Yet another attempt to revive the thread: I finally finished a TL.
Don't all get excited at once.
Note: For this part, I decided to go with recommendations that the Ottoman Empire not be partitioned nearly so much as it was. Therefore, the borders in the Balkans can be seen as roughly comparable to those of 1900 OTL, with the exception that the Greeks control Salonika and Ioannina, which were their OTL gains of the 1912-3 Balkan Wars but were awarded to Greece for services rendered during the Great European War, such as they were. Bulgaria controls Eastern Rumelia as well as its core territories, Serbia has its own core plus Kosovo, and Bosnia was given to the new Republic of Hungary. The Middle Eastern and Armenian border changes were kept, as were those in the Danubian Principalities. Turkey itself has been made into a republic, and the former Ottoman sultans now only hold their title of caliph, and reside in Baghdad, now part of British Mesopotamia. Also, Italy has still been partitioned, but the north is just a puppet French confederacy under the presidency of the Pope.
La Belle Époque.
History is simply a piece of paper covered with print; the main things is still to make history, not to write it.
-
Kanzler Otto von Bismarck
The ink had dried on the Treaty of Frankfurt, and all Europe rejoiced: the Great European War, three years of bloody conflict and destruction, was finally over. The Continent had finally returned to the productive era of peace and prosperity that it had enjoyed for forty years after Vienna. Hopes just as high were entertained for this particular piece of paper. And indeed, despite complaints about the flaws in the treaty the massive new German Empire chief among them this document would govern Europe through a safe and relatively calm four decades. The areas that would be in dispute were obvious. Italy was split between French and British influence if any proxy wars were to be fought, that would be the first place in line. Too, the remnant of the Ottoman Empire still controlled a large tract of Europe in Thrace and Macedonia, an ethnic mishmash of just about every Balkan nationality except Turkish; there would be much hatred simmering in that ill-starred part of the world. Russia, of course, had been enlarged by new acquisitions in the former Habsburg and Ottoman lands, and appeared nearly as ominous as its western neighbor. And finally, last but most definitely not least, the British Empire had expanded even larger, encompassing a huge new colony in the Middle East to add to its Indian and Australian possessions.
Otto von Bismarck, the chancellor of the most powerful state in Europe, was determined to let this peace hold. The nations differences must be papered over; compromise or partition was the order of the day when considering disputed lands. The energy of the European states was to be drawn outward, in an age of imperialism, an age of imposition upon the unwashed masses of the savage world. New attention was focused on Asia, where the Great Powers would play an intense proxy game, where the stakes were supreme influence and the price was relatively negligible. Africa was largely passed over (save for those lands in which Britain was interested, e.g. Egypt and Libya). Instead, the Americas became once again the field for contest and competition. Despite the failure of the French expedition to Mexico at the end of the American Civil War in 1864, greedy eyes were still focused on Latin America. Spain rejuvenated and invigorated by the new Emperor, Maximilian I itched to reclaim its former colonies, and France sought an outlet for her ambitions after being at least temporarily barred from Africa. The two things that protected the Americas from these two Powers had been the Royal Navy and the strength of the United States. Following the strife of the last few decades, though, there were certain fissures in America that could be exploited
America had, in 1864, been arguably the most powerful nation in the world following its rapid mobilization of industry and experience gained in fighting against the skilled Southern general Lee and his subordinates. Now, nearly twenty years later, the United States were ruled by a bombastic, somewhat foolish President (George Armstrong Custer, elected in 1880 to a second term despite charges of corruption leveled against his Administration), the Southern states seethed in barely concealed hatred following the bloody grind of the
jäger war of the sixties and early seventies, the Army was demobilized and reorganized for fighting against the native tribes of the Plains, and the Navy had been allowed to decay for the last two decades after the end of the great blockade. On the other hand, the French had spent the three years since the end of the war in 1878 creating a new model army under the auspices of the Prince-Imperial Napoleon Eugene. The scaled down version of the
mitrailleuse, combined with the improved chassepot rifles and better, quick-firing artillery gave the French a technological edge over everyone save possibly the Germans, and the generals themselves had studied the lessons of the Great European War in an effort to learn from previous mistakes and thoroughly prepare for the next conflict. Spain, for their part, had with French help modernized the army along the new French lines, and was now armed with slightly inferior versions of the weapons that the French themselves sported. In short, these were two countries looking for an easy fight, and it seemed as though the Americans would give them one. Now all they needed was a target. It was then that Maximilian noticed Mexico.
