Chapter 363
June, 1888
Southern Africa
While "winter" in the southern Hemisphere is something of a relative concept, there were perhaps fewer fatalities to heatstroke than the French commander was expecting. Having seized two port towns in Southern Africa, the 25,000 strong French invasion force was quite confident of their prospects. After all, the East India Company now bore only a few thousands regulars in Southern Africa (and most of these Asiatics) while the bulk of the defenders were, of all things......Jews!
However, the sheer size of the region would cause problems as the French army marched northwards. The EIC forces cunningly severed the rail-lines ever few miles ensuring that it would take less time for the French to march to the hinterlands than repair them. Now exposed along the roads northwards, the French line proved an inviting target to EIC irregulars and cavalry who sniped at the army from a distance. Within days the triumphant progress was reduced to an agonizing crawl. In over a week, the army had only managed a hundred miles as the retreating EIC forces simply sucked the French further and further inland.
It was at this point that General George Custer and his chief-of-staff (who happened to be the man who did all the work for Custer and planned this campaign), the Mecklenburg officer Helmuth von Moltke, would spring their trap. The more mobile EIC forces (the French had few cavalry) would surround the French Army and swiftly cut off its retreat. The French drew up for battle....only to see relatively few direct attacks, instead being subjected to more sniping. Having used virtually every draft animal they could find to carry the heavy French guns, the French commander ordered them unlimbered to to fire upon any EIC party they could spot. However, this usually took a significant length of time and the partisans usually retreated before the first frustrated volley was returned. Against any expectation, the EIC was getting the better party of the artillery duel despite the French advantage in caliber. The small EIC guns were pulled only by two horses, sometimes one, and could be placed into position, fired a dozens times, returned to the horses and be out of range before the French could even begin to respond.
The weapons of the French infantry were similarly inadequate as the complacent French War Minister hadn't updated their rifles in nearly forty years. Some were still utilizing muskets similar to those in use in the past century. The EIC partisans, on the other hand, sacrificed efficiency and rate of fire important to massed volleys for accuracy and range.
French casualties began to mount despite relatively few major engagements. Rather than frontal charges, the EIC would nimbly attack weakpoints, launch night raids and take advantage of high ground. Their minds set in the tradition styles of European warfare, the concept of such swift attacks and retreats were alien to the French. The EIC, on the other hand, had hard won this knowledge from fighting the Zulus. Occupying the land meant little in such open spaces. "Holding the battlefield" meant less than nothing.
Lacking horses, oxen and other draft animals in adequate numbers, the French had sacrificed non-munition suppliers. Food was already in short supply even before the EIC started to engage. After days....and then a week.....of this conflict, rations were low. Fortunately, there were adequate small creeks and other bodies of water to prevent thirst from being a major problem.
Realizing their danger, the French commander determined to return to the coast after what he decided to call a "reconnoiter" had achieved its objection, namely "scouting the land". Though he had intended to seize the diamond and gold fields of the northern areas, this was plainly not possible at the moment. Thus the French commander would retreat south....only to find the EIC forces stiffening. Desiring a pitched battle, the French would unlimber their heavy guns to push the EIC aside....only for them to retreat another half mile. This would be repeated again and again for days, the French only managing 10 miles in five days. In the meantime, the night attacks, flanking movements and assaults on any exposed invaders would prove devastating to morale. Having failed to bring along any food for the horses (he assumed there would be plenty of forage along the road), the pack animals and draft animals began to weaken and die.
It wasn't until this point that the French commander truly realized his peril and that the full force of the EIC militia and regulars presented itself. Nearly 31,000 EIC loyalists and regulars surrounded the remaining 18,000 of the 22,000 original French forces. The attacks became almost non-stop as skilled snipers crept forward in the grass and rock to take potshots at the French. The French had lost 4000 dead and at least that amount wounded.
Desperate, the French lined up the entirely of the army in a standard formation and marched south. The EIC forces only retreated, sniping along the way. In the meantime, General Custer would take 3000 cavalry in a daring raid upon the now-unprotected French camp and seize much of their supplies, horses, munitions and even the French commanders personal possessions. Dozens of heavy guns were spiked and, over an hour later, when French infantry managed to return to camp, they found few EIC personnel left from the raid.
