In this country , it is good to kill an admiral from time to time
- Thread starter Antony444
- Start date
They are going to be very different for sure. More than this, I will not reveal for the moment.
As for the Batavians issue, well they're already in a bad situation and given how total the war is, it is not likely to improve.
We will see, we will see...unlike the Pacific, north America is at the top of the King of France priority's list.
Northern China is doing somewhat well...for the year 1897. But using their soldiers to soak up the bullets is not a good long-term strategy. Sooner or later, you run out of men...
Constantinople certainly don't want to anger Paris (since the moment a declaration of war is signed they would get an army invading from Egypt) but it is not exactly the same as joining. Declaring war against the Central Alliance would bring them in a front with Persia...a long war in perspective and the treasury is not exactly filled with gold these days. By December 1897, they're rather interested in staying neutral...waiting for the victorious side to come out and then fall upon the vanquished alliance. Plus retaking Arabia is not a very enticing prospect. They know how difficult the Omani and the Persians efforts to maintain their rule in the region are.
With spanish fighting alongside French, I'm kind of expecting them to bring back home some unwanted Idea once the war is over...
We might be in for a revolution soon.
We might be in for a revolution soon.
I don't like Caroline or Louisiane, so I'm hoping for Victories here...
Well that makes me think we might see a united Arab revolution then.
The Great Struggle for Africa (Africa September 1897- December 1898)
Already embroiled in colonial disputes, the African continent’s chances to avoid the Great War were nearly nil from the start. And with each declaration of war made, the peace hopes were extinct in short order.
For the Saxons, the morale was high. The European Union was at war only with the Grande Entente, and thus its western frontier was protected by the Danish colony of New Jutland. A possibility existed to pursue an aggressive war in the east before the Entente came calling with tens of thousands fresh soldiers. On September 17, the 12th Saxon Army formally activated Operation Alexander and invaded the Imperial Spanish colony of New Murcia.
Backed by an extensive artillery train and fast columns of horses, the Saxon army tore apart the enemy lines, although the quality of the Spanish 8th Army opposing them was underwhelming. After two weeks of fighting, Madrid could count one less division and thousands of native auxiliaries had disappeared in the wilderness, unwilling to face the horrors of modern war for their white superiors.
Repulsed on dozens of kilometres, cities and villages falling everywhere and their entire possessions aflame, the leaders of New Murcia appointed by Madrid were forced to call their French neighbours for help. This was not well-received in French Congo. Weeks before, General Sadrant had been told in a very haughty manner his troops would not be needed to crush the minor threat represented by the Saxons, the very reason why his men were currently not on the front decimating the ranks of the Union. Worse, one of his two divisions had already left the theatre for Guyana and there was no hope the French General would get it back in time to make a difference. When one added the difficulties in transport and communications, the ugly truth was that the Saxon offensive could not be stopped anymore.
The Spanish troops were routed, a third of their best regiments were prisoners of the Saxons. Sadrant had to cede lands for time, time for the Saxons to exhaust themselves in long marches and empty their limited stocks of ammunition. This was not to the taste of Vice-Roy Pacheco, Duke of Escalona, whose possessions were currently under occupation. On December 1897, two-thirds of New Murcia had been lost (including the wealthiest western provinces) and the prestige he and General Vargas, Marquis of Fontao, had managed to gather in years of service had disappeared in decades. Pacheco demanded Sadrant’s dismissal to Louis XVIII, arguing he was the senior legitimate authority in the theatre but was refused by the French High Command. Murcia had affirmed they were going to handle New Saxony, it was not France’s fault they were unable to deliver their promises. A few high-ranked officers serving Isabella II, unhappy with the lamentable state of the 8th Spanish army, tried to replace both civilian and military commanders but the manoeuvre failed due to the connections of the Duke and the Marquis at court. Pacheco and Vargas remained in command, and their soldiers had more reasons to curse them for it. On February 1898, the French-Spanish coalition launched its first great counter-offensive and pushed back the Saxon lines thirty-two kilometres north. The newspapers trumpeted it as a huge success, but the reality was not that pleasant: the Saxons of General Bismarck were terribly limited in ammunition and had to shorten their supplies lines. Moreover, the Spanish lines took thousands of casualties – including thousands of native auxiliaries their European commanders had sent against a wall of bullets and death. They had accelerated the depletion of the Saxon ammunition reserves but the defensive lines were filled with corpses. The 8th Spanish Army was a spent force and was placed under General Sadrant’s orders, becoming the 15th Entente Army. Strategically, the front stopped for the rest of the year, the Entente requiring reinforcements to make a new offensive and the Saxons needing to hold their strength and pray the end of hostilities would come fast.
