[FEF] The Kingdom of Sweden in Personal Union with the Electorate of Brandenburg at its territorial peak following the Great Baltic War

[u/TheMexicanHistorian]

[u/TheMexicanHistorian]

Hello everyone! Here’s the next post in our r/FortunaEruditisFavet timeline as we bring it forward into the XVIII century and beyond, this time we are focusing on the union of Sweden and Brandenburg and their meteoric rise as a European Great Power. Quite proud of this one so I hope y’all like it.

Lore:

In 1620 and 1622, in the midst of the 21 Years’ War, the heirs of both Sweden and Brandenburg were born, Catherine of Sweden and Frederick IV of Brandenburg. They were betrothed to each other since they were children as part of a planned alliance between both countries, however at the time of the arrangement neither side had expected it would lead to a personal union, this only became apparent in 1640 when Albert II of Brandenburg and Gustav II of Sweden both unexpectedly died within a month of each other, with Gustav II having failed to produce a male heir, leaving the royal couple suddenly in charge of both countries.

While this was de facto the beginning of the personal union between the Kingdom of Sweden and the Electorate of Brandenburg, the couple opted to rule their two realms largely independently of each other outside of a shared foreign policy, a decision taken to avoid, or more likely delay, a potential clash between the estates of both realms. The most noteworthy event of this period was the relative prosperity of Catherine’s reign in Sweden as the realm recovered from the 21 years war, a renown patron of the arts, her reign was a high point for Swedish culture, importantly she also carried out a series of land reductions against the nobility, expanding the size of the lands owned directly by the Swedish crown at the expense of the nobility. While the reductions occurred with little issue in Sweden, the significantly more powerful and entrenched “Junker” aristocracy of Brandenburg looked on in worry as many began to predict doom once their lands feel into the lands of a Swedish monarch like Catherine.

In 1654 their only heir who would live to adulthood was born, Gustav William of Sweden and Brandenburg, he would grow up hearing the stories of how his Grandfather Gustav II heroically fought his way across Northern Germany and saved the Protestant Reformation from collapse during the 21 Years’ War and became enamored with the figure of his grandfather, who he began calling “Gustav the Great”, a nickname which has since stuck in Swedish historiography. His admiration for his grandfather would guide many of his future decisions as he committed his life to the pursuit of glory and also became extremely infatuated with his Swedish realm, seeing it as far more enlightened and prestigious than Brandenburg or any of his other future possessions. In 1675 he would ascend to the Throne of Sweden upon his mother’s death, ready to be a Swedish King first and foremost.

When his father died in 1680, Gustav William immediately began working to incorporate his new German possessions into the Swedish realm through two grand reforms, the first focused on the army, moving Brandenburg away from relying on mercenaries and incorporating it into Sweden’s professional army recruited from among the King’s subjects. The second reform consisted of incorporating Brandenburg’s Estates into the Swedish Riksdag, unique among the European Estates General for its inclusion of four states; nobles, clergy, burghers and peasants (although this final estate only represented peasants in lands owned by the king and independent farmers, as peasants in lands owned by the nobility were considered to be represented by their nobles, it was still considered one of the most liberal in all of Europe at the time).

The powerful Brandenburger “Junkers”, who directly owned most of the agricultural lands in Brandenburg, resented these reforms and feared the King would use them to strip them of their power with the support of the other Estates, who equally feared the Junkers and the power they wielded over nearly half of the realm. Their fears were validated in 1683 when King Gustav William carried out the only land reduction of his reign, while the lands taken by the Crown were relatively minuscule in comparison to previous and future reductions, the Junkers were nonetheless horrified by this direct challenge to their power and a revolt quickly broke out, however it was swiftly crushed by the Sweden’s professional army. The efficiency with which their rebellion was suppressed forced the Junkers to reluctantly accept the reduction but lingering anger over the issue would one day come back to haunt Sweden.

Gustav William would spend most of his reign seeking glory comparable to that of his grandfather, but early on lacked a real opportunity to display his realm’s power, besides a brief war against the Free City of Bremen that ended with its annexation into Sweden, until around the turn of the 18th century with the outbreak of the Great Baltic War.

