Mauritania

(Comments most definitely welcome and highly appreciated)

Mauritania is a country quite unlike any other. From the first stirrings of its history as an “Empire” supported by the slave trade and the anti-French sentiment of the British and the pro-Profit sentiment of the Americans it prospered greatly under its first King.

Moric I of Mauritania returned in 1785 to the island that had up until then been marked down in various maps as Malagasy, Madagascar, and Libertalia and received the warm welcome he had been expecting.

With the few volunteers that he had and the large majority of natives who remember the fact that Moric had not only designed an alphabet and built schools for them on his trip to the island but had even gone so far as to try to improve their standard of living with medicine and unification of many tribes he manages to formulate a revolt against the French garrison at Foulpointe which he then designated as the capital of his new kingdom.

What was the allure of Mauritania in those early years? Was it the relative freedoms promised by the Benovsky monarchs, the wild wheeling and dealing of business and the attainable wealth? We may never know but we do know that the many friends that
Moric I made along his way eventually show up on the island.

Many people are hard pressed to find a reason as to why the first non-American and non-British immigrants to the island are Poles but the explanation lays in the fact that Moric I had already guaranteed the Polish, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Slovaks, Russians, and even the Swedes large plots of land deep into the island.

So by 1787 there were already the first stirrings in Europe of the idea of a mass exodus to Mauritania and Moric I was more than ready to take advantage of it. That was not the only plan for ensuring his power as King of Mauritania which at the time was still only his capital and the north of the island.

He also personally sponsored known Arab slave traders and pirates in their adventures, just so long as they would return with captured ships. In his many adventures he realized that there were large untapped markets, everywhere. So that there were already plans in the works to start recruiting fighting men and sailors from Formosa, Brazil, and secret prisoner raids onto the Kamchatka where Moric I had been imprisoned twice.

Moric I was a man that moved at a dazzling pace and by 1790 had already established the Mauritanian Navy, the aforementioned pirates and raiders, the Mauritanian Foreign Legion, the aforementioned Formosans, Brazilians, prisoners from Kamchatka, Austrians, the odd American, British merchants with too much time on their hands, Polish nationalists that followed one of their heroes to a new land, and the assortment of Hungarians and Zanzibari slave-soldiers that would eventually form the core of the force.

Added to this was the Mauritanian Land Army, which consisted chiefly of naturalized Europeans and local Betsimisaraka tribesmen who had a long history with both the musket and war. In the enlightened period of the 1790s Mauritania was considered strange because it still allowed its armed forces to not only raid other, local tribes for slaves and loot but actively supported it.

Though Moric was not always successful, in the central highlands the kingdom of Merina threatened his eventual control of the whole island. The Merina king at the time King Andrianampoinimerina had been hard at work uniting the highland clans through the simple process of marrying the princesses and killing off the princes while at the same time forcibly reforming the technologies of his people through the use of implements like the metal spade.

Both men were definite thorns in the other’s side. Both were well learned and had even possibly met briefly while Moric had last been on the island. Both men were excellent military commanders and could almost predict the other’s moves. Both men had been quick to pull in allies to be used against one another, for Moric the multitude of princes who had been either dethroned or were currently fighting Andrianampoinimerina and for Andrianampoinimerina the western tribes who had never received the full benefits of the reforms implemented by Moric. Both sides were well armed and bloody minded.

The final straw came when King Andrianampoinimerina issued the announcement that “the sea is the boundary of my rice-field.” When Moric heard this he was reported to have flown into a rage and demanded that a final strike be inflicted upon the damned Merina kingdom and that the man who would bring him the head of Andrianampoinimerina would be made an official Earl and given lands in the interior.

So in 1791 the Mauritanian Foreign Legion which was sadly better equipped and armed than the actual Mauritanian Army set off with a force of five hundred and forty three legionnaires. Their only objective was to give chase and try to either capture or kill King Andrianampoinimerina or a member of his court.

They were led by a recent immigrant from the United States. A man named Andrew Jackson.

Probably the most important thing about the fact that it was the Mauritanian Foreign Legion instead of the actual Mauritanian Army that was readied to strike at the very heart of the Merina kingdom headed up by King Andrianampoinimerina was that the Merina and the few allies they had left had by this point grown used to the occasional mercenary group that would try and augment its pay or seek adventure by joining in slaving raids undertaken by the Merina against the Mauritanians or those Africans on the continent itself.

As the first group of about two hundred or so soldiers set off with Jackson to try and seek some form of payment for their guns and experience. Now this was an obvious ruse because no group of that size had yet to try and sign up with the Merina, yet. However the sentiments confessed by the men and the fact that more than a few had begun to learn the Malagasy language caught the Merina chiefs off guard and caused enough bewilderment to allow Jackson to present his case and trick a lower level chief into conscripting two hundred white men with guns to fight for King Andrianampoinimerina.

In his rush to show the king what he had done this chief, who’s name is now lost to history, almost immediately set off with his own small force of warriors in tow towards the central fortifications of the highlands. It was when the force led by Jackson and the local chief were away that the remaining three hundred and more troops led by a Pole named Casimir Zolensky began to emerge from the surrounding forests and engaged the chieftain’s fortress in combat.

After about ten minutes they managed to capture it by burning the wooden fencing and effectively charging up the sloping earthworks to achieve a quick capture of the fortress. Thirty men and women of working age were capture and forced into porterage to help transport the good shares of the fortress’s rice and yam crop.

Those who were not of working age or were simply not needed were marched back by a small contingent of Legionaries as slaves. In all forty three children and twelve elders were captured and forced to make the long journey back to Mauritania.

So Zolensky advanced after Jackson with his remaining forces and the many extra muskets and bags of powder that the men carried. The plan had been to present King Andrianampoinimerina with the mostly unarmed group of soldiers led by Jackson. After the King had accepted the gift and set up reasonable accommodations for the large amount of men then groups of them would break away to retrieve as many muskets as they could carry from the forces of Zolensky.

Then they would attack and hopefully kill or capture not only King Andrianampoinimerina but any advisers and mercenaries that had been serving under him. The plan went off without a hitch and the King was killed in the slaughter along with most of the population of Antananarivo. Jackson and Zolensky then marched their relatively intact troops back into Mauritanian lands and presented the head of King Andrianampoinimerina to King Moric.

After that the remaining Merina princes crumbled and submitted to the general will of Mauritania who though a bold nation thought better than to try and immediately subjugate so much land with so few troops. So instead of taking the whole thing Moric decided upon the northern half of the island and many key ports in the south.

So in a move that would be copied by numerous conquerors and colonizers the world over King Moric created the Sakalava Confederacy and officially recognized that group of princedoms and fiefdoms as the official governing territory of the southern half of the island. Though make no mistake any prince who wanted to stay in power had to swear an oath of fealty to King Moric.

The successes of Andrew Jackson made him an overnight hero in Mauritania and ensured his continued rise through the military ranks. In fact Jackson’s tactical advantage and efforts convinced Moric that maybe he would be better served in the Mauritanian nobility.

In 1793 both Andrew Jackson and Casimir Zolensky received Titles. Jackson took the Earlship of Tsimihety Faritra and Zolensky was granted the Earlship of Mahajanga Faritra.

Though both claims were relatively small and somewhat isolated it was for good reason. In a rush to attract immigrants from Europe and cheap labor and soldiers from Asia the Mauritanian government had marketed the whole nation as a place where ranks of nobility were relatively easy to obtain and that land was plentiful.

It seemed that this tactic worked and between the years of 1795 and 1810 the immigrant population doubled every three years, the titles of nobility granted tripled every year. Soon it seemed as if for Prince there was a Pauper, often they were the same person. In essence Mauritanian court life was, interesting to be certain. With titles of nobility came parcels of land and a well known quip was “Mauritania: one king, one nation, one thousand duchies.”

Still this system somehow worked because everyone quickly figured out that by subjugating lesser neighbors and by buying their titles through the court system that according to basic feudal principles they were now technically your subjects. This practice was realized and pretty soon spread everywhere throughout Mauritania. It gave rise to some nobles having incredibly long and complex titles but controlling no more than a few thousand actual acres of land.

What did these titles do for you? Well for one they increased your standing in the King’s court and in the local courts. Add to that the stipend that came from possessing a certain number of titles and it seemed as if everyone was going to be involved in a land dispute soon enough.

Still though, the system somehow pulled through though Moric did eventually put a rather large Supplies Levy on any earl, duke, viscount, margrave, or baron that possessed more than twelve titles. This still didn’t discourage people as they figured out that importing Formosans and the poor the of Europe to fill in this space was a relatively cheap alternative to giving up their highly inflated importance.

As such all this land grabbing and all these new immigrant groups being forcibly introduced meant that the more conservative and just generally angrier Malays found themselves being drawn further and further away from the white man’s society.

Inevitably they would be drawn to the Sakalava Confederacy where they could at least pretend they were free.
So now that their chief rivals on land had either been absorbed or forced into a relatively small area and the possible land war that could result from everyone becoming their own private duke had been avoided by Moric’s skillful assertion that if someone was truly more noble then they could send more people to fight it seemed as if Mauritania was truly starting to take off and prosper in definite ways.

This belief was on the whole a very true statement and Mauritanians were damn proud of it. However there was the issue of the Mauritanian Navy. Operated almost entirely up until this point at least by Zanzibari pirates and the odd fisherman who felt the need to really kick some ass via plundering and enslaving mainland African villages the navy of Mauritania was lackluster to say the least.

However this was about to change, thanks almost entirely to the desperation of one noble who had ensured for himself something approaching twenty six titles and the realization that the Mauritanian land forces were already filled with mercenaries.

This caused a definite problem with logistics so much so that the Mauritanian Army decided to play a sick joke and have number of men required per title raised to something completely impossible to provide. As a result of this joke the Military Supplies Levy was thus sat at something like twelve hundred fighting men for every title over twenty and enough food to feed each man for three days time.

So enter one Mr. James Weaver who thanks to his ability to accumulate titles seems to be very important but in fact runs a small banana plantation and contracts ships to organize a slave raid or two on the side. Mr. Weaver had twenty six titles all together owed something like eight thousand fighting men to the Mauritanian Armed Forces. If Mr. Weaver did not comply and provide that number of men or a healthy substitute then his lands and monies and business and titles and basic dignity would be confiscated.

So, Mr. Weaver was desperate. In fact Mr. Weaver was beyond desperate and had already been trying to round up as many soldiers as he could. He had gotten lucky and found opportunity in two unlikely places.

One was the Zheng clan from southern China who had been in the pirate trade since the early 1600s when Zheng Zhilong had united large swathes of pirates and worked alongside the VOC to attack the Ming Empire. It was these same fearsome pirates which would be employed by Weaver as his official contribution to the Mauritanian Navy.

However this most generous “gift” was not enough and Weaver had to think fast. Luckily for him many raiders from the former Crimean khanate were out of business and looking for a step up in society. He took advantage of it and enlisted twelve hundred Crimean Muslim raiders to serve as Mauritania’s first official cavalry.

Mr. Weaver’s Oriental Armies as they came to be known were a source of limited pride to the new fledgling state. Many would point out these two disparate groups and say rather smugly or occasionally in a horrified tone that only in Mauritania would a Chinese pirate clan and Turkic raiders be expected to work alongside good white Christians in the building of a new and most prosperous land.

One of the most interesting things about the formation of Mauritania is just how deeply it affected European history. For instance in Poland there had always been grumblings of revolution and yet because Tadeusz Kosciuszko had immigrated to Mauritania that left only a few rabble rousers who knew very little of true republican ideals and only wished to enhance their own powers as szlachta.

By removing the most dangerous man in Poland the situation blew over relatively quickly and Russia managed to avoid the possibility of getting dragged into a war of re-conquest. Because of this Catherine was able to focus on something she had been waiting on for a long, long time.

In Persia nobody occupied the most important throne in the Farsi speaking world. The Peacock Throne was vacant and whenever a monarch sees a vacant throne they cannot help but do the thing that comes most naturally to them. Catherine simply had to occupy that throne.

The subjugation of Persia went off without a hitch. In 1796 Cossacks swept across northern and central Persia before concrete reports of invasion could reach Tehran. By mid year the Persians had decided to prop up a puppet Shah and moved their capital to Bandar-e-Abbas.

