Austria under the rule of Rudolph I

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I hate to break it to you, but this POD is completely unworkable. There is no way in hell that Franz Josef would just run away like that. He had his family history to consider and that was that the rulership of the Habsburgs was ordained by god. His mother was still around by this point and should would have his freakin' head. Sissi was also a bi-polar anorexic that was unfit to be a mother let alone a regent for a nation, once again, the mother of Franz Josef would intervine, probably by having Sissi, Franz, and the senile Metternich all murdered and assuming regency herself. Look, I am not trying to insult your hard work, as obviously you have written quite a bit and planned out a significant story line, but this belongs in ASB. Especially with Britain allying against Prussia. This would not happen until at least 1905, because before then Prussia and later Germany were Britain's continental ally that they had dynastic relations with. Your best bet for a Rudolph rules Austria TL is if, as another poster stated before, FJ retires and his non-syphlitic or bi-polar son takes over. Then it would happen and would change history radically. Rudolph in charge is an important POD that might make even the survival of AH possible or even WW1 not happen at all.
 
Things are different than you might think. I agree that the POD is not really good, but it was the best I could come up with. We're still talking about a son of Klemens von Metternich as regent here. Even if Sophie would take over, she'd be dead five years later.

The British/Austrian alliance isn't really an alliance against Prussia. Well, it is, but it's a secret one. The British (and even Austria until 1888) continue to have a relatively nice relationship with Prussia, but eventually it's agression push it right into the Austro/French camp in the early years of the previous century.
 
Ouch. Austria is encircled. I'm not sure they'd declare war under such cirumstances. Goo story though, I'm looking forward to your next update

Well, this Austria is a lot stronger. Also, Prussia has it's Von Schlieffen Plan to deal with, and Russia has slow mobilization problems. I figured it would give Austria-Hungary enough time to attack Serbia and Montenegro and conquer them both. This version of Prussia is also weaker, seeing as Bavaria as not a part of it, and, since 'Prussia' is the official name, lots of non-Prussians (Mecklenburg being the largest non-Prussian state within Prussia, as well as Saxony) will not be as loyal to the crown as IOTL. I'd say Austria is almost as strong as Prussia, and can beat Russia with the same ease as the Germans could. Eventually, Austria-Hungary could be defeated, still, but it would take quite some time unless you are at war with only one nation - with Russia, Prussia, the Ottomans and Italy aren't.
 
Here is the next chapter. I agree that it is a bit unrealistic compared to OTL, but it could've been worse. At least I didn't have Austria-Hungary defeat it's opponents at the start of the war after one month.

Here's the story. Enjoy.

Chapter Seven

Time For War: 1912

There could be pointed out several reasons for the fact that Austria was the first country to send an army to enter another country. They had sort of been expecting it, having actively declared war, they were the most aggressive, they wanted to show off to Serbia before the Serbs got a chance at their own offensive plans, and they had been the first ones to actually declare war. Anyway, after having mobilized two armies, each containing a miserable but acceptable 150.000 men, who were willing to fight for the empire and especially for the popular and well-liked Emperor Rudolph I and his poor son Karl, the revenge-willing Austrians marched over the Serbian border, ten miles west of Belgrado, on November 30, 1912, at 11:00 PM, five hours after the Russian war declaration had been received, two days after the Serbian War started, and two days before Prussia would declare war itself.

The Serbians had the biggest shock of their lives when they woke up to see the Austrian army had surrounded their city on the morning of December 1. But they weren’t about to give in yet, and, convinced that Austria was still one of the weakest of the Great Powers, they fought hard against the foreign troops. Days passed, and the Austrians, who couldn’t take the city as easily as expected, began to get a little nervous. Up in the north, Austria had enemies as well, and the mere purpose of sending two small armies to Serbia was getting it conquered quickly. Luckily, a Third Army arrived on the fifth, consisting of 225.000 men, and the total of 525.000 men, along with some planes that dropped bombs, managed to beat the walls and resistance of the determined Serbians. On the morning of December 8, the walls had gone down, and the Austrian flag rose above the former capital of Serbia.

