In The Shadow of The Eagle

The year is 1816. The Emperor Napoleon is dead. He has died a warrior's death, on the battlefields where he birthed his fame, and a new world shudders to birth itself in his wake.

His new world order, the Continental System, has reshaped the dynamics of power in Europe, tearing up the old systems of Europe as the plow tears up the field. The ancient empires of the continent have been marginalized or shackled to the ascendant French crown. Moscow and Vienna alike are ash. Britain collapses, her economy in shambles after so many failed wars. A generation of European soldiery lies dead on the battlefields of Austerlitz and Eichstätt. Over the course of twenty years of smoke and fire Napoleon Bonaparte has left France supreme in Europe -- and the emperor, supreme in France.

But now that emperor is dead -- long live the emperor.

Napoleon was not without his heirs. His Imperial Majesty Napoleon II, the Emperor of the French and the Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, the most powerful monarch on the face of the Earth, the uncrowned atlas of this reeling globe, is six weeks shy of his fifth birthday. An emergency regency council has been assembled in Paris, consisting of the most powerful dignitaries and princes of the Empire. Among them are Marshal Murat, the King of Naples, and his peers the Marshals Davout and Ney, as well as the new Emperor's uncles, the Kings of Spain and Westphalia.

But per the dictates of the Constitution of 1816 -- now the dead Napoleon's final legislative act -- the appointment and swearing-in of the Regent Imperial falls not to any of these august princes, but to the lower chamber of the Imperial Parliament, the 629-member Chamber of Representatives. Widely hailed as a landmark effort of liberalization on the emperor's part, many now bemoan the power-sharing structures established in the 1815 Constitution, which largely split the legislative power in the empire between the Parliament and the Emperor. And with the Emperor dead, the Parliament stands, for a single, splendid moment, supreme in France, supreme in Europe -- supreme on Earth.

And all the world falls now in the long shadow of the eagle.

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Welcome to In The Shadow Of The Eagle, a quest set in an alternate universe where Napoleon Bonaparte's Russian campaign was largely a success. The emperor consolidated his power, defeated his enemies in detail, and died heroically vanquishing a final coalition of his foes in the battle of Eichstätt. Broken, the powers of Europe have been brought to the negotiating table and drawn into what all hope is a peace that will last a lifetime.

After a generation of conflict, the Napoleonic Wars are over.

The odd chance of the Emperor's death means that the liberalizing reforms to which he submitted in order to gain political support for his greatest -- and final -- campaign against the Seventh Coalition have now become the final letter of his reign. You will be playing as the various members and political alliances which make up the popularly elected lower chamber of the Imperial Parliament. You have, by an act of God, been given a democratic legislative power nearly unseen in France since the earliest days of the Revolution. Do not squander it.

The imperial princes -- the family, ministers, and assembled nobility of the Bonaparte realms -- all desire to re-center power on themselves as soon as possible. The mighty Marshals of the Empire, France's greatest heroes, are loosed from the leash of their master, and each of them dreams of remaking the world in smoke as he did. You must win -- or keep -- enough of them attached to your government and the idea of it's legitimacy to prosper. You may well find yourself minimized or overruled by men you have thrust to power, or lose enough legitimacy that everything the emperor has built splits at the seams.

Should you overcome all these trials both domestic and foreign, in the distant future, of course, the boy king must eventually become a man -- who knows how well the winds of democracy shall blow in France when an emperor stands tall once again?

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The Emergency Parliament of 1816

The Imperial Parliament of 1816, recorded in history both as the First Parliament and the Regency Parliament, would go down in the annals of French history as both one of the most powerful and the most unprepared bodies ever elected by the French people. Called in absentia on behalf of the Regent (on behalf of the Emperor) by the Regency Council, the Parliament's members, only recently elected to their five-year terms, were convened in Paris before, as the legends would later say, the emperor's body was cold. This is untrue, of course, but among the first legislative affairs laid before the parliament were the ordering and detailing of Napoleon's funeral. The most important issue, however, was that for which the parliament had been convened: the selection of a Regent Imperial, who, advised by his minsters and the Regency Council, would oversee the governance and administration of the Empire until the majority of Napoleon II. Broad camps of support had already broken out in the city for each of the potential regents, whose supporters marshaled in the streets to sway their appointment.


[] The Jacobins (Far Left)

Officially abolished by the Directory in 1799, the first truly popular legislative elections in France in nearly seventeen years have seen the return to the halls of power of many of the old members of the Society of the Friends of the Constitution -- the Jacobin Club, those famed preachers and headsmen of the Revolution. With the most radical members executed after the downfall of Robespierre, many more fled or were exiled during the ascendancy of the Emperor. The surviving Jacobins are an odd lot, republican radicals who kissed the emperor's ring and so have survived to stand here today. These last children of the Revolution have rallied around a national idol: Jean-Baptiste Jourdan, one of the Marshals of the Empire, a hero of both the American and French Revolutions, an immensely popular figure both in Paris and the provinces -- and a lifelong and bitter Republican. With him as regent, it is argued, the empire will be in safe hands both ideologically and militarily.

