Catherine, Czarina of all the Africas (1st story)
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Final Musings about the Renaissance
Home is where you sleep, home is where you drink, home is where you crawl to when you're vomiting...
Ah-ha! That got your attention.
I've been told, you know, that the key to education is relating unfamiliar facts to a student's existing familiarities. You come to know new things based solely on what you already know before. This is why theologians who believe in a benevolent God invariably have kind fathers while theologians who prophesy a wrathful, vengeful God invariably have some deep seated worries haunting them from their past.
But let's relate this to Russia's historical successes, shall we? Our Russian theology was always a mixture, a hybrid between anxious French paranoiacs, who from their desert island reclusion view the divinity as a sly, curly-tongued trickster, and the slothful Iroquois Pantheists to our south. Our Russian Catholic Church knows better than the Pantheists that leading simple lives doesn't mean the Lord won't throw a few disasters your way on a divine whim. But neither are we convinced, like the Franstralian Trinitarians are, that God's entirely out to stick it to us.
Russians reject simple dualistic paradigms; balance heaven and hell
Balance, not excess to either extreme, is the key to happiness, son. In a similar vein, our sciences found a healthy medium between free thinking English aesthetics and nose-to-the-grindstone Roman engineering.
Yes, boy, I'm preparing you to study Renaissance sciences. It was in this age that we, and more sadly the English, discovered just how much nature abhors vacuums. I refer you to our 19th century rocket ship pioneer Govray Husianic, who said:
We Russians saw a happy medium. We invented, but we traded what we contrived for profit as soon as we could. We bartered and sold technology around the world, allowing the wealthy plodding Romans to stay up on the latest tech that we gained from hard work or back-engineering Egyptian cleverness. Our businesses also allowed Mother Russia to keep her taxes low--perhaps the lowest in the world.
Our people, though as curious as any other, saw that the greater profit lay not in research alone, but also in the brokering of technology. Romans thought you got wealthy by making a new thing and selling it. Englians didn't worry about getting wealthy at all, but sought only to share their lovely visions.
The Russian Grand Duma--seat of power in our growing (if imperfect) democratic monarchy--oversaw this policy of selling technology and sciences to all nations that had the liquidity to purchase it, thereby giving us the money to buy further technologies from France and Egypt without compromising our own tax bases. Despite continuing budget deficits in the Renaissance, our empire could run huge deficits and never risk running out of money.
Sound business sense, boy, and let others do the fighting. That was the Russian way in the Renaissance. Eventually, of course, our people would rejoin the world in its violence. But by then, it would be another era. We would join Rome's wars come the Imperial Age.
Home is where you sleep, home is where you drink, home is where you crawl to when you're vomiting...
Ah-ha! That got your attention.
I've been told, you know, that the key to education is relating unfamiliar facts to a student's existing familiarities. You come to know new things based solely on what you already know before. This is why theologians who believe in a benevolent God invariably have kind fathers while theologians who prophesy a wrathful, vengeful God invariably have some deep seated worries haunting them from their past.
But let's relate this to Russia's historical successes, shall we? Our Russian theology was always a mixture, a hybrid between anxious French paranoiacs, who from their desert island reclusion view the divinity as a sly, curly-tongued trickster, and the slothful Iroquois Pantheists to our south. Our Russian Catholic Church knows better than the Pantheists that leading simple lives doesn't mean the Lord won't throw a few disasters your way on a divine whim. But neither are we convinced, like the Franstralian Trinitarians are, that God's entirely out to stick it to us.
Russians reject simple dualistic paradigms; balance heaven and hellBalance, not excess to either extreme, is the key to happiness, son. In a similar vein, our sciences found a healthy medium between free thinking English aesthetics and nose-to-the-grindstone Roman engineering.
Yes, boy, I'm preparing you to study Renaissance sciences. It was in this age that we, and more sadly the English, discovered just how much nature abhors vacuums. I refer you to our 19th century rocket ship pioneer Govray Husianic, who said:
There's a reason why Englishmen and Romans haven't walked on the moon. Romans could always turn an honest profit in the Middle Ages thru their hard work. But on the whole, the Roman was a man without vision. He worked hard, he fought hard, but he never came up with too much that was new. Englians, on the other hand, were a mystical people with a surplus of vision, but with damned little time or resources devoted to protecting or projecting their dreams. They designed and rethought everything, but built nothing.