The act destroyed morale and the hungry soldiers began to mutiny. In one notable case, an infantry battalion killed their own commander and butchered the horses and oxen of their attached Artillery battery. In the meantime, the EIC snipers, cavalry and light artillery would repeatedly sally forth, fire a few rounds and retreat before the French could reply.
Only three weeks after they departed the coast, the French were forced to "break out", effectively separating into small units and fleeing for the coast. Within hours, most of these small units were cut off and surrendered. Only 3000 French, including their commander, managed to evade the swift EIC forces, ingloriously returning to the protection of the French Navy in the seaside towns.
The Congo River
The French had coveted the Congo River for her rubber, palm oil and cotton resources even more than the diamonds and gold of Southern Africa. However, the reputed "white man's grave" of the region was enough that the French were content to simply bottle up the EIC at the mouth of the river and cut off trade.
However, the EIC had long maintained strict neutrality and evenhandedness in trade and the loss of these materials after a few months would swiftly make the French aggression in this war (as it was perceived and skillfully "marketed" by the EIC) very unpopular throughout Europe and the Americas.
King Miguel of Spain (his father Carlos VI having abdicated the Crown and taken to Havana for the "waters" or some such thing) would cunningly inquire if his "friend and cousin", King Louis XIX of France, would like an ally, Spain may be amenable...provided that Spain received the entire Congo as compensation. Rumor had it that the French King laughed so hard that he needed Spanish assistance for ANYTHING that the walls of Versailles echoed for hours with mirth. The caustic letter back to Miguel would scarcely be less politic. Offended, the King of Spain would gather a diplomatic alliance of the German Confederation, the British Confederacy, the Ottoman, Russia, the Habsburg Monarchy and even the Dutch Republic against the French.
To the surprise of everyone, Miguel's pressure and isolation of France seemed to work as the nation would see itself very much unpopular in the eyes of Europe. For over a century, with her enemies laid low by civil war (Britain and Austria), division (the Protestant Germans) and internal decay (Spain), France hardly cared much about what the rest of Europe thought. But to see every power in Europe openly protesting their actions was something of a shock to the young King. The war between the Maratha and Chinese Empires had already disrupted trade a great deal and France's actions only escalated this.
In the meantime, France's only ally in the conflict, British North America, was already in command of what they were promised as compensation, namely the nominal but unoccupied French Pacific islands which France had ignored for over half a century. From that point, America was no longer interested in further action against the EIC and First Lord John Abbott caustically suggested that Louis XIX make an accord with the EIC.
It was at this point that reports of the humiliating loss in Southern Africa reached French shores. Even within France, there had been little press for war and now France's forces were somehow being DEFEATED, a concept that no one expected. Political opinion of all classes were divided. Some wanted to dispatch MORE forces to Africa while others called for a withdrawal.
However, it would be in Egypt where the crisis truly heightened.
The Suez
The Suez Canal was owned by four nominally equal partners: Russia, Palestine (a Russian puppet), Egypt and France and explicitly granted no commercial hindrances to ANY party passing through. Even Egyptian and Palestinian ships had to pay the same tolls as the Maratha or American ships. However, the charter DID allow for warships to be refused entry should three of the four partners agree.
In a move utterly unexpected, the Khedive, the Czar and the Czar's Palestinian puppet determined that French warships not be allowed through the Canal as fears were already heightened that France intended to seize the southern half of Africa from the Congo to the borders of Ethiopia. The Ethiopians loathed the EIC but had forged a working relationship with them. The idea of French domination of Africa was unacceptable however as the minions of Louis XIX would effectively seize control of both routes to Asia.
No only the Africans were opposed to this but most of Europe as well.
As it so happened, the three ship French naval convoy was only intended to transfer materials to Bourbonia. When they were refused entry, the hot-headed commander fired several warning shots in the general direction of the operators' quarters at the first gate of the canal. The shells fell upon Egyptian soil. A Russian cruiser happened to be impatiently waiting for access and steamed forward to confront the miscreants threatening the Czar's property. The next day, several Egyptian ships arrived from the Nile, though most of these were obsolete and, even allied with the Russian, the French could no doubt wipe them from the sea. Also, the flag of the Habsburgs appeared on the horizon. This was, in fact, newly delivered warship which had been temporarily been disarmed to serve as a cargo carrier picking up a large consignment of coffee from Zanzibar. But the French did not realize this.
The nervous French commander, by now starting to heed the warnings of his subordinates, realized he'd crossed the line and, after one final protest, retreated with his ships, recognizing that any action he took would only see blame placed upon his head for an international incident.