[] The Otrantists (Left)

Once the most radical of the Jacobins, reproached even by Robespierre for his bloodthirst in suppressing the enemies of the Revolution and executing hundreds of aristocrats and priests, Joseph Fouché has spent the last twenty years as Napoleon's creature to the bone. Appointed Minister of Police in 1804, he hunted down and exterminated many of his former comrades-in-arms with the same zeal which he hunted the aristocrats. For his zeal, loyalty, and his secret police which were said to terrify even Napoleon, he was made in 1814 a Prince of the Empire and Duke of Otranto. His followers, the Otrantists, insist that his iron and bloody hand is what is needed to combat enemies both internal and external of France, the Emperor, and the Revolution, and to preserve the liberal gains of the last forty years.

[] The Old Guard (Center-left)

Old and stubborn republicans in the Parliament have rallied primarily around the person of Lazare Carnot, another old Revolutionary. Formerly Minister of War under Robespierre, he was largely responsible for the creation, training, and expansion of the French Army that won the first war of the Coalition, a feat which earned him the nickname Carnot le Grand. Breaking from Robespierre due to his increasing radicalism, he helped see him executed, and was elected afterwards to the Directory -- only to break with Napoleon after he assumed the imperial title and go into exile, returning in 1812 to serve him as a military advisor. Many believe that his many years of service at the head of multiple French governments make him an ideal figure to helm the ship of the state.

[] The Bonapartists (Center)

The party of the emperor Napoleon, by and large, who hold great store in the persons he trusted, the institutions he established, and the laws he signed. They support for the regency the emperor's adopted brother, the Prince of Venice and the King of Italy, Eugène de Beauharnais -- perhaps the most capable and loyal of Napoleon's relatives. Beauharnais served the emperor loyally as arch-chancellor of state and viceroy in Italy, administering and ruling it in his stead these last ten years. Most notably, he is the only candidate to already have served as regent of the Empire, having held that position during the emperor's long absence in the Wars of the Sixth and Seventh Coalitions.

[] The Dandies (Center Right)

The supporters of the empire and of a strong central hand at the tiller. They are not opposed to representative democracy, but insist that France needs a strong romantic hero, a capable military and political figure to embody her aspirations at home and intimidate her enemies abroad -- and for this purpose they have turned, as Napoleon so often did, to the formidable Joachim-Napoleon Murat. Marshal of the Empire, Admiral of France, Duke of Berg and Capua, and King of Naples, the Prince Murat has come a long way from the handsome innkeeper's son who joined the Revolutionary Guard. Famously called the Dandy Prince for his good looks and fashionable dress, his followers insist that his acumen both as a statesman and a leader will make him a suitable replacement for his old master.

[] The Josephites (Far Right)

The neo-monarchists, the party of the House of Bonaparte, who have little firm attachment to a democratic France or to many republican ideals. They envision a great French House spanning Europe, a dynasty to replace and usurp the fallen Habsburgs, and for the architect of this dynasty they have selected none other than the King of Spain, Joseph Bonaparte, the Emperor's uncle. They seek to reel and center the various realms of the Napoleonic conquest and forge them into a proper dynastic empire -- never again shall the sun set on the French crown.

Newly assembled, the Imperial Parliament, convening for it's first emergency session, has no formal parties to speak of -- merely ideological leanings and inclinations. Soon, based on your choices, parties will of course coalesce. This is a riot quest, where your votes will represent not just the literal votes of individual members, but the proportional strengths of various leanings and ideological strains among the Parliament, which will in turn be broadly representative of the sentiments among the French electorate. You will be able to vote not just on what parties go with, but on what they do -- and every vote for a party will count not just towards it's strength in the legislature, but also towards it's non-political actions. Though unable to directly coerce individuals, you may push the popular will in certain directions, which may inspire individual actions in support of or in opposition to that will.

An example:


You may choose to vote for any option in the plan above, or simply vote only for the party, increasing it's strength in the next election. If any of the sub-votes receives a large amount of votes, they will happen, with an amount of in-game effort and support directly correlating to how many votes they received. This does not, however, ensure success -- you may simply end up with Talleyrand's house being swarmed with hundreds of boxes of Jacobin chocolate, to no discernible political effect.

A twist on this system compared to many nation quests is that you will not have a perfect representation of the states of the country's finances, it's diplomatic relationships, or it's military readiness and ability. You are only the legislature (or, more specifically, the will of the interest groups directing the legislature). Ministers must be appointed, who will be more or less competent -- a loyal political appointee to the Treasury may give a wholly flawed judgement of the country's financial situation, and propose truly horrible plans to deal with it, at which point the players will not be able to directly suggest a plan to fix the situation: they will have to do what every legislature ever has had to do, and pressure the government to fire the guy.