After the forest of Foixà: a new beginning for the House of Barcelona

[Kurt_Steiner]

Chapter 81: Hispania in the Post-War (1820-1830)

Ironically, the reforms of Solanelles in Aragon-Occitània were to spark revolution outside its borders. The Republic of Hispania was still recovering from the breakup of the nation. Thirty years later, it's severe negative effects on the Hipanic economic development were still felt, mainly caused by the lost of population and of harbours that severely hampered the Hispanic trade, The over-stressed harbour of Santander could not cope with the Hispanic trade and, eventually, its neighbours had begun to take profit of the situation, severely taxing the Hispanic goods that were exported through their harbours. Severe poverty became widespread, reducing market demand, while the disruption of local and international trade, and the shortages of critical inputs, seriously hurt industry and services. The loss of the colonial empire reduced the already poor overall wealth, and by 1820 Hispania had become one of Europe's poorest and least-developed societies; three-fourths of the people were illiterate. There was little industry beyond the production centers around Santander. Natural resources, such as coal and iron, were available for exploitation, but the reduced transportation system was rudimentary, with few canals or navigable rivers, and road travel was slow and expensive. British railroad builders were pessimistic and did not invest. Eventually a small railway system was built, radiating from Madrid.

The government, nearly bankrupt, resorted to desperate measures, such as selling the last remnants of its Empire. Florida was sold to the United States for $5 million in 1815, followed by Puerto Rico to the British Empire in 1818 for £10 million. Thus, only Cuba remained. However, it was not enough and in 1820 the government, led by Manuel González Salmón, considered selling Cuba to Germany. When this was leaked, the popular uproar could be heard around the world. On January, 18, 1822, González Salmón was deposed by a coup d'etat led by General Francisco Tadeo Calomarde y Arría, 1st Duke of Santa Isabel. However, there was little change. Cuba was to remain Hispanic, but the economic crisis was still in place, worsened by the corruption that helped the old nobility, the rural landowners, and the emerging middle class to control the nation. The unpopular Income Tax introduced by the preceding governments were removed and replaced by a policy of laissez-faire, low-spend governance under the Government led by Pedro de Alcántara y Álvarez de Toledo, 13th Duke of the Infantado. With this change in regime, the government was committed to restrict the growth of the national debt and the protection of property, to keep the status-quo and the institutions of power, like the Nobility, the Armed Forces and the Landowners, something that was deeply resented by the growing bourgeoisie

The refusal to introduce a much needed emergency measure caused a bleeding in the revenues of the state. To replace it, Infantado was forced to take on bonds and print money. This soon led to an open war in the Parliament between the Conservative Party, supported by the Nobility and the Landowners, and the Liberal Party, which was centered mainly about the needs of the Bourgeoisie. Outside of the plans and institutions, the mass of the workers and farmers that were alienated from such a regime as they felt that they were facing the brunt of the crisis. Reformers like Rafael del Riego attracted a massive following with his demands for the restoration of the Poor Law Relief, one of the first victims of the crisis, Lack of relief and the economic conditions caused farmers in León and Salamanca to riot demanding bread in April 1821. The riots would repeat again in 1822. This time the demands were not only for bread, but also for constitutional reform. By then the Reformists had been replaced by the Radical Party led by Evaristo Pérez de Castro y Colomera. In Santander rises a Provisional Government, which calls for a General Strike, The army crushes the strikers. Dozens were killed and hundreds deported to Cuba.

