I was looking at a map of the German Empire in 1848-1849 and noticed that if Prussia had joined, the only states left out would have been Bavaria, Hanover, Austria and Luxembourg. Now, OTL Frederick William IV of Prussia was offered the Imperial crown, but refused, but what if he accepted the crown?
What if Friedrich Wilhelm IV accepted the Imperial crown in 1848?
- Thread starter ParasaurEwan
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The question is what if he accepted the Crown, not if he would.
Why can't you just answer the question that is asked?
They did. The answer to "what can happen if we accept hard OOC behavior" is "whatever the writer wants to be, as behavior is functionally arbitrary now" and so all answers are now equally correct and wrong at the same time.
In short, there is no way to make him do so. The Frankfurt Parliament was a foreign and liberal entity which to him, wished to restrict his power. The only reason Frederick Wilhelm agreed to (minor) constitutional reform in Prussia itself was because of the high direct pressure of the liberal movement--his conservative advisors believed that with the defeat of revolutions elsewhere they would be able to renege on constitutionalism. The military was also sufficiently satisfied by the reforms that were made and would be open to oppose any attempt at a forceful attempt to invade Prussia. Basically, 1848 revolution succeeding is impossible.
@Eurofed and @Beer both wrote full-dress timelines on this I believe @ParasaurEwan - those original authors have long since been banned, If I am not mistaken.
I think one of the two timelines was called 'Almond Tree'
I think one of the two timelines was called 'Almond Tree'
Domrémy-Scorniçesti Axis
Banned
I had known from the outset this was an unrealistic idea; maybe I can make an OC king of Prussia who accepted the crown.
In theory if he would have accepted the gutter throne it would have been as a ruse. Once such an Empire was in place, as Emperor he would have simply broken the parliamentarians and re-established this new Empire as an authoritarian one. Although here I am probably ascribing to FWIV Machiavellian instincts he probably could not grasp.
I think the real reason he refused is that Frankfurt lacked any real teeth and that movement would have angered the others kings, especially Bavarian one could have asked for Austria Help, the same Hannover
How did you draw the conclusion those states would have been left out? And what was the very first date of his opportunity to accept a Crown.
You were treated unfairly by naysayers in that thread.
But @isabella posed the very interesting alternative: What if Ferdinand, or Franz-Joseph of the even more prestigious House of Habsburg had accepted the Imperial Crown of Germany from the Frankfurt Assembly, while reorganizing their rule of non-German possessions in Italy, Galicia, and Hungary into a personal union?
It might well have been an option had he been willing to try, and had he timed it right and pulled it off.
Quite.
This is exactly what he did in Prussia itself in Dec 1848 when he imposed a new Constitution. In collaboration with the other princes he could, and likely would, have overturned the Frankfurt Constitution in favour of one which gave him, and the princes in general, more power.
But grabbing an Imperial Crown from gutter, washing it off, rebaptizing it, and ennobling the constitution in the 1848-49 timeframe as @Comte de Geneve suggests would be an interesting and quite significant historical divergence, even if the new German Empire starts off as a pretty conservative monarchical state.
It is proclaimed in Frankfurt, not the Versailles Hall of Mirrors, at the end of a Franco-Prussian War. Now there may be a war to *defend* the new empire from Austrian and/or Russian counter-assaults, possible Kingly mutinies in Bavaria and Hanover, or possible worker or liberal uprisings in towns, but it is still a bit different, and over twenty years earlier, than OTL's unification. The Schleswig War with Denmark is a sideshow the whole time this is going on.
Suppressed and double-crossed for the moment, liberals in Germany know they played a crucial role in unifying the empire, so any moment of crisis, instability, weakness, opportunity, or loosening within Prussia or the larger German empire in the 1850s or 1860s will likely lead to calls for revision of the Constitution to a more liberal direction. So ebb and flow and pendulum swinging would begin, while a unified Germany would also initiate a common foreign policy from 1850ish on.
From what I read, Frederick William IV of Prussia was a hardcore romanticist, and would've preferred a Habsburg taking the Imperial Crown, and would only accepted the crown had the other German Princes elected him as such, and not the people.
That was why he didn't give a damn about Frankfort, Plus he knew those fools wanted the Prussia Army to do their dirty work
Friederich Wilhlem is a bit of a weird character so his true motivations are a bit hard to ascertain.
His aristocratic sentiments were offended by the idea of accepting a "crown from the gutter." That would put him in the same mold as Napoleon who in his own words, "picked up France's crown rom the gutter and cleaned it with the tip of his sword." He's also not wrong for rejecting the demands of the revolutionaries. With how easily their support and "government" collapsed, at the end of the day it was a fragile and shaky overly idealistic movement with very little substance behind it.
For someone like FW who would more likely be forced by in his view was a "Rabble mob" to accept such a disgraceful proposal, double crossing the liberal revolutionaries is an acceptable path for him to take.
At the same time though he was also open to the Habsburgs having some nominal leadership of Germany illustrating his romantic sentiments,
Yup. Though after the 1848 Congress fell apart, a year later Prussia tried again with a congress of princes called the "Congress of Erfurt," trying to spearhead Prussian led German unification.
Nah that was what Napoleon did. This was exactly what the powers and aristocrats Concert of Europe were ideologically opposed to.
Agreed it would be OOC.
There would need to be a radically different pod leading up to 1848 revolutions. It would possibly need some sort of geopolitical shift going back to at least the end of the Congress of Vienna for it to work, creating the circumstances for Prussia to even feasibly entertain the idea of unifying Germany in such a fashion.
In my timeline Imperator Francorum (on hiatus for now), I was toying with some of these ideas. Napoleon died during Leipzig which takes the Hundred Days off the board and makes the powers of the Concert of Europe more complacent with Napoleon dying in battle instead of him launching another hundred days style uprising. This changes things in the early part of the century like with Russia who might feel less of a need to extend the idea of the "status quo" with the Ottomans.
Basically in my timeline I plan on Napoleon II surviving and eventually coming to power in the 1830's with Charles X's deposition and Britain potentially being taken up by political turmoil followed by a stronger Chartist movement.
But what you are saying 'nah' too (what I wrote) and what Comte De Geneve wrote, are substantively the exact same thing you just said here:
What on earth could double-crossing the revolutionaries mean but accepting their offered crown and then using it a different way, a way that he wants, and *then* screwing them over . Denying the revolutionaries crown and crushing them isn't double-crossing, that's just double-stomping or repressing.
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And Württemberg, both Hesses, Baden, Saxony (both royal and ducal lines of the Wettins) who were also all opposed to the idea. They supported a unified Germany in theory, but Württemberg, Hannover, Bavaria, Saxony and (I think) Hesse were all opposed to either Prussia or Austria getting more power than they had inside the confederation.
the Prussian military in 1848 was a joke. It's pay was in arrears and of a shipment of 400 000 new Dreyse guns that had been placed in 1841, less than a quarter had been delivered due to "insufficient funds". They also had one of the highest rates of desertion of any German army all the way up to the end of WW1.
there were essentially two competing factions in Frankfurt. The Klein- and Gross-Deutschland. One wanted the Habsburgs in, one wanted the Hohenzollerns. There was never really any chance of anybody else getting it. But I've stated elsewhere that them choosing Goodinand (once he's abdicated) has all of the perks and none of the drawbacks that a Hohenzollern has:
Consequences of that scenario @Kellan Sullivan could easily see Franz Joseph marrying Anna of Prussia instead of Sisi (and maybe Max paired with a Bavarian cousin instead of Charlotte) meaning different heirs…