Non Plus Ultra: A World Without America (IC - ALT-HIST)

[The Cosmic Frankish Empire]

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I stand at the Rock of Gibraltar, looking southwards at the North African coast. It is a beautiful sight; I am glad to have travelled such a long way from my hometown in England to see this place. The weather is warm, a cool breeze washes over me, and the sun is shining upon the deep, blue Strait of Gibraltar. It is a perfect day. Ships lazily drift down the Strait, carried to and fro by the wind against their sails. I look to the west, at the Great Western Ocean which stretches westward for fifteen thousand miles, from here to the shores of Japan. Apart from a few islands, there is no land there, just an empty expanse of ocean.One might say that this place is at the edge of the world.

It is said in Greek Mythology that this strait bore a warning; it read "Non Plus Ultra", or "Nothing Further Beyond", as a warning to sailors and navigators to go no further. Such a warning, if it ever existed, was probably well-warranted...

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Welcome to Non Plus Ultra, a alternate world where the American continents never existed! If you want to apply for the RP, sign up here!

[Prevnina]

Near Meestersdorp, Nieuw Friesland

Sarel Stomphorst and a dozen other men eyed the road ahead of them warily, they were at the northern edge of the Wytrop colony and everything from here all the way up to far Arendsbaai was thick native bush, firstly the Veertigmylwoud, and after that the Zeventigmylwoud. All there was was trees, trees and more trees, with the odd woodcutters camp or road-clearing party, even the natives stayed away from this area, the bush serving has a barrier between the Rangitane in the south and Kahungunu in the north.

This road didn't go all the way through the bush, only to the furthest lumber camps where small groups of mostly Scandinavians were sawing away the bush one tree at a time. Sarel and his mates, members of the local militia Geweerkorps, had been assembled a few hours earlier by the kommandant. Apparently Red Frans, a wanted man, had killed two constables down in Greylingstad and was now trying to make his way north to the natives. Now, with a rifle in hand and a horse under them, the group was ready to head off and make sure he didn't escape justice.

The kommandant, a fat old Walloon named Willem Lequelenec, rode to the front of the group and entered the bush, the rest of the posse following closely behind. It was a rather scary ride, the path was so narrow that they had to ride single file, and the bush on both sides was so thick that they soon found themselves in darkness, this was good territory for an ambush. After a few hours of riding in tense silence, weapons at the ready, they came to a stop.

"What's going on?" Sarel asked, some of the men ahead of him were mumbling about whatever they had found, but he was unable to see the front of the column. After a few minutes, Big Wouter Braun in front of him finally shifted enough that Sarel was able to see a body lying face down on the track. The man's shoes had been stolen, and there was a small pool of blood under him.

Two men dragged the body to the side of the path, they would bring him in for burial on their way back. With a grumble of "We must be close...", the kommandant climbed back on his horse and they started moving again. Thinking that the murderer was nearby, Sarel strained his ears to hear anything out of the ordinary, the grunts of the men, the clod of the horseshoes on the dirt, the roar of the cicadas, chirping of the birds...

They came to a fork in the road, and a plank of wood propped up against a tree told them that to the left was "Olssons kamp", while the track on the right lead to "Ammundsen's Kamp". The dirt showed recent tracks going to and from each camp, and the party was forced to split up. The kommandant, Sarel, Big Wouter, Jan Visser and Claas van Ketwich would head to Ammundsens, while the rest of the group would check out Olssons.

Another hours riding went by, they hadn't found anything yet, and the horses (and men) were getting tired. It was Visser's turn to ride point by the time they made it to what Sarel assumed was Ammundsen's camp, there were a couple of shacks, a woodshed and some rudimentary stables. Two men were standing at the door of one of the shacks, staring at the riders with blank faces. One of the men had a bushy ginger moustache. Visser called out to the pair, and suddenly a shot rang out. Sarel ducked down into his saddle, and slid off his horse, he heard Visser shout out in pain, Claas had ridden off back into the bush and the others were running for whatever cover they could find.

The redheaded man was holding a revolver, and was laughing as he fired it at the militiamen, with his other hand he held some poor fellow (Ammundsen?) in front of him as a human shield. Sarel took up position behind a large tree stump, he could see Big Wouter and the kommandant had found shelter behind the woodshed, and were trying to find an angle where they wouldn't accidentally shoot the hostage. Visser was lying, groaning, where he had fallen, his horse having spooked.

