1798-1800:
US intervention in the Mediterranean. As a result, not only are the Barbary Pirates broken, but Greece gains its independence with American aid.
1801-1802: The
American Civil War, fought between Northern Royalists and the secessionist Confederate States of America, breaks out when John Pappas uses an executive order to make himself King. The short-lived Confederacy fails to win a single battle, and President Denver (taken prisoner in one of the first engagements of the war) surrenders in Albany Court House in 1802.
1806: Pope-Murray Act signed by King John, Radical Reconstruction begins in earnest. Tens of thousands of ex-Confederates head for Texas from now to 1835.
1811: The charter of the First National Bank is allowed to expire.
1813: After a nine-year insurgency, Serbia finally wins its freedom with covert American and Greek aid.
1830: Mississippi Territory admitted as the State of Sequoyah.
1816: Following a financial crisis, PM King and the Federalists get a Second National Bank chartered.
1821: Enterprising Americans begin to colonize Liberia.
1835: Texas Revolution begins.
1836: The Texans, led by Sam Houston and
Edmund Ruffin, defeat the Mexican army and capture President Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto, winning their independence. Among the Texan forces are a young
Nathan Bedford Forrest. Texas is proclaimed a free republic, but in effect is an extremely racist (even for its day) 'white man's state', a dictatorship that quickly fell under the sway of the ex-Confederate aristocracy.
In Latin America, the Peru-Bolivian Confederation comes under fire from Chile and Argentina. The United Kingdom, seeking a powerful South American ally, actively supports the Confederation, which eventually destroys the Chilean army at the Battle of Yungay and secures a favorable peace.
1846: In Mexican California, American settlers launched the 'Bear Flag Revolt', with UK Army Major John C. Frémont (then acting without orders) taking a major role in the rebellion. Back home, using a minor border incident, expansionist Prime Minister Polk secures Parliamentary approval for war with Mexico.
1847: Liberia is released as a UKA protectorate, ruled by the King in Washington through an appointed Governor and elected Prime Minister.
1848: UK Army troops march down the streets of Mexico City. In the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, Mexico loses its northern half to the victorious Americans.
1853: Texan ex-Army Major and lawyer William Walker, the son of ex-Confederates who fled to the future Lone Star Republic in 1810, launches the first of his 'filibusters' (illegal military expeditions) in Baja California, but fails and is put on trial back in Texas. However, he is later acquitted, much to the displeasure of the Mexicans and Americans.
Meanwhile, Greece and Serbia are eager to join the Crimean War on the Russian side and fight the Ottomans once more, but are restrained by threats from Britain, France and Austria. A brief war scare erupts when the British reinforce their positions in Canada.
1854: Walker travels to Nicaragua, then in the middle of a civil war, and joins one faction with 300 Texan volunteers. He distinguishes himself as a capable leader and eventually prevails, installing a puppet President and governing the country from behind the scenes.
1856-57: William Walker faces off against a coalition of the other Central American states, which sought to drive him from the region. Against all odds, he and his Texan officers whipped his demoralized and ill-equipped army into fighting shape and managed to beat off the Costa Ricans - though not without significant aid from Texas, which sought a counterbalance to the United Kingdom.
1859-63: With considerable support from Texas and business interests, William Walker defeats the other Central American states, one by one, and installs puppet Presidents in each one. By 1863, he is the self-proclaimed 'Puppet Master of Central America'.
1864: France, Britain and Spain intervene in Mexico after President Juarez defaults on his debts. The French go the furthest, placing the Austrian Archduke Maximilian on the long-vacant throne of the Mexican Empire. The UKA supports this move; Kentuckian Brigadier General John Pope is sent to Mexico City as a personal military adviser to Maximilian, and the UKA soon outdoes the French in terms of financial and material aid to the Imperial government, though no combat troops are deployed yet.
1865: As the 'Juarista' rebellion heats up, Prime Minister Douglas agrees to launch an actual military expedition to Mexico. While initially only a 6,000-strong force commanded by Mexican-American War veteran John C. Frémont is deployed, Frémont soon feels that his force is insufficient and asks for reinforcements. By Christmas, the Mexican Expedition has grown to 70,000 men with Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, William T. Sherman and Philip Sheridan rising to become the most prominent of Frémont's subordinates.
In response, the Texans strike an unlikely alliance with Juarez. A few hundred 'volunteers' led by Nathan Bedford Forrest and William T. Anderson cross the border to support the Republicans'; by the end of the year, to counter the massive American presence in Mexico, this force has swelled to about 30,000 men and is placed under the overall command of P. G. T. Beauregard. The Confederate expedition manages to keep Frémont off-balance in a savage guerrilla campaign.
In unrelated news, Peru-Bolivian strongman and 'Supreme Protector'
Andres de Santa Cruz dies; before the country can fall apart under his less than able generals, the UKA pressures interim Protector
Manuel Belzu to invite European royalty to become Emperor of Peru-Bolivia. In the end,
the young Duke of Aosta was chosen to become the first Emperor of the Imperial Union of Peru-Bolivia with American blessing.
1867: Frémont finally manages to lure the Juaristas into the open; in the following Battle of Querétaro in central Mexico, a mere 4,000 Juaristas (supported by 500 Texans) were trapped by 7,000 Imperialists and 20,000 Americans and slaughtered to the last man. Among the Juarista and Texan losses is William T. 'Bloody Bill' Anderson, one of the most brutal of the Texan commanders, whose body wasn't even recognized until a year after the battle.