In Suborov we trust was the name of the game during the Persian Expeditions. Though rapidly approaching old age he went out with one last hurrah in Persia. In the beginning of the campaign after he witnessed the brutality of the Persian reprisals on his captured men it dawned on Suborov to try something completely different.

He knew of the military tactic called decimation in which you kill one tenth of the enemy’s men captured in combat. He decided to try reverse decimation. After all didn’t some of the more pious of the rich do reverse tithing. Donate ninety percent of their yearly wealth to the church while keeping only ten percent for themselves?

Yes, that is what Suborov did. Every Persian military unit that was captured was reverse decimated. It worked well, so well in fact that by the middle of the relatively short campaign only the most hardcore ghazis from around Persia and other parts of the Muslim world would even dare to fight the Russians without overwhelming odds of success.

Some of Suborov’s underlings took it a little too far though. In villages where they did not cooperate quickly enough it was not uncommon to completely reverse decimate not only that village but the surrounding country side. In later years historians would characterize it as wholesale genocide. They would not be far from the truth. Even today some parts of the Persian country side are trying to recover from the repeated massacres against them.

By the time of Catherine’s death in January of 1797 she had managed to secure almost all of Persia and had given up on trying to chase down the new “royal family” which had fled under Ottoman protection. All of Russia mourned as their old Empress fell by the wayside and then cheered as their new Emperor rose up to take his place in history.

Paul I was a strange man to have as the Emperor. Father of ten children and holder of an out of date world view that demanded chivalry he was still uncompromisingly ruthless in all of his military endeavors and made no mistake in quickly reinforcing the newly conquered and reverse decimated Persia by bolstering it with “freed” settlers from Siberia and Cossacks from the Ukraine.

This worked, especially in northern Persia, for two reasons. In the parts of Persia where these new Russian exiles would be relocated to there were very, very few Persians left. The second reason was that in the parts of Persia where there was still a reasonable number of Persians left they wanted to keep it that way and speaking out against a Cossack or prisoner settlement meant than an overzealous underling could decide that your village and every village within twenty miles of your village had just decided to rise against the Russian Empire.

(Author’s Note: In OTL Kosciuszko’s Uprising was a source of great stress on Catherine and helped to bring Russia and Prussia that little bit closer, it also helped to wear her out enough that she died early. Without that stress and with her favorite project running smoothly she and Paul would have gotten along just a little bit better. This would lead to a distinct lack of Pauline Laws that existed in OTL.)

In 1797, the beginning of the Years of Pauline Supremacy as it is known in Russia, a king celebrated his fifty-first birthday. This king was Moric Benovsky and he had something pressing down on his mind.

Since 1785, when kingdom was established, they had been using whatever currency flowed into the nation. For this reason trade could be quite tricky as official pamphlets had already been printed on the conversion rates because the Abyssinian amoseh, or large blocks of salt, the ruble, the complicated web of different brands of thaler used throughout Europe, though it is common knowledge that the Prussian thaler was the most popular thaler in Mauritania because it divided into different Polish currencies that many immigrants already possessed.

Add to this the Gold Coast ackey, the thousands of silver coins pouring in from Formosa, the Tatars from the former Crimean Khanate trying to pay everyone in tobacco, wine, cattle, and decorative rugs, and of course the Spanish dollar, the American dollar, and the payment of debts via slaves and gunpowder.

It was enough to give any devoted economist a heart attack and it was currently King Moric’s job to try and sort it all out. So in order to make everything easier on himself and on his treasury Moric instituted a steady program that would helpfully move Mauritania to a successful decimalized currency.

Because of the abundance of silver thanks to their trading with Formosa, Moric proclaimed that the new Mauritanian Thaler would be backed exclusively by silver. He then set about trying to buy up silver with titles of nobility, tax free mind you, and the ever enticing prospect of land and having the government support land claims based on the amounts of silver that someone has “donated.”

So there was what can only be called a Silver Scramble. Many entrepreneurs set up what could only be described today as pyramid schemes or simple cons. In return for a simple and single investment in silver they would guarantee many American and European businessmen a nice slice of land in Mauritania or any colonies that Mauritania should ever secure.

After the silver was brought in via cargo ship they would then send out a letter stating that sadly the business venture has fallen through and that they cannot return your silver because the ships were looted by natives. Ah well, better luck next time.

So after securing these ill gotten stores of silver they would then trade them in and secure for themselves either a large amount of the new currency or simply some land to be had. It was from this series of events that Mauritanians secured their reputation as tricksters and low down and dirty villains and scoundrels who were just too smart for their own damn good.

Many large landowners started to complain though because already with the size of their claims and the size of all the new land claims it seemed as if pretty much every land claim was going to overlap eventually.

So they had managed to avoid one economic crisis only to be thrown right into the middle of another. It seemed as if there would be an uprising of some kind with the slightly older and well established nobility fighting the slightly younger and government backed nobility.

Most of the nobles who were complaining had only had their land since the last 1780s and barely ten years later, it seemed that they were going to lose their land. So what came to be known as the Halfway Revolt would form around several leaders from what they termed the ‘Older Generation.’ These were composed mostly of Swedes in the south of Mauritania and they soon realized that the closest friend they had was the Sakalava Confederacy.

The rebels established themselves as the Konungariket Nya Norden with the fortified manor of their elected King, Kjell Isakson. From their new base in Kjellborg they proceeded to extend the hand of friendship to the Merina majority in the Sakalava Confederacy.

They promised the Merina the right to the lands that had been denied them by such men as Jackson, Zolensky, and generally every other Mauritanian. So by 1798 Mauritania was in a bad place. A small pissed off group of Swedes had managed to secure for themselves most of the southern half of the island with the help of the marginalized majority native group.

There was only one solution to this problem and that was war.

The Kingdom of the New North managed to garner a lot of support from a surprising source. The French ancien regime within Napoleon’s Empire was most definitely ready to support any rival of Mauritania’s simply because Mauritania had been founded by conquering the French fortress of Foulpointe.

Not only that but many of the businessmen who Mauritania had screwed over with the silver schemes almost immediately jumped at the chance to make their money back and several mercenary companies were hired from across the Americas and Europe and sent to help the New North in their against Mauritania.

Let us examine these mercenaries for a moment. Because there had not been a long history of warfare right on top of warfare on top of warfare throughout the Americas for quite some time, at least not on the level of Europe, these mercenaries had not been well established and in fact came almost overwhelmingly from the Maroon populations of Jamaica and modern day Haiti.

Why were they chosen? Firstly it helped to get rebellious Maroons far, far away. Secondly they were experienced jungle fighters who though lightly armed would prove to be devastating foes to the Mauritanians. The only real problem was the tendency of the white skinned Swedes and their fair complexioned Merina allies to look down upon these blacks who they did see as inferior.

So, the Konungariket Nya Norden (Kingdom of the New North hereafter referred to as the KNN) had the French backing and the support of many businessmen with a grudge against Mauritania. However what the KNN did not have was a lot of guns and ammunition.

In fact they were in a decided ammunition shortage. To contrast this, the Formosan pirate clan, the Zheng, had had every third man of their soldiers equipped with a rifle or musket and every man amongst them carried three rounds of ammunition so that they could easily resupply their rifleman.

Because of this all Maroon, Merina, and Swedish troops of the KNN were guaranteed a single thaler or piece of silver or just whatever money was on hand for every musket or rifle round they brought in. They were guaranteed five for every Formosan head brought in. They were guaranteed fifteen for every Formosan rifle.

The continued support of foreign markets is what did the KNN in. The solution was a bold one but it would work. All of these businessmen had been promised some land on the island or on any colonies that Mauritania might establish. So the first ever Plenipotentiary of the Kingdom, Sir John Hyacinth de Magellan had a very bold idea.

Mauritania would have to establish a colony on the mainland and then give large portions of it to foreign investors. So it was decided and discussed and re-decided and finally the plan was hammered out. Firstly Mauritania would seize the surrounding islands which if any nations held they held in name only. Secondly these islands would be opened up to the foreign investors who had given the most money as a sort of private plantation.

After that came a very, very clever plan. The Maroons would be promised freedom and equal rights should they desert and join the Mauritanian Army. This worked and it worked quickly. Soon it was not uncommon to have large Maroon forces that had just been shipped in from the Caribbean simply desert once they were in the field and march over to join the Mauritanians who made them all official citizens and then promptly sent them back into the field, this time better armed and with promises of noble titles and land if they performed well.

They did. Very quickly the only ones left to fight for the KNN were the most hardcore of the Swedes and the large Merina clans. So a second plan was to be put into place. Commonly known as the Suborov Solution it meant the near genocide of any surviving members of the KNN. Many of the white soldiers for Mauritania however did not favor this plan because it would mean killing fellow white Christians.

So in order to avoid having to kill the white Christian Swedes the Mauritanian government would recognize the titles to any Swedes who deserted now and resettle them in one of Mauritania’s fledgling colonies on the mainland. These colonies were so fledgling in fact that they didn’t exist yet.

Once a large part of the Swedish and the lesser white ethnicities had deserted the KNN and it was simply the most die hard of die hard whites and the Merina clans left to try and defend against the Mauritanians the battle was joined and the Mauritanians advanced from their lines near the Mangoky River and established their presence for the first time in the northern KNN town of Naiad.

After enacting the Suborov Solution and killing nine tenths of the remaining white and Merina inhabitants they sent out messengers to most of the small villages on the way to Kjellborg. These messengers carried tales of the Massacre of Naiad and they informed the villages that unless they flew the white flag of surrender and greeted the Mauritanian troops unarmed, they too would suffer this fate.

The first village reached put up a fight and its name was lost to history. The survivors were told to go spread the word again and after that not a single village stood in the way of the Mauritanian Army as they moved closer and closer to their goal of Kjellborg on the Onilahy River.

(Author’s Note: Any students of Malagasy geography will be able to tell you that there is no town of Naiad anywhere near the Mangoky River. However in this timeline what would have become the city of Ihosy is in fact Naiad. What would have become Toliara is Kjellborg. What would have become Toamasina is Mauritania City.)

'Day
He is not a Pole! He is not a Pole! He is not a Pole!

Anyway, lots and lots of handwavium.

Mass exodus- If it was so easy, other colonial powers would do it too. We are talking a fair amount of ships, people knowing that Mauritania even exist. Also mass imigratio would somehwat erode Benovensis' (latin as to sidestep the dispute) support base, non.

What support can he offer to Arab pirates? And would Malgashy accept it?

I never said he was a Pole. I know that Benovsky was a Slovak.

And alright maybe I gave the impression of mass immigration. I did not mean to so I shall point out that it was small numbers of folks but aye you're right I do have a lot of handwavium in there.

As for what they can offer pirates, mostly they can offer some minor protection...minor notice I said minor. And the use of the Mauritanian ports, which they were already using but now they have some form of legality to their actions.

As for the Malagasy, many of the different tribes have already been cooperating with loads of different Europeans and especially the Arab and East African traders for a really, really long time. Also keep in mind that Moric was incredibly popular amongst the northern tribes.

Sure he's kind of screwed over any reputation he may have had with the Merina but they were far too inland for him to deal with when he was first there so he has little reputation with them to begin with.

As for the erosion of the base maybe I should point out that most of the folks coming in are Bar Confederates/Polish expatriates, and generally folks he either somehow had common ground with in his incredibly wide travels or people he knew.

And yeah, he had some erosion of the base in the southern part of the island...mostly thanks to policies he ennacted. (I always forget is it two Ns or one N?)

That was an interesting start. Are you going to continue the TL?

Very cool, but WHERE IS MY VINCENT VOTES?

(Baldie keeps telling me to post the rest of the timeline here, so here goes)

So in 1802, the fourth year of the war, when the first scouts reached the fort at Kjellborg they found a city deserted of arms and devoid of all life. The granaries had been cleaned out, the ammunition was gone, even the small arms producing factories that had dotted the landscape had been either burned or removed.

The Merina and Swedes of Kjellborg had disappeared, or so everyone thought. It appears that Kjell Isakson had already been in talks with the King of Swaziland, Ngvudgunye, to allow Swazi warriors to fight for the KNN.

However Kjell Isakson was a realist and realized that his people could not win this fight. So he had already begun to evacuate gunsmiths and some loyal troops to the domains of King Ngvudgunye in 1803. By the time of the final Mauritanian assault into KNN territory there were little to no actual troops left.