After the intervention of 1864, Benito Juarez had remained in power for another eight long years before finally dying of a heart attack. Of course, there was the odd scandal about elections being rigged, and a few Conservative revolts under the auspices of Porfirio Diaz and Jesus Ortega, but all in all the country was rather quiet. [1] When Juarez protégé, Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada, ascended to power amid further charges of Liberal vote-buying, Diaz began to plot another rebellion and with every new election that Lerdo de Tejada rigged, more supporters quietly moved into Diaz camp. The straw that broke the camels back was a small piece of legislation that Lerdo de Tejada rammed down the Conservative senators throats. It was nothing much really, just a bill limiting states rights and initiating a fresh centralization process. Naturally, this infuriated many Mexican Conservatives, and in 1881 Diaz swept into Mexico City at the head of 70,000 avowed rebels. Lerdo de Tejada fled for Spain, where he begged his case before a very interested Emperor Maximilian. The decision makers in Madrid contacted their opposite numbers in Paris; the Prince-Imperial, now acting effectively in his fathers stead (Napoleon III was practically on his deathbed as it was), signed the Convention of Toulouse with Maximilian I, providing for French support for Spain in Mexico in return for trade concessions and further favors in East Asia. An expeditionary force was readied under the command of Marshal Francois Achille Bazaine, veteran of campaigns in the first Mexican Intervention, Austria, and Italy, with the Spanish generalissimo Juan Prim as his second in command, in charge of the Spanish contingent. Admiral Hyacinthe Aube was put in charge of the combined fleet, with the Spanish chief of the Havana squadron, Patricio Montojo, his second.
When the fleet set sail in June 1882, Washington was thrown into an uproar. President Custer issued a statement reiterating the Monroe Doctrine and demanding that the French and Spanish back down; Paris and Madrid ignored the protests and went full steam ahead. Angrily, the President issued a final ultimatum: turn around before entering the Strait of Florida or else a state of war would exist between the United States and the two imperialist European Powers. He was shrugged off again, and furiously ordered Rear Admiral John Worden to collect elements of the US Navy from Gulf ports and the Eastern Seaboard and rally them at Key West in a show of force; Aubes flotilla didnt even slow down as they passed the Americans. On July 7th, Custer pushed Congress into declaring war. Despite the counsel of the various Civil War veteran admirals to maintain a fleet in being, Custer ordered the fleet to engage; reluctantly, Worden complied, and tried to cross the allied fleets T off La Fe. Aube complied, and engaged the American fleet; in the Battle of the Yucatan Channel on July 11th, all that was conclusively decided was that the Americans tactical advantage had been nullified by sheer numbers and technological superiority on the part of the French and Spanish. Worden lost a few ironclads and withdrew towards New Orleans and Gulfport to restock and refit, and the European fleets plowed on to Veracruz, where Bazaines Army of Mexico went ashore with naval fire support.