We Russians saw a happy medium. We invented, but we traded what we contrived for profit as soon as we could. We bartered and sold technology around the world, allowing the wealthy plodding Romans to stay up on the latest tech that we gained from hard work or back-engineering Egyptian cleverness. Our businesses also allowed Mother Russia to keep her taxes low--perhaps the lowest in the world. Our people, though as curious as any other, saw that the greater profit lay not in research alone, but also in the brokering of technology. Romans thought you got wealthy by making a new thing and selling it. Englians didn't worry about getting wealthy at all, but sought only to share their lovely visions.
The Russian Grand Duma--seat of power in our growing (if imperfect) democratic monarchy--oversaw this policy of selling technology and sciences to all nations that had the liquidity to purchase it, thereby giving us the money to buy further technologies from France and Egypt without compromising our own tax bases. Despite continuing budget deficits in the Renaissance, our empire could run huge deficits and never risk running out of money.
Sound business sense, boy, and let others do the fighting. That was the Russian way in the Renaissance. Eventually, of course, our people would rejoin the world in its violence. But by then, it would be another era. We would join Rome's wars come the Imperial Age.
The Final Teuto-Roman War
My father once told me "Those Romans love nothing better than a good fight." Papa was singular in his views on Romans. There was, in fact, one thing Romans loved more than fighting. They loved ganging up on a weaker enemy for a fight. In their regional prejudices they probably assumed that the Germans would always be pushovers in their centuries of warfare against those exotic Orientals. Rome's other notable trait is their dogged loyalty to even an outmoded idea. The Germans could certainly fight and at times seemed poised to drive the Romans from the field.
Eternally disappointed in their efforts to conquer new lands in far Asia, the Caesars constantly begged their neighbors, Egypt and Russia, to join them in their fights against the Teutons. Some time around 1315ad they finally met our price.
Russian knights from a generation unfamiliar with war zestfully joined the fight in search of glory and greatness, adventure and immortality. Our young nobles fought valiantly in the best sort of war there is--a victorious one fought far from one's native soil.
Russian knights were decisive in the capture of New Berlin on the scorching Bavarian Desert in 1325, but the Roman Legionnaires managed to take and hold that city. Our gains were minimal. For another generation dashing young Slavic men sought fame and found bloodshed on the German front. But while Germans, Romans, and Russians fought, it was the diligent, idealist Englandians who ultimately acquired far eastern possessions in Indogermany. Eventually all sides in the conflict tired of a perfectly matched contest and sought a final peace. We'd gained no empire, but we had disproved one myth the world held about the modern Russian man--our people could fight. If any doubt remained, the next war would end it.
Major political changes were occurring in Russia in the 14th century, as well. With the growth of the power of the Duma in domestic matters, the Royal Family began to resent the incursion on their traditional power. Each new call for lowering the property requirements or curbing the power of the nobility in voting led to further disaffection between the monarchy and the people's representatives. Two thousand miles away over the ocean, the growing colonies of New Africa blistered at their lack of representation in the Duma and had the appalling corruption rates to show how little they cared for rule from the motherland.
In mid-century the Romanovas determined to remove themselves from the influence of ever-expanding voter rolls. In 1360 they moved the imperial residence to the remaining royalist province of Sevasta, 500 miles to the west of Moscow. The empire now had, essentially, two capitals--two capitals which did not necessarily get along with one another.
(don't worry; we're getting closer to the next round of violence)
My father once told me "Those Romans love nothing better than a good fight." Papa was singular in his views on Romans. There was, in fact, one thing Romans loved more than fighting. They loved ganging up on a weaker enemy for a fight. In their regional prejudices they probably assumed that the Germans would always be pushovers in their centuries of warfare against those exotic Orientals. Rome's other notable trait is their dogged loyalty to even an outmoded idea. The Germans could certainly fight and at times seemed poised to drive the Romans from the field.
