Status
Not open for further replies.
From Borodino to Bulgaria: Russian Military History in the 19th Century
"...purely from a perspective of numbers, Russia should have had a critical advantage in the manpower and resources they themselves possessed - this was already history's largest land empire, after all - even before taking into account Rumanian forces that buffeted their efforts. 300,000 men were mobilized for the Russian invasion, against 200,000 Ottoman soldiers, half of whom were committed to fortified garrisons. The fortified nature of the Ottoman forces offset whatever advantage the Russians may have enjoyed, as did the more modern German and American artillery possessed by Ottoman forces, and their repeating rather than single-shot rifles. This disadvantage was compounded by the fact that the reconstituted Black Sea Fleet was essentially coastal monitors built in short order and impressed merchant vessels outfitted with cannon, against the third largest Navy in the world. The Russian offensive strategy was reliant on Ottoman passivity and thrusting into Bulgaria near Nikopol, far west of the fortified Ottoman positions in Dobruja, but also stretching Russian supply lines further through Romania and requiring a more difficult Danube crossing. Critically, the number of men earmarked to cross the river - 185,000 - were fewer than the Ottomans had stationed in the Balkans prewar.

The first such attempt to cross the Danube near Shvishtov, in June, was an outright disaster for Russia thanks largely to the Ottoman's command of the river, resulting in Russia having to retreat from its efforts to seize the south shore at four times the casualties of the Ottomans. Istanbul deployed Osman Pasha and his 30,000 men from Vidin in the far west - still stationed there due to the recently-ended war with Serbia - to the central Danube, at Nikopol. From Istanbul, Defense Minister Huseyin Pasha also redeployed men from the Middle East, particularly elite Circassians, to defend the mountain passes and even withdrew some men from the Dobruja fortifications to prevent any potential Russian incursions through the Balkan Mountains.

In mid-July, the Russians were able to finally cross the Danube with a successful sinking of Ottoman monitors with Romanian torpedo boats, deploying their own mines, and constructing a pontoon bridge near Nikopol. In bloody fighting they were able to cross the river, taking once again nearly three times the casualties of the Ottomans..."


- From Borodino to Bulgaria: Russian Military History in the 19th Century
 
The Eaglet Takes Flight: The Reign of Napoleon IV 1874-1905
"...the constitutional referendum was a resounding success for the new Emperor, in one move decentralizing power in many respects away from Paris as part of a liberal vision to re-empower the common Frenchman while also defanging the republicans and radicals in the National Assembly by dramatically changing the composition of the body. The Constitution of 1877 would remain in place through the end of the Second Empire [1], easily one of Napoleon IV's great achievements on the domestic front in addition to his forthcoming efforts to create one of the world's first genuine general welfare programs and safety nets for workers..."

- The Eaglet Takes Flight: The Reign of Napoleon IV 1874-1905


[1] Bit of a flashforward...
 
The Eastern Question
"...Huseyin Pasha's strategy relied heavily on a two-pronged strategy, both making heavy use of the Ottoman Navy. The first prong was to bleed the Russian-Romanian army as it attempted to cross the Danube, with mines and river monitors. Though the Ottomans accepted that the Russians would eventually cross the river, they wanted to exact as heavy a price as possible upon the Russians for earning that strategic win, and to effectively "choose" the route the Russians would take through central Bulgaria. In early August, Osman Pasha withdrew from Nikopol under heavy fire towards Plevna, a key city that had been heavily fortified and which the Russian force critically required if it was to move on the mountain passes in the south. With the Russian Caucasus Army being bogged down near Kars as well, it seemed that the war was headed for a stalemate.

