Postcards From Eternity: a Narrative Paradox Megacampaign AAR

Photomajig · May 25, 2021

Excerpts from the journals of General Cesare Borbone, Italian chief of staff in the Betrayer War of 1837-1838

(...) I am attempting to write here an overview of our defenses at the French border, as requested by His Majesty. What can be said! 800 miles of unguarded frontier with no fortification to speak of save for the old bastions at Turin and Milan. At least the Alps make a wall of their own. As the situation stands, the I. Corps has deployed in Piedmont - 110,000 men without much in the way of ammunition, horses or even uniforms for battle. Perfidious Gaul! How are we to resist the coming deluge? The first French regiments have marched to the outskirts of Nizza unopposed, the very goal they profess to campaign for. Sfonrdrati and Rospigliosi have begged me for more men, but what may I offer? We are equally threatened in Austria and Istria. No plan of ours is built for war on all fronts.

As it is we must seek a swift triumph in Bohemia and from there reorient to repulse the French. But how to hold the West for long enough? If we cannot, we must bleed them in a fighting retreat all the ways to the gates of Firenze, or further, as far as necessary. If there are small mercies, they are in that our enemies seem as surprised as we are to be engaged in this senseless conflict. I have spoken with a captured French scout who professed he did not even know they were marching to war until they had crossed the border, and that few men in the French Army are eager to fight an ally.

We shall see if that counts for something. What madness! To piss on the brotherhood of four hundred years for one insignificant town! To see this day, I find myself believing in those superstitious omens and spirits peddled by the likes of Mazzini. It is much easier to believe that some horror of War and Madness has possessed the French Emperor than to accept this vicious act of treachery for what it is.

(...) Wretched black news! They have come through the Alps, and if our Alpini are peerless among the warriors of the mountains, they are outnumbered ten to one. By God, we have bled them in those heights, so that the slopes lie bare and the snows melted by rivulets of hot gore. I receive reports hourly of the French advance and Christ knows it is a hopeless picture. The front has broken in Aosta and Nizza; the French stand poised to encircle our force at Turin. The French are in Bergamo and coming down from the mountains in their thousands every day.

(...) Di Canio rode triumphantly down from SItten in the morning to report a victory for his Alpini. Never before have I seen such joy crumble so brutally from a man's face as when I told him the line was broken everywhere and that his fine soldiers would soon be surrounded on all sides by the French. But for his part he took it well and swore to attend to his duty. He must abandon those hard-won heights and bring them south at the instant; the French vanguard at Novara is modest and I have faith in his veterans to clear a way through them.

(...) Riders came from the Croatian front to report all was well and 12,000 Croats had been slaughtered at Karlovac. A great victory in another time, but while Rospigliosi persecutes what's left of the Croatians, the West is falling. I must call him back. We will trust in the Istrian forts to check their advance for now; his men are needed here, in the heartland. I have received my orders from His Majesty - we must launch a counter-attack and retake Nizza and Piedmont. Sfondrati has reconvened his command in Genova and now drills the conscripts coming in into shape faster than any man has before him. God, give us strength in this time!

(...) Victory! Sfondrati has routed the French from Nizza. He writes to tell of terrible devastation in the suburbs of the city, badly hammered by the artillery and burning madly. Suspected collaborators have been rounded up and subjected to military justice. I pray there shall be no atrocities at the hands riotous mobs now! His Majesty has beseeched me that we should in all things show ourselves the moral superiors of the treacherous French. But the men are quite furious over the betrayal. They are quick to anger when they hear French words spoken and have little mercy to offer. I confess I am of like mind, at times.

Sfondrati now marches north with his 60,000. We rely now on massed strength to carry the day. We are outnumbered tenfold, but the French show their arrogance; they are divided to pillage and besiege the countryside, vulnerable to a defeat in detail. I pray they do not get wise to our strategy. The Alpini are routed at Novara, and we've nothing but peasant conscripts to throw into the grinder elsewhere. (...)

To-day I gave the word to abandon the East. We've 50,000 men holding back the Croats and Bohemians; 50,000 men who shall prove far more useful in Italy. Rospigliosi and Ricotti are to force a march for the capital, where I hope they may regroup and replace their losses at the muster-fields. The French are reported everywhere. Tens of thousands crowd the roads, fleeing southwards. At any cost we must hold open the Genovan corridor: Sfondrati is wreaking havoc among the enemy, but without supply he will not keep at it for long. (...) The cabinet has counseled the King to prepare to evacuate Firenze.

(...) Met with His Majesty today. What valor the House of Guerra shows even now! His Majesty refused any prospect of abandoning the city and instead informed us his intention of taking over the command of the conscript host. At any other time, I would have advised against such rashness, but by God! The mere sight of him has the peasants frothing with bloodthirst like hounds kept too long from their prey. What a glorious fervor overtakes the land! The Italian people will fight until victory or death. We have more volunteers than we may arm; even women flocking to the banner, begging to be made of use. (...) The French cannot match our zeal. Our captives speak of growing resentment and unease among the ranks; they have little desire to be here, and even the most devoted emperor's men go around snappish and uneasy.

(...) We've our share of traitors, of course. Now, when we need unity more than ever, the radicals have stepped up their efforts. They preach against the King and rave on of revolution, gnawing at the foundations of our kingdom with the wolf at the door! The absence of soldiers has made them bold, and for that they shall pay for a great time yet. I've put it to His Majesty we should round up every student and professor in this nation and put them on the front; let them see the sacrifice and horror endured so that they might make their demands and spread their sedition in peace!

(...) The die is cast, as another general once put it in these very parts. We have abandoned the East; but if it allows us to keep the West, it is well worth it. Sfondrati has repelled the French more Nizza once more, and now the King's armies come at them in Lombardia. The men are at a fever pitch, so consumed they are by their hatred for the enemy. No amount of sacrifice is too much if it brings us victory.

(...) An envoy returned last night to give us news at last of Poland. The front there still holds, thanks be to God. The French have left it to the British, the Danes and the Bohemians. We offer our prayers for the brave Poles who fight on our side, but that is all we may offer. Our retreat from Bohemia has left them pressed twice as hard. But these are veterans of the Bohemian War who now lead them, and they know they fight for their own liberty once more. Let no man fault the conduct of the Polish, for they are the among the noblest warriors put on this earth.

(...) I am not sure whether to write of victory or defeat. Our advance has stalled, but there is great confusion among our foes. The French are a deluge, but one moving with the sluggishness of any great tide. Where they might cut us off and strike a killing blow they stand back and hesitate. I suspect this is a matter of doctrine. It is well known the French Army is a static institution - properly set on a foe, it shall crush him utterly under its weight, but without instruction it stumbles and loses its wits. Fast maneuver and rapid march are our best tools now.

His Majesty is advancing to NIzza to put up his flag there. Let the French see that the King of Italy still rules in the Piedmont!

(...) I scarcely know what to say. His Majesty received today the French ambassador, who begged us for a truce so that we might conduct peace-talks. We thought we would be called upon to surrender, but they did not even insist on Nizza. We were met as victors, not as condemned men waiting for the executioner's blade to fall! Something peculiar goes on in France, that much is clear. If this is no strategem, there is to be peace! But why, when we are a hair's breadth from ruin? At the final hour, God sends us a miracle! (...)

***

Letter dated 30 February 1838 from Italian ambassador GIovanni Grasso to His Majesty Galeazzo Maria I Guerra, King of Italy and Emperor of the Maghreb

Sire,

The Emperor has ratified the Treaty. The terms are unchanged - status quo ante bellum - and I may now wish Your Majesty very heartfelt happiness for this peace. As Your Majesty desired, I made investigations of my own for a better understanding of the war and its conclusion. The findings and thoughts I present now are mine alone, and it may be that they are in parts mistaken, but most I can swear to be truth as understood by the men and women who spoke it.

I would not lightly speak ill of Your Majesty's royal cousin, but the Emperor is a fickle creature, easily manipulated by His court. This goes to explain the outbreak of war. It was the so-called imperial faction here that persuaded him into such rash action, which came as a grave shock to many in the French government. It should comfort Your Majesty that there are many in France who still love our nation and her people; but of course any renewal of friendship is made quite impossible by the vicious foolishness of the Emperor.

The French armies thus marched to war quite uncomprehending their true purpose - indeed, I have come to understand that many of the officers thought they were coming to our aid, perhaps against the Persians in Anatolia. I do not think they were misled on purpose; rather that in the absence of any word from above they leapt at the likeliest possibility to come to mind. And here we find the crux of the matter. The soldiers were not happy to be so casually made traitors and oathbreakers. Morale was low to begin with and I believe Your Majesty's efforts with spy-craft made it fall even further.

I suspect the French generals knew this very well. The frontline regiments were of northern stock; Lollards, with little love for our nation or church. They led the charge and did so with that terrible fury of the first weeks. But when the southern regiments arrived to fill the gaps in the line, the French command found out they could not be relied upon to stand in the face of our assaults. The French soul detests cowardice, but it equally hates treachery, and men will not happily fight for a cause they do not believe in. And this same shock and resentment echoed beyond the military sphere. At court many opposed the invasion, and I am told at one time a dozen businessmen, priests and scientists came to beg the Emperor to make peace. So as Your Majesty surely makes out, there was a crisis at home, regardless of their success on the front.

And of course, we bled them quite dry. 240,000 dead in battle alone! The Emperor had been promised a swift and bloodless victory, and in his rank stupidity he had believed such claims. Now with such losses there was no justification to be made for the continuation of the war. Certainly the British ambassador, and other allied representatives, were quite displeased with the conflict also. And I suspect there was a fear of mutiny all this time as well, but that I have not been able to confirm.

So there we have the secret of it! Our heroic efforts made it impossible for the Emperor to prosecute his fool war to its conclusion; at least, impossible unless he wished to face a coup or revolution at home. So it is politics that settles a war once again. I fear that this is not the end of their ambitions and that we may now consider France an enemy for life; but certainly this gives us great insight into the foe we face. Should they test our mettle again, we shall be far more prepared.

Your faithful servant,
Giovanni Grasso
Count of Parma
Ambassador to the French

***

Excerpts of 'A History of the Greek Revolutions', written by Elena Mavrokordatos (Athens: 1960)

(...) When the so-called 'Betrayer War' finally came to an end, the Nikaean armies had collapsed entirely. With no Italian support and with the fundamental weakness of the Nikaean military, Persian forces had penetrated far into Anatolia and threatened the capital at Prusa. Nikaea had set out to seize the northern Caucasus, but now faced the prospect of surrendering its existing portion of the region to Persia. (...) The Peace of Prusa in December 1838 abandoned all claims by the Nikaean Crown to the territories of the Caucasus Greeks, save for the remaining land along the Black Sea coast. The weakness of Nikaea was made manifest - the weakness of the reformed Union even more so. There had been no aid from an Italy caught in a far greater conflict and unwilling to throw its battered armies at another Great Power after it had made peace with the French. The far-reaching consequences of this blow to the Crown and the line of the Guerra would begin to come clear soon enough. (...)

***

Excerpts of 'The American Empire: How the United States Enslaved A Continent', written by Édith Laurent (Port-Royal: 1972)

(...) Ludovicia itself mattered little, save as a stepping stone towards American domination of the continent. The Mexican-American War had a twofold purpose. One, it clearly showed the supremacy of American military power to that of Mexico. Any future sabre-rattling could be made in the knowledge that no lone power in the Americas could defy the United States. This would not be the first blow struck against Mexico, nor the worst of them, but it certainly set the pace.

Secondly, the conquest had an important domestic purpose. Ludovicia was integrated - through the efforts of a small handful of slave-owning elites from the neighboring states - as a slave state into the Union. This extended the 'South' and its power within the nation. The Senate soon passed a compromise proposal that made official this manner of making any state free or enslaved through 'popular' vote. While this could benefit the abolitionist cause as well, it was very much a temporary amendment. The Americans stacked new conquests atop the rickety tower of their nation even as the bottom crumbled more with every passing year. (...)

***

Excerpts from 'The Guerras: the Dynasty That Forged Europe', written by Wilhelm Knecht (Landshut: 1977)

(...) The liberal cause in Italy had barely noticed the brutal war, which of course had never reached the great radical-minded universities of Firenze or Napoli. April 1838 saw a student revolt in Postojna, with a mixed group of Croatian nationalists and Italian radicals storming the town hall and demanding revolution. It was only one of many such incidents in the late 1830s. These small revolts and acts of defiance were quietly suppressed - indeed records of them can only be found in the archives of the state police - but they represented a growing cause of concern for the government. It appeared that not all of the revolutionary sentiment of the late 1700s had been eliminated after all.

A small crisis erupted in government in March 1839 over an attempt to repeal press restrictions in Italy. Liberal-minded ministers had won the ear of the King and been allowed to draft a proposal for press reform. It can be said that this liberal faction grew in strength in the King's council at this time, but only as long as they did not fundamentally threaten the status quo. No talk of constitutionalism or parliament would be tolerated. The genuine explosion of nationalist pride and royalist feeling that had accompanied the War appears to have convinced the King that press freedoms could do no harm - after all, the people clearly loved him - but a brief experiment in Firenze instead produced a flood of reporting on the present unemployment crisis. Even without open criticism of the state, the implication that the nation could be unwell was too much for the King to bear. (...) As such, the experiment was soon terminated and the liberal faction smoked out of government.

The crisis was severe, although in the end quite brief. The war and occupation had been devastating for the economy of the North. Many Italian companies, already on weak foundations, had gone under during the war, and the nation's rapidly growing population left far more hands available than were needed in the fields and workshops.

(...) The crisis gradually abated through government-sponsored public works and subsidies for the struggling businesses. New practices and equipment were improving Italian production at this time in any case, profiting companies which in turn were able to expand their operations and take on more laborers. Of note are the many state-sponsored factories specializing in machine parts founded in northern Italy in 1838-1840, churning out precision pieces in high demand around the globe for industrial machinery. Extensive loans were taken out by the Italian government to fund this development and to repair war damages across the invaded North. (...)

***

Excerpts of 'A History of the Greek Revolutions', written by Elena Mavrokordatos (Athens: 1960)

(...) By late 1839, Nikaea was in a state of collapse. The shattered legitimacy of the Crown and the continued presence of Persian occupation forces within the nation's borders - with Nikaea's crushed military unable to dislodge them - sparked in the autumn massive revolts led by the professional revolutionaries of the nationalist cause. Up to a 100,000 organized and armed militants were active in Anatolia and Greece, with royal forces reduced to little more than the King's guard. From Italy, Galeazzo Maria saw the signs of impending ruin and quietly prepared to abdicate the throne if asked to. These rebels demanded a Greek and Bogomilist king, rather than a foreign and heretical 'usurper' - and the dismantlement of the Nikaean state apparatus, dominated by Waldensian converts and Italian citizens. In effect, they demanded revolution.

Events moved faster than the Italians could have predicted. The French had been repulsed militarily, but in the Greek revolts they saw a chance to assault Italy from another direction entirely. French diplomats now organized an international conference on 'the Greek Question', demanding the 'liberation of the Greek nation from Tyranny' - the tyranny of the Guerran King of Italy, though that part went unsaid. The French hoped to support the Greek Revolution and thus strip Italy of its eastern 'sister realm', replacing it with a strong French ally that would then serve to isolate Italy further. The Nikean Crisis had begun.

***

I thought I posted this last Friday, but clearly not! It went up on the Paradox forums just fine, so I have no idea why it didn't here. Oh well!

Smartphone · May 25, 2021

So France Delende Est anyone? Between the Betrayer's war and the Nikean Crisis there does not appear to be any reasoning with these people.

Photomajig · May 27, 2021

Excerpts of 'A History of the Greek Revolutions', written by Elena Mavrokordatos (Athens: 1960)

(...) Chaos reigned in the streets of Prusa. The royal palace was aflame, with confused soldiers running around firing at everything that moved. Some cried that the King had come and landed with fifty thousand crack Italian troops to put down the revolt. Others shouted that the King was dead, and good riddance. Still some said that instead, the First Minister had embezzled the royal treasure and fled the city. Of these, only the last held some measure of truth. The First Minister had narrowly avoided a palace coup by running for Italy with as much of the royal gold as he could carry. The conspirators behind the attempted coup were a separate force altogether from the mass popular uprising of the Greeks all around them - mostly ambitious officers and aristocrats who hoped to win themselves power by toppling the First Minister.

It was a foolish, short-sighted disaster for the Guerran cause. With news that the government in Prusa had fallen, King Galeazzo Maria made the choice to wash his hands off the mess that Nikaea had become. The nation was in the hands of the nobility who would clearly soon fall to the popular masses. The decision was made to abdicate the throne, thus maintaining the illusion that the King had forfeited his right to rule willingly.

(...) With no government to continue fighting for, Italian diplomats ceased their opposition at the 'Greek Conference' and thus pushed down the remaining obstacles in the way of Greek nationhood. On the 17th of May, 1840, the Great Powers acknowledged Greek independence and the sovereignty of the new Kingdom of Greece. Greek freedom fighters had, for the most part, expected a constitutional monarchy modeled on the Mexican Kingdom, but in return for French aid and protection against Italian revanchism, the Greek representatives accepted a broadly absolutist form of government. This caused a significant split in the Greek Independence movement, but the liberal faction was in the minority; they would have to bide their time and hope for reform in the future.

(...) The new Greece encompassed most of old Nikaea, including Caucasian areas with marginal Greek-speaking populations. The state of Nikaea, however, was not ended. What remained of the aristocratic military government in Prusa fled to the island of Cyprus. The non-Greek regions of southern Albania, Macedonia and Bulgarian Dobrudja were granted de facto autonomy, effectively becoming unrecognized states officially under Nikaean Cypriot administration.

The much-reduced Nikaean state quickly devolved into decadence and anarchy. A kind of bitter, resentful debauchery took hold of the new ruling elite. The people of Cyprus were subjected to any number of casual atrocities and humiliations, while rampant embezzlement and fighting over the Nikaean Crown treasure, or what little of it had been looted from Prusa, ensured that the state had not a penny to its name. The creditors were soon at the door. (...) The leader of this 'noble republic' in Cyprus, one Constantine Argyros, was even accused of hunting the commoners for sport to feast on their blood - likely due to his infamous Vlach ancestry. Some contemporary accounts accuse Argyros and his Wallachian backers of orchestrating the downfall of the Nikaean Kingdom through some occult means simply to spite the Italians and their Guerran King. (...)

***

Letter dated June 2, 1840, by Campanian small farmer Giuseppe Allegri to his brother Salvo

Good day [and] much joy to you!

I write to you on the 2nd of this month, brother. Santo has survived the pox and is as greedy as ever at his mother's bosom. Are you and yours well? Have you kept up with the games in Firenze, as you said you would? Campo tells me we lost again on the 20th of last. Tell us it is not so! And write presently if beautiful Borghi gave us any [goals].

We have here [at the village] today a great monstrosity of a machine from Napoli. It is made for threshing and does the job as fast as ten men do normally. What a blessing, you might say. But no! It costs a fortune. Have you such things in Firenze? This one is for the bastards on the hill. It will put twenty men out of work, of course. With the other contraptions there will soon be no need for any of us here. But it is more efficient, they say. With it we will feed a thousand more men in Sicily, or Istria, or somewhere else where I don't know [anyone]. What nonsense! But there is less work now. I expect we will have to go soon to Napoli for the factories, or perhaps I would join you in Firenze.

Will you send some money if you can? Mother is ailing again and no-one has enough to give for medicine. She sends her love and asks for her grandchildren.

Yours,

Giuseppe

***

Excerpts from 'The Guerras: the Dynasty That Forged Europe', written by Wilhelm Knecht (Landshut: 1977)

(...) 1840 saw the liberal cause emboldened by the apparent weakness of the Guerran monarchy. The movement itself was quite fragmented with no coherent programme for change, but individual demands usually gravitated around press reform, representative government and a purge of corruption and nepotism in the administration bred by 'centuries of tyranny by one decadent line'. In this sense, liberalism was on the rise throughout the nation, in all strata of society. Nervous officials in the halls of power began to speak of revolution, thinking of how easily the Nikaean state had been felled in the end.

(...) In France, the failure of the war against Italy had not significantly weakened the imperialist party. In the summer of 1840, the French nation would betray yet another alliance and invade Croatian Provence to the horror of the smaller nation. (...) Military operations were over by the New Year, with Provence annexed into France. British diplomats now eyed France warily. They held the port of Brest in Brittany, and French rhetoric certainly claimed the region as well. How long until France stabbed the final ally it had in the back? (...) It is uncertain why the British did not simply end their pact with the French. It appears that desire to weaken Italy and perhaps wrest its African holdings into Italian hands persuaded the British to keep calm and carry on, however foolish that decision might seem in retrospect. Of course, it may simply be that the British thought, for whatever reason, that they alone might be spared from the ruthlessness of French ambitions.

Italy in the early 1840s was a powderkeg. The liberal cause had touched off centuries of resentment in the Maghreb. A cultural awakening is thought to have occurred in the Maghreb in this period, with the colonized uniting against Italian paternalism and its crude attempts at cultural imperialism. (...)

The House of Guerra perhaps indulged in a scornful laugh at the collapse of the Aragonese Kingdom in late 1840. The de Mendozas, who had replaced the House of Guerra on the Aragonese throne, were overthrown after defeat against Beja in June; now in July, Aragonese liberals instituted a system of constitutional monarchy and installed a figurehead King from a rival Catalan noble family on the throne. Such laughter would not have lasted long. The success of liberal uprisings all over Europe were beginning to truly frighten the absolute monarchs of the continent. (...)

In this atmosphere, Italy saw its first concession to the liberal movements. In January 1841, the ban on meetings for political purposes - a broad, loosely interpreted law - was finally lifted. Italian liberals could now congregate to discuss their ideas and coordinate their movement far better than before. (...)

The new Greek Kingdom continued its nationalist policy by invading Iraq in 1841 for the region of Trabzon. This swiftly successful war was followed by a Persian invasion from the east. Iraq was rapidly falling from the ranks of Mediterranean powers and gravely weakened by infighting and economic crisis.

***

Excerpts of 'The American Empire: How the United States Enslaved A Continent', written by Édith Laurent (Port-Royal: 1972)

(...) The 1840s saw renewed warfare in both North and South America. The slave empire of Brazil invaded Buenos Aires, but would soon face a punitive attack from Bolivia. In the North, American imperialist ambitions in Canada led to another war in March. The border was pushed further northward - which of course expanded territories which did not practice slavery. These regions were feared to threaten Southern slave power in the American Senate. Northerners were unwilling to accept further compromise, however. In May, a convention was held in Nashville with the hope of strengthening Southern moderates opposed to the growing support for secessionist if slavery was threatened. (...) The slavers were alarmed at this attempt at undercutting them, ironically pushing them further towards open conflict. (...)

(...) New agrarian advancements continued to revolutionize the Italian countryside. Textile production was helped by the import of 'Jacquard' power looms, further boosting the rapidly-expanding industry. Italian textiles had global reach and esteem in this period, even in the most isolated corners of Asia. (...) Opposition by artisans who had lost their livelihoods to the mechanization of these industries provoked several 'luddite' revolts in 1841-1843, crushed with contemptuous force by local regiments.

(...) Nationalist feeling in the Maghreb was emboldened by the invasion of 'Young Spaniard' brigades in early 1842. These adventurers and liberal nationalist fighters had taken Gibraltar from its skeleton garrison and then crossed over to the Maghreb, aiming to subjugate it under a future Spanish nation. Italy hurried to raise local Maghrebi troops to put down the invasion, which gave the assembled locals a taste of fighting for and defending their own country as one. The inability of Italian regular forces - tied up in Italy itself in preparation for French aggression - did not go unseen either. (...)

(...) 1842 also saw Greece follow up its victory over Iraq with a crusade into Persia, aiming to liberate the Greek communities in the northern Caucasus into the Greek nation. The surprising success of this campaign saw the end of Italian hopes for Greek collapse and a restoration of the Nikaean Crown. The East was lost for good.

(...) Far from this atmosphere of tension, the Italian colonial companies in West Africa were planning expansion. The mistreatment of an Italian colonial agent in the Luban Kingdom in 1841 was used as a pretext for invasion, which was launched in December 1842. This colonial conflict was fought with the aim of expanding Company holdings on the African coast for the benefit of their stakeholders, and was scarcely known about in the metropole.

Of course, even had they known, King Galeazzo Maria soon found himself with far more pressing matters. In February 1844, the French ambassador announced the end to the 'ceasefire' and declared a resumption of hostilities between France and Italy. The two nations were once more at war, pitting Guerra against Guerra. Italy had weathered the storm, but a great part of their success had been thanks to low morale among French soldiers who had found themselves betraying an ally against their wishes. Now the conflict was merely between two hostile powers, and French propagandists had been hard at work among the Army to prepare for a new invasion. Italy had strengthened its armies considerably in the meantime too, on the other hand. (...) The Second French-Italian War had begun.

Work starting has kept me very busy, so expect a somewhat slower pace of updates. Also, it is very sad to play V2 when you know of the existence of V3. Oh well!

Photomajig · May 29, 2021

Excerpts from the 1890 memoirs of Louis Philippe de Montmercy, French Minister of State between 1842 to 1871

(...) On the 7th I was received by His Imperial Highness at Versailles. We discussed means to combat liberal critics of government. It is no secret that my sympathies have always been for the liberal cause, for does not a love of freedom beat in the chest of every Christian man? Certainly it does in the chest of all honest Frenchmen. Yet my love for His Highness always barred me from action; He would not entertain the notion of reform, certainly not any high hopes of parliament and people's assembly. I had to thus put aside my own feelings and on the 7th suggested instead that a new war might unify the nation and silence the critics, at least for a time. (...) In the end we decided upon renewing our operations against the Italians; hoping that this time our men would fight more gladly for the liberation of Nizza. Our motivations were thusly of a markedly domestic nature. In retrospect, we erred when choosing the target for what should have been a simple internal show of force (...)

***

Excerpts from the journals of General Eugené Bugeaud, commander of the French I. Guards Corps in the Second French-Italian War of 1844

February 11, 1844

How do you defeat your enemy? The ancients have much to say in favor of the swift, crushing, unexpected attack with overwhelming force. Our war of 1837 certainly began that way; one cannot strike from a more advantageous position than that of a presumed ally. Yet we did not deal the finishing blow; could not, perhaps. The ministers may go on about how they shall motivate the common fighting man, but there is no mystery to that. Victory is justification of its own. Triumph redeems the most uneasy cause. Had we pushed on to the end and forced the Italians to accept our terms, we would be having no such trouble with the men.