Eternally disappointed in their efforts to conquer new lands in far Asia, the Caesars constantly begged their neighbors, Egypt and Russia, to join them in their fights against the Teutons. Some time around 1315ad they finally met our price.
Russian knights from a generation unfamiliar with war zestfully joined the fight in search of glory and greatness, adventure and immortality. Our young nobles fought valiantly in the best sort of war there is--a victorious one fought far from one's native soil.
Russian knights were decisive in the capture of New Berlin on the scorching Bavarian Desert in 1325, but the Roman Legionnaires managed to take and hold that city. Our gains were minimal. For another generation dashing young Slavic men sought fame and found bloodshed on the German front. But while Germans, Romans, and Russians fought, it was the diligent, idealist Englandians who ultimately acquired far eastern possessions in Indogermany. Eventually all sides in the conflict tired of a perfectly matched contest and sought a final peace. We'd gained no empire, but we had disproved one myth the world held about the modern Russian man--our people could fight. If any doubt remained, the next war would end it.
Major political changes were occurring in Russia in the 14th century, as well. With the growth of the power of the Duma in domestic matters, the Royal Family began to resent the incursion on their traditional power. Each new call for lowering the property requirements or curbing the power of the nobility in voting led to further disaffection between the monarchy and the people's representatives. Two thousand miles away over the ocean, the growing colonies of New Africa blistered at their lack of representation in the Duma and had the appalling corruption rates to show how little they cared for rule from the motherland.
In mid-century the Romanovas determined to remove themselves from the influence of ever-expanding voter rolls. In 1360 they moved the imperial residence to the remaining royalist province of Sevasta, 500 miles to the west of Moscow. The empire now had, essentially, two capitals--two capitals which did not necessarily get along with one another.
(don't worry; we're getting closer to the next round of violence)
conquer_dude
Imperial Slave
Since you are currrently allies you might want to surprise attack the Roman when they least expect it. 
Theryman
King
Update! Please!!!
conquer_dude
Imperial Slave
Yes, has this been neglected or somethin'?
Theryman
King
Ple-he-hease!
*passes out*
*passes out*
Tribute
Not Sarcastic
Good job. Yet it has been 1 day! *le gasp*
Theryman
King
I think I speak for me when I say-- update or die.
Life sometimes, you know, calls and won't hang up. So my story is stalled at 1600 and my game at 1700. But rest assured the game is not abandoned. These words of encouragement are like hot coals beneath my feet--bound to get me going again. Update tonight when I return home. I promise. And if you're not a pretty girl and we're not on a date, you can always believe my promises. 
conquer_dude
Imperial Slave
...Always, eh? ...
Sit down, sit down, Alek. I know I've been away for a while. You're not the only little pampered diletante I'm tutoring you know. Anyway, in order to buy some new books to continue my studies, I had to take a night job at a local restaurant.
No, how could I know if it's any restaurant you and your spoiled rich friends go to? Oh, don't worry, you wouldn't see me there. I'm bussing table at Der Wok von Lintelini, that Egypto-Germo-Roman restaurant in the government district. I doubt your snobby friends would like it unless you're "slumming it" for the night.
Oh quit your blubbering, Alek. I've got more Medieval documents to show you, just so you at least sound like less of an ignorant govnodavy when you get to college next semester. Heh, assuming any university is willing to take you.
What? Moscow Politech- ? How many libraries did your mother have to donate to get you accepted there, boy? Ah, never mind. I'm here to teach you, not marvel at your idiotic luck. Here, read this. It's a lithographed copy of the "Charter of the Rights of the Boyars"--mother Russia's first formal constitution from 1434. By granting a voice to the landed snots like your family, it paved the way for the eventual empowerment of the rest of society, altho the process took centuries to complete. Yes, read it, read it.
This balanced Russian constitution, however difficult it proved for the politician and lords of the early Imperial Age, was a qualified success in building the internal strengths of the empire. The nobility gave the empire reliable, vigorous leadership (something our neighbors the Iroquois lacked), while the firm republican values of the people gave our population a sense of political liberty and entitlement (something the Romans lacked).
