Things Fall Apart
Britannian Sicily had always attracted the Republican and Liberal sort since it was first seized, but it seemed the slow, if steady trickle of immigrants had been boosted rapidly by news of Lelouch's invasion, of a liberal cause to fight for. Thousands of eager young men disembarked, the majority of them part of a group informally known as the Peat Gatherers., where "gathering peat" was a cover for secret meetings and drills held in the bogs of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. While certainly not professional soldiers, they were spirited and cohesive, and led by a young radical named Seamus Collins.
The news of Prince Lelouch's conversion to the Catholic faith was received warmly by the Sicilians and Irish, but less so by the mainly Protestant Britannian volunteers, although at the very least it meant that the Prince couldn't warp the doctrines of his Church to suit his own political interests (well, he could, but it would require forcing the Pope to agree with him).
"Did you came to visit for business, Reuben, or did you just miss us?"
"A little bit of both. Once I heard you were taking over Italy, I had to visit you, after stopping in Sicily."
Lelouch leaned forward. "Is Nunnally well? I regret leaving her alone, but I wouldn't dare bring her along into an active war."
"Yes. Milly is with her, and she's going to give you a piece of her mind when she sees you again, for leaving Nunnally alone."
Lelouch gave a melancholic smile. "And I'll probably deserve it."
"I heard you converted to Catholicism."
"Yes. It ties me to the Italian people, and I need to be as relatable as I can get."
Reuben gulped. "Despite knowing that the Act of Succession-"
Lelouch gave a dismissive wave of his hand, "I know. I've practically resigned my claim to the Britannian Throne by converting to Catholicism, unless my father decides to revoke the law. I've made my peace with it."
Reuben nodded. "If you've invested yourself so fully into Italy, than I'll help you as much as I can."
"The help would be greatly appreciated. To start, could you get me some uniforms? I assume you met Asplund and saw his textile mills. Do you think you could get me about thirty thousand red shirts?"
Russian armies were marshaling near the borders of the Duchy of Warsaw, and a conflict seemed inevitable. While this meant that in the short term Russo-Britannian relations were likely to stay cool, Schneizel recognized that the collapse of France wouldn't magically restore the balance of European power, and that keen negotiation would be required to prevent further warfare.
However, Schneizel couldn't predict who would be at the negotiating table with certainty. He knew that if the French lost the Turks and Danubians would try to take their pound of flesh, but Lelouch could potentially sit at the table in an attempt to get international recognition of his conquests in Italy. If Russia joined that would bring Tsar Alexander's ambassadors to the table along with Francis II's and Sultan Mahmud II's. While the latter was something of a reformer, the other two were staunch conservatives, and their diplomats would almost certainly take the chance to crush France and reinstall a traditional, absolutist monarchy.
Prussia was technically within the French sphere of influence, but reports said they had been wavering and Schneizel suspected that Frederick William III would join the other great powers of Europe in taking their revenge on the French. Emperor Charles had no interest in war on the French in the short term, and Schneizel couldn't help but wonder what sort of peace would be drawn up without Britannian interference, and if it would push Britannia further from Europe and closer to her colonial holdings, or if Italy would drag them back into European politics, perhaps quite painfully.
The next stop on Lelouch's tour of Italy was the city of Naples, which was another two weeks from Rome, which would make their arrival around the middle of July. Lelouch planned to stay there for a little longer than his usual stops, to resupply and prepare before traveling between the Apennines and working his way up towards Venice.
Reuben had decided to stay in Rome to help manage Italian economic affairs, and was planning the construction of several factories to exploit the crowded cities of the peninsula. Lelouch was tentatively hopeful that with the help of Asplund and Ashford he could restore Italy as an economic power in Europe, once he consolidated the country, of course. At the very least he hoped to try to industrialize before the rest of the world did. Britannia kept her secrets close to her chest, but the industrialization genie was out of the bottle, and too valuable to be restrained in Britannia forever.
Most of the French puppet states had taken a neutral stance when civil war broke out in France, preferring to let Bonaparte and the Senate tear each other to pieces with hopes of eventually using the chaos to win their own independence. Neither party could draw reinforcements from the Confederation of the Rhine or Spain, much less Italy, and many of the more far flung departments of the empire under direct French control like those in Catalonia, Holland, or the Illyrian Provinces of the Adriatic coast were also useless.
Crechy had proven to be a setback for Bonaparte, but did not loose him the war, and he had won most of the battles and skirmishes which followed, leading to a rough stalemate, and such a stalemate dragging on would only hurt France as her enemies closed in. Bonaparte hoped that if worst came to worst, the other powers of Europe would be more willing to install him as a monarch then they would be to tolerate the Senate running wild; although Bonaparte wasn't fool enough to think that his father had earned him anything but distrust from the other powers of Europe, and they would prefer a Bourbon on the French throne.