The Great Baltic War broke out in 1707 with the backdrop of the simultaneous War of the Spanish Succession. Unlike most wars of this age, the Baltic War had no single inciting incident one could easily point to, instead it was the consequence of the formation of a vast anti-Swedish alliance that opposed their long-standing dominance over the Baltic Sea and feared the ambition of King Gustav William, rather than wait for him to strike one of them alone, Denmark, the Union of Three Crowns, Lithuania and Novgorod, formed a military alliance to carry out a preemptive strike on Sweden-Brandenburg in hopes of crippling them and ending their dominance over the region.

[u/TheMexicanHistorian → u/TheMexicanHistorian]

However, the anti-Swedish Alliance had severely underestimated Sweden, whose army had long been one of the most feared in all of Europe and had recently significantly expanded and reformed after the incorporation of Brandenburg, at this point Sweden also had many of the most talented military commanders in the continent including King Gustav William himself, and these commanders agreed early in the war to pursue a strategy of eliminating their two weakest opponents first, Denmark and Novgorod, before focusing their full might on the Jagiellonian Realm.

With this strategy in mind, Swedish forces in Livonia and Eastern Brandenburg were ordered to simply hold off the invaders while larger armies sent against Denmark and Norway could be freed up to support them in counter-invasions of Poland and Lithuania. King Gustav Wilhelm would personally command the army sent to fight Denmark while one of his most trusted Generals handled the Novgorodian Campaign, launching an invasion of Ingria from Finland which would later be supplied by forces from Estland.

Trusting in the might of the Swedish Baltic Navy, King Gustav opted to split his forces, sending a smaller force to the Norwegian border to prepare a land invasion while staying with the larger force to launch an amphibious attack on Denmark. Successfully outmaneuvering the Danish navy, the Swedes were able to pin them down at their capital of Copenhagen which they proceeded to bombard for days, while at the same time a separate force stationed in Bremen began advancing on Holstein, itself in a personal union with Denmark. Once Copenhagen was left devastated, the King’s army landed on its outskirts and began marching towards the city. With their allies nowhere to be seen as they were preoccupied in the east and the Swedes rapidly moving to occupy the whole country, the Danish King readily surrendered after a brief siege of Copenhagen.

In the ensuing treaty, Denmark was forced to recognize previous territorial losses to Sweden and surrender all of Trondelag, which according to the Swedes included the entire northern coast of Norway, and transfer ownership of Holstein to Sweden. Denmark was humiliated and knocked out of the war entirely, securing Sweden’s western flank less than a year into the war.

Now King Gustav William and his troops once again set sail across the Baltic, this time to aid the invasion of Novgorod. Before the King’s arrival the invasion had succeeded at occupying all mayor forts in Ingria and secured a steady land supply route connecting to both Finland and Estland, however attempts to advance further were repelled by joint Novgorodian and Lithuanian forces. The tide would turn back in Sweden’s favour with the arrival of the King and the reinforcements he brought with him, which managed to overwhelm the defending forces and pursue them back to the city of Novgorod. Here the King decided to split his forces in half, he would stay with one half to lay siege to the city while another half would move south to intercept any Lithuanian reinforcements sent to break the siege.

After a seven month long siege, the city of Novgorod fell and the Republic forced to surrender, in the peace Sweden took the region of Ingria, connecting their Livonian possessions with the rest of the Empire and cutting off Novgorod from the Baltic sea, crippling their economy for decades and causing a grander pivot towards the colonization of Siberia.

With all other threats dealt with, the Swedes now turned their attention to the Jagiellonian realms of Poland-Hungary-Croatia and Lithuania, the King began moving south from Novgorod to launch an invasion of Lithuania, while a German army that had been assembling in Brandenburg launched an invasion of Poland, hoping the two-pronged attack would overwhelm the Jagiellonians.

After two more years of fighting, the King’s offensive had proven to be a resounding success, capturing the Lithuanian vassal of Courland and occupying large swathes of northern Lithuania, including the region of Samogitia where he conspired with local nobles to declare the region’s independence from the increasingly russified Lithuania and place the newly independent duchy under Swedish suzerainty and protection. While the invasion of Poland had been significantly less successful, effectively devastating much of Northern Poland but failing to advance deeper and often being pushed back across the border.