However this was an enormous boost to the Austrian morale, Serbia wasn’t beaten just yet. Even without help from their allies, they were determined to defeat Austria, or at least keep the Austrians back from conquering Serbia until the war, which was hoped to be short, was over. Peter I, the king, had fled to the south, and set up a new government in Nis in the south-east from which he ruled over a Serbia that was almost the same size as it had been before the Austrian attack. Therefore, the Austrian army travelled south, and also, they got help. The Austrian navy, which Rudolph had ordered to be constructed back in 1893, had sent a fleet down the Adriatic Sea, which attacked the Montenegrin city of Kotor to get a base to operate from and easily landed on December 8 on the coast, and within days the troops from the fleet marched up to the capital. Within the span of just a week and a half, on December 19, all of Montenegro was taken. Austria ruled over Montenegro and had made sure there was one place the Serbians couldn’t escape to.

In the meantime, the Austrian armies raced over the Serbian territories. On Christmas day, a frightened Nis surrendered, but again, the royals had fled. Both armies met up with each other by Pec, and they raced into Kosovo, effectively blocking Peter I from a way to flee through the Albanese mountains. The Austrians arrived at Pristina on December 30, and made a camp outside the city. It took them little time to get in. On January 2, 1913, the last Serbian city had fallen after the Austrian ‘Blitzkrieg’ taking little more than one month. Peter I of Serbia was captured and transported to Austria. He would never see his homeland again.

In Pristian, the government of Serbia formally surrendered and Austria placed it’s peace treaty on the table, which was quite harsh. Here’s what it said:

-The kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro will give up their independence and become a state within the Federal Empire of Austria-Hungary.
-Serbia will, before February 15, 1913, form an army of at least 125000 Serbian men, that will become the Austrian Twelfth Army (the other eleven were already in the progress of being mobilized). Montenegro will add at least 30000 men to that army.
-Serbia and Montenegro will cease all support to the Central Powers.

And with that, Serbia and Montenegro became what they are now – members of the Federal Empire of Austria-Hungary. And the Austrians immediately continued their journey south. There was more to do. Getting Bulgaria out of Greece, for example.

The Empire of Bulgaria had joined the Axis in the war on the ninth, as previously said, and had managed to bring it’s armies on the borders on December 13, when Austria had already conquered half of Montenegro and two thirds of Serbia. Trying to help the Serbians wasn’t really an option – the Austrian army had advanced too far already. The Ottomans and Romanians were allies, so the only country that remained was the kingdom of Greece.

Greece had been a relatively minor Balkan nation for quite some time now, ever since it’s creation in 1830, after the Greek rebellions in the 1820s. The Greek king was George I, who had been ruling ever since March thirtieth 1863. George was a good king, and had decided to join the Allies in the World War, hoping to gain some more Balkan territory than only Ottoman Thessaly, and expand in Greece north of the Peloponnesus. A Greek army had established itself and was raging through Epirus as, from Bulgarian Macedonia, the Bulgarian army attacked on December 20th, beating the Greeks. Racing through the lands, the Bulgarians were able to push Greece back to Thessaly, which was occupied by Bulgarian troops on January 17. Athens was just being surrounded by Bulgarian forces as the Austrians attacked from the north.

Never had Greece been so relieved. The Austrians attacked Bulgaria, and defeated them in a decisive battle in North-Greece on January 25. Soon, the Bulgarians moved back into their own borders. Leaving the smallest Austrian Second Army behind to fight the Bulgarians and push them out of Macedonia, the other two merged, forming a greater Austrian First Army of 350.000 men, that went north. Unlike the Greek, Austria had more to do.

The United Empire of Greater Prussia had immediately started it’s complicated war plan, the ‘Von Schlieffen Plan’. The plan was to crush France by moving through Belgium and the Dutch province of Limburg, in a half-circle movement racing past Paris and smashing the French armies, which were focused on Baden. After a quick victory around mid-January, the Prussians would then be transported on rails towards the Bavarian border, taking no more than a week and a half to smash through it, no matter that it was taking the Austrians even longer to go through Serbia, and then attack Vienna before the Austrian troops could’ve withdrawn from Serbia, while the Russians would attack from the east. After taking Vienna, which was to be done around early to mid-February, the Austrians would surrender for sure, and the Prussians would take their time to frighten away the Scandinavian allies… and surely the British wouldn’t go to war with them. Anyway, by early March 1913, Prussia would’ve won the war, and would be ruling over Bavaria, Austrian Tyrol and perhaps Bohemia, and Alsace-Lorraine, forcing everyone else to recognise a Prussian-dominated German Empire, over forty years after the initial plan had been tried to become reality in the early ‘70s. Von Moltke, the leader of the army, had wished to change the plan to his wishes, but William II of Prussia realized correctly that Prussia didn’t have any hopes but the original Von Schlieffen Plan, and as they lacked support in the south and didn’t want the Von Moltke revisions to become reality, they went with the original plan, but taking away a few armies from the centre to aid in the east. After all, with a lack of Bavarian armies, Prussia didn’t have that much soldiers: 3 million, half a million less than scientist would later calculate that Prussia would’ve had if Bavaria had been a part of Prussia from the beginning on. That lack of armies would mean the end to Prussia.