In came the second prong, in which the Ottomans took offensive action and established their Naval supremacy. The Navy shelled the port of Odessa and sank much of the Russian merchant marine there - when the middling Black Sea Fleet responded, the Ottomans lured them south to the Danube Delta, where they engaged in the Battle of Kilya, sinking essentially every ship Alexander II had outfitted to contest the coast in a matter of hours. It decisively ended any Russian threat to the Ottoman Navy and once again gave them total control over the river. As the Russians besieged Plevna in the south, the Ottomans launched a daring assault on the city of Galatz with a force of 10,000 men recruited from the Middle East, primarily Egypt and the Sudan, burning much of the city, twisting her railroads into "Turkish ties" and essentially severing the connection of the Danube Army from the rest of Russia. Men from the Dobruja fortifications were rotated out of their fortresses to hold Galatz shortly thereafter as Suleiman Pasha's 30,000-strong force marched through the Balkan passes to reinforce Plevna in late August..."

- The Eastern Question


(Much of Turkey's problem in this war was that they sat back and let the Russians dictate the pace of the war and failed to take advantage of numerous instances of Russian incompetence and poor-planning. Here, we have them be slightly more aggressive/flexible, to their advantage. It helps that there's five whole years less of Russian naval investment before the war, too)
 
I get the feeling that Britain won't have to worry about the tsar controlling the Straits any time soon.

Sure looks that way doesn’t it?

Not too get too ahead of myself, or give too much away, but there are a LOT of cool butterflies I’m excited about poking around if the course of this war goes the way it seems
 
Not too get too ahead of myself, or give too much away, but there are a LOT of cool butterflies I’m excited about poking around if the course of this war goes the way it seems

HMM...

Possible Spanish-Russian Alliance against the Ottoman Empire? After all, there is this from Post #603:

Serrano could proceed with his grand project of trying to become Spain's answer to Bismarck and Bazaine, and make his homeland the great power he knew it was destined to be..."

- Old Bull: Francisco Serrano and Modern Spain

“It’s time to defend Christianity and put the Turk again in his place! We will have another Lepanto!”
 
HMM...

Possible Spanish-Russian Alliance against the Ottoman Empire? After all, there is this from Post #603:



“It’s time to defend Christianity and put the Turk again in his place! We will have another Lepanto!”

haha I love it! This would totally have happened had the Carlists won, I bet 😜
 
Wow, the Ottomans are doing fantastic in the war. I'm impressed

Believe it or not, it’s not a huge diversion from OTL. Had they been a little more assertive and 1) not conceded control of the Danube entirely and 2) not wasted months and resources on Shipka Pass and just used one of the open passes to reinforce Plevna, where the Russians spent 5 months beclowning themselves, they could have ground things to a status quo ante stalemate, which of course was their entire strategic goal
 
The Giant of Kentucky: John C. Breckinridge and the Dawn of the Confederate States
"...beyond his unique legacy of having served as Vice President of both the Union and the Confederacy, and the strange circumstances of his elevation to and loss of the Presidency, the Gentleman from Kentucky emerged as a titanic figure in the emerging Democratic Party that was quickly being reconstituted south of the Ohio. Yes, the passing of Breckinridge [1] left a gaping hole in the anti-Harris factions of the Confederacy, but nevertheless, a new era was dawning. As the country slowly recovered from the effects of the Depression, the patrician planter class came to view the late Breckinridge as the ideal gentleman and President, strongly unlike the more brusque, corrupt Forrest-Harris duo that had ruled the country for a decade. As Harris - grievously unpopular both in the states and in Congress, and with his Klan machine marred by infighting - retreated from public appearances and began down the road that would eventually lead to his slide into obscurity and memory as one of the worst Confederate Presidents, the next election was very much on the horizon - and with the election by the Virginia Legislature of famed General James Longstreet to the Governorship, the Breckinridge faction of government would have her next champion..."