So it's not surprising that the 15th century saw the defection of two news provinces to our empire. In the forbidding Sahel, the city of "Caesaraugusta" (modern day Tsaroygusch) left the Roman empire and defected to us in 1430. Then in 1475, the bustling borderlands around Vladivostok returned to the motherland, altho to this day the city still retains much of its Iroquoian influences.
But despite our victories, our political problems were holding us back. It was our plodding Roman rivals who created the domineering financial centers in the prosperous Nile Valley. Macroeconomic models today suggest that our own modest financial center in St Petersburg was no more than two generations away from becoming the world's center of financial transactions. But soon economic competition from the bankers and stockjobbers of Cumae seemed to reduce our Russian bankers to second rate money lenders.
To reformers of the Imperial Age, the source of the problem was too clear. Our form of government encouraged petty corruption and was ultimately holding us back.
A century later, as the First Scientific Revolution was under way, Russia found itself again in a race for innovation. Half a world away, the loathsome French were engaging in a rush for scientific progress in the fields of chemistry, optics, astronomy, and physics. Franstralian spies watched our scientists in their noble pursuits, swiped our Russian inventions, schemed to seduce our brightest students and whisk them away to the colleges of "Le Daune Undeur."
The French were never too far behind us in developing the world's leading scientific institutions. With a "brains race" on and fearing that a loss in social stability would endanger our slim lead in scientific progress, popular leaders in the Duma shamefully conspired with corrupt nobles to stall the process of democratization of Russian society. Political liberation stalled while a culture of privilege (and accomplishment) flourished.
Perhaps it was all for the best that our era democratic reforms was put off for the time. Democracies are good at many things. But among those things is not the ability to fight a long distant war. The world was about to become a dangerous place in the bloody 16th century and reforms would only have been a distraction. So we continued along, half monarchial, half democratic, and fully poised for the dangers of the Imperial Age.
Now I've got a real special book to show you--perhaps the first real work of literary journalism in the history of Russian literature. It's a book well ahead of its time, trust me.
No, how could I know if it's any restaurant you and your spoiled rich friends go to? Oh, don't worry, you wouldn't see me there. I'm bussing table at Der Wok von Lintelini, that Egypto-Germo-Roman restaurant in the government district. I doubt your snobby friends would like it unless you're "slumming it" for the night.
Oh quit your blubbering, Alek. I've got more Medieval documents to show you, just so you at least sound like less of an ignorant govnodavy when you get to college next semester. Heh, assuming any university is willing to take you.
What? Moscow Politech- ? How many libraries did your mother have to donate to get you accepted there, boy? Ah, never mind. I'm here to teach you, not marvel at your idiotic luck. Here, read this. It's a lithographed copy of the "Charter of the Rights of the Boyars"--mother Russia's first formal constitution from 1434. By granting a voice to the landed snots like your family, it paved the way for the eventual empowerment of the rest of society, altho the process took centuries to complete. Yes, read it, read it.
This balanced Russian constitution, however difficult it proved for the politician and lords of the early Imperial Age, was a qualified success in building the internal strengths of the empire. The nobility gave the empire reliable, vigorous leadership (something our neighbors the Iroquois lacked), while the firm republican values of the people gave our population a sense of political liberty and entitlement (something the Romans lacked).
So it's not surprising that the 15th century saw the defection of two news provinces to our empire. In the forbidding Sahel, the city of "Caesaraugusta" (modern day Tsaroygusch) left the Roman empire and defected to us in 1430. Then in 1475, the bustling borderlands around Vladivostok returned to the motherland, altho to this day the city still retains much of its Iroquoian influences.
But despite our victories, our political problems were holding us back. It was our plodding Roman rivals who created the domineering financial centers in the prosperous Nile Valley. Macroeconomic models today suggest that our own modest financial center in St Petersburg was no more than two generations away from becoming the world's center of financial transactions. But soon economic competition from the bankers and stockjobbers of Cumae seemed to reduce our Russian bankers to second rate money lenders.
To reformers of the Imperial Age, the source of the problem was too clear. Our form of government encouraged petty corruption and was ultimately holding us back.