Despite the economic panic and the widespread repression, the small electorate elected José María Pando in 1826, and the Liberals returned to power. Despite their promises, the Liberals continued the previous policy with little changes. The strikes of 1828 forced Pando's resignation, and its replacement, José Luyando y Díez, only enjoyed a spell of calm thanks to the Conservative split between the so-called Traditionalist branch led by Antonio de Saavedra, who stood for a nostalgic vision of Spain that traced back to El Cid and the Catholic Kings, and those led by Francisco de Paula de Cea, who many considered a pawn of the Duke of the Infantado, who represented the reformer faction of the Conservatives. Thanks to this, Pando was able to introduce a series of small reforms, free trade and a reduced Relief for the Poor System, but, after his death in 1828, the reforms did not outlive him. His successor, Pedro de Alcántara Álvarez de Toledo, would stop the reforms and return to the policy of laissez-faire. In 1830, the strikes returned in May 1830 with the workers demanding higher wages. Only the lack of an organised leadership kept the strike from becoming a revolution. Álvarez de Toledo resorted, once more, to repression: 250 strikers were killed, 640 were jailed and 740 deported to Cuba.

However, the strike proved to be the bane of Álvarez de Toledo, who resigned in November 1830 and was replaced by Francisco Martínez de la Rosa, which had no better luck. His proposed "Reform Act" was voted down in the Parliament in March 1831, and Martínez de la Rosa dissolved the Parliament, hoping that another election would give him a majority that would push for the planned reforms. However, he was defeated by a vote of no confidence. His successor, José María Queipo de Llano, had no better luck, with an uncooperative Parliament and the angered mass of angered farmers and workers. The revolution was only nine months away.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

Chapter 82: Hispania in the Post-War - II (1830-1831): A Very Hispanic Coup.

The fall of Queipo de Llano worked as a rallying point for those who wanted to bring down the regime. The Radical Party demanded new elections while even more radical citizens created councils in Ávila, Salamanca, León and Toledo, purging the Conservatives from the local governments and making unstable alliances with the Liberals. In the Parliament, Carlos Martínez de Irujo y McKean (1802 - 1855), 2nd Marquis of Casa Irujo, the Conservative leader claimed that "we have lost Hispania". While the radicalisation was least pronounced in the Eastern Part of Hispania, it was most pronounced in the west, where the biggest and richest cities were. As the Parliament became stalled by the unwillingness of the Conservatives to accept a reform, talk began of convening an interim Assembly to discuss the real grievances of the political question from middle-class and working-class members alike. Thus, on June 17, 1831,, the Reformists and Radical sections of the Parliament left the building and gathered in the Cathedral of Burgos (from all possible places...) and there they declared themselves to be the National Assembly of Hispania. Two days later, one third of the Conservative parliamentarians had joined them and elected Juan Álvarez Mendizábal as the President of the Assembly.

Shaken by this challenge, Martínez de Irujo was quickly appointed prime minister and announced that he would lead an commision with all parties involved to determine their reforms that were to be applied at once. To his (and many more) shock, the National Assembly announced on June 20 that they had drafted a new constitution for Hispania. The new Prime Minister announced a series of tax and other reforms and stated that no new taxes or loans would be implemented without the consent of the Parliament, but, at the end of the session, hardly a quarter of the Parliament remained by his side. The rest had joined the National Assembly. Defeated, Martínez de Irujo resigned on June 24. Meanwhile, chaos was slowly spreading. New political formations sprung and created around them their own armed guards after several radical leaders were murdered by unknown attackers. Legions of armed men raided the countryside and patrolled the cities as the nobility had their own small armies again as in the Middle Ages. Meanwhile, the National Assembly of Hispania used the small army to keep control of the main cities. However, when on July 18 a meeting of Cathars in Ávila was violently broken up by the local Militia, leaving 6 men dead, Mendizábal wanted to make an example of the soldiers and officers involved, but he had to drop the idea when he was told that this could damage the loyalties of the army. Later that day, he tendered his resignation, naming the Secretary of Defence, Francisco Javier de Istúriz, as his replacement.

