alternatehistory.com
Part Fifty-Three: The French Advances Stalls
Update time! I might post some closer up views of the fronts, but a general picture will have to wait until the next update on the Grand Unification War gets done.
Part Fifty-Three: The French Advances Stalls
Pommers in the Trenches[1]:
The Second Napoleonic War entered 1866 with both fronts largely stalled. The network of trenches that the French, British, and Belgians set up blocked any side from gaining ground very quickly. Assaults and gained ground were measured in yards as the rifles used in the war had become extremely accurate. The wide use of field artillery in the trenches also made any attacks slow. This was especially the case for the French as Charles Babbage's new analytical engine[2] allowed artillery positions and firing angles to be calculated to an increased degree of precision.
Along with an increased involvement of British strategists, The British commitment of soldiers in Belgium was intensified in 1866 as well. In the 1860s, Parliament was faced with the issue of the Great Famine in Ireland as almost all of the island's potato crop failed between 1864 and 1869. Many Irishmen moved across the Atlantic to British North America, but at the outset of the war, the British government offered young Irish men a place in the army as a way to alleviate the pressure of the famine[3]. Staunch nationalists in Ireland refused, but many were desperate and joined up, or sent their children off to enlist. By the summer of 1866, over 100,000 Irishmen had joined the British ranks either voluntarily or through conscription of the lower classes and were being shipped across the Channel.
This surge of men into the trenches allowed the Eighth Coalition forces, as the British and Belgians had taken to calling themselves, to gain at least some notable ground against the French. In the west of the front, the Eighth Coalition was able over most of 1866 to gradually push the French back into France up to the Aa River, where the front eventually stabilized. This included the capture of Dunkerque, where both sides lost over 20,000 men each in the battle for the city. While both sides had an approximately equal number of soldiers and field artillery during the battle, the support from the Royal Navy pushed the Coalition to capture the city. Further east, the front was moved miles south in some places, but the French were not budged from Waterloo and continued to threaten Brussels.
Raiding the Marches:
Throughout 1866, France continued a steady advance into Spain. However, the speed at which the French troops gained ground greatly slowed after they were out of the Pyrenees. The Spanish cavalry tactics were of greater effectiveness in the flatter plains and plateaus of Catalonia and Aragon, while the Spanish were able to set up defenses in the mountains of the Basque Country. Eventually the fighting in Catalonia fell back to the trench warfare already in place in Belgium.
French forces in the Basque Country moved west from Pamplona in June in a campaign to take the remaining cities in the region. The French army moved northwest from Pamplona through a valley and near the town of Iturmendi, the Spanish forced the French south over the Sierra de Urbasa onto a forested plateau. In the ensuing battle in the heat of summer, Spanish forces had to eventually retreat across the plateau, managed to stop the French from reaching Vitoria. The French forces went north along the mountains and by September reached the Bay of Biscay across the river from the town of Guernica. As the Spanish set up defensive fortifications in Guernica, French forces determined that they could not take the town for a while. That winter, the French commander of the troops in the Basque country came up with the idea of dropping grenades from the reconnaissance balloons manned by the French Aerostatic Corps. While the attack was not very effective, the bombing of Guernica marks the first use of aerial bombing in modern warfare.
In the other areas of Spain, the French tried to go on a fast attack with the objective of capturing the cities of Zaragoza and Barcelona as quickly as possible. The French offensive was largely slowed, however, by the slow progress of the supply trains over the Pyrenees and as a result, the attack in 1866 did not get very far into Spain. In Catalonia, the French were able to secure the coast up to Sant Feilu de Guixois but did not reach far out of Girona in the land movement. A French attack on the town of Vidreres failed when a small Spanish cavalry force cut the telegraph lines behind the French and robbed a supply train. After the retreat from Vidreres, a smaller system of trenches was constructed in the area and the fighting slowed to a crawl. The Corps du Midi in the center of Spain doubled back when a Spanish detachment used the principality to liberate occupied Puigcerda. While the local authorities in Andorra claimed no knowledge of the Spanish incursion, Louis-Napoleon declared war on Andorra and the country was annexed into France after kicking the Spanish detachment out of the principality.
On the Mediterranean, the French navy defeated the Spanish ships that were in the harbor in La Palma on Mallorca in March and captured Mallorca and Ibiza by August. The Caribbean theatre brought further defeats for the French outside of Europe, however, as the Royal Navy landed men on Guadeloupe. In the Red Sea, the French shelled Aden repeatedly, but the landing force from Mocha was turned back before it reached the port city. France did have a few lucky engagements in the Channel and the Irish Sea, but these small victories did not break the Royal Navy's dominance over the Channel.
[1] "Pommers" ITTL is the colloquial term for Irishmen, coming from 'pomme' meaning potato.
[2] This analytical engine is much less extensive than what Babbage envisioned. It mostly does trigonometry for calculating firing angles.