Custer immediately ordered troops south under General John Chivington to assist Porfirio Diaz in maintaining his hold on power. Chivington, with three army corps, passed through the vast northern Mexican desert relatively unharmed, and linked up with Diaz as the Conservatives fled the capital without a fight. Lerdo de Tejada entered Mexico City at the head of a multinational army and to no small popular accord; Bazaine soon began planning his move north. After some inconclusive maneuvering around Ciudad Valles, the French decided to attack as soon as possible, now that a pro-Conservative rising in Oaxaca was beginning to threaten his rear and the unpacified southern portions of the country began to stir in revolt as well. At the Battle of Las Culebras on October 4th and 5th, the French used their artillery to support a massed frontal attack, using their Liberal Mexican allies as cannon fodder, while keeping the French in reserve and using the Spanish to seize a ridge that overlooked the right flank of the American army. Chivington, despite some inspired tactics, including a cavalry charge that briefly scattered the Mexican human waves, suffered increasingly heavy casualties due to the new French weapons and was forced to withdraw north to Tampico. He hoped to thusly trap Bazaine between the two jaws of his army to the east and Diaz forces to the north, and either force the Army of Mexico back onto the capital or west, into the trackless desert near San Luis Potosi. This scheme failed, though; the French quickly thrust northward towards Diaz at Ciudad Mante, forcing the Conservatives further back and dislocating the jaws of the envelopment. Bazaine felt that now the Conservative threat from the south was greatest, and dispatched Prims Spanish contingent to guard Mexico City and break up the centers of resistance, the first of which they did admirably. The winter passed uneventfully, with the two armies and the two navies refusing to break camp (or port, as the case may have been), despite the respective wishes of their commanders-in-chief. Chivington, an able commander and veteran of the Civil War and the Indian Wars, had gained a healthy respect for the new French weapons. It probably would have proved a helpful advantage to the otherwise outmatched American forces if Custer hadnt sacked him on Christmas Eve, replacing him with General Ranald Bad Hand Mackenzie. Bazaine, for his part, felt that his previous notions had been confirmed: the Americans couldnt stand up to superior French firepower and training, and their Mexican allies were equally as feckless.
As the winter ended, the two sides made their respective plans. The Franco-Spanish Army of Mexico would catch the Americans in another battle, wipe them out, and force them to retract their Monroe Doctrine and acknowledge Madrids suzerainty over Mexico. In Bazaines words, the Army of Mexico would exterminate the Americans and walk all over General Mackenzies contemptible little army which was soon made into the American nickname for their Mexican Expeditionary Force, the Old Contemptibles. [2] To distract them from this theater and increase Washingtons fear of continuing the war, plans were made to contact former Confederate resistance cells under the overall command of the last of the great
jäger commanders, Wade Hampton. They would assist a Spanish landing in Mobile Bay and spread panic and chaos across the South; word was sent to the Plains to organize a (not forthcoming) large-scale Indian revolt. Custer, on the other hand, thought that he had the French and Spanish in a vise, between Diaz in the north, Mackenzie in the northeast, and Jesus Ortegas rebels in the south and southwest. Reinforcements were shipped into Tampico harbor to boost Mackenzies strength; at a speech in Baltimore, Custer declared that the European invaders will be crushed once and for all by the valiant defenders of freedom! Privately, though, many American Civil War and Indian Wars veteran officers expressed a distinct distrust of the ease of beating the French and Spanish who, after all, had just fought one of the biggest wars in the history of the world. All of these preparations were overshadowed by news from Paris: Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, had died, and his son, the Prince-Imperial, ascended to the throne as Napoleon IV to much acclaim.