"You idiots shouldn't have come here, hahaha!" Red Frans giggled, firing a shot at Sarel. He ducked down behind the stump, and was thankfully not hit. That was three shots that Frans had fired... most common revolvers had either 6 or 9 shots, but he didn't want to risk his head by jumping up and trying to see what sort Frans had... another shot slammed into the woodshed, sending splinters flying everywhere. Big Wouter shouted something obscene and fired at the redhead, but the shot went wide of both Frans and the hostage.

Frans looked delighted at this attempt at ending him, he turned to face the shed and fired again, this bullet ripping through the thin planks but missing either of the men. While he was facing the other way, Sarel jumped up suddenly, stepped on to and over the tree stump and charged at the murderer, the smiling man quickly tried to bring his revolver around for another shot, but was tackled to the ground. The gun went off, the bullet going straight up into the air, Sarel punched Frans in the face, the hostage turned on his captor and soon the grapple was over.

The hostage, a middle aged balding man started shouting out thank yous in accented Dutch, and Wouter and the kommandant ran over. "Well done, lad!" the kommandant said, patting him on the back. Sarel picked himself up off the ground and went over to check on Visser, Jan would probably be alright, the shot had hit him in the shoulder and gone clean through. Claas came back, redfaced, from the bush a few minutes later and was told to tender to Visser.

The kommandant and the hostage, who was indeed Ammundsen, went into the shack for a chat, leaving Sarel and Big Wouter to tie up the criminal. Wouter gave him another knock on the head when they were done, "To make sure he don't wake up and run off...", and all of a sudden Sarel felt completely exhausted, he sat down on the ground and yawned. His life wouldn't be this tiring if his grandfather hadn't left Breda.

[The Free Republic Of Arconia]

Lahore, The Sihk Empire
Maharaja Iswar Singh spoke with a booming voice:
"People of the empire, I speak to you with pride!" His Wazir, Jammur Kochali Singh, stood next to him, Feeling A great pride in the Maharaja agreeing to implement his idea. "Today we announce the creation of the first constitution of the empire, and the formation of a parliament!" The crowd begins to cheer* "For the first time, the *people of the empire shall have their own voices in the running of the land the land they live in!" *The people cheer again* "We will show these europeans that we are as good as them, that their "civilization" is not unique!" The crowd cheers for the final time as The Maharaja and wizar return into the palace "The crowd seemed to like your speech your majesty" Mizar Singh said to the Maharaja "yes, but the Misls will certainly not be happy." "Not immediately. And if they aren't satiated by the Misls house then we have plans in place in case they get out of hand." "Excellent work Wizar, but I still wonder what the europeans will think" "let them think whatever they want, we must begin plans for our next expansion" *both of them enter a room with a map of the Indian subcontinent, ready to begin planning their next moves*

[The Cosmic Frankish Empire]

Providence, Capitol District, New Eden Province

The well-furnished halls of South Africa's parliament echoed with voices from every corner of every province in the country. Heated debates occurred here over a variety of things, mostly associated with matters of state and the economy - tariffs, support for agriculture, central banking, the military and the peopling of the territories, among other subjects, debates about which often became so heated that they stopped being debates and became arguments. Oh well; all part of living in a young republic, one which had celebrated its 100th anniversary of independence not even two decades ago.

There were some things, however, that the representatives of every province and congressional district were in agreement upon, from those who represented the crowded dock suburbs of Cape Town to those who represented the rough-and-tumble cowboys of the Eastern Tablelands. One of those things was that the Bantus had to be dealt with.

Representative Andrew Higgins stood before parliament. He was a young, handsome man, with strong cheekbones and a jet black beard. Raised by a family of diary cattle farmers and leather tanners from the foothills of the Maloti Mountains, in the Lesotho Highlands of Drakesland Province. Now he was far from the land of his birth, instead representing its people in Providence as their congressional representative. Parliament watched him eagerly as he stood up, waiting for him to speak.