The Swedes and the Merina clans were granted citizenship by the Swazi and Kjell Isakson was himself adopted by Ngvudgunye as a member of the royal family. In return for the shelter that these people would receive the Swazi were taught gun making and basic stand up European discipline.

It was a match made in heaven. The Swazi would expand quickly and the strange Merina-Swedes were almost fully assimilated by the 1860s.

While in exile in kaNgwane (as the Swazi called their lands) the Swedes felt it was their duty to proselytize and bring the good faith to their heathen protectors. The Swazi were mildly enthusiastic about it and the syncretism began in earnest.

The strong Lutheran faith of the Swedish and their Merina allies was added to the ancestor worship of the local peoples and though the few priests among the contingent from Mauritania found this offensive Isakson was able to suppress their rather limited rabble rousing and continue building ties with the king and what he hoped would someday become his kingdom.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Back in Mauritania things were starting to blow over as a small stream of exiles was quickly replaced by a flood of new immigrants. Most of them were debtors and deserters from all over Europe and Southern Asia, though one of the most interesting sources of new immigrants was the Bantu serfs that had managed to escape from Portuguese prazo estates in Mozambique.

Thinking that they’d find a better life than the one they knew these serfs managed to just land in a country that had little to no room for them and either shackled them into the andevo (government slaves) the serfs of private landowners or on rarer occasions employed them as skilled ironworkers.

General Casimir Zolensky would eventually use these Bantus and their knowledge of the Mozambican coast and climate in designing his most brilliant maneuvers ever, the outright invasion and annexation of the Portuguese colony of Mozambique.

After his victories in the Inland Wars against King Andrianampoinimerina, Andrew Jackson was incredibly popular. So popular in fact that if he kept winning it was feared that the old guard who had served with Moric I before the creation of the Empire might be eclipsed in popularity by this new Earl.

So he was made an ambassador to the Kingdoms and Princely States of India and sent east. At first he protested the move saying that he was expecting one Rachel Donelson to arrive in Mauritania shortly. However Moric insisted and managed to persuade the fiery young man to make the journey, assuring him that she would be sent to India once she arrived in the nation.

So in 1793 Jackson stepped off a ship and into a strange and foreign land. He had been allowed by the Sultan of Mysore to set up his embassy in the capital of Srirangapattana. So Jackson existed in a happy state of affairs trying to travel about the massive collection of lands to get an idea of how these people lived and see if anything could be usefully implemented in Mauritania.

Jackson found several things of interest to him in India. The first was the caste system practiced amongst the Hindus and some Muslim princes. It was agreeable to Jackson’s personality and he would come to write long, nearly unintelligible, pamphlets on the subject in his own notes and diaries.

The second great thing of interest was the Sultan of Mysore himself, Tippu Sultan or The Tiger of Mysore. Both men were understanding of the other’s religion, both men had an intense almost super human hatred of the British, both men were accomplished military commanders, both men did not forgive easily and possessed legendary tempers and both men soon became quite fond of the other.

In fact it could be easily argued that while in India, Jackson had no closer friend than the Sultan with whom he would come to speak on many occasions. A not widely known fact is how Tippu tried to learn English and Jackson attempted Kannada before both men eventually caved in and spoke in a mixture of the two along with their broken French.

It was a genuinely good friendship which would lead Jackson into pursuing one of the more radical ventures that ever came into his mind.

Late one night, probably in 1796, Jackson and Tippu Sultan were about to part for the night after a long feast and discussion on religion and the state. At this moment a low caste Hindu fanatic struck and attempted to assassinate Jackson. The would-be assassin had managed to procure a gun Tippu stepped forward and with a single blow from the tulwar at his side ended the man’s life.

Jackson was astonished and angry. He cursed the man and then thanked Tippu for his actions. It was the Sultan’s reply that would change Jackson’s life forever.

“He [Allah] guided my blade.” It was at this moment that Jackson confessed to his friend a desire to convert to Islam. This was no light decision, from Jackson’s diaries that he kept while in India we see a man who had been wrestling with his own religious convictions and who seemed willing to learn more about what he deemed “the Black pagyn faiths.”

When Jackson was called back to Mauritania in 1798 at the start of the War of the New North he was a changed man. Though a devout Shia Muslim he retained much of his old convictions about discipline and hard work and considered it his duty to spread the faith and stamp out corruption in his own Earlship of Mahajanga Faritra.

It was during one of his numerous battles against the separatist kingdom that he received news that would affect his life forever. His beloved Rachel had died back in America. Her former husband had managed to find her and in a drunken fit beaten her to death.

The news broke Jackson and reduced him to a shell of his former self. No longer was he joyous or easy going. Now he was stern and only found comfort in his new found faith. He drilled his mind constantly and gave up any and all luxuries he had once enjoyed.

It is even rumored that he managed to memorize the Koran later on in his life. What is known is that Jackson threw himself entirely into his work and devoted his every waking moment to either becoming a better general or a better Muslim.

His very appearance on the battlefield was enough to rally men and turn the tides of war. He fought with abandon and was cool and collected during even the most intense combat. A well known account tells of the time that a Swedish gunner shot Jackson from his horse during combat.

Rather than seek immediate medical assistance Jackson drew his sword and approached the Swede at a leisurely pace. Once he was upon the man he hacked the man’s head off and carried it with him to have his wounds attended to. Two days later he was commanding from the front again.

Jackson had changed and the history of a nation and of a continent would change with him.

Europe was most undoubtedly changing, the broad sweeps reveal much. The dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and the establishment of an Austrian Hegemony to take its place, Napoleon continued to eat Europe piece by piece, and while everyone focused on the Great French Glutton a backwater Empire raised an eyebrow and smirked.

Russia had long been a nation of contrasts. It sought to make itself a modern machine but it still relied on the ancient serf system to support itself. It threw fighting men at everything and extolled the virtues of the few that survived.

So while Britain and France had their squabble, while the Austrian Empire realized it could be a stronger and more virulent avatar of the former Holy Roman Empire, while men in America ran to chart their new territories. While all of this went on Russia began building its forces and looking at the thing it had long desired the most.

First though some political wrangling would have to be done. After the death of Josephine Napoleon cast about and rested his eyes on Anna Pavlovna, in 1810 he made the offer of a political marriage between the two countries. Though Tsar Paul was wary of marrying his daughter off he realized that for what he desired to take shape he would need the support of Europe’s newest land power. [1]

So in 1810 Anna traveled from her beloved Russia, never to return, and to the arms of France’s greatest leader. This bond between a new dynasty and an old one led to the long and successful friendship between Bonapartist France and Romanov Russia.

After the marriage the Russian contingent was quick to speak with Napoleon himself and made no attempt to hide that they expected a small favor from the man. A plan was agreed upon rather quickly and by 1812 Europe and the world could plainly see that Russia was indeed planning something.

Ever since Peter the Great every Russian tsar has cast their eyes to the south and looked upon the Ottomans as liars, thieves, and most importantly as usurpers. The myth ran in the Russian blood and it resounded through every hall.

Constantinople is ours. It was widely known that Catherine had even been grooming Konstantin, Paul’s second son, as an eventual Emperor of a conquered but most of all retaken Byzantine Empire.

In 1813, before the outright annexation of the Kingdom of Holland by the First French Empire, four thousand Dutch troops were moved south to meet with their Italian brothers. Their objective was a coordinated strike against the Ottomans. Though their supply trains were long and their fleet was relatively small, most of the fleet was busy guarding the north against a possible British invasion. They managed to reach the Ottoman shores and marched inland to rendezvous with the massed Russian forces that would be sweeping in from the east. [2]

Eight thousand combined troops of the French Empire were awed and appalled by their Russian counterparts. The four hundred thousand man army was made up almost entirely of recently conscripted serf soldiers and officers who were so in love with vodka that they rarely knew their own names much less the names of the men who were to fight and die for them.
One Italian remarked that “this was not an army, it was a mobilized colony” and there was the promise of many more monstrous masses of unwashed humanity behind it. Leading this expedition was the young Emperor himself, Konstantin.

Now, any student of logistics can tell you that four hundred thousand Russian serf-soldiers are not the easiest thing to hide and nor are they very good at hiding. They need food, shelter, some form of entertainment, and quite usually a gun.

So it was no surprise to the Ottomans when the beast did finally begin to move towards their heartland. Especially since the more intrepid Ottoman merchants had been selling slave girls and food to those Russian officers and serf-soldiers that did manage to get paid for close to three months now.

The first battle of the war had been fought quite some time ago. Simple Ottoman raids and Russian reprisals which had been ignored by a government which was falling to its knees and praying that somehow the money to pay their own troops in Egypt would surface.

Now though they were praying for a savior. They were praying for someone, anyone who would step up and find a way to stop the human swarms descending on their countryside like locusts. Sadly, nobody did step up. Albanian mercenaries fled before the onslaught, deciding early on that this was not worth the money.

Even the loyal bashi-bazouk, loyalty of course being bought by the right to raid whatever they took, fled before this army of paupers. By the summer of 1813 the unimaginative Konstantin had managed to lose close to ten thousand men through sheer neglect. More Russians died on the forced marches than did in battle. They fell like flies from the starvation and not from the saber.

Still, they pressed on during the hot summer months and by August 18, 1813 the large Russian force had arrived at Constantinople. It was then that they realized they would have to cross the Bosporus, they had in a massive oversight marched from the wrong side. They had also forgotten to bring the ships that would take them across and on to Constantinople.

The behemoth that was the Russian army set about stripping every forest on the Anatolian side of the Bosporus of trees to make giant rafts and medium sized ships that would allow them to transport the main force across. Because of this the bureaucracy and ruling family of the Ottoman Empire managed to slip quietly from Constantinople and reestablish themselves at would become the secondary capital of Mersin, far, far away from the Russians.

The size of the force necessitated quite a lot of rafts and boats so it was in actuality early September before some bulk of Konstantin’s army could cross the Bosporus and enter a city that had almost been emptied of all life. Only the most intrepid merchant or the most devout Christian stayed to greet their new customers or liberators.

What Konstantin did remember to bring was cannonry. So after finding a suitable Orthodox priest and having his sappers blow the minarets off of what had been the Blue Mosque and what was now the Hagia Sophia he was declared Konstantin XII of a restored Vizantiya. [3]

The only question now was, could he keep it?

[1] In our timeline Napoleon actually did ask for the hand of Anna Pavlovna but was rebuked. She would later go on to become the Queen of the Dutch and mother of William III.

[2] No invasion of Russia meant no War of the Sixth Coalition and no Germans getting together to drive out the French Empire, yet. Yes, I know it’s not the absolute greatest footnote on this highly complex and sensitive issue but I’m much better at African history so bear with me.

[3] I use the Russian spelling because it’s all cool and stuff.

It may seem as if the Russians simply walked in and took everything over, though nothing could be further from the truth. They had timed their assault well the nizam-i-cedid, the most modern force in the Ottoman military, was not yet as massive as it would eventually become and the Janissaries, long the mainstay of Ottoman combat, had become nothing more than a conservative military lobby that only sought to protect its own interests.

Without the Janissaries to augment their forces the commanders of the Alti Boluk, the Six Divisions of Cavalry, had decided to not engage the large Russian pike forces on their own. [1]

It cannot be overstated how useful the Ottomans were in this campaign. Thanks to their centuries of segregation and conquest of whole ethnic groups, who had long felt maligned and out of place, the Ottomans experienced some form of rebellion every few years. During the Russian invasion the Serbs had already been rebelling for nine.

So was it throughout most of the Ottoman domains. The Russians were quick to try and foster a spirit of rebellion amongst the ethnic minorities that had long been ignored or mistreated by the Ottomans.

This culminated in Mateja Nenadovic, a Serbian archbishop and a leader of the Serbian Rebellion, visiting St. Petersburg once the Russian army had reached the Bosporus and inquiring whether or not it would be possible for the Russians to help drive the last vestiges of Ottoman power from their beloved land of Serbia.

The Russians considered it but Paul was not sure that Russia could support the Serbs and the invasion at the same time. So in reality a token Russian force found its way into helping the Serbs fight off the Ottoman forces and trying to establish their own kingdom.

The same revolutionary sentiment could be found fomenting amongst the Greeks. Flamed by the death of Rigas Feraios and his revolutionary Greek poem Thourios [2] many Greeks began to see the Ottomans as they had in the past, as invaders and near useless administrators who leeched off of the Christian Greeks.

