Cinco de Mayo
- Thread starter KingSweden24
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But will the monarchy and capitalism survive?
With how much Belgian Socialists have been radicalised, I am pretty much see that there will be a revolution in Belgium after all.
After all, Rouge (Red) can stand for both Bloodshed(if the author ain't going for socialist revolution route and just that the monarchs are bloody tyrants) and Socialism.
I can even feel that the socialist Revolution in Belgium might start the CEW.
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I think Belgium's likely socialist revolution has been telegraphed pretty heavily, hence why there was discussion on them being Socialist Chile's only friend.
Any of these options would be amazing and quite original. I can't think right now about a justification for the others, but I could see Luis Maximiliano, once he ascends to the throne, seeing the opportunity spin something about "Belgian mother", "nephew of Leopold II", etc. I don't think it will happen nor the Europeans powers giving too much weight to these arguments, but it's fun to imagine.
Sorta. Don't forget a radical Argentina in between, which is neither socialist nor integralist
Yup, Portugal got the Pink Map in 1890. Whether it can keep it is an open question.
I've come around to being somewhat enamored with the idea proposed by @Devoid to have the most ardently Francophile Conservatives in Colombia decamp to Panama and lead it into independence, only for them to never manage to finish the Canal. Would be a unique take, that's for sure.
Yeah, I've had to diminish my focus on Europe a bit even though I really need to start building to the CEW more aggressively here soon in order to stay under 500, which I'm becoming more confident about and have updates I can bump to the Sequel de Mayo if needed. We'll get over the pond again soon enough.
Britain might, that's not an entirely awful idea - it'd be their first direct intervention in continental affairs with ground forces since Crimea 1856 if they do, though.
Shaking out the dismantling of the French colonial empire and redrawing the map in Europe is tough. Without Drang nach Osten vs the Russians to motivate German chauvinists, the Eastern European colonial empire would be nonexistent, so I've tried to think out what Germany would want to pluck for themselves in Africa while also satisfying Italy. It's likely the case that Germany is more supportive of Italian irredenta in Europe while assigning more of Africa for itself, or maybe it chucks off Gabon and Kamerun as a package deal to the Italians who are also getting the French Congo and Djibouti, for instance. Who knows.
An Italian Suez with a more North Africa-focused Italian Empire that hasn't collapsed the Ottomans with their expansionism actually would solve a lot of problems for everybody in the peace treaty (everybody being Germany and Italy)
Yeah the use of the word "rouge" was very intentional for precisely the reason you describe.
The Congo is technically a possession of the Belgian crown alone rather than of the Belgian state at this time, after all, so Leo III spinning it off to his first cousin isn't entirely impossible, but considering how terrible Leo III is and that LM is a kind-of-decent man all things considered (philandering aside), and how many little shithead kids Leo III has to keep happy, it does seem unlikely. Writing the Mexicans making the argument in favor of it, though, would be fun.
A Time of Atrocity: An Accounting of Crimes Committed in the Great American War
"...auxiliaries. The Hellfighters were primarily used on the front lines to break through trenches, but veterans of this shock troop cadre often found their way onto the "Firemen" that did not so much patrol the Kentuckian countryside as respond to reports of insurgent activity and deal with it there. These Firemen were held in contempt by locals, particularly as many of their outfits were overwhelmingly Black and began earning a reputation in Kentucky for retributive violence towards their former social betters and sometimes even masters.
What precisely occurred in Corbin, Kentucky on the evening of February 1st, 1915 remains a subject of intense debate in the Confederacy even as the event has largely faded from memory north of the Ohio, perhaps in part because its chief alleged perpetrator, then-Captain Harland Sanders, enjoyed a decorated career in the United States Senate, something Dixie was never quick to forget. Fire Team Five, a group of approximately forty men, twenty-eight of whom were Black and thirteen of which were former slaves from Kentucky and Tennessee, had been dispatched to Corbin to help put down partisan activity in the surrounding hills and hollers that was attacking logistics, especially by rail, to keep the forward position south of Williamsburg supplied. Said activity had been stepped up as the Confederate push in the Applachian theater had improved, with US forces in fact denied an attempt to pierce Tennessee at the Battles Of Oneida and Big South Fork.
According to the general scholarly consensus, Sanders had already enjoyed something of a reputation for ruthlessness [1] even before Corbin. He ordered the torture of three men in a barn on the outskirts of the US garrison and was informed of where the men who were running guns to the hills were; Sanders responded by instigating a firefight at their home then having their houses flamethrowered with them and their families still inside. When the partisan attack came later that evening, the Firemen were waiting in ambush and slaughtered them to the man. Violence in Corbin died down after that, and the Massacre ended with about 35 people dead and another dozen or so wounded; the Firemen suffered no casualties and promptly moved on elsewhere in Kentucky.
