Epilogue
It was fitting that when a ceasefire was agreed to in the September of 1833 that the belligerents in the Great War would agree to the Merchant Republic of Ricco's offer to host the peace talks in Milan. The Merchant Republic managed to keep itself out of the punishing war, despite several close calls caused by attacks on Riccio shipping. In each instance, however, cooler heads prevailed.
There was must to discuss. The Roman counterattack in 1831 that pushed the Chinese far to the east and the Russians out of the occupied territories faltered and by the fall of 1832, the front would once again be in Central Asia. It would seem that Rome would have sued for peace if not for events in the Inner Dominion of China that year. Tensions between the government's ultraorthodox religious policy, its failure in the Great War, and increasing decentralization brought on about the war scare caused by the Roman advance, led to the Machus to once again make a push against China. Normally, such a push would've been handled in a matter of months if not for a general peasant revolt that gripped coastal areas of China in the July of 1832. Chinese revolutionaries had a valuable ally in the state apparatus: the bureaucracy. Revenue fell precipitously as, suddenly, tax collectors across the country switched alleigiance to local rulers harking back to the glory days of China before the Taoists seized control of the government.
Ruan Qiang, after ruling the Inner Dominion of China for over a decade, was assassinated by officers of his own army. The popular coup that followed resulted in a purge of the upper echelons of the Chinese Army, who had been vilified throughout 1832 by revolutionary propaganda as being mere religious-political appointments instead of actual, qualified leaders. The reins of the Inner Dominion passed to Qiang's successor, but the new leader found his reach limited to no further than the country's 1820 borders.
The immediate impact of the July Revolutions was that Rome could shift divisions from the eastern theater to India and Central Asia, where the bulk of the fighting against the Russians to the North and FRCN in India was underway. A British attempt to break out of the seized Roman capital of Constantinople failed, but without strength at sea, Roman administrators and leaders would not step foot in official capacity until 1833, and Roman authority would not be restored until the April of 1834.
The long and bloody war, when looked at through the lens of the Post-Revolution New Nationalism, was a failure for both sides. Despite Rome maintaining much of its pre-war territory, the economic stress brought on the years of blockade and warfare had grown out of control. While British laborers in Canada complained about rationing in general, only in Rome was there a real fear of famine.
So why didn't the FRCN+ART seize the initiative and continue in a war attrition? There are many reasons, and many of those reasons are outside the scope of this write-up, so I will be brief with each.
The war between the Republic of the Rio Grande and Unitary State of America led to something uglier envision by the Republic when the war began. The Republic of Rio Grande's entrance into the War of 1823 forced the USA to the negotiation table, but the Republic's actual involvement in the war was minimum compared to the British investment. War planners in the Rio Grande, developing an unjustified opinion of Rio Grande's might, had pushed with the disastrous amphibious landings in Greece in the Great War, which has gone down in Post-Revolution military history as the greatest military blunder since the Chinese landings in Pakistan. Sensing that the Republic needed a military victory, it turned to the "American punching bag".
The USA's history from 1820 to 1832 has consisted of defeat after defeat. She was defeated in the War of 1823 and forced to recognize the British-Mexican hegemony on the North American continent. The USA's attempt to establish colonies in South America and subsequent failure to gain a military partnership with the neutral Merchant Republic of Riccio resulted in the USA, once more, being force to grant cessions to the British, who demanded the American withdraw under threat of war.
The USA turned to Africa for prestige. The weakest power in Africa was the large, but weak, Ethiopia, and so the USA embarked on a several year war of conquest against the East Africa power that came close to fruition, but soured when the USA entered the Great War and attempted landings in Roman Libya. The balance of power in Ethiopia changed quickly as Egyptian forces allied to Rome launched a massive push into Ethiopia.
It was under this circumstances that the Rio Grande went to war with the USA. While conventional American resistance did quickly melt in the face of superior Mexican forces, it was the occupation that would prove deadly. In the War of 1823, a Mexican soldier could walk alone at night in an occupied city to any bar he wanted. Less than a decade later, that same soldier would have been set upon by armed locals and organized partisans, burned alive, and then lynched in broad daylight. Even traveling with other soldiers at night could prove dangerous, and even in cities considered in the "green zone" of the occupation zone, the idea of going anywhere in an occupied city one soldier wanted was suicide.
Who equipped the American partisan forces is a matter of heated debate, with conspiracies ranging from the despised Chinese to neutral Riccio to even the British Empire, whom some conspiracy theorists claim did not like the idea of the Republic of the Rio Grande gaining further power in the American Southeast. However, the general consensus is that the American government had taken measures since the War of 1823 that would effectively turned an occupation zone into a hotbed of violence and death. These measures include the training of "civil defense" agents, who would train local groups to combat a superior force from a vastly inferior position. White House papers that have been recovered since lend credence to the idea, including correspondence between the President of the USA and a general to mobilize the Civil Defense Corps two weeks before the Mexican invasion. This has raised new questions, especially as to what prompted to the president to issue the order.
