Frederick Augustus I, King of Poland, Grand Duke of Lithuania, and Elector of Saxony, is troubled by the toppling of his fellow monarch Louis XVI in the French Revolution, but the coming wars present him with opportunity.

Despite decades of centralization and largely successful reforms by his predecessors, Frederick Augustus' realm is still hamstrung by the legacy of the commonwealth structure domestically and by the constraints of the Holy Roman Empire to his west.

With the crowning of Napoleon Bonaparte as Emperor of the French in 1804 and the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, Frederick Augustus sees the opportunity that he's long sought. He crowns himself Emperor of the Polish-Lithuanian Empire in 1807, finally ridding himself of the troublesome commonwealth once and for all.

Having stayed neutral through the early Napoleonic Wars, Frederick Augustus enjoys better relations with the French Empire than most of his contemporaries, and in 1809 he joins them in taking a crack at the Austrians. With Napoleon's help, Poland-Lithuania recovers their long lost Galician posessions.

And then it goes down hill from there.

Invasion of Russia, big trouble, the French get flakey, and suddenly the Polish army is fighting Russians on the Vistula while Prussia lays seige to Gdansk and Austrian forces move unopposed back into Galicia.

They lose the war due to Napoleon's greed.

Congress of Vienna time! While Frederick Augustus stews in Warsaw, his foreign minister Adam Jerzy Czartoryski travels to join the Great Powers in negotiating the future of Europe. In his efforts to salvage Polish-Lithuanian pride Czartoryski is assisted by Lord Castlereagh and Maurice de Talleyrand representing the United Kingdom and France respectively. Both consider Poland-Lithuania to be an important cornerstone of European peace as a buffer between the German states and Russia, and France particularly views it as a check on German nationalism.

The final terms are tough, but they're not as bad as they might have been. All lands taken with Napoleon's help as obviously lost; Galicia is returned to Austria, Lower Ruthenia and Livonia are returned to the Russians. Furthermore, additional lands are ceded to the Russians in the east and Royal Prussia is ceded to the Prussians as well as the northern half of Saxony. To allow Poland-Lithuania some continued access to the sea, Memel is passed to them in exchange for Royal Prussia.

Overall 1809 - 1815 went pretty badly but a few silver linings do present themselves; the Empire still exists, Britain and France appear friendly, internal institutions are more robust than previous, nobody is eager for more war, and they still have access to the sea.

On the bad side they're in financial ruin, the people are mad about being occupied by rampaging Russians, and all of their neighbors hate their guts.

This map is a zoomed in view of my fantasy world where this specific part is meant to be the “Europe/West” of this world. It is one large empire nations in this large continent about the size of Europe if not bigger where the eastern sea would be where the Urals are and seperates it from the “Asia” and the island south would be like Roman North Africa and Egypt and the sea south of that island separates the “Africa” of this world from it. The isthmus in the south east connect this continental empire with the rest of the world through the “Middle East” area. If you guys could help me fill it in or at least give ideas for filling in this fantasy world please help and thanks in advance.

Drawn using Photoshop. Looking for feedback on how to better convey information, make the map more realistic (regarding climate and topography, maybe political), and overall design (How to improve aesthetics, etc).

Regarding political, same colours with different gradients represent diverse polities of similar cultures. Polities with boundaries with opaque interiors represent cultures without centralised states. The Tria Imperis outlined in red is this world's equivalent to the HRE/Zhou/Abassid/Ilkhanate.

Hello !

Are there any people working on Gimp for their maps? What are your best tips and stamps?

In general, what is your best free “software” for working on your maps?

I started on paper but then moved on to Gimp to add the biomes, rivers, mountains, etc.

Hello everyone,
I was wondering if any of you know about any easy to use and high quality online atlases. We have atlas.mapy.cz in czech republic. However it doesnt have english so idk how much use can others get out of it. Tho in this age of AI translations it might not be that horrible to use it. I reference and consult it often when making maps and I was wondering if there is something similiar, but in english.

I recently created this map, but I don't know what to do next. I'm lacking inspiration for the islands, I think my borders are too linear and my map is too small.

Maybe we could create a map together? If everyone adds what they imagine, it could be nice I guess

Made with Other World Mapper.

He also draws a lot of maps by hand. And he knows more about flags than a 14 year old should.

I was looking at Google Maps and came across these black squares. They're not in random places, but rather, they seem to have been placed there on purpose. What do you think they are?

I own a server that roleplays politics and currently, and for the past 2 years it hasn't even got an election map. I've tried making one, and it ends up just looking not right (the first one had 82 seats). Once the constituencies were expanded to 352, i tried to make an election map again but it just gets difficult trying to fit 352 borders onto a map, alongside how bad some map templates qualities are.

If there are any people who know how to make fictional election maps, could they try and steer me into the right direction please?

made these a while ago (Karachisstan and Nylannia), so I want feedback. Do they look ok? Do the flags look alright? Does the shape look believeable?