Bazaine began the campaign with a withdrawal towards Mexico City, allowing Diaz and Mackenzie to triumphantly unite their forces at the former site of the French encampments outside of Ciudad Valles. When questioned on the intelligence of the move, Bazaine replied that this would actually make their job easier, since the Mexicans and Americans would all be in one place easier to kill them that way. [3] He sent for Prims forces and then utilized the French armys greater mobility (in their lighter artillery, especially the smaller
mitrailleuses) to prevent the Americans from engaging them until the Spanish had joined them. On April 9th, near the town of Pitahayas, the united Army of Mexico and its allies, a combined 110,000 men, gave battle to the Americans and their own Conservative allies, who constituted 98,000. Mackenzie decided to attack, using Diaz men as the same kind of cannon fodder that the French had tried a few months ago, while using the bulk of his American troops (sans the artillery, which were supposed to support Diaz frontal attack) to try a sucker-punch around the enemy left flank. Bazaine, for his part, expected something along those lines, and thus prepared
mitrailleuses along his front, which was thinly manned by French troops and dug in, while his Mexicans and Spanish were to launch an attack on the enemy right flank. When the attacks went forward, Diaz men were initially repulsed with some ease, so Mackenzie decided to detach a three-division force under General Emory Upton to seize the French trenches. [4] Against nearly impossible odds, Uptons men, supported by the few Mexicans that survived the first attack against the impregnable French position, managed to secure a foothold inside the trench line and thus force the battle there to degenerate into a bloody hand-to-hand combat, in which no side managed to quickly prevail. On the western flank, the two main bodies clashed in an epic bloodbath that saw vast slaughter on both sides; after two hours of sanguinary combat, the Spanish and what few Liberal Mexicans were left managed to prevail, though the Americans managed to withdraw in a comparatively orderly fashion. Upton and his men were left hanging as the Spanish closed in on their rear, but the epic charge of the 7th Cavalry Regiment Lt. Col. Marcus Renos command held the door open for Upton to withdraw his battered force as well. Bloodied nearly beyond recognition, the Mexican Expeditionary Force slowly made its way north to Tampico. Bazaine chose not to pursue after all, there were still some rebels that needed to be pacified. It was then that news came from further north: the Spanish navy, under Montojo, had avoided the American fleet and swept into Mobile Bay, seizing the city and landing a sizable number of marines. The Spanish did a repeat performance at Pensacola a week later, and when Wade Hamptons troopers managed to burn down a predominantly black suburb of Montgomery the same day, Custer was forced to throw in the towel. Rather than face the shame of abasing himself before the Spanish and French Emperors, he resigned, and Samuel Tilden took his place as President and put a signature to the armistice that became the Treaty of Madrid.
The terms of the treaty were rather simple. The Americans were forced to officially renounce the Monroe Doctrine as national policy, pay Mexico, France, and Spain each a purely nominal indemnity, and recognize the Liberal government of Mexico under Lerdo de Tejada. For his part, the President of Mexico granted significant trade concessions to the Spanish government, and affirmed an alliance with Madrid as well. France seemed to have gotten practically nothing out of the treaty, but aside from the most obvious benefit field-testing its brand new army and doctrine international observers and pundits of the time contended that there was a secret clause to the treaty, in which Spain granted Napoleon IV something else in a different sphere. This claim was soon forgotten, and would not be examined again for another few years.
The 1880s in Europe were relatively quiet, if one can say that anything in Europe was quiet at all. Portugal, after a few halfhearted attempts at maintaining order following the destruction of the Great European War, collapsed into renewed civil war in 1884 on the death of Luis I, with the Regenerators (Conservatives) once more set upon by the vengeful Progressives (Liberals). With fairly open support from Spain and no action whatsoever taken by Britain (which was quite busy in the Middle East), the Progressives managed to overwhelm their enemies in three years of brutal, bloody warfare that saw Portugal torn apart by factionalism and artillery. The fall of Lisbon in 1886 was the decisive event that allowed the Progressives to triumph, and when they did they immediately attempted to declare a Republic