Regardless, the occupation of the Unitary State, combined with continuing conventional resistance, and the Republic of Rio Grande's desire for a military victory somewhere, led to a spiraling situation in the region that threatened to drag the British Empire into conflict, something the Empress would not want to handle on top of a recent general revolt in Scotland and the continuing war against the Roman Empire.
The Federal Republic of Coastal Nations faced similar problems in Borneo, where for the first time in that country's history, a general turned on the government and declared himself the "President of the Federal Republic of Borneo" after a further declaration he was democratically elected (by his own troops, something he conveniently left out). And thus, the FRCN was once again forced to turn he attention on Borneo. This revolt would prove the most dangerous, and most destructive, of the revolts as it lasted well in 1835, by which time the enlightenment-inspired propaganda of the presidential dictatorship had put thoughts into the minds of young locals of a democracy of their own.
Russia, meanwhile, was being crushed under the weight of her own success. The country's rapid expansion westward had placed a considerable strain on the logistical train of the nation's military and civilian corps. Trying to administer a region and peoples in the middle of Siberia from Alaska proved difficult, and the cost of waging a war in Central Asia was far greater for the Russians than Romans. Had the Russian government not had easy access to FRCN and Riccio markets, including financial markets, the country would surely have been forced to default by 1832.
The renewed War of the Nile, however, was certainly in the favor of Egyptian forces, but the theater ultimately proved to be unimportant.
It was under all these conditions that the Great War belligerents came to a peace that, while resulting in concessions for both sides, was ultimately a white peace. The war had no winners, but if one could be declared in the April of 1834, it would probably have been the Romans who ceded little territory (though the reparations were moderately heavy). In the context of the post-war era, it is quite clear that Rome's victory should be in quotation marks. Her socio-political structure was called into question by nearly all segments of society, and as much anger was directed towards the Romans by locals who did not identify themselves as Roman as anger directed by Romans against the emperor.
From 1836 to 1840, no less than
seventeen imperial claimants would be declared emperor by the army they commanded. There would be twenty-nine separate revolts across the empire during the same time period and, most worryingly of all, nine general strikes that lasted more than a month and crippled the struggling Roman economy.
The Roman response on the local level and imperial level ranged from mild punishments to severely violent crackdowns that, in one instance, killed nearly one thousand strikers in Damascus and injured over ten thousand. The death of the emperor in 1840 of a heart attack triggered widespread revolts and resurgence of imperial claimants. The world could do little but watch as the Roman Empire descended into anarchy and as a new Shah was declared in Persia, and Indian Princes and Roman officers in India declared new princedoms that no longer would take heed of imperial edicts.
The capital region bore heavy difficulty as well as Wallachian refugees flooded across the border to seek food and safety. Wallachia's complete collapse sent a shockwave across the region and, ultimately, the region would never truly recover.
As I write this from the vantage point of a mere scholar in Cologne in the year one-thousand eight-hundred fifty, the Roman Civil War is nearing a close. The sixth emperor since 1840 has been assassinated by his own men (as has become custom) and nearly every imperial claimant with a strong backing has been eliminated. The new emperor's ability to defeat the other claimants, defend the western frontier, and defeat a Persian attempt to take Mesopotamia has secured his position, I believe.
Once upon a time, war would strike Europe like a drunk strikes his wife: often. There hasn't been a war in Western or Central Europe since the new nations formed in 1820. Revolts? Yes, certainly, but the Castillian Empire, Merchant Republic, and Holy Rome have all but insured the peace and stability of the region. The North Americans should look at how friendship can build lasting geopolitical stability compared to trying to keep a sword hanging over the neck of a neighbor. Some day, the hand shakes, the sword must be put down, and the would-be executioned turns on his executioner out of an innate desire to survive. Tensions in that region, I believe, will always be high, but the peace won by the American partisans have secured independence for the USA, and more importantly secured the large Ethiopian colony.
Ironically, had it not been for Rio Grande's invasion of the USA, it is very likely the Americans would have lost Ethiopia in the peace agreement, but Egypt, preferring an American colony than a colony divided up by her enemies, had came to an "agreement" before the end of the war. With Egypt being the major occupying force, it was quick to relinquish control of the colony after winning the colony in the peace agreement.
That is what happens when you put down the sword for even a moment, and make no mistake, you will have to some day. The hand always grows tired, and all it takes is one quick turn to end the life of the executioner.