On the subject of the Bourbons, Bonaparte knew that Spaniard, Carlos de Bourbon, was fomenting unrest in Iberia as the war dragged on, but neither side of the civil war could rush down to stop him or vi Britannia, damn them both. Lelouch vi Britannia killed his adopted brother and made all the blood spilled to win Italy worthless. Bonaparte didn't think of himself as a man who preened and prided himself on titles, but it did sting a little to see vi Britannia plucking Rome from him, making the title his father gave him, King of Rome, nothing more than a joke.
Joachim Murat, (titular) King of Naples was in a bind. He was no coward, and he would not flee, but his army and Greek allies were stretched thin defending the last bastion of Greek independence left, the Peloponnese. Greek forces had retreated from Athens a few weeks previously, and the ferocity of the Turkish and Danubian navies pushed the armies back into the hills and forests of Arcadia, and while they could retreat into the mountains it would leave the Turks and Danubians free to close in on France.
Murat would not abandon his allies, and he would make the enemy pay a high price for every dead Frenchman and Greek; however, he knew that this battle was hopeless, a Thermopylae of the modern age. While the Greeks emerged triumphant against Persia in the end, Thermopylae won no war- in fact, the Persians would proceed to burn Athens after that fateful battle. Murat hoped that his Thermopylae wouldn't proceed the burning of Paris; however, he knew the odds were not good.
The Imperial Court had become, in a strange way, transfixed on Lelouch's campaign although mostly as entertainment, some hoping to see Lelouch rise above the challenges facing him while others gleefully waited for Lelouch to fall and doom the Commoner Empress's lineage to extinction. It was like a story rife with plot twists, although the most recent of these twists was definitely the most surprising.
"Catholicism, really?"
"Is Italy really worth a mass?"
As the court chattered and murmured about Lelouch's sudden conversion, Charles couldn't help but appreciate the boy's gall, even if his conversion crippled his chances at becoming Emperor of Britannia. So few of Charles' children weren't disappointments, and Lelouch was certainly up there, and the choice between him and Schneizel was actually a fairly difficult one, as opposed to the easy eliminations of the ingrates that filled his court.
At the very least, even if Lelouch never ascended to the throne, he would make one of the finest ministers that Britannia had ever had, and he would endear the Catholic populations of the empire to him greatly.
Lelouch couldn't help but wonder how he would be received in Naples and, to a larger extent, how the entire Mezzogiorno, disregarding Sicily, would view him. He was similar to them culturally and shared their religion, but he was no Ferdinand de Bourbon, and he wasn't sure if he'd receive the same warm support from the peasantry.
The warm welcome he was received with was something of a surprise, but he supposed the Neapolitan people were just happy to have a King figure who wasn't French. Another city joined the Risorgimento, and helped prepare his men for the journey over the Alps to reach Bari, before he marched his way back up the boot of Italy, going through San Marino and striking Bologna and then finally Venice.
Admittedly, northern Italy worried him, because of Austrian claims in the region. Before Napoleon, the Austrians ruled in Lombardy and Venice. In a best case scenario he might be able to snatch the region if his campaign was fast enough; however, he knew that if the Danubians won their war with the French (and every battle he won helped the Danubians, like it or not) after securing the mountainous Tyrol region they would come for Lombardy and Venetia, come for Italy.
At the very least, the Empire of the Danube was the only real great power who had interests in Italy other than France, and if he could fend them off Italy would be secured.
KING CARLOS TAKES NORTHERN SPAIN
In a unsurprising consequence of his recent escape from imprisonment, King Carlos of Spain seized parts of northeastern Spain, like Catalonia and the Pyrenees, with expeditions into Aragon and Navarra under way. Local juntas have flocked to support him, and Carlos seems posed to swallow up Spain in the same way vi Britannia is sweeping up Italy.
A few days before the army of the Risorgimento could cross the Apennines, some unusual ships docked at the port of Naples. Of course, Lelouch wasn't stopping the army for every ship landing in the harbor, but the flag of the Sicilian merchant marine gave him pause. He had not asked for any reinforcements or supplies at Naples, so he rode with his Sicilian infantry to investigate.
He found an enthusiastic young man of an exceedingly Irish complexion, a musket slung over his shoulder, a broad green sash over the other, and a simple flatcap with a green cockade.
"Your highness! My name is Seamus Collins, and I bring with me 2,500 volunteers from Britannia to help your campaign."
Lelouch gave a smile, and extended his hand. "A pleasure. I assume you know my name already. May I ask why you came?"