He spoke in a refined, educated-sounding voice that one could barely tell he had picked up well into his adult life. "Gentlemen", he began, addressing parliament, "With all due respect to the government of these United Provinces, I believe that the federal government is making a grave mistake with regards to the dealing with of natives in the Eastern Tablelands. The government, especially our Secretary of Native Affairs, has been sending the Basotho to reservations in the Lesotho Highlands, under the impression that those lands are more marginal than the rest of the Tablelands. I would like to point out that these Highlands are still much more suitable for white settlement than most of the African continent, and that sending the Basotho there is a mistake." He picks up a thin stack of paper, looks at them and continues speaking. "Last week, there have been more than twenty attacks by Basotho men on South African settlers, and five times as many attacks by the Basotho on South African livestock. These sorts of attacks and the frequency at which they occurred, according to last week's police reports from the Province of Drakesland, is normal for the Basotho population concentrated there. They a nuisance and a danger to our good citizens in Drakesland."

There was a bit of mumbled discussion between parliamentarians for a second as Representative Higgins paused, but parliament was mostly quiet. Few were surprised by what Higgins was telling them.

"It is for this reason...", Higgins continued, clearing his voice, "... It is for this reason that I propose we begin sending the blacks of Drakesland and elsewhere in the Tablelands exclusively to the northern territories, as we have been doing for decades, instead of to supposedly-marginal areas within the Tablelands. I do not doubt for one second that relocating the Basotho to the fever country of the north would be beneficial to the good citizens of our republic living in the Tablelands."

As Higgins sat down, having finished his speech, he was met with scattered applause from parliament (mostly from other representatives from the Tablelands provinces). A few days after his speech, the provincial governments of Drakesland and the rest of the Tablelands would begin preparing schemes for the deportation of the Basotho and other natives further north, into the Limpopo Territory, with help from the federal government.

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Fort Erskine, Limpopo Territory

It was late afternoon. The waters of the Limpopo River were a delftware blue, lazily flowing downriver towards the Indian Ocean hundreds of kilometres to the southeast. The sun sat low in the sky to the west, its bottom half tucked behind the thorny branches of an Acacia tree and casting long shadows of trees and rocks on the dry grass. The sound of birds and insects rang out from the surrounding bushland, forming the ambience of a place untouched by civilisation. In a clearing with no trees and gravelly soil, positioned a good deal south and uphill of the Limpopo River, sat Fort Erskine. Fort Erskine was a very simple fort, not the kind one would see in Europe or even on the Namibian Frontier; it had earthen ramparts to help its walls survive the most basic canon fire, the ditches surrounding it were only two metres deep, and the fort was made almost entirely of wood. Fort Erskine had no more than thirty-five men garrisoned inside of it at any time.

It was, like most forts lining the Limpopo River, the bare minimum, designed with the anticipation that South African soldiers there would be dealing with crime and disorganised civil unrest at most. This had been true for more than half a century, following the pacification of much of the Limpopo River region shortly after the Second Zulu Wars and the creation of the Limpopo Territory in 1827. Today, however, the natives of the Limpopo Territory would prove themselves to be much less passive...

Not far from Fort Erskine was a native town. Officially it was called Erskine, but the locals called it something else. Few people in the garrison, apart from a few local Bantus who had volunteered to man the fort in exchange for pay, spoke much more than basic bits of the local dialect. Originally set up as a Christian mission town on the dusty, malaria-infested banks of the Limpopo River, Erskine had outgrown its purpose and become a cluster of decaying cabins, shanties and huts in the middle of the scrub, with a population numbering a bit more than 700 people.

On one of Erkine's rickety wooden lookout tours stood two men, both fresh conscripts from Cape Town. They looked out onto the late afternoon landscape with pairs of binoculars, idly waiting for the sun to set so that they could head back town from their towers and into the barracks. In the distance they saw a native man, dressed in a scrappy, khaki-coloured South African military uniform. He was sprinting, in a hurry to reach the barracks. The two men on the sentry tower waved and shouted at the native man, and the native waved his arms back at them. One of them was sent down from the tower to let him into the gates of the fort. The native claimed that he had seen people with weapons approach the town, and was taken to see the commander of the fort - Colonel Jacobson - in his makeshift office.

Colonel Jacobson had spent most of his adult life in the South African army and was close to retiring- his cheeks were wrinkly and drooping, and his moustache was greying from the tips. His hair had turned from brown to a salt-and-pepper mix a few years ago, and was slowly but surely turning white. He was dressed in a sharp-looking midnight blue-coloured uniform that looked out of place on the banks of the Limpopo River. The Colonel sat at his round wooden table, with the light of a freshly-lit candle flickering against its wooden surface.