What is a point of disagreement is whether the people Sanders killed were even partisans or just somebody who had an example made of them. That women and children were among the dead, and that the Firemen had burned several homes in town, began to foster fears amongst the White population of a US-sponsored campaign of vengeance by Black paramilitaries armed and trained by hardened killers like Sanders. Rumors began to spread that Sanders had randomly had boys of fighting age shot and allowed his men to rape the town's women; interviews after the war suggest that many townsfolk started to misremember the more horrific version of an already grim event due to the importance placed on these rumors as an ideological underpinning for the Great Resistance by Kentucky's white population to the postwar Free Commonwealth. [2] Fear of a slave revolt now began to grow enormously acute, especially in much of south-central and eastern Tennessee, with evidence in hand to many of what barbarism the Confederate underclass was capable of and which the Yankees were apparently willing to sanction.
Sanders never denied carrying out an aggressive operation in Corbin but scoffed at the idea that it was a massacre, dismissing the entire affair as legitimate under the rules of war in an occupation zone. When pointedly asked in an interview in 1965 upon its fifty-year anniversary, at a time when trans-Ohio relations were shaky, about the arson of homes in Corbin, he replied, "I ordered the partisans burned out and my only mistake was that I didn't burn down the whole town." To say the least, Sanders' flippancy earned him no fans in Kentucky, and the "Kentucky Fryer's" death in 1980 was commemorated with church bells ringing, a standing ovation in the legislature and even a parade in Corbin..." [3]
- A Time of Atrocity: An Accounting of Crimes Committed in the Great American War
[1] I fucking loved this idea, thanks to whoever presented it originally! Don't worry, I'll do a wikibox on this in time.
[2] Tipping my hand, I've decided to go this route, at least in the immediate postwar
[3] I chose not to place this update under the "Freedom Bought with Blood" update because I didn't really want to associate Colonel Sanders doing a My Lai with the Black story of emancipation even if the Corbin Massacre and similar events across Kentucky have a profound effect on race relations across the Confederacy as more and more slaves are liberated. For obvious reasons, I'm sure you can all imagine my disquiet if not straight discomfort at the thought of writing out what is essentially a race war across the Confederacy in the postwar era, so think of this as me dipping my toes in a pond I'm dreading swimming in.
What precisely occurred in Corbin, Kentucky on the evening of February 1st, 1915 remains a subject of intense debate in the Confederacy even as the event has largely faded from memory north of the Ohio, perhaps in part because its chief alleged perpetrator, then-Captain Harland Sanders, enjoyed a decorated career in the United States Senate, something Dixie was never quick to forget. Fire Team Five, a group of approximately forty men, twenty-eight of whom were Black and thirteen of which were former slaves from Kentucky and Tennessee, had been dispatched to Corbin to help put down partisan activity in the surrounding hills and hollers that was attacking logistics, especially by rail, to keep the forward position south of Williamsburg supplied. Said activity had been stepped up as the Confederate push in the Applachian theater had improved, with US forces in fact denied an attempt to pierce Tennessee at the Battles Of Oneida and Big South Fork.
According to the general scholarly consensus, Sanders had already enjoyed something of a reputation for ruthlessness [1] even before Corbin. He ordered the torture of three men in a barn on the outskirts of the US garrison and was informed of where the men who were running guns to the hills were; Sanders responded by instigating a firefight at their home then having their houses flamethrowered with them and their families still inside. When the partisan attack came later that evening, the Firemen were waiting in ambush and slaughtered them to the man. Violence in Corbin died down after that, and the Massacre ended with about 35 people dead and another dozen or so wounded; the Firemen suffered no casualties and promptly moved on elsewhere in Kentucky.
What is a point of disagreement is whether the people Sanders killed were even partisans or just somebody who had an example made of them. That women and children were among the dead, and that the Firemen had burned several homes in town, began to foster fears amongst the White population of a US-sponsored campaign of vengeance by Black paramilitaries armed and trained by hardened killers like Sanders. Rumors began to spread that Sanders had randomly had boys of fighting age shot and allowed his men to rape the town's women; interviews after the war suggest that many townsfolk started to misremember the more horrific version of an already grim event due to the importance placed on these rumors as an ideological underpinning for the Great Resistance by Kentucky's white population to the postwar Free Commonwealth. [2] Fear of a slave revolt now began to grow enormously acute, especially in much of south-central and eastern Tennessee, with evidence in hand to many of what barbarism the Confederate underclass was capable of and which the Yankees were apparently willing to sanction.
Sanders never denied carrying out an aggressive operation in Corbin but scoffed at the idea that it was a massacre, dismissing the entire affair as legitimate under the rules of war in an occupation zone. When pointedly asked in an interview in 1965 upon its fifty-year anniversary, at a time when trans-Ohio relations were shaky, about the arson of homes in Corbin, he replied, "I ordered the partisans burned out and my only mistake was that I didn't burn down the whole town." To say the least, Sanders' flippancy earned him no fans in Kentucky, and the "Kentucky Fryer's" death in 1980 was commemorated with church bells ringing, a standing ovation in the legislature and even a parade in Corbin..." [3]
- A Time of Atrocity: An Accounting of Crimes Committed in the Great American War
[1] I fucking loved this idea, thanks to whoever presented it originally! Don't worry, I'll do a wikibox on this in time.
