I think Augustus just became one of my favourite monarchs, he should have tossed Gilmore quite a while before this but better now than later. I imagine that his speech referred to Henry IX who faced the French dragoons with a six shooter and even at his execution gave a grand middle finger to the Jacobins.
Look to the West Volume VIII: The Bear and the Basilisk
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
Or did explorers from Timeline L bring it back from their own visits in OTL via reverse-engineered portals? It would explain why it emerged from a physics lab.
Really impressive performance on the Combine's part to even approach the enemy capital like this even if the ENA was taken completely by surprise. It does seem like the Novamundine powers are really good at approaching each others' capitals everytime they clash despite the tremendous distance between them. If there's any major thing I find odd it's this. Also correct me if I'm wrong but I saw no mention of Mexico and the nearby bits of former New Spain (or does it still theoretically exist?) in the peace treaty. Did I miss something about those areas? (Of course when I said peace treaty I was referring to the agreement for the release of as many hostages as could be fesibly rescued at the time by the gangsters to the north which the nationalistically blinded mistakenly call a peace treaty due to their inability to comprehend the true nature of this event.)
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This is impressive planning on Thande's part, since he obviously planned this all the way back in 2007.
I am guessing that the Combine also grabbed French/American Guyana, right?
ISTM that the Combine wasn't able to drive the ENA from the Nicaragua Canal, or consequently points north; and that since they didn't land or successfully march to anything west of Westernesse Mexico et al. weren't hit from that direction either.
I'm with you on your hypothesis: "separate cross-time incursion" makes more sense than "security personnel in contact with one of the first three (semi-)teams pass along a virus at the ensuing research project and only there", even if it does require an additional event.
The difficulty with Timeline L bringing anything back is that the last we heard they didn't even have the concept of parallel universes. Going from there to interdimensional travel in five years seems like a heck of a leap.
That was before they captured an actual expedition from a parallel universe which then mysteriously vanished. Adequate surveilliance could have determined that rescue would have been impossible without teleportation of some kind. This shocking knowledge could have led to the revision of several important assumptions and the quiet allocation of considerable resources to investigating this. 5 years is plenty of time for a breakthrough. It's only a bit shorter than the time between Einstein writing his letter to Roosevelt and the detonation of the first atomic bomb.
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Great update! I could really feel the suspense as the tide of war turned. I know it's a minor thing, but having a direct link to Nouvelle-Orleans is nice to see after all this time, and I hope Westernesse has the self-respect to change the name of Wragg Province to something less traitorous if it's staying in the ENA long-term. Since some peripheral bits of the Cherokee Empire are still outside Societist control, hopefully that'll allow their culture to survive in some form.
I thought they just had a late start? It takes at least some knowledge of atomic physics to manage nuclear fission or whatever's used in threshold bombs.
I think you're on to something. The chapter epigraphs for the last volume are full of allusions to advances in TLL's physics, complete with what sure looks a lot like a parallel set of terms for cross-time travel. The complicating factor here is that, because TLL doesn't have an internet or indeed quite possibly any interconnected scientific apparatus comparable to our own, it's really difficult to piece together from easily-accessible sources the exact state of technology.
I foresee an interwar period where everybody's going to be panicking about the concept of panic. With the possibility of aerial or rocket bombardment of city-sized targets now being extremely feasible; and a genuine case where a pair of near-misses - not even actual mass casualty strikes but near misses (of course they hit what they aimed at and were never targeting the city, but LttW dwellers won't know that for decades)- caused mass panic and what is effectively a negotiated surrender on the part of the ENA; this is substantially more strategically effective than any bombardment of a city OTL (arguably the atomic bombings of Japan are equivalent, depending on your view of the factors leading to the Japanese surrender, but there's really nothing else in the same league).
I really can't imagine LttW's military planners spending the next few decades 'til the Sunrise War planning for great power peer-opponent large-scale military operations to be dominated by attacks and results straight out of Douhet- decisive military results to be gained by ignoring land power and focusing on air power's ability to break civilian morale.
I wonder if the association of the Alkahest with this success will put an earlier focus on fighting in a WMD-saturated environment. You might see theorists playing with the concepts of oversized units intended to be capable of fighting on independently after taking heavy casualties and being cut off from their home bases, the way the OTL 1950's US Pentomic Division was intended to do. At the very least, military vehicle development teams are likely to focus on (the period-appropriate LttW equivalent of) NBC protection, and the greater survivability of troops in sealed vehicles under chemical attack may spur wider adoption of APCs and IFVs.
I really can't imagine LttW's military planners spending the next few decades 'til the Sunrise War planning for great power peer-opponent large-scale military operations to be dominated by attacks and results straight out of Douhet- decisive military results to be gained by ignoring land power and focusing on air power's ability to break civilian morale.
I wonder if the association of the Alkahest with this success will put an earlier focus on fighting in a WMD-saturated environment. You might see theorists playing with the concepts of oversized units intended to be capable of fighting on independently after taking heavy casualties and being cut off from their home bases, the way the OTL 1950's US Pentomic Division was intended to do. At the very least, military vehicle development teams are likely to focus on (the period-appropriate LttW equivalent of) NBC protection, and the greater survivability of troops in sealed vehicles under chemical attack may spur wider adoption of APCs and IFVs.
Thande
Donor
Thanks for the comments and analysis everyone.
