM not given to the CSA will do in terms of getting Statehood.
     

    KingSweden24

    naraht said:
    In other words, the Mormons neither create Official Declaration 1 as a hard policy of the Church nor gain Statehood only 6 years after that. I wonder how the Territory of OTL Arizona & NM not given to the CSA will do in terms of getting Statehood.
    Click to expand...
    Yup, correct. That’ll def have knock on effects in New Mexico and other parts of “greater Deseret” (east Idaho; parts of Nevada and Wyoming, etc)

    The Confederates probably don’t care enough to cause much trouble for whatever minute Mormon colonies are in the Tucson or Mesilla area; the AZ Territory really hasn’t grown much
     

    naraht

    KingSweden24 said:
    Yup, correct. That’ll def have knock on effects in New Mexico and other parts of “greater Deseret” (east Idaho; parts of Nevada and Wyoming, etc)

    The Confederates probably don’t care enough to cause much trouble for whatever minute Mormon colonies are in the Tucson or Mesilla area; the AZ Territory really hasn’t grown much
    Click to expand...
    Unless things have altered in some way, the entire southern half of Idaho will be "greater deseret".

    The other question is whether there are Mormon colonies in Northern Mexico as iOTL. With a stronger central government, the pushback against polygamy is likely to be greater. (not sure any changes in Canada would occur with the mormon colonies in Alberta)

    Note, this also means that the Mormons will be on the front lines in the North American war. Could we see Mormon fight Mormon in numbers far beyond OTL?
     

    KingSweden24

    naraht said:
    Unless things have altered in some way, the entire southern half of Idaho will be "greater deseret".

    The other question is whether there are Mormon colonies in Northern Mexico as iOTL. With a stronger central government, the pushback against polygamy is likely to be greater. (not sure any changes in Canada would occur with the mormon colonies in Alberta)

    Note, this also means that the Mormons will be on the front lines in the North American war. Could we see Mormon fight Mormon in numbers far beyond OTL?
    Click to expand...
    That’s a good point. I don’t know enough of the history of the colonies in Northern Mexico; I imagine Max’s zeal for immigrants and the generally more conservative culture of OTL Mexico will probably clash here
     
    A City Made for Liberty: The American Urban Experiment
  • Index

    • KingSweden24

    "...consolidation of the four boroughs in January of 1899 had intended to eventually advantage the Liberals (it was pushed heavily by both Senator Warner Miller and Governor Jacob S. Fassett), but the Democrats in both Manhattan and the Bronx quickly overwhelmed the city administration and Tammany Hall expanded their reach throughout the new "greater New York", even piercing Liberal Brooklyn for the first time and within years building a robust machine on the left bank of the East River. Municipal consolidation and annexation, though political in nature in the sense of its origins in 19th century boss politics, nonetheless became a progressive pursuit before long, intertwined with scientific solutions and the burgeoning City Beautiful movement. The idea of merging smaller townships to a larger entity to streamline services (and soak up tax revenue) appealed to the turn-of-the-century American reformer; efficiency in government administration from fewer school, fire and water districts presaged the rudimentary use of data and ease of use as goals in the newer, supposedly "cleaner" 20th century that beckoned with opportunity. The newer, wealthier New York - with boundless space in fairly empty Queens and Bronx to build new neighborhoods for the tens of thousands of new arrivals at Ellis Island every year - had in one stroke positioned itself to be America's next great place of opportunity..."

    - A City Made for Liberty: The American Urban Experiment
     
  • Index

    • Capibara

    If we're speaking of immigrants in Mexico, don't forget the Japanese coffee planters in Chiapas! (And don't forget that Mexico was the first country to establish equal-to-equal diplomatic relations with Japan during OTL Porfiriato).
     
    Nine Flags Fly in China: The Boxer Intervention and the Twilight of the Concert of Europe
  • Index

    • KingSweden24

    "...the flotilla of Western vessels in the Bohai Bay was formidable, representing the gathered ships of nine different nations (even Austria-Hungary!). The contingent of men they intended to put ashore was not large, perhaps in the low thousands, but was intended to demonstrate the seriousness of Western anger over the quick spread of Boxerism and their intent to resupply Seymour, somewhere beyond Tientsin. The June Crisis was still just that - a crisis - and China had a history of backing down when the saber was rattled. Messages from Tientsin, about thirty-five miles up the Peiho, suggested that Boxers were starting to appear in the vicinity of that walled city as well; if a response was not made now, there could be a second siege and hostage crisis on the world's hands. But first, the informal Nine Nations would have to pass the mouth of the Peiho to get upstream to Tientsin, and that meant passing the Taku Forts just below the small village of Tangku, with two major interlocking fortifications on each side of the river, for four total. The Franco-British force that had launched its punitive expedition in the 1860 Second Opium War had surpassed these forts with relative ease; with such a substantive naval force at their disposal, the commanders at the mouth of the Peiho expected likewise.