- The Giant of Kentucky: John C. Breckinridge and the Dawn of the Confederate States


[1] Delayed two years due to lack of as many war wounds
 
Maximilian of Mexico
"...Mejia [1] cut a very different figure than Vidaurri, immediately taking to aggressively overhauling the Council of Ministers. Despite a reputation for pragmatism, Mejia viewed his personal rivals at Court as enemies of the Emperor, to whom he was devoted, and sought to rapidly consolidate power in Mexico City. Of course, a broader issue for Mejia was growing tensions between the central government and the caudillos who in effect ruled the various departments of Mexico, particularly in the north and west of the country. Here, the industrialization of the last fifteen years had not penetrated; peonage may have been abolished, but the people - many of them more indigenous in their descent than European - still ground out difficult existences on haciendas in utter poverty. Maximilian's Mexico, that of operas in Nahuatl and light industry in cities such as Queretaro and Puebla, did not exist in places such as Mazatlan, Sonora, or Tamaulipas. Despite the gains made in the Altiplano since the Empire's founding, the peripheral departments of the country only seemed to grow poorer and more restless.

The Emperor himself had, at this point, become remarkably blind to the brewing issues in the poor rural north. Mexico City was still transforming into a semi-European capital; industry thrived in the other major cities in the vicinity, and besides, he had his rocky marriage to Carlota and his numerous mistresses to distract him. It fell to Mejia then to navigate the thorny matters presented not just by restive caudillos like Manuel Lozada, a mercurial figure known as the "Tiger of Alica" who effectively ran Nayarit as a personal fiefdom [2], but also the ambitions of Miramon and the hyper-reactionary ultramontanism of Archbishop Labastida..."

- Maximilian of Mexico


[1] Credit due to pathfinder and Capibara for suggesting to me that Tomas Mejia take on a larger role in this TL
[2] Interesting guy, Manuel Lozada. Still alive at this point obviously as Diaz wasn't President and ordering his execution
 
The Age of Questions: Britain in the Gauntlet of Change and Upheaval
"...it can be said with absolute certainty that in the "Age of Questions," as Prime Minister Walpole so famously termed it, every time a question was asked of Her Majesty's Government, particularly when the Earl of Carnarvon resided at Downing Street, the answer was always not only insufficient but wrong. The 1870s found the Cabinet caught flatfooted by nearly every development, both foreign and domestic; in perilously few cases did the Government react with prudency, either grotesquely overreacting (such as on domestic matters in Ireland, which in 1877 represented more the Thirteen Colonies in the pre-Revolution days than an integral part of the United Kingdom, or against trade unionists and suffrage campaigners, and in Carnarvon's insistence on gambling and wasting British blood and treasure on his failed campaign to subdue South Africa) or underreacting (such as Britain's somnambulant response to the Eastern Crisis and replacement by France as the world's preeminent trading and financial power in the last quarter of the 19th century). It is no wonder that modern historians consider the Carnarvon ministry to be one of Britain's worst - it was a time when the government squandered the Royal Navy's global hegemony and allowed the other great powers of Europe to catch up and pose genuine threats to the Crown's interests, and a time when the government would sow the seeds not only of Irish nationalism but also socialist agitation and reactionary police action..."

- The Age of Questions: Britain in the Gauntlet of Change and Upheaval
 
From Borodino to Bulgaria: Russian Military History in the 19th Century
"...the third attempt to seize Pleven, in late September, was the most disastrous one. Prince Carol of Romania had withdrawn a substantial piece of his army by this point to retake Galatz and defend against a feared Ottoman offensive against Bucharest, and General Gourko's attempts to seize the Shipka Pass had all failed. When General Skobelev's latest attempt to break the Ottoman defenses collapsed on the morning of September 28th, the counterattack by Osman Pasha's forces caught the Russian Army entirely flatfooted. The ensuing rout on the plains north of Plevna remain one of the worst defeats in Russian military history, a double-embarassment thanks to the death of Skobelev in the field and the subsequent capture not only of Grand Duke Nicholas, head of the Danube Army, but also Tsar Alexander II himself, who was there in a pavilion with his brother to observe the siege. With not only the head of the scattered Danube Army but also his brother the Tsar now held hostage, Russian morale collapsed. Matters became worse in early October when the Ottoman river monitors, with full command of the Danube, sank the pontoon bridges that would have allowed a Russian retreat back into Romania. Tsarevich Alexander, the Tsar's son in the western end of the Bulgarian theater, was a practical man and saw the writing on the wall - Russia had been not just defeated but humiliated, an outcome he had predicted before the war when he criticized the lack of equipment and preparation. "We have underestimated the Turk," he would later remark. "We shall underestimate no enemy ever again." With the central corps of the Danube Army broken and largely captured, and separated from Gourko's divisions by most of Bulgaria, the Tsarevich took command and sent signals to the Ottoman forces that he was interested in a ceasefire..."

