Catherine, Czarina of all the Africas (1st story)

Catherine's Quick Little War

Catherine the Great, the first Czarina, loathed the Egyptians. For over 300 years her ancestors had warred against them. For over 300 years Russian parents had told their children that Europeans were ice-blooded devils. But because since 190 ad they held the vital Levant--and thus controlled the sea and trade route that connected an entire hemisphere--two generations of Russians had been forced to accept their military and political dominance.

Catherine saw a different possibility. War had made her people great in the past, and war would redeem them again.

In 249 ad, just three years after ascending to the throne, the Czarina ordered her troops to occupy disputed lands along the Suez coast. But to one brave unit of horsemen, she sent secret orders, a "suicide reconnaissance" deep into the Sinai, to scout out just how large the Egyptian forces were. The captain of the horsemen reported back that the enemy were strong, but not invincible.



Sadly, his troop paid for this intelligence with their lives. And with this retaliation, the Third Egyptian War began.

The Battle of the Suez went poorly at first, with the brave Russian swordsmen driven from the disputed territory. An expected alliance with the Iroquois fizzled out as the southern tribesmen faltered in the face of Egyptian might. Russia would stand alone.



The Egyptian general, Lord Takerekhonshu of Alexandria, abandoned his foot soldiers in the north and confidently pushed his charioteers toward Ravenna.

But of course the Russians were experienced in defending this critical Nile city. A troop of swordsmen ambushed the Egyptians at Big Bend and took revenge for their humiliation at Suez.



Russian commanders were surprised to find that Lord Takerekhonshu was not among the captured chariotmen. The drive to Ravenna had been a feint. Probably Takerekhonshu had intended to use his chariots to draw the Russian forces away from the main line of march, spreading out the swordsmen in more defensive positions. But Takerekhonshu underestimated the size of the Russian army, which was comprised of ten battalions of swordsmen. His chariots were lost and Russian forces were now free to march north to the Levant.

Catherine fell ill and died before her troops could complete what she called "The Great Drive North." However Russian swordsmen were able to reclaim the Suez coast and fortify it with the largest army known up to then in history. The Egyptians fortified their possessions in the Levant, preparing to repulse any Slavic incursions. But in the sincerest compliment to Catherine's military planning, Lord Takerekhonshu began to steal Russian military tactics and deploy more reliable swordsmen to defend Egypt's empire. The day of the chariot was over.

But darker challenges awaited.

A Cure for Pride

I want to avoid ethnocentrism here. It's form of pride. Scholars today are often accused of maintaining an Afrocentric view of human events. So I should apprise you that world history is not only about Russia events. In this time period the truly resurgent world power was neither Russia nor Egypt. It was Germany in the far Orient that experienced the greatest progress. We traded with them, but hardly appreciated their accumulated wealth nor questioned how these inscrutable German potentates always seemed to get the better half in our deals. Still, they stayed out of our wars with Egypt, and that at least was something to be grateful for.



In the Far Hemisphere, which our 4th century ancestors knew nothing of, the vast Indian empire was crumbling, falling before the might of the growing Japanese and Zulu nations.

In our own hemisphere, both of our neighbors, the Romans and the Iroquois, were experiencing population spurts which would have a great impact on future events.

Well, that just about covers it for looking at the rest of the world. Now let's get back to talking about our race.

In 350 ad, the 4th and final Egyptian war broke out. Altho the Matriarch Catherine was long deceased, much of the credit for our victory can go to her. It was during her reign that final, lasting peace terms were negotiated with Egypt's main allies, Aztlan and Englandia. The distant Americans could not be swayed to peace, but they lived too far away to be concerned with. But of course Catherine's principal legacy was the vast army she left to her descendents. It was her granddaughter, the Czarina Catrinne, who finally put that vast array of men to good use.

Proclaiming the time had come for the Great Drive North, Catrinne "let her boys out" and took possession of the Levant. Fourteen iron battalions of warriors moved thru Judea and Phoenicia and prepared to drive back the unsteady trickle of Egyptian swordsmen who came to challenge them.

note: Roman settlers moving eastward

To reclaim their lands, the Egyptians marched in a deadly column of swordsmen. The primitive Russian horse fighters were lost in the early stages of the Fourth War and the remainder of the fighting would mostly occur on foot. Upon defeating a large army of Egypt's first wave, however, General Poshyel k'Chyertu didn't press his attack. Instead of pressing further north and risk driving the battle into Roman territory of Pompeii, Poshyel k'Chyertu had his troops dig in during the 360s, building up his reserves to full force and planning to assault the main column of Egyptians as they arrived in the Levant the following year.