When the conscript and the native volunteer entered his office, he looked at them, breathed out, and silently nodded in acknowledgement that they were here. He was ready to hear what they had to say. The conscript, noticeably surprised by whatever he had just been told, began to speak. "Colonel", he said ,"Private Isiah has spotted native soldiers at the outskirts of the town. He says they have spears and muskets. He says they're Venda." The Colonel was silent for a good ten seconds, with a grave look upon his face. He turned to the native volunteer. "How many were there, private?", he asked gruffly. The native hesitantly looked down at his fingers for a second and then looked up. "A hundred", he said hesitantly. The recruit from Cape Town and Colonel Jacobson looked at eachother and then back at Private Isiah. A hundred men!? Surely he had to be exaggerating, but even if he was, there'd be no way the garrison at Fort Erskine would be outnumbered.

Suddenly, the second conscript stationed at lookout entered Colonel Jacobson's office. "Men are approaching the fort!", he shouted. Colonel Jacobson frantically reached for the telegraph on his desk. "Don't panic", he said gruffly, trying to avoid panicking himself, "Defend the fort!".

Before long the garrison at Fort Erskine was ready to face the enemy with rifles and a few old canons. They came wearing a mix of traditional clothing and handed-down European clothes, and some of them had muskets. A single horse-drawn canon rode behind them. The natives, who clearly outnumbered the garrison at Fort Erskine by a factor of 3 to 1 or more, came out from the surrounding bush and scrub and surrounded the wooden fort. Before long, battle had begun.

Fighting began when perhaps a dozen men with spears attempted to charge up the steeply-sloping earthen ramparts of Fort Erskine. They were shot dead with rifle fire, dropping to the ground like dead flies after the bullets hit them. A series of canon balls bombarded the walls, forcing the garrison to fight away yet more spear-wielding intruders. Canon-fire was mostly useless against the natives, as they intended to swarm the fort as infantry and scattered when shot at. Nonetheless, the South African army's musket-fire was brutally effective against the largely spear-wielding Bantus.

By sunset, the battle had come to a standstill. The Bantus had lost a large portion of their spearmen attempting to assault the fort, and Fort Erskine's garrison was starting to run low on ammunition. Fearing the battle would drag on into the night and give the South Africans an advantage, the native soldiers set pieces of wood from the surrounding dry scrubland alight and threw them at the fort's primarily-wooden walls. The fort caught fire easily, and Bantu musket fire decimated the South African garrison as it tried to escape the site of the battle.

The smell of burning wood and the sound of exploding gunpowder drifted downhill towards the Limpopo River for the rest of the evening. The people of Erskine town looked up at the hill overlooking them uneasily. The pacification of the Limpopo territory had been ended.

[Caer Bryn]

Near Rozhniatov, County of Pokuttya, Muscovian Commonwealth

Sir Pavel Abdank Khorzovsky, beloved Count of Pokuttya, Colonel of the new Pokuttya Hussar Regiment and renowned lady's man looked at himself in the mirror with pride, he really did look wonderful today. His light blond hair was parted to the left, showing off his good side, and his uniform was looking just as dashing as ever. The light blue tunic (which went perfectly with his eyes), red sash (oh wasn't it lovely) and bar of medals (well done him) on his chest made him grin quite charmingly, and he spent another few minutes admiring himself, he didn't really like the trousers, they were too baggy, and the boots were horrid, there was no style on them at all.

A knock at the door made him jump, and he frowned (oh didn't his eyebrows look cute when they scrunched up like that) and waved at the bored looking servant who had helped him dress, what was his name? It didn't matter, the man went over to the door and opened it, and with a sigh, and one last quick touch of his hair, the Count shoved his comb in his pocket and turned to face the intruder.

"Oh, hello Artur, how do I look?" he flung out his arms and did a quick turn, his military attaché Major Artur Abdank Zhyvillo, a distant member of the same noble clan as Pavel, looked pained for some reason but hurried to assure Pavel that he looked "...just as dashing as ever, Sir..."

Count Pavel nodded, he had been thinking the same thing. Artur asked if he was ready to leave and the Count sighed again rather dramatically (he was sure would be an excellent actor), confirmed that he was and hurried out of the room with the Major. They passed several servants on the way out of the manor, and the Count made sure to flash his very best smile at all of the woman. Soon they were outside and another servant was waiting with a pair of horses, getting a lift from the Major, Count Pavel swung into the saddle and patted his horse's crest affectionately.

