Giant Austria-Hungary

[KWorld]

[An attempt to come up with a semi-plausible explanation for why Austria-Hungary looks the way it does.]

Emperor Rudolph of Austria-Hungary

The primary driver of the change in A-H fortunes can be laid at the early death (due to a fall from his horse in a hunting accident) of Emperor Franz Joseph I on December 30, 1875, leading to the ascension of his son, Crown Prince Rudolph, to the throne.   Where Franz Joseph was a deeply conservative man, who never recovered from the bitter losses of 1866, Rudolph is a younger, more active, and more liberal man.  Where Franz Joseph allowed Austria-Hungary to sit out the Balkan wars of the 1870s, picking up Bosnia-Herzegovina as the prize of it's neutrality, Rudolph was not so passive.  He, when Serbia was hard-pressed and forced to seek a truce in August, 1876, took the opportunity to mobilize the Heer and launched the Austrian and Hungarian armies against the Turkish forces almost as soon as the truce between the Serbs and the Turks expired.   The armies of Austria-Hungary and Serbia were too much for the Turkish armies, and the Sublime Porte signed a truce with Serbia and Austria-Hungary on October 19, 1876, confirming the absorption of Boznia-Herzegovina into the Austria-Hungarian Empire and the independence of Serbia.

This nearly bloodless victory fired the blood of the young Emperor and his people, and diplomacy with the nominally Turkish principality of Rumania resulted in an agreement to allow the Austria-Hungarian armies to cross Rumanian territory to enter Bulgaria (while Serbia also bordered Bulgaria and Boznia-Herzegovina, the Serbs were not in a position to continue the wars against the Turk so soon without outside funds), in exchange for Austro-Hungarian support for Rumanian independence from the Sublime Porte.  Diplomacy with Russia reached agreement on the Russian acquisition of the city of Batumi and any acquisitions that Russian arms might acquire in the Caucasus and eastern Turkey.

As the spring of 1877 arrived, the migrating birds found the Austro-Hungarian armies on the march.   The lead elements of the army crossed the Rumanian frontier less than 48 hours after the agreement to allow them into Rumania were signed on April 12, 1877.  The fact that it was the Austro-Hungarians attacking into Bulgaria, rather than the Russians, threw the Turkish high command off balance, because their intended strategy of relying on the coastal fortifications along the Black Sea was no longer valid.  Osman Pasha inflicted heavy casualties on the invading Austrian and Rumanian forces at Plevna, but his inadequate forces could not stop them, and the fact that the Russians were not invading Bulgaria meant that they had more troops available in the Caucausus.  The combatants agreed to a truce on December 1, 1877, and the Treaty of San Stefano recognized the independence of Rumania and Bulgaria from the Sublime Porte.


Rumania

Rumania had chosen in February 1866 to invite the then-emperor of Mexico, Maximillian, brother of the Austro-Hungarian emperor Franz Joseph, to be it's new Prince (in place of the historical choice of German prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen).  Maximillian's rule in Mexico was clearly doomed at this time, because of the impending withdrawal of French troops that had been supporting him and the possibility of US intervention against him.  Taking the advice of Napoleon III and his wife Carlota (and the American ambassador), he abdicated the throne of the Second Mexican Empire in March of 1866 and sailed to Europe to take up the throne of Rumania (rather to the annoyance of his brother Franz Joseph) as Prince Ferdinand Maximillian.

Ferdinand Maximillian was a much more liberal man than his brother Franz Joseph, which had caused Ferdinand's removal from the Viceroyalty of Lombady-Venetia, but this meant that he and his nephew Rudolph were substantially more compatible, making an alliance between Rumania and Austria-Hungary easy to arrange.  Upon his death in 1896 at the age of 64, being childless, his wish was that the crown of Rumania be offered first to Rudolph of Austria-Hungary.  The Rumanian parliament mulled over this idea, considered again offering the crown to Prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, but in the end decided to offer the crown of Rumania to Emperor Rudolf.


Bulgaria

Upon the abdication of Alexander of Battenburg as it's Knyaz in 1886, the Bulgarian parliament under Stefan Stambolov offered the crown to the King of Rumania (as historical).  Ferdinand Maximillian accepted the offer, travelling between Bucharest and Sofia as his duties required.  Upon his death, the crown of Bulgaria was offered to Emperor Rudolph, who took it up as King of Rumania


Serbia

King Milan of Serbia had always inclined himself towards his Austrian neighbors after the events of 1876 but especially so after the Serbian-Bulgarian War of 1886 where Austria threatened to enter the war to preserve the pre-war borders of Serbia.  With Rumania and Bulgaria under the rulership of a Habsburg prince (Ferdinand Maximillian), the influence of Russia in Serbia was less than historical, and when Milan abdicated in 1891 in favor of his underage son Alexander, the regents chosen did not include his Russophone wife Natalija Obrenović.  Alexander's unilateral ascent to power in 1893 was welcomed by many in Serbia, but others were rather less happy, especially when his mother returned from her exile and when Alexander announced he would marry her lady-in-waiting Draga Masin in 1897, this was regarded as too much.  A group of army officers murdered the King and Queen in 1898, but their coup-de-etat failed in other respects as they failed to successfully kill the Prime Minister, Military Minister, or the  Interior Minister.  Soldiers loyal to the government soon put down the coup, executing the plotters by hanging, and the government considered who would succeed the King.  King Milan had abdicated, and Alexander had been his only son.  The heir to the Karađorđević line, Peter Karađorđević, was considered but he was opposed by the Austrian government and there were suspicions that the plotters had, at the least, intended to elect him as King whether or not if they had not contacted him with their plans prior to the coup.  In the end, Emperor Rudolph was elected King of Serbia.


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[Jefgte]

It's now Austro Hungarian Empire with 18BP & 66m people.
An interresting country to play

Jef