On the other fronts of Western Africa, events turned better for the Entente. The Danish colony of King’s Frederick Land lasted three months before capitulating against the firepower of the regiments stationed in French Senegal, making it a nice Christmas present as the final surrender took place on December 24. On March 1898, the 16th French Army, a new formation combining the garrisons of Senegal and Cote D’Ivoire, moved north and bombarded night and day the frontier defences of New Sicily. Decimated by a crescendo of explosions, steel and flames, the Italian soldiers were defeated and by May all was over. Matteo I’s dreams of a grand ‘Italian Western Africa’ had perished...and the Central Alliance had suffered another defeat. New Jutland resisted longer to the Spanish of New Palma, but by the end of 1898 the end was near. The Spanish had lost nearly two divisions of second-line troops but the ‘Jutland Fortress’ was cracking, abandoned by Copenhagen which couldn’t sail its ships out of the Skagerrak, never mind the Atlantic.
This reassured the Generals and Marshals directing the Entente war effort. Once the 9th Spanish Army would have finished the irreducible Danish soldiers, New Saxony would be forced to fight on two fronts. The Union presence in Africa would disappear, freeing more troops for other pressing battlefronts.
These thousands of men were really demanded elsewhere because in all honesty, the war was not going well for the Entente in North and Eastern Africa. Originally, Madrid and Addis-Abeba had obtained after many deliberations the supreme command over their main theatre operations. The Imperial Spanish would defeat the Italians, a task made easier by the fact the Italian Navy was hiding in its principal harbours, and gain an enormous piece of North Africa in the process. French forces in Libya, the pejoratively named ‘Desert Army’, were just supposed to fix one or two Italian divisions while the men of Southern Andalusia hammered Matteo’s troops. In Ethiopia, Emperor Menelik IV promised ‘a hundred divisions’ to conquer Omani Africa, as long as he was granted sixty percent of the best lands and the island of Zanzibar. The Portuguese forces of Mozambique would be the anvil, attacking from the south with four divisions. The French contribution would be limited to the elimination of the Sultanate of Oman from the list of naval powers and the capture of the vital port of Aden, which was done in the first days of the war.
The period between October and November 1897 was as a result a litany of bad news from an outside perspective. As they were already committed to the bloodbath of the European great front and the multiple offensives of North and South America, Louis XVIII and his generals assisted in spectators to the incredible humiliation of their allies.
The Spanish had sent over twenty divisions to the Algerian front, and from the onset there had been some grumbles in the Entente. Why send so many men on this secondary theatre while the realities of modern war ate the young generations by the thousands? The Italians had barely ten divisions to defend their western frontier...
The overwhelming superiority in numbers didn’t exactly produce the one-sided victory all expected. Two months later, the Spanish were fighting tooth and nail to break the partial encirclement of Alger, more than two hundreds kilometres west of where the former frontier was. Three divisions had been completely destroyed, two had surrendered to the enemy and the rest were in dire straits. To stabilise the front, Marshal Fernandez, Duke of Cadiz, had to send five more divisions – and it was to stabilise the front, not to mount a counterattack. The intelligence services of the Entente had badly overestimated how many regiments could be transported in Africa from Naples and Sicilia before the French blockade was effective...and completely overestimated the value of the Spanish armies. The average Spanish soldier was of impeccable loyalty, eager to serve the Empress but badly equipped to resist the new machine guns and rifles of the Italians. The English observers concluded that at least they had learned their lessons: no more bright uniforms including red and gold, no more ‘traditional hats’ to provide their enemies with targets and stopping their launch of counter-offensives when the Habsburg men had the will to kill them by the thousands. By June 1898, the Spanish had finally managed to save Alger for sure. By October, the front had moved ten kilometres east...at the cost of five more divisions. Madrid had promised more troops to be sent overseas in 1897 but for the moment it was impossible. North Africa was devouring their European reserves at an awful rate.
The Ethiopian dreams of easy conquest were advancing better, but they were far from the ambitions Menelik IV had exposed to his main supporters. In one year and four months, the Ethiopians had pushed back the Omani fifty kilometres east and forty kilometres south, but all of this had been achieved in the first three months. 1898 had seen no progress, and unlike the Algerian Front, the Ethiopians were able to count on the French fleet to bombard the main coastal strongholds. The Oman resistance, sometimes compared to heroic lions, was decreasing but the glorious offensive had become a bloody stalemate. Far to the south, the Portuguese troops were blocked two kilometres north of the pre-war frontier and the casualties they had received was causing plenty of agitation in the less pacified provinces. Cape agents were becoming more and more of a problem...except two small expeditionary detachments to Florida and the East Indies, the men of the Cape were staying idle at home.
To be sure, the ‘small little wars’ waged on the Dark Continent certainly weren’t in their last stages, contrary to the promises of certain politicians in the homelands...
Already embroiled in colonial disputes, the African continent’s chances to avoid the Great War were nearly nil from the start. And with each declaration of war made, the peace hopes were extinct in short order.
For the Saxons, the morale was high. The European Union was at war only with the Grande Entente, and thus its western frontier was protected by the Danish colony of New Jutland. A possibility existed to pursue an aggressive war in the east before the Entente came calling with tens of thousands fresh soldiers. On September 17, the 12th Saxon Army formally activated Operation Alexander and invaded the Imperial Spanish colony of New Murcia.