Fun fact, I had already planned this segment before naming the forts; I was thinking "can't name them after Confederal capitals because that'd be too confusing, what else could I use, maybe an equivalent of the USA's state birds, now Cygnia's would be a - OH." That one worked out well.
I'm wondering if the ENA is going to have one hundred billion apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stories as a result, a la OTL post-WW2 Japan.
So much nicer now. All we really need now is New Ireland ceding a bit of its territory in the east before it's handed over to Ireland.
So it seems that the Combine's gains on the mainland in the Mexico/Guatemala/Costa Rica region were actually minimal? This strikes me as odd and I keep having a feeling that either I missed something or that the update did not focus on this. It seems to me that the ENA would have wanted to swap at least parts of Carolina for Mexico, etc to keep the Combine as far away from Fredricksburg as possible. Since the Combine appeared to have the advantage it could have tried to negotiate for parts of (former) New Spain larger than the parts of Carolina which they would withdraw from? Or did the ENA prefer ceding Carolina to ceding Mexico? Or perhaps the Combine preferred more of Carolina?
This peace is different from what I had been expecting based on the hints dropped in earlier updates. Not that I'm complaining just saying that I did not see this coming. My reasoning had been that the ENA would abandon Mexico, New Ireland and Central America before agreeing to leave Carolina to the Combine. Therefore the confirmation of Carolina going black seemed (to me) to mean that the Combine would have all the aforementioned areas as well. Since I also expected the ENA to prioritize influence in Carolina over influence in California I wondered why the ENA had not also recognized the Combine's annexation of California (which had been confirmed as separate from the Combine for at least some time longer). The only sensible expanation seemed to be that California would now fall directly under deeper Russian influence. And since I had assumed that Russia would prioritize holding its existing territory over extending its influence farther across North America I had thought that Russia would at least retain its prewar posessions there. In short based on those hints about the future which I had noticed before I had expected that the ENA would at best retain its pre-1922 borders and a bit of Carolina. And that the loss of New Orleans and the reminder of the pacific coastline was on the cards as well.
This peace is different from what I had been expecting based on the hints dropped in earlier updates. Not that I'm complaining just saying that I did not see this coming. My reasoning had been that the ENA would abandon Mexico, New Ireland and Central America before agreeing to leave Carolina to the Combine. Therefore the confirmation of Carolina going black seemed (to me) to mean that the Combine would have all the aforementioned areas as well. Since I also expected the ENA to prioritize influence in Carolina over influence in California I wondered why the ENA had not also recognized the Combine's annexation of California (which had been confirmed as separate from the Combine for at least some time longer). The only sensible expanation seemed to be that California would now fall directly under deeper Russian influence. And since I had assumed that Russia would prioritize holding its existing territory over extending its influence farther across North America I had thought that Russia would at least retain its prewar posessions there. In short based on those hints about the future which I had noticed before I had expected that the ENA would at best retain its pre-1922 borders and a bit of Carolina. And that the loss of New Orleans and the reminder of the pacific coastline was on the cards as well.
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300.2 and Int 25
Thande
Donor
From: “Europe - From Pandora to the Sunrise” by A. K. Dalziel and Alice Fielding (1980)—
Since the outbreak of war in June 1922, and the arrival of the plague in (around) March 1924, millions of men, women and children had died in Europe, from princes to paupers. The death toll was staggering. Modern estimates suggest that the worldwide military death toll of the Black Twenties conflict in general was around 10-12 million, with as many as 25 million in plague deaths; separating the two is problematic, as soldiers or civilians might die from a survivable plague infection due to war shortages of medical supplies. Some argue that 25 million is an undercount, given questions over figures reported by some nations (and the Societists) and lack of data from the interiors of India and Africa.[19]
Plague deaths were heaviest in places lacking medical support, good sanitation, and access to poisons to kill rats and fleas (or lack of understanding that those were the vectors). Yet, despite Europe possessing all those things, European nations still had substantial plague death tolls, proportionately greater than in the ENA, mainland Societist South America and perhaps even China (again, the numbers are disputed). This was both caused (in part), and exacerbated, by the fact that Europe was the epicentre of the armed conflict, certainly after the exit of Persia. A striking plurality of war deaths (a majority if one considers the Russo-Ottoman conflict to be separate) took place over a small area of Poland and Germany, as the fronts of the Oder bridgehead froze and both sides were hollowed out from within by the plague.
All the wonderful technological and tactical innovations developed over the past few decades had come to naught, as the deadly animalcule – ‘no respecter of persons’ as the old saying went – wrought disproportionate damage by killing a small number of skilled leaders, technically-proficient engineers, trained pilots and protgun drivers, etc. Too often, both sides found themselves regressing to the kind of tactics that had characterised the Nightmare War between France and North Italy, the latter stages of the Great American War, or the worst parts of the Pandoric War (as some were now beginning to name it). With more reliable access to untrained, conscripted infantrymen, who were essentially interchangeable (unlike their skilled veteran counterparts) when plague ripped through a camp, both sides resorted to mass march tactics evocative of the Jacobins. Trenches were built and wreathed with spike-wire, then hordes of young men were sent to their deaths in the hope of overwhelming them by sheer weight of numbers. As the Societists observed in propaganda that began to hit home, all this achieved was to kill them even faster than they were already dying of the plague.
