Dark autumn (Western Europe September 1897- December 1897)
The chances of avoiding a major war on the soil of the British Isles had never been high. English and Scottish cordially hated each other, the diplomatic relationships had been execrable for the last two decades and the leadership of each government had developed a heavy dislike for each other. The Scottish thought their hated southern neighbours were responsible for the limited wealth and prosperity their country had suffered in the last years of the nineteenth century. The English considered the people they had to share a northern frontier with unwashed barbarians and warmongers of the worst sort. When one studied the relationships or rather the lack thereof, it was downright miraculous the war had waited 1897 to be started.
The main reason, of course, was the great numerical superiority of the English forces over their Scottish counterparts. For every regular soldier garrisoned from Edinburg to Kirkwall, the English could arm two or three...and London had sent many volunteers in Africa, the Caribbean and South America to defend their interests in the colonial wars. On the naval side, things were definitely worse. The English had built ten battleships and a considerable fleet of cruisers and fast auxiliaries on their own resources while the citizens of the Kingdom of Scotland, hampered by budget difficulties and a record of government creations, had two battleships in service and one was foreign-built. Whether they liked it or not, Scotland had a disadvantage of over five-to-one in tonnage for the warships, and it didn’t count the reinforcements the French and the Irish could send if it wasn’t enough.
It was evident once the declaration of wars were made Scotland was going to endure a terrible naval blockade and Marshal Forbes –supreme commander of the Scottish military forces – had no choice but to plan for a short and victorious war, since his country would not have the strength of launching more than two big offensives.
On September 23, Operation Border began. The entire strength of the Scottish 1st Army attacked on the eastern section of the Scottish-English frontier, crushing two divisions and breaking through the pre-war defensive works. The result was anything but pretty. The threat the perfidious English were posing to Edinburg was erased for the time being, but the regulars of Edward VII defended their positions tenaciously and inflicted severe casualties on the invaders.
More delicate, the Scottish had managed to defeat decisively a couple of divisions but the English army was far from destroyed. Despite an impressive fast march southwards, the railways of the English Crown were even faster and when the 1st Scottish Army was seventy kilometres away from Newcastle, they were intercepted by two newly created English armies. The result was a bloodbath for the best part of the last half of October, costing thousands of lives. Ultimately, it was a bloody draw and the exhausted armies began to erect the trenches and the fortresses they needed to consolidate their positions.
Officially, it was a glorious victory for the Scottish army who had managed to advance deeply into enemy territory, hold its positions on the western front and discourage the risk of an amphibious landing on their western coast.
Unofficially, the reason there had been no landing was because the Irish had been tasked by the Entente to conquer the Danish-held fortresses of Iceland, an endeavour costly in supplies, warships and men. Marshal Forbes made no mystery in front of his King and the ministers that it was a situation the Scottish population could not win. Edinburgh could and would launch a new offensive as soon as possible in 1898 but the odds of destroying the English 1st, 2nd and 3rd armies facing them were problematic at best. Some politicians liked to convince themselves that London would accept a negotiated peace but nothing was less sure. The arrival of a single Irish division in November worsened the numerical disadvantage and emphasized how alone Scotland was on this theatre.
The Danish and Norwegian Navies would not come, aware the French and English just waited an excuse to form a line of battle and eliminate the threat they represented. As long as the Central Alliance had this fleet in the Baltic, more than twenty battleships were immobilised and unable to help on other oceans and seas.
This did not mean the Entente had not its fair share of major problems in Western Europe. France had poured millions of francs in fortifying the frontiers Westphalia and Dutch Germany shared with Saxony, but Plan Attila had ridiculed these efforts and opened a terrible wound in their flank. The frontier with Bavaria had been deliberately demilitarised, since Bavaria was absolutely neutral. And to make matters more complicated, in addition to the Saxons they had the Austrians forces to deal with too, negating in part their superiority in equipment and numbers.
The Westphalian regiments who did not receive in time to the order to retreat from their frontier positions were annihilated under a torrent of fire and the Union armies surged westwards to fight the oncoming French 1st Army. It was east of Ulm the great confrontation was fought. For the first time in history, thousands of machine guns were the hands of the Entente and the Alliance, steel-dirigibles dominated the skies and the sound of the cannons was heard hundreds of kilometres away.