So in 1813 three merchants who had been inspired by both Rigas Feraios and took heart in the fact that the Russians had invaded founded the Filiki Eteria. The men who would later become Greek heroes Nikalaos Skaufos, Emmanuel Xanthos, and Athanasios Tsakalov immediately began raising money to help pay for Greek mercenaries for the rebellion. [3]

So the Orthodox Greeks and the Orthodox Russians looked at each other and realized that they had the chance to do something both had wanted to do for many, many years. The Greeks set themselves to rebellion in early 1814, shortly after Vizantiya was declared. The early leaders of the rebellion were exile Greeks or Phanariot Greeks from Constantinople itself.
Still, it was a Greek rebellion with pro-Russian leanings and then a rebellion for the myth of Byzantium itself. One of the early members of the rebellion was Theodoros Kolokotronis.

Theodoros would come to be an invaluable member of the Rebellion, also known as the Restoration amongst Vizantiya nationalists, since his youngest days he had worshiped his father who had been killed in a Greek rebellion against the Turks. Add to this his experience as a fleet commander in the Russian Mediterranean fleet and his experience as a land commander and he seemed the perfect candidate to become an important official in the army of Vizantiya.

This is exactly what happened when in May of 1814 Emperor Konstantin was persuaded by his sister Maria Pavlovna to make Kolokotronis the first Strategos of Vizantiya. Kolokotronis would have his work cut out for him. The nizam-i-cedid had been massing in the secondary capital of Mersin and the general feeling amongst the Turks was that they would do a much better job than the useless Janissaries.

News would come back to Konstantin of Akinci raiders near the Cilician Gates by July of the same year. It was known amongst the Russians that the Akinci would appear before the main Ottoman force and raid the surrounding countryside to soften up the target and though there was barely even a Russian presence there and it was seen by both sides as the Turks marching to establish order in their own territories.

Still, Konstantin decided that if the Russians and their few mercenary groups could make a good showing in central Anatolia then the Turks might be pushed further back and more land could eventually be consolidated for Vizantiya.

The Turks had already moved into the region and had set up fortifications and were actually preparing to push forward when the massive combined Greco-Russian force reached the Cilician Gates on September 6 of 1814.

Leading the main charge was the relatively young General Alexander Balashov who had previously been stationed in Vilnius. A decent commander he had courage and intelligence and was resolved to take pure numbers and turn it into pure talent. The Greek coalition was of course led by Theodoros Kolokotronis and consisted almost entirely of former Greek militiamen and exiles who had managed to return to the homeland in time.

Balashov had not been expecting a mostly modern army to attack him. In this engagement he had decided to lead from the front, all the better to inspire the inexperienced troops at his back. Later tales would recall him charging through blistering cannon and gun fire as the nizam-i-cedid made full use of its newest training and tactics.

Still, their fortifications in the Cilician Gates held at least until the diminished Russian forces reached the first sets of cannonry. No mention had been made of the Turkish officers but most of these “Turks” were in fact mercenaries taken from all walks of life and every form of military profession.
They had drilled the Ottoman soldiers into fine fighting form and now demanded absolute ruthlessness. The Russians who had managed to reach the guns and take prisoners thought that they would be safe. After all what form of madman would order his own guns and his own men destroyed rather than have them fall into the hands of the enemy?

Abraham Wright was that type of madman. Wright was a veteran of the American Revolutionary War, hailing all the way from Boston, who had picked up Turkish quickly enough and had a disdain for losing. When he sighted Balashov amongst the victorious Russians he ordered the remaining Turkish guns to fire upon the position.

And they did. Balashov was killed almost instantly. With the death of their commander the Russians scattered and died as they ran. They would later regroup off the field only to be left with mere minutes to deal with the advance of the modernized infantry of the nizam-i-cedid.

The Russians, at least a majority of them would hold their lines. They looked to the grim and determined Greeks for guidance and found it. The holding of the line proved disastrous for the Turks as the Russians, though slow at reloading, had been massed to such effect that for every volley fired the sheer volume of shot would mow down every Turk in their way.

While the Russians and the Greeks grew happy slaughtering the Turk infantry they had been mostly unaware of the massive cavalry buildup. The Ulufejis of the Left, one of the Six Divisions of Cavalry, had been assigned to the nizam-i-cedid and they made a fine showing indeed.

After smashing through the first lines of panicked Russian infantry the turned and wheeled and came back again. Theodoros was quick to note the Turkish infantry reforming and preparing to strike behind the cavalry. As such he ordered a fighting retreat and the Russians had left the field after two more attacks by the Ulufejis.

Once the remainder of the army had marched back to Constantinople, of course being harried the entire way by Ottoman raiders, it was realized that in order to take on this new Ottoman force something serious was going to have to be done.

The Russians were going to need a lot more men to expand, much less hold on to their small empire. So they looked at the Serbs again and wondered if it would be worth it.

[1] There were actually only four divisions of cavalry, two were sub-divisions.

[2] Literally war-song

[3] This actually happened in our timeline, just in 1814. The pro-Greek rebels were actually based out of Odessa and wanted to reestablish the Byzantine Empire, same as the Russians.

So while the Russians bumbled in Vizantiya and the Ottomans were forced by fire to regain control of their own empire and modernize while literally under the gun some lesser things were taking place.

Firstly Mehmet Ali Pasha stunned the world by setting himself up as Wali of Egypt and the Sudan. He stunned them further still, assuming that anyone was paying attention, by obliterating the Mamluk amirs in 1811 in the Massacre of the Citadel.

However it was the events within the Ottoman Empire that helped to propel Mehmet’s Egypt into the position of the lone power in Northern Africa. Years earlier when Russia invaded Persia and took the Peacock Throne as well as most of the country thousands of Persians had poured into the surrounding friendly Muslim lands.

Amongst these refugees were the Qajars, the recent usurpers of the Peacock Throne who had barely reunified Persia before being thrown out into the world. The Qajars were Turkmen and had yet to truly adopt a sedentary lifestyle. They still relied heavily on their reserves of Georgian slaves and in the scramble to find some safe haven were quick to bring as much of their limited armed forces as was possible.

The former Shah and leader of the Qajars was a man named Fat’h Ali Shah Qajar. To say the least he was not a very happy man. When the Russians took Constantinople he was said to have stroked his legendary long black beard and begin the plans to move his massive family, some sources say he had as many as 158 wives and over 200 children along with bodyguards and slaves, to safer pasture.

This safer pasture would be in the land of Egypt where Mehmet Ali Pasha was quick to welcome the royal clan and set them in direct opposition to his opponents, the shattered Mamluk forces.

Historians would later remark that is seems strange, almost comical, that the mostly Georgian forces employed by the Qajars would end up fighting the mostly Georgian descended Mamluks, at the time though nobody was laughing.

The Mamluks were furious. Not only had their amirs been slaughtered at the Massacre of the Citadel but Mehmet’s Egyptian troops had set themselves to trying to exterminate the Mamluks and their families in Egypt proper.

The only place for the Mamluks to flee was to the legendary Dunqulah base in Sudan where they established an outpost for organizing anti-Egyptian raids and planned their expansion in their new home.

Mehmet was unable to commit many troops to pacifying their raids in the south. He was far too busy fortifying northern Egypt from a perceived Russian attack, not likely in the least, or a wounded Ottoman Empire trying to build up a few victories to give its new troops some good morale, more than likely because it happened on a few occasions.

Like any good administrator Mehmet was quick to delegate responsibility and called back his son, Tusun Pasha, from his wars in Arabia against the Wahhabi state and the House of Saud. Mehmet gave both of his sons an army and began drilling them to provide the first line of defense should the Ottomans ever attack in force.

To the Qajars he gave a much, much simpler job. They simply had to “destroy the Mamluk power base in Dunqulah and cast Mehmet’s enemies to the four winds, to chase them to the ends of the world and grind them until nothing was left.”

That was of course the official line from Cairo. Fat’h Ali Shah Qajar accepted the offer only because he had been promised that Egyptian forces would eventually restore him to a kingdom, probably not his kingdom mind you but a kingdom. Add to this the fact that the Wali had been so gracious to allow the Shah’s massive family to seek shelter in his lands and it made for a very compliant Qajar Dynasty.

The only problem was that even though they had a small army with them, it really was not large enough to destroy the committed forces to the south. So deals would have to be made and payments given so that the Shah could eventually do what a Shah does best and that is rule.

So in 1815 the first andevo soldiers began appearing in the “pay” of the Qajar nobles who had come with their Shah. It was a brilliant move on the part of the governor of Mahali pa Afaya, one Sir Henry Blacker. He had an abundance of government slaves just sitting around doing nothing and there was a war about to be on.

Henry Blacker had actually served in the East India Company, he had been stationed at the Baraset Academy when the students there mutinied in 1808 and had been discharged after he was drawn up for treason and excessive drunkenness.

Still, he had experience and the Mauritanians needed someone to govern the island so he was selected in early 1813. He was a cruel task master and quick to sell off any andevo he considered ‘an excess burden upon me.’

Apparently he found over 800 excessive burdens in 1815. Either way he was not considered a war profiteer by the Mauritanian public and the andevo performed well in the early parts of the engagement.

It was this development that led to Mauritania’s discovery of one economic activity it would be engaging in during the 19th century. A nation of slave traders, plantation owners, rampant colonialists, and mercenary serfs was born.

It would be almost impossible to chronicle the history of Mauritania without mentioning the history of the local African kingdoms.

Beginning almost immediately after the establishment of the nation as a stable political unit, before even the first large amounts of Europeans began to arrive on the island gun running had become a popular activity for tribes like the Betsimisaraka, who now certain that they would be protected by a government of some sort spread their wares all over the coast.

Needless to say this had long irked the Portuguese colonials in Mozambique. This was just too bad because they had never managed to muster enough force to try and stop this rampant trade in death, at least from their end.

However enemies of the Portuguese, like the crumbling Rozvi Empire, were quick to adopt these cheap guns and added them as large supplements to their forces. The Rozvi and the Portuguese actually had a long history of fighting each other, ever since the Rozvi had driven the Portuguese from the hinterland with their primitive forces some years ago in 1693.

The Rozvi were far from the only ones to employ the use of Mauritanian guns and Mauritanian gunsmiths. The Mtetwa Empire was eventually convinced once their wars against the Swazi, who had come to make use of the Swedish Exiles and their experience with firearms.

Many great African leaders and innovators would eventually come from the Mtetwa Empire. These were leaders who would come to mold the very fabric of the Mtetwa Empire and southern Africa, leaders like Dingiswayo, Mzilikazi, Dingane, Mpande, Umhlangana, and of course Chaka.[1]

Each of these men would shape the Mtetwa in their own way. Mzilikazi would convince Chief Dingiswayo to seek ties with the Khumalo Kingdom, which would eventually be subsumed into the Mtetwa Empire, and crush the rising power of the Ndwandwe who were led by that most infamous chieftain Zwide.

In the lore of southern Africa it is commonly accepted that Zwide was born of a she-elephant who also happened to be a witch. It would of course make sense to assume this because his quick rise and steady growth of the Ndwandwe would leave anyone assuming that he had to be somehow supported by magic.

Zwide pioneered a battle tactic which later warrior kings would come to copy. He was extremely successful in utilizing the womb as a weapon. Already an old man by the time he turned his attention on the Khumalo and Mtetwa empires he had been encouraging his people to have as many children as they could for quite some time.

This had led to a large culturally homogenous group that understood that in order to survive it had to expand. Later historians would come to call the Ndwandwe the Revolutionary French of southern Africa, if only for their almost annual expansionist wars.

They were quick to fight and they ate kingdoms twice their size in little to no time. Assimilation was painful and forced, often at the end of a spear. Whole cultures were quickly destroyed, priests killed, women raped and distributed amongst the troops, cattle stolen, men castrated, and children taken to be raised as Ndwandwe warriors and wives.

It was this force that in the early parts of the 1800s began to acquire second hand rifles from the glutted Rozvi markets. Zwide was a prudent chief and more than willing to trade an entire conquered village for a good quality rifle, which he did in spades.

While Mzilikazi was convincing Dingiswayo to lead the charge and strike at the Ndwandwe while their attention was elsewhere a thirteen year old Chaka would be sent east to study in the colleges of Mauritania.