He called this charger Perun after the ancient god of storms. On his horse, the Count could ride as fast as thunder and attack as violently as lightning, he was a nobleman after all, and had always thought that if he had been born a few centuries earlier he would have been a fantastic knight. These days wars were far too dirty and unchivalrous, that a serf with a rifle could kill him from such a distance that he wouldn't have even noticed the peasant was there...

The Major cleared his throat and Count Pavel looked at him rather crossly, and was about to rebuke the knave when he remembered they were on a tight schedule. At once he began riding, the military man following closely behind, they were headed out to one of the manor's fields where the men of his new regiment waited. The King had began a recruitment drive the year before and all over the Commonwealth, good lords like Count Pavel were raising their own units to add to the order of battle, whoever did such a thing was entitled to command over said unit, monetary compensation for their troubles and the upkeep of their units and membership into the new knightly Order of Saint George.

He hoped they were preparing for an invasion of Poland, Pavel's noble clan and many of the others had originated in the old Kingdom of Poland, and he would just love to be the one to retake Krakov, the original home of the clan. Those rebel serfs and democrats would surely run at the sight of him, charging with his men behind him. Oh it was going to be so much fun.

They were soon out of the manor proper and into his outlying land, and after only a few minutes of riding during which he fantasised about single handedly capturing Poland, they were passing through a gate into the fields where his regiment had assembled. They had finished their training, been issued their lovely new blue uniforms and woolly hats (which Count Pavel refused to wear, it messed up his hair) and rifles, and were here for a final inspection.

Just over twelve hundred men crowded the fields, standing next to their horses in several rows. The ones at the front snapped to attention as he entered the field. It felt good to have so many people watching him, the Count always loved attention. He and Artur rode over to the group of officers standing in front, most of them were also members of the extended Abdank clan, so were many of the enlisted men for that matter, not every shliakhta was lucky enough to be from such a distinguished sept as his.

A mustachioed man with dirty looking brown hair and a slightly lopsided mouth greeted him, Pavel had to think for a second to recall his name, Bogdan Abdank Putvinsky, he was in charge of the third khorugva. Pavel nodded at his officers and gave them a polite greeting, before turning and gesturing to the gathered hussars. He suddenly noticed the large flag that one of the men was holding, as it unfurled in the wind, it was a lovely blue, just a bit darker than their uniforms, and on it were the words "1st Pokuttya Hussars Regiment", and the motto of his clan, "Awdaniec!", both in white with gold trim.

"Good day men, you're looking tremendous, like fine soldiers indeed!" he shouted, that wasn't entirely true, he noticed that most of them had dirty boots, unkempt hair and scruffy facial hair. If only he had been able to recruit an entire regiment of dandys, that would have been lovely. "Now, I'm sure you know who I am, but just in case, I am the Count, Colonel Sir Pavel Ivanovich Abdank Khorzovsky, commander of this regiment"

His eyes swept over the men, they were all standing completely still, faces blank and faced forwards. It was rather odd really. "I don't know why any of you decided to join this unit, whether you are a patriot, or were just hungry, it doesn't matter... You are soldiers now, even better, you are hussars!" a few of the men cheered at that, and he smiled, "You have answered the King's call, and now you can be proud to call yourself defenders the Rus, like old Alexander Nevsky or Ivan the Great!"

"I can't promise you that everything about the army will be wonderful, you are going to get dirty and you might get killed, you could be stuck on manual labouring duties, or you could get sent to fight rebels. Whatever happens, remember your training, remember your honour and remember your Muscovy." he pulled his sword from it's scabbard and raised it into the air, "Everything we do from now on, we do for our land, and our King!"

"The Poles, Teutons, Tatars, whoever dares to threaten our land had better watch out!" he waved his sword around again for emphasis, "For the King, we will do our duty! Awdaniec!" he shouted, and the men cheered, many of his distant kinsman joining in with cries of their own.

After his speech was done, Count Pavel felt quite good, he was like some noble warchief of old. He put his sword back in the scabbard and inspected each khorugva of the regiment. At three hundred strong each, they would be split up and distributed around his county until they recieved orders to mobilise, his section was to be garrisoned in Rozhniatov town, that of Iosif Abdank Kagnimir would stay in Obertin, Bogdan Abdank Putvinsky's unit would be garrisoned in Kuty and Vladimir Pershkhala Grushevsky's in Kolomyya.