The way to defeat your enemy is not to provoke them, allow them to build up their strength, alienate your own allies and only then attack. We shall suffer for it. Oh, on paper the Italians are our inferiors in every respect, but wars are not won on paper. The last war showed us how fiercely they defend what they believe to be theirs. The Italian Army of 1837 was disorganized and lacking in materiel. Their present force, I believe, suffers none of the same weaknesses. It has nearly doubled in size and modernized its corps of artillery and its armaments. None of this should come as news to Government, yet it appears that such matters do not weigh in their policy. It is all well and good to say we have learned from the mistakes of the last war, but the same surely applies to our foe also.

As expected, the Italians are striking out into Bohemia in the hopes of forcing them to make a separate peace. The Czech border is heavily fortified and I have little fear of such an event. All they shall accomplish is tying their force down in the north-east, which presents us with opportunity. Their own allies are not such tough nuts to crack, at least not in the north. Gelre will fall within a matter of days as it has done so often before. What a travesty of a nation! But victory over the Dutch shall not give us Nizza. The true fighting shall take place in the south.

April 1, 1844

The modest concern we had of trouble from the Americas has now dissolved. The Americans and Mexicans have allowed their pacts with Italy to lapse, and Brazil is trapped in a military disaster of its own making. That nation's many wars of conquest are now repaid with the aggression of its free neighbors, who through war seek to contain her ambitions. No aid shall come to Brazil from Italy, or vice versa.

Yet we do not seize our chance! We maneuver and contemplate the enemy day after day, as if there was no war on at all. Why have we not crossed into Italy? Why do we not claim Nizza? Instead, orders come from on high that we should march into the Alps and there die in our thousands on those mountain paths. No offer of winter gear or mountaineers to guide us; it is folly. (...)

May 20, 1844

I am wearied. [Marshal and supreme commander of the French Armies] Reinhard fancies himself a modern-day Hannibal Barca. Only we do not bring an army of elephants over these barren heights, but a baggage train of carts and artillery that stretches for miles upon miles of alpine ruin. The Italian Alpini are here before us; they have methodically occupied the Swiss passes and intend to close the Alps to us. They would form a front of mountain fastnesses from Zürich to Aosta. A mighty wall indeed to keep us out! A fine plan, if that were the only path open to us. They do not know of the Bavarian treaty. The Germans have opened their borders to us, and the northern armies shall soon descend upon Istria and Venetia through their lands.

This makes us and our march through the mountains a mere feint - never an enviable position to be in, and poorly executed here to boot. Does France have so many souls to spare that the loss of fifty thousand veterans in the mountains counts for nothing in Government's calculations? (...) And if the Italians realize how lightly defended France itself is? The last war barely touched French soil. Do they expect the people to welcome Italian occupation after all the tales of terror they have spread among them?

July 13, 1844

I shall be held responsible for this. Guillaumat [commander of the III. Guards Army] has engaged the Italians at Innsbruck, miles from any support. He has 20,000 men in summer clothes from the South throwing themselves into the bayonets of 30,000 veteran Alpini. They shall almost certainly lose. I have followed my orders and marched the I. and II. down into Italy proper. Or what's left of them, which comes up to less than 25,000 men. With this I am expected to keep busy 120,000 dug-in and comfortable Italians who certainly have not just marched through the goddamn Alps at their highest!

I have written repeatedly for reinforcements, but am promised only scraps and conscripts who I would not trust in an even contest. It is easy for Government to issue such orders and approve such grotesque sacrifice, but they are not here to look men in the eye and tell them to march to their deaths. (...) I must cease writing. Di Borgese's forces have arrived at our rear. We are encircled and will almost certainly face destruction within the next few hours. The blood spilt here today shall not only stain these hands!

July 29, 1844

i am told the Bohemian front has seen a triumph at Brno. The Italians have lost something in the region of 30,000 men and are retreating into Austria, with the Poles faring little better. The courier tells me this with a happy smile on his face. I invite him to look upon my wretched camp with its countless unused tents and to listen to the screams of the wounded that ring out everywhere around us. The II. Army is destroyed entirely, all 18,000 men dead or captured, and here I lie with what little remains of the I. I must accept my share of that guilt. They name the Butcher General and spit at my name when they think me out of earshot. By God! Rarely have so many died for such foolish orders for so little gain. I have given the order for us to withdraw into France proper, and damn my orders. They may hang me after the war if they please, but I will not persist on this fool's errand unless I am given the reinforcements promised to me.

If I am to have any, I would prefer if Government sent themselves. Let those old fools see the price of their ambitions! Let them bleed and die to no good end in this wretched country. Francois tells me I should be more careful in what I write, but to hell with it. The censors may try to burn these books if they dare. (...)

August 25, 1844

The Italians have our scent. They are marching into France, though we are fortunate they do not do so very fast. I am told this is a most cautious offensive. They do not wish to overextend by leaving the northern border undefended, with their fortunes in Bohemia flagging so. If only our own leaders had such wisdom! I was received by Reinhard in Lyon this past Monday. He had the temerity to blame me for our defeat, as if this hare-brained scheme was not entirely his invention! He accused me of cowardice and treason and put it so before all the assembled staff. By God, I nearly struck him down there and then! Perhaps I should have.

But no. If there are to be changes in our strategies, I must be there after the war with my life and my honor intact. I offered my resignation, of course, but the Marshal would not hear of it. I have returned to what is left of the Guards to the south; returned to news of Italian forces on the approach. This sorry remnant of my once-proud Army will not delay them for long. (...) From what Reinhard did not say, I gather that the offensives from Bavaria and Bohemia have not gone as well as he had hoped, either. Not only have we lost the west and allowed the enemy into our homeland, we have failed to make so much as a crack in his defense. For how long longer shall they persist with this damned fool's war?

***

Excerpts from 'Crowns of Lead: France in the Early Imperial Period, 1768-1856', by Agnès Duvernoy (Paris: 1990)

(...) The end of the Second French-Italian War was perhaps an even greater humiliation for the Crown than the First. At least the previous war had been launched with every expectation of success and the advantage of the shocking end of the French-Italian alliance. Both wars were essentially exercises in nation-building. By uniting the ethnic French population of Nizza in Italy with the Empire, Charles VI hoped to strengthen his claim as Emperor of the French and make himself a symbol of national unity.

Despite the apparent failure of French war aims in both cases, there is something to be said for this. By placing southerners and northerners, Waldensians and Lollards, all fighting alongside one another for a shared cause and under a barrage of nationalist propaganda, Charles VI appears to have succeeded in bridging some of the divisions inherent in the French nation-state. Shared military service with its compulsory education in Burgundian French and predominance of Waldensian rites is thought to have served as a pathway to conversion and assimilation for many poor northerners.

(...) Even so, the inability of the French coalition to reclaim Nizza could not be denied. While Imperial France never abandoned its claims to the region, the end of the conflict saw it fade from French priorities. Government was reshuffled and French ambitions oriented elsewhere. Peace between Italy and France, regardless, would be only temporary. (...)

***

Excerpts from 'Italy and the World: the Italian Empire in the Modern Period', written by Hugo Fourier (Firenze: 1977)

(...) This bloody but swift victory was followed by another in Africa. A low-intensity campaign of raiding, kidnappings and the occasional skirmish had brought the Luban Kingdom to surrender in March 1845. Under the terms of this agreement, the Guinea Company seized a considerable swathe of Luban territory, including the strategic port of Loango. These territories would form a central staging ground for later imperialist conquests in Africa. The news of this success filtered slowly to an Italy preoccupied by the French War, but the expansion of the Company charter in the following year tells of the favors shown to these 'merchant conquerors' thanks to their victory.

At home, the butcher's bill from the war had become a point of concern for the Crown. Wounded veteran and the families of the fallen demanded government aid; indeed, liberal activists wrote a great deal on the horrors of crippled veteran soldiers begging on the streets and roaming the country seemingly abandoned by their King. Political concessions could not be considered in absolutist Italy, but neither could losing the support of the Army. A royal decree on veteran aid and healthcare was put into effect in July 1845 - one of the first programmes of public healthcare in the world. While restricted to soldiers, veterans, war widows and families, this system of 'Marching Physicians' had a notable effect on the standards of living and loyalties of the military-affiliated population. (...)

Industrial developments saw early railroads begin to spread in Italy at this time. These crude, experimental locomotives and non-standardized rails were a far cry from what was to come, but nevertheless they captured the imagination and heart of many an Italian. Liberal authors saw the railroad as a symbol of the future. The Italian countryside was gradually transformed as these monstrous engines and their roads spread. The military benefits were seen at once as well - indeed, many of the strongest proponents of Italian railroads were officers who had seen French railways in the War. (...) Private entrepreneurs jumped to try the new technology for themselves and a great many railway companies appear in this period. Most went bankrupt soon enough, but the strongest contenders still exist today. (...) There is a reason why it is the railroad that is often the symbol of this age.

(...) The Brazilian Republic had conceded the region of La Paz to Bolivia in August 1846. Left without Italian aid, the overextended Brazilian Army had not been able to defend the region against a motivated and disciplined smaller Bolivian force. (...) Brazil's vast size, extensive political rights and reputation as a land of riches made it the leader of world immigration in the 1840s. The promise of cheap land for any arrival and the hope of attaining citizenship and all the benefits it brought ensured a steady flow of travelers from Europe and western Asia. Italian immigrants, though a modest percentage of the total, were often given privileges that other nationalities were not - another way the Brazilian government worked to keep its alliance with Italy.

Immigration to North America was picking up, however. The United States offered climate conditions more familiar to Europeans, better land and similar hopes of political representation. While it lagged behind Brazil in the 1840s, in time the trickle of American immigration would grow into a flood.

(...) Between May and August 1846, the Croatian-populated provinces of Slovenia and Karlovac in Italy were invaded by 'Yugoslav' expeditions - pan-nationalists from Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, who hoped to liberate the region under a strong Yugoslav nation-state. These adventurers occupied much of the border regions before they were put down in August and driven back into Croatia, where they continued to thrive in the absence of strong central government. Italy would have to fend off similar expeditions and local revolts in the area long into the 1850s.

***

Excerpts from 'Crowns of Lead: France in the Early Imperial Period, 1768-1856', by Agnès Duvernoy (Paris: 1990)

(...) The final blow to France's pre-imperial alliance system came in June 1847. Nationalist historiography has sometimes given these events the grandiose name of the 'Anglo-French War', but this misrepresents the sequence of events. French diplomats had made repeated demands that the British-controlled port of Brest should be ceded to the French state. The British were reluctant to abandon a strategic port and foothold on the continent just to appease an increasingly unpredictable and unreliable ally. Negotiations were still ongoing when French troops marched into British Brest and occupied the port, forcing the British squadron in the harbor to sail out. The British ships lingered near the port in a state of some confusion but refused demands from the French forces at port to sail back to England. This soon prompted artillery fire from the port fortifications, with the Royal Navy responding in kind.

The next months were spent in a state of undeclared war. Brest was never retaken, however. The British government was very much aware they could not hope to invade France with any hope of winning. A period of hostility at sea followed, with British ships seeking to cut off French shipping. Aside from a few ineffectual skirmishes, no fighting is recorded between the French and British navies. (...) In October, Britain formally acknowledged French ownership of Brest in exchange for an official apology; but while this ended any threat of continued war, it certainly did not repair the French-British alliance. France was becoming increasingly isolated in Europe, confident that its great power and near-hegemonic position would lead to triumph regardless. (...)

***

Excerpts from 'Italy and the World: the Italian Empire in the Modern Period', written by Hugo Fourier (Firenze: 1977)

(...) Julu 1847 saw the Grand Duchy of Gelre fall to revolution. The new liberal-minded elites turned the Grand Duke into a figurehead and instituted a wide variety of political reforms. Gelre's alliance with Italy was considered ended, with the nation's first Prime Minister Alfred von Stein condemning the 'Tyrant State' in the international press and demanding renewed efforts at reform or revolution in Europe. (...) This continued success for 'jacobin' movements in the West pressured many absolutist governments into further reforms and concessions, though the prospect of diluting the monarch's power in any way remained inconceivable.

(...) The potato blights of the late 1840s showed a need for investment into biology and medicine in Italy. The 'Marching Physicians' of the veteran aid decree were providing the government Bureau of Health with a wealth of data on the many diseases and problems facing the nation. The Blight of 1847 in particular resulted in groundbreaking studies into the effects of malnutrition, as identified in the starving poor whose livelihoods the infection had destroyed.

Algiers and the Maghreb were the worst affected in the Empire, and Italian doctors had little problem with experimenting upon and making their studies on the local populace. The alienation and discrimination of the Maghrebi peoples becomes ever more pronounced in this period. Non-Italian subjects of the Empire were losing what little rights and dignity they had in the face of new scientific racism and exclusionary nationalism. While the design of new, advanced medical equipment in this period was a great boon to Italian medicine, one cannot forget that much of it was created out to serve the needs of a callous kind of medical science tainted by phrenology and other pseudoscientific practices. Many key inventions of modern medicine in Italy were born from a time of grave suffering welcomed by many of these physicians for the opportunities it presented. What little contemporary criticism there was seems to have been couched in superstitious and occult language - referencing such entertaining phantasms as 'the Plague Mother' and 'the Starveling Childe' - (...)

***

Excerpts of 'The American Empire: How the United States Enslaved A Continent', written by Édith Laurent (Port-Royal: 1972)

(...) Pragmatic Mexican statesmen hoped to avoid further war with the United States through appeasement and military alliance. This spirit brought Mexican soldiers into the American invasion of Canada in October 1847. Once more, Canada had little hope of defying the great monstrosity of the American Empire. More and more French-speaking Canadian citizens were falling under American dominance - forced to give up their rights and language, often their homes, to sate the American hunger for power and material gain.

The Mexicans would soon regret their choice. Rather than seek allies elsewhere, they were benefiting the very foe which sought to subjugate them under its heel. It is for good reason that this period is known in Mexico as the Years of Shame (...)

[CENTER}***[/CENTER]

Excerpts from 'Italy and the World: the Italian Empire in the Modern Period', written by Hugo Fourier (Firenze: 1977)

(...) Italian possessions in Cadiz and Gibraltar had suffered for over a decade from 'Young Spaniard' activities. These nationalist revolutionaries and adventurers sought to unite all of Iberia under one banner, a state of affairs strongly opposed by Italy and its allies in the region. The Kingdom of Beja, with Italian support, launched a war against Aragon in September 1848 with the aim of pacifying regions said to have been strongholds of the movement. Beja also hoped to reclaim areas lost to Aragon in the previous century. The once-proud Kingdom of Aragon was so dominated by these Young Spaniards that it had little military assets to draw upon, while many of the revolutionary militias refused to fight Bejan forces as fellow Spaniards. The course of the war was thus a foregone conclusion. (...)

The Italian government did not send any forces to assist Beja. In part this was because little resistance was expected, but the mood at home was also a factor. Oversized fears of liberal insurrection plagued the Italian court. Historians have generally estimated the amount of popular support for revolution to have been fairly low in Italy in this period, but at the time with kings and princes falling all over Europe, the Italians did not see it that way. Foreign campaigns could not be contemplated before the situation at home was certain. (...) But how to pacify the nation? Concessions and compromise, or then reaction and oppression? The next few years would be critical for the Italian monarchy. (...)

Photomajig · Jun 5, 2021

Excerpt from 'The Great Game: Spycraft and Diplomacy in 19th-Century Europe', written by Eleonora Engels (Amsterdam: 1989)

(...) Amsterdam had a reputation as a city of spies from the 1840s onwards. The shadow wars of French, Italian and British agents wreaked havoc on the strategically placed Kingdom of the Netherlands. Anecdotes from the time claim that one could not find a park bench or quiet alleyway that was not already in use as the location of a discreet meeting or a running battle between foreign operatives. Fresh outrages came with every season. 1846 saw the bombing of the French embassy on De Boelelaan - reported as an anarchist attack but almost certainly the work of Italian saboteurs. The spring of 1847 witnessed the assassination of an up-and-coming politician of the anglophile faction by an 'infernal machine' installed within his carriage. Wintertime followed this up with several aides to the Italian ambassador washing up drowned in an out-of-the-way canal.

These incidents were merely the very visible tip of an iceberg composed of equal parts espionage, diplomacy and investment. Italian industrialists in particular were swaying public and government opinion with their generous investments in Dutch infrastructure and ship industries. This economic cooperation slowly built up in Italy's favor, but France had advantages of its own. Its proximity and long cultural ties naturally helped. The same could be said for the British, but the bumbling amateurs of the British service had little to offer over their counterparts. Dutch nervousness about French ambitions and nationalist desire to reclaim ethnic Dutch territories presently under French rule somewhat undermined French victories, however. The French were, regardless, considerably more persuasive and capable in their operations than the inefficient Italians or the British. The tug-of-war would continue for decades before any clear victor could be made out. (...)

***

Notations found on the margins of a copy of 'The New Physician's Friend', a 1846 medical textbook

I defy thee, ye wretched mistress of the hospice
Behold the ingenuity of Man!
In time all your wicked designs shall be defeated
The bountiful one guides my hand
Know that your time is at an end
Our children shall cast out death itself!

***

Excerpts from 'Italy and the World: the Italian Empire in the Modern Period', written by Hugo Fourier (Firenze: 1977)

(...) The Bejan victory in the Spanish War strengthened a friendly power devoted to absolutist principles, weakened what appeared to be a dangerously liberal constitutional monarchy, and forced underground the 'Young Spaniard' movement which had been based mainly in Aragon. Iberia would remain troublesome and turbulent for over a decade, but the worst of it was over. No more were Italian holdings in the region in danger from these nationalists. This victory is generally thought to be the culmination of the Iberian realignment. Beja, the old enemy of the Italians, had now transformed into their foremost ally. (...)

Food shortages in the late 1840s were blamed on the government's regulation and interference in the markets. The violent bread riots caused by high grain prices largely targeted the usual minority scapegoats and held little danger for the state, but the arguments it armed the liberal opposition with was received with embarrassment and alarm. In 1849, the conservative Minister for Trade Lazzaro de Lucca was dismissed and replaced by outspoken liberal economist Luigi Bargnani. Bargnani immediately proposed an ambitious programme of economic reform and liberalization that promptly met the staunch opposition of his cabinet comrades.

After years of debate, soured relations and useless campaigning, the King approved merely one point of Bargnani's many demands - that slavery in all its forms should be abolished in Italy.

This change was less dramatic than it might appear. The profitability of the slave trade had been going down for decades by this point and slaves were rare in Italy, kept mainly as status symbols by some wealthy families. It should not be ignored that the King was personally in favor of the abolitionist cause and had advocated ending slavery privately for years. His marriage to a missionary woman who had worked in West Africa had made him sympathetic to the plight of Italian slaves. Even so, a desire to appease the slave-trading companies had delayed the Abolition Proclamation until now. Many liberal activists entertained hopes that the end of slavery might lead to further liberal reforms in Italy, but they were to be gravely disappointed. The King had no intention of appeasing 'the students and the housewives' any further, as he saw the matter. (...)

In early 1850, King Galeazzo Maria was part of the Western embassy intervening in the 'Tver Crisis' in Russia. A diplomatically isolated Persia was faced by an united front of European great powers who demanded it return the region of Tver to the Kingdom of Vladimir and cease its attempts at converting its Quranist populace. This unlikely adventure united Wallachian, Greek, French, British and Italian representatives in their condemnations of 'Oriental barbarism'. Beneath the surface, the move was likely motivated by the proposed reform of the Majlis parliament in Persia. A new law would have turned this aristocratic, semi-representative assembly into a broader and more powerful legislative institution at the expense of the Shah's authority. This liberalization of Persia was perceived as a threat to the international absolutist system and an embarrassment to Western powers still clinging to rule by decree.

The Persian government failed to call the Europeans' bluff; it acceded to the embassy's demands and withdrew from Tver. This failure of the Persian state to defend itself against diplomatic 'bullying' provoked an immediate counter-reaction at home. Conservative nobility orchestrated a coup that dissolved the Majlis and ended the democratic experiment in Persia before it had a chance to truly begin. The reformer Shah Abbas IV was replaced by his domineering and reactionary brother Ismai'il. The European embassy had effectively achieved its goals without firing a single shot.

The co-operation of the Europeans would not last - except between Galeazzo Maria and the British envoy, Lord Pitcairn. Their personal friendship would pave the way for an Italo-British alliance in July. France's allies-turned-enemies were now growing closer together, united in their desire to contain the ambitions of 'Perfidious Gaul'.

***

Letter dated 26 October 1851 by an unidentified author to Dutch Minister for War, Alexander Vermeer

Dear Alexander,

I wish you a merry day wherever you are. I have met a charming Austrian scientist to-day by the name of Gregor Mendel, who enlightened me at length on the processes through which Nature passes on certain traits and qualities across the years. While much of what he said astounded and intrigued me greatly, the basic assumption of inheritance and heredity certainly did not. I still see myself in those countless souls of my flesh and blood. Every some generations a spitting image of the long-dead man I was comes forth and bewilders me with their likeness.

But I suppose you have no descendants, for the self-evident reason. I will write instead of the thing you love most. There is war here in the Near East once more. The Arabs have invaded the Sinai and seek to drive the Somali out of Egypt. How much blood has been shed over these sands? Not enough, you would say. I enlisted as an advisor for the Iraqi armies, claiming to be a veteran of Italy's wars. And I certainly am one at that! You will be interested to hear of the treatments and medicines they have crafted in these parts; there is something of the Alchemist in them, though I suspect the mortals begin to outpace even her genius. I send with this letter some elixir they distill from opium into a draught that takes away all pain.

The end result is far fewer men dead, though one wonders if those crippled and dismembered would rather have perished than live on in this manner. But I suppose the Muslims will always have the charity of their pious neighbors to draw upon. My perspective is naturally biased.

You will observe, dear friend, how my writing has improved since my last letter. I have attended a modern Italian school in the Maghreb, where I have relearned my native tongue. Why they keep changing the ways it is written and spoken is beyond me! The locals here care little for any variant of the tongue, though they get by with a pidgin when they have to speak to bureaucrats and the like. I remember your hatred for bureaucrats, and the people here certainly share in your opinion, at least for Italian bureaucrats.

It is quite convenient that your present persona should be so easily reached. Pray write to me of your work and the wars you have planned. I shall visit when I find the time.

Respectfully,
Your Wanderer

P.S: They've come a long way with ale and wine, it must be admitted. I am quite overcome as I write this. No matter. Raise a toast for me, as I now raise one to you!

***

Excerpts from 'Italy and the World: the Italian Empire in the Modern Period', written by Hugo Fourier (Firenze: 1977)

(...) Italian reluctance for war had faded by 1851. When Polish envoys raised the prospect of war against the Wallachian Empire, King Galeazzo Maria was eager to agree. On December 6, 1851, the Kingdom of Poland declared war upon Wallachia with the aim of reclaiming the ethnic Polish territories western Galicia. Italy raised its banners for war only days later. The mass mobilization put into effect was made far faster and far-reaching by the growing network of railways running through the most populated parts of Italy.

Even with the great host gathering for the invasion, Italian strategists were nervous. Wallachia would not be an easy foe to fell. Or so it was assumed.

(...) When Italian forces crossed into Wallachian territory on the 13th of December, however, they found a nation in flames. The closed Italian border had admitted little in the way of news or travelers for many years. The picture of Wallachian strength had been preserved, but it was now revealed to have been an illusion of such. Wallachia in 1851 existed in a state of civil war, with serf revolts, bickering nobility and nationalist uprisings all working to tear the vitality out of the Empire. The Wallachian armies had been hard-pressed to battle these rebel armies - and now they faced a full-on invasion by their enemies.

Wallachia was joined by their sole ally in Europe, the Republic of Gotland. (...) The war would not be over swiftly. Despite their weakness, the Wallachian Empire was geographically vast and difficult to traverse, and its armies reportedly fought 'like demons themselves'. (...)

When the extent of Wallachian weakness became apparent, Italian diplomats were quick to press further claims against their enemy. The desire to create a buffer state and block Wallachian access to the Adriatic led to a promise to liberate and protect the Serbs in January, laying the foundation for an independent Serbian state. This represented the loss of a vast amount of territory if realized, though less than 4 million people - centuries of brutal royal rule had effectively depopulated the region by the 19th century.

(...) Wallachian fortunes turned from bad to worse in February. The Kingdom of Greece declared the liberation of Crimean Greeks and jumped into the fray, backed up by its French benefactor. Faced with a two-front war, what little resistance Wallachia was able to muster now began to rapidly collapse. Only the sheer size of the Empire and widespread guerilla night attacks - attributed to supernatural monsters for the sheer ferocity and skill of these partisans - now delayed Wallachian capitulation.

(...) The Greek and Italian fronts met in Craova in April, ending the first stage of the war. Battles still raged on in Wallachian Slovakia, where most of the royal armies had been mustered. New regiments of conscripted serfs were raised up and gathered in the east, but these unmotivated and untrained slave-soldiers had little hope of matching professional Greek and Italian forces. Wallachian victories in Trencin and Gyor only provided temporary relief, as their enemies were bringing more and more men to the field every day.

(...) Gotlander forces arrived in northern Poland in June, but these expeditionary corps proved a distraction rather than a reversal for the war. Western Wallachia was under Italian occupation by the end of summer, with the Crimea and the south-east in Greek hands. Now only the great Ukrainean plains held out against the invasion. The Empire was falling. But what of its King? (...)

Photomajig · Jun 10, 2021

Excerpts from 'Italy and the World: the Italian Empire in the Modern Period', written by Hugo Fourier (Firenze: 1977)

(...) The rapid collapse of Wallachian resistance emboldened its invaders into making ever more ambitious claims. Late 1852 saw proclaimed Greek ambitions over Bulgaria and Italian demands that Gotland give up its border territories in Lithuania, which held modest minority populations of Poles. The aim of both powers was to cripple Wallachia and end it as a credible rival in Europe. The co-belligerents practiced an increasing degree of cooperation in their operations. While King Galeazzo Maria in Italy distrusted and disliked the Greeks immensely - seeing them as usurpers of his Nikaean crown kingdom - the rest of the Italian government was coming to terms with their new neighbor. Greece's ties to France made any prospect of actual alliance impossible, of course; but the ice was thawing.

