I was daydreaming recently about alternate history, and an idea about Joan of Arc not existing collided with the various ideas about alternate Americas, and I wanted to see if the resulting ideas were plausible or not, so here I am!
Okay, say Joan of Arc had been born, and everything is the same up to the point when she gets her visions. Either she doesn't listen to those visions, or does, but is turned away by Count Robert de Baudricourt, or her family members refused to take her to him, as well as an million other impediments. The end result is that there was no Joan of Arc, and the peasant girl fades into pious obscurity.
Charles VII is captured and denounced as an bastard pretender, and imprisoned for the rest of his life. France ends up being annexed by England under the son of the English Henry V and the French princess Isabella, and this is the start of the great British empire. There are problems with rebels and possibly Burgundy (I never really understood why they sided with the English, but maybe they wanted to come out on top), and the insanity of the English-French King, but in all, everything goes as well as the merger between England and Scotland did when they were united under James I/IV.
Fast-forward to the 1760s. Great Britain consists of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and France, as well as vast tracts of the Americas. Then thirteen (or more) of these American colonies get it in mind to rebel and break away from the empire after all that trouble with being taxed without representation.
Now in our history, France helped us out with supplies, ships and men. But there is no independent France in this alternate history to help. The British had the Germans helping them. My guess is that the American colonies would have turned to Spain, Britain's other enemy to help them, but would they have helped?
So it's possible that the American colonies' revolt would have been crushed, and then resentments would have fermented for a long time among the various colonies, territories and conquered lands until a bloody revolution explodes decades later and the British royals undergo their own version of the Terror. I put that in because the annexation of France would have had a influx of extreme autocratic tendencies from the French nobles, who are now British, so Britain may have lost their more democratic tendencies. I'm not sure what happens after this, though.
So does any of this make sense? Am I missing anything important? Did I BS a bit too much in some areas? I know this alternate history is painted with really broad strokes, but it's just the beginning of an idea.
How I connected Joan of Arc with all this...when I looked back with 20/20 hindsight, I couldn't reconcile Joan's actions; saving the monarchy by convincing Charles VII that he was legitimate, and saving France by a series of victories and fanning French patriotism, with the French Revolution and the Terror. If there had been an end result to Joan's actions, it wasn't the monarchy. My next thought was that France, as an country, had a right to exist and Joan affirmed that right. The U.S. as an country also had that right, so Joan enabled France to help the U.S. centuries later. Does that make sense? I would like to expand from America though, and see what else would have changed if Joan of Arc didn't do what she did.
On a tangent, for Joan of Arc in our history, what would have happened to her if she had never been burned at the stake? I know that Charles VII didn't like her too much, since she stole the show from him, but if she had never been captured, what would he have done with her? Married her off to a noble? Sent her to a nunnery where she would be a mystic for the rest of her life? Sent her home?
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206 / 50,000
Mar 11, 2008 - 18 02
One of the reasons taxes were raised was to pay for the French and Indian War. If France did not exist then most likely no revolution at that time. So that needs to be considered.
0 / 50,000
Mar 12, 2008 - 13 52
Concerning this single aspect: Helping another country in war is always a question of reaching more power.
If all happened as you said, one powerful nation - in this special case FRANCE, wouldn`t exist, but would be part of the British Empire, so Britain would have the status of a European power nation. In that case Germany wouldn't help England, it would help the colonies. - trying to avert that England could gain even more power!
In your scenario the European political balance would be a complete mess, and nothing would be the same anymore.
Another aspect:
Charles V. (Hapsburg - living in Spain) - had a son Philip II (Spain)- both reigned the big Hapsburg empire (Austria, parts of Burgundy, Spain, Hungary, Neapel, the overseas colonies). As Philip II had no son following him on the throne, a war of succession with France followed. The French candidate won- and in your scenario? - it may still be part of the Hapsburg's empire - well connected with Germany!
and above all that, don`t forget the religious wars -Thirty Years War....Henry VIII., Luther... things like that.
So I think you have to completely reinvent the European History! ;-)
lg alirion
Alirion war nicht alleine, dass sagte ihr ihr Verstand, auch wenn sie es nicht fühlen konnte.
8,747 / 50,000
Mar 21, 2008 - 14 37
First of all, the hundred years war was never about England 'annexing' France. It wasn't even a war between England and France as nations. It was really a war between the houses of Valois and Plantagenet for the French throne, which is something completely different. Had Henry V been crowned king of France, then he would have simply been king of two countries, but they would have remained separate countries. It wasn't ever about the right of france to exist as an independent state, because nationstates as we understand them now didn't exist in those days. Similarly, there was no 'merger' of England and Scotland under James I. That didn't happen until the act of union a century later.
Also, the consort of Henry V was Catherine of Valois, not any Isabella, and their son was the feeble Henry VI, who, it turned out, was incapable of holding onto his own throne, let alone the throne of France as well.
I think the medieval situation between England and France is very complex, not least because English kings tended to consider their french territories just as important, if not more so, than England itself. It's often said that the best thing John ever did for England was to lose his french posessions, because then it forced later kings to value England. If the kings of England had become kings of France as well, which kingdom would they have considered more important? It seems to me just as likely that England would have become a satellite of France, as vice versa.
4,290 / 50,000
Mar 25, 2008 - 06 19
The two major assumptions you're making here are both flawed, I think:
Without Joan of Arc's intervention, France would have lost the Hundred Years War.
Don't forget, the French won [em]after[/em] Joan had been executed! Of course, she gave a bit of belief and morale to the beleaguered French forces, but she was betrayed by her own people - the Duc de Bourgogne who was fighting with the English because of a falling out with the house of Valois. Just as important, if not more so, is that the death of Henry V and the accession of the weak, sickly child king Henry VI really put the cat amongst the pigeons in the English court. Old rivalries which had been submerged while England was winning suddenly came home to roost once the French won a battle or two. The House of York suddenly remembered that it had just as good a claim to the English throne (if not better) than the House of Lancaster, and the Wars of the Roses ensued. The main "Wars" of the Roses only really kicked off once the troops came home from France, but the political manoevering and taking of sides certainly was going on from the moment that Henry VI was crowned.
The Hundred Years War was France's only chance for indepenence at least until the late 18th century
England was permanently fighting wars with Scotland throughout the medieval and Tudor periods, not to mention trying to hold down Ireland - if France had risen as well (as well it might, if French nobles were being squeezed for taxes to pay for the Irish garrison), I dare say something would have had to give and it may well have been France. Then you have the prospect of the Thirty Years War in Europe spilling into France, especially if France is a catholic satellite of a protestant nation by that time.
The thing is, 400 years of history is a long time to posit counterfactuals. So many millions of knock-on effects and so on, even in subtle ways, affect so many things that it's simply impossible to say "If there had been no Joan of Arc, what would have happened in the Revolutionary War".
That can be incredibly crippling, or incredibly freeing. I would say that if you start researching everything that happened between 1429 and 1789 in Europe and the Americas and work out how the non-existence of an independent France would have affected events, you ought to be ready to actually start writing in NaNoWriMo 2038 or thereabouts...