[3] But also a way to get rid of Irishmen.
Part Fifty-Three: The French Advances Stalls
Pommers in the Trenches[1]:
The Second Napoleonic War entered 1866 with both fronts largely stalled. The network of trenches that the French, British, and Belgians set up blocked any side from gaining ground very quickly. Assaults and gained ground were measured in yards as the rifles used in the war had become extremely accurate. The wide use of field artillery in the trenches also made any attacks slow. This was especially the case for the French as Charles Babbage's new analytical engine[2] allowed artillery positions and firing angles to be calculated to an increased degree of precision.
Along with an increased involvement of British strategists, The British commitment of soldiers in Belgium was intensified in 1866 as well. In the 1860s, Parliament was faced with the issue of the Great Famine in Ireland as almost all of the island's potato crop failed between 1864 and 1869. Many Irishmen moved across the Atlantic to British North America, but at the outset of the war, the British government offered young Irish men a place in the army as a way to alleviate the pressure of the famine[3]. Staunch nationalists in Ireland refused, but many were desperate and joined up, or sent their children off to enlist. By the summer of 1866, over 100,000 Irishmen had joined the British ranks either voluntarily or through conscription of the lower classes and were being shipped across the Channel.
This surge of men into the trenches allowed the Eighth Coalition forces, as the British and Belgians had taken to calling themselves, to gain at least some notable ground against the French. In the west of the front, the Eighth Coalition was able over most of 1866 to gradually push the French back into France up to the Aa River, where the front eventually stabilized. This included the capture of Dunkerque, where both sides lost over 20,000 men each in the battle for the city. While both sides had an approximately equal number of soldiers and field artillery during the battle, the support from the Royal Navy pushed the Coalition to capture the city. Further east, the front was moved miles south in some places, but the French were not budged from Waterloo and continued to threaten Brussels.
Raiding the Marches:
Throughout 1866, France continued a steady advance into Spain. However, the speed at which the French troops gained ground greatly slowed after they were out of the Pyrenees. The Spanish cavalry tactics were of greater effectiveness in the flatter plains and plateaus of Catalonia and Aragon, while the Spanish were able to set up defenses in the mountains of the Basque Country. Eventually the fighting in Catalonia fell back to the trench warfare already in place in Belgium.
French forces in the Basque Country moved west from Pamplona in June in a campaign to take the remaining cities in the region. The French army moved northwest from Pamplona through a valley and near the town of Iturmendi, the Spanish forced the French south over the Sierra de Urbasa onto a forested plateau. In the ensuing battle in the heat of summer, Spanish forces had to eventually retreat across the plateau, managed to stop the French from reaching Vitoria. The French forces went north along the mountains and by September reached the Bay of Biscay across the river from the town of Guernica. As the Spanish set up defensive fortifications in Guernica, French forces determined that they could not take the town for a while. That winter, the French commander of the troops in the Basque country came up with the idea of dropping grenades from the reconnaissance balloons manned by the French Aerostatic Corps. While the attack was not very effective, the bombing of Guernica marks the first use of aerial bombing in modern warfare.
In the other areas of Spain, the French tried to go on a fast attack with the objective of capturing the cities of Zaragoza and Barcelona as quickly as possible. The French offensive was largely slowed, however, by the slow progress of the supply trains over the Pyrenees and as a result, the attack in 1866 did not get very far into Spain. In Catalonia, the French were able to secure the coast up to Sant Feilu de Guixois but did not reach far out of Girona in the land movement. A French attack on the town of Vidreres failed when a small Spanish cavalry force cut the telegraph lines behind the French and robbed a supply train. After the retreat from Vidreres, a smaller system of trenches was constructed in the area and the fighting slowed to a crawl. The Corps du Midi in the center of Spain doubled back when a Spanish detachment used the principality to liberate occupied Puigcerda. While the local authorities in Andorra claimed no knowledge of the Spanish incursion, Louis-Napoleon declared war on Andorra and the country was annexed into France after kicking the Spanish detachment out of the principality.
On the Mediterranean, the French navy defeated the Spanish ships that were in the harbor in La Palma on Mallorca in March and captured Mallorca and Ibiza by August. The Caribbean theatre brought further defeats for the French outside of Europe, however, as the Royal Navy landed men on Guadeloupe. In the Red Sea, the French shelled Aden repeatedly, but the landing force from Mocha was turned back before it reached the port city. France did have a few lucky engagements in the Channel and the Irish Sea, but these small victories did not break the Royal Navy's dominance over the Channel.
[1] "Pommers" ITTL is the colloquial term for Irishmen, coming from 'pomme' meaning potato.
[2] This analytical engine is much less extensive than what Babbage envisioned. It mostly does trigonometry for calculating firing angles.
[3] But also a way to get rid of Irishmen.
- wilcoxchar
- Word Count: 1k