August brought a change, when the usual public meetings vanished and were replaced by gatherings in the inns and taverns of every city and every village, where Liberal, Conservatives and Radical exposed their ideas and plans for the future. With politics reaching the streets, the Liberal held a meeting in Toledo on September 16 to plan for the future. On his part, de Istúriz attempted to help the public meetings in the inns and taverns as much as he could, as he considered them key elements to support the Republic. The flood of ideas and slogans that invaded the streets took place at the same time that the violence subdued and the armed militias began to disarm. Agitators saw the meetings as their time to encourage rebellion. Soon the workers began to go to strike again, asking for higher pay and better conditions. De Istúriz, then, decided to call for elections on October 15, but, when a quarrell on a tavern spiralled out of control and the army unit sent to put it down ended up firing on the crowd, events got out of hand. A series of public meetings, organized in defiance of magistrates and the Army, helped to fuel the anger and protests began to start up, with the support of the Catholic Church. With reports of mutiny from the ranks of the police and the army, of armouries being ransacked around the country and with private armies rising everywhere, de Istúriz condemned the violence in public speeches and letters, and promised to form a new cabinet and to call for elections. However, he was soon convinced by the growing violence across the Republic that nothing short of a military dictatorship would save the situation. However, with the Army being reduced to a shell and with men like Alonso Antonio Osorio y de Silva, 14th Duke of Alba commanding stronger armies that the government himself, de Istúriz turned to the only Peninsular power willing and able to save the situation, the United Kingdom of Aragon and Occitania. However, before he could do that, on October 22, the angered mob of Toledo attacked the former royal palace at the Alcázar, now turned into a fortress and an armoury. Even if the assault failed by the spirited defence of the small garrison still loyal to the government, it shocked many. The Duke of Alba was the first to offer his help (and his army) to de Istúriz. A week later, with the bulk of the nobility rushing to support the government before a revolution could do worse than the one of 1799.

The days that followed the failed assault were quiet, too quiet. The debris of the battle was removed from the streets. The government and people's response was to carry on as normal. No one was more apparently calmer that the members of the Reformist party, as some of them had led the failed revolt. Bitter resentment boiled under the surface when they began to notice how Alba and Pedro de Alcántara Téllez-Girón, 11th Duke of Osuna, became the main supporters of the government. Seeing that their failure had brought tyranny over Hispania, they were determined to act new and further vigour, and when the acute social differences proved the bane of the tyrant, they would be ready to take the chance. In that situation, Alba was fast to see that de Istúriz was living on borrowed time and began to look for a replacement. This was the genesis of the "soft" coup of November 16, 1831. Alba was thus able to seize the moment thanks to de Istúriz's exhaustion. The Prime Minister was still recovering from the stressed days and relied too much on Alba and Osuna, thus was hardly able to notice the conspiracy around him. Thus, when he attempted to introduce a reform of the Parliament that would reduce its membership by half, de Istúriz was stormed by a group Reformists who termed the measure of not only eligeal, but also of being seditious. Álvaro Gómez Becerra (1771-1855) a former lawyer that had risen to lead the Progressive Party in Cáceres, caught the eye of Alba after speaking for his party after the Reformist revolt against de Istúriz. As in the following days of debate Gómez Becerra was one of the main speakers with his continued demad of reform to prevent chaos. His speeche were simple and direct to the point: his energy and deluge of proposals offered a stark contrast to the stillness and impassivity of de Istuiz and his ministers. Eventually, when the Parliament resumed on November 16, Gómez Becerra had the support of eighty members of the Parliament, and was to attract the support of almost one hundred more by the end of the day, when he bluffed that he was to present a vote of no confidence against the Prime Minister. Meanwhile, moving in the shadows, Alba bought the support of the main group of Conservative and Reformist Parlamentarians and then "leaked" the information to a frightened Osuna, who wasted no time to persuade de Istúriz to resign. Thus, by November 17, the Republic of Hispania had a new Prime minister.