Throughout the ‘Two Years of Hell’ period of plague-ridden frozen warfare around the Oder bridgehead and the rest of the Polish front, leaders on both sides were keen to bring the war to an end, yet both wanted a stronger position from which to negotiate – and so the war continued according to horrible, ineluctable logic. Later historiography on the European or ‘Protocol’ side would place the blame more firmly on Tsar Paul’s intransigence and indifference to his own people’s suffering, for the very important reason that (like Lewis Faulkner in the ENA) he was no longer around to defend himself.
Millions had died, both small and great, yet none were received with the shock around the world that dawned with the news of September 3rd 1926. Paul III, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, Protector of the Tatars, Yapontsi and Abyssinians, was dead at the age of sixty.[20] The man who had dominated Russian politics for much of his adult life, years before he became titular tsar with his amiable father Peter V’s passing in 1919, had shuffled off this mortal coil. Or rather, as whispered in the taverns of Russia and openly discussed in the salons of Europe and bars of America, someone had pushed him off it.
Paul had been born in the year 1866, a golden age of peace and prosperity for Russia under Emperor Theodore IV (interrupted only briefly by the Euxine War). However, he had grown to majority under the more indifferent rule of his grandfather and namesake, Paul II – who is perhaps best remembered for his questionable decision to exile the embarrassing Prince Sergei Dolgorukov to Yapon, ultimately igniting the Hanran rebellion thanks to the prince’s misrule.[21] The elder Paul died after only thirteen years on the throne, in probably natural circumstances. By this point, the younger Paul, now aged twenty, was already beginning to be an active player in court intrigue. He soon became the real power in his father Peter V’s new court. Perhaps one of the better things that could be said about Paul was that he desired the power to make the changes he felt were necessary, rather than the pomp and circumstance of titles. Some Russian tsareviches would have murdered their own fathers to ascend the throne, but Paul was quite happy for Peter to retain the crown, and Peter tolerantly allowed Paul to take a lead on policy while he focused on the ceremonial aspects of being tsar. Peter’s eventual death in 1919 is thought to be unambiguously natural and Paul seemed genuinely saddened by it. Some court observers also note that Paul now having to take on the role of tsar, rather than just having its power effectively delegated to him as a sort of ‘reverse regent’, wore heavily on him and probably played a part in his judgement growing more erratic over the years.
Paul was generally noted as a cool and calm operator who usually made decisions based on cold, rational analysis rather than his own whims and prejudices. Even choices he made seemingly out of romanticism, such as attacking the Ottomans after their invasion of Greece, were usually calculated based on how he thought they would be received by the Russian people, rather than something he genuinely believed in. There were exceptions to this, notably his burning dislike of French stateswoman Héloïse Mercier, which appears to have started when they negotiated part of the close of the Pandoric War in 1900 – when she was merely parlementaire Mademoiselle Rouvier, and was standing in for her ill future husband, Foreign Minister Robert Mercier.[22] Many consider one of Paul’s blind spots to be a dislike of women, with different biographers taking different tacks on whether this was merely a prejudiced opposition to Cythereanism, or actively casting aspersions on the tsar’s sexual activities (with little evidence).
As both tsarevich and tsar, Paul was a consummate planner, someone who tried to become an expert on all aspects of his empire, though this did make him prone to Passeridic management at times. One way in which he did resemble his namesake Paul II was in his lack of interest in Yapon, the RLPC and Russia’s Pacific possessions (including Russian America) which fed into how he concocted his policies. Paul appears to have independently concocted something similar to Wiegel’s Ecumene Theory,[23] believing that Russia could dominate the world if she secured critical resource areas and sea access points in Eurasia. For centuries, Russian tsars had desired to take Constantinople from the Ottomans, primarily for religious and ideological rather than strategic reasons; while Paul would not say no to this, his policies for territorial expansion would be more pragmatic. In particular, he was determined that Russia should gain sea access to the Indian Ocean, both to challenge the western European powers and to support her own small network of colonies. Hence both the establishment of Pendzhab in India as a stepping stone, and the focus on taking and subduing Persia in the Black Twenties. Russian domination of eastern, and increasingly central, Europe following the Pandoric War would provide crucial control of what Wiegel regarded as a critical pivot point for global influence. Russian intervention in Belgium following the Pandoric War would also lead to a new puppet state with strategically important colonies, a dagger hanging over its neighbours in the west. Paradoxically, however, this very threat aimed at the western European powers would lead them to unite against Russian expansion in the Black Twenties.
Ultimately, Paul’s plans would only illustrate the limitations of a political system that was so dependent on the will of one individual. Though a strong and capable ruler himself, he could scarcely be everywhere at once. His focus on the Indian Ocean access and control of eastern Europe, with a bit of Ottoman war on the side (we must remember the Ottomans attacked first in the Pandoric War), would inevitably lead to neglect elsewhere. Inevitably, this manifested itself in neglect of the overseas Russian colonies, the RLPC possessions and particularly Russian America – where victory in the Pandoric War led to a false confidence in the upper echelons of the Soviet. Beiqing China was lost at the end of the Pandoric War, the Russians were outmanoeuvred for influence in Corea by the Chinese after the Panic of 1917, and in the end Paul gave up and sacrificed Russian lands in the region (to the RLPC’s fury) to bribe China into staying out of the coming war.
