(Ensign Cussans’ note)
While those two are doing impressions of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon over that jigsaw, I’m going to add a few more excerpts from these history books to the digitiser. We haven’t got to the really distressing stuff yet. I think it was Cicero who said “In a war, people die, and that’s a bad thing”.
*
From: “Decade of Hell: The Black Twenties” by Michael P. T. Emmerson (1988)—
For students of history, it can be difficult to understand popular and governmental perceptions of the opening rounds of the conflict that would later be namelessly folded into the broader period of upheaval that was the Black Twenties. It is easy for our own perceptions to become coloured by hindsight of what came later. In this respect it resembles other long-running historical wars and periods of conflict such as the Thirty Years’ War of the seventeenth century; the people fighting in 1618 did not know how ruinously long the conflict would stretch. Their perceptions, and their chosen actions based on their perceptions, can therefore be far removed from our own thoughts when we look at those opening events with the benefit of hindsight.
One key insight, suggested by analysts before but strongly supported by the work of Susan Wetherby in 1922: The Road to War (1970) is that both the French and the Russian governments simultaneously regarded the opening weeks and months of the war as being disastrous for their own side. Wetherby’s argument is backed up by an extensive search of declassified documents in the French Royal Archives, and what survives from their Russian counterparts, as well as interviews with eyewitnesses who worked as clerks and subordinates to the major players at the time. In order to understand this perception, Wetherby points out that neither France nor Russia had truly known a major reversal in foreign policy terms for many years. It is possible to critique this assertion by drawing attention to the collapse of Russia-backed Beiqing China in the Pandoric War, and the independence of Dufresnie and the failure of France’s International Expeditionary Force in South America just afterwards, but the broad argument has some merit. While those events certainly impacted on the politics of the two powerful nations, they were usually regarded as being associated with a particular ministry (in France) or ‘evil advisor’ or Soviet councillor (in Russia), errors of judgement which would be punished by a reshuffle and/or election result to remove the offending individual, or exile to the East respectively.[18]
Conversely, the reversals in the early part of the war were seen as an existential threat to the two nations’ status as world-striding colossi, not simply explainable away as the error of one individual. Wetherby’s argument is that, as both France and Russia were used to getting their own way at the expense of weaker nations, a clash between the two would inevitably shatter at least one side’s confidence, because someone had to win and someone had to lose. The reality was actually more complex, with ambiguity dogging the initial clashes even when they were solid victories or defeats, the two major naval battles of the Scheldt and Ceylon being the primary examples of the latter case. In the Scheldt, a ‘Protocol’ (to use a popular though anachronistic term) fleet defeated a Pact one, in what was seen as a defeat by Russia (as Admiral Gavrilov had lost) but not much of a victory by France (as it had been won by the English Admiral Hotham, and Counter-Admiral Myard of the French contingent had not covered himself with glory). The situation was effectively reversed in Ceylon a few weeks later, where the Pact had won, but under the Belgian Admiral van de Velde, and the force he defeated was largely French and under a prominent and formerly well-regarded French admiral, François Louis de la Rochefoucald. In both cases, the perception was that Russia and France had lost, respectively, yet with the paradox that they had not won the other clash; rather, one of their supposedly subordinate allies had.
Wetherby’s argument perhaps applies more to France, with its freer press casting aspersions on the government, than in Russia, whose propaganda carefully papered over van de Velde’s inconvenient nationality and trumpeted Ceylon as a success for the Tsar. Though popular perception may have been unconvinced, of course. The naval clashes were only the most dramatic part of this narrative. France’s overseas policy was falling apart thanks to the neutrality of China and Danubia, followed by weeks of dithering from Germany (q.v.). The land war in Europe had therefore not begun in earnest by August 1922, but already there were visible problems in other theatres. From the French perspective, the Russians had successfully cut a resupply corridor through Tartary and their aero forces were outperforming those of the French and Persians themselves. This culminated in the deadly aero raid on Shiraz on August 2nd, a black day for Persian history. This shocked the world in both its brutality (partly unintended, as Russian bombers had intended to target military targets but had made errors and triggered fires), and in how much it showed that warfare had changed. Suddenly, no city was safe if the enemy could reach it from their nearest aerofields (and in the ENA and Combine in particular, theorists noted the power of a mobile aerofield in the form of a hiveship). France’s attempts to stop the bombers with interceptor aerocraft seemed to meet with imperfect success in these days before Photrack [radar] and made the supposed protector of Persia look helpless. Paris itself was potentially within the range of these flying death machines thanks to Belgium, leading to an urgent panic about pushing hard into Belgium to take it off the map (which itself led to avoidable bloodshed).
The French therefore saw the Russians as sweeping all before them. The Russians saw it differently. Shiraz was seen as a grievous error for which officers up to the rank of general were quietly court-martialled in closed courts; terror was not a weapon Emperor Paul would hesitate to use, but unintended terror, not part of a planned policy, was disastrously unpredictable. Shiraz turned much neutral public opinion against Russia, particularly in Germany where there had been some further hesitation after the Pact victory at Ceylon. And while the Russians were defeating the French in the skies over Persia, it was a much more mixed picture on land. The Russian army was pushing slowly but steadily into Persia via the Azeri lands of the Caucasian border, but Tartary remained restive and combative; what the French saw as a successful supply corridor was regarded by the Russians as a fragile shoestring constantly under local Tartar attack. Members of Russia’s military high command, the Stavka,[19] feared the war was fundamentally unwinnable for Russian interests due to the need to focus on France and Persia while Tartary remained in revolt, and the Russian troops in Pendzhab were trapped and cut off. This was exacerbated further by a revolt of the Sikh administrators in the province (q.v.). Many feared, incorrectly as it turned out, that the Yapontsi would seize the opportunity for yet another round of rebellion themselves.