In the beginning, all went well. The Prussian troops attacked the Belgian and Dutch borders, smashing through them like they didn’t exist, on December sixth, the first day. A British withdrawal order followed on the seventh, which of course was ignored. To the Prussian surprise, though, war was declared by the British on the ninth, and, bribed by Great-Britain and Austria, the Dutch declared war, too, a day later, since the Prussians had attacked their borders. An annoyed army, the First Prussian Army which contained 300.000 men, was sent north. It easily raced through the Dutch lands and easily defeated a Dutch army on December 13 whose weapons hadn’t been improved since Napoleon. This battle, the Battle of Den Bosch, was the first Prussian victory in the war, and gave a smallish boost to the Prussian morale, taking away their annoyance at the British and Dutch. A boost, however, wouldn’t make them win the war in the end.

The Prussians kept attacking, and soon raced through North-Brabant. Trying to break the dykes along the Rhine and Waal didn’t really slow the Prussians down, as they simply moved back to Limburg and attacked through Kleve instead, one half of the Prussian army going with boats over the IJssel river, and one half going north. On December 17, Arnhem fell, and on December 20, Utrecht did the same. As a short pause was made on Christmas Day, all of the Dutch provinces of North-Brabant, Limburg, Gelderland and Utrecht were Prussian-occupied.

The Dutch weren’t ready to give up yet though. They managed to flood big parts of the border between North Holland and Utrecht, therefore effectively stopping the Prussians from attacking the border between the two provinces and capturing Holland. The Prussians ignored it, and, after Christmas, they headed north instead.

The provinces soon collapsed as they fell into Prussian hands. Zwolle, the capital of Overijssel, fell on January 2. Drente’s capital Assen did the same on January 5. Groningen tried hard to resist Prussia, but the capital fell on January 10. Then, the Prussians attacked the Frisians. They fought hard back, having some advantage through their lakes, and the annoyed Prussians, not having time to play around, sent airplanes towards Harlingen, Leeuwarden, Drachten, Sneek and Dokkum. The cities were bombed, and a Prussian victory was soon established. On January 21, everything in free, Non-Prussian hands was North-Holland, as the other provinces had soon fallen. Late January therefore saw fruitless Prussian attacks to conquer North-Holland that kept failing. In mid-February, they eventually gave up, left behind a small occupation army, and headed down, where their friends were in serious trouble in Belgium.

While the other armies raced through the Netherlands, the Prussians in the south soon attacked Liege, or Luik, the capital of one of Belgium’s most eastern provinces. Luik, however, was fortified, and however the city fell on the eleventh, the forts fought and fought up until the day before Christmas. The other Prussian armies had in the meantime moved on, and finally reached Brussel on the sixteenth. At that point, the army was severely exhausted from marching through Belgium, but it still easily managed to defeat the troops in the capital of Belgium. Marching farther west, though, was because of limited manpower going to be a hard task. Albert I of Belgium, realizing that, acted upon that information and sent a message through free Belgium to fight back as hard as they could, to weaken the Prussians more. And it worked. The remains of the Prussian armies didn’t reach the border with France until December 27, when they were weakened. There still were four armies left, though, consisting of 750.000 men all together. What they did not know, although they could’ve expected it from the recent developments, was that a French army was waiting for them.