Backed by an extensive artillery train and fast columns of horses, the Saxon army tore apart the enemy lines, although the quality of the Spanish 8th Army opposing them was underwhelming. After two weeks of fighting, Madrid could count one less division and thousands of native auxiliaries had disappeared in the wilderness, unwilling to face the horrors of modern war for their white superiors.
Repulsed on dozens of kilometres, cities and villages falling everywhere and their entire possessions aflame, the leaders of New Murcia appointed by Madrid were forced to call their French neighbours for help. This was not well-received in French Congo. Weeks before, General Sadrant had been told in a very haughty manner his troops would not be needed to crush the minor threat represented by the Saxons, the very reason why his men were currently not on the front decimating the ranks of the Union. Worse, one of his two divisions had already left the theatre for Guyana and there was no hope the French General would get it back in time to make a difference. When one added the difficulties in transport and communications, the ugly truth was that the Saxon offensive could not be stopped anymore.
The Spanish troops were routed, a third of their best regiments were prisoners of the Saxons. Sadrant had to cede lands for time, time for the Saxons to exhaust themselves in long marches and empty their limited stocks of ammunition. This was not to the taste of Vice-Roy Pacheco, Duke of Escalona, whose possessions were currently under occupation. On December 1897, two-thirds of New Murcia had been lost (including the wealthiest western provinces) and the prestige he and General Vargas, Marquis of Fontao, had managed to gather in years of service had disappeared in decades. Pacheco demanded Sadrant’s dismissal to Louis XVIII, arguing he was the senior legitimate authority in the theatre but was refused by the French High Command. Murcia had affirmed they were going to handle New Saxony, it was not France’s fault they were unable to deliver their promises. A few high-ranked officers serving Isabella II, unhappy with the lamentable state of the 8th Spanish army, tried to replace both civilian and military commanders but the manoeuvre failed due to the connections of the Duke and the Marquis at court. Pacheco and Vargas remained in command, and their soldiers had more reasons to curse them for it. On February 1898, the French-Spanish coalition launched its first great counter-offensive and pushed back the Saxon lines thirty-two kilometres north. The newspapers trumpeted it as a huge success, but the reality was not that pleasant: the Saxons of General Bismarck were terribly limited in ammunition and had to shorten their supplies lines. Moreover, the Spanish lines took thousands of casualties – including thousands of native auxiliaries their European commanders had sent against a wall of bullets and death. They had accelerated the depletion of the Saxon ammunition reserves but the defensive lines were filled with corpses. The 8th Spanish Army was a spent force and was placed under General Sadrant’s orders, becoming the 15th Entente Army. Strategically, the front stopped for the rest of the year, the Entente requiring reinforcements to make a new offensive and the Saxons needing to hold their strength and pray the end of hostilities would come fast.
On the other fronts of Western Africa, events turned better for the Entente. The Danish colony of King’s Frederick Land lasted three months before capitulating against the firepower of the regiments stationed in French Senegal, making it a nice Christmas present as the final surrender took place on December 24. On March 1898, the 16th French Army, a new formation combining the garrisons of Senegal and Cote D’Ivoire, moved north and bombarded night and day the frontier defences of New Sicily. Decimated by a crescendo of explosions, steel and flames, the Italian soldiers were defeated and by May all was over. Matteo I’s dreams of a grand ‘Italian Western Africa’ had perished...and the Central Alliance had suffered another defeat. New Jutland resisted longer to the Spanish of New Palma, but by the end of 1898 the end was near. The Spanish had lost nearly two divisions of second-line troops but the ‘Jutland Fortress’ was cracking, abandoned by Copenhagen which couldn’t sail its ships out of the Skagerrak, never mind the Atlantic.
This reassured the Generals and Marshals directing the Entente war effort. Once the 9th Spanish Army would have finished the irreducible Danish soldiers, New Saxony would be forced to fight on two fronts. The Union presence in Africa would disappear, freeing more troops for other pressing battlefronts.
These thousands of men were really demanded elsewhere because in all honesty, the war was not going well for the Entente in North and Eastern Africa. Originally, Madrid and Addis-Abeba had obtained after many deliberations the supreme command over their main theatre operations. The Imperial Spanish would defeat the Italians, a task made easier by the fact the Italian Navy was hiding in its principal harbours, and gain an enormous piece of North Africa in the process. French forces in Libya, the pejoratively named ‘Desert Army’, were just supposed to fix one or two Italian divisions while the men of Southern Andalusia hammered Matteo’s troops. In Ethiopia, Emperor Menelik IV promised ‘a hundred divisions’ to conquer Omani Africa, as long as he was granted sixty percent of the best lands and the island of Zanzibar. The Portuguese forces of Mozambique would be the anvil, attacking from the south with four divisions. The French contribution would be limited to the elimination of the Sultanate of Oman from the list of naval powers and the capture of the vital port of Aden, which was done in the first days of the war.
