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Update's done. I'll add footnotes and answer earlier comments later tonight.

Part One-Hundred Three: War, Interrupted

The War Resumed:
The Olympic truce lasted the three days after the opening ceremony from June 9th to the 12th. The commanding generals were wary of any maneuvering that happened during the truce and so the fighting soon resumed in Europe. During the truce, both sides attempted to gain an advantage. France sailed a fleet out of Marseilles to assist with the navy in Menorca and positioned more troops on the Spanish border in preparation for beginning their third invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in a century. However, the New Coalition came out of the truce with the upper hand. With Russia's entry into the Great War on June 16th, the length of the national borders on the eastern front tripled. The New Coalition also bolstered its defense in the Pyrenees as Britain sent an expeditionary force escorted by the Atlantic Fleet. The fleet ran into a French squadron that they defeated after a two day engagement, before landing the expeditionary force at San Sebastian. As the expeditionary force joined the Spaniards at Irun, France began its first initial push into Iberia.

Starting in the middle of June, France had mobilized almost five million men on the Spanish border. Like in the Seocnd Napoleonic War forty years prior, the French concentrated their forces on the coasts to skirt around the majority of the Pyrenees. The fighting in the Basque country where the million man British expeditionary force joined the Spanish was known as the Battle of the Bidasoa. For much of the latter half of 1906, the front line moved very little. Both the French and the New Coalition armies attempted to wear each other's forces down from attrition while making few major territorial offensives. However, the French had a slight upper hand in the mountains and made breakthroughs in September during which they captured the village of Ultzama five miles north of Pamplona. However, the British assistance to the Spanish on the coast prevented the French from taking San Sebastian, although the city as well as the border towns of Irun and Hendaye took large damage from artillery shellings by both sides.

On the Mediterranean, however, the fighting was nowhere near as static. The numerical advantage of the French army on the eastern side of the Pyrenees combined with the French naval dominance in the Mediterranean allowed the French to push the Spanish back quickly and gain far more ground. Unlike the Second Napoleonic War, the French armies were almost entirely focused near the Mediterranean coast and not divided between the coast and the Segre basin. However, the French did advance somewhat down the Segre, capturing Puigcerda but they were stopped and dug in before reaching Cerdanya. On the coastal offensive, the French fleet from Menorca defeated a Spanish squadron in the First Battle of the Belearic Sea and shelled Tarragona while the army advanced down the coast. By the end of September the French advance had reached the outskirts of Mataro on the coast and had captured Vic further inland. Further south, the French suffered their first significant loss in the Mediterranean Sea. A combined British-Spanish-Portuguese fleet defeated the French squadron at the Khedira base in August and forced its way through a small French blockade force at the Strait of Gibraltar[1].


The Bear Awakes:
Before the Russian entry into the Great War, the Tsar had already positioned several armies near the German and Hungarian borders. The troop placements were part of the reorganization of Russia's international focus and its transition toward greater participation in the European diplomatic stage. When Russia joined the war, they immediately started an offensive into East Prussia to try and catch the Germans off guard. The Russian offensive capture Memel early in the offensive. However, the advance was stopped by the Germans in July and prevented the Russian armies from reaching Labiau and Insterburg. Further south, the Russians were stymied by German fortifications and artillery placements in the Masurian Lakes[2]. The Russians did force Germany to mobilize more forces in the later months of 1906, but the initial offensive did not weaken Germany as much as the Tsar hoped.

Meanwhile, the Russian armies in Poland and Galicia were more successful than the East Prussian offensive. Russian armies moved across Galicia to join Hungary in their defense against hte German advance, and to stop a German attack on Krakow, the capital of Galicia. The German army moved east from Kattowitz into Galicia and Russian Poland on June 29th, and began the Siege of Krakow on July 3rd. As the Galician government was evacuated to Tarnow, the Russian forces tied up the invading Germans in the surrounding hills and prevented the Germans from getting near the city itself. However, in Hungary the Russians and Hungarians were pushed back by a continued German summer offensive. The German armies took Pressburg, Nitra, and Zilna in northern Hungary and reached Gyor in the German advance toward Budapest.

The Russians not only had an early push in Europe, but also in East Asia. The Russian Pacific Fleet moved to base on the island of Tsushima after the Korean invasion of the island was rebuffed and word reached the island that Russia had entered the war. In late July, the Russian fleet joined a Japanese fleet in a raid on the Korean port city of Busan. As the French squadron was preoccupied with the British fleet from Malaya harassing Hainan and the Chinese coast, the Koreans faced the combined Russian-Japanese force on their own. The Battle of Busan took place over four days in August of 1906. The Korean navy narrowly drove back the Russian-Japanese fleet, with Korean ships seeking respite off Geoje Island[3]. By the end of September the East Asian front had changed little, and while Tsushima had been retaken by the New Coalition, no solid gains had been made against Korea either.

[1] The navy was assisted by British submarines, marking the first use of submarines in warfare.
[2] Just as in OTL WWI, the lakes are a sore spot for the Russian offensive.
[3] Geoje Island is a large island a few miles west of Busan. It provides a secluded sound to the north and a good harbor in the city of Geoje.