At first the French were forced to cede ground in the first weeks, a consequence of the Westphalian command structure collapsing and the relentless assault of the Saxon and Austrian waves but by the third week of October the Alliance offensive stalled and Marshal Deprès ordered a counter-attack. The French artillery transformed the landscape into an apocalyptic nightmare, projecting earth and human corpses so high the soldiers on the first lines thought it was raining blood and gunpowder.
Marshal Sturm of the Saxon Imperial Army didn’t insist and prepared his troops for a fighting withdrawal. Ulm and Stuttgart had not fallen and the implacable juggernaut of French troops was now fully effective. Hundreds of thousand men were coming from the other side of the Rhine and the only way the Alliance could hold was to take prepared positions. The French 1st Army tried to break through the former Westphalian positions but their advantage in siege train had been drastically decreased. Saxons and Austrians had learned well the lessons of the past and the doctrines the French used. The French counter-attack, Operation Sans Peur, bogged down without repulsing the invaders. Trenches were built on hundreds of kilometres and the two armies rushed northwards and southwards, trying to flank the opponent and gain the upper hand.
Emperor Gustav and his generals, aware this was a critical moment of the war, thinned out the divisions guarding the Danish frontier, betting on the Danish cautious behaviour and their defensive fortifications. A new Saxon army, the 5th, was mustered and attack Dutch Germany on the northern sections which had not yet been reinforced, trying to reach Amsterdam before the Entente could come to the rescue.
The issue was that Dutch Germany was not Westphalia. The latter had had time to forge itself a national identity in the last decades, and while everyone knew they were living in a French protectorate, the country itself was prosperous, industrially in the leading wagon and the liberties of expression had progressed enormously. They were also under no illusion the Saxons had their best interests in mind, Emperor Gustav I and his policies of expansion in Africa being well-documented. After what had happened to Bavaria when the subjects of the martyr Maximillian II had declared their neutrality, the Entente was considered a solid choice. While the Westphalian army suffered appalling losses, support for the Kingdom of France and their allies rose and Paris was quick to capitalise, promising loans at extremely low rates, building brand-new hospitals and generally infusing a lot of resources to make sure Westphalia was not going to collapse economically. After the front was completely stabilised in mid-November 1897, the Entente observers could truthfully report Westphalian support for the war had never been higher.
In Dutch Germany, this support didn’t exist. It didn’t help that on September 26, Rudolf II was assassinated by a partisan of Dutch independence many suspected to be completely insane. There was no government of national union like it was done at Paris or at Stuttgart. Saxon support was also far higher, as neither the Hessians nor the Dutch had enjoyed the successive treaties imposed on them by the French Kings and Queens. The outcome was particularly disastrous for the Entente. In the first weeks of the war, several cities in Holland and Hesse went over to insurgents, the local garrisons rallying to independent committees or joined as Saxon auxiliaries. The Alliance did not let the opportunity pass by and by the time the race to the North Sea was over in early December 1897, a third of Dutch Germany was lost to the Entente.
As the trenches and fortifications were consolidated on this lengthy battlefield, the French repression fell like thunder over the German insurgents. Thousands of men who had chosen to support Saxony were executed; sympathisers were condemned to decades of forced labour and would die soon to boost the demands of the Great War and entire provinces were put under martial law since the local authorities were outright treacherous or incompetent to maintain order.
The Saxon-held lands were not scenes of great celebration parades. Saxony naval trade was now limited to the Baltic and the kingdoms and republics they could trade with had not the kind of material surplus they wanted. Bavaria and the German they had conquered would have to bear the brunt of the war effort and the orders from Dresden were incredibly brutal. Workers whose job was of critical importance were recruited whether they wanted it or not and sent away from their families, the big companies were all purchased by the Saxon government for desultory sums. In Bavaria, the Empire and the Dual Republic began a politic of economic robbery and extortion, taking everything of worth and more. Rebellions and the remnants of the Bavarian army were put down with extreme violence. A storm of violence had fallen over Western Europe and for the German civilians, the future seemed incredibly dark...