The period between October and November 1897 was as a result a litany of bad news from an outside perspective. As they were already committed to the bloodbath of the European great front and the multiple offensives of North and South America, Louis XVIII and his generals assisted in spectators to the incredible humiliation of their allies.
The Spanish had sent over twenty divisions to the Algerian front, and from the onset there had been some grumbles in the Entente. Why send so many men on this secondary theatre while the realities of modern war ate the young generations by the thousands? The Italians had barely ten divisions to defend their western frontier...
The overwhelming superiority in numbers didn’t exactly produce the one-sided victory all expected. Two months later, the Spanish were fighting tooth and nail to break the partial encirclement of Alger, more than two hundreds kilometres west of where the former frontier was. Three divisions had been completely destroyed, two had surrendered to the enemy and the rest were in dire straits. To stabilise the front, Marshal Fernandez, Duke of Cadiz, had to send five more divisions – and it was to stabilise the front, not to mount a counterattack. The intelligence services of the Entente had badly overestimated how many regiments could be transported in Africa from Naples and Sicilia before the French blockade was effective...and completely overestimated the value of the Spanish armies. The average Spanish soldier was of impeccable loyalty, eager to serve the Empress but badly equipped to resist the new machine guns and rifles of the Italians. The English observers concluded that at least they had learned their lessons: no more bright uniforms including red and gold, no more ‘traditional hats’ to provide their enemies with targets and stopping their launch of counter-offensives when the Habsburg men had the will to kill them by the thousands. By June 1898, the Spanish had finally managed to save Alger for sure. By October, the front had moved ten kilometres east...at the cost of five more divisions. Madrid had promised more troops to be sent overseas in 1897 but for the moment it was impossible. North Africa was devouring their European reserves at an awful rate.
The Ethiopian dreams of easy conquest were advancing better, but they were far from the ambitions Menelik IV had exposed to his main supporters. In one year and four months, the Ethiopians had pushed back the Omani fifty kilometres east and forty kilometres south, but all of this had been achieved in the first three months. 1898 had seen no progress, and unlike the Algerian Front, the Ethiopians were able to count on the French fleet to bombard the main coastal strongholds. The Oman resistance, sometimes compared to heroic lions, was decreasing but the glorious offensive had become a bloody stalemate. Far to the south, the Portuguese troops were blocked two kilometres north of the pre-war frontier and the casualties they had received was causing plenty of agitation in the less pacified provinces. Cape agents were becoming more and more of a problem...except two small expeditionary detachments to Florida and the East Indies, the men of the Cape were staying idle at home.
To be sure, the ‘small little wars’ waged on the Dark Continent certainly weren’t in their last stages, contrary to the promises of certain politicians in the homelands...
Well, they have not fought a true war against a nation able to match them in numbers and resources for quite a time...Portugal and the Moroccans weren't exactly a match for Madrid.
As for England and Ireland, we will see...
War came from the North (North America September 1897- December 1897)
On September 17 1897, the North American continent went up in flames. Firing thousands of cannons beyond the existing frontiers, the divisions of the French Army launched a coordinated offensive to destroy the Central Alliance on this theatre. Operation Pluto had begun.
For all the hundreds of thousands men gathered for this operation, the war plan elaborated by the French generals had not much subtlety in it. Since the Entente faced an alliance of three nations spread from the Western to the Eastern coast, the first act would be to ensure said enemies would be unable to reinforce each other. Thus Operation Pluto was born. The armies of the Bourbon Crown, supported by the greatest artillery concentration ever fielded, were going to march straight to New Orleans and cut the continent in half. At the same time, second-line divisions would finish Eastern Louisiana and the Carolinas would be attacked from the west, as Maryland neutrality had to be respected. On the seas, the French Navy would blockade the coasts and strangle the enemy trade.
Pluto was not a plan conceived to win the world conflict in months, not with New Spain and UPNG on the other side – respectively members of the European Union and the Central Alliance. But it would secure French dominance of the North American continent for the next generation. If the goals were accomplished, Louisiana capital and its most populated areas would be conquered, Carolina would be bled to death and California completely isolated.
The Central Alliance had known a French attack would be coming from Missouri but they had underestimated the time the Louisianan army could hold against its hereditary enemy. Québec and Paris had enormously invested in the artillery, live-fire training and used their dirigibles to silence artillery opposition with implacable determination. The Battle of Frontiers for Louisiana would last eight days. It ended in a decisive French victory, the forces of Marshal Levilliers destroying or capturing the best part of four Louisianan divisions.
The Central Alliance defensive positions were completely shattered. President Lebec was informed by his generals a massive retreat was now the only option to save the Republic. Californian regiments were coming in one and two, but the two railway systems were not compatible – the project to correct this problem had been supposed to start in 1898 – and besides the French would still have a massive numerical advantage.
Eastwards, the land frontier shared by Carolina and Louisiana was under enemy occupation. No reinforcements would come from this in time to make a difference. And by the strange game of the alliances, the two Alliance nations were at war with the Florida Directorate, though this front was remaining quiet for the moment. Skirmishes and a few battles at company size had been fought, but it seemed Director Damian Jackson had been caught off-guard by the beginning of hostilities.