Álvaro Gómez Becerra​

​

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

Chapter 83: A Cultural Rennaisance

A seemingly distant affaire, the death of Oda Katsunaga, the fifteenth and longest-serving shōgun of the Oda shogunate of Japan, was to bring havoc not only to that distant country, but also in Europe, where the last embers of the last conflict had not yet cooled. The death of Ienari's heir in 1835 had caused great worry about the succession of the Shogun, as Katsunaga's grandson was only 8 years old then. The lack of central authority after the death of Katsunaga (March 18. 1837) in spite of the best efforts of the Oda Loyalists led to a continued deterioration of the political situation, The quarrels between the Tokugawa and the Ishida clans only helped to accelerate the crisis and,eventually, when Ishida Sakichi, the head of his clan, became the leader of the Loyalists, His rival, Tokugawa Ieyoshi, supported by some disaffected nobles, claimed he had more rights to lead the Oda Regency, Tensions between Sakichi and Ieyoshi boiled into open hostilities, with relations eventually degenerating into the conflicts that led to the Battle of Zenkoji (1838), which opened the Second Sengoku Period (1838-1870).

In Europe, the death of Katsunaga was hardly taken into account by the European rulers. Many remembered when, in 1821, Japan closed all their harbours to European trade but for a trade outpost at Kagoshima. Only Portugal had any trade interest in Japan, so the question was overlooked. In Aragon, Sadurní Solanelles sent a diplomatic mission to Japan (1831) following a request from Oda Katsunaga with the goal of modernizing the Japanese military. This mission was also to negotiate the Aragonese support for the construction of the Yokosuka Shipyard,. Katsunaga had additionally requested both the United Kingdom and Germany to send a military mission for training in Western warfare. The missions were dismissed by the Oda Regency after the death of Katsunaga. In 1832 Solanelles, who was by then 64 years old, resigned and was replaced by Amadeu Baget (Cardedeu, December 26, 1781 - Barcelona, January 23, 1865). the former Minister of Industry. Baget was very well received by the Aragonese-Occitan society, as he was considered the soul of the continued modernisation of the economy and the expansion of the industry and the colonial markets. This, along with the new king, Lluís I ( October 6, 1773 – 26 August 1850, r. 9 August 1830 – 24 February 1850), was considered the beginning of a new golden age of the country.

Soon the international scene suffered a shock when the British Prime Minister, Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, gave a short but fiery speech discussing the European scene and stating that it was time for a “new age of unity against the German foe”. It was an embarrassing incident that was to outlive Grey's resignation (November 14, 1834) and to plague the tenure of the next British Prime Minister, Robert Peel, who was to turn his attention from Europe to the British colonies in the New World. The waves caused by the collapse of the Hispanic Empire reached the shores of the British colonies. After the complains of the representatives of the Thirteen Colonies over a variety of issues, including the Stamp and Townshend Acts that resulted in withdrawal of the the so-called Intolerable Acts in 1780 and the tax reforms of 1788 and of 1812, a new call for self-government was pushed forward in 1827 the growth of political reform movements in the Colonies. Thus, after the Governor General of the British North America₁, Matthew Whitworth-Aylmer, 5th Baron Aylmer, wrote his famous Report on the Affairs of British North America, which contains the famous description of "four nations warring in the bosom of a single state." For Aymler, the French settlers of the Quebec had to be assimilated by the English-speaking settlements, while the Southern Colonies (the New England Colonies, the Middle Colonies, the Southern Colonies, the Floridas, Cuba and the Caribbean) were considered to be a different entity with its own subdivisions. Thus, Aymler suggested a similar process to unify them, even if he admitted that there were too many differences between them. This question would not eventually be solved until the late years of the 1830s.