A century later, as the First Scientific Revolution was under way, Russia found itself again in a race for innovation. Half a world away, the loathsome French were engaging in a rush for scientific progress in the fields of chemistry, optics, astronomy, and physics. Franstralian spies watched our scientists in their noble pursuits, swiped our Russian inventions, schemed to seduce our brightest students and whisk them away to the colleges of "Le Daune Undeur."
The French were never too far behind us in developing the world's leading scientific institutions. With a "brains race" on and fearing that a loss in social stability would endanger our slim lead in scientific progress, popular leaders in the Duma shamefully conspired with corrupt nobles to stall the process of democratization of Russian society. Political liberation stalled while a culture of privilege (and accomplishment) flourished.
Perhaps it was all for the best that our era democratic reforms was put off for the time. Democracies are good at many things. But among those things is not the ability to fight a long distant war. The world was about to become a dangerous place in the bloody 16th century and reforms would only have been a distraction. So we continued along, half monarchial, half democratic, and fully poised for the dangers of the Imperial Age.
Now I've got a real special book to show you--perhaps the first real work of literary journalism in the history of Russian literature. It's a book well ahead of its time, trust me.
What do you mean, 'What is it?' It's a book, you opezdol. I'm sure you've seen one before. You just peel it open from the edges and read the words you find on the pages inside it.
Oh quit pouting. You rich kids are all so damned lazy. I'm only kidding. I'm giving you this book to read. (you opezdol) So read!
Because, you numbskull, you learn better by reading than by listening. That's why. Do you complain about everything? Open it up. Yes, now, Alek.
*sigh*, Of course from the first chapter. You know just when I think you're about to run out of stupid questions... Hang on. I'll go get that. You start reading.
Oh quit pouting. You rich kids are all so damned lazy. I'm only kidding. I'm giving you this book to read. (you opezdol) So read!
Because, you numbskull, you learn better by reading than by listening. That's why. Do you complain about everything? Open it up. Yes, now, Alek.
*sigh*, Of course from the first chapter. You know just when I think you're about to run out of stupid questions... Hang on. I'll go get that. You start reading.
Without Honor
by Mikhail Herskowitz
Preface: Coffeechat
"The thing to being a great leader," Dolboyob Kustik said to me in our most famous conversation (unofficially speaking), "the key to it is, you've got to have a war."
"A war?" I asked. "Surely there are other ways to accomplish great things in life..."
He paused.
"No." He nodded his head, as if just now settling the matter in his mind. "It takes a war. Nothing else will do."
Normally I wouldn't have paid much attention to such a simplistic and thoughtless assertion. It was just us there, two Congorusan cattlemen, sitting in a coffeeshop in Kharkov and "whistling for wind," as we Southerners like to say. But then again, it wasn't "just us." We didn't know it then, but destiny was sitting with us in that room, too. And, of course, we weren't just two cattlemen, altho sometimes we liked to fool ourselves into believing that we were.
I was a writer, a tutor at the local library, a young, but semi-retired man of means who chose to move to this out of the way province in search of a fortune that could be made without too much of an effort. I had had two novels published, which made me a minor celebrity among the local bigwigs, which in turn got me invited to some exclusive clubs and meetings. And my drinking companion was no ordinary hide-puncher, either. He was a politician with more ambition than brains and, due to his late father's fame, more public name recognition than ambition.
In the year before our little coffeechat, rumor had it that Squire Kustik had gotten it into his skull that he deserved to become prime minister of all the Africas, just like his dear ol' papa. So when I asked him out for our informal visit that day, there was really more going on than two leather merchants "straining the beans," as we Southerners like to say. He knew I was a writer looking for a story and I knew he was a politician looking to be a story. This is what the English philosophers of old called a symbiosis.
I drained a refill into my samovar and wondered why he thought greatness required other men to bleed and die. "Squire Kustik," I inquired, "we are at peace and no great power threatens us. Are you saying Russia and all the Africas are incapable of greatness in this generation?"
"Please, Miksha, call me Dolboyob." My turn to nod with certainly."And that's not what I'm saying at all. But look at the Romans. They have a wealth of great men. Titanicus, Berlosconius, Benitocus, Garibaldio. And why do they--a weaker, poorer, less accomplished empire than ours--produce so many more great men?"