In other news, Peru-Bolivia takes advantage of the War of the Triple Alliance (Paraguay Vs. Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina) to rip off Gran Chaco.
1868: Lieutenant-General Nathan B. Forrest was killed at the Battle of Miahuatlán, where Lieutenant-Colonel George Armstrong Custer's Royal 7th Cavalry routed his 1st Texan Mounted Volunteers in a ferocious two-hour all-cavalry engagement. A healthy son, Ferdinand, is born to Maximilian and his consort Carlota in May.
1869: After two months of attempting to outrun his pursuers, President Juarez and 9,000 Republicans finally decide to turn and fight the 10,000 Imperialists and 30,000 Americans (led by Miguel Miramón and Philip Sheridan respectively) pursuing them at Santa Cruz de Rosales. In this doomed last stand, less than half of the Republicans come out alive, and President Juarez is captured shortly after the battle while attempting to escape. The fanatical Miramón executes him on the spot, dealing a fatal blow to the Republican cause; comparisons are drawn between the Imperial general and James Murray, a Civil War general who led a force of Royalist Crusaders and gleefully executed Confederate General Jonathan Thomasson after the latter's defeat and capture at Humpback Rock.
General Frémont resigns after word of this victory to run in the general election of 1869, confident that his status as a war hero would win him the office of Prime Minister; he would not be disappointed. Robert E. Lee is chosen to replace him.
Seeing the writing on the wall, Republican commander Porfirio Diaz finally accepts a large sum of monetary 'compensation' and the office of Prime Minister to Maximilian and goes over to the Imperial side; many disheartened Republican leaders follow him, or at least drop out of the fighting. The Texans also withdraw their expeditionary force, having realized that the Republican cause was doomed. The UKA also begins withdrawing its own troops over the next four years, figuring that the Imperialists could wipe out the remaining Republicans with minimal American aid.
1870: The Spanish depose the hugely unpopular Queen Isabella II and, after much thinking and negotiating, choose Maximilian of Mexico to become King of Spain - on the condition that Mexico and Spain are never actually united, instead being ruled in a personal union until Maximilian's death, at which point the Spanish throne would be inherited by his biological son Ferdinand and Mexico would go to his adoptive son
Augustine, who was also the grandson of the first Mexican Emperor Agustin I.
1879-1884: War of the Pacific. Chile challenges the Imperial Union again, loses badly.
1881: The sixty-year-old William Walker, tired of ruling from the shadows, gets his puppets all over Central America to reunite the various republics into the Union of Central America, a revival of
the Federal Republic of Central America. As President in his own right, Walker walks over the various rebel movements organized against him with a mercenary army and the 2,000-strong Texan Legion supporting him since 1875.
1897-99: The Greeks go to war with the Ottoman Empire over a border skirmish in Macedonia. Although their military has been greatly modernized with American aid (the single-shot Fusil Gras Modčle 1874 had largely been replaced by a mix of French Lebel M1886, American Krag-Jřrgensen and Russian Mosin-Nagant rifles) and conscription expanded the size of their military force, the Greeks are still faced by a numerically superior and technologically equal Ottoman opponent (which had modernized with German aid). In the following war, the Greeks are able to secure Western Thrace, but sustain heavy casualties (15,000 KIA and ~20,000 WIA out of a 90,000-strong army) due to several disastrous blunders by their commanders and an underestimation of the Ottoman military.
1898: Spanish-American War. This goes the same way as OTL (Our Timeline).
1900-01: The Boxer Rebellion breaks out in China. The Americans intervene to secure a concession in Tianjin and favorable trading rights.
1904-05: Russo-Japanese War. While the Russians are constantly defeated by the Japanese, American mediators work hard to secure the best possible settlement for them and end up getting both powers to sign the Treaty of Portsmouth, which secured Russian possession of Port Arthur and joint control of the Trans-Siberian Railroad.
1910-11: Mexican Revolution begins. Porfirio Diaz, a capable but repressive and corrupt man who served as Prime Minister of Mexico 1869-92 and finally became Viceroy from 1892 onward, faces a challenge from a coalition of dissatisfied liberals, progressives and peasants championed by Francisco Madero. In the end, Maximilian (a liberal reformist at heart) dismisses Diaz and allows Madero to form a government; Madero's moderate government passes many agrarian reforms, cracks down on corruption in the government and remains loyal to the Habsburg Emperor.
1912-13: The Balkan Wars begin. First Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia unite to seize most of the Ottoman Empire's European possessions; then an unsatisfied Bulgaria attacked its former allies, but was overwhelmed and defeated - with aid from Romania and the Ottomans, no less. Greece expands into Eastern Thrace as far as Adrianople (largely thanks to American mediation), Romania gains Constanta and Serbia takes the rest of Macedonia.
In other news, Madero is assassinated in the
La decena trágica (Ten Tragic Days) in 1913, and an alliance of conservatives and military officers backed by foreign businesses and the Americans takes power. Felix Diaz, nephew of the elderly and sickly Porfirio Diaz, is installed as Viceroy; however, Prime Minister Victoriano Huerta is the man really running the show. In response to this calamity, a group of increasingly radicalized rebels rally under Venustiano Carranza, Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa to challenge Huerta and the Habsburg monarchy.
1914: Franz Ferdinand is assassinated by the Black Hand, Great War begins.