With London focused on America, Berlin centered on solidifying his hold over Europe and Russia looking for a way to expand into the Balkans and the Middle East, Amadeu Baget, on his part, spent the first years of his tenure in expanding the Aragonese economy, and the United Kingdom of Aragon and Occitania went through a Silver Age, The cultural centers of Barcelona, Valencia, Zaragoza and Toulouse produced wave after wave of not only educated men for the bussiness and government worlds, but also artists that became the nucleus of the so-called Renaixença (Renaissance), a cultural revival movement (1833-1892) which began in Catalonia in the first third of the nineteenth century, thus paving the way for the contemporary period of Catalan literature which soon expanded to the Occitan, Valencian, Aragonese, Navarrese, Neapolitean and Sicilian literatures. This process gained momentum when the growing interest of the moment in history, stimulated an awareness, between elegiac and assertive, of the deterioration of the former social prestige of the language and literary vitality (which was so stimulating in both political and literary terms) of Catalonia during the 15th and 16th centuries. However, as Baget was soon to realize, it led to a national consciousness in Naples, Sicily and Navarre, which began to resort to their cultural traditions as a reaction against the Catalan/Occitan cultural reform. In the whole kingdom, this cultural process promoted the most urgently-needed cultural instruments (such as grammars and dictionaries) and extended its influence beyond erudition and lyric poetry in an attempt to Catalanise other fields such as philosophy, science, art and law, but it also created its own political myths, as the national myth built in Naples, which were centered around the Norman (1130–1198), Hohenstaufen (1198–1266) and the Angevin periods (1266–1282). Apart from expressing the desire for an autonomous culture, the Renaixença in Sicily and Naples was also a particular form of seeking this end, with a style and themes rooted in romanticism, either academic or archaic linguistic criteria, and a moderate, liberal standpoint in keeping with its bourgeois roots.

This Silver Age, which was in great part funded by the emergent middle class and growing bourgeoisie, also saw extensive works in the expansion and reconstruction of the big cities like Barcelona, Tolosa, Zaragoza, Valencia, Monpelhière, Bordeu, Marselha and Pamplona. This age was also marked with the commerical and cultural exchange with Egypt, that underwent by that time the so-called Egyptian Regeneration, which sank its roots in this Pharaonic past and took place after the victorious war against the Ottoman Empire (1823-1825), which turned all the Levant into an Egyptian protectorate, something that was deeply resisted by the Ottomans. The Egyptian Regeneration is mainly remembered by the efforst devoted by the Egyptian government to the restorian of the Gizah Pyramids and the temples of Abu Simbel, Karnak and Luxor and of the city of Memphis, and by the Ancient Egyptian obelisk placed at Plaça Cinc d'Oros in Barcelona.

However, this era of complacency created by cultural and economic progress was going to be shaken by the Second Sengoku Period.

The Egyptian obelisk of Barcelona.​

₁ - ITTL, the name given to the British Empire's colonial territories in North America (including the Floridas and the Caribbean area). chosen by the Crown after the suppression of the Intolerable Acts in 1780.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

Chapter 84. The Rising Sun and the Crescent Moon (1830-1842)

After being defeated by Tokugawa Ieyoshi, Ishida Sakichi found refuge in an Aragonese ship that was anchored in the Portuguese of Nagasaki. It caused a diplomatic crisis that was solved when Ieyoshi's men stormed the ship and executed Ieyoshi on the spot on May 22, 1838. Ōtani Sakon, the former Gyōbu-shōyū (Junior Assistant Minister of Justice), at the head of about 600 men, rose in arms against Tokugawa and managed to utterly destroy an enemy army of 5,000 troops led by Fukushima Takatora (Battle of Marune, September23, 1839). This outstanding feat signalled a general uprising in the country against Tokugawa, who, nevertheless, managed to defeat Sakon at Terabe ( July 10, 1840). Several Loyalist commanders died during the battle or were executed by Tokugawa later (Ukita Yoshitsugu, Shima Morichika and Gamō Yoshihiro), but, on December 16 of that year, Tokugawa was murdered by one of his own commanders, Kuroda Shigekado, and the war broke out again.

Ironically, just as Tokugawa's heir, his son Tokugawa Tadanaga, took the place of his father, an Aragonese tradesman offered to one of his commanders a present for the new Shogun: a dozen Nock guns and a hundred Pattern 1805 Infantry Rifles, also known as the Barcelona Rifle, as it was mass produced there. The Pattern 1805 was being withdrawn from service in the Aragonese armed forces and that tradesman, a man called Miguel Solsona, had bought a great number of them hoping to find a client for that weapon. Tokugawa's men were still using the old-fashioned Belton flintlocks, so the Pattern 1805 received a warm welcome and soon Solsona found himself selling the rifle to Tokugawa by the hundreds, as fast as the Aragonese army was selling them and he was able to purchase and to send them to Japan. Of course, the massive selling of rifles did not go unnoticed and soon the Chief Minister was informed about this development. Baget was still not too keen on foreign adventures but, as Solsona had opened the Japanese market for the Aragonese guns, Baget used the chance ot send a diplomatic mission to meet the new Shogun.

