Part One Hundred Twenty-Eight: A Silence Falls Over Europe
The Eagle and the Bear:
For much of 1910, the broad eastern front of the Great War had ground to a halt. After the fall of Warsaw, the Germans paused to strengthen their hold on the territory in Poland that they had gained. Further south, the siege of Budapest continued, but the Hungarians and their Russian reinforcements continued to prevent the capital from falling to Germany. After Illyria joined the war and the fall of Rijeka, the advance south of Budapest quickened. Illyria with small assistance from Austrian regiments joining the combat front pressed eastward across the Illyria-Hungary border. The fresh Illyrian soldiers quickly overwhelmed the Hungarian border garrisons and took the largely Slovene border towns of Kumrovec and Bregana by November of 1910. From Bregana, the Illyrian army moved eastward along the Sava, intent on taking Agram before the end of the year. While the Germans had drawn much of the Hungarian defense in Croatia to the area around Belovár, the road from the Slavonian military frontier remained open and Hungary was able to send a sizable army to defend Agram. After several weeks of skirmishes near Zaprešić as Illyria attempted to cross the Krapina River, the Illyrians were forced to set up a long encampment through the winter. While the Illyrian offensive stalled, the gap cut by the Sava River between the Zagorje range to the north and the Gorjanci range[1] to the south provided a defensible valley that repelled a Hungarian counterattack in late January.
In Poland, the Russian army was still putting up an eager fight and the German push into Russia had mostly ground to a standstill. However, with the Alliance Carolingien[2] making gains elsewhere and the fall of Warsaw to Germany, morale among the Russians started to decline. The Germans, aided by the Illyrians relieving pressure in Hungary, continued to press forward from the line during the winter of 1910, and made considerable gains as the Russian line faltered. Rzeszow in Galizia and Bialystok were the first major cities German forces captured and fell in November. From Rzeszow, the Germans attempted to push on to Lviv, but were unable to breach the fortress of Przemysl after several weeks and halted their advance for a protracted siege. Despite this setback in Galizia, further north the Germans were able to advance further into Russia in early 1911 as more soldiers were moved in from the Italian front. By April of 1911, Germany had advanced as far east as Lutsk and Pinsk, and were poised to capture Wilno. Wilno fell in mid-April, and the Central Army began advancing on Minsk.
While the German army pushed further into Russian territory in the center of the front, the northern front and the Baltic Sea saw a resumption of movement as well. The German Baltic Fleet moved north from Konigsberg once again to blockade several cities on the Russian Baltic coast in the winter of 1910. In a stroke of luck, a large part of the Russian fleet was still in the Gulf of Finland, and a cold snap prevented much of the Russian fleet from engaging the Germans. The German fleet of 24 ships sunk almost a dozen Russian ships off Kotka, and entered the Gulf of Riga on January 12, 1911. The German naval activity and the pending attack on Wilno enabled a final decision to be made by the command in Kaunas to strike north in an attack toward Riga. From Šiauliai, the German Northern Army moved north once again into Latvia. In a second attack on Jelgave in March, the Germans broke the Russian defense there and finally took the city in February. As Wilno fell in April, the Siege of Riga was already several weeks in. While the German army was held south of the Duagava, with a naval bombardment they soon took Jūrmala, reaching the Baltic coast and breaking the supply line to the area of Latvia and Lithuania west of the German line. Riga remained under siege for two more months until the German navy was chased out of the Gulf of Riga by the Russians. However, by the middle of June, all countries in the Great War had begun down the road to peace negotiations. While Riga suffered heavy bombardment, it did not fall before Russia signed a ceasefire with Germany. Unfortunately for the Hungarians, they could not say the same for Budapest, which at long last fell to Germany in August.
Bringing the British to the Table:
While the Alliance Carolingien had convinced many of the partners in the New Coalition to begin peace negotiations and end the war, the British remained stubborn holdouts. While the other major powers in the New Coalition had suffered significant losses, Britain had maintained its naval edge in the English Channel and the far north Atlantic throughout the war, and the British Isles remained safe from invasion. Despite this, there were always fears rampant around Great Britain that the French or Germans were on the verge of landing on British soil. This was part of the extensive propaganda machine by the government during the war to justify continued support for Britain's allies on the continent.
