The Axamallan Revolt

Timeframe: 1837-1838.
Belligerents: The G.P. of Mexico vs. the Pomeranos, supported by the UCNA.
Outcome: The independency of Axamalla.

In the 19th century,  was the dominant power of the New World; its only rival was  staggering from the loss of, well, Mexico - the historic heart of the Moorish New World. In no small part, this dominance was because of its Baltic diaspora; Mexico had an impressive amount of military talent at its disposal, most of which spoke Pommersch at home.

Then, in the 1830s, it all started going terribly wrong.

The background of the Axamallan Revolt

The early G.P. may have been the big continental power, but it was still a turbulent place.

• Pomeranian immigration: There was a significant turn-of-the-century rebellion in Pomerania (Poland-Ruthenia quashed it after it started suffering a leadership crisis); because ethnic communities are self-reinforcing, this brought a new influx of Pomeranian immigrants to Axamalla, and pretty much nowhere else.
• Catholicization: Mexico's revolt was in no small part a religious one, and the Pomeranians had no strong problems with anti-Islamic and anti-Moorish violence. The problem started with the religious efforts in peacetime. In practice, Reclamation meant that Mexico was becoming an explicitly Catholic nation, implicitly othering Axamalla's settlers.
• Overrepresentation in the military: The G.P. was heavy-handed from the start, and heavily reliant on its (very Pomeranian) generals to lead it to victory. After the Grand Princess, it also relied on its armies to enforce the law; Mexican popular consciousness had associated the baltos with the walls of bayonets that were routinely bloodied maintaining peace and order.

All of these issues were represented in the personal life of Oskar Sansinger, himself a Balto and part of the officer corps; his presence in the Palace placated the Axamallans, and his refusal to actually claim the throne himself placated the rest of Mexico. The problem (so said the Pomeranians) was that he was not planning on representing them - his children were raised Mexican, Sevillan-speaking, and (worst of all) Catholic.

The start of the Axamallan Revolt

Matters came to a head with the Guise succession. Oskar was in poor health, and (with at least his blessing, if not by his connivance) his son Carlos had just been engaged to a very specific princess: the (now impotent and irrelevant) Guise pretender's eldest daughter, born and raised in Rome. [who?] The Grand Principality wasn't just going to be Catholic; it would be Catholic enough to inherit the claims of the Most Christian Kingdom.

One night, after several rounds of beer and before several more, a clique of Mexico's generals had an intensely ironic Niemöller moment. The night after that, they started to seriously discuss how they should respond to that. One of their number, a certain Gen. Adler [who?], drew the short straw; knowing and accepting what was to come, he went to be the messenger to the Grand Prince - and arrived just in time to crash the wedding party, like the wicked fairy of a Grimm story.

Gen. Adler presented the young Prince with a list of demands from the generals, speaking as self-declared representatives of the Pomeranian-Mexican common interest. Most of them involved the specific rights of Pomeranians in general, and the Holy Church vis-a-vis the Roman Catholic Church in particular. None of them were negotiable. None of them were conceded. Against all odds, he was allowed to survive the encounter.

With the official refusal to guarantee any protections for the Holy Church, the generals declared themselves no longer bound by their oaths of loyalty to the Grand Prince, and ordered the units they commanded to ignore any further orders. The Revolt had begun.

The UCNA's involvement

Military competence alone wouldn't suffice to keep Axamalla (now "the Holy Plebeian Commonwealth of Axamalla") independent forever. A majority of the officer corps was still loyal to Mexico, and the provisional government's economy quickly started foundering in war debts. What kept them afloat was the support of the generals' lifelong enemy: the UCNA.

Depending on the exact year, Yusuf I would either be very old or very recently departed (leaving his second-in-command Don Musa to sort things out.) In either case, the UCNA had plenty of problems of its own (not least a series of showdowns up north between England-Scotland, New Britain, and the aboriginal nations over exactly who controlled what land in the Ohio Valley), and every reason to be afraid of Mexico; a Mexican secession, conveniently poised to be a buffer state, was too good to not pass up.

Aftermath of the Axamallan Revolt

Because Axamalla took a fistful of generals with them, the Axamallan Revolt damaged Mexico's military power out of all proportion to the cost of war. The next generation saw Mexico's focus turn southward, where none of its opponents could pose a serious threat.

This is a stub. It will be expanded upon.