By the time that the Aragonese mision reached Kyota on the late Autumn of 1840, Tokugawa Tadanaga had defeated his enemies in the battle of Tanegashima (September 2, 1840) and forced them to withdrawn to their bases, in spite of being defeated at Tamiya (September 18, 1840). Soon, armed with the Patern 1805 Rifle, the new army mustered by Tadanaga, moved north to confront the rebels. Two battles would follow, and by the end of the second (Ochiaimiano, (October 21, 1840), the rebels were decimated by the precise fire of Tadanaga's riflemen. After this battle, the war was over and Tadanaga prepared to rule. Much to Baget's dissapointment, the Shogun was hardly interested by his proposals. Japan was to turn its back to Europe once more.

More close and more concerning where the events that were taking place in North Africa. The Hafsid Sultanate had been a valuable ally that had helped Aragon to protect Sicily since the 1570s. After several dinasty changes, the actual rulers, the Hafsid-ibn-Hassans, had proved to be most ineffective, corrupt and iddle in all the history of the sultanate and, by the 1840s, they had been forced out of the Gulf of Béjaïa by the Moroccan Sultan and had to withdraw to their fortresses around Chott el Djerid under the pressure of the Egpytian rulers. However, in July 1842 the Egyptian army invaded the Hafsid lands and the Sultanate collapsed in a matter of weeks after his army was utterley devastated ini the battle of Akarit. With their former ally gone, Baget wondered what would happen next. However, the last Hafsid ruler, Abu Abdallah Muhammad XIII, had made a clever move before the Egyptian onslaught came on him: he named Moulay Abd al-Rahman bin Hisham of Morocco as his heir. Thus, with the enemy calling at his gates, Muhammad XIII had poisoned himself, giving this the crown to the Moroccan ruler, who claimed his right to the lands of the Hafsids.

With Aragon and Germany siding with Morocco and Britain and Russia with Egypt, many feared that an international conflict was comming, but, in the end, the question was settled in the Treaty of Tripoli. Tunis itself and the lands to its east were to pass to Morocco while the former Hafsid dominion of Libya was given to Egypt. Baget, on his part, was relieved by the turn of events, even if he was less than pleased to be alligned with Germany against Britain and Russia. However, he was not to face this problem, as he resigned at the end of his second term. The new Aragonese Chief Minister, the Conservative Miquel Bosch (Sitges, September 21, 1792 - Monpelhière, January 23, 1871), was a crude dissapointment for many, as he was known for being a religious fanatic. Thus, the Neo-Cathar Church feared that, with him in power, violent religious pogroms were to follow. Aware of this, Lluís I of Aragon consulted his advisors first about the steps to remove the Chief Minister and then met Bosch. The king was a modern, open minded fellow, a fan of industry, progress and enlightenment ideas, while Bosch was deemed to be the complete opposite. Thus, the Chief Minister was warned by the king about the consequences of uttering a single word about religion in the Parliament, something that surprised Bosch, as he did not expect the monarch to be defending what he considered a church of heretics. In any case, Bosch promised that he would refrain from making any religious statement and that he would leave the matter to the Official Churches of Aragon-Occitania.

Nevertheless, the country prepared itself for a rule of terror as the papers announced a crusade against the "unbelievers". The Progressive party geared up for war, as many of its leaders gave for granted that Bosch would end up facing a vote of no confidence in a few meeks and thus he would inevitably be forced into an election. However, Bosch was no food and he moved swiftly to secure his position. He contacted wealthy businessmen and bankers and forged alliances with the main leaders of the party. He then surprised friend and foe alike by not only openly debating all the topics with the official opposition, but also by listening to their suggestions and criticism with an open mind. Thus, he let off some of the steam both in the Parliament and in the legislature. His enemies, who had worked hard in the press to present his flaws (his rage and his shameful prejudices, etc) found themselves out of the game by the passionate and determined Chief Minister, who kept most of his predecesor's cabinet.