(...) Now something extraordinary happened. Even at the time the events that followed were confused and understood by few contemporary spectators. In what was likely a palace coup, King Tibor XV of Wallachia disappeared without a trace, leaving the reins of power entirely in the hands of a suddenly empowered cabinet. The loss of the King appears to have precipitated an immediate collapse in morale and war readiness. (...) The ministers who approved the treaty would not speak of what had happened. The only, cryptic comment on the matter was that they had been "at last freed"; perhaps a criticism of the stifling nature of absolutist rule. But the exact details will likely remain one of history's great mysteries. (...)

***

Transcript from the interrogation of Matteo Bombacci, a rifleman in the 3. Corps of the Italian Royal Army, on March 20 1855; regarding events in the Polish-Wallachian War

INTERROGATOR: Be seated. (a brief pause) You are Matteo Bombacci, son of Giovanni Bombacci, a small farmer from Salerno? Enlisted rifleman in the Second Campanian Brigade, Third Army Corps?

BOMBACCI: I've done nothing wrong. Who are you people?

INTERROGATOR: Calm yourself, rifleman Bombacci. You are not accused of any crime. I must beg you to answer the question, for the record. Are you the aforementioned Matteo Bombacci?

BOMBACCI: Uh, I- Yes.

INTERROGATOR: Tremendous. Would you care to theorize why it is that you are here, rifleman Bombacci?

BOMBACCI: No.

INTERROGATOR: Very well. You were overheard some days ago at a public house in Rome as you spoke to an associate about your experiences in the last war. We would like you to repeat what you said then to us. For the official record.

BOMBACCI: I, I don't think so. I don't know what you people think you heard. It was nothing. It was all nonsense. A soldier's tale. Idle phantasms, you know... I'm not proud of it, but when I have a drink or two, my imagination-

INTERROGATOR: This is not how you represented yourself then. You were willing to swear the veracity of your tale upon the Blessed Virgin. An oath that we do not believe a pious Papist like yourself would give casually, rifleman Bombacci.

BOMBACCI: No, no, I... It's not like that at all.

INTERROGATOR: You are not accused of any crime, rifleman Bombacci. At least, not yet. If you refuse to comply with us, that may very well change.

BOMBACCI: No, no! I'm a loyal King's man. (a pause) It's only that, you'll surely think me mad. I swear, my mind is my own. I'm not going to the madhouse.

INTERROGATOR: That is not likely to happen, rifleman Bombacci. But I must ask you to begin, so that we are not forced to resort to less pleasant means of persuasion. If you please?

BOMBACCI: Alright. Well, I. The thing is. (A pause.) This was after we'd trounced the Swedes in Königsberg. I remember hearing about that in the mess tent the night before. So, it must have been, the August of '52? It's been years. I can't place the date, I don't think. I was fighting in the south, myself. We'd driven the Wallachians back over miles, victory after victory. It'd been poor country, though. The people there, well... they were so wretched poor and hungry you couldn't find anything worth taking. And besides, the General didn't like that sort of thing, anyway.

INTERROGATOR: General Di Canio, this would be?

BOMBACCI: Yes, that's him. Old Bear, we'd call him. He was one of those Alpini, I think, before they gave him his promotion. Big man. Fierce-tempered, or so we understood. Drilled us pretty hard, even when we was marching to fight. But, anyway. He's got nothing to do with what happened. See, we'd been given this mission, well, recon duty. There was this old castle up in the mountains looking down at us, and they wanted us to see if the General could set up there. There was a dozen of us or so, led by this captain, um, Captain Graziani. So we-

INTERROGATOR: One moment. Please describe the men with you as well as you are able.

BOMBACCI: Right, uh. There was Graziani. He came from money and, uh, a title, you understand. Seemed like a decent fellow. We didn't really get to know him. Then there was Valenti, who I was good friends with, and Leonetti, who I knew a little. And little Rivera, who we called Lucky, him being so uncommon good-fortuned, and a friendly lad besides. I think the others were Ricardo, Martelini, Bondavalli, and, uh. Oh, Müller - he was an Austrian from Tirol, a Catholic also, so we got along. He was a replacement, I think. I don't know if I remember the rest. I didn't really know them, and, well, there wasn't much left to know by the end. But then there was the Lieutenant.

INTERROGATOR: The Lieutenant?

BOMBACCI: He said he was a Guerra. Like the King, you see? Well, we thought it was some kind of joke. See, his coat said Grieco, so that's his real name, I guess. He had this odd accent. I don't know how to describe it, just odd. Nothing like you usually hear. I've pretty good ears, myself, everyone says. I can hear that kind of thing. Well, he said he was from Toscana. Don't think that was true. But maybe he was running from something, or such. I've no idea. There's a lot I don't know about him. Not really.

INTERROGATOR: What did he look like?

BOMBACCI: Well, uh. Handsome fellow, I suppose. Uh, dark hair. Strong, he looked strong. I don't know how... Ricardo said he looked like the King, and that maybe he was a Guerra after all. But I didn't think much of that.

INTERROGATOR: Captain Graziani was killed in action during this mission, yes?

BOMBACCI: Uh, yes. Or well, no. I don't know. We'd set up camp on this mountain path, on the way to the castle. The Lieutenant and the Captain were discussing something. Only then, the Lieutenant left, and when he came back in a few hours, he went into the Captain's tent and came to tell us he was dead. Killed by enemy partisans who'd slipped into camp, he said. I never did see any partisans. But maybe it was something like that. So that's how he died. Or what we saw of it.

INTERROGATOR: What happened then?

BOMBACCI: Well, the Lieutenant took over. He told us to break camp and head up for the castle, even though night was falling and we was dead tired. We didn't even bury the Captain... He said we'd come back for him later and, well, what could you do? He was in charge. So we hurried up that path like the Devil was on our... well, behind us. And when we came to a stop just before the castle, well, that's when the first of us died.

INTERROGATOR: You were attacked?

BOMBACCI: Yes. I think so. I didn't really see it, except out of the corner of my eye. Something rushed past and snatched up poor, uh, one of the fellows whose name I can't recall. He was just a boy, really. He was keeping the rear, but, uh, maybe he slipped, or maybe something reached for him. I think it was probably one of those things that we, uh. Anyway, he went down into the rocks and out of sight, and we couldn't see him in the dark. But he kept screaming. Screaming, calling for help. The Lieutenant forbid us from descending into the, uh, the ravine where he'd gone down. That was for the best, I think, but at the time we thought him then the coldest son of a... Well, you know.

INTERROGATOR: And then?

BOMBACCI: We moved into the castle. And he was still screaming, the boy, until we couldn't hear him no more. So we hurried inside the castle. The doors were open, you see. There were no lights there, so the Lieutenant had us light torches as we went along. That place.... It was something else. Damned big, with a whole lot of money put into it. Old, old stuff. Paintings and the like. Müller, who knows these things better, he was acting all very impressed. The Lieutenant, though, he moved about the place like he'd been there before. Like he was already searching for something. Anyway, we didn't have a lot of time to gawk around. They started coming at us in the dark. (A pause.) People, I guess. Things.

INTERROGATOR: Things, rifleman Bombacci?

BOMBACCi: Well, I've never seen people like that. All pale and horrid, like there was no blood in them. No fear in them, either. And when we shot them, they kept coming back up. Only, the Lieutenant had told us to light their bodies on fire once we shot 'em, and we had a little oil with us. His idea, that. We'd thought him mad, but now... Everything was mad. That's when most of us went down. Leonetti, Martelini, Bondavalli, and a lot of the others. Snatched into the dark. And those things, they was gutting them open and starting to eat them. Call me mad, but that's how it was! I saw 'em tearing off pieces, and drinking blood!

INTERROGATOR: Calm yourself, rifleman Bombacci. What then?

BOMBACCI: Eh... We went deeper. The Lieutenant wouldn't let us stop. He led us on until we came to this, uh, this big hall. Like a throne room, I guess. There were lights here, though. And people. All very proper, waiting for us. Like a welcoming committee. Some of 'em were like the.... the things that attacked us, but some of 'em looked normal. Like you and me. Later, the Lieutenant told us they was sons and daughters of ministers and the like, for the Wallachians. Hostages, he said. Only I don't know how he could tell any of that. In the middle of it all was this pale, big man, I think their leader. The Lieutenant and him seemed to know one another. But we couldn't understand any of it; they spoke in the local tongue, though Rivera, who knew it a little, couldn't make heads or tails out of it either. So there we stand, pointing our guns at the lot of them, praying that those things don't come at us from behind...

INTERROGATOR: What happened then?

BOMBACCI: The pale man gave some kind of order, but now his people, they wouldn't move a muscle. He didn't like that one bit. One of them others, this woman, she comes up and challenges the old man. Now, I know I said I don't speak the tongue, but you didn't need to, to see what was going on there. So the woman and the man start going at it. God, they... They were monsters. They didn't have weapons, but they tore eachother apart, with their bare hands. And all the rest of 'em were just watching. Waiting to see who came out on top. And the Lieutenant, he was watching too. All of us were. You couldn't take your eyes off it.

INTERROGATOR: I see.

BOMBACCI: You see. You see? What is this, huh? I'm telling you a madman's tale, and you don't even have the decency to look surprised. Are you humoring me, or what? You can't actually believe me. Do you?

INTERROGATOR: Allowing for exaggeration, faulty memory and lack of understanding, yes. I do. But let us finish your tale before we discuss the ramifications of that.

BOMBACCI: The hell.... Alright. Well, those two, the ones fighting, they'd worn themselves down pretty bad. I don't think the old man thought the girl'd be so much trouble. I sure as Hell wouldn't have. So I say to the Lieutenant, just voicing my thoughts, that it looks like the old man's getting the upper hand. And he says, Matteo, I think you're right. And he grabs the canister, the rest of the oil we have, and he pours something in it, a little vial, something he has in his shirt pocket. He runs down the middle of the hall and flings the whole damn thing at the monsters. And the two of 'em, they go up like matches. Screaming and thrashing. My God, the fire was white-hot. That oil shouldn't have burned as good as it did. Wouldn't have, without that something he mixed into it, I think. And once they're gone, once they're piles of ash, the whole damn room goes mad. The monsters start fleeing every which way. Ignoring us, except when we get in their path, and then they tear us right apart. But the Lieutenant, he just says that we ought to make sure the hostages - that's the normal people they had there - are alright, and not to bother him. And he goes to the pile of ash and pokes around it and shakes his head.

INTERROGATOR: He was angry?

BOMBACCI: Disappointed, more like. So I go up to him, to tell him about the hostages, and he says to me that "It didn't work" and that "They'll return". And I say, how's anyone going to come back from that? But he says nothing, 'cept then he says he's sorry to the ashes! To someone called Ruxandra, I think. And then we're just told to head out and leave the castle. And that's the end of it. The Lieutenant made some report, I guess, but they never asked us anything. And I, I guess I didn't really tell anyone, since I didn't really know what to tell. For a while I figured I'd dreamed it. But I don't think so.

INTERROGATOR: That is all?

BOMBACCI: Well - the peace was made only a few days after that, I hear. And maybe it's foolish, but I feel, I always felt, maybe what we did that night had something to do with it. I know their King died, sometime around then. And I saw a portrait of that one later on, and there was a resemblance to, you understand, to the leader of those monsters. So it don't feel like just coincidence. The Lieutenant would know, for sure.

INTERROGATOR: Very good. I believe this shall do for a preliminary examination, but rest assured we will be returning to your testimony again. Thank you for your cooperation, rifleman Bombacci.

BOMBACCI: Now hold on just a moment. I've told my tale. I want some answers. Who are you people? Why aren't you surprised at any of this? What do you know about those things?

INTERROGATOR: I should hope you will not have heard of us. Let us just say that our institution serves His Majesty, rifleman Bombacci, whether He is aware of that or not. I suppose it would be best to say we serve the Nation. We protect it against... less obvious threats. Our means and weapons are no less necessary than your rifle when it comes to it. It is a different kind of war. But we will discuss this at length on another date. For now, I would ask you to follow me. It is time we discussed your prospects for employment at the present time...

Transcript ends.

***

Excerpts from 'Italy and the World: the Italian Empire in the Modern Period', written by Hugo Fourier (Firenze: 1977)

(...) The war was a triumph for Poland and Italy. The latter had gained a large buffer state in the region in the form of Serbia, leaving Wallachia with only a handful of Adriatic ports and bereft of Serbian resources and industry. The Serbian Kingdom was formally restored in a jubilant affair and months-long festivities, with promises of friendship and alliance made by King Galeazzo Maria of Italy and King Lazar Petrovic of Serbia. For the former, Poland's ascendancy was only beginning. The power of the two nations united had brought down the Wallachian behemoth, but Poles still lived under foreign rule. Where would Polish eyes turn next?

Greek negotiations went perhaps even further than those of Italy and Poland. Wallachia was demilitarized and disarmed, while the westernmost tip of the Caucasus was returned to Greek rule and a part of Wallachian Bulgaria annexed into Greece. These harsh terms crippled the Wallachian military for decades to come, and left the nation incapable of maintaining more than an internal security force to quell unrest - and even that would prove unreliable. (...) The new 'interregnum government' of Wallachia delayed the choice of a new King and instead began drafting ambitious plans for the emancipation of the vast serf underclass in Wallachia. This grand ambition would be extremely difficult to realize without the military strength or concessions to ensure the obedience of the nobility, and this the new government did not possess.

(...) Inevitably, on June 4 1854, a nobles' revolt overcame the much-reduced state forces and seized control of the government. Foreign observers were driven from the country, the borders were closed once more, serfdom was enshrined as a central pillar of Wallachian government, and thousands of liberal- and reform-minded officials were slaughtered in mass purges. Soon enough, a new King of the Draculesti line found his way to the throne. Little appears to have changed in the end for the people of Wallachia, though the state itself was still considerably weakened. (...)

Serfdom did not exist in Italy, but more and more Italians were driven into wage slavery with little difference in their quality of life to those toiling in bondage in Wallachia. Child labor in particular had become an issue that drew a great deal of criticism by the new generation of liberal and proto-socialist authors interested in societal ills and dangers. Many liberals were firm defenders of child labor, however, arguing that it benefited both the laborer and his employer and resenting perceived attempts at further regulating the market. For its part, the government had little interest in legislating against the practice - though liberal members of cabinet would at times raise the subject for official discussion. (...)

***

Excerpts of 'The American Empire: How the United States Enslaved A Continent', written by Édith Laurent (Port-Royal: 1972)

'Bush wars' continued to break out in North America in this period. Indian-descended settlers in Columbia were provoked into attacking an outpost on the Canadian frontier, sparking the Columbo-Canadian War. This low-intensity conflict saw Columbian skirmishers drive back Canadian militias and occupy much of the western frontier. The fortunes of war would only be reversed by an American intervention in support of Canada with the aim of asserting American hegemony over the continent. (...) The United States, on the other hand, would in November 1853 betray all promises to the Mexican government and demand Texas and Arizona to be ceded to the US. The appalled Mexican government refused to give up what constituted almost a third of its territory. Predictably, the Americans invaded. This invasion was led by militias of the Southern states, who indeed began hostilities weeks before the declaration of war was hurried through the Senate. The aim was the expansion of Slave Power by any means necessary.

(...) Mexican resistance crumbled quickly. The Mexican government offered its surrender on December 1854. The US annexed Arizona and Texas; the latter was invaded a second time immediately after, this time internally, as Southern slavers fell upon the vast territory as a ravenous horde to lay the foundation for their slave state. This mass of slave-owner immigrants ensured a successful vote for the expansion of slavery into the new state of Texas. (...) The Bengali-American remnant of New Mexico would fall next in a bloodless invasion usually treated as a mere footnote to the conflict. (...)

Their political opponents were outraged, though generally for the sheer size of this new 'mega-state'; plans had already been made to form at least two, if not more, new states out of the territory. The western parts of Texas were dominated by Indian-descended populations, while the east had been settled by Dutch colonists. This cultural and political divide alone should have guaranteed two separate states. Canny Southern politicians raised a storm over the division plans, however, claiming that Mexico had governed the region as one province, and that any talk of dividing the area was merely an attempt to abolish the 'Southern way of life' - that is, chattel slavery - through a pretext. Fearful of secession, Northern politicians bent over and accepted this. A more radical proposal to ban slavery entirely in any new states annexed from Mexico failed in the Senate, serving only to stoke Southern hostility to the government in Saguenay. (...)

The death toll, devastation and instability which followed the war in Mexico had a noticeable effect on immigration rates. For the first time in decades, Mexico was a net exporter of people. Immigration from the Old World had effectively ceased and Mexicans now fled to neighboring nations, including the Italian colony of Nicaragua, the Bolivian Republic, and the very cause of Mexican misfortune, the United States. The latter group were often families with ties to Texan and Arizonan Mexicans annexed into the US, though they were generally not allowed back on the lands which American settlers had stolen from them. (...)

***

Excerpts from 'Italy and the World: the Italian Empire in the Modern Period', written by Hugo Fourier (Firenze: 1977)

(...) May 1854 brought news of a war in the north. Bavaria sought to reclaim lost territories from Denmark, which held considerable territory in German and Sorb lands. The Danish alliance with France had ended some years before from a spying scandal, leaving Denmark isolated and vulnerable to invasion. (...) The war was costly and did not see an end until 1857, when the Danish government accepted the loss of Franken. This wealthy and populous region joined Bavaria and strengthened German hopes that Bavaria could become an unifier of Germany. Italian diplomats thought this prospect unlikely, and so endeavored to align Bavaria with Italy and bring it into the Italian sphere of influence.

(...) Italy's colonial ministry saw reason for joy in December 1855, with the Filippino revolt against their Ceylonese overlords. With the established powers of the Pacific weakening, Italy saw an opportunity to expand its own holdings there - preferably without expensive military campaigns. While the Philippines were eventually deemed too volatile to approach, the Sultanate of Brunei became the focus of Italian imperialist aims. A slow, insidious infiltration of Bruniean government was underway, with consequences to follow. (...)

In the Maghreb, a network of 'flying universities' was taking shape. With higher education closed from locals due to their religion, ethnicity or the arbitrary whims of Italian administrators, many middle-class Maghrebis founded their own societies for study and debate. It is not surprising that from the beginning, these universities had a radical and revolutionary character. Increasingly, they attracted early socialist thinkers and agitators, whose descendants would feature in far more radical pursuits in the region half a decade later. (...)

Unwelcome news came out of South America in 1857. Brazil, a long-time Italian ally and the premier power in the region, had fallen to military coup. The progressive republic born of the War for Independence was gone, replaced by authoritarian generals who governed through a permanent state of emergency. Their inexperienced and painfully reactionary rule would see Brazil fall into steep decline. Military leadership could not prevent military defeat either, as the Argentine invasion of 1858 would go on to show. (...) Brazil was on the fast track to becoming a lawless failed state. Italian influence on the continent was gone just as well.

(...) Imperial ambitions also meant the expansion of Italian rule in Africa. Beginning from December 1857, Italian envoys and military expeditions subjugated the tribes of the Angolan coast, forming the foundation for Italian South-West Africa and the massive growth of its African empire.

(...) The question of the Netherlands was settled - at least for a time - in early 1858. In secret negotiations, Dutch officials agreed to an anti-French alliance with Italy and proposed war to reclaim ethnic Dutch territories in Gelderland. This modest aim was accepted as the first step in reclaiming all Dutch lands in the region. But when to attack? The Wallachian victory had emboldened Italian generals, but they were aware of France's vast military strength and strong defenses. The French also could rely on allies in Aragon and Bohemia. The opportunity, when it finally came, was a surprise. Bavaria had refused French 'patronage' in a very public manner, causing widespread outrage in France. The French launched an invasion of Bavaria in April 1858, which also brought the British Empire to defend its ally against French aggression.

The chance to force France into a two-front war was too good to pass up. On the 2nd of June, the Netherlands declared war upon France. For the first time, Italy would go on the offensive against their once-dear neighbor. The Dutch-French War had begun.

***

Photomajig · Jun 19, 2021

Excerpts from 'Italy and the World: the Italian Empire in the Modern Period', written by Hugo Fourier (Firenze: 1977)

(...) The situation in June 1858 was optimal. British forces had made landfall in the French Low Countries in strength. Britain, eager to avenge the loss of Brest in 1847 and to sate revanchist feeling within the military establishment, was investing a great deal of coin and men into the 'Bavarian Expedition'. Even so, they were vastly outnumbered by French numbers and generally outfought when odds were even. They needed Dutch - and far more importantly, Italian - assistance. (...) The French opened the new front with an aggressive gambit, blockading and raiding the Dutch coast while the superior British navy was otherwise engaged. Naval bombardment leveled the heart of the Dutch financial empire in Amsterdam and caused severe damages to much of the city. The toll of the war years for Dutch trade and finance would be extreme.

(...) The French had not expected war in the south as well. The border corps had been drawn away for the invasion of Bavaria, leaving the Franco-Italian border catastrophically open. Italian forces advanced with caution, however, wary of overextending. This would end up giving the French armies precious time to consolidate and regroup. To accomplish this, however, the French general staff essentially gave up the South as lost. Occitania would suffer the humiliation of an Italian occupation once more. (...) Italian forces also deployed into Bavaria to provide much-needed relief against the invading French forces. Bavarian citizens put aside a history of differences to cheer for Italian soldiers as they marched into Münich after routing the French V. Corps from the area.

Lessons from the last wars had been taken to heart. The vast population reserves of Italy could now be mobilized and organized into regiments of the line far more efficiently than had been possible before. The combination of railway and bureaucratization of the military was bearing fruit. (...) Victory was not so easily assured in the Netherlands. An overeager Dutch thrust into Wallonia had resulted in heavy casualties and a chaotic retreat. The French now pressed the offensive, advancing rapidly through aged Dutch fortifications that could not withstand the sheer destructive power of modern artillery.

With this, the French hoped to force the Dutch quickly to terms. The arrival of Italian reinforcements at Cambrai and Maastricht in September 1857 marked the end of such hopes. While the French still had the upper hand in this theater, they did so at the cost of the war elsewhere. Southern France was falling rapidly to Italian occupation, while the British armies swept over the north and marched unresisted into Paris in October. The French cause was well and truly in trouble. (...) This unexpected success emboldened the Italian leadership. At the behest of King Galeazzo Maria, the Italian envoy announced - to the delighted surprise of his Dutch counterpart - that Italy would not settle for anything less than the full liberation of all Dutch-speaking inhabitants of France. This in effect meant the annexation of considerable territories into the Netherlands proper, (...)

As far as the British were concerned, however, the war was won. An empowered Netherlands was not in their interest. As such, Great Britain negotiated a separate peace with France in the February of 1859, accepting 'merely' the acquisition of various historical treasures and imperial valuables from the French treasury. The loss of the Imperial Standard - later placed on display in the British Museum in London - was particularly harshly felt in France. (...) Despite this humiliation, France's position was improved. They could now attempt to repulse the Italo-Dutch invasion and hopefully tip the balance of war back in their favor.

(...) Many European liberals had counted upon wartime deprivation and hardship to radicalize the common people for revolution. Bitter disappointments in previous conflicts had sapped the fervor of the organized revolutionary movement in Italy bit by bit despite success abroad. The Franco-Dutch War proved to be the death blow for this 'dreamer generation' of jacobins. No real discontent or resistance to the Italian Crown manifested during the bloody conflict. Indeed, the state had co-opted the nationalist rhetoric of the revolutionary cause with such sophistication that many would-be revolutionaries gave up the cause to champion the King and the absolutist state instead, seeing it as the best way forward for all Italians. (...) Later generations of rebels would look to other doctrines instead; liberalism in Italy had died in most ways that mattered.

(...) French hopes of recovery in the war were crushed in March-April 1859. The Kingdom of Aragon capitulated first, overwhelmed by the forces of Italy and their Iberian allies and fearing the forced restoration of a Guerra claimant to the throne if they resisted further. Bohemia followed soon after, ceding the Sorbian-majority region of Bramborska to Italian ally Poland. France now stood alone against a triumphant foe. (...)

Bohemia, shorn of its Sorbian corridor to the coast, endured a government crisis soon after capitulation. The difficulty of administering territories on the Baltic coast, now separated from the centre by hostile Poland and Denmark, resulted in the foundation of autonomous Duchies of Sorbia and Pommerania. These Czech satellites would be granted some measure of self-rule - a necessary sacrifice with the new state of the realm. Bohemia itself would reform as the Kingdom of the Czechs in a bid to capitalize on nationalist feeling in the heartland. (...)

After the Czech exit from the war, French resistance collapsed like a deck of cards. The Dutch and German provinces of France were under enemy occupation by June. The few battles fought in this period were disasters for the French. The impact of the new long-barreled Mazzini rifles has been overstated in past historiography - since they only began arriving in the final months of the war to Italian troops and thus played no role in the earlier stage of the conflict - but it should be noted that these new, highly accurate weapons caused heavy casualties when French forces encountered them. The demoralizing effect of being unable to engage at similar long ranges further reduced weak French desire to fight. (...)

On August 6, 1859, the French government accepted the inevitable. Dutch-speaking regions of the French Empire would be ceded to the Netherlands and any claim to these territories given up permanently. The Italo-Dutch negotiators interpreted 'Dutch-speaking regions' very loosely, resulting in the annexation of many ethnically German territories into the new Greater Netherlands as well. (...) The war had demanded 600,000 dead on the Italo-Dutch side and 540,000 on the French; a considerable bloodbath, but one made possible by the growing reach of mobilization and industrially fueled warfare in this period.

(...) The victorious Netherlands had suffered not only in men, but in profits as well. The mercantile-minded nation saw bleak economic collapse in the years following the war. Only months after the end of the war, a cadre of generals and admirals seized power in the nation, beginning the long period of military dictatorship in the nation's history.

(...) For Italy, the war had been a lesson in the need for military reform. The aristocratic deadwood of military academies were done away with during the years of war, opening up the final bastion of noble influence in the Kingdom to the 'new men' of the bourgeois classes. Further reforms in training and organization followed as the war revealed weaknesses in the Italian military institution, gradually creating one of the strongest armed forces on the planet. Italy's continued military triumphs did not go unnoticed by the great powers of Europe.

***

Excerpts from the 1860 Report on Foreign Affairs, drawn up by the Foreign Ministry for internal use in the Kingdom of Italy

(...) The Somali-Alodian War has ended with the victory of the latter. The Sudanese of Alodia have extended their reach to the sea and thus cut off Somalia from its Egyptian possessions. The Somali Emperor has been forced to grant some measure of self-rule to the Catholic Egyptian elites, who have elected a King from among themselves. This theoretical state appears internally weak. We are of the belief that Italy should capitalize on this weakness and expand its influence in Egypt in the coming years. (...) It is evident that the Somali are the sick man of the Near East and cannot be counted upon to maintain their dominion for much longer; Persia is thought to benefit and we believe swift action could still blunt Persian influence in the region. (...)