By fall, the while of Europe was up in harms. Even nations who held the East India Company in contempt realized that France conquering the vast region of southern Africa and the East Indies would make for a devastating shift in power in the world. France, which had spent much of the past century confident in her security and position, found itslef the focus of a global outcry, condemned even by its allies of America, Spain and the Dutch Republic.
And the Maratha Empire had not even asserted her opinion as yet.
Quietly, the French King agreed to a Russian offer of "mediation" with the relieved EIC.
Pune
As it so happened, the November "armistice" occurred on the same day that the final peace between China and the Maratha Empire was approved by the diplomats. After years of heroic expenditure and hundreds of thousands of deaths, the only territory to change hands was that the assorted petty Kingdoms of Malaya were granted to the EIC. Burma remained a Maratha client state (though one in the process of division into smaller, more "governable" Kingdoms) while Siam remained attached to China.
Within a few years, the Maratha domination of the predominantly Buddhist Burmese Kingdoms would cause friction yet again to the point that local rulers were agitated for China to free them from the Hindu tyranny.
East Indies, the "Spice Islands"
While France's ambitions to stake claim to vast stretches of EIC territory (perhaps ALL of it) had been stymied by internal public opinion and international outcry, the fact was that the Spice Islands of the eastern East Indies (Bali and the smaller islands to the east) had been occupied by France for over three years.
Having put their own reputations on the line, the King of France and his Ministers dared not come away with nothing thus the retention of the Spice Islands were the minimum France was willing to gain from the venture. They would be surprised to find the EIC willing to cede them. While the Spice Islands had, under the Portuguese and Dutch, provided consistent revenues for centuries, they had been eclipsed significantly by the value of the rubber, palm oil and other goods now being extracted from Java and Sumatra. Malaya, similarly, would be expected to provide a bounty of these high-value goods. Losing control over a few pepper islands was not crippling to the EIC. As it so happened, the Company had learned from several years of exploration that Malaya appeared to have large reserves of tin as well.
This seemed an equitable trade for peace given that the EIC's long-standing client relationship with the Maratha Empire was on the rocks, peace was necessary.
Southern Africa
While "winter" in the southern Hemisphere is something of a relative concept, there were perhaps fewer fatalities to heatstroke than the French commander was expecting. Having seized two port towns in Southern Africa, the 25,000 strong French invasion force was quite confident of their prospects. After all, the East India Company now bore only a few thousands regulars in Southern Africa (and most of these Asiatics) while the bulk of the defenders were, of all things......Jews!
However, the sheer size of the region would cause problems as the French army marched northwards. The EIC forces cunningly severed the rail-lines ever few miles ensuring that it would take less time for the French to march to the hinterlands than repair them. Now exposed along the roads northwards, the French line proved an inviting target to EIC irregulars and cavalry who sniped at the army from a distance. Within days the triumphant progress was reduced to an agonizing crawl. In over a week, the army had only managed a hundred miles as the retreating EIC forces simply sucked the French further and further inland.
It was at this point that General George Custer and his chief-of-staff (who happened to be the man who did all the work for Custer and planned this campaign), the Mecklenburg officer Helmuth von Moltke, would spring their trap. The more mobile EIC forces (the French had few cavalry) would surround the French Army and swiftly cut off its retreat. The French drew up for battle....only to see relatively few direct attacks, instead being subjected to more sniping. Having used virtually every draft animal they could find to carry the heavy French guns, the French commander ordered them unlimbered to to fire upon any EIC party they could spot. However, this usually took a significant length of time and the partisans usually retreated before the first frustrated volley was returned. Against any expectation, the EIC was getting the better party of the artillery duel despite the French advantage in caliber. The small EIC guns were pulled only by two horses, sometimes one, and could be placed into position, fired a dozens times, returned to the horses and be out of range before the French could even begin to respond.
The weapons of the French infantry were similarly inadequate as the complacent French War Minister hadn't updated their rifles in nearly forty years. Some were still utilizing muskets similar to those in use in the past century. The EIC partisans, on the other hand, sacrificed efficiency and rate of fire important to massed volleys for accuracy and range.