Another example of a Russian defeat without a corresponding French victory occurred on August 22nd, when Russian strike marines operating from Enterprize[20] attacked the major American naval base of Fort Fowler on the Salish Sound in Drakesland.[21] Knowing the Americans were building up for a major assault on Russian America, to be supported by the Pacific Fleet based in Fort Fowler, the Russians acted boldly to stage a pre-emptive site and weaken that fleet. The strike marines planned to plant new kinds of adhesive bombs to the American ships below the waterline, sinking them in dock. The Mexican military historian Adolfo Chavez has pointed out that this plan was always flawed, as the Americans would probably have been able to raise and repair the ships, and it would only have bought the Russians limited time. Regardless, it is a moot question, as the daring strike marine raid—which in another world’s history would probably have birthed countless films celebrating its audacity—failed miserably when it was stopped by the dull but dutiful security arrangements of America’s boringly competent Admiral Chamberlain Miller. Once again, Russia had been defeated in such a way that made it look more like a failure on the Russian side rather than any great triumph by their foes. The incident is commemorated today in the distinctive logo of the Washington-based tea-house chain Whaler’s, which depicts a scared-looking Russian strike marine being illuminated by the beam of a (somewhat anachronistic!) electric torch in the hand of a local watchman. Perhaps it will become better known, as Whaler’s has gone from a quaint Drakesland institution to one which appears to be colonising the civilian aeroports of the nation.
As President Fouracre launched the assault that his predecessors had long prepared for, the Russians found it difficult to protect what they had won in the Pandoric War. The hinterland of the isolated naval base of Shemeretvsk on the Californian border[22] was rapidly taken by the Imperial Fifth Army under General George Chandler Welch, and by November 1922 only the embattled base itself was fighting on, occasionally resupplied from Noochaland or farther afield. The strike marines having failed, Russia’s Admiral Korsakov avoided direct confrontation with the superior American fleet under Miller, trying for asymmetric attacks using ironsharks—but this strategy effectively conceded control of the waves to the Americans. The Russians needed naval superiority if they were to have any hope of preventing their Pandoric War gains from falling victim to American reconquest; unlike the situation a quarter-century ago, the Americans were not distracted by a major front in Carolina (...for now) and could bring their full force to bear. At least so much as the railway links permitted, but this war had been planned for years.
We will cover more of the events of this early phase of the war elsewhere, but the important point here for Wetherby’s argument is the impact it had on how the nations of France and Russia reacted. The two countries’ different systems of government fundamentally affected the options they had available to them. In France, the failures and lukewarm successes were attached to the Cazeneuve Government, not to the constitutional King Charles IX and the entire structure of the state. They did impact on how France was seen across Europe, causing wobbles in Italy and especially Spain, formerly firm allies—but a subordinate one in the latter case. But fundamentally, Charles could always ask Cazeneuve to resign to take those failures with him. Russia was a different matter due to its autocratic form of government. Ultimately there was only so much that failures could be blamed on ‘evil advisors’ among the Imperial Soviet and exorcised by firing them; if all power devolved on the Tsar, then so too did all responsibility. In February 1923, amid reversals on most fronts, Emperor Paul would make the quixotic and radical decision to declare himself personal supreme commander of the Imperial forces. This drew a line under what had come before, but came with the obvious hazard that any future failures would be unavoidably attached directly to him.
This decision also gave Prime Minister Cazeneuve, in Paris, an unexpected shot in the arm. He had expected to have to fall on his sword for a similar drawing-a-line approach to past failures, though he had proposed a new political strategy to King Charles as an alternative. That strategy had seemed naive, but now Paul’s move would give him an excuse to approach an individual who would become known to many as the greatest stateswoman of the twentieth century...
[18] ‘The East’ here implying Russian America as well as Siberia, being a term influenced by later events viewed in hindsight as putting these together as an entity.
[19] This term for military headquarters has appeared through parallel evolution, probably originating from a slurred-together abbreviation of the words for ‘staff’ and ‘tent’.
[20] ‘Strike marines’ is a common term in TTL for what we would call commandos—a term which only entered English in OTL because of the Boer War. Enterprize is a town and fort on the northeastern coast of Noochaland [Vancouver Island], on the site of the OTL settlement of Campbell River and named after Captain North’s ship. The Russians presumably renamed it from this American name when they conquered it in the Pandoric War; the fact that the author here does not bother to give the Russian name may be a clue for how things will proceed.
[21] The Salish Sound is the term used in TTL for Puget Sound (which in OTL terminology is only part of the Salish Sea). Fort Fowler is on the site of OTL Everett, WA.
[22] See Part #249 in Volume VI. Shemeretvsk, formerly Two Ton Port, is the OTL town of Port Orford, OR.