Soon fate would test the habilities of the new head of the Aragonese government.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

Chapter 85: Brussels, 1843.

Hardly two months after the Treaty of Tripoli was signed, the British Foreign Minister, James Graham, landed in Frankfurt am Main to make a proposal to Frederich VIII (1819-1881; r. 1833-1881): an international peace conference to settle all the questions that divided the European powers. The Kaiser supported the idea and wrote to Barcelona to persuade the Aragonese king to follow his steps. Lluís I of Aragon was interested by the proposal and accepted the proposal. Furthermore, the invitation was extended not only to the European powers, but also to the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. Sweden was the hardest to persuade, but eventually the Russian ambassador managed to persuade the Swedish gabinet to accept the invitation. Queen Amalia of Sweden (1830-1904; r. 1830-1868) was still a minor, and around her the regency was marked by palace intrigues, back-stairs and antechamber influences and barracks conspiracies. Thus, the diplomatic arguments of the Russian ambassador, Count Mikhail Petrovich Bestuzhev-Ryumin, were mixed with some bribes that, eventually, made Sweden to join the conference.

After considering and discarding several cities, Brussels was picked as the seat of the conference. It would be hosted at the Brussels Town Hall, the symbol of municipal power since the XV Century. All in all, one hundred delegates of the different countries (with their advisors and private secretaries) were packed in its main hall. The main topics of the conference was the opening of all the European markets to all parts involved, even if the final agreement excluded a free trade agreement; a non-agression pact that linked the British, the German, the Russian, the Austrian and the Ottoman Empires, the United Kingdom of Aragon-Occitania, the Hispanic Republic, Sweden and Egypt. Behind the Ottomans and the Egyptian delegations, British, Germans, Hispanics and Aragoneses carved their domination areas over Africa, Asia and America, that were going to be settled in a future conference. Then, in an unexpected move of generosity, the German Foreign Minister, Heinrich von Bülow, announced that Burgundy was to return Pontheiu, Picardy and Vermandois to France and Artois and Boulougne to Belgium. There were not going to be territorial devolution to the United Kingdom, but von Bülow promised that Aragon was to become a favoured nation in the German trade market. Finally, Austria was to withdraw its troops from Italy. Its "satellite" states were to be able to decide freely on their future without any Austria interference. If this meant a reunion of the Italian states under a common government outside Austria’s sphere it was open to question.

When the "Treaty of the Sacred Alliance for the European Peace" was signed on June 17, 1843, after two months of debates and negotiations, a new scene appeared on the horizon, The danger of a war caused by an irredentist France was avoided with the treaty and the international rivalries vanquished by the opening of the trades and the future conference over the spheres of influence of the Great Powers outside Europe. However, in Germany there was a real hanger with Frederich VIII, who, apparently, had surrendered without a fight all that his ancestors had won with their blood. It was open to question if securing the British, Aragonese and Russian sympathies was worth the sacrifice. For many, it was not.

After Brussels, a new conference followed when the Hispanic and Aragonese ambassadors in Rome met with Pope Leo XVI to end the Catholic "schism". The first meeting took place in Rome (November 20, 1843) and the last was to be held on September 16, 1844. Leo XVI and the Republic of Hispania reached an agreement that sought reconciliation between Rome and the Hispanic church and restored the Papal primacy over the Hispanic Church. However, it did not restore the vast church lands and endowments that had been seized since the break up in the 16th Century. In the Aragonese case, little was achived as Rome was unwilling to accept the Cathar Church as nothing but a heretic one. Thus, but for an overall improvement of diplomatic relations between Barcelona and Rome, nothing else was agreed upon.