The result of this narrow focus was that, by 1926, Russia had obtained Paul’s longstanding policy aim by gaining effective control over Persia and had even driven through the Tarsus salient to reach the Mediterranean – but it had all come at a heavy cost. Purely in terms of moving counters on a map (as in Paul’s own worldview) the Russians had been thrown out of North America and India, briefly threatened in Kamchatka and attacked in Yapon, pushed back in Poland, Finland and Romania, had lost influence over Abyssinia, Belgium and the Matetwa Empire, had lost Erythrea, and had only held on to Gavaji and Povilskaja against the odds thanks to good generalship and luck. The war might have started over Khiva and the Tartar rebellion in general (which, ironically, had still not been fully subdued five years on due to troop shortages) but merely having taken Persia could scarcely be called a victory.
And that was just the cost in terms of political reversals. More viscerally, Russia had suffered badly in terms of both military casualties and plague deaths. Two entire armies had surrendered, Privalov’s in Pendzhab and Yengalychev’s in Alyeska. Against the wishes of the Orthodox Church, women had entered the workplace, labouring in factories to support the war efforts of their men, who lay sickened in trenches from Hammerfest to Mersina. Agricultural labourers in the Ruthenian breadbasket were worked from dawn till dusk like the serfs of old. Serfs in truth were sometimes brought in from Yapon and other oppressed regions to replace Russian workers who had been conscripted for the front. This sparked resentment and occasionally race riots against this alien intruder, no matter that he was scarcely there by choice. Popular resentment was growing, and class consciousness with it.
For the past century of industrialisation in Russia, the primary class conflict had consisted of tensions between the traditional aristocracy and the rising bourgeois captains of industry, with the equally wealthy and bourgeois traders of the RLPC serving as a third wheel. The nature of the restoration of Paul I and the later accession of Theodore IV had tended to weaken the aristocracy at the expense of the industrialists, though (as can be seen from any list of generals in the Pandoric War and the Black Twenties) the aristocrats still exercised considerable influence over the military. The Orthodox Church also remained a power player with influence over the common people, and tsars, aristocrats and industrialists would all court its favour to help gain a stronger position. Paul’s break with the Church over women in factories was therefore a significant shift in power dynamics, though this was little noted at the time by foreign observers. The Slavicist cultural movement, which had used a celebration of Russian and Slavic traditional culture as a tool to attack (when convenient) either the foreign elements of the aristocracy or imported industrial leaders, also proved a wild card.
By the 1920s, factory workers were growing discontented with a system in which their bosses were no longer seen as bourgeois Slavic allies granting them dignity and skilled positions against the traditional semi-foreign aristocrats who still viewed them half as serfs, but as exploiters who refused to allow their wealth to trickle down to those who had built their empires for them. Some of the more idealistic industrialists had constructed modern factory villages for their workers and encouraged them to become educated and cultured through social programmes, but this well-intentioned policy also served to help the workers organise against their less beneficient counterparts.
Some among the bourgeoisie and aristocracy did sympathise with the proletarian workers in the cities, who at this stage generally did not collaborate with agricultural labourers (looking down on them as uneducated country cousins). This can be considered a kind of analogue to the Hochrad (High Radical) movement in Germany at the time, in which aristocratic reformists would forge alliances with discontented but disorganised workers to pursue policies in the interests of both. Best-known of these figures in Russia was Privy Councillor Nikolai Ulyanov, who had been a thorn in the side of the monarchy since before the Pandoric War, yet was too popular to remove. Paul finally imprisoned him in 1923, accusing him of fermenting popular unrest against the decision to go to war against the Ottoman Empire. However, public anger grew too great (especially when Ulyanov grew sick in prison in the winter of 1925-6 and was near death) and Paul was forced to release him, a concession seen as a sign of growing weakness. Paul had also been visibly affected by the death of his son and heir Tsarevich Mikhail on the Anatolian front in February 1925, and some biographers believe he never recovered from this. His second son Theodore (Fyodor) had still to reach the age of majority and his father had neglected his own preparations due to a focus on Mikhail.
By September 1926, following two failed ceasefires and negotiation rounds, it is an open question whether Paul was merely mule-headedly convinced that fighting to the last man would force the Protocol forces to blink first, or whether he had a plan. Certainly, later events in Italy have led some to suggest that Paul might have been able to break the Protocol alliance and secure a more favourable peace for Russia. However, such notions lie within the futile speculation of counterfactuals.
The Tsar was allegedly found dead in his bed, having suffered a fatal heart attack – officially, thanks to the stress of his position, but most believe his heart was helped along with poison. The biggest historical argument about this incident is not whether Paul was assassinated, but how big was the circle of people behind it. Most believe that the Dowager Empress Anna (Paul’s mother and a former rival for influence over his father Peter V) was one of the prime movers thanks to her existing court faction; the Meridian Refugiado exile General Pichegru, who may have been Anna’s lover, appears to have been involved; Arkady Streshnev, a key ally of the RLPC in the Soviet, may have contributed the Yapontsi nindzhya whom are speculated as being responsible for the poisoning. Others are much more debatable; there is particular controversy over whether Paul’s wife, the Empress Elizabeth, was involved, and whether Alexander III, Grand Duke of Courland, was informed of the plot before or after its execution. Some have claimed that Paul’s cousin Vasily, Grand Duke of Finland, may have been involved in the early stages before getting cold feet, agonising over whether to inform Paul but finally electing not to. About the only thing that seems reasonably certain is that Prince Kirill Dashkov was not involved, as he had become Paul’s closest advisor and had been responsible (with his brother, the Russian Ambassador to Danubia) for the direction of the talks in Vienna; the brothers Dashkov would be purged and exiled to Yekaterinsk after Paul’s death and the ensuing coup d’état.