Collins seemed a little shaken by the gesture of friendship, and Lelouch could see Jeremiah's brow furrowing in consternation. "We came to support your campaign, to support the expansion of the most liberal part of Sicily. Most of us are part of a group called the Peat Gatherers-"
Jeremiah scoffed. "The Peat Gatherers? Truly?"
Collins' pale face turned ruddy and he rushed to defend himself. "Because we're a society that holds our meetings in peat bogs. Not sure if a high and mighty nobleman like you has lowered himself to see a peat bog where the commoners do real work-"
Lelouch stepped between the two. "Now gentlemen, let's both just calm down a bit, shall we? We're all here for Sicily and for Italy, aren't we?" While Lelouch was pleased that he was so well regarded among Britannian liberals that a few thousand came to support his campaigns in Italy, he knew the Italy they wanted (if they truly wanted an Italy and not just a more liberal Britannia with a Mediterranean climate) would be very different from the Italy that the Neapolitan peasants toiling in the fields just a few kilometers away wanted.
It took a bit longer to rearrange his logistics to support an extra 2,500 men on the march, but they moved within a few days with hopes of arriving in Bari a week after the beginning of August. Lelouch carefully arranged the men on the march so that the Peat Gatherers would intermingle with the Italians, especially the Sicilians, who tended to know more English than the rank and file Italian volunteers. It would be rather silly if his Italian army had members who didn't know a lick of Italian, after all.
RUSSIANS MOVE INTO WARSAW
The armies of Tsar Alexander have moved into the Duchy of Warsaw, citing the chaos of the French civil war as reason to subjugate the Poles and prevent anarchy. Reports of battle and fierce Polish resistance have come from Lublin and Mariampol. As of yet, the French Confederation of the Rhine has remained neutral, although with the threat o the Russians closing in who knows how the Germans will react?
Bari was rich city, in large part thanks to the influence of Murat, whose rule as King of Naples lead to economic growth for the city, as well as a new district, the Murattiano, where Lelouch's army was currently stationed. He supposed that the man might be quite upset with his modern, rational city quarter being used to host a scion of one of the oldest dynasties in all Europe, if Murat wasn't lying dead somewhere in Greece already.
Now the army would head north, hugging the Adriatic as they raced the Danubians to Venice, and while Lelouch was loath to exhaust his army by marching hard in the hot August sun before what could be a decisive battle against the armies of the Danube, but reaching Venice first would be important in keeping him from appearing as stealing from the Danubians, but rather as a liberator from the French. He would win no favors in the European halls of power by fighting a bloody siege to take Venice from the Danubians.
Nunnally ruled in her brother's absence, which largely consisted of keeping a careful eye on the behaviors of the Sicilian Parliament. While Lelouch had never expanded on it at length, she realized fairly quickly that the Parliament was staffed with decently skilled administrators that were bribed enough to not be overly resistant to Lelouch's suggestions, and as the payments were still being made, Nunnally tried her best to make some positive changes for Sicily while Lelouch was gone.
Milly was helpful, both for her business acumen and for simply providing some company, although she tended to… spook much of the staff other than Sayoko, who seemed used to her antics. Of course, this was just extra eccentricity of top of the many quirks of their resident researcher, Lloyd Asplund.
"Your highness, I have a project I'd like you approve."
"What would that be, Earl Asplund? They've all proved interesting so far." While some of them seemed a little too ambitious, he had introduced the rifles her brother was so fond of, and a device for reaping which helped the farmers.
"In some parts of Britannia, they use steam powered trains on rails for the delivery of cargo, and while that would be valuable enough for the hilly terrain of Sicily, I believe I can modify them to be used to move people!"
Milly smirked, "And they'd still be alive at the end of it, Lloyd?"
"Well of course! There's no use in loosing out on good workers!" Nunnally couldn't see it, but Cecile's sigh was so loud she could hear it from the other side of the room.
"The idea sounds good, but please assure the safety of the passengers, Earl Asplund." Perhaps, if things turned out well, Nunnally would be able to ride around Sicily in these trains Asplund was so confident in. She knew so little about the country she lived in, outside of the Norman palace.
GERMAN REVOLTS
The Russian push into Poland has provoked an uprising throughout the Confederation of the Rhine, spearheaded by young radicals across Germany, with support from the component states of the Confederation. The revolution seems to be centered around Prussia and King William III, with the former seeming like the center of the massive anti-French revolt. With this, France retains control over very little of the land Napoleon had fought so hard to take, such as the Low Countries and the Illyrian provinces, although advancing Danubian armies seem intent on tearing the latter from them as well.