[2] Tipping my hand, I've decided to go this route, at least in the immediate postwar
[3] I chose not to place this update under the "Freedom Bought with Blood" update because I didn't really want to associate Colonel Sanders doing a My Lai with the Black story of emancipation even if the Corbin Massacre and similar events across Kentucky have a profound effect on race relations across the Confederacy as more and more slaves are liberated. For obvious reasons, I'm sure you can all imagine my disquiet if not straight discomfort at the thought of writing out what is essentially a race war across the Confederacy in the postwar era, so think of this as me dipping my toes in a pond I'm dreading swimming in.
Can someone please explain to me Radical in this sense where it is in opposition to the Brazilians in a way where they went to war against it and yet far enough away from Chilean Socialism that there is no guarantee that they'll align with each other?
I'm still very fuzzy on Portugal, I'm not sure just how much Brazil as a power has affected them (and do they have any conflicts with their neighbor Spain who isn't being *crapped* on iTTL.
Hmm. the question on Belgium is whether Flanders and Wallonia are *both* trying to move to the same level of socialism or not. You could end up with *both* types of Civil Wars happening simultaneously.
The Germans could grab *some* Eastern European empire out of Bohemia and Galicia (which ever spelling is the one south of Poland rather than the one in Spain). Given the choice between the Hungarians and whatever survives in Vienna, they might actually join willingly.
The Italian gains would almost always make them *INSTANT* rivals with the ottomans. We are talking likely gains that would include the entire Adriatic coast *and* Suez. Ottoman control over OTL Libya vs. Italian control of the Canal, Djibouti and part of the horn. Frankly, I can't see this getting to the 1950s without a war between the two.
For the Belgian Congo. I have a suggestion. As mentioned, the Belgian Congo is a personal posession of the Crown. Therefore any government that overthrew them would have no claim to it, and as such it can't be given up in a treaty. Can we have the person who became OTLs Albert I of Belgium gain control.(Not sure how many people would be in front of him for the inheritence though, but I'm sure there are enough lampposts in Belgium). He would be unable to enter Belgium (probably for the rest of his life) and it would be interesting to see what he would do with the Belgian Congo given what he did iOTL. Could OTL *Brunei* somehow end up as the model for a country 50 times its size?
I wonder if "Trans-Ohio relations" is a term that is simply so common that it stays around after Kentucky independence or if that indicates that Kentucky was re-acquired...
Note, "Trans-3630" (The KY-TN line, more or less) doesn't have the same ring and especially if Richmond remains the capital, fairly inaccurate)
And it appears that things aren't lovey-dovey even by the 1960s.
Note, "Trans-3630" (The KY-TN line, more or less) doesn't have the same ring and especially if Richmond remains the capital, fairly inaccurate)
And it appears that things aren't lovey-dovey even by the 1960s.
*CUTE* (note, iOTL, North Corbin is considered to be the birthplace of Kentucky Friend Chicken)
But how would such a state survive? It would be immediately surrounded by hostile neighbours, we know France turn Far right later on, so no supportment from them, unless British intervene it should be easily squashed like a bug by German and Dutch forces.
Considering that Sanders' death was met with a standing ovation in the legislature and the ringing of church bells - acts that most certainly would not occuring if kentucky were an independent Freedman Republic - it seems safe to say that Kentucky's experiment in independence is going to be measured in decades, and likely not that many of them. Which, to be honest, I'm really excited about. Basically having Kentucky going 'failed-state' so badly that the international community doesn''t bat an eye when the Confederates march in to restore peace and order ... is going to be a wild ride to say the least, and I'm genuinely intrigued by that story, because I doubt it has ever been done in AH before!
Both France and Germany see Socialist Belgium as a buffer state that wouldn't ally with the other on principle(cuz it's communist?) And tolerate it as long as it ain't supporting any communists in France or Germany? And they don't bother cuz they know its too weak?
Or it doesn't survive?
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I missed the applause in the Legislature line.
There are three choices here.
1) The freedman republic fails and is reconquered
2) The freedman republic doesn't have the same borders as Kentucky (so the city ends up as Corbin, Tennessee, the city is relatively close to the SE corner of Kentucky.
3) Retcon.
I am thinking Women and Girls of Color will also extract their revenge against their attackers in the liberated South.
Would be kind of amazing if the CSA marches into KY at the approval (tacit or overt) of a USA who is tired of propping up a free KY.
"Hey Huey! If you guys want em back by all means, they all yours."
Honestly very interested in seeing what happens here. Really wondering how it'll go down if (when?) it does.
Something something KingSweden's joke about Longism being Kentucky-fried Peronism something something
Beating Kentucky then fills them with overconfidence and they try to retake Texas. *Dumb Ways to Die plays*
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