Chaka had been born in 1787, the son of the then current Zulu chieftain Senzangakhona kaJama. The only major problem for Chaka while he was growing up was that he was technically born out of wedlock, therefore putting almost completely out of the running for the title of Nkosi.

So while Chaka’s older brother Sigujana kaSenzangakhona was groomed for the chieftainship Chaka would be sent to study in Mauritania. By all accounts he would come to be an excellent student and a great lover of guns and would come to view them as the perfect gift. When his brother Dingane joined him in 1812 Chaka was waiting for his brother with the gift of a shotgun.

Chaka was said to have excelled in history and linguistics, as well as devouring as much on military tactics as he could. Though while he was in Mauritania he was quick to always introduce himself as a Zulu and was completely adamant about spreading knowledge on the Zulu culture and trying to coerce his school mates into seeing it as an equal to their own still developing Mauritanian culture.

Many would come to view Chaka and later Dingane as the Mtetwa Empire’s greatest unofficial ambassadors abroad. When Chaka would eventually return to his people and the Mtetwa Empire in 1814 he brought not only new knowledge and ideas about infrastructure and management but a wealth of contacts that would become invaluable in securing a favorable stance from Mauritania.

This favorable stance would come well when in 1816 the first almost modern war broke out between the Ndwandwe and the Mtetwa Empire over the Khumalo Kingdom.

[1] This is essentially the dream team of indigenous African politics. Dingiswayo was the last chief of the Mtetwa Empire. Chaka, Dingane, and Mpande were the first three kings of the Zulu Empire. Mzilikazi was the first king of the Ndebele (Matabele) and Umhlangana probably would have made something of himself if he had not been assassinated by Dingane.

1815 was a strange year for Russia. Paul had never really been that much of a popular Tsar, at least not amongst the nobles. If it had not been for the earlier Persian campaigns undertaken by Catherine the Great then it is most likely that Tsar Paul would have been assassinated much earlier than he was.

Some of the most virulent anti-Paul nobles found themselves in Persia early on with no way home. Men like Nicholas Zubov who had served in the armies of Field Marshall Suvorov and was all accounts a strong Russian patriot. He even formed a close tie to the legendary general, at least in the eyes of many Russians, by marrying Suvorov’s daughter.

Nicholas Zubov was far, far away from Saint Petersburg trying to quell one rebellion after the other in different parts of Russian Persia.

Still others who had an axe to grind with Paul quickly found themselves at the fringes of the Empire. Knyaz Pyotr Mikhailovich Volkonsky and even Paul’s own son Alexander soon found themselves in Vizantiya helping to lead the charge in establishing what would hopefully cement Paul’s glory. [1]

Really one of if not the only child that Paul managed to find any trust for was Maria. Maria was not a pretty girl, this is for certain. Though she is fabled to have been a great pianist and philosopher, even earning praise from Goethe to who called her one of the most extraordinary women of the day.

She was an extraordinary woman who while in visiting her unhappy brother Konstantin in Vizantiya had taken the time to view more than a few field engagements and learn just how chaotic an actual battle could be.

This of course had given her an idea.

The first of many sad occurrences took place when Alexander, who would have assumed the throne in front of Maria, was tragically killed through a friendly fire accident in January of 1815 while skirmishing against Ottoman raiders near Constantinople itself.

This left only her brother Konstantin in line for the throne of Russia but he was already the Emperor of Vizantiya. All accounts say that Maria dearly loved her father and took to his ideals of a vast love of mankind tempered with a general distaste for all humanity quite well.

Maria Pavlovna was also a very, very smart girl and soon realized that any potential ruler would have to have a good knowledge of military tactics. As such she had been studying the works of Suvorov for quite some time when her own father died suddenly in 1815.

Paul had made one enemy too many it seemed. Aleksey Arakcheyev was an incompetent officer who had been dismissed as the Inspector of the Artillery by Paul for consistently covering up the misdeeds and blunders of officers under his command.

He was a broken man by the time of the assassination. Ever since the dismissal in 1800 after having been given a second chance in 1799 his fortunes had turned ever sourer and he had come to blame Paul for all of it.

So on March 14, 1815 he got close to the Tsar while pleading his case for reinstatement. Rather than be publicly humiliated by being turned down he withdrew a knife that he had had hidden on his person and stabbed the Tsar close to nine times in the throat before being summarily bayoneted by the nearby guards.

The Tsar was dead. The most direct male heir was the Emperor of Vizantiya and Nikolai was only nineteen. Even though he could technically become the Tsar and Autocrat of All Russias there was a problem.

Nikolai never learnt about his father’s death. At least not until after Maria had been in power for a few years. An elaborate ruse had been set up by Maria. In retrospect it was foolish and strange; soldiers loyal to her had taken their positions as his official honor guard and made sure to limit his contact with the outside world as much as possible while feeding him false information about the state of the country.

They even went so far as to say that the French had invaded and members of the Royal Family had to go into hiding. As if the admittedly eccentric Napoleon would try his hand at invading Russia.

Maria had already had herself crowned and Nikolai was living in a completely different world by the time that Nicholas Zubov heard of Paul’s death. This of course did not stop him from raising a small army and revolting to restore Nikolai to the throne.

Though it really is hard to have a revolt to restore anyone when that particular person had not been heard from for close to four months and was presumed dead. After the first of the local, most importantly loyal, Russian troops heard this they marched on his position and scattered his forces to the wind.

Though Zubov himself did manage to escape to the Sultanate of Muscat, his acceptance at court being eased by all the loot he had brought with him.

[1] In our timeline Paul was long dead by 1815 and Alexander had been ruling since 1801, with both Nicholas Zubov and Volkonsky as some of his closest advisors. Both of whom took part in the plot to kill his father.

The 1810s were a strange time for the world. In May of 1813 the Allies began to put pressure on the larger French forces in the Iberian Peninsula. This pressure would result in Marshall Massena declaring unconditional war on the Spaniards and their civilian populace and the eventual dissolution of Spain as a nation.

The most drastic action would of course be taken in the newly annexed portion of Catalonia where one of the first artificial famines was created to cut back on guerilla movements and tear apart the Catalan resistance.

This worked, it cost many Catalonian lives but it worked. Moves by men like Massena and Suvorov began to ensure that desperate field commanders could no longer rely on the value of human life. It was barbarous to kill so many, it was evil to create a famine in order to control a population.

However, one cannot argue with results. From there the Long War in the Peninsula really began. The French continued to move deep into Spanish territory while at the same moment being trounced rather thoroughly in Portugal. There are literally hundreds of books written on the subject so we shall not go too far into the details here.

Anyone with a basic historic knowledge knows that by 1815 France had withdrawn its meager forces from Portugal and was consolidating its gains in Spain. In order to control the unruly Spanish some basic wide sweeping measures were undertaken, measures like sterilizing all Iberian prisoners from around 1814 onwards and taxation designed to send whole regions of Spain into abject poverty.

These are all well known and contributed to the rapid decline and fall of what was left of the Spanish Empire. Napoleon and his Empire cared very, very little for what happened to the remainder of the Spanish Empire. They were more worried about the prospects of a Seventh Coalition against them, this one likely to be led by the Austrians and their allies.

Britain was also in no place to enforce any form of order in the vast Spanish domains, like they had done with the Dutch. Wherever they were the peninsulares and the criollos came to know fear, they realized that without a great Spanish Empire backing them that they would be oh so alone and the mestizos and the indios would realize just how powerful they could become.

Portugal however, was in an entirely different position. The Braganza monarchs who would rule during this period, Maria a Piedosa and Joao o Clemente had come to understand that Napoleon and the French Empire were chronic conquerors. Neither would rest until they had either been defeated or were satisfied with their gluttonous ways.

Portugal would stand in the path of the French desire for more and more and more land until either of the nations was destroyed. It was for this reason that most of the royal family and later the court and even random peasants who had happened to have been waiting around docks would end up in Brazil.

Joao VI was not a good monarch. He was dominated by his Spanish wife, overwhelmed by ruling a defunct Empire, and had little knowledge as to how to properly maneuver his way around the seemingly revolt happy Spanish colonies.

His wife, Carlota Joaquina Teresa of Spain, on the other hand was a shrewd political manipulator who convinced her husband to use the Catholic sensibilities of the Brazilians and hopefully the Southern Americans by declaring a full Reconquista of Spain in 1817.

This Reconquista fielded maybe nine thousand men from all over Brazil and South America and eventually served only to act as a garrison and a source of determent to the French who were still pacifying sections of central Spain, the French had been emboldened by the collapse of negotiations in the formation of the Seventh Coalition and celebrated their enemies’ war weariness by turning the metaphorical and physical thumbscrews in Spain.

While the Portuguese were slowly being absorbed their own subjects and the French found new ways to strike terror into the Spaniard some important developments were taking place in Mauritania.

In 1815 Moric I was if not an old man then he was very close. At the age of 69 the tropical weather and continuing strain of running an expanding kingdom were having their strains. It seemed as if he was constantly on the verge of sliding into the dark abyss.

Luckily for the kingdom he had an heir. In 1794 his daughter Roza [1] had married a fine young man, Casimir Zolensky the Earl of Mahajanga Faritra. By 1796 Mikael Zolensky was born and by 1815 the nineteen year old was universally loved and engaging in numerous scholarly pursuits, not the least of which involved learning fluent Malagasy, Slovak, Polish, and Magyar so as to eventually better rule over his potential subjects.

This would be extremely useful because September 20, 1816, on his seventieth birthday Moric I of Mauritania would die in his bed. By the 22nd the news had reached most of the island and Mikael would take the name Benovsky and prepare to take the throne.

The only problem was that some of his more traditional subjects thought that because he was not descended through Moric’s inexistent son that he should not be allowed the throne.

A very, very interesting man made sure that he did. When Andrew Jackson heard news of the unrest in Mauritania City he gathered his personal guard of four hundred loyal ghazis and marched two days straight to reach the modest palace that had served first as a fort and later as Moric’s home.

In a brilliant move Jackson offered his life and his sword to the young king. Mikael was stunned and quickly accepted Jackson’s offer. The fact that Jackson had brought an army also helped to speed things along. Within days the well armed ghazis restored order to the city and Mauritania’s spiritual center was back on track.

Other parts of the island rebelled briefly before being put down by local loyalist troops, though most rebellions only escalated to the size of a particularly bloody bar fight. The nation had held and would continue to do so. The only question now was if Mikael was half the ruler his grandfather had been.

“The Reckoning War was about as useful as the Revolution in shaping American politics and national identity.” –John Ellis Wool

The massive waves of warfare and broken treaties in Europe, the Coalitions and the invasions and the redrawn borders, do not think that these went unknown and unnoticed in the United States and the rest of North America.

Americans are a crafty lot and the first thing they did was to immediately sell goods to both sides while claiming neutrality in the bloody conflicts. Of course the fact that they bought quite a large amount of territory from the French and cheered the French Republic on in its early days did little to dissuade the British from seeing a decidedly pro-French bent amongst the Americans.

Eventually though the Republican voices were silenced as Napoleon took his throne and guided the French into an ever expanding empire. Still though, Americans were eager to trade with anyone and everyone as often as possible.

The British were in a tight spot though. They secured much of their nation’s wool and cotton from the United States as well as good timber and a host of other resources. One thing they had never bothered to ask for were sailors, instead they just took them.

Both sides realized that they were at odds. The Americans felt that British embargoes and raids mixed with impressments was a gross affront to their national identity. The British considered American attempts to trade with both sides of a hard fought war an obvious endorsement of the French. So the British did the natural thing and supplied copious amounts of gun and ammunition to Indian tribes that were opposed to the Americans in the Ohio and Indiana Territories.

These tensions seethed for quite some time but eventually expressed themselves in a declaration of war by the United States on Great Britain in November of 1811 [1]. The first months of the campaign were stalled by the harsh winter and led to a simple drawing up of troops by the Americans and training of their small army.

The British were at the moment engaged in the beginning of what would be many long drawn out wars in the Iberian Peninsula, in the eyes of the British they were preventing Napoleon from gaining a spring board on which to invade England, and as such told the commanders on the ground in North America to simply stick it out and adapt a defensive strategy.