- From Borodino to Bulgaria: Russian Military History in the 19th Century
 
The Land of Plenty: Southern Africa in the 19th Century
"...the Basuto War was effectively a long, ugly stalemate, one marred by atrocities carried out by both sides. In the end, it resulted only in combining Natal and the Cape into British South Africa, a unitary state to be ruled from the Cape. Though Frere had dismissed the Molteno government and ruled the Dominion personally, when the war ended in late 1877 he was recalled to Britain, crestfallen and humiliated by not only the Natal Field Force's defeat and evisceration at the hands of Boer commandos and African warriors but also the struggle of the Royal Marines dispatched to Natal who also "ran aground," in the parlance of the First Sea Lord, Sir George Wellesley. The Drakensberg Mountains proved difficult terrain, and the complex pastiche of South African politics a vipers nest. Critically, of course, was the British mistake in trying to blockade the Delagoa Bay - the Inhaca Crisis that September nearly destroyed the Anglo-Portuguese alliance and the withdrawal of the Royal Navy's presence there was just a further embarassment to Cabinet..."

- The Land of Plenty: Southern Africa in the 19th Century
 
The Eastern Question
"...the Conference of Berlin sought to find a peace accord between the humiliated Russians and the Ottomans, who despite their reputation as the "sick man of Europe" had fended off the Bear and indeed decisively controlled the entire pace of the war. In the end, it was a status quo ante settlement, with one major caveat insisted upon by Germany; the end of the "legal fiction," in the words of Bismarck, that Serbia, Montenegro and Romania were "part" of the Ottoman Empire. This was placed in the final treaty signed in Berlin with the acquiescence of the other Powers at the table largely as a measure for Russia to save face at minimal losses to Istanbul. As such, in return for Europe accepting the Constitution of 1876 and neither the Ottomans nor Russia requesting any war indemnity, the three principalities were given total and formal de jure independence. The idea was that these three small states, which received no additional territory, would join the conference of powers in Europe as minor players - in reality, each became a plaything for a larger power. Montenegro almost immediately became a French client; Francois Bazaine was in Podgorica within days of the Berlin Conference's conclusion to negotiate basing rights out of Kotor. Serbia, with the Austrophile Obrenovic dynasty already in charge and situated on the Danube, slid cleanly into being an Austrian sphere of influence [1]. Romania, while initially Russia's sole ally in the conflict, quickly became a close friend of Germany. It had a Hohenzollern sovereign and irredentist interests in Transylvania, and Russia's failures in the conflict had made her much less of a reliable partner moving forward.

Of all the parties at Berlin, it was Britain and Russia - enemies in Central Asia - who came out worst. Russia was of course the laughingstock of the Great Powers, and in the next two decades turned both inwards and eastwards in her interests. But it was Britain that now had lost her ability to hold sway with the Porte and had gained nothing in the Balkans for her neutrality. It was the fallout from Berlin, and the plain advantages the settlement gave both France and Germany, that moved Britain to substantially overhaul her foreign policy approach in the years to come..."

- The Eastern Question


[1] Yes I see the irony in this, but the Obrenovic dynasty *was* generally pretty pro-Austria
 
It was the fallout from Berlin, and the plain advantages the settlement gave both France and Germany, that moved Britain to substantially overhaul her foreign policy approach in the years to come..."
What do OTL, this OTL give us the entete, this here seems butterfly away,,,
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top