CHAPTER 62
THE CHARTER OF THE LAND
The Declaration of Reunification in London
Though the world was erupting into total war, the Scottish Nationalist Party was booming, bringing a semblance of prosperity back to Scotland under Ramsay MacDonald. MacDonald was a fascist by any other name, but he wasn't nearly as extreme as the Fascist Sphere would have liked him to be. Down south, in jolly old England, the situation was tense. The economy was in a state of freefall, as trade would be basically impossible without allying to one faction or another. Poverty was extreme, crime was rampant, and the people looked north to Scotland to see a way out. MacDonald proposed an economic union, with the governments still mostly independent but with a joint economy operating on his psuedo-fascist principles.
Winston Churchill, then-Director of the English Nationalist Party, proposed going even further. He proposed joining the two countries once again as a "Britannic Union." He first put this idea forward in 1910, with his highly-publicized "Britannic Manifestum." In this 200-page book, he laid out his plans for a "New Union of the Isles, forged in the flames of brotherhood and patriotism." This new Union, he said, was perfectly agreeable to both parties.
"With the destruction of our enfeebled nobility and monarchist government so many years ago, this proposed Union of Britannia is by no means a shadowy path for England to exert dominance upon Scotland. Operating on the same fascist principles which made Scotland great again, England will become great as well. I propose a Directorate government, founded upon the principles of the ancient Roman consulate. Of course, at some point in the future, Wales and Ireland need to be brought into the fold. Each nation will be ruled by a Director and Parliament, and together these Directors shall decide the fate of the nation. The economic squalor and disaster in which we currently are engulfed shall fade away as we strengthen these ancient isles one more time in the name of security and liberty."
- Winston Churchill's
Britannic Manifestum, pg. 15, Sedgwick Publishers, 1910
MacDonald seemed surprisingly amiable to idea of reuniting with England in an equal alliance, and this angered some members of his own Scottish Nationalist Party. Unsurprisingly, many Scots began to call Churchill "King Winnie." MacDonald was even making appearances with Churchill, championing him as a "working class strongman." Indeed, in the upper echelons of party leadership, American agents were pulling the strings. Finally, upon the outbreak of war in Europe, MacDonald publicly called for unification. This would cost him his life. On the evening of November 11, 1911, just two months into the Great World War, MacDonald was watching a showing of "My American Cousin" in the Glasgow Theatre when an assassin shot him three times from behind, killing him instantly. The assassin was revealed to be a member of MacDonald's own Scottish Nationalist Party who killed MacDonald because of his "selling out of Scottish independence."
After two weeks of mourning, Winston Churchill and the ENP saw the time was right. They joined with the remaining SNP leadership and called for a referendum. The vote would decide the course for the island. Churchill said, "A vote for separation and neutrality is a vote for slow economic death and cultural evisceration at the hands of the Catholic bastards our fathers fought for generations. A vote for Union is a vote for security and prosperity!" Tens of thousands took to the streets in December of 1911 and voiced their opinion in huge clashes during the vote. Over the course of five days, the fate of Britain was decided. The "Union" vote won with 64% of the vote. Wild celebrations erupted across the island, from Edinburgh to London. English Prime Minister Edwin Stanley, staunchly opposed to re-unification with Scotland, resigned in humiliation and fled the country for South America. Winston Churchill took to a balcony at the old Buckingham Palace to wave an old Union Jack, bearing only the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew. At the same time, riots also erupted across the newly unified country, anti-Union forces torching police stations and smashing windows and fences. But the new government immediately cracked down hard and used their pooled resources to crush all rebellion.
General Director Churchill announces the Reunification from the balcony of ENP Headquarters. During this same time, English Prime Minister Edwin Stanley was fleeing the country.
Churchill was never voted into the position of Director of England, but he just seemed to make people accept that he was. He also began to call himself the "General Director," seemingly above the other Director, MacDonald's successor Edgar MacMurray. This would be a new era in British history. General Director Churchill's first move was to join the Churches of England and Scotland into the "Church of Britannia," which espoused much of the same doctrine as the American Fundamentalist Christian Church and was, indeed, a very literal sister movement with roots going back to Milo Miles' expeditionary force which participated in the revolution decades before. The Church began to administer aid to the poor and promised "a pheasant in every pot." The working class rose from the ashes and went to work on government-sponsored projects. The Army tripled in size as Churchill instituted a lottery draft system. He formed the Britannic Security Agency (BSA) as his own personal secret police to round up political enemies and dissidents. Between December, 1911, to February 20, 1912, over sixty thousand people of mostly Irish descent were either thrown into work camps or shipped back to Ireland, even if it had been generations since the families had last lived there. He also instituted a mandatory minimum wage and finally gave women the right to vote, the third nation to do so after the Republican Union and the Confederation of the Carolinas.
Churchill was a political genius, moving at just the right opportunities and striking with determination and a core belief that he was always right. However, this entire time he was an American agent, easily influenced by his mother and his father-in-law, Horatio Hendrick. From the very start of the movement, Churchill viewed an alliance with the Americans as the only proper and moral thing to do. They would stand the test of time, united against the Catholic mainland and drenched in the blood of Irish traitors. This would also put them back into the same alliance as their Australian and New Zealander cousins. Custer was the first to personally congratulate Churchill upon his rise to power. Discussions were immediately held between the new Britannic government and the Central Powers about joing the war against Europa. Churchill would frustrate his Yankee handlers, however, when he repeatedly turned down joining the war, stating he needed more time to build up the military and defenses.