"But those are only their military men, Squi... Dolboyob. What about their great engineers, their explorers, their musicians?"
"That is nothing without leadership from a man of vision, a man on a horse who knows how to rally a nation's hearts to pull together for one cause. That is greatness. An engineer never does that."
"An engineer doesn't have vision? What about the great irrigation canals of the Sahara? That's not a great thing, sir?"
"A great thing? Sure, it's a great thing. But that doesn't make a great man. That's just a thing that a man of skills gave to the people of Rome and Antium. A gift. But those engineers don't have greatness to them. Greatness is when you ask something from the people, when you inspire them to accomplish grand deeds and wonders, not when you simply give to them grand things you've made yourself."
Now I saw where he was going with this. "So greatness inspires sacrifice?"
"Sometimes, if things go rough. But I'm not big on sacrifice. That's for losers. Greatness should inspire reverence. That's the problem with this country today. The people do not revere their leaders, those of us who were born to the responsibilities of leadership. They want low taxes and straight roads and funny books and clean shipping ports and a fresh import of leather every winter to keep them warm and stylish."
He sipped his bitter coffee and continued, "But they don't--and this is where my vision for our future greatness comes from--they fail to revere their leaders. This is why greatness requires war. The people must be shown, every generation or so, truly shown who their betters are and why they should follow us."
"Us?"
"Or whoever takes over after these damned Reformers are driven from office. The point is, Russia's greatness needs a war and until we have one, we will always be less than what our fathers dreamed of."
Three years later Squire Dolboyob Kustik married Princessa Zelda Romonova, third daughter of Czarina Kathiya IVth, and two years after that, "by soap or by rope," as we Southerners like to say, he was appointed leader of the Progress party, then only a minority faction in the Duma. He didn't talk about war when he was schmoozing with the squires and barons who selected the party's leaders (for they had no formal party officers or partisan conventions back then and most political matters were settled in parlors or the Matriarch's dining room). He talked about destiny and how great the Russian people were, and how his faith in God and Our Savior were the only political theory he needed to govern justly.
I was a young novelist then and had become bored with politics. Nothing much happened around the turn of the century in Moscow except bourgeois plays, pedantic operas, and debates in the Duma about taxation rates and corruption in the colonies. So I didn't tell anybody about a five year old discussion I had with the new minority leader. No one expected much would happen from the Progressives' platform anyway.
Then the scandals began...
Keep reading, you brat. 
I can't do all the talking.
I can't do all the talking. Without Honor
by Mikhail Herskowitz
Chapter Three: Prime Minister at Last
...When two elderly Dukes died in the winter of 1523, two more young men of the "Iron Generation" were elevated to the peerage. Following the gains and defections in the Duma over the Corn Reform party's Welinsky Scandals, the Progressives under young Count Dolboyob Kustik were poised to outvote the Corn Reform party and take control of the Duma. When the peers and deputies met the following spring Kustik's lieutenant, the copper merchant Zalupo Krashkartski, rose in the Duma and called for a vote of confidence against the Corn party's embattled first minister, Duke Robhihm of Kiev. Watching his own friends turn on him, Robhihm announced he would resign his office before the vote was finished.
That same afternoon, the Czarina approached her son-in-law, Count Kustik of Maslagorod, and offered him the First Ministership. Reputedly Count Kustik blurted out "Yes, I'll take it!" before the Grand Matriarch could finish her ceremonial offertory speech...
"The point is, Russia's greatness needs a war and until we have one, we will always be less than what our fathers dreamed of."
Chapter Four: November Ninth
...The horror of the young Englishmen's action took a while to settle into the city's psyche. Moscow's hospitals were full with the dying and the dead. At first city officials blamed "bad airs" and then "rats" for the pandemic--they knew nothing of medical sciences and epidemiology. One deranged physic of the town even proposed it was not the rats but tiny gnits on the rats who carried the disease from town to town. Soon, however the Prime Minister Kustik came to blame the wretched English sailors with their poisoned apples for the diseases that ravaged Moscow. The city sheriff stormed down to the port and seized the entire crew of the ESS Luym where it was anchored in the city port.