As noted above, Tsarevich Theodore was entirely unready to be Emperor Theodore V, and in any case was still underage. In a still poorly-understood series of rapid and ruthless political manoeuvres, Alexander of Courland became Regent. As the historically-aware noted (in hushed tones) the great irony was that a descendant of Catherine the Usurper and her lover Potemkin finally, de facto, sat on the throne of Russia. However, Alexander had no intention of literally taking the throne for himself; some have argued it might have been better for Russia if he had. Opposition forces to his regency, stripped of the Dashkovs as potential leaders, attempted ineptly to court Paul’s younger brother Grand Duke Nicholas and Marshal Kobuzev, the hero of Persia. But Nicholas was a lover and patron of the arts with no interest in politics, and Kobuzev (who had been sidelined by Paul after the fall of Persia out of fear of his popularity) had no intention of supporting a probably-doomed counter-coup. Alexander’s position seemed secure...
*
From: “The Black Twenties” by Errol Mitchell (1973)—
With a new regime in Russia and a new (and final, as it turned out) armistice, negotiations resumed in earnest in Vienna on September 27th 1926. This was near-contemporary with the ‘negotiations’ between the Americans and Societists – which largely consisted of talking past one another and basing the post-war arrangement on uti possidetis, as the Societists were unwilling to grant their foes the dignity of equivalence that would be required for the Americans to suggest swapping Carolina for Guatemala, for example. Though bitter in tone, the Treaty of Vienna could scarcely be less cordial than that, and belonged much more to the traditional world of diplomacy.
As in the previous rounds of negotiation (which had got nowhere) both sides began with entirely unrealistic negotiating positions; Russia wanted Czechosilesia and Pendzhab back, for example, and would probably have demanded Russian America too if those negotiations with the ENA had not been pursued separately. The Protocol, whose positions were much more murky due to disagreements between the Five Powers (France, Germany, Italy, England and Scandinavia) similarly would initially demand the total Russian evacuation of Poland and Finland, which they were in no position to enforce. However, unlike the previous rounds, progress proved possible to make. For the first time, the French Dictateur Berry allowed Héloïse Mercier to negotiate directly on behalf of France...
*
From: “Mme. Mercier’s Diaries, Volume III: Exile’s Return” (1978, authorised English translation 1981)—
October 15th 1926.
I fall into bed, my head hurting thanks to drink and loud music. Vienna feels like an unearthly island of normality after the last few years of hell. Only a few posters (with Martial Latin at the top and German and Hungarian in rather small characters below) warn of the importance of staying vigilant against the plague. Here, it is as though the années des allègres never ended.[24] Young people enjoy life, a tragic vision of what poor Renée should be living. Eat, drink and be merry; but tomorrow we shall not die.
What tempers the guilt is a sense of satisfaction: that, for the first time in years, I feel I am making real progress, making a difference. Unlike everything we saw in previous negotiations, we seem to have Russian counterparts who can recognise reality. It will be a hard fight for peace, but at least I believe it is possible to obtain.
(Translator’s note: parts of the following section were written in code)
Persia is lost; we have not publicly accepted it yet, but it is understood. Bertrand will struggle to spin this as a victory, even though the frustration of Russian interests elsewhere may have been worth the trade – if it had not cost so many lives. None shall challenge Russia in Tartary; perhaps the Chinese, one day. At least Grand Duke Petras, the chief negotiator, is sensible enough to admit that Pendzhab is also unrecoverable, though I fear the new regime in Petrograd may not be so sane. He is old now, and it is many years since his logistical triumphs against the Turk in the last war; I understand he has mostly given up rule of Lithuania to his like-named son. But there is still keen wisdom in his eyes.[25]
At least the Russians also seem to understand that control of Persia does not necessarily translate to control of her former vassals, either, though I suspect that will be a flashpoint in years to come. They have also given up asking about Belgium, just as we have given up asking about Finland. In some ways that is a bad thing, as it means the argument over what to do with Belgium is, once again, beginning to divide our alliance. The Germans are growing fractious as they assert questionable historical claims, but it is the Italians who truly worry me.
Bertrand’s great idea was always that we would reward the Italians by making the Italian king, or his representative, King of a freed Poland. I feel that was always questionable (and would the Italian people really see that as a win?) but it has become politically impossible. Even if we divided Poland and merely sought to impose a king on the part we hold (now there’s an idea...), the Poles have become highly Italophobic after the Italian rocket attacks. If that is not an option, what remains? The Italians wanted Erythrea, but the Scandinavians refuse to give it up. Povilskaja...we have also given up on, I fear. Perhaps we could pressure the Omanis to give up Zanguebar to them, or part of it? There is no kicking the Ottomans out of Greece, that is clear. The Bengalis have effectively taken over Ceylon. And while we shuffle these colonial cards, the Legion of Romulus is instead calling on France to cede Italy chunks of Provence and thousands of French subjects(!) I fear this contradiction will lead to cataclysm...
...
November 2nd 1926
Now the negotiations are over, I look back on my diary and thank the good God that my worst fears did not come to pass, at least.
Revolution in Italy! It seemed so at the time, though I suspect writers in times to come will paper over it. The people, demanding their own unified Parliament, not merely a government selected from the members of the four national parliaments. The monarchist Union Party of Orsini and Borromeo defeated and discredited, while both the Romulans and the old Alliance Party of Adamantians and Mentians have gained power. I fear that the Alliance may prove merely useful idiots for the Romulans, long-term. If I were King Carlo, I would fear for my position.