This was a saving grace for the Louisianans because the war on the main front was going from disasters to disasters. The initial retreat after the defeat of the Battle of the Frontiers was not ending. Kilometres after kilometres, the French were descending the Mississippi, ravaging the countryside and inflicting losses Louisiana would take decades to recover. The drive to New Orleans was by now impossible to miss on the maps but with supposedly unbreakable fortresses surrendering with their flags and their garrisons, each defeat was one more dagger in the Republic’s heart. The eastern provinces were falling like a castle of sand collapses under the assaults of the sea. The western ones resisted better, but they had the help of the Californian 2nd Army and were at best a secondary front for Louis XVIII and his deputies commanding the war effort.
Three months day-for-day after the initial onslaught, the Louisianan army at last decided it had finally amassed enough fresh divisions for a counter-attack. The Californian 1st Army was operational and ready fight sides-by-sides with the Louisianan 1st, 2nd and 3rd Armies. It was like not they had any choice anymore to be honest. The French 22nd Army had crushed the defences of Centreville and was a day away from Baton-Rouge. If this city fell, then New Orleans would fall. Already thousands of people were fleeing the capital of Louisiana to avoid the atrocities the newspapers were describing in vivid details.
On December 18, the Alliance counter-attack rolled in. For the first time, the two sides had near-parity in numbers. However, it was the first time Californian and Louisianan forces really tried to coordinate pincer movements and elaborate strategies on an army scale. The French, on the other hand, were a single coherent force and though they were far from their supplies lines, generated a massive barrage of death. If they won Baton-Rouge, Louisiana would be out of the war by Christmas.
The bloodshed would last for three days. Ultimately, Marshal Levilliers retreated five kilometres on the order of his civilian and military superiors. Baton-Rouge had cost more than twenty thousand deaths to the Entente cause and the number of badly wounded was absolutely sickening. New Orleans was not yet ready to fall.
The Central Alliance was quick to claim victory and spread the news. The apparently unstoppable offensive of the dreaded enemy was at last stopped. By telegraph, newspapers or other means of communication, the glorious victory was trumpeted from cities to ports and from the coastal areas to the isolated villages in the mountains. In private, the generals were far more reserved. The French had been repulsed, but the combined armies had lost more than thirty thousand men to achieve this exploit. The Louisianan Army was a spent force. East of the Mississippi, most of the territory was lost, leaving just a tiny land shield to protect New Orleans from the French guns. The capital was still hideously vulnerable and administration members were openly announcing their will to make the official assembly meetings in one of Texas’ cities where they weren’t going to wake up with the hated tricolour flag rising in the distance.
Still, some good news could be found in the ocean of bad ones. New Orleans and the Californians had entered fruitful negotiations with Mexico. The Emperor of New Mexico was technically a Union member, but the Union and the Central Alliance weren’t at war. The Entente and the Union were enemies, and the French raiders caused a huge amount of nuisance. Retaliating in kind was an idea very seducing to Miguel II, especially as Baton-Rouge successful defence showed the French were not going to be at his frontier next year. On the Carolinian-French front, the soldiers of Louis XVIII were experiencing the horrors of trench warfare and were unable to break through. California was also safe from the Entente depredations. Of course, it didn’t mean they were about to return to the old border, for the moment the stated goal was to consolidate the current frontline...
On September 17 1897, the North American continent went up in flames. Firing thousands of cannons beyond the existing frontiers, the divisions of the French Army launched a coordinated offensive to destroy the Central Alliance on this theatre. Operation Pluto had begun.
For all the hundreds of thousands men gathered for this operation, the war plan elaborated by the French generals had not much subtlety in it. Since the Entente faced an alliance of three nations spread from the Western to the Eastern coast, the first act would be to ensure said enemies would be unable to reinforce each other. Thus Operation Pluto was born. The armies of the Bourbon Crown, supported by the greatest artillery concentration ever fielded, were going to march straight to New Orleans and cut the continent in half. At the same time, second-line divisions would finish Eastern Louisiana and the Carolinas would be attacked from the west, as Maryland neutrality had to be respected. On the seas, the French Navy would blockade the coasts and strangle the enemy trade.
Pluto was not a plan conceived to win the world conflict in months, not with New Spain and UPNG on the other side – respectively members of the European Union and the Central Alliance. But it would secure French dominance of the North American continent for the next generation. If the goals were accomplished, Louisiana capital and its most populated areas would be conquered, Carolina would be bled to death and California completely isolated.
The Central Alliance had known a French attack would be coming from Missouri but they had underestimated the time the Louisianan army could hold against its hereditary enemy. Québec and Paris had enormously invested in the artillery, live-fire training and used their dirigibles to silence artillery opposition with implacable determination. The Battle of Frontiers for Louisiana would last eight days. It ended in a decisive French victory, the forces of Marshal Levilliers destroying or capturing the best part of four Louisianan divisions.