San Marino was a charming little country, and while the republic didn't join the Risorgimento, he couldn't really bring himself to crush the ancient city state, and several volunteers joined the army's rush to the northeast and to Bologna, with hopes of reaching the city by early September, and Venice a bit over a week after that.
Bologna "fell" in a similar fashion to the majority of the peninsula, and the army marched at a tremendous pace through Ferrara, over the Po, and past Padua to reach Venice, but what Lelouch feared did not come to pass. When the city came into view, Lelouch sagged in relief when the flag flying above Venice was the red, white, and green of Napoleon's Italy and not the black over gold of the Danubian Empire. Vaguely, Lelouch pondered on what sort of flag the united Italy would fly, but decided to ponder upon questions such as those when he had international recognition.
The army of the Risorgimento had to stop to rest after the long march they had just struggled through, and while the Venetians were hospitable both Lelouch and Jeremiah were wary, and began to drill the men outside Venice during the days, anticipating a Danubian force, knowing that before Lelouch could travel to Rome to suss out the Italian government he would have to keep the Danubians from taking Venice.
The men drilled for days on end, and soon enough his scouts were bringing reports of Danubian banners flying over the horizon in the distance. Lelouch and Jeremiah rode out, taking care not to take bring along any of the Peat Gatherers in their guard, in hopes of making a good first impression.
Their meeting was short and tense, both sides bristled and were primed to break into fighting at any moment, especially the bear of a man that led the Danubian forces.
"Vi Britannia. Surely you know that this city is rightfully Danubian?"
"I took it from the French, not you. Furthermore, why spill blood here for a city that you may just win at the negotiating table? Let me keep custody of Venice until the peace."
"What guarantee do I have that you will return Venice to the Danubian Empire if ordered to by the other powers of Europe?"
"Well, I would be facing the might of the other powers of Europe, would I not? I am no Napoleon, who would try to fight a grand coalition in a loosing battle. As loath as I am to say it, Venice may be an acceptable price for Italy."
The Danubian general gave a shrug. "Perhaps we shall, Vi Britannia. Will you now march against the French?"
"If you can extract a promise from your superiors not to interfere with my Italian holdings until we reach the peace talks."
As Lelouch and Jeremiah waited for results from the Danubians, they drilled the men harder, training rapid firing of their rifles and the operation of the guns which won him victory against Beauharnais. Occasionally, a ship would come from Sicily, bearing great loads of ammunition or more rifled artillery to bolster the army of the Risorgimento, or perhaps it would soon be the army of Italy? During the September evenings, when the sunset dyed the Venetian lagoon orange and gold, his Britannian volunteers stumbled their way through the basics of Italian grammar as the army bonded.
He also couldn't help but think the red shirts Ashford provided for him were truly striking, turning his army into a great mass of red that reminded Lelouch of the Roman legions, reborn in the forge of the 19th century.
Once a truce had been declared and Lelouch was assured that the lands he won Italian campaign wouldn't be snatched up the Danubians immediately after he left, the men marched west, towards France. They passed through Milan once more and passed by Turin and Genoa, where the entire expedition started before beginning to slowly work their way into the southern portion of France.
The Spanish were busy pushing the French garrisons down into Andalusia in the south, but the Germans were already pushing into the Low Countries and crossing the Rhine by the thousands. The Danubians were also making their way through southern Germany, Barbary corsairs were striking France, and the Russians were pushing their way through the Poles.
The rolling fields of Provence were a beautiful purple color, the result of massive cultivation of lavender, and the smell that hung in the Autumn air was calming. The farmers toiled in the fields, planting winter wheat or harvesting their crops before the weather grew too cold as Italian columns marched by.
Lelouch believed that his army was on Bonaparte's tail- the Emperor of France was pushing towards Paris, probably with hopes of at least being at the negotiating table instead of sidelined by the Senate. Of course, there was the risk that the French were somewhere else, waiting to ambush his army, so their advance was cautious, but at a greater pace than the relatively sluggish pace they had taken through Italy, with hopes of reaching Paris in a bit over a month, in late October or possibly early November.
He hoped Nunnally was well, it had been some four months since he had last seen her, and his heart ached, but he told himself he did it for her sake. He would restructure Europe if it meant that she would be safe, and if he was fortunate, that was exactly what he would do.
The Britannian revolutionary group I talked about/made up, the Peat Gathers, drew inspiration from the Carbonari ("Charcoal makers"), an Italian secret society with similar goals that sprung up in Italy, and I found the name particularly striking. Sorry that this one was a little shorter than the last. Once again, I love feedback, so if you think something's up or have some criticism tell me. Couldn't resist the red shirts though, heh. If anyone's curious, I plan on conflict between Lelouch and the other powers of Europe in the future, and the truce he has with the Danubians will not last forever.