I fear revolution in general, of course, as any right-minded burgess should; but I particularly feared that our position would collapse with the new Italian government withdrawing from our alliance. Fortunately, the Russians did not push their luck – they seemed as surprised by this as we were. With the anti-French and anti-German rhetoric coming out of Rome, people calling of betrayal and a war of waste, I am not optimistic about our future relations with the new Italian regime. But for now, all are too exhausted to consider a new war any time soon.
Everything has been such a whirlwind of confusion in my head, all the rejected proposals and lines on maps pencilled and rubbed out again, that I feel I need to set out the final agreements in black and white. If one can call them that; Vachaud is an idiot, but I agree with him that this is not so much a peace as an armistice for a generation – two, if we are lucky.
The Germans have got Czechosilesia – Bohemia – back. But they too are discontented with us, if not to the same extent. It is too obvious to Ruddel that we fear Germany as a potential future enemy, and are keen to limit their expansion. They have pushed outside the old boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire and have managed to secure West Prussia, eliminating Poland’s coastline. I already hear of racial purging in Danzig. At least we have managed to prevent it in East Prussia. I was particularly proud of that compromise. Poor Grand Duke Petras could not fight too hard to regain Karaliaučius, lest the Russians claim he had sacrificed Russian lands to prioritise Lithuanian ones. But we could not let it go to the Germans and become Königsberg again, as it was in the days when the Hohenzollerns ruled here rather than being stuck in a house in the Floridas (I wonder what happened to their last heir now the Societists have taken over). Both because it would make them too powerful, and because it would probably lead to racial tension that could spark the next war.
We needed a neutral third party that could govern over a mixed city of German- and Lithuanian-speakers. Meanwhile, Charles Grey, who has become something of a pen friend of mine over the last few years, needed a victory to cover England’s embarrassing loss to the Matetwa. The result is that the English have taken over the key port and its hinterland, tying them to Baltic interests for the future. To try to prevent future wars, slices around Šventpilis and Raušiai on either side have been given to the Scots and the Scandinavians as buffers, respectively; let treacherous Ireland see there is no reward for such behaviour, though I doubt they would want a Baltic foothold regardless.[26] I do not know what the Scots and the Scandinavians will call their small colonies, but Charles has told me that he is thinking of throwing a romantic sop to certain members of his party enthusiastic for what some are calling ‘Diversitarianism’, an antithesis to the disturbing ideas of the Sanchezistas. He has decided to render the old German name into an English equivalent: from this time forth, this important Baltic port will be named Conisbrough. Naturally, the Germans are furious.
Not so furious, however, at what we did to Belgium. It is clear that no-one wanted to allow that blight of a nation continue as an entity, but splitting it up let the Germans start staking claims to worryingly industrial regions. Our stance was that, as they did not do enough to help against the Belgians early in the war, they do not deserve the spoils now. Naturally, this has not been well received. We have not been able to prevent them gaining East Frisia, Mainz and parts of the Ossenbrügge region, but their quest for Mönster and Essen, or any more of the Ruhr valley, has been quashed.[27] We have made a point of not adjusting our own borders, preferring influence over the successor states.[28] There shall be three of these, it has been decided. In the north, the old Dutch Stadtholder Willem will be made King of a continuing Belgium; in the middle, the Republic of Liége-Luik; in the south, the old Duchy of Luxemburg will be expanded into a Grand Duchy.[29] As that includes most of the old Palatinate from which the Wittelsbach Kings derived their authority, we shall award the Grand Duchy to Charles Theodore III, then make him immediately abdicate in favour of his brother and send him into exile. That brother is another Maximilian, sadly; hopefully a better-starred one than his predecessors.
I look back on those words in wonder. France, creating a Republic centred on Liége and staffed largely by local rabble-rousers who resented Belgian rule? A century ago, that would have set Europe alight; folk would have said that Lisieux had come back. Now, even I will sign up to it. Rouvroy defanged republicanism; though I came to the Diamantine Party late, I have always admired him for that.
In the north, the Scandinavians have pushed their border eastwards and now have the old Russian naval base of Khanko, but any ambitions farther have been stymied by Finland remaining loyal to the Tsar, and they have withdrawn from the other regions they occupied. At least we will force Reval [Tallinn] to shepherd a lot of weight if the entire Russian Baltic fleet is forced there; or at least, there plus allied ports like Klaipeda in Lithuania and Riga in Courland. With the loss of – ah – ‘Conisbrough’ as well, we may have weakened the Russians and Vitebsk Pact in the Baltic for a generation, at least.