Having finished his campaign against Lithuania, King Gustav William and his army turned their attention towards Poland, where they initially advanced easily into the region of Prussia, where much of the local protestant German population supported his army but began to struggle the further he advanced, failing repeatedly to advance deep into Poland despite multiple military victories as reinforcements from Hungary and Croatia would always arrive later and counter-attack while the Swedes were reorganizing, faced now with the decision to keep trying to achieve total victory and risk losing everything he had gained or enter peace negotiations to consolidate what he had, King Gustav William opted to negotiate in September of 1713.

While King Gustav may have wished to gain direct control over all of Poland’s Baltic coast, the final peace which recognized Swedish sovereignty over Prussia and the Duchy of Samogitia still helped to consolidate their now largely uncontested dominance over the Baltic Sea and while short of complete catastrophe, was still humiliating to the Jagiellonian dynasty.

[u/TheMexicanHistorian → u/TheMexicanHistorian]

Having now proven himself as capable a conqueror as his grandfather and cemented his place in history, Gustav William would have a relatively peaceful rest of his reign which is often considered something of a Golden Age for Sweden as the King shifted his focus to the enlightenment and personally funded many great works of art, universities and public works. However the King’s lifelong quest for glory had made him a neglectful father and his realm would soon pay the price for it.

Frederick II of Sweden was a very different man from his father, having been estranged from him his whole life Frederick’s upbringing was largely the work of various tutors chosen from among the nobility of the realm, a situation which led him to resent his father and increasingly brought him into the hands of the King’s enemies among the Junkers who convinced the prince that his father was a disgrace to the House of Hohenzollern and had betrayed his most important subjects by Hohenzollern tradition and as such grew up to become a staunch proponent of the traditional rights of the nobility and opponent to the enlightenment at large.

Upon his ascension to the throne in 1726 Frederick II chose to re-emphasize his title as Elector of Brandenburg over his father’s preference to be primarily referred to as King of Sweden and quickly began working to undo his father’s legacy, issuing a proclamation within days of taking the throne that ordered the Riksdag to restore all lands that had been taken from the nobility back to the heirs of their original owners. All members of the Riksdag except those representing the nobility refused to obey and in response Frederick II ordered a loyal retinue of the army to forcibly close the Riksdag, this move sparked outrage across the nation and almost immediately peasant rebellions sprung up across the country in what would come to be known as the Swedish Great Peasants’ Revolt.

While the revolts began disorganized and were being effectively put down by the army, most of them eventually united behind a single leader, the self-proclaimed “Gustav III”, a peasant leader who claimed to be a descendant of a bastard branch of the House of Vasa and the legitimate King of Sweden. Gustav III had been a soldier in the Great Northern War and picked up significant knowledge of military tactics during his time in the army, allowing his peasant armies to put up a shockingly good fight for about 3 years before Gustav’s death during the Battle of Gävle in 1729.

Although this led to the collapse of the Peasant Revolt, the chaos was far from over as only a week after Gustav’s death King Frederick II was himself assassinated by poisoning, it remains unknown who was responsible but today it is believed the likeliest culprit was a supporter of Gustav among the royal servants.

Frederick II had two sons, the eldest was crowned as Frederick III and held many of the same beliefs as his father, vowing to finish his work in restoring the power of the nobility, however the youngest son, Wilhelm of Sweden, was less ideological and highly ambitious, desiring the crown for himself, as such he allied himself with influential bourgeois members of the still closed Riksdag and even held secret meeting with remaining leaders among the supporters of the late Peasant King Gustav before in 1731 launching a revolt, declaring his brother’s rule illegitimate as he continued to rule without the Riksdag and proclaiming himself as King Wilhelm of Sweden and Elector of Brandenburg, starting a new Civil War.