Czarina Catrinne dismissed Poshyel for failing to pursue a weakened enemy, but still benefited from his prudence. Kremlin records from the time indicate that Catrinne had ordered her general to send his troops eastward, around Pompeii, to attack the eastern flank of the Egyptian homeland. It was an audacious plan, but Poshyel refused, fearing that this maneuver would expose the Russian homeland to an invasion straight down the Nile-Red Sea corridor. Poshyel k'Chyertu's wisdom was rewarded with a dismissal from royal service and a retirement into a life of poverty. He did not live to see his strategy validated.

When the new Gypsy Horde charged south into Phoenicia, the Russian swordsmen were ready for them. A two year long battle ensued with the full might of each nation poured into the iron and blood that fought for the eastern Med.



Tired of enduring decades of playing chessboard to the maneuvers of the pharaohs and czarinas, in 400 ad the people of the Sinai formally joined the Roman empire to seek their protection. The Roman city of Brundisium became the new eastern capital of the empire, effectively cutting off the surviving Russian army from our homeland.

Unable to advance or retreat, and prevented from sending new troops into the war zone across Roman held lands, the mighty Russian army was slowly cut to shreds by a bloody, decades long attrition. They gave as good as they got, but desperately undersupplied, they could not hold out. Meanwhile the Egyptians sent a naval force around the Bulge of Africa, which arrived in 420, threatening the militarily weak western provinces of Yakutsk and Smolensk. Provincial leaders were able to abandon public works and rush some military defenders into the field, but Russia's vulnerability was exposed by this tactic.



In 421, a last gasp attack on Egyptian forces by the tattered Russian army convinced, finally, both empires of the foolishness of continuing the war. In four hundred years of fighting, the only concrete accomplishment was to push the locals into the arms of Rome. When the unit flags were finally returned to Mother Russia, the total armed forces of the Russian Levant barely numbered enough men to comprise one battalion.

The war, fought ineptly and by half measures, had produced no concrete gains and had cost the motherland dearly. This loss ushered in, for all practical purposes, the Russian Dark Age.

(2b cont'd)

Dang that's alot of action. I'm sure the Romans are really TO'd with all that bloodshed soaring into their lands.

conquer_dude said:

I'm sure the Romans are really TO'd with all that bloodshed soaring into their lands.

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Nah, they don't mind. It's good for the cabbage.

Seriously tho, I tried several times to get a RoP deal out of them, but they kept on asking for too much money. I'm a real pennypincher when I play civ (as we'll see in the 16th century in this story). Whatever civ I play always ends up with an additional trait: chinsy. Like when I'm the English, my civ traits are expansionist, militaristic, and chinsy. I don't think the "chinsy" quality gives you any Golden Age, however, coz bein' a cheapskate is really its own reward.

Well you cant really get gpt until your reputation rate goes up. Mine is always low

Updates?

Oh, btw: Could you throw in your minimap in the next update?

conquer_dude said:

Could you throw in your minimap in the next update?

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I'll do something significantly better than a minimap with the next post. I've put an entire atlas online. But it won't take place in the story until the 12th century.

You don't mind waiting 800 years for the next installment, do you?

{spoiler removed in the interests of the "pursuasion of continuity" (cf. Northrup Frye) }

The Dark Age

The time between the Late Classical Period and the Renaissance is a dreary spot in history. Russia descended into a crazy quilt of feudal kingdoms and the power of the Czarinas waned until they could barely control even the neighborhoods of Moscow. Some states of Russia began to experiment with Republican forms of government, but little of greatness was accomplished.



We learned little new of the world in those years, but the new trade in Burgundian ivories would soon change our ways.

Just as it looked as if our people would degenerate into warring factionalism, perhaps go the way of the chaotic Burgundian nations, the fates delivered to Russia an inspired leader.

"All our people fear going the way of the Burgundians," mused the traveler-merchant Baron Bahl Bering, "I say we should go their way. Go way over there and take their ivory business from them."

Soon after, Russian merchants began to refer to the Burgundian subcontinent by a new name. They called it, "New Africa." A smart Burgundian would have seen this as an ominous sign.