The Central Alliance defensive positions were completely shattered. President Lebec was informed by his generals a massive retreat was now the only option to save the Republic. Californian regiments were coming in one and two, but the two railway systems were not compatible – the project to correct this problem had been supposed to start in 1898 – and besides the French would still have a massive numerical advantage.
Eastwards, the land frontier shared by Carolina and Louisiana was under enemy occupation. No reinforcements would come from this in time to make a difference. And by the strange game of the alliances, the two Alliance nations were at war with the Florida Directorate, though this front was remaining quiet for the moment. Skirmishes and a few battles at company size had been fought, but it seemed Director Damian Jackson had been caught off-guard by the beginning of hostilities.
This was a saving grace for the Louisianans because the war on the main front was going from disasters to disasters. The initial retreat after the defeat of the Battle of the Frontiers was not ending. Kilometres after kilometres, the French were descending the Mississippi, ravaging the countryside and inflicting losses Louisiana would take decades to recover. The drive to New Orleans was by now impossible to miss on the maps but with supposedly unbreakable fortresses surrendering with their flags and their garrisons, each defeat was one more dagger in the Republic’s heart. The eastern provinces were falling like a castle of sand collapses under the assaults of the sea. The western ones resisted better, but they had the help of the Californian 2nd Army and were at best a secondary front for Louis XVIII and his deputies commanding the war effort.
Three months day-for-day after the initial onslaught, the Louisianan army at last decided it had finally amassed enough fresh divisions for a counter-attack. The Californian 1st Army was operational and ready fight sides-by-sides with the Louisianan 1st, 2nd and 3rd Armies. It was like not they had any choice anymore to be honest. The French 22nd Army had crushed the defences of Centreville and was a day away from Baton-Rouge. If this city fell, then New Orleans would fall. Already thousands of people were fleeing the capital of Louisiana to avoid the atrocities the newspapers were describing in vivid details.
On December 18, the Alliance counter-attack rolled in. For the first time, the two sides had near-parity in numbers. However, it was the first time Californian and Louisianan forces really tried to coordinate pincer movements and elaborate strategies on an army scale. The French, on the other hand, were a single coherent force and though they were far from their supplies lines, generated a massive barrage of death. If they won Baton-Rouge, Louisiana would be out of the war by Christmas.
The bloodshed would last for three days. Ultimately, Marshal Levilliers retreated five kilometres on the order of his civilian and military superiors. Baton-Rouge had cost more than twenty thousand deaths to the Entente cause and the number of badly wounded was absolutely sickening. New Orleans was not yet ready to fall.
The Central Alliance was quick to claim victory and spread the news. The apparently unstoppable offensive of the dreaded enemy was at last stopped. By telegraph, newspapers or other means of communication, the glorious victory was trumpeted from cities to ports and from the coastal areas to the isolated villages in the mountains. In private, the generals were far more reserved. The French had been repulsed, but the combined armies had lost more than thirty thousand men to achieve this exploit. The Louisianan Army was a spent force. East of the Mississippi, most of the territory was lost, leaving just a tiny land shield to protect New Orleans from the French guns. The capital was still hideously vulnerable and administration members were openly announcing their will to make the official assembly meetings in one of Texas’ cities where they weren’t going to wake up with the hated tricolour flag rising in the distance.
Still, some good news could be found in the ocean of bad ones. New Orleans and the Californians had entered fruitful negotiations with Mexico. The Emperor of New Mexico was technically a Union member, but the Union and the Central Alliance weren’t at war. The Entente and the Union were enemies, and the French raiders caused a huge amount of nuisance. Retaliating in kind was an idea very seducing to Miguel II, especially as Baton-Rouge successful defence showed the French were not going to be at his frontier next year. On the Carolinian-French front, the soldiers of Louis XVIII were experiencing the horrors of trench warfare and were unable to break through. California was also safe from the Entente depredations. Of course, it didn’t mean they were about to return to the old border, for the moment the stated goal was to consolidate the current frontline...
I'm realllllyyy looking forward to the End of Louisiana, god will I be happy when it finally happen
Edit: also hoping California get an asskicking
Well, Louisiana as it was pre-war really doesn't exist anymore, since the east is under French occupation, they have French armies stationed in the middle of their territory and are forced to rely on allies if they want to have the smallest chance to win.
California is more problematic to deal with. If New Spain doesn't enter the war, France will be able to deal with them once New Orleans is conquerred and the Louisianan armies routed. If not, well the Entente will have to settle for pushing them back westwards as far as they can.
Especially as in certain fronts like Carolina, the front was never really mobile in the first place and some trenches appeared in early-mid October. Besides, northern France in the middle of winter isn't exactly warm and sunny either...
Look, I live down here. At the moment, it's like 60 degrees F here.
At the lowesst. Now, admittedly, Florida's big issue is a water table so low I could throw a glass of water onto the lawn and risk it getting out of hand....