Among the higher echelons in Paris and Berlin, the schemes for getting Britain to start peace negotiations mostly surrounded a limited invasion of the British Isles to scare the British into an armistice. The earliest concrete plan for an invasion was drawn up by Joseph Leopold von Habsburg in early 1910, when the Habsburgs still held some sway in the German military staff. Joseph Leopold proposed a small invasion force landing at Shetland, while a larger force landed in Scotland on the beaches north of Peterhead. When Joseph Leopold brought the plan to a high ranking member of the German Navy, the plan was immediately scrapped because of the large Royal Navy fleet based at Scapa Flow was too close to provide sufficient time before the British could engage the German navy. In the autumn of 1910 a small fleet went ahead with a landing at Shetland, however, resulting in one of the worst naval defeats for the Alliance Carolingien in the Great War. Four transport ships and nearly five hundred men were lost in the landing, infuriating the German high command.
After the failed landing at Shetland, plans for an invasion of Britain turned from solely a German endeavor to a joint Franco-German operation. As the French secured domination over the Mediterranean, the France and German naval commands began collaborating on a way to launch two simultaneous invasions of the British Isles. By summer of 1911, the final plan of what was known as Operation Hohenlinden[3] was drawn up. The French part of the plan involved the fledgling air force the French and Germans had been building since the Battle of La Rioja in 1905[4]. By 1911, France had a fleet of six airships and Germany had a fleet of ten. In July, fifteen airships set forth across the English CHannel with a large French naval escort. Great Britain intercepted enough French plans to determine the French navy's route in the Channel, and the Home Fleet came out to meet the French. While the battle was a draw, the Royal Navy and the coastal batteries were unable to turn the airships back. The airship fleet dropped bombs on several cities in southern England, with Dover and Portsmouth being the worst hit. One French airship, the Jeanne d'Arc, went as far north as Guildford, but none reached as far as London.
While French and German airships were bombing southern England, Germany launched one of its largest naval operations of the Great War into the North Sea. The German High Seas Fleet, under the command of Frederick III's son Prince Heinrich, set sail from Wilhelmshafen in late June of 1911. On July 15th, the High Seas Fleet reached the south side of Flamborough Head and sent nearly 125,000 troops ashore to the beaches of Bridlington. While the bulk of the fleet was situated near Flamborough Head, a small squadron of minelayers was sent south to lay mines outside the Humber Estuary to delay the mobilization of any warships in Hull or Grimsby. With few coastal forts in this part of England, and with the major Royal Navy bases on the south coast or in Scapa Flow, the British took several days to respond once word arrived of a German landing. The North Sea Fleet at last arrived from Scapa Flow on the 19th, but in the four days the Germans had established a beachhead at Bridlington and had secured a defensive line stretching from Skipsea to Gristhorpe. As the North Sea Fleet, numbering 50 ships with three battleships and ten cruisers, attacked the 103 ship strong German High Seas Fleet, the Germans on the beach dug in. The Battle of Flamborough Head lasted nearly two weeks raging on both land and sea with high casualties on both sides. The Germans were ultimately repelled with nearly 30,000 men lost, but the British lost nearly double that dislodging the Germans from the coast. Additionally, the naval battle was indecisive, destroying the perception of invincibility of the British navy so close to the Isles. The German High Seas Fleet sank the battleship HMS Temeraire, three cruisers, and thirteen other British ships, while only losing nine and only one cruiser, the KMS Leipzig. The evacuation of the remaining German troops from British shores was over by August 6th ending the nearly month-long German occupation of British soil.
The joint Franco-German assault on the British Isles shocked the British population and caused a scandal in Parliament. The impregnability of the British coast and the faith in the navy to protect Britain had become increasingly relied upon by Westminster throughout the Great War as both a military strategy and an assurance to the people. The protection provided by the Royal Navy seemed sound; the last foreign invasion of England was nearly two centuries before in 1719. The shock of invasion was the final straw to the British people, who had been facing rationing since the beginning of the Great War. The rationing was a necessary result of the trade lost to Great Britain from war with many of its largest trading partners, but Parliament had been using the constant threat of invasion as a propaganda tool to support it. Now with the threat of invasion realized, many Britons were simply demoralized and held a defeatist attitude after five years of relative economic hardship. The triumph of the Alliance Carolingien on the European continent and across the globe only hurt British perception of the war even more. Finally in September 1911, with general fatigue from the continuation of the war mounting, the Conservative leadership under Prime Minister Lord Curzon relented to pressure from numerous members of both Houses of Parliament and sought an armistice with France and Germany. On September 27th, 1911, a general armistice was agreed between the New Coalition and the Alliance Carolingien and the final treaty negotiations could begin.
[1]Slovene name for the Zumberak Range
[2]Thank you to bm79 for mentioning it should be Carolingienne. I haven't forgotten, but I'm starting to kind of like it as a minor in-universe translation mistake.
[3]Named after the French victory over Austria at Hohenlinden in 1800
[4]
From Part 111