and forever eliminate the position of king. Maximilian, their benefactor, was fine with all of this, but wanted something in return; a nice juicy colony, perhaps but Antonio de Serpa Pimentel, the Progressives leader, flatly refused, leading to a Spanish military intervention that saw the fall of Portugal in a mere three weeks, with most of that devoted to mop-up operations while Lisbon and Oporto were being besieged. The Progressives were pretty much wiped out, and Maximilian restored the House of Braganza-Wettin to the throne. The young new King, Carlos I, immediately allied with the remnants of the Regenerators and after much negotiation ceded Angola to Spain, which the British and the Germans more on the Germans and why they have anything to do with this later recognized, a favor they hadnt done for the Portuguese. Carlos quickly proceeded to throw several wild parties and generally wallow in luxury, while Maximilian began to use his new colony as a key part in the new Spanish African empire
Indeed, Africa was becoming a land of interest to a few parties in Europe. Spain, of course, was interested in reclaiming former glory, and saw Africa as an easy route of expansion. The Germans were interested in new colonies as well, despite Otto von Bismarcks misgivings, as an outlet for trade, manufacture, and sheer boredom. Britain and France held their already-vast colonies in Africa, but were much more interested elsewhere; Portugal, as has already been mentioned, was rather busy tearing itself to shreds. Even by the early 1880s, only the coastlines of the Dark Continent had been colonized; the new Great Powers, especially the Germans and Spanish, were interested in claiming their own little slice of prestige and raw materials. Von Bismarck was leery of running smack into conflict over relatively useless (as he saw them) chunks of land, so German colonies grew slowly, but the Spanish had a good deal of room to expand, and troops moved into the defunct Congo Free State, leaderless since the death of the Belgian King Leopold during the Great European War and abandoned by his successor as shareholder, King Philippe I. Brussels was easily persuaded to give up the unprofitable land in exchange for some cash, and Belgiums short-lived colonial empire died without a sound.
The death of Wilhelm I, Emperor of the Germans, in 1885 had seen the throne pass to his son, Friedrich III; this son, an experienced general (as could be seen during the series of German unification wars in the sixties and seventies, wherein he served as a Prussian army commander and won the great victory of Karlsruhe against the French in the last year of the war) and no slouch diplomatically or domestically, soon began to try to shake the hold of the Chancellor on Germanys policy. Von Bismarck, in the middle of his somewhat ill-advised culture war with the Pope (whose adherents comprised a full half of the German population), was inclined to change his policies at first to allow a more open hand elsewhere, for example working to establish strong ties with Britain home of the new Emperors wife, and the culture with which he identified most (except, of course, Germany), so that he could continue his struggle against the Vatican. These ties would pay off in an unexpected form: the lines of good communication, established mostly during the periods of receptive Liberal governments (which, in turn, were mostly under PM Gladstone), led to British sympathy for and eventual action in favor of German colonialism. This was compounded by the heavy losses suffered after the disaster of Chinese Gordons expedition into the Sudan to reassert British authority; while the British public slowly grew dissatisfied with the inordinate effort expended by Conservative governments to eliminate the Mahdist state, the British politicians were beginning to favor a shift to the Far East as opposed to Africa as an open field on which Britain could develop her already formidable advantage of almost all trade with Qing China and which produced far fewer locales for armed combat. Over the protests of men such as the archcapitalist Cecil Rhodes, the unproductive, partially useless (due to the profitable Suez Canal and the complete British control of the Red Sea), and highly at risk to Boer attacks Cape Colony (and its attendant offshoots in Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and Natal) was signed over to Germany in 1886 by Gladstones new Liberal government in return for a guarantee on German naval limitations (which von Bismarck was all too ready to grant) and other assorted niceties. However, Africa aside from some minor colonial expansion, including the extension of Spanish colonies into the Congo basin and German settlements in East Africa, Kamerun, and the Namib coast soon took a backseat to the lovely goings-on in the Far East.