The French attacks from Alsace-Lorraine towards the Kingdom of Baden had initially been very successful, taking over major parts of the land. When about to attack Karlsruhe, though, the news of the Prussian intentions came, from both Rudolph I, suspecting something similar all along, and Albert I of Belgium. The French immediately withdrew their forces out of Baden, losing their territorial gains, and with the fastest moves the world had ever seen up until 1912, the French raced towards the border. They eventually came a little too late, and met up with the main German forces in Picardie, in the department of the Aisne, on January second, 1913. The French realized they could not win a direct battle and grudgingly backed off, although doing that in a slow way. The French army allowed the Germans to race further through the region, but attacked at night with swift but deadly moves. Burning locals’ houses delayed the Germans also, causing it to be on the eleventh when they finally reached the border with the Champagne region. On the same day, British and Spanish forces had arrived, and even an Austrian army, the Austrian Seventh Army. Along with the British Force, one Austrian army and the two Spanish armies, five French armies finally stopped their withdrawing on January thirteenth. The region was the region of the city La Fère, a fortress city which the Prussian Second Army was about to catch and that the French did not want to have fall. The date was Monday, January 13th, 1913, at 7:30 AM. It was time for a battle. Or should I say… the battle.

The Prussians had now advanced very far into their scheme, and were supposed to have the ‘job’ done in just a few days from the present day. But they couldn’t. The Von Schlieffen Plan had not considered that the French might get help from the British, that Belgium would give so much resistance, and that the Dutch would declare war as well. The only thing in which he had been right was that Luxemburg had stayed quiet and had allowed the Prussian Fourth and Fifth Army to occupy and, on December fifteenth, formally annex it without much resistance. The grandduchess, Marie-Adélaïde, was enraged with the course of events but could not do much. From that, Luxembourgian people later accused her of allying with the Prussians, while the young grandduchess really couldn’t do much about the situation. Anyway, the grandduchy of Luxemburg was occupied by Prussia easily, but that was about it for the good news, or at least, the good news for the Prussians. The combined French/Austrian/Spanish/British army attacked the Prussian armies on January 13. It was a decisive defeat for the Prussians, stopping their advance through France. The Entente armies far outnumbered the Prussians, and Russian help, though requested by Emperor Wilhelm II, had not arrived yet, instead still being transported through Russian Poland, from where it would be taken through Germany and through French Alsace, to finally end up at the battlefield. As the Prussians knew, though, the Russians weren’t fast at mobilizing their troops. Therefore, the Prussians, upon withdrawing their troops from the Champagne region on January 16, decided to try a counter-attack.

On January 24, after slowly moving the armies there, The Prussian Sixth and Seventh Army attacked Alsace-Lorraine from the east, at the spot the French had expected them to attack much earlier, at the start of the war. Right now, they were unprepared, and the Prussians easily raced through Alsace and besieged Strasbourg, one of the major cities in the region. But, as soon proved, Strasbourg was a fortress, and a fortress was never easy to take, even with weakened resistance. Some historicists even claim that, if Strasbourg would’ve given in to Prussia easier, it might’ve given the Prussians a chance to win the war in the west. This statement is of course by the majority declared ridiculous, since the Prussians didn’t have much of a chance anyway, and they hadn’t had from the start – they even hadn’t managed to provoke war on France in the 1870s under Bismarck, so they surely couldn’t win this war without him. Anyway, Strasbourg kept standing, until the fortresses finally fell on February 2. The Prussians soon advanced past it, but they were too late. Despite attacks at Nancy, the capital of Lorraine, and hopes to march up to Picardie and help the other troops, the offensive wasn’t a success. On February 7, two French armies and one Spanish army defeat the Prussians a few miles west of Nancy, and managed to make them go back into Alsace, and, eventually, Baden. The French were victorious in the east. Now, all they had to do was push the Prussians out of the north.

The Western Front was not really stabile at the time. The large French/ British/ Spanish/ Austrian Army tried to push Prussia to the north. But Russian reinforcements, finally arriving on February 17, stopped that short. While in France, the Prussians only managed to occupy the east of Picardy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg were all occupied except for North Holland and a piece of ground west of the river IJzer in Belgium. This front was the front that would eventually stabilize, around April, and form the basic of the Western Front for the next two years. It wouldn’t be until early 1915, that the front would really start moving again.

