Medina, Emirate of Mecca, Ottoman Empire, 13 Raby II 1339 [Saturday, 25 December 1920]
The looting by the Ikhwan died away towards sundown. The resourceful desert chieftain, or bandit, Abdulaziz of Nejd had marshaled his the Bedu of the Arabian desert into a fierce, savage gang. Riding in the forefront of his men, Abdulaziz had overthrown the former overlords of the center of the great peninsula, and now he was striking at the heart of Islam, the second holiest city.
The shaky Turkish lands were facing ruin. Already, the Armenians and the Kurds trembled on the verge of revolt, and with the prospect of an Arab rising, the Caliphate and Sultanate would soon tremble on the brink of extinction.
About the only non-Turkish supporters of the Sublime Porte were in the vicinity of Jerusalem. With the strife of the Russian Civil War, many of the Jews of the new Federation had taken the opportunity to flee. Britain, France, Germany, and the United States had all received large numbers, and many had found opportunity wherever it lay.
To many, though, the siren call was that of going up, “Aliyah”. Hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews poured into the coastal provinces of Southern Syria. The economy was already taking a turn for the better.
But there were foreign influences. It was reported that Abdulaziz was receiving French support, and that French agents were behind the Armenian resistance. Just as it was reported that the British were encouraging the migration of the Jews, all the better to shore up the Porte.
Budapest, Apostolic Kingdom of Hungary, Saturday, 25 December 1920
King Karolyi did not go out much. The strains of the Servian War had done for the Dual Monarchy. In the aftermath of the demise of Franz-Josef, after so many years, the problem of nationalities had broken loose. It all began when an uprising in Prague proclaimed a Czech republic. Within days, the army had broken into its several parts. The Empire was done for.
Austrian politicians had sent delegates to Berlin, begging to be admitted to the Reich. This had almost provoked a war, which had only been settled by British and American backed negotiations in Reykjavik. The Treaty of Reykjavik had shaken the German Reich, with the retrocession of Lorraine to France, and the hand-over of Posen to Poland, along with transit concessions to Danzig. Had it not been for the absorption of the new Grand Duchy of Upper and Lower Austria, under the nominal rule of the heir of the late Franz-Ferdinand, German politicians would have raised a great uproar. The Reich had paid a heavy price for its new lands, but now Germany was more “German”, the conservatives stronger in the Reichstag by the inclusion of the more traditionalist Austrians. Moreover, war had been averted.
Hungary was now Hungarian, with a Habsburg monarch, surrounded by the Slovak Republic, the Grand Duchy of Slovenia, the Croatian Commonwealth, the Kingdom of Romania, and the Mandat de Serbie.