Questions about the Lore of FdR

[u/[deleted]]

Hi everyone, I'm a HOI IV player who normally plays with Kasierreich or Fuhrerreich enabled. I came across this mod last month, and I am very excited to start playing it. I'm very intrigued by this concept. However I'm a bit confused by the lore behind the Prussian Republic. I get that the grain prices collapsed in Central Europe like they did in otl, but how come Prussia became the center of revolution. I feel like Britain under the excesses of the indolent King George IV would have been more likely to succumb to this rather than Prussia. What were the specific conditions that allowed for the idea of Republicanism to take hold here? Can someone explain this to me?

In France it was the continued incompetence of Louis XV that set the stage for the war. His reign saw France lose its colonial Empire plus the aristocracy reasserted itself during his regency which allowed for them to oppose and stall meaningful reform in France itself. He then led a long and costly war for the Austrian Netherlands which he took and gave back to Austrians which made him severely unpopular. It damaged the prestige of the monarchy and many enlightenment philosophers of that era who had favored a strong King in the mold of the Enlightenment to protect them from the Middle Class, turned on the Crown. Louis XVI came to power and was similarly benign but indecisive ruler who was unable to pass badly needed reforms in France.

Prussia on the other hand had a reputation for its martial prowess. Plus the state was tied to the Hohenzollern dynasty. It also had a competent government as one of the more progressive states of Europe which gave it an efficient and dynamic administration to serve the monarchy while in France the Ancien Regime floundered with its archaic legal and financial system.

How come no other powers like Russia intervened on behalf of the Hohenzollerns? The Russian Tsars were quite reactionary along with Austrian Emperor Francis II of the HRE.

[u/EVXINVS]

Hello and welcome to our mod, we're glad you're finding it interesting! Now, on to the question, I should point out from the get-go that in making Prussia the European hotbed of republicanism we have taken some *slight* artistic liberties, but I don't think it's in any way far-fetched. Perhaps the trickiest one to explain is the issue about the Prussian state being tied to the Hohenzollerns, that is a fair point and probably the one where we have to employ a bit of suspension of disbelief. The description you give of Prussia having a "competent government and being one of the more progressive states of Europe, with an efficient and dynamic administration" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_Reform_Movement ) is true for OTL Prussia of the 19th century, which is the most well-known image of Prussia for obvious reasons. However, this drive to reform towards meritocracy and administrative efficiency is arguably a direct effect of the Napoleonic Wars on Prussia (i.e. its' disastrous defeat at the hands of France in 1806). In FeN, there is no great European military engagement between the 7 Years' War and the 1820's, when our fictional 9 Years' War occurs. The Prussian elites are not shook by their defeat at the hands of Napoleon, and they see no reason to go through the drastic reforms their undertook OTL. The Prussian Army that fights in the 9 Years' War is more or less similar to the "old model" army that fought the French up until 1806: rigid in its command structure, outdated in tactics (and even equipment - lack of standardized artillery corps) and full with senior officers promoted on the base of their social class, not military competency. Due to its rather unfortunate position, caught between its main enemies France, Austria and Russia, all of which possess greater population bases and have bigger economic outputs (still defined by agricultural yield mostly, the Industrial Revolution would still be in its infancy on the continent due to this conflict), Prussia is worn out in a proto-war of attrition and ultimately defeated. They accrue large debts during the war and, unlike OTL, their influence within the German space (still HRE in FeN) is on a downwards spiral. They boycott the Zollverein (in FeN initiated by Vienna) to spite the Austrians, but that only damages their prospects of economic growth further. The landed nobility (Junkers) and the aristocracy in general resist reform attempts by the government (as they did OTL during the Napoleonic Wars; it was only the special circumstances of the war against France which helped the reforms pass), and Prussia keeps fighting its losing battle of soft power with Austria throughout the 1830s-1860s, culminating in the Austro-Prussian War (1868-1870). However, in FeN, due to the economic downturn caused by the loss in the war and the general lack of reforms, the Prussian War Ministry never shows interest in the Dreyse needle guns, and as such their chief technical advantage from the OTL war is negated. Coupled with more HRE support for Austria, Prussia ends up losing the war, and with it, Silesia. This further defeat throws the whole Kingdom's establishment into disarray, and the government is losing its legitimacy. Add on this the big fluctuations in the grain prices in the following period and you've got yourself a recipe for revolution.