In the east, in the meantime, Austria had mobilized all it’s troops and was now with eleven armies, one of which (the second) was in Greece, and one of which was in France (the seventh). The other armies, though, were ready to fight the Prussians. And fight they would. There was, actually, another ally to the Entente: the Kingdom of Bavaria. After some hesitation, Bavaria had finally declared war on Prussia on December 27, and had attacked Württemberg. By mid-February, when the reinforcements had arrived, the Prussian First and Seventh Army managed to leave the main army and move away through Prussia. In the meantime, on February 21, Russia, after months of preparation and mobilization, finally opened it’s first major offensive in Galicia. The strong Austrian troops managed to beat them back quite easily, beating them by Premysl on the twenty-eighth, and even pushing them north and into Russian Poland on the fifth of March, where the Austrians pushed up towards Lodz before they turned around. The Austrian-Hungarian army initially didn’t really understand why this offensive was even made without solid Prussian support, or at a more fortunate time. They would know soon.

Within days, the Austrians found out that the real intention wasn’t conquering Galicia – it was providing a distraction. On March 1, when the Austrians were busy pushing back the Russians, the Prussian First and Seventh Army crossed the borders with Bavaria, and attacked Nurnberg. The weak Bavarian First Army (their only army at the time – they would form a second a few days later) didn’t stand a chance and had to give up the city on the twelfth, after heavy fighting, allowing the Prussians to advance into the south, while the remaining parts of Württemberg and Baden attacked from the west. It was official. The WFGU (Wars For German Unification) had began.
 
Map. Hope you like it. It's Europe on January 1, 1913.

Austriavictorious1913Jan1.PNG
 
New chapter.

Chapter Eight​

Heavy Fighting: 1913​

In the meantime, there was once again an Entente ally left unattended, and that was the Kingdom of Spain. Having already helped the French, they now searched some place to go with their other armies, the Third, Fourth and Fifth Army. Soon, they found that in the country that was located to the west: Portugal. Portugal and Spain had been enemies for a long time, and, for helping the Axis, Spain declared war on them on the twentieth of January. The next day, Spanish troops crossed the border in the north. The war for Portugal had began.

The young Portuguese Republic hadn’t prepared themselves for this, but they fought bitterly. Nevertheless, the strong Spanish Third and Fourth Armies, who attacked from the Spanish Orense, managed to beat the Portuguese and march up to Porto, the second city of Portugal. Portuguese defence troops tried to push the Spanish back but, even though the Spanish offensive was slowed down, it could not be stopped. Eventually, Porto fell to the Spanish on February 12. Other territories soon collapsed. On February 16, all of Portugal above the river Duoro was in Spanish hands. And soon, more would follow. The Spanish troops, which were being constantly refuelled by Spanish supplies from Salamanca, managed to conquer quite some territory in a short time. The average marching was about 15 miles a day – a pretty fast speed, considering the state Spain had been in less than half a century before. Aveira was reached on February 18, and fell on the twenty-first. Coimbra fell on the twenty-fifth. The Spanish offensive was going well, but they weren’t impossible to defeat. While they managed to conquer the non-willing cities above the Mondego river soon, as early as March 3, the Spanish offensive finally came to a rest after a failed attempt to conquer Guarda in the east failed. After having to let go control over one-thirds of Portugal, the Portuguese finally could try to stop their withdrawing and go over to an effective counter-attack.

The Portuguese had been completely surprised by the swift Spanish moves in the north, and by the time the Spanish offensive came to rest, they’d considered evacuating Lisbon, the capital. Portugal had been hoping not to have to do anything but sit back and relax, and eventually conquer British Botswana, creating a link between their colonies of Angola and Mozambique. Only now, it turned out to be that they were in danger after all. The Spanish moved so fast that the Portuguese armies that were in the north had been crushed. The majority, however, was in Faro, the harbour in the south, and had now been transported to Lisbon, where three small armies, containing about 350.000 men all together, had been formed. The Spanish armies, which together were 330.000 men, were outnumbered by this, unless they’d call in reinforcements from the Fifth Army, which, however, was situated in Madrid instead of the Portuguese border. Now, the Portuguese First, Second and Third Army set off to the north, determined to crush the Spanish forces and push them out of Portugal for once and for all.

The Portuguese offensive started on March 21 in Covilha, one of the most northern cities that wasn’t Spanish-occupied, and soon pushed through towards Guarda. The Spanish, which once again had tried to conquer the city, were surprised by the Portuguese First and Second Army catching up to them. They soon found themselves being forced to withdraw from a few cities, and, as the Third Army arrived, that withdrawing increased. Coimbra was taken back on March thirty-first, and as April started, the Portuguese were clearly in the majority. By the end of the month, they even managed to get as far as the Douro river, almost restoring Portugal to it’s old borders. The Republic was enthusiastic, and urged the offensive not to stop, instead to go on. That became it’s fall.