French casualties began to mount despite relatively few major engagements. Rather than frontal charges, the EIC would nimbly attack weakpoints, launch night raids and take advantage of high ground. Their minds set in the tradition styles of European warfare, the concept of such swift attacks and retreats were alien to the French. The EIC, on the other hand, had hard won this knowledge from fighting the Zulus. Occupying the land meant little in such open spaces. "Holding the battlefield" meant less than nothing.
Lacking horses, oxen and other draft animals in adequate numbers, the French had sacrificed non-munition suppliers. Food was already in short supply even before the EIC started to engage. After days....and then a week.....of this conflict, rations were low. Fortunately, there were adequate small creeks and other bodies of water to prevent thirst from being a major problem.
Realizing their danger, the French commander determined to return to the coast after what he decided to call a "reconnoiter" had achieved its objection, namely "scouting the land". Though he had intended to seize the diamond and gold fields of the northern areas, this was plainly not possible at the moment. Thus the French commander would retreat south....only to find the EIC forces stiffening. Desiring a pitched battle, the French would unlimber their heavy guns to push the EIC aside....only for them to retreat another half mile. This would be repeated again and again for days, the French only managing 10 miles in five days. In the meantime, the night attacks, flanking movements and assaults on any exposed invaders would prove devastating to morale. Having failed to bring along any food for the horses (he assumed there would be plenty of forage along the road), the pack animals and draft animals began to weaken and die.
It wasn't until this point that the French commander truly realized his peril and that the full force of the EIC militia and regulars presented itself. Nearly 31,000 EIC loyalists and regulars surrounded the remaining 18,000 of the 22,000 original French forces. The attacks became almost non-stop as skilled snipers crept forward in the grass and rock to take potshots at the French. The French had lost 4000 dead and at least that amount wounded.
Desperate, the French lined up the entirely of the army in a standard formation and marched south. The EIC forces only retreated, sniping along the way. In the meantime, General Custer would take 3000 cavalry in a daring raid upon the now-unprotected French camp and seize much of their supplies, horses, munitions and even the French commanders personal possessions. Dozens of heavy guns were spiked and, over an hour later, when French infantry managed to return to camp, they found few EIC personnel left from the raid.
The act destroyed morale and the hungry soldiers began to mutiny. In one notable case, an infantry battalion killed their own commander and butchered the horses and oxen of their attached Artillery battery. In the meantime, the EIC snipers, cavalry and light artillery would repeatedly sally forth, fire a few rounds and retreat before the French could reply.
Only three weeks after they departed the coast, the French were forced to "break out", effectively separating into small units and fleeing for the coast. Within hours, most of these small units were cut off and surrendered. Only 3000 French, including their commander, managed to evade the swift EIC forces, ingloriously returning to the protection of the French Navy in the seaside towns.
The Congo River
The French had coveted the Congo River for her rubber, palm oil and cotton resources even more than the diamonds and gold of Southern Africa. However, the reputed "white man's grave" of the region was enough that the French were content to simply bottle up the EIC at the mouth of the river and cut off trade.
However, the EIC had long maintained strict neutrality and evenhandedness in trade and the loss of these materials after a few months would swiftly make the French aggression in this war (as it was perceived and skillfully "marketed" by the EIC) very unpopular throughout Europe and the Americas.
King Miguel of Spain (his father Carlos VI having abdicated the Crown and taken to Havana for the "waters" or some such thing) would cunningly inquire if his "friend and cousin", King Louis XIX of France, would like an ally, Spain may be amenable...provided that Spain received the entire Congo as compensation. Rumor had it that the French King laughed so hard that he needed Spanish assistance for ANYTHING that the walls of Versailles echoed for hours with mirth. The caustic letter back to Miguel would scarcely be less politic. Offended, the King of Spain would gather a diplomatic alliance of the German Confederation, the British Confederacy, the Ottoman, Russia, the Habsburg Monarchy and even the Dutch Republic against the French.
To the surprise of everyone, Miguel's pressure and isolation of France seemed to work as the nation would see itself very much unpopular in the eyes of Europe. For over a century, with her enemies laid low by civil war (Britain and Austria), division (the Protestant Germans) and internal decay (Spain), France hardly cared much about what the rest of Europe thought. But to see every power in Europe openly protesting their actions was something of a shock to the young King. The war between the Maratha and Chinese Empires had already disrupted trade a great deal and France's actions only escalated this.