As for Poland itself, I weep for its people, fated to live at the crossroads of conflict between greater empires. After already suffering when the Russians fought their way through in the last war (so many are now calling it ‘Pandoric’, as though the rise of the Societists at its end was the only important event in it! ...perhaps future generations will think so, but I digress) Poland had an even worse fate in this one. At least the Russian puppet Poland before this conflict was structurally intact, even if its Jews in particular were persecuted after they used to enjoy a fair place in society when I was a girl. (So much I have lived through feels like regress, for all the advances in technological wonders). Now, though, we face an ugly compromise. The Russians refused to agree to the proposal, which I think started with Orsini before he was toppled, to turn Poland into a neutralised buffer state akin to Bavaria. The Poles I managed to speak to seemed to favour this option, and the Danubian hosts were also keen on it – of course, they might benefit from their own influence there. But the Russians refuse, and the Germans weren’t too happy, either. So instead we face an unlovely divide. Poland in the east, still ruled by Casimir from Warsaw under the Russian thumb, and Poland in the west, ruled from Poznan. There is talk of drumming up an Election Sejm and forcing them to choose the Duc as their king, providing him a neat exit from French politics! I fear this will not make us any friends with our alleged new puppet state, even if the Poles might prefer us to the Germans. Their old days of Pressburg Pact alliance are long gone. I wonder how long this division of Poland will last, and what the two halves will end up being called.[30]
Of course, we have no authority here to decide what happens on the Ottoman fronts. It seems that the Turks – both sets of them – cannot break the Russians on their Tarsus salient, and the Russians cannot break the Turks in Wallachia. I suspect that conflict will peter out from exhaustion until the next round, whenever it comes, and frozen front lines will become lasting borders – just as they have in Poland. The Turks are looking weaker in North Africa, as well; I wonder if this fierce new Italian government is watching and taking notes.
We seem to have hammered out a peace that pleases exactly no-one, which is the way of the world. I am so thankful that at last this horrible war is coming to an end, and an end that is not, as we feared, our defeat and slavery at the hands of the Tsar’s Armart Legions – which now seem like a childhood fairytale. Yet part of me fears that we have been fighting the wrong war all along. These new innovations, rockets and aerodromes that fly from ships, may render all our calculations obsolete. Like men centuries ago would fight for the ownership of strong stone castles, only for them to become worthless when gunpowder came along. And then there are the Societists. Some of our press mock the Americans for their defeats, for effectively allowing the black-flag armies to sit so close to their capital now. But I fear that soon, we will have no cause to point the finger. Down in Spain and Portugal things go from bad to worse, and there is no public enthusiasm for sending more young men to die. I fear that before too long, we too will have Alfarus’ armies on our southern border. Maybe the last war was, truly, Pandoric.
I look at the political situation, too. I fear that our people will not reward us for this peace after all their sacrifices, and I cannot blame them. We have already seen it, in a way, in Italy. I doubt many of the governments that have fought our way through this war will survive, for better or for worse. I fear what the alternative will be. In France we have worked so hard to preserve our position in the world, and I do not trust Vincent not to throw it away.
But I cannot let myself think that way. That path leads down to thinking I know who should run the country, better than the people do. And then, well, Lisieux and the Jacobins might as well have come back after all.
No. I must speak to Alain. We shall focus on ensuring the people have an alternative, when they are tired of Vincent...
*
“...further quarantine measures. Now, (coughs) my apologies for the delay, ladies and gentlemen, but once again, another reminder of the upcoming frequency shift.” (sotto voce) “This second cart had better work, Ultima. If someone has magged over it with that footage from the last office Christmas party...”
*
From: “Decade of Hell: The Black Twenties” by Michael P. T. Emmerson (1988)—
When did the Black Twenties end?
History is never so neat as to comply with our arbitrary divisions of time. Scattered conflicts often persist years after wars are declared over, or precede and blur into them. Periods of fashion, musical movements, youth subcultures, unaccountably show up years earlier than they ‘should’ in books written at the time, or else fail to be visible when we expect them. From the perspective of years, decades, centuries later, we can pretend that this blurry mess resolves into a neat progression from a suitable distance – and then, of course, become upset that the times we live through ourselves are not so clear-cut. Our children’s history books carelessly put Hammurabi’s portrait next to the Ishtar Gate, ignoring the fact that as many centuries separate them as do Pablo Sanchez and Mohammed, or Christopher Columbus and Emperor Constantine.[31] History is never so simple as we like to think, once viewed up close; it becomes a polychrom of endless complexity even when viewed through a microscope.[32]
We might as well ask when the Black Twenties began. War did not break out until 1922, yet the foundations were laid by the Treaty of Bermuda in 1920, which formalised a Franco-American alliance aimed at Russia, and the Treaty of Guiling in 1919, which normalised Sino-Siamese relations and opened up the trade routes that allowed the plague to spread from Yunnan province. Of course, one can endlessly chase precursor events in chains back to the dawn of time; if we must make a cutoff, these do seem to fall close enough to the beginning of the titular decade of the 1920s. Perhaps it is understandable, then, that we similarly turn to the end of that decade to define the close of the Black Twenties.
The war was over, at least on paper, by the end of 1926. In practice, many corollary conflicts continued into 1927 and 1928, such as the Russians finally putting down the Tartar revolt that had originally started the war, and the Societists brutally consolidating control over their new possessions of Cuba, Jamaica and Carolina.[33] But then, where do we draw the line? Conflicts in southern Africa would bleed smoothly from the Black Twenties into resistance to further Societist expansion there in the supposedly peaceful 1930s. The Russians would launch a failed attempt to reclaim Pendzhab in 1935, which would help further catalyse the wave of anti-colonial revolt against the French and Chinese in the Indian subcontinent which had already begun. Many other minor conflicts would continue throughout the background of the Second Interbellum, an age where our eyes are instead turned to times of prosperity and peace, of the drama of the Second Black Scare and the wonders of world-changing technology. Once again, history is never so neat as we would like to think.