On May fifth, the Fifth Spanish Army, having arrived from Madrid, attacked the Portuguese army, which was marching towards Porto. The Portuguese, not expecting an attack, were crushed under the force of Spain. Soon, the three Spanish armies united and started the so-called ‘March For Lisbon’. By May thirtieth, all of the territory prior to the Portuguese offensive had been restored into Spanish hands. Guarda was left aside this time, and kept mostly quiet as the Spanish continued to race through Central Portugal. They reached the Tague by Abrantes on June twelfth. Despite the fact that Portuguese protests grew heavier, the Spanish reached Lisbon on July first.

Never before in it’s recent history had Portugal been so threatened. What was worse, the Third Portuguese Army, the only one that had managed to recover, was sent off towards Sevilla. The Spanish ignored it, and pressed further, despite the fact that the Portuguese were marching up. Eventually, a good Sevillian defence managed to get the Portuguese troops to move back into the mainland, especially after hearing that the Spanish stood for Lisbon. The Portuguese Army reached the Spanish forces on August fifth, but the battle that broke out the next day only caused a Portuguese defeat and withdrawal to Faro, on the southern coast. This battle also broke the Portuguese morale. After a few more days, and pleas for the other Central Powers, who were otherwise occupied, to help them, Lisbon eventually gave up on the thirteenth. Spanish troops flooded the city. On August 14, 1913, Ferdinand VIII of Spain was proclaimed king of Portugal as Ferdinand III, 273 years after his far Habsburg ancestor, Filips IV of Spain, had been driven out by the revolution. The Iberian Union was back.

The Portuguese didn’t give up, though. While North- and Central-Portuguese fled to the colonies, an army from the colonies came in return. The ‘Colonial Armée’ arrived in Faro on August twentieth, determined to push the Spanish troops out of Portugal. Most army leaders, though, had realized the fact that the dream they were pursuing was a useless one, and only wished to keep the current size of the republic, which was practically everything below Lisbon, intact, even if it meant that, in a future peace, two-thirds of the country would have to be ceded to Spain, or to the newly established Habsburg Portuguese monarchy.

The Spanish, though, weren’t satisfied by that – they wanted supreme rule over the Iberian territories. On August twenty-seventh, after almost two weeks of partying, the Spanish king, Ferdinand III, arrived in Lisbon to speak to his troops. He stayed in Portugal for four days. The day after, on September first, the next and final Spanish offensive began. It’s goal? Complete destroy of Portugal. The Spanish armies soon marched up, and took Evora on the fourth. They met the colonial army a few miles south, on the eighth. The army actually put up quite the fight, only withdrawing very slowly. After almost three weeks, the Spanish were sick of it and launched an offensive to break through the current border lines. It worked. The capture of Beja on October fifth made it clear to the remaining Portuguese forces: Portugal was practically defeated. That remained secure as the Spanish marched up to take Alsace do Sal on the tenth, and Grandola on the thirteenth. But as the 38 degrees north border became the border between the Spanish and Portuguese troops, the cities became harder to take. Serpa didn’t fall until October 20. Aljustrel came on the twenty-seventh. The Spanish had expected a faster advance, and pushed through. They wanted to finish the last parts of Southern Portugal, too.

On November eighth, though, the Spanish troops came to a halt at the Vascao. For a moment, the Portuguese thought that Spain was going to withdraw after all… but that hope didn’t last for long. The Fourth Army simply moved to Spanish Huelva, and launched an attack from there on the sixteenth, the same day fighting along the Vascao river started again. The Portuguese cause was lost and they knew it. Great-Britain had occupied most of Mozambique and was now attacking Angola. The Spanish part of Portugal was now 95 percent of the former republic. And it became more. Olhao, a city next to Faro, was taken on November 24. Faro itself held on until December eleventh. The Spanish easily moved to the west and crushed the remaining forces. Most of the southern region was taken by the twentieth – the small city of Cabo de Sao Vicente, however, kept fighting until January third, 1914. Then, it finally surrendered. After almost a year, Portugal was defeated by Spain. The first Central Power member (not counting smallish Serbia) was taken. Now, many more had to come.