In the meantime, France's only ally in the conflict, British North America, was already in command of what they were promised as compensation, namely the nominal but unoccupied French Pacific islands which France had ignored for over half a century. From that point, America was no longer interested in further action against the EIC and First Lord John Abbott caustically suggested that Louis XIX make an accord with the EIC.
It was at this point that reports of the humiliating loss in Southern Africa reached French shores. Even within France, there had been little press for war and now France's forces were somehow being DEFEATED, a concept that no one expected. Political opinion of all classes were divided. Some wanted to dispatch MORE forces to Africa while others called for a withdrawal.
However, it would be in Egypt where the crisis truly heightened.
The Suez
The Suez Canal was owned by four nominally equal partners: Russia, Palestine (a Russian puppet), Egypt and France and explicitly granted no commercial hindrances to ANY party passing through. Even Egyptian and Palestinian ships had to pay the same tolls as the Maratha or American ships. However, the charter DID allow for warships to be refused entry should three of the four partners agree.
In a move utterly unexpected, the Khedive, the Czar and the Czar's Palestinian puppet determined that French warships not be allowed through the Canal as fears were already heightened that France intended to seize the southern half of Africa from the Congo to the borders of Ethiopia. The Ethiopians loathed the EIC but had forged a working relationship with them. The idea of French domination of Africa was unacceptable however as the minions of Louis XIX would effectively seize control of both routes to Asia.
No only the Africans were opposed to this but most of Europe as well.
As it so happened, the three ship French naval convoy was only intended to transfer materials to Bourbonia. When they were refused entry, the hot-headed commander fired several warning shots in the general direction of the operators' quarters at the first gate of the canal. The shells fell upon Egyptian soil. A Russian cruiser happened to be impatiently waiting for access and steamed forward to confront the miscreants threatening the Czar's property. The next day, several Egyptian ships arrived from the Nile, though most of these were obsolete and, even allied with the Russian, the French could no doubt wipe them from the sea. Also, the flag of the Habsburgs appeared on the horizon. This was, in fact, newly delivered warship which had been temporarily been disarmed to serve as a cargo carrier picking up a large consignment of coffee from Zanzibar. But the French did not realize this.
The nervous French commander, by now starting to heed the warnings of his subordinates, realized he'd crossed the line and, after one final protest, retreated with his ships, recognizing that any action he took would only see blame placed upon his head for an international incident.
By fall, the while of Europe was up in harms. Even nations who held the East India Company in contempt realized that France conquering the vast region of southern Africa and the East Indies would make for a devastating shift in power in the world. France, which had spent much of the past century confident in her security and position, found itslef the focus of a global outcry, condemned even by its allies of America, Spain and the Dutch Republic.
And the Maratha Empire had not even asserted her opinion as yet.
Quietly, the French King agreed to a Russian offer of "mediation" with the relieved EIC.
Pune
As it so happened, the November "armistice" occurred on the same day that the final peace between China and the Maratha Empire was approved by the diplomats. After years of heroic expenditure and hundreds of thousands of deaths, the only territory to change hands was that the assorted petty Kingdoms of Malaya were granted to the EIC. Burma remained a Maratha client state (though one in the process of division into smaller, more "governable" Kingdoms) while Siam remained attached to China.
Within a few years, the Maratha domination of the predominantly Buddhist Burmese Kingdoms would cause friction yet again to the point that local rulers were agitated for China to free them from the Hindu tyranny.
East Indies, the "Spice Islands"
While France's ambitions to stake claim to vast stretches of EIC territory (perhaps ALL of it) had been stymied by internal public opinion and international outcry, the fact was that the Spice Islands of the eastern East Indies (Bali and the smaller islands to the east) had been occupied by France for over three years.
Having put their own reputations on the line, the King of France and his Ministers dared not come away with nothing thus the retention of the Spice Islands were the minimum France was willing to gain from the venture. They would be surprised to find the EIC willing to cede them. While the Spice Islands had, under the Portuguese and Dutch, provided consistent revenues for centuries, they had been eclipsed significantly by the value of the rubber, palm oil and other goods now being extracted from Java and Sumatra. Malaya, similarly, would be expected to provide a bounty of these high-value goods. Losing control over a few pepper islands was not crippling to the EIC. As it so happened, the Company had learned from several years of exploration that Malaya appeared to have large reserves of tin as well.
This seemed an equitable trade for peace given that the EIC's long-standing client relationship with the Maratha Empire was on the rocks, peace was necessary.