War of lost opportunities (South America September 1897- December 1897)
When the first clashes tore apart the fragile peace and enflamed the existing tensions, there were many Alliance military personnel in America who rejoiced. The UPNG and the Peruvian Republic had long been surrounded by opponents stopping them from expanding their possessions; now with France, Brazil, Imperial Spain and Chile on the other side, they had been granted a golden opportunity to dominate South America.
Of course, first they had to win and the first weeks proved it was not going to be the walk-over they had expected.
Rear-Admiral Cousteau of the French Navy, with an audacity no one had thought of him, led a suicidal attack on the Panama Canal. The UPNG fleet was in the Pacific, busy organising and preparing the transfers on the diverse Pacific theatres. The destruction of several locks and the Entente control of the Cape Horn waters would make sure they would stay away from the Caribbean for a long time. Surprised and caught unprepared, the Admirals of the Alliance were unable to prevent major damage to one of their nation’s greatest accomplishments. Rear-Admiral Cousteau lost one heavy cruiser, one light cruiser and two destroyers in the operation, but the Panama Canal would stay closed until early January 1899 – assuming no more damage lengthened the duration of the reparations.
French Guyana was also mounting a far more bloody resistance that the most pessimistic plans had envisioned. Originally, Bogota and Lima had believed five divisions would be largely enough to earn the glory of occupying first a French colony. This assumption took a hit before war was declared, as Paris moved one infantry division each from North America, Congo and India to support the one already garrisoning the exposed prisons and the gold mines. Five against four, the rapport of strength was no longer overwhelming. By June 1897, the UPNG planned to mobilise no less than ten divisions to deal with the French in this area and maybe use whatever naval support wasn’t busy transporting troops in the East Indies. With the temporary closing of the Panama canal, there would be no warship bombardment in support. Marshal Balboa, in command of the 3rd UPNG Army, demanded five more divisions as his soldiers began Operation Firedawn.
The defenders of Guyana during the next three weeks appeared to withdraw deeply eastwards and for several days the easy victory promised was looking to be in sight. Then resistance stiffened and the 18th Entente Army counter-attacked in force. Aside from the three French divisions, one Imperial Spanish and five Brazilian-Portuguese divisions had been sent in secret to the frontlines. The result was a monumental disaster for the UPNG. By the end of October, the Alliance had suffered heavy losses and the regulars were one day or two east of the pre-war frontier. Back home Marshal Balboa was busy blaming his subordinates for their poor initiatives when his own faults and communication errors had played their part too in this defeat. Five UPNG divisions had been virtually destroyed between the wounded, the missing and the prisoners. Instead of consolidating the gains acquired, President Martinez was forced to send six more divisions. Balboa retained his command, his political connections proving too tough for his detractors to overcome, but the war in Guyana was proving to be no longer a short affair. For an insignificant colony, the Central Alliance had to throw thousands of men on the battlefield, fresh reinforcements other Generals sorely needed elsewhere.
The Blanquist Directorate – or rather the ruins which had once used this name – was the scene of terrible battles between Chileans and Peruvians. At sea, the Chileans had the advantage due to their “advisors” from England and France. On land, there was no victor. The Peruvians were leading in terms of battles won, but the destroyed infrastructure and the difficult logistic challenges were preventing any side from fully exploiting a breakthrough. On both sides of the frontlines, officers and conscripts wondered why they were fighting for this land. After decades of dictatorship, civil war and warlord predations, this part of South America was war-torn and a third-class conquest at best. If anything, the defeated side of this conflict should be forced to administer it, since the bridges, the cities and practically everything having a strategic value was blown up.
The Entente had its share of problems too in South America. The Holy Empire of Spain’s mobilisation was long and terribly inefficient, and the troops Madrid had promised to send from Europe were moved to North Africa against the Italians. But it was Portuguese Brazil which was at the centre of the preoccupations. Unlike the rest of the Entente, this Lisbon colony had been anything but ecstatic at the idea of fighting a war against the Central Alliance – or indeed at the idea of fighting at all. The white aristocracy of the Brazilian coast harboured a deep mistrust towards the interests of the Royal court, hundreds of kilometres away. More often than not in the current century, Brazil was used as the manpower shield of Portugal and the King took their allegiance for granted. Decisions were taken without listening to their opinions and the fighting in Guyana and the western provinces wasn’t helping things. Loud orators screamed that the ‘Marquisate Trio’ elevated by King Luis were at the beck and call of the French. Thousands of Brazilians had died to defend Guyana in the first months and thousands more were sent to strengthen the front. Tensions were simmering in the low and middle classes. After four months of bloodshed, the Great War was the most unpopular conflict of Brazilian history and there was little hope it would change. Two days before Christmas, a coup attempt was brutally crushed in Rio. It didn’t stop the riots and the protestations from becoming common place and Luis II’s provincial governors had not the resources to win the minds and the hearts...
When the first clashes tore apart the fragile peace and enflamed the existing tensions, there were many Alliance military personnel in America who rejoiced. The UPNG and the Peruvian Republic had long been surrounded by opponents stopping them from expanding their possessions; now with France, Brazil, Imperial Spain and Chile on the other side, they had been granted a golden opportunity to dominate South America.