Fighting continued on the Portuguese Azores, Madeira, and in the colonies. The remains of Belgium had managed to cede control of the protectorate of Cabinda (Portuguese Congo) on July twelfth, and had annexed it into Belgian Congo. Mozambique was fought off by Britain and the independent Union of South-Africa, grabbing Maputo in May, and Beira in July. The capital fell on August twenty-seventh, and from there on, the British pushed farther, towards Italian Somaliland. The major cities fell like domino stones, and Italian Eritrea collapsed soon, as well, as Ethiopia, Britain and France attacked it together. Not even the Ottomans on the opposite side of the Red Sea could stop them, being relatively weak themselves. On October 2, 1913, the last Eritrean city collapsed. The last Somalian city would do the same on October tenth. Those countries would be under British occupation until the end of the World War, when things would really be decided. Except for Prussian South-West Africa, which would remain fighting until February 1915, and the Cape Verde territory, which would eventually collapse on November eleventh of 1913, all of Africa was now in Entente hands, including the Portuguese Azores and Madeira, and even including Italian Libya, which had fallen in September even though the Italians had tried to fight the British really hard. But their hopes at African territory were over now.

In the meantime, in Europe, things happened as well. The Prussian soldiers in Bavaria marched up with amazing speeds. King Louis III of Bavaria urged his soldiers not to give up, even visited the rapidly southwards moving frontline. Finally, after Weissenburg’s collapse, the Danube became the official frontier. On March twentieth, the Germans reached that frontier, and managed to beat the Bavarians out of the Bavarian Forest in the east, on the twenty-third. The Prussian offensive had it’s goal as Augsburg, and the Bavarians knew that the next offensive would go towards Munich. The capital should not, could not, fall, or it would cause an immense Bavarian humiliation.

The heavy Bavarian resistance from South-Bavaria that followed was something that the Prussians, who had occupied all of North-Bavaria, had not taken into their account when making a war schedule. It didn’t matter anyway, according to the army leaders, because after all, Prussia was far stronger than it’s southern neighbour. And that was partially true, although it would take the Prussians longer to finish their conquests now. Augsburg resisted heavily, even though there were various attacks, and it didn’t fall until April tenth. The Prussians then marched on towards Bavaria’s capital: Munich. On April eleventh, a small airport had the task of transporting king Louis III of Bavaria towards Salzburg, along with almost all of the royal family. The popular Crown Prince Rupprecht was left behind, organizing defence of Bavaria. It was not much of a use. Munich was reached on April eighteenth, and, after a twenty-day-defence, it was defeated on May eighth. Prussian soldiers marched through the Bavarian capital and the dream of German Unification was now dangerously close. In mid-May, the Inn river marked the Prussian-Bavarian border, meaning there was very, very few left. Traunstein was viewed as the current capital of ‘Free Bavaria’ but it wouldn’t take long for the remains of Bavaria to collapse. The main question for almost all of the occupied Bavarians now was: where is Austria-Hungary?

Upon the realization of the danger in the west, the Austrian-Hungarian defence had done anything to build up an army. Slowly, some Austrian troops were moved away from France, and transported over the seas towards Austria itself. The Italians, which had tried to attack Bolzano, were beaten back by a giant Austrian offensive in early April, that almost reached Venice itself. Leaving the Italians to regroup, and having Serbia crushed and Russia humiliated, the Austrians could concentrate most of their power on Prussia. And that was exactly what they did.

On May twentieth, a coupled offensive in both Tirol, Upper-Austria and Bohemia started to drive the Prussians out of Bavaria. The Austrian manpower was huge, and the strong army soon managed to drive the Prussians out of the Alps, where they had tried to march on Innsbruck. With help of the Bavarian troops and most importantly information about the Bavarian geography in Free Bavaria, the Austrians soon managed to push the Prussians back. Rosenheim collapsed on May 26, and after a few days, Austrian troops surrounded Munich. A Prussian counter-attack, however, made the Austrian attacks on the city unsuccessful. Grumpy, the Austrians withdrew from Munich. A war front was established. With Prussia and Austria almost equal, it would take the Austrians quite some time to defeat them. For now, the Bavarian front solidified, even though Munich would change hands a few times in the following years.