Each of the squadrons had an impressive banner, not as large as the regimental one, but still quite lovely, depicting Jesus Christ. He crossed himself three times as he passed each one, and felt that whatever was to come, the Lord was on his side.

In the Commonwealth that month, two regiments of infantry, a battery of artillerymen, and now Count Pavel's regiment of Hussars had been incorporated into the ever growing army. As long as there were men willing to join, and enough farms and factories to supply them, they would expand and upgrade their forces. This was a dangerous world, and after all, the best defense is a good offense.

[Dentali]

Letter from Chancellor Otto Von Bismark of the German Empire to the King of the Muscovian Commonwealth.

It is the express wish of Kaiser Wilhelm II and myself to address the outstanding issues between our two nations and to enter into a new era of mutual understanding and respect. We wish to organize a private meeting between representatives of our two nations to establish this relationship, should sure a meeting be reasonable please let us know so that we may set it up with all due haste.

By an overwhelming margin the vote passed both houses of parilment and found its way to the desk of the Kaiser. "The Naval Expansion Bill of 1880" Germany had only been focusing on naval buildup for the past few decades, in the grand scheme they had no great naval tradition. However Bismark and the past Kaiser's had recognized any global empire would require an expansive naval force to maintain it.

Before the Unification the navy's of the German States were fit only for coastal defense, and even then barely, the first year after the unification saw a massive number of German naval vessels scrapped, not up to Prussian standards or otherwise technologically backwards, it wasn't until 1862 that the Imperial Naval Academy was founded in Kiel, and a 10 year program was launched to expand and modernize the fleet. By 1870 eight armored frigates, six armored corvettes, twenty light corvettes, seven monitors, two floating batteries, six avisos, eighteen gunboats and twenty-eight torpedo boats had been added to the fleet, plus an additional 220 million marks, with a massive expansion of the naval bases a Kiel and Wilhelmshaven.

The navy had made moderate updates in the ten years since, mainly focusing on training new officers and sailors as well as patrolling the global German Empire. But this new bill would mark a change, this bill authorized the construction of the Kiel Canal, allocating 150 million marks for the project. A further 300 million marks were authorized over the next decade to expand the navy, with an emphasis on torpedo boats though 4 newly designed Brandenburg-class battleships had also been ordered at 10 million marks each, they would be the first ships of the navy to be fitted with wireless communications.

This bill on the desk of the Kaiser laid the foundation for the new High Seas Fleet, one that could conquer any potential rivals and secure the seas for the German Empire.

[Caer Bryn]

To the Chancellor of the German Empire, Otto von Bismarck

His Royal Highness, the King of the Muscovian Commonwealth etc., Nikolay Riurikov has received your government's message and finds the proposal most agreeable. Muscovy has no wish for conflict with Germany, only an understanding as to the proper approach to a lasting peace in Middle-Europe. His Royal Highness etc., agrees to the dispatch of a diplomatic expedition to the German Empire's capital in Berlin.

By the time you have received this response, Count Boris Azarov and his staffers will have left Muscovy, and will arrive in Germany within the week.

His Royal Highness etc., has granted Count Boris leave to discuss naval, trade, colonial and economic matters, and to brief His Highness Wilhelm II's government of the Muscovian stance on the Polish rebellion and other international issues. For any other negotiations the Count will be forced to telegram Moscow for clarification of the Foreign Department's stance on said issues.

Foreign Secretary Count Yaroslav Belsky, on behalf of His Royal Highness the King of the Muscovian Commonwealth, Chief Autocrat of All the Russias, Prince of Muscovy & Kiev, Grand Duke of Novgorod, Khan of Crimea, etc., Nikolay Boguslavovich Riurikov

[Vrijstaat Limburg]

Coat of Arms of the duke of Baden


Karlsruhe, 11:00.

The duke nervously fidgeted with his hands, while talking to his minister of defense. The minister was a good man, but the troops guarded that guarded the realm were disregarded for the last few years. Economic decay and the lack of colonies ruined the small duchy, with regiment after regiment being disbanded. The duke knew that an increase in spending was difficult, or his land would just be run over by the French, Austrians or Prussians. He had to make his small country, just like the Burgundians had done before him.

The duchy will be increasing its military spending by 13%. 3,4% of the Baden's GDP is invested into the army.