    Two factors came together to turn the First Battle of the Taku Forts into an utter disaster for the Nine Nations. Firstly, and perhaps more importantly, their alliance was as of yet ad-hoc and riven by mistrust. The Royal Navy officers who naturally regarded themselves as having rightful charge of the operation glared warily from their bows at French and Russian warships; Frenchmen refused to put ashore alongside Germans and Italians, instead requesting that when night fell and the thousand Marines and other various troops gathered for the rescue mission went ashore they go out with the Japanese, whom the Spanish preferred to send home rather than fight alongside after numerous incidents over the years with Japanese nationals in the Philippines [1]. The Americans held back with a single unarmored cruiser, the grievously-outdated USS Ticonderoga, because the chief of the Far East Squadron out of Port Hamilton, Admiral George Dewey, was reluctant to make a move without receiving an affirmative cable from either the consul-general in Hong Kong or the minister to Korea in Seoul about how to proceed - the United States had not conducted true gunboat diplomacy in over a decade this far from home, and incidents in both Panama and Samoa had led to brief but unpopular naval wars, and Dewey, the golden boy of the New Navy, was not about to make it a third time on his watch.

    The second factor was that this was not the old China anymore. Though the rotting Qing state bureaucracy remained in place and many of the reforms pursued by the now-figurehead Guangxu Emperor had been stillborn or rolled back, the Sino-French War of 1885 had revolutionized the Chinese military from top-to-bottom and created, at least across the North, a massive "Beiyang Army" which answered in practical effect exclusively to the Qing Court, which after the Tiananmen Coup and the purge of the Kangists meant Dowager Empress Cixi and her immediate clique. By 1900, the Beiyang Army was allotted 450,000 men as a professional force and was in the process of expanding to close to 600,000, and it could raise the reserve component of that total force within weeks, having run successful and impressive mobilization drills and war games in 1897 and 1899. The four separate Qing navies that had been annihilated by the French one-by-one had been reorganized into two, with one in Guangdong under the control of the most powerful of the "Southern Viceroys," reformist and diplomat Li Hongzhang, and the other at Lushunkou at the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula, under the command of Cixi's lover (and Boxer skeptic) Ronglu. In addition to the Beiyang, each peripheral Viceroyalty in the South had substantive forces it could raise on short notice, too. The Chinese armies were no longer a disorganized rabble, either. German, British and Russian military advisors had spent much of the 1890s embedded in China, helping introduce them to more modern infantry and cavalry tactics; Chinese defenders were equipped with and trained to use American-manufactured rifles and Krupp cannons from German factories; the fortifications (such as the Taku Forts) had been strengthened with the help of French engineers, electric river mines had been sourced from the Spanish armory and the six torpedo boats in dock at the base of the forts had come from the Armstrong Shipyards in Great Britain. Each Western power had, in some way, contributed to making China a considerably more fearsome, and technologically capable, foe than they would have been just ten years earlier.

    This lesson was learned with tremendous difficult at the Taku Forts in mid-June. Aware of the strength the "gates of China" held, the Nine Nations elected after conferring together to move ahead with the support operation for the Seymour Expedition at once and put to land upstream from the forts at night. Two vessels - one Russian, one British - struck mines while trying to put their landing parties into place, alerting the Chinese defenders of their presence. The six torpedo boats put out to sea and immediately began opening fire on the Western fleet, sinking the HMS Fortitude while damaging two additional. The artillery fire from the forts similarly pressed the Western flotilla back to a safe range after a ferocious exchange, one of the greatest cannonades in war since the Russo-Turkish conflict twenty years prior. The landing parties were almost slaughtered to the man, and not a single Western ship was able to slip up the river towards Tientsin. [2] The alert had gone out by daybreak - the foreigners were now coming with force.

    Licking their wounds and regrouping while waiting for reinforcements they knew were on the way would have to do for now for the Nine Nations (news of the Taku debacle led to Dewey at last authorizing the rest of the Far East Squadron to set off from the Korean archipelago along with close to 5,000 Marines, and Britain and France scrambled larger, nearby forces to deploy for the second attempt on the forts), but the opening salvo was the last provocation and escalation for Peking. Cixi formally issued a decree that declared war not just upon the Nine Nations who had gathered their ships but all foreigners in China and ordered their immediate expulsion from Chinese soil, even the treaty ports. Prince Duan went a step further, demanding that every foreigner and "rice Christian" be exterminated. The Boxers, under their leader Cao Futian, agreed to be incorporated as auxiliaries to the Beiyang Army that was now nearly fully mobilized with close to half a million professional soldiers, with conscription notices soon flowing out to the drought-stricken villages of Shandong, Manchuria and Shanxi for even more. Boxer skeptics such as Ronglu, Prince Yikuang [3] and Genearl Nie Sicheng reluctantly accepted that the Rubicon had been crossed and steeled themselves for the defense of China.

    That acceptance did not extend south - Li and his fellow Southern Viceroys were stunned at the brazenness of Peking's actions, alarmed at what horror the decision would bring, and quickly began scrambling to formulate a joint response, convinced that Cixi's action was not only rash but possibly illegal at that..." [4]

    - Nine Flags Fly in China: The Boxer Intervention and the Twilight of the Concert of Europe

    [1] More on this later...
    [2] This is way, WAY worse than how the attempt to take the Taku Forts went OTL
    [3] His formal title was "Prince Qing" which could cause confusion so I'll use his personal name instead
    [4] Shout-out to @Karelian for his input in helping me formulate my take on the Boxer Rebellion. He wrote a few years ago a really excellent TL covering this war called The March of Time that you should all definitely check out. Some decisions - like a Taku Fort debacle - are similar to my own, but his TL is a really outstanding exploration of what a Boxer Rebellion that went better/differently for the Chinese would look like without as far-back of a POD and as many butterflies as here, so its very realistic.
     
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