"These vile Engle-men must be punished," he pronounced within days of the discovery of the true cause of the pandemic--the apples.
Some writers today propose that Englandia was destined for conquest. For a century now the world's statesmen have privately dismissed decrepit Englandia, with its ancient culture and corrupt leaders, as the "old man of Asia." Unable to hold its lands and sundry vassal states, the Engle Empire was ripe for the picking. But with the Great Game of Asia still afoot, with Romans and Germans glaring across the steppes at one another with deep suspicion, no great empire dared to start the carving.
But clever and ambitious generals lurked in every great army--Rome's, Germany's, America's, but especially Egypt's--and they dreamed of bringing grand Englandia under their flag.
This is why they called it the Great Game. Central Asia was the hub of the Near World and yet tottered under the weak rule of the English. Count Kustik was quick to send his strongest armies north from Ravenna, Araby, and the Hindi Rus. But swift as the young knights rode to avenge the Plague of Moscow on the apple-peddling Engli, wiser heads in Moscow feared what would happen if the other Eurasian powers decided to come to old Engle's aid.
Kustik's wily foreign minister, Prince Zhopu Risi, traveled to Europe, bearing horrendous stories--some even true--of English barbarism. In the court of ruling Cleopatrician of Egypt, Minister Risi denounced English perfidy, won the enlightened Egyptians to Russia's cause, and secured an alliance against Englandia. Once the war commenced, two great powers would stand in partnership, not competition. His mission was completed none too soon, for within a week of the treaty signing in Thebes, word arrived that Russian swordsmen had crossed the Kazak desert and were besieging Reading in central Englandia.
Just as swift and certain was the coming vengeance of the first major battle in the war. Duke Mudak the Elder of Mikshagrad brought his disciplined Chernozem Knights across the plains east of the Caspian Sea and surrounded the venerated fortress city of Oxford. With tremendous violence they ravaged the lands--some of Englandia's most cultivated farmlands. Roman troops, who for years had plotted to wrest Oxfordia's farmlands for their own empire could only sit by helplessly, knowing any move might threaten their nation with war against the Russo-Egyptian alliance.
the fabled city of Oxford-on-the-Caspian
When Mudak of Mikshagrad rode into Oxford he wisely restrained his men from plundering the city. His orders from Minister of War Prince Vodkapolya were, as Count Kustik promised, to "conquer with compassion." Kustik and Vodkapolya wanted to ensure that other cities would resist Russian swords and muskets less. But their policy was also designed to give the surrounding empires less cause to ride to Englandia's rescue. But it was Foreign Minister Risi in his travels to Rome City who would ensure that the Roman armies did not turn on Russia.
Ah, I see you're getting to the good part.
Without Honor
by Mikhail Herskowitz
Chapter Five: The Partition of Englandia
"The Vengeance Spring" of 1525 saw the birth of a new generation of heroes for the Russian empire. In the Charge at Oxford and the Battle of Southern Road, the young nobles of the "Iron Generation" proved their mettle and brought acclaim to their families and heritage. But the acknowledged leader of the Russian knights, Duke Mudak of Mikshagrad also noticed something less heroic--or perhaps more heroic but less modern--in the casualty rolls from his two great battles.
The troops handling the crude early firearms of the day suffered greater casualties than their sword wielding comrades, even tho the early military doctrines of the day dictated that the sword was the more dangerous weapon to hold in combat. In the camps surrounding conquered Oxford, Mikshagrad began to formulate his new theories of mounted warfare.
The mounted gunman had been intended for defense purposes, like the infantry musketman, while the attack, coming in close to the enemy, was still considered the gloryright of noble chevaliers. Exactly reverse, reasoned the Duke. Ill-educated commoners were more clumsy with the mechanics of firearms, already an awkward match for horsemen. Most of the mounted casualties came from misfired muskets and blunderbusses. A new breed of professional soldiers would have to be trained in mounted gunfire and used not as defenders--a waste of their shock value in combat--but as attackers. The Iron Generation would have to set aside their old fashioned ideas of gallantry and become masters of modern warfare.