By the spring of 1812 the twelve thousand man American army was on the march. The time for the first troop movements by the Americans coincided nicely with the orders from the Crown to remain defensive and avoid fighting large pitched battles. As such the earliest land engagements were brief encounters, almost primarily between militias with the limited professional troops playing only a support role or protecting large cities that held worth.

The earliest sea battles on the other hand were something to behold. The British may have had a larger force but the American frigates were usually well stocked with guns and ships like the USS Constitution, USS President, and USS United States could deliver devastating 56 gun broadsides.

The USS Constitution would become famous not only for its later role as the premier commerce raider but for the earlier victories, most notably the defeat of the HMS Guerriere, which was sadly beyond salvaging and would later be burned. The Constitution would go on to join up with Rodgers Squadron and they began the early disruption of the port of Halifax. [2]

After Hull met with Rodgers and the two men realized that Halifax could not itself be taken, even by the larger Rodgers Squadron, and that so many of the large frigates operating in the same waters reduced the war effort in other theaters it was decided that Hull and the Constitution would take with him the 38 gun USS Congress under John Smith and meet the USS Essex in the Pacific to raid the British whalers there.

The British under Governor-General George Prevost were almost completely defensive. Early plans had been made by Isaac Brock to try and take Fort Mackinac but Prevost was new and eager to enforce his will. So while Brock was prevented from taking the militarily strategic fort the American infantry, of course buffeted by many militias, were free to reinforce their northern boundaries and begin the push into Upper Canada. [3]

These forces under William Hull were quick to take the town of Sandwich and from there established a temporary base of operations. After learning of this Brock was quick to act and using the forces of the native chief Tecumseh marched on Hull at Sandwich.

Luckily for Hull, who was a somewhat timid General, the Van Rennselaer cousins had been ordered forward with their New York Volunteers and the main Indian force was soon engaged by Solomon Van Rennselaer while his cousin, Stephen Van Rennselaer was able to lend his largely untrained troops to William Hull.

The First Battle of Sandwich was a swift one, even though the American forces greatly outnumbered the British, Brock was able to play mind games against his American foes by dressing his poorly trained army of farmers in the uniform of British Regulars. It took the full concentration of Hull and both Van Rennselaer cousins to keep the main American force from turning and running at the sight.

However the American obsession with good sharpshooters paid off when halfway through the advance Isaac Brock, arguably the best British commander in North America at the time, was struck in the throat and bled to death while being carried to the rear. [4]

Many of the colonial Canadian militia were disheartened by this and lost their nerve at the sight of the size of the American armies that had gathered to meet them.

So the First Battle of Sandwich consisted almost entirely of the other side frightening the other into a desperate and dangerous state. So after two or three salvos both sides fixed bayonets and charged. This served the larger American forces rather well as the Canadians hardly had the training of a British regular and rather early on the Americans were able to make enough gains to scare quite a few of the Canadians in the back into retreating from the field.

After the battle it was learned that very few men had actually died in the fighting though Solomon Van Rennselaer was rumored to have encouraged his men to reverse decimate a number of Indian prisoners.

News came to the Van Rennselaer cousins that John Armstrong had decided that their men should make the hard march back to New York and take hold of the Saint Lawrence River.

Having experienced a battle and not realizing that they had only faced quickly scrapped together militia Stephen was more than willing and remarked that “Soldiering seems to be marching and victory.”

He would be proved wrong on the Saint Lawrence.

[1] Without the gradual pullout of troops in the Peninsular Conflict Britain has had to step up its impressment policies so that by the time of the declaration of war there have been almost eight thousand Americans impressed by the British instead of the six thousand or so in our timeline, it was a major bone on contention and could have easily led to an earlier conflict.

[2] So for now the naval war seems similar enough but it’ll change in good time. Plus the Constitution was originally meant to break through and meet with Rodgers so as to take on sloops and do some general raiding in the area.

[3] Just in case you did not know Upper Canada is Ontario, so basically southern Canada.

[4] Eerily similar to the events of our timeline, except that the Van Rennselaer cousins would meet Brock at the Battle of Queenston Heights, where they would lose pitifully and far too many Americans would die. Like the Battle of Queenston Heights Brock would be shot by an American sharpshooter.
************
The death of Isaac Brock severely set the British in Upper Canada back. So rather than take the risk of going on an offensive war with few battle hardened troops and inexperienced commanders who relied heavily on Indian aid Governor-General Prevost ordered the remaining British forces back towards the more populated centers, like Montreal.

Left throughout much of the western stretches of Upper Canada were civilian farmers and the American Army of the Northwest. After the Van Rennselaer cousins departed with their New York Volunteers the only significant American presence was the almost literal ragtag army that would have been better suited using the hit and run tactics of the Revolution than actually forming a line and firing.

The thirty nine year old General William Henry Harrison, who was in charge of the Army of the Northwest, understood this and bemoaned the fact that such a large contingent of Americans, would not know how to properly fight.

So he would have to get smart or get lucky, or a little of both.

They would get their chance again in 1813 when good intelligence said that some Indian forces under Tecumseh himself were massing troops near the Sydenham River to begin raids into the Detroit area and rumors of war parties as far eastward as the Genesee River caused the Army of the Northwest to churn and yearn for the coming battles.

The battle would come when one of their encampments would be attacked by a probing force of about 100 Shawnee Indians. This particular encampment was being used by the Kentucky Rifles under Isaac “Old Kings Mountain” Shelby. What ensued was the stuff of legend.

After the initial shock of a night time attack the Kentuckians stood their ground and fought well, almost all of the combat was melee and the Shawnee would be quickly driven off, but not before the two leaders of the engagement would find themselves dueling each other.

Nobody is certain who found who but Tecumseh and Shelby came face to face on the night of August 3, 1812. Spectators from both sides of the conflict recount the gruesome determination of both men to slay the other. Tecumseh armed with a musket which he had already fired and Shelby with a hunting knife.

Shelby was much older than Tecumseh but not easily overcome. The big man held his own while the Indian with deft movements and catlike grace battered the butt of the musket into the head of Old Kings Mountain. Shelby was eventually knocked unconscious but not before sinking his knife deep into Tecumseh’s belly.

The Indian fled as the elder man blacked out and the Shawnee withdrew. Tecumseh did not die from the wound but he did suffer an infection that weakened him for the rest of his life. As for Shelby the old man would slip into a coma and die three weeks later.

This of course enraged the great state of Kentucky who would send thousands more to fight against the ‘savage natives who have wounded us’.

This new force would receive some basic training and march to New York by February of 1814, a six thousand strong Kentuckian force which through the course of the war would come to earn such monikers as The Red Man Runners, The Terrible Ones, The Army of Old Kings Mountain, and The Vengeful.
*************
The Van Rennselaer cousins would be the first of many successive American forces to try and cut Canada in half by reducing the main trading lanes of the denser more populated section of Lower Canada in half.

Their initial invasion of Quebec was in tandem with General Dearborn, who had helped invade the region during the Revolutionary War, Dearborn had raised a substantial New Hampshire and Vermont militia, mostly with the promise of adventure and beer, and a small corps of about 120 scouts that would serve as a vanguard for the New York Volunteers and the Army of Old Kings Mountain.

The main force that was to meet them on the undisputedly Canadian side of the Saint Lawrence River was one Joseph Wanton Morrison. [1]

Morrison was a commander cut from the same cloth as Isaac Brock. He had served in the 89th Foot for most of his career, though he briefly joined the 1st West India Regiment in order to be promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. Now he was given the chance to lead the second battalion of the 89th Foot against the American invaders.

Though he was greatly outnumbered Morrison knew he had professional crack troops who would be more than a match for the majority of the hastily assembled American forces.

It turned out that this was true. At the Battle of the Gananoque Mill the Van Rennselaer cousins with support from Dearborn’s Corps many of the militia are driven back by the stiff backs of the British troops and the sharp blades of their bayonets. [2]

The ultimate humiliation came though when Stephen Van Rennselaer, who was by all accounts not a very good military man, fled the field with quite a few of Dearborn’s Corps.

This left Solomon Van Rennselaer and Dearborn to command the more loyal Army of Old Kings Mountain along with the remainder of the New York Volunteers and the few New Hampshire and Vermont men who stayed on the field.

Though the American commanders eventually decided to retreat from the field it was not after proving to the Canadians that at least some of their number would stand and fight. Morrison decides to send only a token force after the retreating Americans and instead regroups his main troops and considers his next movements.

While both armies were regrouping and resupplying good news reached Dearborn and Van Rennselaer, they would be reinforced by regulars from the Army of the Northwest. The main force would arrive in about three week’s time and would be led by John Parker Boyd.

This was good news to the men seeing as after the battle they realized that a good majority of their own troops were not ready to face British regulars again, fresh men who had not been beaten would be needed to help lift morale, at least that was the consensus of the commanders.

While things boiled in Lower Canada the war at sea only intensified. William Mulcaster would lead the primary British raids against the eastern coast during the beginnings of the war. He had six sloops under his command, the flagship of his “squadron” being the HMS Royal George.

Though it may not seem like a lot the Mulcaster Squadron was sufficient for raiding coastal Maine and even going as far south as New Jersey and an attack on a fishing village in Virginia. The majority of the men in the Mulcaster Squadron were armed with boarding pikes, axes, and a few muskets between them. This made their tactics not that of the world’s greatest naval power but of the world’s greatest naval raiders.

In short, they were modern day Vikings and on a few occasions acted as such. There are reports of them looting and pillaging a timber camp, making off with more than a few prisoners and “requisitioning” the uses of the camp distillery and some old world inspired galleys.

The galleys were towed up onto the Saint Lawrence River, refitted and slightly improved, and stocked with American prisoners who would serve the remainder of the war as galley slaves being forced to row up and down the river so that Mulcaster and his men could attack small American encampments along the way.

Of course, the war was not the only thing going on during this time period. In the early parts of 1814, January 12 or so, the Congress of the United States returned James Wilkinson to the Mississippi Territory and instructed him to secure the formerly Spanish possession of Florida.

Why would a country in the midst of war make a blatant land grab? To be honest they did not. Florida was collapsing at every turn. The Spanish governor could not restore order without the support of the Empire and much of the south of the country had become a haven for pro-British pirates who attacked American interests in the Gulf.

Wilkinson managed to secure Florida, in name at least, rather easily. Enforcing order in the territory would be a very different thing altogether. [3]

[1] Even this early in American history the lumberjacks in Maine were going on about how at least half the Saint Lawrence was their territory.

[2] Much like our timeline the Americans attacked Gananoque in order to upset the depot supplies there.

[3] This really isn’t too early at all. American settlers in western Florida had rebelled in 1812 in our timeline and set up a rather short lived Free and Independent State of Western Florida. These pro-American forces will serve as the main force that Wilkinson will end up using in the pacifying of Florida.
**************
The year of 1814 came and went with very little headway made by either force. The increasing buildup of military forces by both sides made the public very, very nervous. So much so that cities that were not well fortified yet extremely important, Halifax for instance, made several steps toward copying the ideas laid down by Isaac Brock before his death and building fortifications and large walls around their perimeters.

Of course merchants were duly angry about this whole affair but they were silenced quickly enough by the fact that large walls may interfere with trade but definitely helped with protecting their goods. The first steps towards making sure that merchants would agree with this plan was allowing them to form a province wide union and not taxing their use of the new gates.

This worked remarkably well in the aforementioned port of Halifax which quickly began to grow thanks to an influx of merchants and the dime a dozen refugees who had been evicted from their farms by bored Americans in the west of the nation.

Governor Prevost was lambasted almost daily for his refusal to send troops west to try and oust the Americans from their position in Sandwich, he was quick to point out that they were already regularly making incursions from the Saint Lawrence River and any diversion of troops would open up Quebec City and eventually Halifax to the full brunt of the American onslaught.

Madison was in an equally tight spot. Militia commanders from many states were starting to call for their men to be returned, business leaders in the New England area were calling for a halt to the hostilities and almost daily reports came in of new Indian violence in the Mississippi Territory.

This new violence was from the Red Sticks who had risen up as the southernmost faction of Tecumseh’s Confederation. The man on the ground for this particular fight was James Wilkinson and he was quick to gather a force of pro-American Creek from the Lower Towns and Cherokee slave holders, along with whatever white men he could conscript from both territories and a few free blacks.