The Qing Empire in China was recovering from the destructive Taiping Rebellion of a few decades ago, a process slowed by internal rivalries and infighting at the top. The early part of the eighties had been dominated by the end of Dowager Empress Cixi after her untimely death from a mysterious illness in early 1881. The other Dowager Empress, Cian, though relatively guileless and bereft of political intrigue, soon replaced her as the absolute ruler of China, with Prince-Regent Gong holding the real power. With Gong in charge, the countrys focus began to shift towards an attempt at industrialization. Gong and his ally Li Hongzhang made a real effort at Westernizing the army, especially the Beiyang Army, and it paid off in 1885 when routine French expansion of the Tonkin colony resulted in them getting dangerously close to menacing Chinas southern border. When Paris refused to withdraw they had, after all, signed a treaty with the Emperor of Annam allowing them to extend through the Red River basin Beijing began to move troops south. Despite the loss of much of the Chinese fleet off Fuzhou, the Beiyang Army performed moderately well against the vastly outnumbered and now outgunned French, who were defeated at the battle of Zhennan Pass as they tried to force their way into Yunnan, and then chased into northern Tonkin and beaten (this time, much more narrowly) at Lang Son. Napoleon IV, worried about the British reaction to any larger-scale French actions against the Qing, decided to allow the Chinese victory, and eventually traded away their stake in Tonkin and Annam though not Cochin China or Cambodia to Germany, the prevailing idea here being that the bloody Germans could deal with the Chinese. The remainder of the eighties saw apparent Chinese power go up again as the Beiyang Fleet was reoutfitted and enlarged with British help. Clashes with Japan Frances Far Eastern ally soon came over Korea, where both sides were attempting to influence the Korean court, but Li Hongzhang managed to convince the Dowager Empress and Prince Gong of the necessity of coming to terms with the Japanese, who he perceived as a powerful threat which should not yet be attacked so Japanese influence was recognized in an independent puppet Korea. In addition, Britain, the European nation with the greatest interest in the maintenance of the Qing Dynasty, advised the ruling authorities to do their best to make peace with France-allied Japan, and France applied pressure to the Japanese on her end. This last was the manifestation of a new phase in Franco-British relations, which were slowly changing from one of relative hostility to a rapprochement.
The British and French were being pushed into this new understanding in the early 1890s because of the new powers that were rising in Europe and America. Germany, now that Berlin was finally able to tap that vast unused economic potential that had once been locked up in the various member states, was a new colossus of which even the Russians were slightly wary. Japan, partially with French assistance but mostly on its own initiative, was strenuously engaged in turning itself from a semi-feudal society into an industrial colossus on a par with the European Powers. China, with far less effort or success, was attempting the same, and the initial results were beginning to show even in the 1880s. The United States, across the ocean, had been developing incredibly rapidly, showing its latent industrial potential and causing many in London and Paris to reexamine Tocquevilles famous 1835 prophecy that America would rule in a bipolar world with Russia. Following the military defeat in the war on France and Spain, Democrat President Samuel Tilden lost even his partys presidential nomination in 1884, when Republican Civil War hero and Representative James Garfield was elected on a platform of revanche and civil service reform. Garfields two terms were full of massive shipbuilding and army expansion programs. The Navy especially was pleased, as the recent writings of the head of the Annapolis Naval Academy, one Rear Admiral Alfred T. Mahan, had far-reaching influence with the President in view of the failure of the US fleet to prevent the Spanish landings in Alabama and Florida, however brief, and the contrasting picture of the Civil War, when the Navy had been dominant and thus helped mightily to swing the balance in the favor of the Union. By the time 1892 rolled around, a now-retired Mahan ran for the Republicans as Garfields successor and was easily elected, promising further naval expansion and preparations to avenge the disasters of 1882. The Presidents first moves were towards the Sandwich Islands kingdom of Hawaii, which was rapidly annexed as part of a plan to gain naval bases in the Pacific. In an even more alarming move (to the French, Spanish, and British, anyway), Germany and the Americans began to trade naval officers and army commanders as liaisons, bouncing ideas off each other and assisting with the military reforms in each nation.
Question: did anyone particularly like the colonial system from DisNES 3? I'm thinking of adapting it for my own nefarious purposes, but if it seems impracticable due to the larger number of players needed (who probably won't send orders, or even join for that matter) or the issue of coordination, or even some other random factor, let me know...