The Celestial Empire has been restored in China. The Liang Dynasty have consolidated their power and successfully modernized their administration to the level where we believe them capable of asserting their hegemony over all of China in the coming decades. The claimants of Yue, Kumtag and the Manchu have not attempted to deny the Liang their claim to the Empire. The Republic of Shun remains a protectorate of the Liang, and we have noted a significant degree of industrial development within this small aristocratic republic. We believe patronage and investment into the Shun Republic may allow a counterweight to be created to the Liang. The Manchu also present a likely prospect for Italian investments, with the power to resist Liang expansionism and thus ensure the division of the Middle Kingdom. A powerful and industrialized China is not in the interest of Italy at this time. (...)

The United States continues to advance in industrial capacity, population and military strength. However, its internal instability has only grown worse in the past year. (...) This latest ill-advised military venture against Mexico is likely to plunge the nation into political deadlock, as neither side will accept compromise when it comes to the status of slavery in territories to be annexed. Tensions are at a breaking point. We beseech His Majesty's Government to advise us in the matter of America. Shall Italy support the industrialists of the North, or the Vinlander slave-owning elites of the South? The possibility of a peaceful solution to the Slavery Question in the United States now appears extremely unlikely. We do not consider civil war impossible; indeed it seems likely such a conflict will begin either after the Mexican War, or perhaps even during it. (...)

***

Someone messaged me about whether I'll put up the saves for these games up, but I can't seem to find the message anymore. In case I didn't just dream that up - sure, I can do that. As promised, the HoI4 part will be a full-on mod with as much content as I can give it, but I can put up the saves and converter mods for the EU4 and V2 saves as well at some point.

Smartphone · Jun 19, 2021

What is up with the Virginias staying part of the US despite being completely surrounded by the CSA?

Iceblocks · Jun 19, 2021

I wish I had more to chime in with, but Victoria is the one Paradox game that I completely bounce off whenever I try to get into it.

Photomajig · Jun 19, 2021

Smartphone said:
What is up with the Virginias staying part of the US despite being completely surrounded by the CSA?

I'm not totally sure of how the logic goes, but it mostly has to do with if the state is a slave or free state. They happened to be free states and so here we are.

I think the split in general is interesting - slave-holding is practiced further north than in our timeline, but this US also incorporates OTL Canadian territory as free states, so there's still a balance.

The CSA is dominated by Danish-descended (Vinlander) plantation owners, so I think that any Lost Causerism in this timeline will also have an ethnic/language side - imagine Danish slogans on Confederate flags. Vinlander culture is doomed to essentially disappear should the Union win, thanks to the game's assimilation mechanics, so in a way they really are fighting to preserve their identity. And slavery.

WestOrEast · Jun 19, 2021

Photomajig said:
The Italo-Dutch negotiators interpreted 'Dutch-speaking regions' very loosely, resulting in the annexation of many ethnically German territories into the new Greater Netherlands as well. (...)

This seems like a poison pill from the Italians to the Dutch.

Photomajig · Jun 28, 2021

Letter dated 10 November 1862 from Goffredo Guerra, Prince of Italy and Imperial Heir, to Kazimierz II Andrzej Guerra, King of Poland

My dear cousin,

How are you? I write to tell you that I have finished the Manifesto which you were kind to mail me. It is testament to the zeal of our censors that my man only narrowly saved it from the pyre at the border! It proved a most riveting read; certainly imaginative, however nonsensical its principles may be. I am confounded by your concerns! This will matter little to the hoi polloi; it is far too dense and worldly. Its message is not for the common laborer. I tell you, they look blankly at you should you mention the name of these strange Germans to them. It is all far too academic, far too high-brow. The students have gone mad for it, on the other hand, as is to be expected. The once-Utopianists and cooperationists have jumped ship in droves to this far more fashionable strain of their cause. There is some concern they may rile up the masses, but I think that unlikely. They're of different worlds.

There is a curious strain of orthodox Waldensianism in the text, is there not? It portrays the fathers of our noble church as a breed of proto-Communists and decries the corruptions of its modern edifice. This, I suspect, to win over the radical kind of priest. But it's a long way from vows of poverty to the socialist creed. But I am told there are already groups in our great nation who join the humble candle of the Waldensians with the working man's hammer and axe.

They are very small and insignificant, of course. These ravings do not seriously threaten the order of our state and they never shall. Every man and woman in Italy knows their place in the grand scheme of things. It is the same place their families have filled for hundreds of years.

But enough of the Communists. You have begged me for a narrative of the American War, and I shall provide. You will know that the fighting began in April. The sensationalistic tales of the atrocities at Fort Lombardia and the Ponte are well known by now. Let us speak of politics and maneuvers. In the South, the Confederates and the Mexicans of course made peace so as to focus on their mutual enemy. Alas if this had come six months earlier! The Mexicans had little fight left in them by 1860. They'd lost their taste for war. The regiments in Mexico remained almost wholly loyal to the Union, I have understood, and so there situation for the Mexicans changed little. These loyalists now continued their offensive with renewed zeal - seeking to subdue Mexico with haste and then swing east into the rear of the Confederacy.

In August the Mexicans threw out the white flag. They ceded a handful of territory in California - a modest gain for the Americans, but such swift victory was its own reward. With Mexico bowing out of the conflict, the Union forces could double up upon their Confederate opponents. The Southerners had seen some success in the north, but this new front forced them to redeploy and forfeit their advantage there.

The situation was chaotic, I have understood, until the April of 1861. Then the Mexican Corps of the Union began to arrive in Texas, where they wrought such havoc and terror among the 'traitors' of the civilian populace that the vast state jumped to sign a separate peace with the Union, forsaking the Confederate cause. Now the modest gains of the Confederates melted away as they faced enemy forces both south and north of their heartland. It was an untenable situation. Imagine a Poland beset so! How far would your people follow their young warrior king against such odds? To the end, perhaps. Certainly these Confederates expended a great deal of blood to deny their once-brothers easy victories.

Ah, but I have forgotten to address the matter of the Emancipation Proclamation! The American President, that Mr Abramo Lincolo, penned this in the August of 1862 - when victory seemed assured, and he held the political capital to do so. With one fell stroke the contentious issue of the slavery question was resolved forevermore. A great liberation - a shattering blow against the corrupt institutions of the VInlander magnates. Latin liberty has overcome Northern reaction once more. That this Proclamation also roused the blacks to fight for the Union should not be overlooked. The Union's conscription acts were unpopular and fresh manpower was greatly welcome. A triumph in many ways.

The Canadian-Columbian conflict also came to an end in 1863, with American support in arms and money tilting the balance in the favor of Canada. The Christian power of the North is now supreme over the heathen Indians. I expect Columbia shall be subjugated in due time by the unity of America and Canada. And with this little support the Americans guaranteed their northern border and ensured that Canada would not give aid to the Confederacy. The President has my sincere admiration for his skill at managing the rambunctious and unsteady house that is American republicanism.

The latter part of the war is of less interest, or at least my advisors have less to tell me of. The Union's victory march did not stop until it reached the Atlantic at every point. Even so, it was no foregone conclusion. The Southerners fought back like rabid dogs. They chained up their slaves to do battle for them, by the end. A dangerous choice, to put arms in the hands of those you oppress. They have certainly paid the price. Peace came at last in February 1865 - the South surrendered without conditions, to be readmitted into the great American nation.

The news coming out of the South tell of the wholesale collapse of Slave Power. The President's wolves have torn apart the old world of the South in favor of a new, a land for blacks to do as they like. One hopes this is the total end of that foul institution and its worshipers, not merely a delay for fifty years. The militants in the Senate have won the votes and so now have free rein to punish the South and redistribute the slave-lands as they like. One hopes it shall be the once-slaves who benefit.

As for other things - I am enclosing with this letter the most extraordinary amulet out of China. I say extraordinary, because it is reputed to depict our common ancestor, the great Mario Guerra! But it is from five hundred years ago, and claims to show him on a mission to China long after his death. I am inclined to dismiss any such claims, but remembering your fondness for these occult tales of our family, I have obtained it for you. Our advisors in the Emperor's court are shown great favor - and given great treasures also for their service - and so we learn more and more of the situation in China every week.

The restored Empire expands rapidly. The Liang forge a modern, civilized state, and they do it with every trick up their sleeve. This dizzying pace of change has its problems. The locals resent European civilization, of course. We expected as much. But the introduction of our racial understanding, hygienic ways and Christian conduct will go a long way in healing that wartorn and superstitious land. But what a rich land it is still! Centuries of violence and yet incredible wealth jumps out at you from every corner. Or so my agents tell me. We strive to open markets in these undeveloped places so that our industries shall benefit.

On the island of Japan they have attempted something similar to the policies of the Liang. But alas! The forces of ignorance were too strong. The Japanese have toppled their own Emperor and imprisoned him within his house. Now a shogun - some manner of military governor - rules the land instead, and denies our ships access to its ports. These barbarians cling so tightly to their backwards ways that they shall never understand the benefits of our trade, unless we force them to terms with it.

An aside - we may do away with the business of letters in the coming years. They have built a great many telegraph lines in this country and will be eager to do so in yours. It is a far swifter means of correspondence, though of course one cannot be as certain as with the the privacy of a sealed letter. But my generals and industrialists are both besides themselves with the potential of these machines. I regret the blemish they leave upon pristine fields and shores, though - as if the factory chimneys and slums were not already enough.

What else, cousin King, what else? The Persians have dealt with the Iraqis without much issue. The Arabs have ceded a great deal of land - parts of the historical Persian realm, as I understand it. We are not overtly concerned with the squabbles of the Muslims unless they threaten our hold on the gates of Egypt, and the Red Sea trade routes. But for now we may treat Persia as merely one neighbor among many. These deserts have little to offer in any case, and I doubt any great treasure waits underneath their sands.

The Somali and the Sudanese are at war also, and the latter have summoned the hordes of the Sofalan Empire in the south to aid them. These savages have humbled the legions of Ajuraan. They have fallen very low indeed. A footnote ending to a once-mighty force which failed to follow in the footsteps of the enlightened West. Good Christian men will not mourn their passing. But we do hear rumors that the Somali Emperor has sworn fealty to great Persia, and that Persian armies shall soon make landfall in the defense of their ally. The first step to Somalian submission beneath the Persian heel, of course, but they are a desperate people indeed. The Sudanese of Alodia are such savages that Persia shall not face much difficulty mopping up their sorry mobs.

Almost all Slovak provinces (light blue) are outside Czechoslovakia proper for now.

Now, let me ask you in turn. What do you know of the mood in Bohemia? One supposes they are to be called the Czecho-Slovaks, now. A curious attempt at union; the Slovaks all labor under different masters, but it appears the Bohemians have designs on these lands also. Let me guarantee now that Italy shall protect Poland against any Czech aggression, however they will dress it up as liberation. Write to me swiftly of your plans for the Czechs and how Italia might assist you in their completion.

Your friend and cousin,
Goffredo Guerra
Prince of Italy

Up next, a State of the World update.

Photomajig · Jul 6, 2021

I.
The Kingdom of Italy

Population: est. 55.90M (+14.42M from 1836)
Capital: Firenze, est. 4.8M in capital area (+1.3M from 1836)
Government: Absolute Monarchy
Head of State: King Galeazzo Maria I Guerra
State Religion: Waldensian Christianity
Estimated Army Size: 327 000 standing, 1 308 000 reserves

Industry Estimate: 176 (#2)
Top Producer Of: Steel, Sulphur, Clippers, Fabric, Fruit, Luxury Furniture, Ammo, Artillery and Small Arms

Recent History:

Italy has been successful in several wars against is former ally France and its eastern neighbor Wallachia. Colonial expansion has granted Italy a stronger foothold in Africa as well. The Italian sphere of influence aims at containing and weakening France before all else. Staggering economic growth has rapidly industrialized Italy, but even so an approximate 65% of the population are employed in agrarian labor.

Government:

Italy is governed according to the principles of absolutist rule. The King is the final authority in all things. No representative assembly exists. Public rallies and meetings are allowed, though subject to arbitrary repression should the state take offense. Private presses must only print material approved and directed by the state. Slavery remains legal in Italy. The economic policy of Italy can be described as state capitalist and protectionist, leaving the reins of economic activities tightly in the hands of the state. Minority religions face persecution and their adherents are not allowed in public office. Non-Italian citizens face discrimination.

The government of Italy sponsors a rudimentary and limited public healthcare system.

***

II.
The United States of America

Population: est. 25.67M (+5.77M from 1836)
Capital: Guassese, est. 160 000 in capital area
Government: Republic
Head of State: President Abramo Lincolo
State Religion: Waldensian Christianity
Estimated Army Size: 48 000 standing, 240 000 reserves (post-war situation)

Industry Estimate: 103 (#7)
Top Producer Of: None

Recent History:

The United States has over the course of several decades annexed most of North America under its banner. Wars against Canada, Mexico and the powers of the West Coast have won it huge reaches of territory. The Republic has essentially claimed the entire Americas as its own sphere of influence, demanding non-interference from European and Asian powers. Tensions over the Slavery Question broke into bloody civil war in 1860, which has only recently ended in Northern abolitionist victory. The US continues to industrialize steadily, aided by growing immigration to the North American continent. The capital has recently been moved to the small wartime administrative center at Guassese.

Government:

The United States is a democratic republic. The voting franchise comprises all male citizens. Each state sends representatives to the American parliament, the Senate of the United States. The Senate debates, proposes and passes legislation. The electorate also votes in a President to serve fixed four-year terms. The office of the President represents the executive branch of government and has significant political powers. Political parties and activism are allowed. No restrictions are placed upon the freedom of the press. Trade unions are legal in any form. Slavery has recently been outlawed after a bloody civil war against a slave-owner rebellion.

The current government party of the United States, the Partito Democratico Americano, supports free trade with an interventionist policy in the economy. The Waldensian state religion is promoted, with minority religions discriminated against. All free citizens of the United States enjoy the same equal legal and political rights, though gaining citizenship has been made difficult.

***

III.
The Chinese Empire

Population: est. 130.71M
Capital: Kaifeng, est. 3.9M in capital area
Government: Absolute Monarchy
Head of State: Emperor Xizong Liang
State Religion: Confucian/Mahayana Buddhist
Estimated Army Size: est. 510 000 standing, 2 550 000 reserves

Industry Estimate: 77 (#9)
Top Producer Of: Timber, Tea, Luxury Clothes

Recent History:

The Liang Dynasty declared the Empire of China restored in 1860. Since then, they have been embarked on a near-continuous campaign of conquest and consolidation against their neighbors, utilizing Western armaments and tactics to overcome the opposition. The Liang seem set on uniting all of China under the Imperial standard. China has begun to industrialize quickly, specializing particularly in the production of luxury fabrics and clothes using native silk, as well as mass cultivation of tea and industrial forestry.

Government:

China is governed according to the the principles of absolutist rule. The Emperor is the final authority in all things. No representative assembly exists and political activities are banned by law. Private presses must only print material approved and directed by the state. Slavery remains legal in China. The economic policy of China can be described as state capitalist and protectionist, leaving the reins of economic activities tightly in the hands of the state. Minority religions face persecution and their adherents are not allowed in public office. Minority citizens face discrimination.

***

IV.
The Kingdom of Czechia

Population: est. 8.24M (-2.91M from 1836)
Capital: Prague, est. 1.8M in capital area (no significant change from 1836)
Government: Constitutional Monarchy
Head of State: King Jan IV Guerra
State Religion: Catholic Christianity
Estimated Army Size: 42 000 standing, 168 000 reserves

Industry Estimate: 54 (#10)
Top Producer Of: None

Recent History:

The Kingdom of Bohemia reformed as the Kingdom of the Czechs in 1859, releasing its former possessions on the Baltic coast as the autonomous duchies of Sorbia and Pommerania. Defeat in war has cost the Kingdom a considerable amount of its population and its international prestige, but Czech excellence in the cultural sphere and its strong industrial base have allowed the small nation to remain a Great Power in the eyes of most observers. With hopes of reclaiming its lost territories unlikely, industrial growth seems to be the way forward for the Czech state.

Government:

Czechia is a constitutional monarchy. The King serves as the head of state and may veto legislation, but must sign it into law after it has been reconsidered and passed again. Each state sends representatives into the Czech Parliament, who propose and pass legislation and form His Majesty's government. The voting franchise encompasses all Czech citizens. Political parties and activism are allowed. No restrictions are placed upon the freedom of the press. State-governed trade unions are legal. Slavery is illegal.

The current government party, the CSL, practices a protectionist and interventionist economy. Minorities face persecution and efforts to Czechify the population are widespread.

***

V.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Population: est. 29.0M (+2.37M from 1836)
Capital: London, est. 2.9M in capital area (+0.7M from 1836)
Government: Semi-Constitutional Monarchy
Head of State: King Oswald Augustus I Guerra
State Religion: British Waldensianism (Anglican)
Estimated Army Size: 174 000 standing, 696 000 reserves

Industry Estimate: 197 (#1)
Top Producer Of: Machine Parts, Lumber, Fish, Furniture

Recent History:

Britain has become the greatest industrial power in the world thanks to a lack of homeland wars and profitable natural resources. Wars against France and other European powers have generally ended in victory, ceding both reparations and glory to the British throne.

Government:

Britain is best classified as a semi-constitutional monarchy. The King is advised by a parliament which is composed of British peerage. The King retains the power to intervene in legislation and dismiss Parliament as desired. Public rallies and meetings are tolerated to some extent. Political parties are banned by the state. Private presses must only print material approved and directed by the state. Slavery is illegal in Britain. The economic policy of Britain can be described as interventionist and protectionist, allowing the state great power in regulating and directing the economy. Minority religions face persecution and their adherents are not allowed in public office. Minorities are subjected to discrimination.

***

VI.
The Empire of France

Population: est. 43.54M (+1.37M from 1836)
Capital: Paris, est. 1.9M in capital area (+0.3M from 1836)
Government: Semi-Constitutional Monarchy
Head of State: Emperor Charles VI Guerra
State Religion: Waldensian Christianity
Estimated Army Size: 153 000 standing, 459 000 reserves

Industry Estimate: 170 (#3)
Top Producer Of: Coal, Tobacco

Recent History:

France has come out of the wars of the past decades poorly, losing its Dutch and northern German territories to the Netherlands. Strong economic growth and industrialization have allowed the nation to recover from these blows. It retains a large military and diplomatic influence across Europe.

Government:

France is best classified as a semi-constitutional monarchy. The Emperor is advised by a parliament composed of elected representatives from the middle and upper classes. Political parties are harassed and repressed according to the whims of the state. Public meetings and activism is tolerated. The state employs censors to fine and suppress damaging publications. Slavery is outlawed in France. The economic policy of France can be described as interventionist and protectionist, allowing the state great power in regulating and directing the economy. The government of France functions on secularized principles, with religion in theory a private matter. All inhabitants of France are considered citizens with full legal and political rights.

***

VII.
The Shahdom of Persia

Population: est. 29.22M (+3M from 1836)
Capital: Tabriz, est. 1.4M in capital area (+0.2M from 1836)
Government: Absolute Monarchy
Head of State: Shah Mohammad Khan I Ustadh
State Religion: Sunni Islam
Estimated Army Size: 135 000 standing, 540 000 reserves

Industry Estimate: 120 (#4)
Top Producer Of: Grain, Cattle, Cotton

Recent History:

Persia has enjoyed over a decade of peace since its loss of face and reactionary coup after the defeat of . This internal stability has allowed the new Shah to consolidate the state's hold on the many minority peoples within its borders and to invest in industrial development. Steady, strong growth in key industries and mass development of agrarian fields have made Persia one of the great economic movers of the globe.

Government:

The Shahdom of Persia is governed according to the the principles of absolutist rule. The Shah is the final authority in all things. No representative assembly exists and political activities are banned by law. Private presses must only print material approved and directed by the state. Slavery is outlawed in Persia. The economic policy of Persia can be described as interventionist and protectionist, allowing the state great power in regulating and directing the economy. The Sunni faith is promoted, but all religions are tolerated and face no official discrimination. Minority peoples are subject to discrimination.

***

VIII.
The Kingdom of Greece

Population: est. 18.76M
Capital: Athens, est. 411K in capital area
Government: Constitutional Monarchy
Head of State: King Alexandros I Manos
State Religion: Bogomilist Christianity
Estimated Army Size: 96 000 standing, 480 000 reserves

Industry Estimate: 39 (#12)
Top Producer Of: None

Recent History:

Since its inception in 1840, the Greek Kingdom has been engaged in a campaign of unification with the Caucasus and Crimean Greeks. Success against Persia have made this Greater Greece possible, though economic stagnation and slow industrial efforts have dimmed the Greek flame. The Greeks face threats from Wallachia in the north and Persia in the east, necessitating strong allies to stay upright.

Government:

The Kingdom of Greece is a constitutional monarchy. The King serves as the head of state and may veto legislation, but must sign it into law after it has been reconsidered and passed again. Each state sends representatives into the Greek parliament, which proposes and passes legislation and forms His Majesty's government. The voting franchise encompasses only the wealthier propertied classes of the ethnic Greeks. Political parties and activism are allowed. Private presses must only print material approved and directed by the state. Trade unions are illegal in any form. Slavery is legal in Greece.

The current government party of Greece practices a protectionist and interventionist economy. Religion is a private matter, but Bogomilist Christianity is promoted by state institutions. Ethnic minorities face persecution.

***

Starblight · Jul 6, 2021

Jesus, the more I look into the current situation in Italy, the more I'm reminded of early-20th century Tsarist Russia. If things don't start changing soon, it may end in a similar fashion.

Photomajig · Jul 9, 2021

The Kingdom of Poland

Population: est. 19.33M
Capital: Warsaw, est. 735K in capital area
Government: Constitutional Monarchy
Head of State: King Kazimierz II Andrzej Guerra
State Religion: Waldensian Christianity
Estimated Army Size: 120 000 standing, 480 000 reserves

Industry Estimate: 82 (#8)
Top Producer Of: None

Recent History: The Kingdom of Poland was catapulted from ruin to triumph in the 1813 Polish War, reclaiming ethnic Polish territories from the neighbors which had sought to partition the venerable realm between themselves. Since then, Polish Galicia has also fallen into the state's hands after war with Wallachia. After these conflicts, internal development and an industrial boom have preoccupied the Polish kingdom. Constitutional reforms in the 1850s elevated a new Sejm to parity with the King, ending a good century of social upheaval and struggle for control. With its large army and steady industrial growth, Poland seems likely to ascend into the ranks of the Great Powers in the near future.

Government: Poland is a constitutional monarchy. The King retains strong executive powers, but serves essentially as a 'citizen-king' in partnership with a powerful Sejm parliament. This representative assembly is open to all Polish men and elected by an universal electorate, although votes are weighted to favor propertied citizens. Political parties and activism are allowed. No restrictions are placed upon the freedom of the press. Non-socialist trade unions are legal. Slavery is outlawed.

The ruling party of Poland favors a conservative, protectionist and state capitalist policy. Minority peoples and faiths are repressed by the state.

***

The Shun Republic

Population: est. 15.01m
Capital: Luan, est. 4.0M in capital area
Government: Republic
Head of State: Councillor Weng Chongjun
State Religion: Confucian/Mahayana Buddhist
Estimated Army Size: 108 000 standing, 432 000 reserves

Industry Estimate: 105 (#6)
Top Producer Of: Explosives, Guns

Recent History: The Shun Republic was born from succession crisis in the vestigial imperial state of the brief Shun Dynasty. Rather than place an Emperor on the throne, the small state reformed into an aristocratic republic. In the decades since, the republic has extended the voting franchise to wealthy men of lesser families as well. In theory a vassal state of the Liang Dynasty, the Shun Republic has led the charge of Chinese modernization and become one of the most industrialized corners of the globe. Shun gunworks and explosive factories dominate the world markets. It seems likely that this growth of Shun wealth and influence will inevitably lead to conflict with the Chinese Empire - a progress encouraged by rivals of the Chinese eager to see them stumble.

Government: The Shun Republic is an aristocratic republic. An assembly of wealthy and noble forms a government from among themselves, elected in turn by all male citizens of similar breeding and property. Public meetings and activism is tolerated. The state employs censors to fine and suppress damaging publications. Slavery is legal.

***

The Empire of Ceylon

Population: est. 50.14M (+0.14M from 1836)
Capital: Kandy, est. 336 000 in capital area (+57K from 1836)
Government: Semi-Constitutional Monarchy
Head of State: Emperor Vijayaditya I Lakshmi
State Religion: Hinduism
Estimated Army Size: 240 000 standing, 960 000 reserves

Industrial Estimate: 9 (#25)
Top Producer Of: Opium

Recent History: The Empire of Ceylon has successfully modernized its administration and completed wide-ranging reforms of its economy and military. While industrialization has been slow, a shift towards mass opium cultivation has brought great wealth into the country. Ceylon's neighbors are less than pleased by its opium trade, which may provoke war in the future.

Government: Ceylon is best classified as a semi-constitutional monarchy. The Emperor is advised by an elected assembly composed of noble and propertied members. Private presses must only print material approved and directed by the state. Slavery remains legal in Ceylon. The economic policy of Ceylon can be described as state capitalist and protectionist, leaving the reins of economic activities tightly in the hands of the state. Minority religions face persecution and their adherents are not allowed in public office. Minority citizens face discrimination.

***

The Wallachian Empire

Population: est. 30.87M (-4.93M from 1836)
Capital: Bucharest, est. 429 000 in capital area (-9K from 1836)
Government: Constitutional Monarchy
Head of State: Emperor Vlad III Draculesti
State Religion: Bogomilist Christianity
Estimated Army Size: 135 000 standing, 270 000 reserves

Industrial Estimate: 106 (#5)
Top Producer Of: Cement, Steamers, Fertilizer

Recent History: The past decades have been turbulent for the Wallachian Empire. Coups, counter-coups and destructive wars reduced the once-mighty power from the ranks of the Great Nations, culminating in the 'silent revolution' of 1865, when millions of serfs and liberal-minded freemen essentially went on strike against the reactionary imperial government. Mutinous sentiments in the army prevented the usual bloody crackdown and the state was forced to back down. A liberal wave swept the Wallachian government, leading to the establishment of constitutional monarchy - though claims are frequently made that the apparently free representative assembly and new independent judiciary are somehow in thrall to the House of Draculesti behind the scenes. Regardless, Wallachia stands poised to reclaim its place on the world stage. Strong industrial and economic growth and military success seem to pave the road to fresh triumphs.