Burgundians are Basically Stupid

As I was saying at our last session, the only bright spot in the Dark Age was the increasing trade with New Africa. Econo-historians in the past asserted that it was the increased trade with the east that triggered the Renaissance of Russian culture. That viewpoint has come under some critical scrutiny at the university with the works of Ingalls and Marques, but the basic thesis is sound. When Bering and the other merchant-explorers of the Middle Ages began to discover more opportunities in the east, the world view of the whole society was expanded.

Honestly, with the Burgundian subcontinent occupied only by brute savages, it's a surprise that no other world power thought to colonize them before we did.

While Bering himself was off discovering what appeared to be a new land beyond the frozen wastes of America, the first Russian traders began to cross the Araby Sea in crude dhows and bringing back valuable Burgundian ivory.

While it was not the same quality as the African ivory harvested by Russian and Iroquois merchants, the tusks of Burgundia did represent a potential economic competitor to our exports. The wisdom of the medieval tradesmen was that it was better than they control the market than somebody else.



Somehow, fighting broke out between the natives and the Russian merchants--well technically between the natives and the merchant's armed mercenaries. But whatever. Things didn't go too well for them, as you might expect from any clash between a feudal and a stone age culture. Native uprisings were a constant threat to business and as long as the natives held any power, ivory profits were going to prove negligible at best.

Among the biggest drains on profitability were the constant attacks of Burgundian, Hun, and other barbarian pirates who trolled the Bay of Richmond to prey on our merchants.



For over a century these high seas brigands harassed honest businessmen--often with the clandestine support and approval from Burgundian potentates and even from the exotic foreigners from the isolated islands far to the south of the Orient.

Who am I talking about? Boy, do you really not know what kingdom lay beyond the Burgundian Ocean? Forget history, you little travka, you need a geography lesson.

Excelent!

This is one of the best stories since the days of Daft.

Updates? ??? ???

conquer_dude said:

Updates? ??? ???

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Dang, Conquerer-Dude, you sure do ask for a lot of updates. I posted 10 chapters in seven days! Now that spring break is over with, the posting rate will slow down just a mite. I'll try to keep the rate at about two postings a week. Any more time spent on this new hobby and I'll have to start taking my kid to McDonalds for dinner instead of cooking a proper dinner.

BrendanM said:

This is one of the best stories since the days of Daft.

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Thanks. But who is Daft? Are there some older stories I orta be reading? I don't recall that name from the sticky'd index of stories, but it's been a while since I looked at that.

BuckyRea said:

But who is Daft? I don't recall that name from the index of stories...

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Oops. It's the first name on the index page. No wonder I missed it. For somereason I was reading his name as "draftpanzer".

Don't ask.

Renaissance Ideas

Ah, to live in the Renaissance! That is the age for which my delicate soul was destined. Not this pointless hurly burly of a modern society. Nope, m'boy, of all the time periods one may dwell upon, the Renaissance is the only worthy choice for a true man of learning. After all, whoever goes to an Enlightenment Fair, or a Classical Age of Philosophy festival? 'Tis balderdash! The people know that Renaissance is the granddaddy of historical epochs.

It was an age of literature, discovery, manners, learning, and brand new techniques in engineering. The world's expert engineers, the Romans, built their system of grand canals in this age. Imagine the conviction and vision that it took to design a system of earthworks and canals to bring irrigation waters to the far side of the Atlas mountains and turn the northern Sahara into a green southern Eden!



Or think about the innovations in sailing technology that allowed our ancestors to cross the uncrossable Araby, despite the violent monsoons, and plant our first overseas colony on the hilly western coasts of New Africa! Think of how it took an era of geniuses to rethink the boat and turn transport craft into war crafts strong enough to wipe out the last of the Burgundian pirates!



The spirit soars! Certainly our people had spiritual visions. How else can you explain the transfiguring beauty of the "separated twins" cathedrals of Moscow and St Petersburg, completed months apart from each other and bringing an unprecedented joy and serenity to the hearts of our people?



Oh, other nations had their rebirths in this era, too. The enigmatic oriental potentates of Germany had their own rebirth of thinking, but mostly applied their ideas to the military arts--the great German philosopher Züngentschüh wrote his Art von Krieg in the same year that the great Petrov established his first colony in New Africa. But that is hardly a worthy comparison.