Of course, first they had to win and the first weeks proved it was not going to be the walk-over they had expected.
Rear-Admiral Cousteau of the French Navy, with an audacity no one had thought of him, led a suicidal attack on the Panama Canal. The UPNG fleet was in the Pacific, busy organising and preparing the transfers on the diverse Pacific theatres. The destruction of several locks and the Entente control of the Cape Horn waters would make sure they would stay away from the Caribbean for a long time. Surprised and caught unprepared, the Admirals of the Alliance were unable to prevent major damage to one of their nation’s greatest accomplishments. Rear-Admiral Cousteau lost one heavy cruiser, one light cruiser and two destroyers in the operation, but the Panama Canal would stay closed until early January 1899 – assuming no more damage lengthened the duration of the reparations.
French Guyana was also mounting a far more bloody resistance that the most pessimistic plans had envisioned. Originally, Bogota and Lima had believed five divisions would be largely enough to earn the glory of occupying first a French colony. This assumption took a hit before war was declared, as Paris moved one infantry division each from North America, Congo and India to support the one already garrisoning the exposed prisons and the gold mines. Five against four, the rapport of strength was no longer overwhelming. By June 1897, the UPNG planned to mobilise no less than ten divisions to deal with the French in this area and maybe use whatever naval support wasn’t busy transporting troops in the East Indies. With the temporary closing of the Panama canal, there would be no warship bombardment in support. Marshal Balboa, in command of the 3rd UPNG Army, demanded five more divisions as his soldiers began Operation Firedawn.
The defenders of Guyana during the next three weeks appeared to withdraw deeply eastwards and for several days the easy victory promised was looking to be in sight. Then resistance stiffened and the 18th Entente Army counter-attacked in force. Aside from the three French divisions, one Imperial Spanish and five Brazilian-Portuguese divisions had been sent in secret to the frontlines. The result was a monumental disaster for the UPNG. By the end of October, the Alliance had suffered heavy losses and the regulars were one day or two east of the pre-war frontier. Back home Marshal Balboa was busy blaming his subordinates for their poor initiatives when his own faults and communication errors had played their part too in this defeat. Five UPNG divisions had been virtually destroyed between the wounded, the missing and the prisoners. Instead of consolidating the gains acquired, President Martinez was forced to send six more divisions. Balboa retained his command, his political connections proving too tough for his detractors to overcome, but the war in Guyana was proving to be no longer a short affair. For an insignificant colony, the Central Alliance had to throw thousands of men on the battlefield, fresh reinforcements other Generals sorely needed elsewhere.
The Blanquist Directorate – or rather the ruins which had once used this name – was the scene of terrible battles between Chileans and Peruvians. At sea, the Chileans had the advantage due to their “advisors” from England and France. On land, there was no victor. The Peruvians were leading in terms of battles won, but the destroyed infrastructure and the difficult logistic challenges were preventing any side from fully exploiting a breakthrough. On both sides of the frontlines, officers and conscripts wondered why they were fighting for this land. After decades of dictatorship, civil war and warlord predations, this part of South America was war-torn and a third-class conquest at best. If anything, the defeated side of this conflict should be forced to administer it, since the bridges, the cities and practically everything having a strategic value was blown up.
The Entente had its share of problems too in South America. The Holy Empire of Spain’s mobilisation was long and terribly inefficient, and the troops Madrid had promised to send from Europe were moved to North Africa against the Italians. But it was Portuguese Brazil which was at the centre of the preoccupations. Unlike the rest of the Entente, this Lisbon colony had been anything but ecstatic at the idea of fighting a war against the Central Alliance – or indeed at the idea of fighting at all. The white aristocracy of the Brazilian coast harboured a deep mistrust towards the interests of the Royal court, hundreds of kilometres away. More often than not in the current century, Brazil was used as the manpower shield of Portugal and the King took their allegiance for granted. Decisions were taken without listening to their opinions and the fighting in Guyana and the western provinces wasn’t helping things. Loud orators screamed that the ‘Marquisate Trio’ elevated by King Luis were at the beck and call of the French. Thousands of Brazilians had died to defend Guyana in the first months and thousands more were sent to strengthen the front. Tensions were simmering in the low and middle classes. After four months of bloodshed, the Great War was the most unpopular conflict of Brazilian history and there was little hope it would change. Two days before Christmas, a coup attempt was brutally crushed in Rio. It didn’t stop the riots and the protestations from becoming common place and Luis II’s provincial governors had not the resources to win the minds and the hearts...
Watched. Took me an age to get here, but it was very worth it. This WW looks to be a mess beyond limit.
And all is quiet on the Russian front?
Thanks! I'm glad you appreciate this alternate world.
And yes, this Great War is already bad...and we are just four months into it for the theatres I described.
The Russian Front is a lot of things, but definitely not quiet. I'm planning to write India next week, and after this we will go to Europe where millions men are rushing to their deaths...