Government: Wallachia is a constitutional monarchy. The Emperor has little open power, with most old imperial rights held by a prime minister chosen by the Parlamentul. All citizens meeting certain property requirements are eligible to vote and stand for seats in the parliament. Political parties and activism are allowed. No restrictions are placed upon the freedom of the press. State-governed trade unions are legal. Slavery and serfdom are outlawed, with the recent liberation leaving millions of landless freedmen flocking to cities for work.

***

The Kingdom of Bavaria

Population: est. 6.86M
Capital: München, est. 819 000 in capital area
Government: Constitutional Monarchy
Head of State: King Ludwig II de Bourcq
State Religion: Catholic Christianity
Estimated Army Size: 39 000 standing, 195 000 reserves

Industrial Estimate: 53 (#11)
Top Producer Of: Clothes

Recent History: The Kingdom of Bavaria has excelled recently mostly in cultural pursuits and economic growth, including the development of a profitable textile industry. It has ambitions on southern German territories in the region, however, and may find its war footing soon enough. Constitutional reforms in the 1850s have made Bavaria an exemplar constitutional monarchy, stabilizing its internal situation.

Government: Bavaria is a constitutional monarchy. The King serves as the head of state and may veto legislation, but must sign it into law after it has been reconsidered and passed again. Each state sends representatives into the Bavarian Landtag, which proposes and passes legislation and forms His Majesty's government. The voting franchise is universal and standing for office open for all Bavarian citizens. Political parties and activism are allowed. No restrictions are placed upon the freedom of the press. Non-socialist trade unions are legal. Slavery is outlawed.

The current government party, the Konservative Partei, practices a protectionist and interventionist economy. Minorities face persecution.

***

The Dutch State

Population: est. 10.42M
Capital: Amsterdam, est. 444 000 in capital area
Government: Military Dictatorship
Head of State: Admiral Johannes de Vries
State Religion: Lollard Christianity
Estimated Army Size: 132 000 standing, 528 000 reserves

Industrial Estimate: 31 (#15)
Top Producer Of: None

Recent History: The Netherlands have enjoyed victories and expansion in recent decades. A destabilized political situation has, however, led to a military coup in 1859, and a military junta continues to serve as a 'caretaker government' for the indefinite future. This cadre of admirals and generals has maintained order with a strong hand and overseen a revitalization of the Dutch dockyards, but otherwise have allowed the Dutch economy to stagnate.

Government: The Netherlands are governed as a military dictatorship. Legal government has been dissolved under martial law. With official institutions stripped of their power, Dutch administration is essentially a chaotic, amorphous mass of competing ministries and factions fighting for the ear of the junta. Private presses must only print material approved and directed by the state. Slavery has been relegalized in the Netherlands. Unions are outlawed. The ruling faction practices an interventionist and protectionist economic policy. Minorities are persecuted.

***

The Kingdom of Beja

Population: est. 5.15M
Capital: Lisbon, est. 2.1M in capital area
Government: Constitutional Monarchy
Head of State: King Ernesto I Suleyman
State Religion: Catholic Christianity
Estimated Army Size: 102 000 standing, 408 000 reserves

Industrial Estimate: 24 (#17)
Top Producer Of: None

Recent History: Beja is the ascendant power in Iberia. With Italian aid, it has crushed the 'Young Spaniard' popular unification movement and checked the ambitions of Aragon. Steady growth and military investments have made Beja a strong regional power.

Government: Beja is a constitutional monarchy. The King serves as the head of state and may veto legislation, but must sign it into law after it has been reconsidered and passed again. The parliament proposes and passes legislation and forms His Majesty's government. The voting franchise is restricted to Portuguese and Spanish men meeting certain property requirements. Political parties and activism are allowed. No restrictions are placed upon the freedom of the press. Non-socialist trade unions are legal. Slavery is outlawed.

***

Republic of Argentina

Population: est. 1.66M
Capital: Antofagasta, est. 737 000 in capital area
Government: Republic
Head of State: President Cornelis Klaver
State Religion: Lollard Christianity
Estimated Army Size: 102 000 standing, 408 000 reserves

Industrial Estimate: 0
Top Producer Of: None

Recent History: The Argentine Republic has strengthened its position in South America through war and diplomatic triumphs. It seeks to claim all of the Argentine region and is thus in frequent conflict with the Platinean and Catholic nation of Buenos Aires on its eastern borders.

Government: Argentina is a democratic republic. The States General debates, proposes and passes legislation. The electorate also votes in a President to serve fixed four-year terms. Only Dutch-speaking citizens of certain property limits are allowed to vote and run for office. The office of the President represents the executive branch of government and has significant political powers in the American model. Political parties and activism are allowed. The state employs censors to fine and suppress offensive publications. Trade unions are legal in any form. Slavery remains legal in Argentina.[/CENTER]

Photomajig · Jul 9, 2021

Excerpts from 'European Classics, Vol. V: the Modern Novel', a 1972 German-language literature textbook

Luigi Raphael Bardaro: THE MYSTERY OF THE ORIENTAL LINE, 1874

Bardaro's classic short novels of the 1870s pioneered the detective fiction genre and laid down many of the devices and tropes used in the formula today. Most famous and well-received of these works is without doubt the 1874 tale, THE MYSTERY OF THE ORIENTAL LINE, which is the first of his books to feature the protagonist of William Lancer, the Scotland Yard detective. In this at times humorous, at times terrifying mystery, Lancer is caught in the turmoil of the Second Greek-Wallachian War of 1868 while on cruise aboard a luxury steamship of the Oriental Line. The strong narrator's voice deftly depicts the savage warfare and tension under the genteel mask of Europe's society in this period, showing this fundamental contradiction through characters such as the Italian arms merchant Pietroniro and the Wallachian hussar captain Bologa.

The steamship becomes a personal purgatory for those passengers trapped within it as the narrative progresses. With hostile waters all around and uncertain fates looming on the mainland, secrets come to light and polite appearances give way to harsh truths. Bardaro weaves expertly through the eyes and feelings of each character, even as the central mystery remains clouded from the reader. This deeply psychological and introspective look into the hearts of men and women is something sorely lacking from many later works of Bardaro; indeed, the climax is more standard fare for him even here, as the crucial clue of the murder weapon is a purely technical and technological breakthrough for the detective - a shot thought to be impossible with weapons of the time is realized to have been fired with a novel breech-loading rifle from the arms merchant's stores.

Bardaro's fascination with the rapidly advancing technology and society of the time shines through from the first page to the last. From new forensic methods and criminal studies to the sheer wonder Bardaro's voice conjures for the powerful steamship that he sets the story in, the narrative allows a reader fascinating glimpses into how contemporary audiences and the author himself perceived these innovations. New machines and technologies provoke both joy and curiosity - the experimental camera, the steamship, the character of the engineer Diakos - and horror, as in the case of the commerce-raiding torpedo corvette which comes out of the night and almost sinks the cruise.

(...) The identity of the killer and the rather gruesome details of the murder play into a long tradition of occultism and folklore, with the strong implication of the Wallachian Bologa being a supernatural vampyr, though Bardaro's staunch rationalist worldview appears to have stopped him short of outright stating it to be so. (...)

***

Excerpts from 'Italy and the World: the Italian Empire in the Modern Period', written by Hugo Fourier (Firenze: 1977)

(...) This meant that Italy would merely wait and watch as its old enemy, Wallachia, fought a vicious two-front war in the east. Italian feeling was hardly pro-Greek after the perceived humiliation of the King by the Greek independence movement and its alignment with the French - general opinion appears to have been that of wishing for both sides to suffer. Czechoslovakia and Croatia's entrance into the war was of some concern for Italian strategists - a stronger northern neighbor was not desirable, with Czechoslovakian feeling generally anti-Italian according to reports. Croatia was feared to fall to Wallachia if the tide turned against the Czechoslovak-Croat alliance, potentially removing them as an useful buffer on the Wallachian border.

(...) In any case, Italy was more concerned with the ongoing 'hunt for the Nile'. The Morini-Hofler expedition had been for three years sending back enthralling reports of Africa as they delved deeper into the territories of Alodia and Ajuraan, searching for the source of the Nile. The expedition had, of course, more to do with espionage than actually trying to locate the origin of the great river, which in any case was well known to the states of the East African coast as the Nyanza Lake in the Sofalan Empire. Giovanni Morini, the leader of the expedition, had been tasked by Prince Goffredo with ascertaining the military strengths of the local powers and mapping out the region to the best of his abilities. Local authorities were rightfully suspicious of the Italian adventurers, but a combination of bribes, gunboat diplomacy and assistance from local rebels allowed the expedition to bypass them.

(...) Wallachia's remarkable resilience in the War is a story for another book - an impressive triumph brought about by the 1865 liberation of the serfs and constitutional reforms among other things - but in Italy it was met with some apprehension. Wallachia had failed in its original invasion of Greece, but it had repulsed the Greek counter-attack and earned itself a truce, while the Czechoslovakian offensive had been thoroughly broken and turned back. Croatia, the ally of the Czechs, was thrown to the wolves to avoid a Wallachian occupation of Czechoslovakia - forcing the Croatians into a separate peace where they ceded the Hungarian-majority region of Transdanubia to Wallachian control.

(...) The Czechoslovakian war effort collapsed entirely with the surprise invasion of Czechoslovak Krems by Bavarian forces. Czechoslovakia had attacked a distracted Wallachia, only to suffer the same fate in turn. Bavarian forces quickly overwhelmed Czech militias. The Czechoslovak government rushed to accept the loss of Krems and then turned around to accept a white peace with the Wallachian Empire. The chaotic conflict was finally over, but where Greece was concerned, it was going to be merely a ceasefire. (...)

1869 saw the Akan Incident, as a visiting Italian diplomat in the Akan Sultanate in western Africa was taken for a slaver by local abolitionist militias and beaten publicly. The assault provoked widespread outrage in Italy, a fervor of racialist and nationalist antipathy which allowed the Italian government to sweep under the fact that the diplomat had, in fact, been engaged in illegal slave trade on behalf of Brazilian plantation interests. (...) The Italian ultimatum appears to have only stiffened Akan defiance. The Italian mission in the nation's capital was besieged and burned to the ground. Within the month, Italian forces were marching into Akan to 'restore order'.

(...) For the Italian Army, the conflict offered an opportunity to try out new armaments bought on a trial basis from the Campanian Vulcan Company only weeks before. These proto-machineguns were cumbersome, ammunition-hungry and unreliable, but the horrifying effect they had when used against Akan line formations in pitched battle stunned contemporary observers. The small African sultanate had invested in modern rifles and artillery, but its tactics still lagged behind modern doctrines, held back by powerful and conservative warrior elites in its military. (...) In October 1870, the Sultan of Akan surrendered into Italian custody, ending its history as an independent state. From now on, Italy would dictate the policies of the small nation - with the first step being the dissolution of all tariffs and import bans, flooding the local populace with Italian currency and Italian products. The nation's modest economy effectively collapsed overnight in the face of this onslaught. (...)

***

Letter dated 9 April 1876 from Goffredo Guerra, Prince of Italy and Imperial Heir, to Kazimierz II Andrzej Guerra, King of Poland

My dear cousin,

You write with keen insight on the American situation. The South has been well and truly shackled by now, which is well. Now the Americans seek to complete their conquest of the West. The Columbian heartland on the Pacific high coast has fallen, annexed as the state of New Bengal. The remaining Columbians have fled north into the frigid wasteland of Alaska, for reasons that cannot be fathomed. Likely they will rather perish in that hell than admit their defeat. No true enemies now remain for the United States, and it appears that the border with Canada is settled to satisfaction at last. I cannot say if the same applies for Mexico; the American takes some wicked pleasure out of dominating their less fortunate sibling in the south, I find.

Our brave explorers in the eastern parts of Africa continue to send the most thrilling reports. The Alodian Sultanate is, as you will have heard, far stronger than we have thought. They have seized the Egyptian deserts has thus forged a border with our holdings in Matruh. Of course it scarcely matters who holds those sands, as long as trade northward is guaranteed. For this, I welcome the ascendancy of the Alodians. Their rule is far stronger than that of the Egyptians ever was. No more shall caravans go missing on their way to Alexandria. I expect the Iraqis to seize what remains of Egypt soon enough.

The Draculesti have renewed hostilities with the Greeks once more, which you will know by now. Perfidious Gaul supports the Wallachian cause. Our Father is not interested in intervention at this time. A pity! But if the Greeks lose, I shall not weep for them. We have crushed Wallachia in the past, and we may very well do so again if they demand it of us. But the Greeks can stand to be humbled. We have given up all hope of restoration there, so it is in our interest to see them weakened.

The Persians, also, are on the march. They have given up the peace to battle an old friend, the Mughal Empire. The Mughals have accomplished curious reforms in the past decades, which might give them a fighting chance. Our sympathies are for Persia. We share an irritant in the Greeks and Wallachians. Matters of faith and race may be put aside - I have told Father frequently that it is in the East where we must find allies. The Chinese, perhaps, if the Persians prove too stubborn to take the olive branch offered.

I am told the Chinese rule over one hundred and fifty million souls. And that is only in their present territories! Their reach grows by the year. What numbers! And somehow they are all fed and reasonably content. The ignorant and small mind is easy to please, of course, but even so - what a triumph! With such numbers, who could oppose us? I have given orders to encourage the cultivation of rice. Surely there is the secret of their fecundity. But I fear Italy offers a less fertile soil for such growth.

The Chinese now go to war against the Avan Empire, seizing lost provinces of the previous Dynasty in their quest to reunify all of China. Oh, their tactics are primitive, their armies low in modern armaments. But by Jove! With so many bodies, who needs a rifle? Of course, we have now witnessed the terrible power of the machine gun against mass infantry: but such weapons have only so much ammunition to waste. There is no end to these Chinamen.

P.S.: You predicted well, my friend, when you warned me against the Red scourge. It is not merely the students and the utopianists who have been taken by this rot, as I thought. A sinister hand appears to move even the common worker to partake in and spread their doctrine. Now we are plagued by professional agitators. Theirs is an international brotherhood and they move unchecked by our border guards and censors, peddling their subversion at every factory yard in this country. Oh, most of the workers care nothing for their dreams. But enough do to concern Government, and the industrialists. We have taken steps to appease them. If the common worker chooses to spit on the hand that aids him, we have no choice but to give the rapacious banker and the factory magnate what they want. Father has agreed to shuffle the Imperial Cabinet. We shall have some new blood in our halls - a loosening of the reins of the economy, so to please these company men. A slight loosening, to be clear. They shall remember who rules in Italy still. We pray for the restoration of your Throne to its proper position likewise.

We have strengthened the police when it comes to these union agitators. I expect these troublemakers will be behind bars soon enough, and that'll be the end of that. Such devilry we are beset with in this day and age!

Your friend and cousin,
Goffredo Guerra
Prince of Italy

Photomajig · Jul 18, 2021

Excerpts from 'Italy and the World: the Italian Empire in the Modern Period', written by Hugo Fourier (Firenze: 1977)

(...) The 1870s and 1880s brought the Iberian Question back into the spotlight. The extermination of the Young Spaniard movement had crushed the hopes of the old unionists, but the new generation coming to the stage were daring to speak once more of an united Iberia. Despite widespread popular support, the political situation did not favor unification. The central Iberian states of Beja, Aragon and Galicia were unwilling to compromise or concede any measure of their power in an union state. Such a nation would be dominated by one of these powers, and the rough balance of power within the peninsula prevented any one of them from pressing their claim by force.

Politics of the time were chaotic. The Iberians were not the only ones concerned with the future of the region. Beja and Sevilla, in the south, aligned themselves with the great power of Italy; Galicia in the north with Britain; and Aragon with France. The tense relationship of these empires meant that any attempt at reconciliation and cooperation between the Iberian states was taken as a sign of interference by a rival. Peaceful union was made impossible by international politics. (...) Italian influence waned in the late 1870s as French and British diplomatic efforts managed to realign the southern powers away from Italy. Canny Iberian leaders declined to kowtow entirely to either Britain and France, however, leaving them to benefit from the bribes and favors of the three powers each in turn. (...)

Persian triumph in the Khorasani War in 1876 was a cause of some celebration in the Italian court. Persia was seen by this point as a valuable counterweight in the East, checking Greek expansion and helping maintain the weakness of South East Asia through its gunboat diplomacy. Persia's lack of interest in an alliance prevented these strategic considerations from ever developing into something closer, but relations between the two powers became comfortably cordial by 1880. (...)

Wallachian success was less welcome, even if it did come at the expense of the Greek. The military alliance between France and Wallachia threatened an encirclement of Italy and a familiar two-front war in the near future. (...) The Wallachian star was certainly on the rise once more. The new model of parliamentary constitutional monarchy had produced a gifted stable of ministers and statesmen. French investment, new exploitation of natural resources and the liberation of the workforce had revitalized a stagnant and backwards economy. A far more reliable army composed of professionals and advised by French officers had replaced the old institution of conscripted serfs and cruel aristocratic officers.

Against this force, the Greek state faltered. Rumors abounded at the time of terror attacks against the Greek leadership and King by shadowy assassins and betrayals by Greek officers and ministers somehow manipulated by Wallachian agents. Certainly, political instability in Greece played a role in its defeat and the loss of Bulgaria and the Macedonian coast. (...)

This 'mutilation' of the Greek nation, as contemporary authors put it, came as a shock to a people used to thinking themselves superior to the backwards and superstitious savages of the Wallachian Empire. Greece's enormous loss of face in the international sphere, as French diplomats demanded acts of humility and surrender in front of Wallachian representatives, reduced it from a junior Great Power into just one of many among the nations of the world. (...) Wallachian influence grew quickly in the following years, even in Serbia, where hatred of the Draculesti and their realm came as a result of centuries of bloody-handed oppression. Italy was fast losing its grasp on the Balkans. (...)

***

Excerpts of a chapter dealing on the formations of modern Sweden and Catalonia, from 'Nationalism and Imperialism in the 19th Century', a 1996 German educational textbook

(...) 1876 saw the formal dissolution of the Gotlander Republic in Scandinavia, reformed into a far more nationalistic Republic of Sweden. This long-awaited proclamation was pushed through despite the opposition of the Finnic faction in the Riksdag, who were now second-class citizens in a nation which had previously at least maintained the illusion of their equality. If the Republic was for the Swedes, what did this mean for the Finns, Sami, Norwegians and other minority peoples under its rule? On the other hand, what did it mean for those Swedish-speaking inhabitants of Denmark?

(...) In 1877, Catalonia assumed its modern name and identity. Years of political struggle between so-called Unionists and Nativists was ended in this symbolic victory for the latter. The Unionist Party had advocated union of all Spain under the Catalonian government, while the Nativists rejected such pan-nationalism and advocated for the advancement of a Catalonian culture and state. While this did not mean the end of such aspirations - especially as the new Catalonian state considered itself the heir of Aragonese claims to territory then under Bejan rule - an united Iberia had ceased to be a practical goal for government. (...)

***

Excerpts of 'Crimson-Taloned Dragons: The Struggle for Chinese Supremacy', written by Wong Yung (Saguenay: 1979)

(...) The Avan Empire, once the terror of East Asia, was on its knees. Chinese armies had occupied the Avan heartlands by mid-1876. Surrender came not long after, with the expected ritual kowtowing of the Avan Emperor publicized across the world. Chinese unity seemed likely - but the Liang had not yet matched their growing might against a truly equal power. The Avan adventure had won the Emperor Guangxi, but it had done something more. It had proven that the modernized Chinese armies could be relied upon to wage war even through the extensive losses incurred in the Avan jungles and highlands.

The time had come to strike at the Manchu and liberate the North. On August 1876, on the very same day of the Avan surrender, the Chinese Empire declared war upon the Manchu. The battle-hardened core of the new Chinese military was still in the west, but the northern armies had undergone the same transformation in training and doctrine as those which had conquered Ava. The general staff held full faith in their ability to overcome the Manchu, who still clung to the detritus of old traditions and limited technology.

It was the greatest war seen in history up until that point. Both sides had armies that numbered in the millions. Such forces were inconceivable in any other corner of the globe. The numbers are misleading, it has to be noted - only a fraction could actually be equipped by modern weaponry despite the booming Chinese industry and technological base. But even those armed with the relics of the past had benefited from new training and military administration, advantages which their similarly armed opponents lacked. (...) The Manchu and their Kumtag allies had dominated northern China for decades. The Manchu had expanded into the most populous areas of the world and vanquished local states with ingenious strategies and well-drilled forces, and these advantages had not vanished into the aether. But they had been left behind by time.

(...) Peace terms came only a year later, in August 1877. A bleeding Manchu agreed to exceedingly harsh terms, ceding a huge portion of its population and land area. The state remained, with considerable territories and military strength, but its most vital regions had been torn out after twelve months of incredible slaughter. Over one and a half million fighting men are recorded to have been lost. China fared little better, with almost 800 000 lost. Millions of civilians perished in the fighting; economic and social devastation must have been inconceivable. (...) The China of the Liang had proven its supremacy. It had overcome the final challenge. The Empire was back. (...)

***

Excerpts of 'The American Empire: How the United States Enslaved A Continent', written by Édith Laurent (Port-Royal: 1972)

(...) The American government piled fresh outrage upon outrage. The war had been an imperialist campaign to bully Mexico into submission from the beginning, but American greed now showed itself even more openly. The Senate voted to seize the state of Sonora from Mexico as 'reparations' for a conflict they had begun in the first place. Mass ethnic displacement and aggressive Americanization campaigns in the aftermath of the war effectively constitute cultural genocide. 'Unreliable' Mexicanos were deported en masse across the border to make way for 'loyalist' white Italo-Americanos from the north. (...) No memorials exist in present-day Sonoran State for this legacy of racialist and exceptionalist excess. (...)

In the shadow of the Scramble for Africa and the High Imperialist project, American imperialism is often left unnoticed. They do not exist separate from one another, however. The colonization of the United States by its white majority and the colonization of Africa are twin projects, reflecting one another in many ways. (...) Even as Italian, French, British and Persian administrators drew up their plans for annexation of African native kingdoms and tribes, the government in Saguenay drafted racial laws and enforced conformity from the barrel of a gun. Indeed, American writers and policymakers were eager investors and sponsors of colonial projects, seeking to simultaneously 'civilize' the African continent and their own.

***

Excerpts from 'Italy and the World: the Italian Empire in the Modern Period', written by Hugo Fourier (Firenze: 1977)

(...) Dreams of African hegemony suffused the Florentine court. The Maghreb was ever more volatile by the year, but colonial officers plotted increasingly more ambitious schemes to bring the 'savage' territories of the Earth under Italian rule, Africa foremost among them. The problem of the Maghreb received much attention in the early 1880s. Imperialist rhetoric painted the Maghreb as a land too close and integrated into the European sphere for comfort; inflaming the passions of the native Arabs with wild liberal ideas and practices unsuitable for them, thus causing the disorder and disturbances the region was increasingly known for. In comparison, sub-Saharan Africa was a virgin land, untainted by the degeneracy of the European lifestyle - a land of noble savages who would welcome Italian development and administration.

(...) Later thinkers would take on a harsher bent, having experienced the resistance to European rule by natives. In these racialist screeds, Africa is a dark and primitive continent waiting to be subjugated by the white Italian man. With his immigration and strong hold on the land, he will in time replace the simple-minded and genetically inferior black native. Many colonial officers went further and 'eased the way' for this expected natural 'whitening' of Africa by massacring native populations in one-sided 'wars' and labor camps. (...)

The Hausan 'Purchase' marks the beginning of this new era of High Imperialism. The vast Hausan Empire had for nearly a century served as a protectorate of Italy. In the past two decades, Italian infiltration of this once-prosperous realm had shackled it tightly to Italy. The economy of Hausa was reliant on Italian currency and goods; domestic production had collapsed, with Italian imports feeding, clothing and entertaining the Hausan millions. The Kings of Hausa lived in excessive luxury paid for by Italian diplomats and armed their personal guards with Italian arms.

Such a relationship meant that Italy virtually ruled in Hausa. In 1880, this rule was made official. Hausa had slipped into an political and social crisis thanks to a price hike on Italian imports. With drought and rebellion looming, the Hausan government rushed to accept generous Italian loans which saved their personal fortunes and preserved the realm. The only price was the installment of an Italian governor over the King - and the consolidation of Hausa into the Italian West African colonial government. The last dregs of Hausan independence were gone. (...)

Similar developments in the small Kingdom of Luba followed in 1881. British Royal Marines supported a palace coup that saw the new pretender sign his realm over to British mercantile interests. Within the year, Luba had been reorganized into the British Colony of Angola. (...) Slowly but surely, Africa was tumbling into the arms of European empires.

These triumphs did little to ease tensions at home. In Italy, popular 'chartist' movements seeking political representation and enfranchisement for the common people were growing rapidly. Though still more liberal- and reform-minded than outright revolutionary, these mass movements were building the foundations of italian Socialism and the boundless masses it would in time reach. Fears of revolution gripped the ailing King, marching him faster and faster towards death's door. Italy would soon face one of its greatest challenges yet. (...)

Photomajig · Jul 26, 2021

Excerpts from 'The Water Madness', a 1912 semi-autobiographical novel by Italo-Akan writer and revolutionary Kwame Adjaye

(...) For thirty-five years, my father had worked that land. When the whites first came to seek out gold and ore, he mapped out the richest veins and dug out their treasures to sell to the Italian mission in the city. This was profitable business, though they paid far less than we later learned those things were worth. In any case it was not worth so much to us, and we assumed we made good bargains. In those times the wealth of an enterprise was shared among the village; and so we came to enjoy great respect in our community.

When I was ten years old, the king of the Akan sold our people to the Emperor of the Italians. Very soon men of the new governor began to appear at the village. They had pieces of paper and self-assured airs and they told us it was now illegal for a black man to own a mine. At this we laughed and ignored them, for a while. But then they returned with the soldiers, who were men of the Tchaman, who had no great love for us, and we were bound to submit. So went the paths and the carts and the tunnels and the picks and all the other apparatus of my father's work. They put up a great chain by the mouth of the mine and placed there a sign that told us of its new owners.