Mikshagrad took his ablest officers off of the eastern and northern perimeters and spent the winter of '25-26 training them and their troops for a new style of war.
Meanwhile, to the north and east of Oxford, the English prepared for the following year's combat. The Duke of Bennyhill mounted a large and surprisingly swift police force to guard York, while the Earl of Bean prepared a massive counterassault to ride in from Newcastle.
But the most novel development of that quiet Autumn--the coldest in the memory of the tropic-loving Russians--was Foreign Minister Risi's journey to Rome City in the Sahara. There Risi entered into tough negotiations with the Romans, eventually cutting a surprise deal to bring the vaunted Red Army into the war on Russia's side.
At the same time, Risi's personal secretary had crossed the Arctic circle and arrived in the frozen Tundra of Cincinnati and drew the obstinate Ameri into yet a third alliance against the English by exploiting the centuries long animosity between the two Asio-Saxon kingdoms.
Now, utterly surrounded by enemies, the English finally began to see their years of decay and decadence catch up to them. All Englandia's enemies were arrayed in an unprecedented league of blood. Just like the ancient Ukrainian proverb from the savannahs, four mighty jackals surrounded the one limping and ancient gazelle.
Finish these next two chapters, young Alek.
I've planned for something a little bit different for tomorrow's session
I've planned for something a little bit different for tomorrow's session
Without Honor
by Mikhail Herskowitz
Chapter Seven: Englandia's Sorriest Hour
With his new Cossacks still untested in major combat, the Duke of Mikshagrad allowed his old style knights one last hurrah, the march on Newcastle.
Mudok of Mikshagrad was aware that his knights were in a race against Roman and Egyptian forces for the conquest of Englandia. And so he spared them no support in unleashing the Iron Fury of the Russian noblemen out to avenge the apple attack on Moscow.
Baron Kolvitz, general of the march to Newcastle, knew he had scant months to capture this prized English town before swarms of Roman troops came galloping north up the Caviar Trade Road from Caesera and Byzantium to capture some of Englandia before all the good lands were taken.
Kolvitz marched two corps of chevaliers into the ranks of Englandia's vaunted longbowmen and captured the counties west of Newcastle. But as weakened as they were, the Earl of Bean's army held back the charging Russians and saved the city from a plundering attack.
However new mounted drives the following two years drove the last of Bean's forces from the field and left Newcastle surrounded and under imminent attack from Kolvitz's force. That same year Mikshagrad in Oxford--now a pacified if not wholly content corner of the Russian empire--launched surprise, devastating raids into the counties lying between Oxford and York. With the core of Englandia's military strength now centered at York under Duke Bennyhill, Mikshagrad moved to destroy the farmlands and roads to slow down any attacks coming down from the north.
. .
The English, reeling from assaults on all fronts sent ambassadors to the capitals of the Russian League, but no nation on earth would grant them peace. In 1535 daring Russian raiders began to harass the areas south of York as Egyptian forces pressed in on the English Empire's second city from the west. That year Newcastle finally fell to the harried, and by now outmoded, Russian knights. Along the coast of the Southern Ocean, the Englian colony of Richmond fell to the Romans. These losses were catastrophic, too much for the ruling elite to bear. In 1537 a palace coup replaced the old monarch and council with a new, militaristic English dynasty under Winston the Bullish. The new king sought a quick and easy victory by ordering a counterassault on occupied Richmond. This would not prove to be the hour for their empire to rally, however, and the Romans slaughtered the underequipped English in the rice paddies of the Ganges Valley.
. . . .
Perhaps cognizant of the changing nature of warfare in the world, perhaps sobered by partition of Englandia, the two leading Vespuccian nations in 1635--Babylonia and Persia--signed a new kind of military alliance. This would promise to be both a stabilizing and devastating model for international diplomacy in the years to come, but for the moment the mutual protection pact of the Perso-Babylonian bloc was the first and most startling "permanent" alliance known to the nations of the world.
The world was modernizing, thanks in large part to the dangerous events unfolding across the Englandian Steppes, and despite the Prime Minister's assurances, not all progress was good.
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