The Red Sticks were a traditionalist people, they often burnt anything they saw as being too “white” these included spun cloth, cotton fields, metal pots and pans, horses and cattle, wagons, but never for some reason the oh so useful guns that they had managed to hoard before their Spanish suppliers in Florida had been forced to stop supplying the Indians with equipment.

The Red Stick War was a short one and really served as an overall front in the Reckoning War. Their leaders were mostly Scotsmen who had become infatuated with the Creek, or Muskogee and later Maskogi, way of life. Peter McQueen was killed early on when Captain Dixon Bailey led a force from the Lower Towns at the Second Battle of Burnt Corn.

After the main force of the Red Sticks had been driven further and further south, near the Tombigbee River in what would become Saint Stephens, Alabama it was decided by Menawa and Red Eagle that they would not stand and fight here because the militias were so many and their troops had not been fed for some time. At Red Eagle’s urging Menawa took the largest contingent and pushed through West Florida and into the southern more swamp infested zones where it was hoped that their Seminole cousins would give them refuge and also drum up support for a potential war against the Americans if Red Eagle’s plan did not work.

Red Eagle took a party of about twenty Red Stick warriors with him to meet the commanders at Saint Stephens. James Wilkinson met with the man and the two discussed a treaty. Wilkinson agreed that Red Eagle’s people would be granted parts of southern Florida to live their traditional ways and that the United States government would not impede on their sovereignty while they owned their tribal land. In return they would be a protectorate of the Americans and would provide some troops later on.

Neither side planned on keeping the deal but it looked good on paper. Wilkinson then sent the Treaty of Tombigbee to Washington and asked for its ratification. The Congress approved it, but just barely. After all what use would thousands of acres of marsh be to the United States, other than a place to dump the unwanted. [1]

Wilkinson was quick to use the forces he had raised and conscripted most of the men who did not want to fight. The Mississippi Militia marched north in 1815, just barely three thousand men strong it was quickly absorbed into the growing number of Tennessee Militias who had joined the fight in order to not be out done by the Kentuckians.

The Army of Nations, as it came to be called, was the only American unit during the entire war to field men from two different Territories, West Florida and Mississippi, two different states, Tennessee and a regiment from Georgia, and a sovereign nation, the Lower Town Creek, not to mention people that were not even considered citizens, about one hundred free blacks from all over the American South.

The main force would add up to seven thousand men though by war’s end it would be closer to nine as militias from Virginia, North Carolina, and Ohio would be added to the roster. After massing and marching they would soon be stationed in Pennsylvania where they eventually learned they would help an American push into Quebec and on towards Halifax in order to severely disrupt British trade and use those two cities as a bargaining chips at the Peace Table.

That is until Gordon Drummond upset everything.

[1] For those of you who know your geography you will realize that the Tombigbee River is in southern Alabama and it may confuse you as to why the Upper Towns would be in the south and the Lower Towns in the north. I really do not know. Also Red Eagle was the Creek name for William Weatherford.

1816, just the date makes any American with a knowledge of history cringe. Gordon Drummond makes most Americans shake their head in shame.

Gordon Drummond was the most talented officer in Canada at the time of the Reckoning War’s move into high gear. He was audacious and talented, frequently surprising those Americans that moved against him.

In 1816 The Army of Nations was preparing to move from central New York and into Upper Canada, Massachusetts was raising a militia to deal with the attacks on its northernmost reaches, the province of Maine, and Gordon Drummond ordered the last of the crack British troops out of Halifax and marched them west, not to meet the Army of the Northwest but to bring the war fully to American soil.

The Invasion of New York began in a three pronged attack that the Americans were not expecting. Drummond had the element of surprise and everyone was surprised indeed. A small force moved to capture Lockport first and set up a defensive line. The main British force, mixed with Canadian militia, would come in behind them from across Lake Ontario.

Mulcaster would come in handy on this invasion. His sailors were able to construct several pre-fabricated galleys to transport men and supplies all over the lake while a small force of war sloops moved down the Saint Lawrence and disrupted American fishing.

The truly masterful stroke however was upsetting the main force of Dearborn’s Corps by having Roger Sheaffe invade Vermont by deftly bypassing the Army of Old Kings Mountain, which was further north in Quebec proper trying to gain ground.

This one two punch laid the framework for one of the most disastrous battles in American history.

The Battle of Buffalo was not decisive because Buffalo was a particularly important city. It was decisive because it opened up southwestern New York to British conquest. The war in the Iberian Peninsula was winding down and Britain could free up more and more troops to go and fight a lesser prepared force.

The Army of Nations, under James Wilkinson, was just such a force. On the day of the battle most of the men garrisoned in Buffalo were either drunk, at leisure in a Den of Iniquity, or gambling.

Some multitaskers were doing all three. Either way they were almost totally unprepared and were soon crushed beneath the rolling tide of red clad Brits.

So they did the sensible thing and retreated to a larger encampment. They brought news of real British troops with real British guns and real British bayonets. The Army of Nations was demoralized and resigned to fight a losing battle almost before the battle began.

Wilkinson was unable to restore order amongst his men and many refused to fight, opting instead to retreat further afield, ultimately regrouping in Pennsylvania. As for the Army of Old Kings Mountain, their Vermont and New Hampshire regiments were quick to bail and return home to fight the wretched British there.

From there everything went to hell, the Americans would not regain their hold of southwest New York until the war’s end, Mulcaster and his men would terrorize the coast as well as every lake which Americans might try to make their living from and by 1818 there would be more British regulars in Canada than militia.

It was a dark time for America as they desperately tried to hold on to central New York and reports came in that Vermont and New Hampshire were just barely holding on. If it had not been for the large reinforcements from the Army of the Northwest and the fact that the Army of Old Kings Mountain was able to provide support to the Granite Militias [1] then the news could have been much, much worse.

The Massachusetts Militia was sent to war in 1816, but only in a mild support function on the border of their northern province. After 1818 however the state was firmly in the war and pushing to have Congress declare the Granite Militia, Massachusetts Militia, New York Volunteers, and the Army of Old Kings Mountain declared the Army of New England.

This was granted and soon the war took on a much more official tone. The Army of Old Kings Mountain was divided into two divisions of Kentucky Rifles and supported by a regiment of heavy guns raised in Boston, Massachusetts itself.

This early force was placed squarely on the shoulders of Solomon Van Rennselaer.

Early interactions liked this helped to cement the idea of the war not simply as a northern one or a southern one but as an American one. This would become increasingly important later on.

The Army of Nations was reorganized as the Army of the Tennessee River and would see one of the first big jumps of the war.

The Hamiltonian Plan, named because Hamilton had created such a plan during the Revolution, called for southern states to raise a number of slaves that would be fit for combat and the United States government would free them, while at the same time paying their former owners.

These slaves would be organized into a Negro Division and placed firmly inside the Army of the Tennessee River. The 4th Tennessee River Regiment ND* would come to great heights when in 1819 it would serve as a “temporary” occupying force after the Army of New England’s 1st Vermont Rifles and 3rd New York Horse would luck out as it were and manage to capture Halifax itself.

[1] A term which will come to describe the large combined militia which will eventually be fielded by both Vermont and New Hampshire, as a single force.

* Just in case you aren’t completely certain the ND means Negro Division, similar to the British army using NI, Native Infantry, for its Bengali sepoys. I will elaborate what happens to the 4th Tennessee River Regiment ND in future updates. As well as explain the capture of Halifax.
**************
Throughout the Reckoning War both sides would end up taking many prisoners, after all it is considered one of the last true “Gentleman’s Wars.”

Most American prisoners of war would be held in Quebec City where they would be under constant guard by a small contingent of Canadian militia. The Americans however were clever and would transport the prisoners down the Mississippi to New Orleans where they would be shipped over to the Territory of Florida.

That is of course if the captured prisoners were white. The Kentucky Rifles, formerly the Army of Old Kings Mountain, were infamous for massacres against the Canadian Indians. They fought mainly to avenge their beloved governor Isaac Shelby who was killed by Tecumseh. [1]

They were ruthless, merciless, and thorough. Women and children were captured and occasionally raped. Men would be beaten and then strung up in front of their loved ones. Those that survived the drunken anger of the Terrible Ones, one of the many Indian nicknames given to the Kentucky Rifles, would then take the long overland trek to Florida.

The United States could not spare boats for Indians. The few slaves found in Canada fared much better. They were allowed a position in the Negro Divisions and promised some land at the end of the war.

All of this activity would slowly increase the size of the population of the new territory. Through prisoners of war, captured Indians, and eventually mental patients and petty criminals along with prostitutes and the occasional moonshiner helped to make Florida the destination for the unwanted that could not fit into American society as a whole.

Though the real story of the year 1820 in the Reckoning War had to be the Pacific Squadron, after Isaac Hull had taken command and the USS Constitution was declared the flagship the fortunes of this three frigate squadron only increased.

They were incredibly lucky in raiding British shipping all over their Pacific holdings, most specifically the North Island of New Zealand, which served as a base for both British and American whaling interests and the USS Essex even conducted a small scale war against the British backed Kingdom of Hawaii.

Eventually though the Pacific Squadron would have to withdraw to resupply and restock. They found an incredibly good source on a place called the Falklands. The Falklands had been serving for the past few years, ever since the collapse of Spanish enforcement in South America, as a base for pirates and fishers alike.

So after a particularly heavy raiding session the Pacific Squadron withdrew to this tiny spigot of land and restocked its fresh water supplies. The first thing Isaac Hull did upon meeting so many disgruntled pirates who were fed up with the Royal Navy’s presence on the plunder rich Pacific coast of South America was issue emergency Letters of Marque and declared each of them honorary citizens of the United States and members of the Pacific Squadron.

He also gave them a prize that had been captured and towed back to the Falklands. It had been a small British brig named the HMS Beagle. [2] Isaac Hull liked the little brig and so decided to do it an honor when renaming it the USS Derby, after his own hometown in Connecticut.

So the beginnings of a pro-American feeling came into the pirates of Cape Horn who would later allow American ships to pass unharmed and would even help American squadrons in later engagements against other pirate bands.

For now though the Cape Horn pirates resumed their plundering ways under the command of an American onboard the USS Derby.

The christening of the Derby and later ships like it would be a minor footnote to the War in the Pacific. The most memorable event is of course, the Battle of Cape Horn. The “Honorable” British East India Company was roped into the conflict by 1819 when they lent over 700,000 pounds to the British government.

Their greatest effort though would be supplying their own sepoys and white soldiers to the war, as well as terminating the contracts of many actual British troops that were serving with John Company so that they could go and fight.

British and Company troop carriers were heading for Jamaica where they would reinforce the British garrison and free up troops for the attempted invasion of New Orleans. Though the troops had initially been massing for an attack on the Sultanate of Brunei’s formerly Spanish holdings they were intercepted by messengers who had been told by messengers who had been told by Cape Horn pirates who had been hired to inform the Indian troops.

Of course these Cape Horn pirates were more than eager to sell the secret to their American friends who were able to read the Greek letters used by the ever so clever British agent who had issued the order. [3]

So the Americans were waiting, the USS Constitution, USS Essex, and USS Congress were buffeted by a massive assortment of sloops and brigs like the USS Derby, USS Abuelo, USS San Martin, USS Jefferson, and the USS Bolivar. [4]

The most brilliant stroke though was the use of a tactic that been used to defeat the Spanish Armada so many years before. Nineteen small ships sat high in the water during the two day battle. They were filled with gunpowder barrels and when the large troop transports would approach these ships thinking them flotsam American sharpshooters would light them up.

The effects were devastating to the initial British waves and even if they won the engagement there would be far too many men and materials drowned in the cold waters of Cape Horn to make much of a difference in Jamaica.

It is of course notable that the Americans ignored the old rules of naval warfare and did very, very little to try and rescue these damned men. Commodore Hull even ordered a broadside on some British ships that were attempting to rescue the drowning.

Another feature of the battle was the first use in a long time of stinkpots, long a favorite of pirates in older days these vile little things erupted when they hit a ship and released odors so foul that men would jump overboard where the cold waters would shock them and force them to try and draw breath, drowning them even quicker.

After the first two attempts very few British sailors jumped overboard anymore. They were simply reduced to vomiting and crying as they fled from the horrible stench. Only to be fired upon by sharpshooters and carefully aimed broadsides that would render the deck of a ship devoid of all life.