Later my father tried to sneak into the tunnels to work them as he always had. There was a great stubbornness in him up until the end. So those of the village who were now paid Italian paper to guard the mine found him and beat him savagely. After that my father did not try to do so again. But he could not be made not to work, so for the ten remaining years of his life, he worked there in the mine he had built for the distant white men who now possessed it and all within it. And the guts of the earth were turned upside out and the mountain scooped hollow; and not a penny of the wealth that rose from those depths was seen by our village again.

(...) When I grew into my manhood, and learned of the world, I came to know the terrible swiftness with which the Europeans had broken our world. Oh, it was a poor world, in many regards. And I hear many of my companions still mouth the same poisonous half-truths - did they not bring medicines, or railways, or canned foods and the products of the metropole, or indeed civilization? Did they not bring us God, who cast out Kwaku Ananse and all his kin? Did they not teach us the proper roles for men and women, and the way to count descent from fathers in the place of mothers? And in this vein they allow themselves to only remember that which was imperfect of the past. Civilization! What fearsome weapons such ideas are.

(...) In this frenzy of feeding, the Italian and the French and the English and all his companions gobbled up the free states of Africa. And when they were done, and the blood still trickled from the corners of their mouths, they looked to each other and said; "Oh, you may have this piece; but kindly spare me this in turn", and with such exceeding civility were the maps of the world redrawn. (...)

***

Excerpts from 'Italy and the World: the Italian Empire in the Modern Period', written by Hugo Fourier (Firenze: 1977)

(...) The European stick-and-carrot worked almost everywhere. The advent of world powers with their professional armies, machine guns and ability to project force anywhere on the globe made resistance futile for the weaker powers of Africa. Small polities and tribes fell often without realizing they had been subjugated. Economic domination and engineered market collapse were effective tools of the imperialist, even if they were often wielded completely unintentionally in the chaos of colonial adventuring and opportunism. (...)

Only the most isolated and hostile of powers could defy this encroachment. The Kingdom of Sao, in central Africa, proved resilient in the face of Italian advances. With soft power failing them, Italy turned to conquest instead. (...) The regiments for these small-scale colonial wars of the 1880s were drawn from local populations. Strategies of divide-and-conquer allowed European colonial governments to play on ethnic differences and tribal feuds to integrate certain groups into the machinery of oppression.

(...) In South East Asia, similar developments were underway as well. (...) The once-mighty Malaccan maritime empire had sold away its sovereignty bit by bit to the Chinese court, until only a polite illusion of statehood remained. (...) Ancient trade ports and ethnic Chinese communities in the thriving commercial hubs of the region began a rapid transformation. Harbors which once bustled with fat-bellied merchant junks were now increasingly crowded with new imperial ironclads. Ritual tribute and kowtow were joined by imperial agents and garrisons which now dictated direct orders to local administrators. (...) In 1881, China annexed the remains of Malacca, laying a new and aggressive claim to Indochina and beyond.

The blood was in the water. The Sultans of Brunei, old rivals of the Malays, were convinced that the Celestial Empire would come for them next. Their benefactor of Italy stretched out a hand and offered a poisonous gift. Italy would take over the military defense of Brunei and its territories, protecting the Sultan against China's ravenous expansion. Developments in the Brunei Empire had been toward greater dependence on Italy for decades, and now they reached their peak. With Italian marines occupying all key sites of government and defense, Brunei could not have resisted if it had desired to do so. Only two months after Malacca's annexation by China, Brunei became an official protectorate and possession of the Italian Empire. (...)

Both Malacca and Brunei had suffered from their backwardness. Limited literacy and education, a minimal technological base and old-fashioned structures of state ensured routine takeover by greater foreign powers. The other states of South-East Asia were not such easy prey. (...) Responses to the rapidly growing phenomenon of High Imperialism in the region varied. In Sukhothai, the military dictatorship of Chitra Amatayakul - the infamous 'kingslayer tyrant' - pursued an aggressive campaign of administrative modernization together with nationalist propaganda and education, with the aim of mobilizing the small nation's populace under one banner. This culminated in the official adoption of Mueang Thai as the name of the nation-state in October 1881, though outsiders especially in the West generally began the usage of 'Siam' instead.

(...) In Africa, the Sao-Italian War ended as swiftly as it had begun. Like many such conflicts, it is characterized by the extensive use of local soldiers from rival or distant ethnic groups to subjugate and brutalize hostile populations. (...) These colonial regiments had been trained to high standards and equipped with modern Italian weaponry. Their campaign in Sao progressed quickly, with the forces of the isolated native state crushed in a series of pitched battles. With traditional forms of warfare failing them, the Saon forces engaged in a semi-successful campaign of guerilla warfare throughout the decades to come, bleeding the Italians for their conquest. (...)

State press reports of this period would have you believe that the local regiments fitted seamlessly into the Italian colonial army - simple-minded, loyal and appropriately martial Africans happily swearing their fealty to the King in Italy. In truth, Italian officers had frequent trouble with their native soldiers. Insubordination and desertion was common. Orders were routinely ignored by soldiers when it suited them, subverting the harsh discipline beaten into the recruits as proscribed in the Manual of Drill. This reflects a general discontent that followed the consolidation of Italian rule in the new colonies. (...) Italian colonial authorities repressed defiance with brutal methods. The Zaria Massacre is perhaps the most well-known of such incidents, but similar heavy-handed acts of reprisal and bloody punishment were common in Italian West Africa. (...)

These disturbances did not prevent the fall of Sao. The hermit kingdom of the African interior was virtually annexed and eventually integrated into the Italian colonial empire, which now stretched across much of the African continent. The greatest empire of the period was taking shape. (...)

***

Excerpts from 'The Imperial Histories: Vol XII, High Imperial Persia', written by Akbar Ali Khatami (Tabriz: 1942)

(...) The decrepit Somalian Empire had been unable to withstand the deluge of Sofalan and Alodian invasions in the late 1870s. Persian intervention had saved the Somalian realm from total collapse and partition, but the most bitter loss of Gondor-Tigray had shocked the Somali people. With the military in shambles, the Emperor begged for a permanent Persian expeditionary corps to help maintain order in his lands. (...) At the request of the Somali Emperor, Persia took on more and more responsibilities in the administration of the ineffective Somalian nation. (...) In 1882, Shah Mohammad Khan dissolved what remained of the Somalian state, overseeing widespread reforms and rationalization of Somali governance in its place. (...)

With the beginning of the Khorasan War in August, these developments became a lesser priority. The Mughal Empire's invasion became a testing ground for new Persian armaments and reformed military doctrine. (...) Some volunteers even arrived from the new Somali territories, repaying Persian generosity with their lives and service. (...) Though relatively bloody, Persian victory was inevitable from the first skirmishes, with the Mughals lagging behind in modern technologies and tactics. (...)

The opportunism of the Greeks in attempting to stab Persia in the back while the Shah contended with the Mughals was harshly punished. (...) Peace terms saw the return of northern Caucasia to rightful Persian hands, unifying the west of the realm once more. The Persian Empire was asserting its power as the hegemon of central Eurasia. (...)

***

Excerpts from 'Italy and the World: the Italian Empire in the Modern Period', written by Hugo Fourier (Firenze: 1977)

(...) Any hopes for a Chinese-Italian alliance were crushed in mid 1882, with the invasion of Avan Indochina by the Chinese Empire. Italy had variously warned and begged China not to expand further in the region in a confused attempt to contain rapidly growing Chinese power. These entreaties fell on deaf ears. The Avan Empire fared as badly as in the previous war this time around as well, swiftly losing Tonkin and Yunnan to the Celestial Empire. Italian military advisors in the region noted the slow but steady improvement in Chinese soldiering and tactics, as well as the propagation of modern rifles and artillery. (...) With Italy seeking to consolidate its hold on maritime South East Asia, China's ambitions were a serious threat. (...)

Better success was had in Europe. The Sorbian liberation movement, bolstered by generous funding by American Novysvet Sorbs, enjoyed its greatest success yet. A diplomatic crisis broke out in October 1882 over Slesvig-Holstein after wide-ranging agitation by Sorbian activists. This Danish-governed region held a majority-Sorbian population and tales of Danish cultural oppression had aroused the sympathies of the international intelligentsia. Czechoslovakia saw in this 'crisis of conscience' a chance to strengthen its Sorbian satellite state, while Italy leapt at the chance to weaken its rival France, the patron of the Danish nation.

(...) A turbulent France had no desire to call Italy's bluff. On the 12th of December 1882, French diplomats informed the Danish ambassador that the French Empire was withdrawing its support in the matter. With no hope of withstanding Italo-Czechoslovak aggression on its own, the Danish king caved in on the 17th of December. The Sorbian territories of the region were surrendered to Sorbia, with the exception of Danish-majority Hamborg. (...)

This show of French weakness emboldened enemies of Denmark. Bavaria followed on the heels of the Sorbs, issuing a formal plea of support to Italy over their claims to Danish-ruled Saxony. While Bavarian ambitions were something to watch carefully, as far as the Italian establishment was concerned, this chance to follow up on the Sorbian victory could not be passed up. (...) Danish envoys begged at court in Versailles for French aid, but in vain. Danish Saxony was ceded to a triumphant Bavaria without a shot fired by a bitterly resentful Denmark. (...)

In France, nationalistic press became a frenzied campaign castigating the government for this 'national humiliation' and 'impotence', aided by sympathetic ministers in government. In a private cabinet meeting, French Emperor Charles VI vowed that France would not 'take one step back' any longer - and suggested that revenge on the Italians might come very soon. (...)

***

Unidentified journal, c. 1883, discovered preserved in a shipwreck off Sumatra

I was too late. The ritual could not be stopped. The Dragon's disciples guarded the island too well and felled me time and time again on my desperate attempts to make landfall. My allies are all dead, and there is no coming back for them. They are far from the only ones. The power in this sorcery! For one, terrible moment, the Maiden stood manifest on this Earth. The mountain woke and thundered and swallowed thousands in its wrath - I could do nothing. Nature at its most potent. Krakatoa is no more; and there is little left of the villages I came through on my way here. As for myself, I died countless times in that choking ash and drowning torrents. Only when the earth was settled once more was I able to move unhindered.

What did they seek to accomplish in this? Was this a success, or a dismal failure? It is too much to hope for that my enemy would have perished in that fire.

He has gone, I think, into the wars in China. I will not find him in that butchery. What is one more corpse among thousands? The flesh of China is pockmarked by the mass graves of its wars. But I will follow, regardless. The Chinese Emperor goes to war once more against his northern rival. The Manchu are a shadow of their glory. But the Chinese are a most cyclical race, I find. Their empires rise, fall, shatter only to rise once more. A time may well come when the Celestial Empire once more dominates the globe. But that matters little for me. The secret war must continue... (...)

***

Photomajig · Aug 6, 2021

Excerpt from 'Populism and Nationalism At The Turn Of The Century', written by Anton Lund (Stockholm: 1960)

(...) Elsewhere, nationalism was far from a movement of the masses. The Grand Duchy of Lietuva to the east of Poland had been dominated by its ethnic Polish ruling class since its inception. These aristocratic families held the vast majority of arable land and managed the nation's nascent industries. For the Byelorussian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Russian minorities working their fields and manufactories, questions of national identity were distant. Some attempts had been made by the weak central government to construct an artificial 'Lietuvan' identity, with no apparent success. The medieval identification with one's lord and superior no longer functioned to guarantee the social order.

Instead, Polish pan-nationalism thrived among the educated nobility. The weak Grand Duke and the state apparatus had everything to lose from an union with Poland, but the aristocratic kingmakers saw only profit. (...) The nobles' revolt of 1885 swiftly overwhelmed the small forces of the throne and proclaimed the formation of a new aristocratic republic.

A hand was soon outstretched towards Poland - Lietuva would join the Polish Kingdom in exchange for various privileges and guarantees of autonomy. The Polish government was quick to accept. (...) The nation had annexed a large amount of territory at the price of some little deniable support for the rebels. The actual work of keeping the new lands would require some diplomatic exertions, however. The neighbors were less than pleased. (...) To ease the concerns of the Estonians, the Russian-speaking eastern provinces of Lietuva were sold to the Estonian crown instead. Polish diplomats were satisfied with this solution, though Lietuvan nobility from the ceded regions less so. The new union was off to a rocky start. (...) The nobility who had sold their state to the government in Warsaw were to be bitterly disappointed by their future prospects.

***

Excerpts from 'Red Rose of Freedom: the Birth of Modern Socialism', written by Marco Francesco Scalzi (Monte Baldo: 1982)

(...) That critical moment is often thought to have been the Second Internationale of 1883-1886. Its conferences were for the first time dominated by the militant and revolutionary wings of the assembled socialist and anarchist parties and unions. Fiery speeches and belligerent motions of world revolution echoed through the halls which before had mostly heard genteel and intellectual musings on utopian colonies and parliamentary reform. The modest gains of socialist politicians of the old guard in the intervening decades since the hopeful First Internationale could no longer satisfy the new radicals with their working-class backgrounds and first-hand experiences of state and capitalist oppression.

A break was imminent. The reformists could still hold their own among those hailing from democratic, constitutionalist states, but for those toiling under autocratic rule, the inefficacy of peaceful reform had become clear. (...) The Turin Conference of 1886 saw the dramatic walkout of 322 representatives from various social democratic and trade unionist groupings in protest to the 'excesses' and 'self-destructive militancy' of the Revolutionary faction. (...) Tensions within the Revolutionaries' 'big tent' coalition remained high, with anarchists and anarcho-communists butting heads with the centralists over differing visions of what their future revolutionary state would look like, and if indeed the time for such revolution was anywhere near at hand.

The changing of the guard sparked a truly staggering wave of new propaganda and agitation. (...) The masses of discontented working classes found the message of the Revolutionaries far more appealing than the often heavily theoretical and conservative approaches of the Social Democrats. (...) In Italy, the member lists of key revolutionary parties show staggering growth from the 1880s onwards, revealing the dramatic extent of discontent concealed beneath the Italian state's cherished illusion of order and unity.

Indeed, away from the metropole's bourgeois harmony, the margins of the Italian Empire were frantic with activity. The vestigial Saoan Kingdom was annexed in 1885 in an orgy of colonial violence and atrocities by both white Italian and local African troops under their command. The 'safe' coastal territories suffered from 'restless natives' - sophisticated and enduring guerilla campaigns by local displaced elites and popular sympathizers, which assassinated colonial officials and sabotaged economic institutions. (...)

Italy was no easy foe to break, however. Colonial administrators could be extremely capable in combating native unrest. In Malacca, an abortive Malay revolt was subverted by a mixture of bribes, agitation of ethnic tension and scorched-earth terror among the 'enemy' civilian populace. The much-reduced rebellion was easily destroyed when it at last staggered into open battle with Italian colonial forces. (...) Future insurrections were increasingly inclined to look to the socialist underground for aid, intrinsically linking the causes of colonized peoples and exploited labor.

(...) The colonial administration reacted equally harshly against other outbursts of defiance. It was feared that any weakness on Italy's part in the region would embolden China to invade - propelling the nation into an expensive overseas war in a time where feeling at court was overwhelmingly in favor of peace and stability. (...) Fears of Chinese expansionism only grew in 1889, with renewed war in Manchuria. In this vast but swift conflict, the Imperial Chinese forces dealt the killing blow to Manchuria as a contender for Chinese supremacy, annexing its most populous remaining territories in China proper. (...)

***

Excerpts from 'Italy and the World: the Italian Empire in the Modern Period', written by Hugo Fourier (Firenze: 1977)

(...) The nonchalance shown by the Italian general staff in regards to a possible French or Wallachian invasion seems astounding in retrospect. Even as contemporary theorists furtively speculated about the danger of a great, global war looming in the future, Italy's leadership was committed to ever-lasting peace. Foreign writers certainly expected conflict between the Great Powers, either in Asia or in Europe. Even the concerns of colonial administrations over a Chinese war were curiously muted and cautious, despite the very public 'pact of friendship' forged between the Chinese Empire and France in 1889. (...) Here the autocratic system of rule reveals its limits. The new King, Goffredo II, was an active and energetic ruler, frequently intervening in the day-to-day affairs of his ministries and observing the bureaucracy through a large network of informants.

This meant that whatever the King desired became law, to a far greater extent than usually seen in similar autocratic systems. The King believed in peace and prosperity, with any threats surely coming from within - the workers and the natives - and thus the entire apparatus of state also believed thusly, at least in public. (...) But the relentless logic of history did not yield to Goffredo's optimism. The time had come for a terrible, Greater kind of war.

(...) Italian strategy could thus encompass nothing even remotely aggressive. Italian diplomatic and business interests had for decades sponsored the industrial boom in the autonomous Shun Republic, a satellite state of the Chinese Empire. This small but heavily populated and extremely industrialized region was thought to represent a 'backdoor' means of influencing China. However, the Republic's dizzying success appears to have gone to the heads of its ruling council. In 1891, the Shun refused to pay obeisance to the Chinese Emperor and expelled Chinese Imperial forces from its territory. The small would-be nation demanded nothing less than full independence.

Imperial reaction was swift and predictable. In August 1892, the Empire declared war on the Shun. All eyes now turned to Italy; would they come to the defense of their investment and at last go to war against China? Many at court petitioned just for this course of action, but the King's decision was final. No aid was forthcoming to the Shun.

(...) The war lasted less than six months, but it carried a bloody price in men and destruction. The rich industrial hub of the Shun heartland was devastated and much of its population forcibly deported to the margins of the Empire. The Republic was dissolved and its leaders tried for treason. China's unification was nearing its end. No true rivals now existed to threaten the Imperial Throne's hegemony over the Middle Kingdom. (...) China was ready, then, to look outwards. In a secret meeting in Paris in late 1892, the Chinese crown prince and the French Emperor met and drew up plans for an 'adjustment of the balance of power and the terms of trade', as the minutes of that meeting insisted on putting it. (...)

***

Letter dated June 1, 1893, from an author under the pen name of the Wanderer to Ragnar Fredriksen Pind, a trapper based in Roma, Columbia

My friend,

I am returned to America once more. The steam-ship over the stormy Atlantic conveyed me to New Lombardy, and by my name, what a torrent of humanity it was which came with me! Thousands of hopeful souls seeking better lives in the New World; Italians, Poles, Frenchmen, English, Serbs, Croats, Czechs, Vlachs, who knows what else; and I am told Chinamen, Indians, Japanese and more on the Western coast. I have been taken in by disaffected separatists of Croat stock, who mistook my accent for one of their own. My odd pronunciation of their own native tongue they take for degradation it has suffered from the oppression of Italian schools, and indeed many of them have trouble with the language themselves. There are a great many such souls here in the New World. What Italy scornfully discards, America embraces. Well, embraces, as long as they vote for the right people to be in charge. What a farcical performance democracy is!

In truth this position serves me well. I have followed the vampyr far from China, where I wrote to you last, and tracked a great many of them to this place. They conceal themselves among the common immigrant mass, but then, so do I. For every one I uncover and exterminate, ten more escape me. Their numbers are frightening; though these are the lesser spawn of that terrible sire, many generations diluted and weakened into sorry wretches that cannot even bear the Sun. It appears to me that Dracul has plans for the American experiment. But what? These false immigrants are canny operators; already many of them rub shoulders with the social elite of the Republic. Here, where any man may - they claim! - rise by his own merits, they possess avenues to power denied by older hierarchies. It concerns me.

On a lighter note. I entertain the idea of entering the Olympics. You will have heard of this idea? It is a grand competition of athletics and myriad sports for amateurs of all nations. I am nothing if not the ultimate amateur, and it would be amusing to pit all my skills against those of mortal lives. If the world is indeed becoming a more genteel place, as some claim, I shall require a more peaceful way of expending my energies than the butchery of war. This might answer, though of course I could not carry on doing it forever, lest I'd be forced to answer unwelcome questions.

That is all for today. I look forward to resuming our correspondence now that I am back on this great continent. Reach me by the usual means - or by the telegraph office, if they have one there!

Yours,
The Wanderer

***

Excerpt from 'The Great War: a History', written by Bettino Rattazi (Napoli: 1983)

(...) France had been expanding its shipyards at a rapid pace throughout the 1880s. Despite these investments, French shipyard output lagged considerably behind the Italian naval industry. With new, fully armoured steel ships taken into service in both Italy and France, a naval arms race developed. French military strategists were aware that in the long run Italy's fleet would grow far faster than the French one. Thus, any naval war should be fought in the near future, before the brief parity was lost for good. Without naval supremacy, any hope of contesting Italy's colonial holdings was irrelevant. (...) This was one of the factors influencing the decision-making of the French cabinet in the beginning of 1893, the fateful year of Europe. (...)

On the 12th of November, 1893, the happy illusion of lasting peace for Italy was shattered. France had fought and lost two wars against Italy for Nizza in the 1830s and 1840s. Later defeat in the Franco-Dutch War and Italian triumphs had ended French ambitions over the region - or so the Italian establishment thought. In fact, the revanchist and belligerent mood in France had only grown in the intervening decades. French nationalists resented the vast Italian colonial empire and considered France 'cheated' out of further gains in Africa and Asia. (...) Right-wing popular movements and veterans' leagues demanded action from the Crown. French strategists estimated the odds for victory higher than they ever had been, thanks to huge investments in France's military capabilities in the past two decades.

(...) The old alliance with Wallachia had been joined by a new pact of cooperation with the rising star of the Chinese Empire. This was certainly the most important factor in the French decision to go to war in November 1893. With Chinese numbers and Asian projection of power, the Italians would be pressed hard at every side. China, in turn, had the opportunity to extend its influence over all of East Asia and banish the Italians from the region. (...) Italian lapses in foreign policy had seen the alliance with Poland terminate in 1890, though the nations still enjoyed friendly relations; still, French thinkers saw any Polish intervention as irrelevant for the course of the war, however much the Polish nation had grown recently.

Italy had not sought war, but that did not mean it was not ready. The foremost Great Power of the world met the incoming deluge head-on and marshaled its forces. It would not surrender one inch of its soil without sacrifice.

***

Excerpts from 'Letters From The Front: Collected Correspondence of Soldiers In The First Great War', edited by Maria Dechoirs (Paris: 1979)

18 November 1893; Italian combat engineer to wife, European Theater, uncensored original

Kisses for my Carlotta,

God only knows how much of this will survive the clever little censor with his black pen of military secrecy. Those fellows like to indulge in pedantry and overcaution. But no matter! My darling, we have marched all day and are damn near spent, but our pace has been worthwhile. The Wallachians are still mobilizing and we've swept over these dismal little towns and closed the roads for miles on end.

Sometimes they close themselves without our help, it has to be said. A war in November! Who has conceived of such a thing? We do our best to make roads and ford waters, but by God the rain and mud makes a mockery of it. It won't be fast going for much longer, not with the trenches and fortresses they've set up in these parts. If we let them occupy any one of them properly, we'll have a hell of a time trying to blow them out.

So it goes! We will cast them out nevertheless. The bastards think to attack us. I bet they were not expecting us to go on the offensive! I approve of this strategy, as much as my poor feet do not. Onwards, ever onwards! Be brave for me at home, my little darling, and write to me daily of the little one. (...)

22 November 1893; French colonial officer to father, West African Theater, uncensored original

Sir,

I must protest at your description of the local stock, as you see fit to call them. The blacks under my command have performed bravely and admirably in these first weeks of war. We are plagued by ill-supply and low stores of modern equipment - only twenty good rifles to a company! - but they make do never the less with the most astounding degree of ingenuity and cleverness. They are most attentive listeners to the chaplain - far more attentive than my scoundrel regulars - and never fail to discharge their orders to their fullest. As comrades they appear cheerful and united. In short they are everything one could hope for in a Frenchman, and I dearly hope you will come to see the error of your judgement.

The Italians press us pretty hard. We were caught unprepared by the call to war - your usual Colonial Office incompetence, but I shall speak no more of it - and so we are struggling to coordinate our defense. It is defense, it must be said, however pretty of a picture they try to paint of it in Paris. We must have a great many more reinforcements if we are to claim the Italian colonies. Certainly we shall require a flotilla or several of those new ships; the Italians have scarcely two warships here to rub together, so naval assets would win us the game and quick, I think.

I've my first taste of combat, as you may have gathered. I commanded a successful fighting withdrawal from Dandou over the river - you will understand from the map I send with this letter - and the destruction of the bridge to deny it to the Italians. It is nothing you will see in the paper, but it is my own first glimpse of glory. But what butchery modern war is! We raked them with the company machine-gun as they sought to storm the bridge, and God be my witness, they were stacked by their hundreds on the bridgehead when we were done.

(...)

25 November 1893; upper-class Malay auxiliary in Italian Army to patron, Indonesian Theater, uncensored original

Dear Sir,

I hope all is well with you and yours. You have expressed your curiosity regarding the war, and I will humbly express my understanding of events. We are here engaged in a pleasant little diversion against the Chinese. The Italian generals wish for us to take the southern tip of the peninsula; Johor Bahru and Singapore, which the Chinese garrison is moving to defend. We are quite literally on their heels. A rear guard of stragglers was encountered and engaged by our cavalry some days past. They formed a line and peppered us with their odd little rifles - a line, I say, in the old manner of things. Our guns made pretty short work of them.

So these are the new Chinese legions. Of course, this was a mere garrison militia, not those dreaded Imperial Guards. But for all their numbers the Chinese clearly know nothing of modern warfare. Yet I am concerned at the scarcity of regiments in our corps. The Italians will not hold the peninsula with 30,000 men and 8 old ironclads. For one, there's not enough of us to spread across this territory. I have advised my Italian superiors of this fact and, alas, received some degree of scorn and indifference in return. I shall continue until one of the White officers takes up my call; and then we may see some true change. (...)

***

Excerpt from 'The Great War: a History', written by Bettino Rattazi (Napoli: 1983)

(...) It is possible that the conflict could have remained a localized one without the entry of Poland into the war on the 1st of December, 1893. In a rushed meeting between the Italian and Polish governments, the old alliance was reaffirmed and Poland's aid immediately requested against the French and their allies. Now a cataclysmic sequence of alliances and diplomatic realignments occurred, drawing in allies and satellites of all four Great Powers involved in what was now rapidly becoming the first total, world-spanning, Great War.