At last, in late March, 1912, Churchill officially announced Britannia would be joining the Central Powers in the face of "increasing barbarism from the Europan government toward the Dutch and Germans."
“I would say to the people of Britannia, our young nation, as I said to those who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many long months of toil and struggle. You ask what is our policy. I will say, it is to wage war with all our might, with all the strength that God can give us, to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. You ask what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all the bullets and shells that Caesar can toss our way. Victory however long and hard the road may be. For without victory there is no survival for the Anglo-Saxon race and its Scottish brothers and sisters. Without victory there is no light, no illumination of the spirit or mind. There is only the darkness of a new Middle Ages under a Papal Imperialist hegemony stretching from the Baltic to the Pillars of Hercules, from the white cliffs of Dover to the Teutoburg. Without victory there is no England. There is no Scotland. This is a war of not only national but racial preservation. If we do not fight now, the Europans will merely suck the Reich and America dry until they finally turn their lecherous hordes upon us, raping our women and murdering our children. I ask each and every single Englishman and Scotsman to rise up! Stand up and take back Wales, the humiliation which, for too long, has blighted our sacred homeland! We shall go to Ireland and finally show the Shamrocks what happens to scum-sucking Papists! We shall fight the Papists on the beaches, and in the air, and in the fields! We shall fight! We shall never surrender!"
- General Director Winston Churchill, March 26, 1912
As can be imagined, this was a major turning point in the war. Shortly after this, the Dutch Royal Army was on the rocks, beaten badly by Field Marshal Perrault. However, it would be largely Britannic vessels that would help pull off the "Miracle of Gluckstadt," rescuing the Dutch Army and Royalty and evacuating them to England. This marked Britannia's true entrance into the war and enraged Caesar. At the same time, Wales was being steamrolled by Britannic troops. Though Wales put up a good fight, there were too many within its own borders who sympathized with the Union and assisted the invaders. Fort Scotia, the massive Europan fort which had for so long prevented a war between the Irish and Scots now also fell under attack. Scottish ships blasted its walls and cut the defenders off from supplies.
The Europan Imperial Navy, formerly the most dominant force on the planet, now struggled heavily to keep up with the demand of the different fronts and also the Beckie Flu currently finally reaching its shores. Quebec was already a dead man walking, and Europa's guarantees of neutrality for Iceland and Greenland were completely worthless now as Nordic and Yankee troops occupied the islands. The Britannic Navy was nowhere near a worthy foe for the Imperial Navy, but constant attacks on supply lines at disparate locales kept it on its toes and unable to hold down its enemies in any area. The Russian Navy also was cutting holes through the Continental System, once again not defeating the Europan Navy but keeping it too busy and occupied to actually be used to its fullest extent. West Australia fell shortly after the North Atlantic, with the Imperial Navy handed their first real defeat when Australian and American vessels sank several battleships off the northern coast, crippling the Pacific Fleet for months.
Britannia's entry into the war was a smashing success, with Wales totally occupied by summer. However, as the Beckie Flu began to really take hold in Europe and the Invasion of Ireland commenced in August, things were about to get extremely vicious. The Irish were determined to not fall once again to Protestant occupation. The 83 year-old King Dominic II vowed "an eternal war" against the "Cromwellite barbarians who seek to besmirch sacred Eire." Little did the Britannians know that he had actually long anticipated this event and had stockpiled chemical weapons to use against any invaders. Dominic was very serious when he told his cousin Caesar that "If Ireland falls, all is lost. The Cromwellites will have control of the Atlantic and the Empire will be crippled, if it somehow survives a treaty."
This left Europa in an almost impossible situation. To the west were the ravenous hordes of Viktor, day after day launching new assaults on the trenches of the Eastern Front. Day after day, more Romanian, Austrian, and Hungarian blood was drained. To the north was the disaster of the Rheinbund, full of rebelling city-states and warlords. In early Spring, the Nordreich had launched its "Grosser Angriff" into the Bund, occupying the northern areas as a sort of "tit-for-tat" after the Europan occupation of Holland. Now, Field Marshal Perrault stood as the only man to hold back the Swedes, Norwegians, and Germans. Tens of thousands of Swedish troops were tied up in the occupation of Denmark, but they could not be ruled out of the equation. Perrault, a man whose loyalty to the Imperial Family was the only thing keeping him from mutinying, was left to face a gauntlet of foes from north, east, and west. Only time would tell what fate had in store for Europe....
An Austrian cyclist regiment prepares to ride to the Eastern Front (among them is a 23 year-old named Adolf Schicklgruber)
Nordic cavalry ride into battle with lances ready during the Grosser Angriff of summer, 1912
A Britannian foot regiment poses for a photo, circa 1912
Europan cuirassiers bid farewell to Paris as they ride to the Rheinbund Front
Russian cossacks attack a Hungarian cavalry force on the Eastern Front
Sorry if any chapters are a bit scattered or contradictory. I'm trying to run an entire war here without taking 100 chapters to do it and make sure everything works. lol It's extremely easier to write about peace than war because the war is so globe-engulfing there is always going to be something I left out!
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