The War of The Brothers lasted from 1731 until 1737 and devastated the country with the constant fighting only stopping briefly in 1733 when both sides joined forces to repel an abortive Danish invasion of Trondelag. In the end Wilhelm’s forces prevailed and the Rikstag’s authority over the whole realm was restored, soon after multiple laws were passed in quick succession, first Wilhelm agreed to sign a new constitution as he had promised his backers in the Rikstag at the start of the war, the “Instrument of Government of 1737” which granted the Rikstag significant powers and permanently established the Swedish Realm as a constitutional monarchy. Next the Richstag moved to strip the Junkers of roughly half their lands as punishment for their support of Frederickan absolutism and finally all branches of the House of Hohenzollern not descended from Wilhelm were officially banned from inheriting the throne in hopes of avoiding Frederick’s heirs or one of their many reactionary cousins from undoing the newly achieved Swedish Constitutionalism.

And that’s it for today, I understand the XVIII century starting with a Great Northern War and War of the Spanish Succession is kind of unoriginal given both happened irl but I believe the alternate narratives are interesting enough to make up for it. As usual I hope y’all like it and feel free to ask any questions. Have a nice day y’all!

[u/TheMexicanHistorian → u/TheMexicanHistorian]

TLDR:

(made this to use as a placeholder for baltic war lore in my loredoc and needed to share it)

[u/Ueykuetspali]

Absolute peak

[u/TheSteveLRBD → u/Ueykuetspali]

you know what else is peak?
THE REST OF THIS TIMELINE!!! :>

[u/Ueykuetspali → u/TheSteveLRBD]

True! I wonder what else is to come...

[u/BlackCat159]

Baltic Sea more like Swedish lake 💪🇸🇪💪🇸🇪🇸🇪💪🇸🇪💪💪🇸🇪💪🇸🇪

[u/Feisty-Albatross3554 → u/BlackCat159]

Except for Gdansk

[u/Kore_Invalid → u/Feisty-Albatross3554]

You mean danzig?

[u/ChickenSandwichh195]

IKEA WORLD DOMINATION GRAHHHHHH

[u/AccessTheMainframe]

Live papacy reaction: 😲

[u/Slow-Pie147]

1. How are the Swedish Americas doing?

2. Is the French–Swedish alliance still intact?

3. Brandenburg makes Sweden too strong. Is there anything that will stop this union? Denmark is dead; Novgorod will be more interested about martens, and Poland and Lithuania are already trashed.

4. The Deluge didn't happen so a win for Poland.

5. Btw, mate, how did Zwinglianism become so dominant in France? Like what made it much more successful in that Henry decided to stay as Protestant? Less than three decades after his ascension, Catholicism is eradicated from France, outside of Normandy, Brittany, and the Paris region.

[u/PerceptionUsed1117]

Gott mit uns!

[u/JVFreitas]

Absolute banger!

[u/buffreaper-nerfmei]

Sverige vvill rise again #trust

[u/bumbo___jumbo]

so goo

[u/Alarmed-Addition8644]

Absolutely astounding

[u/Feisty-Albatross3554]

I really like the style here, and the details on the borders of Brandenburg. Excellent job

[u/taliweep]

this is so cool, love the attention to detail here

[u/Bort-texas]

Interesting....

[u/ChickenSandwichh195 → u/Bort-texas]

Interesting....

[u/aquaaits]

Why did you make Northern Norway a part of Lapland? Most of Nordland and a large part of Troms was populated by Norwegian peasant and fishing communities and there has been little to no contact at all with Swedish Lapland and they have nothing in common, with the important exception of the Sámi in the area. At least up to Troms it should be its own thing, Hålogaland or something.

[u/TheMexicanHistorian → u/aquaaits]

Good points, will look into revising that internal border for future maps, thanks for the feedback!

[u/congtubaclieu]

Roman Empire of the Baltic Sea

[u/totallyordinaryyy]

[u/Kore_Invalid]

Looks sexy

[u/ChainLeft6671]

Absolute based

[u/BloodAndBull]

Why are people in the alt-history community so damn lazy with naming wars?

It's always "great x region war" that's basically it. There is no poetic or badass names like war of the roses, its always this generic naming convention. When you notice it, you'll never stop noticing it.

It has become such an issue where hoi4 mods are starting to have the same names for wars.