The French alliance - the Accord Imperiale - was made up of France itself, the Chinese Empire, Wallachia, Catalonia, Galicia, Alarcon, Denmark and Sweden. Opposing it after December were the Italian-led Central Powers, a vast though lethargic alliance of Italy, Poland, Beja, Albania, Estonia, Iraq, Mughalistan, Ceylon, Ava, the Netherlands and after 1894, Czechoslovakia and Sorbia. Smaller powers also intervened or supported sides in the conflict. Most significantly, the Duchy of Gelre invaded the Netherlands as a co-belligerent of France without formally joining the Accord Imperiale.

The War touched most of Europe. The Franco-Italian border immediately became one of the primary theaters, as did the Wallachian-Italian front in the east. The impact of the Wallachian invasion was blunted by the entrance of Poland into the war, opening a vast new front across Eastern Europe. The East became a chaotic mire of running battles between Poles, Estonians, Wallachians, Swedes, Danes, Pomeranians, Sorbians and Czechs. In Iberia, Bejan and Italian forces fought to repel the united front of Catalonia, Galicia and Alarcon.

(...) The Dutch lines were breached by a massive French offensive only days into the war. The French Navy earned its first victory with the crushing destruction of the entire Dutch High Seas Fleet on the 29th of November. Italian observers darkly took what information they could gleam from the French success, vowing to never allow it to happen again. On land, the massive French advantage in numbers and armaments pushed Dutch forces quickly north towards the coast, with no hope of evacuation after their navy's obliteration. With Gelrean hostility blocking off the east, there was no way out for the Dutch Army. Italian aid could only arrive too late.

There was little to give in any case. The apparent French lethargy of the first days of the war had been revealed as a devastating trap, as crack French divisions surged from the Alps to breach overstretched Italian lines at Mantua, Turin and Savoy. The Italian general staff had seized on the strategy of holding Nizza at any cost - a successfully realized objective in previous wars, but one made irrelevant in this new spirit of warfare. Even as Italian forces wasted themselves attempting to reclaim Nizza, French forces were moving on all sides to encircle them. (...) Here still was warfare of movement at its finest, the last hurrah of the cavalry sabre and the bayonet charge over the trench and barbed wire. (...)

In the East, the weakest link in the Italian alliance, Estonia, was rapidly approaching its shatterpoint. Its southern reaches were flooded with Wallachian invaders, while its north and east lay under Swedish occupation. Poor cooperation between distrustful Polish and Estonian leaders meant that Polish forces lingered far from these crisis areas and thus allowed the enemy to rampage through their theoretical ally. (...)

In early January 1894, the small Duchy of Alarcon in central Iberia fell under Bejan-Italian occupation. Its participation in the War had been a token effort at best, but Italy seized the chance to accept a surrender from the irrelevant city-state. It could now claim the first such victory in the Great War. Unfortunately, its true opponents would not be remotely as easy to bring to the negotiating table... (...)

WestOrEast · Aug 6, 2021

Photomajig said:
Even as Italian forces wasted themselves attempting to reclaim Nizza

Too distracted to properly plan a strategy?

Photomajig · Aug 7, 2021

WestOrEast said:
Too distracted to properly plan a strategy?

In-universe or out of it? OOC, holding Nice worked out for me in the past few wars, as it's the wargoal and thus ticks warscore for France if they hold it. In this case, I was a bit distracted, sure - global wars are a lot of micromanagement in V2 - but also stubbornly clinging to that tactic even though Great War mechanics made it irrelevant. Which is kinda what happened in-universe, too; the Italian generals prepared for a nice, civilized, local conflict, not total war with its grueling war of attrition!

On another note, someone in the Paradox thread asked about who the Great Powers are and for a screen of the world at the War's start. I'll include it here for your benefit also.

The Great Powers are Italy (#2), the Chinese Empire (#3), France (#5), Wallachia (#7) and Poland (#8). The USA (#1), Britain (#4) and Persia (#6) sat this one out.

Here is a map of the relevant parts of the world (apologies for the quality; blame imgur's size limits). It's from a little earlier than 1893, that's why the Shun Republic still exists in China for example. There's some little fighting in the Caribbean between French and Italian colonials, but not much.

A closer look at Europe, with helpful labels of the belligerents.

NOTE: I'll warn you in advance, I lost around half of all screenshots from this Great War. The first half of the War will be told as normal, but the latter will consist more of repurposed artworks and other materials I can find on the internet. I'm not sure what happened there, but I discovered it far too late to salvage anything.

WestOrEast · Aug 7, 2021

Photomajig said:
NOTE: I'll warn you in advance, I lost around half of all screenshots from this Great War. The first half of the War will be told as normal, but the latter will consist more of repurposed artworks and other materials I can find on the internet. I'm not sure what happened there, but I discovered it far too late to salvage anything.

Ah well, no worries about it, man. These things happen.

Photomajig · Aug 8, 2021

Excerpts from the memoirs of Nandana Manola, the 'Red Marshal of Ceylon', written in 1930; describing experiences as a young captain in the First Great War

By April 8, the entire Royal Guards Army Corps had become encircled and cut off on a meandering stretch of the Burma Road. (...) Sitting in that deadly pocket of fetid jungle for three months, with the Chinese shelling us day after day, sinking ever deeper into the muck, I at last came to question the sanity of this war. For an imperialistic spat half the world over, Indian men suffered untold miseries in order to butcher and be butchered by their fellow working men from China and beyond. I had come into the War a loyal King's man; and for sure I remained so for many years to come. But the doubts had set in. One cannot love the fighting men under your command without coming to listen to their hopes and worries at least a little. There were subversives among our ranks, as I called them then: wild-eyed anti-imperialists, brotherly agrarian socialists, slick city anarchists and intellectuals, even the odd convicted would-be revolutionary serving out their time in military service. It was with men like these that I broke bread with and fought alongside for those long nightmarish days. (...)

I was, one supposes, a cynic in my youth. I believed in the innate wretchedness of Man - saw my brothers and sisters as selfish, small-minded, ignorant and hateful, accepted the lie of the necessity of force and the iron rule of law from the barrel of a gun to maintain societal harmony. (...) The 120 000 men trapped with me in the Mandalay Pocket did not, for the most part, act as I had expected. For sure there were the bourgeois-minded shirkers and self-saboteurs. But the great majority of my men showed us just how a conscious, fraternal fighting man could be. Food was scarce; so it was shared. Fear was common; so it was laughed away. Bullets ran out, grenades were wasted, bayonet edges blunted and broke; so we swore to defend each other with our bare fists if we had to. Many units self-organized in some grasping proto-form of the soldiers' councils we would come to rely on. Rarely it was necessary for us to fall back on the brutish tyranny of military discipline, and indeed when we did the results were predictably poor.

(...) Of course, this strange existence was half-formed and temporary from the start. In July, we heard that the Avan government had capitulated and that our comrades beyond the Pocket were running for the border. The Chinese offensive had smashed through the Avan-Ceylon front at all key locations and was now driving for the homeland proper. The propagandists had claimed the War would be over by the New Year, and that it would never reach Indian soil. They were now forced to eat their own words. (...) Our scornful underestimates of Chinese capabilities had been brutally proven wrong. The war effort in the Asian Theater was collapsing at dizzying speed. (...)

***

Excerpt from 'The Great War: a History', written by Bettino Rattazi (Napoli: 1983)

(...) By May 1894, the Netherlands had been fully occupied. A government in exile, composed mainly of junior officers and ambassadors at large, was conveyed to Firenze to plan a liberation of the homeland. The French terms of surrender, which demanded over a third of all Dutch territory and establishment of Wallonian and Flemish satellite states, could not be stomached. The Dutch leadership then made the bitter choice to continue fighting with the meager resources at their disposal. For the millions who now labored under French military occupation, the only thing that could be done was to wait and hope for Italy to come to the aid of its old ally.... or to join the resistance and continue to fight in secret.

At the time that hope seemed unlikely. The Italian Western Front was crumbling piece by piece in the face of the French spring offensive. King Goffredo II had finally reshuffled his cabinet and elevated the so-called 'War Party' into power. This court faction advocated militarism and belligerent nationalism alongside liberal causes. In a sense, liberal policies sneaked into the Italian government on the heels of wartime measures. (...) Where the social democrats and conservative trade unions had generally embraced the war effort in a patriotic frenzy, the revolutionary faction of the socialist underground did not. Wartime law enforcement was surprisingly lax in regards to the efforts of union organizers and reformers. Moderate voices were allowed to speak out, perhaps in the hopes that they would weaken the rapidly growing revolutionary parties.

(...) In Africa, the confident Italian offensive into French West Africa was checked at last in Kong, with a smaller but far better-drilled and equipped French colonial army annihilating an Italian force of 27,000. Such pitched battles would be rare in the African Theater. The small size of colonial forces and the vast extent of territory meant that campaigns were prosecuted more by independent local formations and guerilla fighters than massed armies on fixed frontlines. (...) Time was on Italy's side. The Emergency Colonial War Act of July granted permission to do what had before been unthinkable - for the colonial administration to undertake a mass mobilization of Italian subjects in Africa, arming and training hundreds of thousands to wage war in West Africa, and later globally.

(...) The disastrous and rapid collapse of the Avan war effort led to its capitulation in July, followed by Estonian surrender on August 5 1894. (...) Swedish and Wallachian forces had completely overwhelmed the Baltic Kingdom. The small Estonian Royal Army had revealed itself to be hopelessly outdated and underequipped for modern warfare. Token Polish expeditionary forces had cooperated poorly with local leadership and made little difference to the defenses. (...) With trust in its allies low and the King captured by advancing Swedish forces, the Estonian government made the call to demobilize and offer its total surrender. This swift submission likely spared Estonia from any territorial losses. (...) The War now shifted into Poland proper, narrowing the Eastern Front considerably. (...)

Everywhere the Central Powers were on the back foot. Losses elsewhere could be tolerated, but now both the Italian and Polish heartlands stood threatened. The Bengal was on fire and Bejan forces struggled to make headway against dug-in Catalonians and Galicians. (...) In Italy, the most fateful moments of the War would soon be seen. (...)

***

Excerpts from 'Letters From The Front: Collected Correspondence of Soldiers In The First Great War', edited by Maria Dechoirs (Paris: 1979)

12 August 1894; Italian conscript rifleman to fiancee, European Theater, uncensored original

My beloved Maria,

I think of you ardently and always & hope I shall live to see you again. We have been pretty badly mauled in the last week and have nothing to show for it. The officers talk a big talk & I imagine the press at home is the same, but the truth of it is that the Gauls are whipping us hard, everywhere pretty hard. It would break your heart to see our wounded shamble and stagger southwards as we retreat, retreat, retreat again. Yesterday we had a little victory of sorts outside Mantua. If victory it is. We turned back the Enemy but the devastation in our wake makes you weep. The French long guns are the stuff of nightmares. Really very lovely medieval communes and little villages have been reduced to dust and rubble here wherever you look. Your Father could not bear to see it if he still lived.

Rumor has it the censors are sloppy and overworked & so I hope to get this through tucked inside the prettied-up version to you. You have always been so terribly strong and I know you would want to hear the truth. There is also a portrait I sketched last night of a comrade here, who you will see has the most amusing look to him, quite a bit like Scarpia back home. But it's no shame to him if he looks somewhat like a donkey, as long as he fights as stalwartly as he has all these days at my side. (...) The front is collapsing, everyone agrees. But if we can focus our forces around the capital and divide them up, the General says, then they'll be the ones running. I hope it's not just more empty bluster. (...)

30 August; Ceylonese seaman to Dakshin (Aoteaoran native) brother, Asian Theater

Dinesh,

Is it true what they say? News out of Aotearoa are hard to come by these days. The state press won't say much, save that there's been unrest. The underground papers are tricky to get your hands on while in the service. But we docked last night in Singapore and the Italians had some leaflets from Eora, off a Red press. Write to me and tell it truly. Has there been a revolution? What has become of the old government and the Governor? Have you been a part of the fighting, if there has been any? It sounds as if it is the peasants who drive these developments, not factory workers, who must not be very numerous in the Islands anyway. Please describe to me this doctrine of agrarian socialism as best you can. Is there great fear of invasion by our forces? I tell you that if we are given orders to go against our comrades there, I shall desert at once. Perhaps I could join you there and see this new red soil republic myself? As long as these are not just idle rumors. I remain hopeful.

For my part the War is uneventful. We hear of terrible losses in the Bengal and the Chinese swarming southwards. But here out at sea it has been quiet. The Chinese Navy is so out of date they dare not sail out of port; so we satisfy ourselves with harassing their shipping and laying mines in the Straits. The only battle in these waters so far has been between three ancient Chinese sailing ships and a convoy of Italian clipper transports; the unwanted detritus of an older age of sea war, now sunk to the bottom of the South China Sea.

I leave this letter with a comrade in Singapore. That way we may deceive the censors. But I do not expect I will have a chance to read your letter any time soon. How much longer the War shall last, I cannot say. It seems that we shall not overcome the Chinese. One hopes that the bloodshed ends sooner rather than later, so that we may get back to the work of organizing once more. (...)

***

Excerpt from 'The Great War: a History', written by Bettino Rattazi (Napoli: 1983)

(...) November brought hope, but a delicate kind of hope. Fresh reinforcements from Wallachia had arrived in the Veneto and Tirol to dislodge the French V. and VII. Armies. Some of the bloodiest battles of the War were fought in the span of a few months across the region. The French strategy of shock and advance - mobile dragoon infantry and cavalry detachments with horse-drawn light artillery forcing breakthrough after breakthrough in masterful feats of maneuver warfare - was beginning to falter, as the Italian military establishment adopted successful countermeasures. Overambitious French formations were drawn by feint withdrawals too far from support and destroyed in detail one after the other. Over one hundred thousand French soldiers died or surrendered in these battlefields from October to November 1894.

But the French were dug in deep. The counter-offensive wound down from November onwards as Italian forces were forced to siege French fortifications and reclaim lost territory mile by painful mile. Worse, French advance forces were already on the outskirts of Firenze. The outdated fortifications around the city were falling slowly but surely. The King refused entreaties to leave Firenze. Like his father before him, Goffredo sought to become an unifying symbol for his subjects by his brave stand against the Gaulish 'hordes'. (...) Unless relief forces could break through occupied Veneto and oust the French siege from Firenze, the War looked likely to end within months. (...) A new winter offensive named Operation Vulcan was launched at the end of November to avert this catastrophe. (...)

In Wallachia, the frontlines had stabilized. Italian, Czechoslovak and Polish forces had penetrated deep into Hungary and appeared poised on a breakthrough into Wallachia proper, but the collapse of the Italian front necessitated the redeployment of key attack divisions in the late autumn. Even so, the Italian IX. Corps marched into Bucharest, the Wallachian capital, in December. Hard mountain warfare in the Carpathians had drained the strength from Italy's now-limited forces in the region, however. A tense back-and-forth play of attack and counter-attack would ensue in the coming months; Bucharest would be reclaimed by Wallachian forces in March, with the Central Powers ceding their gains outside of Hungary and Slovakia. (...)

Operation Vulcan proved a tremendous success. In a series of highly mobile campaigns, Italian forces under the eccentric General Umberto Orengo maneuvered and destroyed the vast majority of French forces deployed in Italy. The shocking speed and ferocity of this campaign led to a total collapse of the French war effort in Europe - between December and February, the vast French Imperial Army had been utterly devastated on a scale never before seen in the history of warfare. Nearly 400 000 soldiers, alongside thousands of horses and massive stores of equipment, had thrust into Italy as triumphant conquerors; now a scattered and demoralized roughly 90 000 men were being driven out or captured in massive surrenders.

The tide had turned at last, at least in Europe. But if Italy was now liberated once more, the rest of the Central Powers continued to struggle. Poland was managing to hold the enemy back at its borders, but could not muster a counter-offensive; most of Czechoslovakia lay under enemy occupation; Sorbia's hopeful invasion of Denmark was hitting a wall; Ceylon was bleeding men and territory and seemed on the brink of surrender. Only in Iberia, where a Bejan-Italian offensive had finally broken the enemy in Galicia, could similar success be boasted.

(...) January 23 saw the surrender of Galicia. Already in December French allied forces had been withdrawn from Iberia to defend the suddenly exposed heartland. Now Catalonia, already buckling under Bejan invasion, was left alone to contest the peninsula. The Italian naval dominance of the Mediterranean Sea had already starved Catalonia of imports and demoralized civilian populations with indiscriminate naval bombardment of key port cities. The War in Iberia was coming to a close, but in the shadow of the Pyrenees there was still stiff resistance by Catalan guerilla fighters and local militias.

(...) In the North, the Sorbian Army was marching unhindered in Denmark. Only the presence of the Danish fleet in the Straits prevented a crossing into Skane. Danish forces still wrought havoc in Holstein, however; neither force was eager to meet the other in open battle without support. For now, neither the Central Powers nor the Accord Imperiale could offer that support.

(...) The Battle of Kuala Lumpur was fought from February 9 to February 15 in Chinese Malaysia. The 12,000-strong Italian Malay Colonial Army had occupied the city and its environs in January, establishing fortifications and using local expertise to plan an elaborate defense. This defense expected considerable reinforcements from Italian Java which never came, but regardless it made Kuala Lumpur a considerable strongpoint. (...) In the early hours of February 9, scouts of the Colonial Army reported the approach of a massive 63,000-strong Chinese army that would soon encounter the outermost defensive perimeter. Despite the gross numerical inferiority, the Malay officers and soldiers of the Italian force demanded that they stand and fight. In any case, it was far too late to retreat - they would have to make a stand. (...)

The Battle has been greatly mythologized in Malaysia and Italy alike. It forms the central origin myth of the Malay Army to this day and is mandatory learning in national schools. (...) The most commonly accepted explanation for the Chinese defeat rests on a few key factors. First, despite the enormous military success of China in the past decades, the Empire had never come to battle a fellow Great Power, certainly not Italy with its own history of military excellence. Though local Malays, the Italian forces had been drilled, trained and equipped to the same edge as Italian elites elsewhere; furthermore, a sense of national pride and liberation drove the Malay soldiers. Chinese tactics lagged behind European ones, with displays such as human wave attacks against fortified machine gun-armed positions, undirected and scattered use of artillery, static and reactionary leadership with little autonomy for NCOs, poor organizational structure, sacrificial attitude towards the common rifleman and lack of education among recruits.

For sure, the forces at Kuala Lumpur did not represent China's elite, but they were Army regulars with successful campaigns under their belt. They carried modern equipment such as bolt-action rifles and grenade belts; though at the same time wore colorful and easily identifiable uniforms which allowed Malay snipers to eliminate over a third of the attackers' officer corps during attempted attacks. (...)

The Italo-Malay victory was strictly a Pyrrhic one. Each 'circle' of Kuala Lumpur's defense bled and died until the last, before sending any survivors to retreat into an inner circle to begin anew. Wounded soldiers would reportedly stay behind with grenades to detonate both themselves and enemy soldiers when they reached the now-abandoned positions. Traps and jury-rigged bombs were set up at every interval. Horrific casualties mounted for the defenders as the days dragged on, but their losses paled in comparison to the butcher's bill for the Chinese. (...) In the end, almost 10 000 Italian and Malay soldiers had died or been wounded, with over 42 000 losses on the opposing side. This rate of attrition would naturally have been unsustainable, but in the evening of February 15, mass mutinies struck the Chinese forces at yet another order to assault the most heavily defended inner circle of the city. Chinese general Tan Ma was forced to abandon the attack and ordered a retreat out of Chinese Malaysia. He would later face execution for the failure of the campaign.

(...) Indeed, though on a local scale the Chinese losses were significant, they mattered little in the greater War. That is not to say that the Battle of Kuala Lumpur did not have a significant effect on China and the War. Chinese strategists adjusted their plans on the - likely mistaken - assumption that any battle against Italian forces would lead to similar casualties, and concluded that a long war would inevitably lead to China's military defeat, or worse, a cataclysmic social upheaval from within. (...) China was now far less eager to test its mettle against Italy, and no attempt to make landfall in the Italian Indies was ever made again. (...)

***

Excerpts from the memoirs of Nandana Manola, the 'Red Marshal of Ceylon', written in 1930; describing experiences as a young captain in the First Great War

(...) It had been a harrowing experience. If I had known then what my ordeal in the jungle would be like, I would likely have stayed in that prison camp until the end of the war. Regardless, on February 20, I disembarked from the 'Eel Man's junk and set foot again in my native Ceylon. I found the nation in a state of panic and despair. Chinese forces had reached Madras, facing no organized resistance. A naval action off Tanjore had crippled our fleet, massed Chinese ironclads overpowering our brave boys at sea. (...) At that point it was only a matter of time before our fall. Regardless, I found my way to the appropriate military authorities and reported for duty. (...)

This return to regular military discipline was upsetting to me. I had become accustomed to the easy camaraderie of my fellow survivors in the Pocket and then in the camps. With defeat looming and masks of civility falling, the business of lashing and court martials had become, if anything, more grotesque than ever. The final blow against my attachment to the Royal Army was struck. But I still served to the best of my ability, and tried to make some difference. If nothing else, I owed it to my comrades in the ranks.

(...) In those last desperate days I pioneered a great many of the strategems and reforms we'd make good use of in the coming years. It is the truth of modern warfare that chaos is the natural state of all combat. Only with the prudent exercise of personal initiative and willingness to adapt to changing circumstances may battles be won. Our guerillas knew our plans and shared in our intelligence, but I trusted in them to act as they knew best when out in the field. We gave them the tools and trusted in them to use them properly, something that the Royal Army with its codified hierarchies and obsessions with control could never have stomached. (...) My success saw me promoted up to Colonel even as my distaste for the Army grew more and more each day. One of life's delicious ironies.

(...) It took until August for the formal surrender to be made, of course, but my war ended once more in April. Our resistance efforts were identified and cornered by the Chinese garrison, and so I became captive a second time over. This new camp was no better than the last, but I had a fine enough time. My fellow officers frowned upon my 'fraternization' with the rank and file, but I was past the point of caring. Who were they going to report me to, anyway? The Chinese warden? (...) So the War in India ended. We still followed news of the conflict in Europe with interest, of course. At that time we still thought the Central Powers had lost and Italy would soon follow us, but events would soon surprise us all. (...)

***

Excerpts from 'Letters From The Front: Collected Correspondence of Soldiers In The First Great War', edited by Maria Dechoirs (Paris: 1979)

28 March 1895; Italian combat engineer to wife, European Theater, uncensored original

Many (tired) kisses, my Carlotta,

Life has its seasons. Now it's winter for your love, one supposes, for we have been beaten back everywhere here these past weeks. Too many men pulled back to save old Italia, which we are all grateful for, but it would do us good to see those fellows back here also. The Vlachs have rebounded and bloodied us and the Czechs very badly. We're falling back fighting to Slovakia and Hungary. All these months spent fighting only to fall back! That's war, one supposes. We are mining and blowing the very bridges we built here only two months back.

How fares your belly? I dearly wish I could be there to kiss and hold you, my darling. I worry for the babe, no matter how easy your Mother says she had it. Remember to see the doctor every week. You are lucky to be a soldier's wife to gain such learned care.

(...) On an amusing note. The local people here are very superstitious. I have been given a great many crucifixes and offerings now, after they learned we aim to withdraw through a mountain pass they claim is infested by vampires. You would have a great laugh at their expense, I am sure. I send my love to you, Carlotta, and promise to skewer a vampire for you. (...)

1 May 1895; Dutch resistance fighter to unknown recipient, European Theater

Marius,

It is May Day and I write to you in tenderness and in (optimistic?) joy. Today we marched into the town of Lingen and were met by the most beautiful vision of the better world a-coming, my love. The French garrison had fled at our approach and we could walk in without a shot fired. And in the town! The people swarmed the streets in their hundreds, kissing and hugging us, cheering and roaring, manic with pride. There were red banners and flags everywhere you looked; and for sure many Prinsenvlags flying too and so forth, but in that moment we cared not for your affiliations. We were a people united - a people united under the Red Banner and the dream of a worker's republic. Oh, at least on this great day, and one hopes tomorrow also.

What a scene! Unthinkable a few years ago, but here we are. The world changes. Perhaps in time we may be united also, as natural as any man and wife? Now we must only work to ensure it is not the rule of generals and colonels that is restored in the Netherlands, but that of the People. If the Italians or anyone else dares object, I've a rifle to use on them just the same as on any French invader. Now that we have peace with Gelre, too, we can proceed with the liberation with no fear of having to contend with incursions from the east either.

There are riots in Utrecht and Amsterdam, we hear. The Holland and Brabant have sailed out of Sorbia and now lay off Amsterdam Port, waiting for the French ship there to show itself. There is a great deal of revolutionary feeling among the sailors on those ships, Marius. They have not elected to declare for us yet, but neither will they accept orders from the cowards-in-exile either. That gives me hope. Our forces are small yet, but they grow day by day. Shall we celebrate May Day a year from now in a free proletarian nation?

I will say it will be so. But there is a great deal of killing to be done before then. (...)

***

Excerpt from 'The Great War: a History', written by Bettino Rattazi (Napoli: 1983)

(...) The Italian offensive began to stall in August. The French stragglers from the disaster of Operation Vulcan had been reorganized and consolidated together with returning forces from Iberia and new conscript regiments raised in the North to form a credible defensive force once more. By this point much of southern France was already in Italian hands, however. With the capture of Barcelona in early September, the Iberian and French fronts were physically united. Italian and Bejan forces could now move unhindered across the Pyrenees.

Catalonia was done for - a separate peace was made on September 12, much to the disappointment of the Bejans. With globe-shaking terms apparently planned for France and her allies, the Bejans had expected to end the war with at least more of Iberia under their control, if not entirely united under their leadership. Italy, eager to knock Catalonia out of the war, had settled for mere reparations to be paid and general disarmament of Catalonia. (...) As a result, a resentful Beja offered only token military support in the French campaigns for the remainder of the War, citing the need to defend its own territory first.

(...) By November 1895, Italian forces had pushed into central France. The reorganized French Army had put up a fight, but its conscripts and demoralized veterans faced the elite of the Italian military, hungry for vengeance after the devastation of northern Italy the year before. Now the French lines threatened to collapse once more. (...) The French Eastern Legion still fought in Czechoslovakia, but otherwise France could call upon very few large concentrations of armed forces to withstand the Italian deluge. In Africa, the French colonies had been lost to Bejan, Italian and Iraqi forces. (...) The turning point had been reached.