A hundred years later the great Tuscarawa architect, Micah Eagle-O, would design an even greater cathedral in Allegheny, the Sistine Chapel. Twenty years after that the city of Paris saw the flowering of engineering genius of Leonârde d'Avignon, whose famed workshop revolutionized human thinking. This is what the Renaissance was all about. The glory and vision of realizing humanity's greatest gift--the capacity to create art and beauty...

But first we had to get those damned savages in New Africa out of the way.

BuckyRea said:

Dang, Conquerer-Dude, you sure do ask for a lot of updates.

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I know, I'm a hippocrit. I always ask for updates and I never really update my stories that often. I admit it.

Awesome update, dude!

Updates? Just kiddin.

Do you have a zip of the map you're playing?

BrendanM said:

Do you have a zip of the map you're playing?

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it's the standard Earth map that comes with vanilla civ3. You can probably do much better with the world map downloads here on civfan. For instance the prefabbed Earth game scenario makes Mexico WAY too skinny, omits New Zealand, and totally butchers the shapes of Cuba and the British isles.

If I could download the Civ3 maps from this site, I'd never use this pre-fab again.

Years of Turbulence and Change

For centuries the Levant had been the political, trade, and military focal point of the Near Hemisphere. But with eventual Roman domination of that region and the growing power of far away Germany, the center of conflict, if not the center of gravity, shifted to the east. While Russians came to dominate southern and central Burgundia, the northern portion of the subcontinent was the scene of growing tensions among the other world powers.

"Whoever controls the Himmel Mountains," the military philosopher Hans Züngentschüh wrote in his immortal Art von Krieg, "truly controls the gateway to Heaven." The exact meanings of these arcane Oriental aphorisms escape me, but rest assured that it means in substance that central Asia was going to be the site of some pretty heavy fighting.

More than once in the 11th century any pairing among Rome, Egypt, Germany, and even Englandia--by these times called the "old man of Asia"--threatened to stumble into war. Finally, in 1170, the two strongest powers reached their breaking points. For reasons lost to history, the Germans arrayed their vast armies for the conquest of Rome and unleashed a new age of Renaissance warfare.



Have you ever noticed how bad things always hit the fan right before your guests show up? Well, the Teuto-Roman War is a good example of this. Even as the two powers squared off for their conflagration in the mountains of Asia, strange visitors came calling upon our hemisphere.

Rumors of other lands beyond the two great oceans had circulated for centuries. But sudden wealth and new technologies coming into the grasp of the backwater Aztecs made it clear that somebody else was out there. Then in the prophetic year of 1111 ad, strange clever men hailing from a swampy jungle named "Japan-quo" sailed into the far western town of Yakutsk.



In an explosion of new trading opportunities, our scientists and cartographers came to learn that between the two oceans lay not the veil of Heaven, nor the houses of the Sun and Moon, but two brand new continents, teaming with life, new languages, and strange cultures.

(To see a proper atlas of this era, go HERE)

And despite the occasional plague or viral pandemic sweeping thru the unprepared populations of both hemispheres, cultural exchange turned out to be a net plus for all parties concerned.

Of course this mattered little to the Romans and Germans who fought valiantly across the open steppes of central Asia, taking, losing, then retaking city after city in a vast bloodbath.



Vlad Soyuzski's epic poem The Reclamation of New Leipzig is a stirring example of how Renaissance artists embraced the passions and fervor of even these militant times. Despite its obvious sympathies in favor of the German knights riding in to liberate Roman-held Neue Leipzig in 1160, it has become a timeless standard for men of war from all cultures to quote as they struggle to express their love of valor and the honorable hatred for their own profession.

My arms are soaked in the blood of men
whose countries I'm not welcome in;
and yet, I know, they'll greet me fair
to their Heaven, should ever I travel there.
These valiant Teuton knights bedecked
in oriental splendor, who ride erect,
to free their lost city on the Himmel range
greet Death thus, in these days of turbulence and change.

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More than once the Roman monarchs pled with the matriarch and sundry local kings of Rus to join in the war against the Germans. But always the Russians demurred, having other concerns. Among those was the specter of a shrinking culture, as hinted at by the defection of an entire city to the Iroquois alliance in 1150ad.




2 b cont'd

Ooooo that culture flipping sucks I hate that.

I'm not forgetting to play or post, folks. Just danged busy at work and in the so-called personal life. Updates will start to occur this week once I finish editing the text and cutting the screenies down to digestable sizes.

This is a teaser.