The French Century, the history books will record, began with neither a bang nor a whimper, but with the scratch of a pen. Backed by the constitutionalists and La Maison -- that political coalition which was famously called the 'unflinching column' at the heart of the early Regency -- the lower chamber of the Imperial Parliament passed several resolutions which would shape the future of the continent.
Firstly, they demanded a massive indemnity of 500 million francs be levied upon the defeated Austrian state, to be managed by the Bank of France. Secondly, they approved an expansion of the Napoleonic Code and it's strictures to the forty million souls then living in French-held Europe, from the shores of Gibraltar to the banks of the Danube.
With the signing of a single document, the old order died. Lands across Europe held by nobility and clergy for centuries was stripped and given to the public weal. A hundred hundred years of tradition and ceremony and arcane legislature were vanished in an instant like gunsmoke on the wind.
The doctrinaires of the Parliament, led by the esteemed Pierre Royer-Collard, proposed that this new order should be set in ink and stone, to stand another thousand years. Ministers Maret and Talleyrand agreed, and shortly after Talleyrand's return from Vienna, designed and proposed to the Chamber the face of a new Europe: a political and economic system with France at it's beating heart. The Prime Minister called it the 'Continental Concert', or the 'Concert of Nations' -- but as many in France and beyond were wont to say, it was a concert with but a single conductor. In chained and beaten Austria, where it's effects were felt most heavily and intensely, they called it simply the Imperial System.
It was, simply put, nothing less than the introduction of French direction into every court and every capitol and every market. Under the direction of the Bank of France, a new system of tariffs would be levied across Europe, as Napoleon had perhaps dreamed when he drew up the Continental System all those years past. Paris, the planners imagined, would become the beating political, economic, and cultural heart of Europe, fed by veins stretching to every city on the continent.
They imagined.
News of the new order spread from Paris much as a wildfire spreads on a dry plain -- catching in the wind and rippling out in greater and greater intensity. Sixteen regiments of the defeated Austrian army staged a prison break and marched into the Hungarian wilderness, championing the cause of the imprisoned Francis I. Cities burned. Garrisons were assaulted, governors defenestrated. Europe bucked under the Frankish yoke.
And yet. Marshal Massena marched the VI Corps into Dresden, and that same winter pacified four more of the German cities within the new-formed Kingdom of Westphalia. With Westphalia's King Jerome in Paris and showing little desire to return, the Marshal assumed de facto supreme authority along the Rhine. Escorted by troops under Marshal Jourdan, King Joseph returned in glory to Madrid, and set about reorganizing the nation in the face of fierce opposition. In Austria, Marshal Davout assumed a similar leading role in enforcing the new imperial system, and it was said in Europe in those days that the new order came blazing at the barrel of a gun.
Ministers, Talleyrand among them, urge a lighter hand. Old officers caution that they might break many armies, but they cannot fight a continent. Maret and the Regent dither. They stand their ground. They proclaim iron and blood, as the old emperor might have.
Finally, they yield. Many of the new tariffs are struck from the records with the ink still fresh. The Imperial System is reimagined by Talleyrand, who graces it with the lighter touch he imagined: France, first among nations, not a lord among vassals. Empowered by the Regent, Talleyrand returns to Vienna, and some weeks later, the Schonbrunn Proclamation is issued by Francis I, Emperor of Austria and King in Hungary. His imperial highness recognizes the 'special influence' of his grandson Napoleon II, whom he creates an Archduke of Austria. In so many words he legitimizes the 'leading role' which France will take in Austrian affairs moving forward. In return, of course, the Regent Imperial issues a proclamation from Paris recognizing Francis and his heirs as rulers of the Habsburg realms in perpetuity, now and for always Emperors of Austria and Kings in Hungary.
In one fell swoop, the Habsburgs are saved from the inglorious fate of the Bourbons and the Hohenzhollerns before them. Austria settles, a dog with a new chain but a familiar master. Like cannonsmoke drifting on the horizon, the old order fights the rising wind.
At the end of the fourth month of the Regency, the Emperor Napoleon is buried. A mass of moving humanity follows his corpse through the streets of Paris and under the arcs of the heroes. Old men in their uniforms throw themselves before the casket and weep as babes. A generation mourns. Across Europe, from Cadiz to Montenegro, a thousand thousand cannons fire a thousand thousand salutes.
And then the casket is lowered beneath the dome and the doors of the tomb are shut with a clap like the hand of God and it is done. The emperor is dead. Long live the emperor.
Somewhere in all of this -- amidst the weeping and the tearing of cloth and the beating of chests -- the Regent quietly ends the first convention of the Imperial Parliament.
He does not convene it again for two long years.
The Constitutionalists have emerged the unquestioned victors of the Regency Parliament, alongside with their compatriots of the center, La Maison. With the backing of the Regent, their programs have passed both chambers of the Parliament and become the law of the land: a centralizing and constitutionally enshrined French hegemony -- neither the autocratic madness of the right or the liberalizing lunacy of the left, but a French dominion all the same. Their programs have proven exceptionally popular among the middle class and the lower military, to whom they have promised demobilization and land reform. Europe burns, but it remains to be seen if France shall prosper.
Narrowly defeated by the Constitutionalists and their allies, the Philadelphians are not idle during the long recess. The Philadelphian Lodges spring up across the breadth of French Europe, the cutting edge of continental Masonry. Many a soldier returning home after years at the front finds himself seeking a new sodality to replace the long familiarity of the army -- and the Philadelphians are there. Part social club, part cult, part revolutionary order, they are present in almost every major city, and their reach is soon felt even in the highest halls of power.
The Jacobins do not rest easy either, those old torchmen of the Revolution. More and more correspondence is uncovered by the ministry of security indicating collaboration between republican groups across France, with aid perhaps from the Philadelphian Lodges. Though no names are ever written in ink and no incriminating evidence is ever found, Spain in particular becomes a hotbed for these new committees of correspondence, as troops under Marshal Jourdan -- far from home in a foreign country oppressing foreign men -- seethe and stir to acts unbecoming loyal citizens of the Empire. There are midnight assemblies and clandestine rallies and in the dark there are the many murmurings of angry men.
The Absolutists are enraged by the Schonbrunn Proclamation. Many of the more fervent imperial loyalists see it as nothing less than a betrayal of everything which the Emperor died for, which French men have bled and fought for for so long. They gather to themselves the dregs of the right, the fervent and the faithful, and though their demands grow increasingly absurd in the wilderness, their aim is clear: France, supreme in Europe, and the Emperor, supreme in France by the grace of God. Here and there, drinking clubs and hunting groups crop up among the jilted noveau riche, where men might whisper around coffee tables that the Regency is weak, that the Emperor is surrounded by women and Germans, and that France slides every day towards disaster.
They build their power in the shadows and in the parlors, and when the convention is called again it is a more jaded and shrewd sort of house which assembles. No longer startled men thrust into uncertain power, they are tested and devoted ideologues, men devoted to their constituencies and their missions, who shall shape France's future and know it.
The parties are now FROZEN until the next election. Currently, the center parties (La Maison and the Constitutionalists) have the most power. As the Parliament of 1818 convenes, they are in an uneasy coalition. They are followed by the ultraleft Philadelphians, the left-wing Jacobins (who still control the Presidency), and finally the right Absolutists. All other parties have been merged into these.
Parliament update incoming.