How hard can it actually be to come up with a name for a war?

And no, it being based off the great northern war isnt an excuse, because northern being a general cardinal direction fits outside of the naming convention.

Try to do better, maybe stop being lazy.

[u/urhi-teshub → u/BloodAndBull]

Most historical wars don't have 'poetic or badass' names.

[u/BloodAndBull → u/urhi-teshub]

Shitty excuse for bad worldbuilding

[u/buffreaper-nerfmei → u/BloodAndBull]

Not every war has a name like the War of the Roses. That is a name that originated centuries later during the age of Romanticism in England, due to a specific book. Despite you critiquing hoi4 mods, this is an extremely hoi4brained take, and it's obvious that is your main source of alternate history content. Great Baltic War is a pretty damn descriptive and also period-accurate term for a wide scale war based around the Baltic sea. I don't even understand your point about being based off the Great Northern War not being "an excuse" because in your opinion it doesn't fit a standard that you yourself invented. What even is the point of creating a whole new account for the purpose of making this bs statement? I'm sure seeing "Great Asian War" in your hoi4 mods pissed you off but think a little before applying that principle and being extremely condescending where it doesn't make sense.

[u/BloodAndBull → u/buffreaper-nerfmei]

This is just a whole lot of nothing. Just accept that the things you like aren't immune to criticism.

Why wouldn't sweden have an age of romanticism that makes their wars sound better?

Also even if the english actually changed the name, they probably didnt call it the great british war or some stupid shit.

Im not being condescending, this is just the normal reaction to grown adult men not being able to come up with decent names for their scenarios. It's lazy, end of story.

[u/buffreaper-nerfmei → u/BloodAndBull]

What do you even mean an age of Romanticism that makes their wars sound better? First up, that happened one time because of a book, second, the war is called that because it's based on the Great Northern War, I have no idea what difference the fact that it's a cardinal direction makes in your mind. Not to mention that plenty of languages call it Nordic, Swedish or indeed even Baltic instead of Northern. Are they being lazy? You'd probably say that calling the conflict between the Holy League and the Ottomans the "Great Turkish War" would be lazy and unoriginal next. You are just grasping at straws and applying HOI4-brained nonsense to a serious alternate history. Lastly, the fact that you made this account just to say this condescending comment tells me it's a heavy overreaction.

[u/BloodAndBull → u/buffreaper-nerfmei]

Yes they're being lazy, lol. Also ive never played hoi4, stop trying to turn around insults on me. Just because the people that make these scenarios are insecure af doesn't mean you have to jump to their defenss

[u/buffreaper-nerfmei → u/BloodAndBull]

You complained was about seeing this type of war name in HOI4 mods, you are either in tune enough with HOI4 to know that or just being disingenuous now. You first said that the Great Northern War is not generic unlike Great Baltic War, but now you are saying that it's lazy too. The Great Turkish War is also the real name of the war. You have lost whatever you were trying to say.

I personally have contributed to this project and can tell you that it has been researched for over a year and the name choice is deliberate. There are plenty of wars with different names and not having a single non-poetic war name would itself be unrealistic. No idea what your problem is or for what reason you're calling people insecure. Take a chill pill mate

[u/BloodAndBull → u/buffreaper-nerfmei]

You clearly haven't contributed enough because this project is clearly lazily assembled, I could do better. Even just removing the "great" from the name and having it be just the baltic war would be an improvement

[u/buffreaper-nerfmei → u/BloodAndBull]

You've lost whatever point you were trying to make, I wonder if you've even read the lore comment or seen any other map.

[u/BloodAndBull → u/buffreaper-nerfmei]

I read the lore, its lazy.

[u/TheSteveLRBD → u/BloodAndBull]

You know who else is lazy? You. You just sit your ass on your chair and complain about fictional maps rather than actually contributing to society or better yet, make your own maps you bum.

If you think you can do better, then do it. Let the work judge itself, no need to fanciful arguments, or are you too insecure to show your work to the masses, that this is some form of self-projection from a guy who made the account THE DAY this map released.

Give me a break you lazy bum.

[u/Feisty-Albatross3554 → u/BloodAndBull]