***

Excerpts from 'Red Rose of Freedom: the Birth of Modern Socialism', written by Marco Francesco Scalzi (Monte Baldo: 1982)

(...) After Aotearoa, the global socialist underground had dared to hope for the beginning of a worldwide revolutionary wave. Risings in the occupied Netherlands and across much of wartorn Europe made it appear that the time was ripe, though most were brutally suppressed by the mobilized military machines of their states. In Buenos Aires, however, a variety of rural insurrections by impoverished peasantry and agrarian workers coalesced in the summer of 1895 into an organized mass movement, the Libertadors, which soon united with the militant unions in the cities. In September, the call for Revolution went out. Sympathizers in the military took the cabinet captive and dictated recognition of a new communist provisional government.

The socialist republic proclaimed in the heady days of the Autumn of Liberty was internally chaotic. (...) By November, the centralist faction had consolidated the instruments of power into their hands. Led by radical intellectual Fransisco de Huerta, this faction formed the Communist Party of Buenos Aires. Soon came a ban on factionalism and a purge of rival socialist and anarcho-socialist factions. The rural popular movement was co-opted and its leaders put on trial for alleged bourgeois morality. (...) In comparison to the largely peaceful transition of power in Aotearoa and the establishment of its so-called 'Red Soil Utopia', events in Buenos Aires led quickly into widespread political violence and the exercise of authoritarian rule, finally culminating in the disastrous liberation war against Argentine, which would lead to yet another partition of the nation. (...)

***[/CENTER}

WestOrEast · Aug 8, 2021

What a war! I wonder how much longer men and shells can keep on being fed into the battlefield.

Photomajig · Aug 13, 2021

Excerpt from 'The Great War: a History', written by Bettino Rattazi (Napoli: 1983)

(...) That day was January 12, 1896, when French Emperor Charles VI Guerra fled the city of Paris. With Italian forces drawing the noose tight around the city's outskirts, this was certainly a prudent move. Yet it was a mere delaying tactic. Where was there to evacuate to? Normandy remained in French hands, but Italian ships patrolled the sea-lanes. Could the Emperor's life be entrusted in the care of a desperate blockade runner seeking passage to some friendly harbor? And where would they go - to Sweden, which would certainly not stand for long without French troops or that dreamed-for mirage, the arrival of Chinese divisions in the European Theatre? Or indeed should they undertake a perilous journey to China itself and live there at a fellow Emperor's mercy?

These schemes were unfeasible. There was never a chance to put any of them to the test, in any case. The 88-year-old Emperor refused all proposals of further flight. No, indeed, he had merely taken to the field himself - the Emperor made it plain that he expected to be conveyed to the headquarters of the French High Command and given the reins of war once more. (...) Government could only stall their absolute monarch for so long. On January 14, Charles VI arrived in Rouen and announced that a massive French counter-attack was imminent. (...) That no such forces existed to carry out this ambitious plan was secondary; local farm-wives would be armed and put on the lines if necessary. (...)

***

Excerpts from 'Letters From The Front: Collected Correspondence of Soldiers In The First Great War', edited by Maria Dechoirs (Paris: 1979)

A last stand of French forces in the Battle of Caen, February 1896.

8 February 1896; Italian conscript rifleman to fiancee, European Theater, uncensored original

My darling Maria,

I dream of your kisses & hope most of all for peace. This war will surely end by the year's end, now that we've the French cornered. How I wish I was there home already, only the two of us alone...

We have just taken the town of Caen. The 51st arrived too late for the real fighting, but we had the far less pleasant job of clearing out the cellars and attics of hiding French soldiers. Not that they put up much of a resistance, poor buggers. They're defecting daily now, I hear, and in such sorry hordes that you hate to see it. But all the better for us. This town has been hammered hard and it's not much to look at now. The French put up a fight around the old cemetery; so there were old graves and new dead lying side by side as far as the eye could see. It feels bad to see such desecration. L. thinks it's alright, since they're Lollards, and thus heretics, but as I see it we're all fellow Christian men. Though you can't always tell in all this savagery.

I've sketched the scene for you. Kindly ask the paper if they will have it & perhaps pay you a little for it. You say the whole village wants to see these drawings. I hope you exaggerate, my love. They are not exactly masterpieces, whatever you say!

We're moving again. I'll write again when we stop. I pray all is well with you, my darling. Bathe often, eat well, and stay away from strange men.

Yours with a thousand kisses,
Luca, your proud husband

(...)

Wallachian regulars by converted ammunition train, Bulgaria, March 1896.

20 March 1896; Italian combat engineer to unknown recipient*, European Theater, uncensored original (*writer has no recorded uncles or cousins)

Uncle,

Our cousin came to visit yesterday. She knew just what to say and so we trust she has your kind regard. We discussed a surprise party for our highland friend. (...) Five tons of festive supplies have been requisitioned from the regimental stocks, upon your authority. In addition we have been granted use of the particular gift discussed in my earlier letter. It does not always work as expected, but with luck it shall create a pleasantly heated atmosphere, as best suits these highland feasts. And we have liberated a great many bouquets of flowers, just to be certain. Our amusing cousin shall play a grand jest upon our host first and we shall come in when he is thoroughly overcome by his mirth. In that state he will not expect our surprises.

I hope these preparations meet your approval. Perhaps it is far too much for a lesser scion of his noble line, as we have surmised him to be, but one cannot be too kind with friends.

Our social lives have been much eased by the swift advance of our forces against the Wallachians in these past months. We are driving them against the Carpathians, where no doubt more of our friends wait to greet us. I in particular hope to meet that friend from one year ago - a year almost exact to the day as I write this! - whose camaraderie led me to in time discover our family. It is high time we were reacquainted. (...) I ask again if you are certain that we cannot find any cousins on the other side. They would be a pleasant addition to the family, and we've great difficulty to operate across the frontlines as it currently stands.

(...)

Albanian independence fighters, northern Albania, July 1896.

12 July 1896; Wallachian artillery officer to lover, European Theater, uncensored original

My ever-cheerful Raluca,

It is like you said. We are pulling back to the homeland proper. And it is about time. These Albanians may keep their mountains all I care. We have shelled them and hunted them in those heights ever since this damned war began and all we have to show for it are men still going missing in the night when their partisans come down in the night to cut our throats. Let them have them! If what I hear is true, we're in a hurry to move east. The Italians are pushing again and they say Bucharest is a shelled ruin. Well, Armenis fell to the Enemy long ago, so excuse me if I do not care too much for the city.

We are to reform and create a new defensive line at the mountains. That should hold them. Long enough for the Chinese to make landfall in the east, at the least. It's only that I had hoped to have seen the back of my last mountain here. It is not pleasant work lugging our guns up and down hills, not for the men or for the poor animals.

If this Carpathian Line falls, what then? We shall retreat into the Ukraine. But the Poles are said to be amassing for an offensive at the border, now that the French and Danes are gone from their west. I expect the censors will not let this letter go. I have been labeled a defeatist by my fellow officers. Alas. Oh, there is still hope for victory, however slim. We shall need all the old powers of the nation to rise up if we are to vanquish this foe. And if not that, then China.

(...)

***

Excerpt from 'The Great War: a History', written by Bettino Rattazi (Napoli: 1983)

Close quarters fighting on the outskirts of Lille, August 1896.

(...) The assault on Lille was preceded by the greatest artillery barrage of the war so far. The entrenched French positions around the town were hammered for three straight days by a torrential rain of steel and high-explosive shrapnel, turning farmland into pulped grey matter, shredding forests into graveyards of bisected trunks and dead animals, unleashing such concussive shock that hearing damage accounted for thousands of French wounded before any fighting had even begun. It is testament to the depth and complexity of the French trench system that much of the defenses remained intact even so. The same could not be said for the men within them. Desertion and defection mounted from the very first impact of the first shell. By the time the Italians began their assault on August 15th, 1896, only the elite core of the Imperial Guards and the scattered remnants of a hundred other regiments still stood to meet them. (...)

The taking of Lille is the stuff of legends. Desperate street fighting went on without pause from the evening of the 15th to the late hours of the 20th. Block by block, Italian 'Arditi' - new shock troop elites - cleared a path towards the French headquarters, where their ultimate prize lay - the French Emperor himself. The stubborn old sovereign had refused to withdraw from this final redoubt of the nation. If it was to fall, he would gladly fall with it. (...) The effects of modern weapons of war on the town were catastrophic. Hand grenades, incendiary shells, explosive bullets and high-caliber machine-guns devastated the picturesque medieval town and left tens of thousands without homes to return to. (...)

Finally, at 22:00 hours on the 20th of August, the encircled French command post raised a white flag. General Orengo rode out to meet with his counterpart, General de Secondat, for a tense meeting overseen by the rigid and silent presence of the French Emperor. The genteel reserve of this negotiation stood in stark, grotesque contrast to the shattered battlefield and massed ranks of wounded and dying men around them. After a failed last-ditch attempt at negotiating a way out for the Emperor, de Secondat offered the complete surrender of the French forces still in France proper; in other words, all but some scattered forces still operating in Africa and the Czechoslovakian front. France's part in the War was effectively over. (...)

'Dahomey Amazon' Italian colonial auxiliaries drilling, September 1896.

Colonial forces in French West Africa continued to wage low-intensity skirmish warfare until late autumn, when the guerilla general André Daladier at last surrendered to the Italo-Iraqi occupation. (...) Local auxiliaries could be quite colorful, as mass mobilization schemes brought Africans into service in their thousands outside of the regular Askari system. Their deployments saw many march across the breadth of Italian Africa, in rare cases even beyond. To these new global soldiers, service offered a glimpse of a world beyond the quiet backwater of Africa with the conservatism and paternalism of its colonial administration. In Europe and Asia, strict racial relations and segregated spheres of living were no longer universally in effect. Ideas like socialism and feminism had been kept out of the colonies by watchful colonial governors, but the breakdown of restrictions in wartime breached even this sheltered world. Returning soldiers with their training and new ideas would go on to form the backbone of the new wave of local resistance in Africa. (...)

Italo-Sorbian task force crossing the Kattegat, October 1896.

With the fall of France, northern Europe lay for the taking. Swedish and Danish forces had fought a painful fighting retreat from continental Europe from August onwards. They could not be pursued any further, as Danish and Swedish ships held the Danish Straits until October 1896. A modern Italian task force arrived on the 16th of October and was joined by Sorbian elements already in the area. Together, they defeated the Swedish and Danish navies in the Battle of the Great Belt and the Battle of Bornholm and soon seized control of the Baltic. Nothing now stopped Sorbian and Italian divisions from making the crossing to the Danish islands and Sweden. (...) In the East, a Polish offensive had run the Swedes out of the Baltics and now approached Swedish Finland with its fortified borders. (...)

Chinese soldiers in the Battle of Agra, December 1896.

With Ceylon capitulated, the Chinese Imperial Army set its sights on Mughalistan. The sprawling Central Asian empire had offered little to the defense of India or to the war effort in general. The Chinese high command perhaps accurately believed it a paper tiger, capable of little more than raiding. (...) Though Mughalistan and China shared a short border in Xinjiang, the sparsely populated and undeveloped region did not offer an ideal pathway for invasion. Border skirmishes fought in the area favored mobile local cavalry sworn to the Mughal banner, frustrating Chinese bite-and-hold tactics of advance. (...) In northern India, however, the fall of Ceylon promised a new avenue of attack into Mughalistan.

(...) The Battle of Agra in early December 1896 broke the Mughal frontline and allowed for Chinese incursion deep into Mughal India. (...) It soon became clear that supplying this invasion would be no small feat. Italian control of Borneo and the Indies threatened Chinese transport of much-needed goods to India by ship, while the routes by land crossed miles and miles of mountains and jungle in wartorn territory. (...) In early November, the decision was made to send a task force composed of the most modern and heavily-armed ships of the Chinese Navy through the Straits of Johor to escort a grand convoy of supplies for the Mughal campaign.

Chinese ironclad cruiser Jiyuan approaching the Straits of Johor, November 1896.

The Chinese were aware that a detached task force from the Italian High Seas Fleet had arrived in the theater in December, though little sign of it had been sighted so far. Even so, Navy strategists were hopeful that the Chinese fleet could repel any attack by the Italians should they attempt to intercept the convoy. (...)

The reorganized Chinese 1st Fleet was under the command of Admiral Weng Baogui, the destroyer of the Ceylonese fleet in 1895 and an intelligent realist who was well aware of the inferiority of Chinese seamanship and warships. The Italian Task Force 'Neptune' was helmed by Vice Admiral Vittorio Orgagna, who could claim no great victories under his belt, but enjoyed an intimate familiarity with the confines of the Straits. (...) Against 46 Chinese warships, the Italians brought 18. To balance this difference in numbers, Orgagna oversaw the arming of merchant ships and transports from Italian Java and Borneo to support his capital ships. (...) All Italian ships were modern vessels of war with long-ranged guns and armor-piercing shells; in contrast, the Chinese mostly wielded a chaotic arrangement of ironclads led by a handful of semi-modern cruisers. (...)

Italian sailors firing guns of the armed transport Vespucci during the Battle of the Java Sea, March 1897.

The Chinese convoy now retreated at full speed into the Java Sea, pursued by Task Force 'Neptune'. With hope of safe escape dwindling by the hour, Weng Baogui gave the overdue order for the 1st Fleet to turn back and engage its Italian counterpart on March 26th. The Battle of the Java Sea began in the early hours of March 27th. (...) The early sinking of the Italian Da Vinci emboldened the Chinese and persuaded Baogui to abandon his careful cordon strategy and advance upon the enemy line, with disastrous results. (...) Between 12:00-13:00, the Italians drove the Jiyuan aground and destroyed the ammunition storage of the Yangwei, taking out the two most modern vessels of the Chinese squadron in a devastating one-two blow. (...) By 14:30, the Chinese situation was growing desperate. (...)

Retreating Chinese ships under fire off Batam in the Battle of the Java Sea, March 1897.

Italian victory in the Battle of the Java Sea decisively crippled the Chinese Navy and made its technological and doctrinal weakness plain. The much-awaited convoy fell into Italian hands and the future of the Mughalistani campaign was thrust into peril. The Italian naval dominance and subsequent blockade of key Chinese ports did not leave the outcome in doubt. The Burma Road was now the sole artery connecting China and its millions of men in India. No amount of engineering and sacrifice would allow it to service the entirety of the Chinese Indian Army for any reasonable period. (...)

***

Excerpts from 'Letters From The Front: Collected Correspondence of Soldiers In The First Great War', edited by Maria Dechoirs (Paris: 1979)

Wallachian general and retinue survey battlefield in the Carpathians, Battle of Gheorgheni, April 1897.

4 April 1897; Wallachian artillery officer to lover, European Theater, uncensored original

Little Raluca,

It is a small miracle that I received your last letter of the 29th, and I fear you will not hear back from me. I was sorry to learn of your illness. Times are bad and food is scarce from Lissabon to Kiev. I send my affection and hope of your recovery. As for myself, we are encamped here high in the mountains, hoping to bleed the Italians and the Czechs to a stop at last. The mood of the men is hopeful. The Poles are evenly matched in the north and west, so if we can hold here, perhaps they can be driven out yet. I'd not like to be in the shoes of the Enemy when they try to come up the mountainside at us. But their Alpini have quite the reputation, and they are said to be bringing all the crack regiments of the French front here to push us out.

There is a desolate beauty to this place. One does not see the scars we have gouged into the skin of the Earth from so high up. One does not smell the smoke of the burning cities we have left in our wake. And the roar of our guns and theirs can be mistaken for thunder, if you only try. I would like to come here again when the War is over. Perhaps you shall come with me? We could make a hike out of it; but of course you'd rather not think of such hardships in your present condition. But imagine it thusly: we shall climb this mountain and here behold the place where the heroes of Wallachia turned back the Italian tide and saved the nation. A pleasant image, is it not?

(...)

Marching Chinese soldiers in occupied Ceylon, May 1897.

28 May 1897; Chinese infantry officer to father, Indian Theater

Honorable Father,

Your obedient child writes to you from the city of Cuttack, in India. Pray grant your regard to these humble words. I have taken the liberty of conveying this letter through a private courier rather than the Army post, so that it might reach you unaltered. (...) We have completed our redeployment back into Ceylon. In truth I am happy to leave the Mughal lands behind. Hunger and disease dogged our heels there from the first day to the last. Of course, the delay of our offensive into those parts is most regrettable. But there is something to be said for full bellies, flea-free beds and heated baths. The common soldiers have generally acquitted themselves well and in a civilized manner in these savage parts; of them I have no further complaint to make.

There is a great curiosity in our officer corps as to the prospect of deployment into Europe or Africa. May I ask if you are only able that you would draw upon your contacts at the Court and inquire after this matter? It seems to us that the War will inevitably be lost if the Europeans are allowed to fall and their ports with them. We understand that the situation at sea is temporary and shall be remedied in short order in the coming months. Pray write if this is accurate or if we have in fact left the seas to the Italians for the time being. (...) There are rumors that a landing has been made in Arabia, with success against the Iraqis therein. Perhaps we are to follow there instead?

(...) There is a great fear that the War shall turn against us soon, if action is not now taken promptly. The Ever Victorious Army shall certainly be up to the task if we are only allowed the chance to prove ourselves on distant shores.

(...)

Wallachian forces withdrawing into the Ukraine, June 1897.

13 June 1897; Italian combat engineer to wife, European Theater, uncensored original

My Carlotta,

I did not receive a letter from you this past week, or the week before. Of course the wretched condition of these mountain roads is likely to blame, but I ache to hear from you at the earliest possibility. Fear grows in my belly with no word from you. Strange, for me to fear so, when it is I who is here in the way of danger day and night? But I hear there is a terrible lack of food and fuel and much else in the homeland also. I have asked some friends to look into your situation and assist in any way possible. Be good and do not be alarmed if they should come to visit.

We advance, mile by bitter mile. The Wallachians have been running ever since Gheorgheni, which I am sure you have read of in the dispatches. They are flooding into the plains and we are snapping at their heels as they go. The wretches burn their fields as they go to deny us a harvest. Every soldier in this war must be fighting with at least a half-empty belly, I am sure. Not much longer now, I do not think. The Wallachians must soon give up the fight or perish entirely. In the North the Swedes have put up a white flag and we are occupying the wide breadth of their homeland. Victory in Europe must be close. But what are we to do with China, I do not know.

(...)

***

Excerpt from 'The Great War: a History', written by Bettino Rattazi (Napoli: 1983)

Refugee leaving devastated hometown, September 1897.

(...) None of the belligerents could escape the pervasive weariness which four years of war had brought. Tens of millions had become displaced by the rolling tides of the conflict, swept up by its advance and rendered homeless by its terrible weapons. The home front everywhere had become all too familiar with rationing and hardship. Societal upheavals had become everyday - women now worked in the factories left empty by mass mobilization, and reforms considered impossible only years before had been put into effect as emergency wartime measures. The temporary systems of social welfare springing into existence in nations such as Italy and France would be sorely missed after the War by their millions. (...)

Czechoslovak airships in bombardment exercise, February 1898.

With Victory in Europe essentially achieved, internal disputes put aside for the war effort began to rear their ugly heads. Czechoslovakia appeared poised to claim all of Wallachian Slovakia after the war, and indeed already administrated the occupied region as if this was the case. The dream of a great unified nation seemed suddenly very real. Ultranationalist factions began agitating in the winter of 1897-1898 for the government to go even further. West Galicia, a Polish state, held a significant Slovak minority. Many in Czechoslovakia saw the region as rightful Slovak territory. (...) In January 1898, the simmering conflict suddenly escalated as Czechoslovak representatives accused the Polish government of oppressing and mistreating Slovaks within West Galicia. They demanded that the region be placed under joint administration. The Polish government refused, stating that West Galicia was and had always been Polish. Newspapers on both sides began drumming for war. (...) In part, the drive for a military conflict on both sides came from a desire to test recent innovations such as militarized airships, which in Czechoslovakia had not finished construction in time to reach the frontlines before they had run out of fighting to be had. (...)

Polish Hussars at the outbreak of the Polish-Czechoslovak War, March 1898.

The Polish-Czechoslovak War broke the unity of the Central Powers. At the cusp of total victory, Italy was forced to contend with its two chief allies going to war against one another while still formally standing side by side against the remnants of the Accord Imperiale. (...) Savage fighting broke out in West Galicia and along the border in March 1898, mostly perpetrated by local militias and free corps of demobilized veterans. The regular forces of both nations, far away in the Ukraine and in Scandinavia, do not appear to have heard of the fighting until it was already over, though the tensions led to independent skirmishes and brawling where the two shared frontlines regardless. (...) The War came to an end in April after an Italian intervention and diplomatic pressure, though the status quo ante bellum terms of the peace caused great resentment in both nations, and are thought to have merely delayed hostilities for a decade. (...)

Armistice talks in neutral Münich, July 1898.

The occupation of the European Accord powers was complete by June 1898. Local resistance still continued, but no organized state forces existed to trouble the invaders. Victory in Europe had been achieved. (...) But China still presented an enormous problem. The Chinese Empire had lost none of its territory. Indeed, it had barely been touched by the War outside its periphery. While the Central Powers enjoyed naval dominance over the coastal waters of the Empire, an economic blockade of China was not a feasible way of defeating the last Great Power of the Accord. Invasion plans suggested truly catastrophic losses for even the most optimistic estimates. (...) The exiled governments of France and its allies held out hope for a Chinese liberation of Europe, but the sole attempted landing by Chinese forces in Muscat had been pushed back into the sea three months earlier. (...)

The stalemate could not be broken. In late June, ambassadors of the Central Powers met with their Chinese counterparts in occupied India and began discussing the possibility of a separate 'Peace with Honor'. The Central Powers would concede that China had not been defeated in war and make no territorial demands, in exchange for a general disarmament and demobilization. This 'price' was eagerly accepted by the Chinese delegation, who were well aware of the enormous economic cost of the military's upkeep throughout the five years of war and the desperate need for peace even in 'sheltered' China. (...)

The success of the Chinese talks removed the last obstacle to the end of war. At the same time, talks had been ongoing in Münich with representatives of the European Accord powers. Little progress had been made, but fresh rumors of Chinese surrender at last began to crack the defiance of the defeated party. (...) Finally, on August 30, 1898, the Accord delegation swallowed their pride. They had lost, and there was no Chinese miracle to redeem them. One by one, the ambassadors of France, Wallachia, Denmark and Sweden signed the armistice agreement and put themselves at the mercy of the Central Powers. The Great War was over.

Italian soldiers in Borneo celebrate news of peace, August 1898.

(...) Celebrations on an unprecedented scale erupted across Europe and Asia. After five years of suffering and want, the War was over. Civilian or soldier, that was cause for jubilation. (...) Where wartime privation and devastation had led to famine and its handmaids - plague, banditry, civil conflict - the celebrations were far more muted, but they still occurred. Perhaps now, millions dared to hope, there might again be clean water and bread to eat? Yet reconstruction efforts would only save a fraction of these refugee masses. (...)

Now came the time to count the cost. By any account, it was almost too horrific to believe. (...) The War had produced almost ten million military casualties, with conservative estimates placing civilian losses at nearly thirty million. An entire generation had been annihilated on the charnel fields of Europe. Even the most belligerent pro-war voices of the victorious Central Powers were made quiet with shock, at least for the time being. (...) In Italy, the government was desperate to somehow sate the fury of an Italian people seeking something akin to the downfall of French civilization. Reparations payments and disarmament alone would not satisfy an Italy gripped by nationalistic fervor. France and its allies had to be made impotent - their empires stripped from them and their influence in world politics cut off at the source. It would need to be humiliated. (...)

Europe after the Great War, 1898.
Norway, Finland, the Rhineland, Latvia and Hungary join the community of nations; Czechoslovakia, Sorbia, Albania and Greece make considerable gains.

In a strange turn of events, the clash of two great empires led to the freedom of several new nations. France itself was stripped of its ethnic German territories along the Rhine. From this 'mutilation' was born the Confederation of the Rhine (or Rhineland), an Italian satellite state in what had been the great fueler of France's industry with its plentiful coal.

The Republic of Sweden was relatively wounded even deeper. Over half of its territory and the entirety of its Finnish population were detached as the revived Kingdom of Finland. Sweden's Baltic possessions became the Kingdom of Latvia, the first taste of independence for its people in recorded history. These separations were not entirely unwanted. Swedish nationalist policies had alienated the once-loyal Finns and harsh unrepresentative rule in the Baltics made the Latvians happy to leave. The independence movements of these new nations were not best pleased by the installment of absolutist Kings over what they had conceived of as free republics in the Swedish model, however. (...) If the peacemakers sought to forge lasting stability in the region, they failed. Ösel, an Estonian island left under Swedish rule, and Danish-held Sweden would become the flashpoints of the near future. (...)

Denmark's losses were considerable. Norway gained its independence, a surprise to the country's insignificant independence movement. Sorbia claimed most of continental Denmark, including the Danish-majority exclave of Hamborg, finally ending Danish ambitions of a Central European empire for good. Danish Pommern went, naturally enough, to Pommerania. Denmark's German possessions were split between Sorbia and the Rhineland. (...)

The Wallachian Empire received a harsh blow in the liberation of the Kingdom of Hungary, one of its most populous areas. Greater Slovakia, a generously interpreted region, was annexed into Czechoslovakia, the young nation finally redeeming the latter part of its name in full. The coastal exclave of northern Albania was returned to Albanian rule, while occupied Macedonia joined the Greek Kingdom. (...) While the mood in Wallachia was one of outrage at these terms, later historians have considered them relatively mild, as there was no push towards an independent Ukraine - allowing Wallachia to retain its important breadbasket and loyal millions. (...)

The partition of French West Africa.
Poland claims the lion's share, while Beja and the Netherlands make gains of their own.

Beyond Europe, French West Africa was partitioned between Italian allies. Prudently, the Italian Empire made no further attempt to expand in Africa. Poland received most of the old French colony, with the Netherlands granted the westernmost territory. Beja's holdings in western Morocco also absorbed French holdings in its southernmost reaches. (...) French possessions in the Pacific received the same treatment, with charters for 'civilizing' the undeveloped island territories granted to Poland and the Netherlands. (...)

The War was over. In the Far East, it had ended with Honor, or so the Chinese Emperor proclaimed to his people. In the West, it had led to a reordering of Europe. France and its allies were much reduced and almost wholly disarmed. Italy now held the strings to most of the continent in their hands. The Italian government would soon come to realize just how impossible the task of maintaining this new Continental System truly would be. (...)

And there we have it - the FIrst Great War. Whew. The illustrations in place of the lost screenshots worked out pretty well in the end, I thought.

Postcards From Eternity: a Narrative Paradox Megacampaign AAR

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