The Battle of Cape Horn was an overwhelming American victory and sealed the fate of the naval war in the Pacific. For the rest of the Reckoning War the Pacific Squadron would continue to strike fear into the hearts of British whalers and try their hardest to build a permanent American outpost on the Falklands Islands, as well as garner alliances with more and more pirates.

[1] Just in case you didn’t remember the update in which that happened.
[2] Unlike OTL the British actually need the Beagle and so launch her to the colonies while bigger and better boats will be taking care of fighting the Americans. Also, take that Charles Darwin, take that.
[3] An actual British tactic used rather effectively in the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. Of course some of the Americans have a classical education and are able to decipher it rather easily.
[4] These names of course reflect the origins of many of the new sailors/pirates.
************
When the Netherlands was forcibly assimilated into the French Empire the Dutch left behind more than a few colonial possessions, namely South Africa and the Dutch East Indies, however the unwanted bastard child of the Dutch Empire would prove to be the most important.

Suriname was annexed by the British in 1799 and was fully under British control until 1820 when the Reckoning War, specifically the American victory at the Battle of Cape Horn, forced British military planners to abandon the colony to its fate and use the freed British troops to move on New Orleans.

Of course the British did not really abandon Suriname. They simply turned over control of the country to the Dutch colonists and left them to their fate. The first move on the part of the Boeroes was to of course reinstate slavery and begin combating the Bosnegers. [1]

The Bosnegers of Suriname had been autonomous and living rather peacefully since the 1760s or so when they had signed treaties with the Dutch colonial government and continued living in traditional West African ways.

When the British had abolished slavery in the colony the Bosnegers had of course been pleased and were on good standing with the Brits. However the reinstatement and continuation of slavery and direct white rule by the Boeroes united the five Bosneger tribes against the new republic of Suriname and forced the Boeroes to try and find candidates for immigration. [2]

Well, they found them. All over Europe there were people who were tired of the constant cycle of war and conquest and war, they were a small minority to be certain but many early pacifists would eventually be joined by people who no longer wished to see their homes under constant threat of being ravaged. Most of these immigrants would find a home in the United States, only to realize that it was at war.

The better informed immigrants would find themselves in supposedly calmer climates like Suriname. Not only those seeking a respite from danger would come to Suriname, a large amount of Jews would immigrate to the new country, mainly because one third of the white population was already Jewish and they figured that they would be accepted more readily in the multicultural society.

However the greatest amount of immigration came from the former homeland itself, many Dutch citizens were fed up with French rule and found out the hard way that constant rebellion would be punished accordingly, so they fled all over Europe. Most of these ‘fugitive Dutch’ would end up in the German states, however more than a few would manage to flee into British hands and would be filtered into Suriname.

Of course wherever there were Dutch people who were unhappy of the way that things were going there would be the knowledge that Suriname was waiting. This knowledge would drive many Afrikaners to leave the then British ruled Cape Colony and find a home in Suriname. Even the Jersey Dutch began to move south in order to try and preserve their language and culture against the all pervasive onslaught of American English.

So Suriname came to be and its population almost immediately doubled, it was not hard of course because so few people had lived there to begin with. Rather quickly immigrants outnumbered natives and the Surinaams Dutch dialect was in danger of being absorbed by the heartier strains of Afrikaans and Vlaams.

Still, the language and culture of the new nation would come to reflect almost all of its new immigrants with laws and the eventual constitution being translated into Vlaams, Ladino, and English.


1822 was a critical year in the Reckoning War as British troops from across the Caribbean moved for the long planned assault on New Orleans. It came as a surprise to the Orleans Territory militia which had been put in charge of guarding the city as British cannon quickly reduced the harbor’s few defenses and the British used their naval advantage to quickly reinforce the troops that had been landed.

It was a short battle, one in which the American forces were completely routed and the British were quick to broadcast the news to everyone who would listen. This combined with the invasion of central New York made most Americans sit up and take notice as they realized that they may not be able to win the war.

The fact that the British now controlled the most vital port in the United States, and therefore the Mississippi River, meant that the Americans were going to have to strike back at the British and do it quickly.

So they chose Halifax. Halifax was and is a vital port in Canada and would complete its Quebec style defensive walls by 1820, just in time to use them against American forces that attacked the supposedly impenetrable city and took it in the summer of 1822.

Most British forces were either marching west to battle the Army of the Northwest which was still camped out in the large grain producing regions of Upper Canada or they had already been deployed into New York and Vermont and New Hampshire.

Halifax was protected by a small garrison of about 100 regulars and a similarly sized city militia, nobody was expecting an attack from the Americans and laughed when the small force of the 1st Vermont Rifles camped outside the city and began a barely noticed siege.

However the people of Halifax noticed when those same Vermont Rifles marched into the city on July 5th, 1822. The night before the Americans had celebrated their independence by setting off cannon and rockets while singing “Oh Columbia” as loudly and annoyingly as possible.

The people of Halifax had crowded the parapets to watch this spectacle and nobody noticed while American agents who had entered the city months ahead of time disguised as French fur trappers secured the Western Gate and waited until the American force marched to the other side of the city early in the morning and after a brief battle had officially taken Halifax by trickery. [3]

The Capture of Halifax was a result of sound military strategy and arrogance on the part of the British, it would be compared to the Biblical Siege of Jericho and the resulting occupation would become legend in the minds of many Americans.

After the capture and the turning out of most of the citizens of Halifax orders came in from the Army of New England that the Vermont Rifles and their companions in the 3rd New York Horse would be needed for an assault on British troops massing to try and take Long Island.

So the nearest somewhat experienced force was volunteered to hold the city. On July 23rd the 4th Tennessee River Regiment ND would be put in charge of Halifax. They were well supplied and well staffed, which would help them in 1823 when the British cut off reinforcements to the city and they would come under a four year siege.

[1] Boeroes is an actual Suriname term for Dutch pastoralists and their descendants, eerily similar to the Boers of South Africa. Bosnegers is an actual term that means Bush Negroes, also called Maroons in the English speaking world.

[2] So many African slaves were imported into the colony under Dutch rule and so many escaped that five large, distinct and culturally West African tribes developed in the interior of the country. They are the Quinti, the Saramaccan, the Paramaccan, the Djuka (or Aukan), and the Matawi.

[3] Agent will come to mean spy in this timeline, mainly because I like that word better.
******************
“John Armstrong, now there is a man for all times.”
-Anonymous

The last years of the Reckoning War were spent by both sides staring at each other and fighting one desperate battle after another. Little headway was made, though threw a slow and grinding campaign the last British troops were ejected from New York in 1825.

No, instead the last years of the Reckoning War would be spent much like the first years, in small scraps that ended up bloody and dangerous. Though the Fire of 1823 certainly altered the course of the war, in 1823 James Madison was a very weary man. He had been elected four times as the President of the United States and was more than willing to step down and was looking forward to trying his hardest to not run in the Election of 1824.

George Mulcaster would help alleviate Madison’s weariness, just not in the way he expected. November 9th, 1823 saw James Madison preparing for bed when a great fire began inside the Presidential Palace. Now George Mulcaster was an experienced raider who had had time to perfect his arson skills while inflicting damage in New York, some say even causing the Great Fire of Manhattan which nearly obliterated all of Long Island.

The President was caught in the blaze and died from smoke inhalation. The nation was stunned and without a leader and because Madison had not bothered to raise anyone up to the office of Vice President since it was left by Elbridge Gerry in 1814 there was no single man who seemed worthy or indeed capable of taking up the mantle and leading the nation in reclaiming not only New York and New Orleans but Charleston which had been invaded scant weeks before.

John Armstrong was the Secretary of War since almost the beginning of the conflict and had run the Reckoning War from his own office in Washington DC and from the frontlines, he had gained a good working knowledge of politics and of the Constitution, so it was with a heavy heart that he invoked Article I, Section 8, Clause 18 of the United States Constitution on November 18th of 1823.

John Armstrong declared nation wide martial law and elected himself and the leading generals of the day: Solomon Van Rennselaer of the Army of New England, James Wilkinson of the Army of the Tennessee River, and William Henry Harrison of the Army of the Northwest as the Executive Council of the United States. He promised to restore elections as soon as the threat from Great Britain had passed.

There was of course some internal strife but the good majority of the people were easily persuaded into sacrificing their votes in order to defeat the British menace. Firstly though Armstrong had to decide what a victory would entail, there were the obvious things like restoring Charleston and New Orleans to American control and the ceasing of all trade between the British and the Indians who were hostile to the United States.

Armstrong was a smart man though and liked the fact that as it stood, thanks Isaac Hull and the Battle of Cape Horn, that the fledgling American nation actually controlled the only known passage to Asia through the Atlantic Ocean route. The Executive Council also quickly realized that they would not have enough money to pay their soldiers for years to come and that if they held more territory they could use that as a bargaining chip at the Peace Table.

So James Wilkinson would do something daring, he would travel from the main front and open up the Caribbean to the full brunt of American wrath, with barely any competent troops and having to rely on conscripted pirates, black troops, and Indians who had previously been hostile to the United States he would take Jamaica. [1]

Most of the British troops that had been in Jamaica were currently trying to pacify the Orleans Territory and so it came as a shock when Wilkinson landed, burned Kingston to the ground, and declared all slaves that would rise up against the British as free citizens of the United States.

He brought guns to supply the Maroons who had been fighting a guerilla war in the mountains, he quickly and efficiently rounded up the leading plantation owners of the Jamaican colony and quietly deported them to Florida where they would reside until the final negotiations freed them and returned them to their possessions in 1828.

The United States government confiscated these large plantations and would use local Maroons as guards and former slaves as cheaply paid workers while the average American soldiers would run the day to day business on the plantation and send the sugar cane back to their beloved American homeland.

It was a remarkably similar strategy to the one adopted by the Army of the Northwest in the large grain producing regions of Upper Canada which ironically ended up feeding most of the American troops who would come to fight in Canada, the surplus was of course sold on the American market.

The British were stunned and appalled by the actions undertaken by the Americans and would carry out reprisals in the territory under their control, namely the Orleans Territory and central New York until 1825.

The Taking of Jamaica was the last big move of the Reckoning War and both sides would up end suing for peace in 1827. Final negotiations resulted in Charleston and New Orleans being returned to the United States, Halifax and Jamaica were returned to Great Britain, and prisoners on both sides were shuffled around until the last boatload carried those Brits that felt like leaving out of Florida.

The most interesting trade was the Americans giving up claims to Texas in exchange for Great Britain recognizing their right to the Falklands Islands and the surrounding areas near Cape Horn. The British were supposedly acting on behalf of the nation of Spain when they negotiated for Texas, which would have made more sense if Spain still existed. [2]

Tecumseh and his Confederation demanded that the British address the fact that so many Indians had been deported to Florida during the war, when the British refused Tecumseh took up arms and incited the tribes of the Ohio Valley to rebel against the United States.

Tecumseh’s Battle was squashed completely and utterly by the well trained and angry American forces who managed to slaughter the thousand or so strong Indian army. After this act of aggression Armstrong ordered all of the remaining natives in the states of Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware to be forcibly removed to Florida.

Those former slaves who had served in the Negro Divisions were also given land in Florida and encouraged to move there. As well as about 500 Jamaican partisans who had joined American forces.

Elections were restored in the United States in 1830 and John Armstrong was in a presidential mood, so was the general populace as they swept him to victory and named William Henry Harrison his Vice President.

The most pressing concern of the new government was finding some way to pay the former soldiers and help revitalize the American economy.

James Wilkinson would become the first governor of the Territory of Florida, formerly the Military District of Florida and would rule with an iron fist, thanks in part to the former Red Sticks and the blacks of the ND and the Jamaicans who would make up the largest sections of his police force which would be instrumental in keeping so many angry Indians in line.

1830 saw a rash of new territories being admitted as states, Orleans and West Florida were both admitted as states, Baton Rouge serving as the capital of Orleans and Mobile serving as the capital of West Florida.

The Mississippi Territory was divided into Alabama and Mississippi with Alabama’s new capital at Saint Stephens on the Tombigbee River, Mississippi’s new capital would be the relatively new town of Columbus. [3]

[1] All the above mentioned were easily found in Florida.

[2] Essentially Britain just said “Hey we’ll recognize your Falklands if you let us have Texas.

[3] No Jackson means no Jackson, Mississippi so I just went with my favorite city in Mississippi