Guest Post: Russian Redcoats

This post first appeared on Today in Alternate History with input from Eric Oppen, John Braungart, Philip Ebbrell, and Michael Morano.

August 10, 1778 - Russian Redcoats arrive in North America

Catherine the Great had signed a supply agreement that would see one hundred thousand Russian troops transferred to British North America to serve as mercenaries under the command of Sir Henry Clinton. After difficult negotiations had stalled, the diplomatic breakthrough was a British guarantee to support the Tsarina in the Spanish-Russian struggle in California.

Times had changed in the North American colonies and worldwide. During the Ohio River War (1754-1763), the British Empire had only needed to hire ten percent of her troop requirements from foreign countries. However, this successor conflict had become global; this time around Britain was fighting the French, Spanish, and Dutch across the world in addition to the rebels among her own citizens living in North American colonies who had refused to pay for their own defense. In fact, many Britons were sympathetic towards to the colonial cause and enraged by the involvement of Russia. For all the derisory comment in the broadsheet newspapers, the much maligned "Russian Redcoats" were armed and clothed by Catherine the Great (with coats that were primarily green).

Prior to the appointment of Clinton, mercenaries had been hired from German states. The most important was Hesse-Kassel, known as "the Mercenary State," whose soldiers fought under their own colors in their own uniforms. This sourcing approach was broadly in keeping with the British Army policy of recruiting and training new regiments "as needed" rather than maintaining a much larger standing force. However, this Hessian strategy had proved hopelessly inadequate to meet demand, such as the outnumbered and distracted troops at the Battle of Trenton in 1776. After Viscount Howe had resigned as commander-in-chief of British land forces, his successor Clinton had pressed the North Administration for a massive troop surge. He recommended recruiting Russian troops, whom he rated very highly, having seen them in action against the Ottomans.

The first "Russian redcoats" began to arrive in August 1778 at a troubled time when any significant level of organized Loyalist activity required a continued presence of British regulars. But unbeknown to Clinton, the interjection of Russian troops was merely a ruse to support the North Administration's primary move: a diplomatic initiative. The true cost of such an enormous occupation force, and logistics involved, would have bankrupted the British Government. In any case, time-delays would have been counterproductive. Consequently, the main play, the Carlisle Peace Commission arrived at the same time to offer the Continental Congress self-rule. After lengthy negotiations in York, Pennsylvania, this proposal was eventually accepted and an end to hostilities finally agreed by winter.

The vision of Lord North was self-rule for the colonies; for example, the new country of Pennsylvania would enjoy the same status as Hanover. Instead, the result was a monster that would threaten to swamp the House of Commons with American representatives. By the time that Viceroy Clinton passed away in 1795, the only realistic solution was an Anglo-American Empire with an imperial parliament. This new governance structure would survive until southerners rebelled over the abolition of slavery in 1833.

Author's Note:

In reality, negotiations with Catherine the Great made little progress. The OTL failure of the Carlisle Peace Commission was a contributing cause for Benedict Arnold to abandon his comrades and switch over to the side of the British.

Provine's Addendum:

The end of the American Revolutionary War could hardly be called "peace." Britain's international war continued with Spain, France, and the Netherlands while the American colonies came under a period of reorganization. Bouts of violence routinely broke out among former rebels and longtime tories, often more exacerbated by the occupying military than defused by it. Although amnesty had been granted for those partaking in the revolution, many of them found their businesses or farms disheveled by the end of the war and neighbors unfriendly. The new government pushed for efforts of reconciliation, such as the much-publicized moment of George Washington dining with Benedict Arnold. Many former rebels decided to move west, settling in the Great Lakes region north of the Indian Reserve established by the crown in 1963 (which had been much of the initial struggle between London and the land-hungry colonists) or along the Gulf Coast in Florida after the war with Spain ended.

Naval warfare in the West Indies dragged on even with excess Russian mercenaries dispatched in pursuit of de Galvez in Florida and the Mississippi Valley. With peace from the Treaty of Paris 1783, there were few territorial trades made since the last treaty there in 1763 except the clarification of Russia's hold on California north of San Francisco Bay. The major international difference was the tens of thousands of Russian soldiers now in the western hemisphere. As with any occupying force, many of the soldiers wished to stay in a land they saw as opportunity rather than return home to a country they joined the military to leave. Russian neighborhoods were established in many of the American port towns where they had been garrisoned, though the newcomers were unwelcome by some. To alleviate troubles as well as secure Russian California further, expeditions pushed westward to find an overland "Northwest Passage." Once a trail was blazed to the Columbia River, thousands of pioneers made the journey to settle in the valleys west of the Rocky Mountains. Louisiana gained its independence from France by force as part of the Treaty of Paris 1813, creating a cosmopolitan nation in its own right while much of the upper reaches of the territory became settled by new waves of immigrants under British authority.

A surprising outcome of the Russian deployment to North America was the modernization of their motherland. With so many Russians abroad, shipping surged, driving economic forces that in turn pushed for rapid industrialization. Serfdom came to an end in the 1840s, soon after the Second American Revolution was put down when several colonies rebelled over the end of slavery in the British Empire. While other colonies later gained dominion status under the Imperial Parliament, these remained colonial for decades longer. Russia soon became one of the world's major traders, a status affirmed by the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1870 that could ship goods from the Baltics to the Pacific in a fraction of the time they could go by sea even with the Suez Canal shortening the journey around Africa.