In the meantime, fighting continued in the north. Prussian troops had crossed the Inn there, and had been marching on Linz when they were eventually stopped by Wels on June fifth. The Austrians had pushed them out of Austria, even though the Austrian border city of Schärding remained in Prussian hands, the only city ever to do so. In Bohemia, the Prussians were pushed out of the country also, even pushed back before they got a chance to merely attack. The Naab and Regen rivers became the south and west borders of the Bohemian occupation zone. This area was ceded to free Bavaria on July first. The borders pretty much solidified afterwards, and a trench warfare started. Long trenches were lied on the western border, which would remain pretty much the same during the rest of 1913, even though there were minor attacks from both sides that humiliated either the Prussians or the Austrians respectively, depending on who won, of course.

The Eastern Front wasn’t that quiet. Russian attacks were promptly met by Austrian counter-attacks, and therefore, the Polish border pretty much remained solid. The Austrians also didn’t have major goals in Russia – the idea of a puppet state established in Poland wouldn’t occur to them until 1916, when the real war in the east would start. The offensives right now pretty much involved Galicia, which was attacked by the Russians once again in late July. They were beaten back soon, and withdrew to their original borders. Austria ruled in Galicia and it would show Russia that. The Russians therefore limited their offensives of 1913, and prepared for a big one in 1914, that would cause the Habsburg dynasty to collapse for once and for all… at least, that was what Russia hoped. The real results were different, of course.

More movement occurred on the Italian front, where the Austrian generals finally decided to form an offensive plan instead of the current defensive strategy in August 1913. Not only did Austria want to regain Lombardy-Venetia, they had also seen in Portugal, where Spain had advanced really far by now, that an offensive strategy could destroy the other country and make it do anything you want, which would, in the long term, mean one less battlefront. Therefore, an offensive plan was formed, which, unusually, was started by sea and not by land.

On October 7, 1913, Austria and Britain surprised the world as their combined navies attacked Venice, destroyed major buildings, and, seeing as the British navy combined with the Austrian one, which had grown in major ways under Rudolph I, was superior to the Italian navy, Venice fell on October twelfth. Austrian armies raced into the city, and from Venice it would be that they would launch their offensive into North-Italy that would be the start of the Italian part of the Great War, which would last for the next two years and result in the end of Italy as a super power (if it had the ability to claim that title in the first place).

The Italians were shocked to have one of their major cities fall so easy, but it soon got worse. From the northern border, attacks were made towards Italy. The Italian Army was divided on which front it would fight, and finally decided to attack Venice, which held thanks to the Anglo/Austrian army that was still in the city. But they did not realize that the troops on the ‘regular’ border were now by far out-numbered by the Austrians. The frontline broke easier than the ones in Bavaria had done earlier that year. Austria attacked and captured Udine, and managed to march up to Portogiuara and Lignano by November second. The Italian army, that had soon marched up, withdrew to the Pieva, the so-called ‘last-possible frontline’ by November seventh. Austrian troops reached that border soon, and the Austrian Tenth and Ninth Army soon liberated the Austrians that were under heavy fire at Venice. On November twenty-third, exactly one year after the death of the Prince of Vienna, all of Italy east of Venice was in Austrian hands.

The fall of the territory of North-East Italy was a huge shock to the Central Powers, especially after France managed to somehow attack, too, on November twenty-sixth, and race with amazing speeds towards Genoa and capture the city on December second. Prussia and Russia immediately contacted their other allies. The Entente was getting way too successful: The Spanish troops were already moving in for the kill in Portugal, which would soon collapse. Reinforcements were sent to Italy, which successfully managed to stop the Austrians on December twelfth by Chióggia. The French were stopped by Turin a few days later. The front solidified again, and the Italians could relax. But things had already spiralled out of control way too far. The Italians had conquered the Spanish Baleares and even Valencia during 1913, but they’d had to give this up to help their forces in the north. The colonies were lost, and Austro/Anglo/French troops occupied large parts of the north. But it wasn’t enough. Even though December would remain quiet, 1914 would bring more hell for the Italians: Austrian and Spanish preparations for big offensives.

In the meantime, the northern, Scandinavian countries finally decided to join the war. War was declared on Prussia on December fifth, 1913, and Denmark immediately attacked the north of Schleswig-Holstein. Prussia, annoyed at the Danish, somehow managed to push them back into the north, and eventually would push them out of Jutland all together. This would provide a great boost for Prussian morale, and would be part of the cause that it managed to hold on for so long. It wouldn’t help in the end, though.

1913 was now over, and the war-hungry countries had already made plans for offensives in the new year. 1914 would again be rough… but for who, that was the big question.
 
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