But the Black Twenties were not merely about war, nor about the expansion of Societism, but about the plague pandemic that afflicted the world and worsened the misery of war; as men continued to fight in a burning house, this response to the plague would endlessly feed the Societist propaganda machine and make Sanchezism seem far more sensible to the average person. Such pragmatism would not last, of course; if Alfarus’ more fanatical successors had been in charge in the 1920s, the Combine would likely have been as prone to blithely continue military conflicts throughout the pandemic. But in the short term, this distinction would play well for the cause of the Threefold Eye.
And yet, despite all this – or because of it – epidemic diseases, the great and deadly enemies of mankind, have served to unite all men in a cause far less objectionable than the fever dream of Sanchez. Even in the worst excesses of Societist rule and Diversitarian reaction, men and women of all nations and none have come together across the divides to unite against our common foe. Never again, it was proclaimed, would we allow pursuing our own disagreements to come before our honourable war against a merciless and alien foe. In the past, individuals had sometimes used the spread of disease as a weapon, notably against the native peoples of the Novamund. Some even suggest that the Black Death began in Europe due to the Mongol Golden Horde hurling infected corpses over the walls of the besieged city of Kaffa (now Beth Mataniel) in the Crimea. But no more.
After the Black Twenties, despite the continuing bitter divisions between the sides, all resolved to abominate such practices at the Fourth Convention of Ratisbon in 1933. While attempts to limit the use of chemical weapons were less successful (no-one wanted to disarm themselves before the Societists) some restrictions were also passed. Finally, the laws of war were reaffirmed, that attacks from the air (or artillery bombardments) against civilian targets in cities, whether using death-luft or conventional weapons, were classed as crimes de guerre and their perpetrators would be excluded from the legal protection afforded to prisoners of war. The Russian government agreed to this move providing there was an amnesty for past incidents, though a number of senior officers had already been punished for the Shiraz Massacre which had sparked this movement. As a corollary to this ruling, it was agreed that attempts to use civilians as human shields by moving military targets into cities would also be considered an actionable crime de guerre. In practice, this was very difficult to enforce, but the existence of the rule (and the fact that violating it would likely lead to the rule on civilian attacks being cast aside) led to greater civilian awareness of the threat. This resulted in widespread civic movements to reject any construction within cities which could be construed as future military targets. Concern was particularly deep as the development of hiveships, rockets and longer-ranged aerocraft seemed to give nations the ability to strike directly at one another’s heartlands with impunity; suddenly, nowhere was safe. Naturally, attempts to limit these weapons also got nowhere. Some argued that their very existence might be sufficient to ward off future wars, as no-one would be willing to risk their heartlands by starting one.
Not only did the nations reject the use of biological weapons, but they also resolved to cooperate at long last against the threat of the plague – and, eventually, other epidemic diseases. In contrast to the jealous guarding of patents during the war, research was freely traded in the final years of the decade. The French traded Peptobrim culicide drugs for American Birline, and even Alfarus magnanimously allowed the Tremuriatix formula and Societist vaccine-production techniques to be shared at last. There had been a major shift of public opinion around the world; everyone had lost a loved one to the invisible foe, and all were resolved to ensure it never happened again.
In hindsight, we can bemoan the damage to our environment inflicted by the widespread use of indiscriminate insecticides and rat poisons; some parts of the world are still suffering from the effect caused by the elimination of all rats on the balance of nature.[34] But we do so from a lofty position of privilege, for all that the modern world still has many problems of its own. The plague was battered down from a pandemic to merely localised epidemics in the final years of the 1920s, with China in 1929 suffering the last well-recorded major outbreak. In practice, the plague burned on at a lower level out of (outsiders’) sight in the interiors of Africa and India. But the will to suppress G. pestis continued. Vaccination, treatment with Peptobrim drugs, and first and foremost the destruction of carrier species was pursued for decades. The final reservoirs of plague were eliminated, one by one. Finally, in 1965 G. pestis was declared extinct, and the world rejoiced as one, no matter the continuing bitter differences that divided Societist from Diversitarian. Children were born into a world that would never know another case of plague, would never know the sickening black buboes or the cruel septicaemia that the disease inflicted upon mankind. The Black Death, which had killed so many over thousands of years, was finally consigned to the history books.[35] Other diseases would join it, such as smallpox a decade later.
The Black Twenties therefore showed the worst of humanity, but also were a catalyst for bringing out our best, as times of trial often are. As the 1930s dawned, they brought with them a great unwinding, a feeling of relief and joy, a desire to seize the day. The new decade, often called the Flirty Thirties or the Dirty Thirties, would be a time in which new generations shocked their parents, who conveniently forgot their own Flippant days of ‘debauchery’. It would be a time of the Archie and Recky warring subcultures in their many forms, a time of political theorising as men struggled to respond to the rise of Societism, and most of all, a time of technological progress. Technology had already transformed war; now, it would transform peace.
The age of the Electric Circus had dawned.
*
(a rather low-quality recording, obviously having suffered from having been played many times)
“Ladies and gentlemen. This is an important announcement. Please take note.
“From September 4th 2020, your Motoscope pulse-rates are changing. You will need to retune your receptor in order to pick up the Motostreams and Motext sources you are currently using. Please go to Motext page 201 for more details, or you can order a print booklet by calling 0550-2134-PR or writing to us at Carolina White News Broadcasting, number 44 Adams Street, Ultima 44A-ULT.
“Please ensure you select the correct pulse-rates for tuning. Our sister stations C-BNB and C-RNB are staffed by our esteemed colleagues from the Black and Red races and will be giving the news from their perspectives, not those suitable for a White viewer. You will recall from your school classes the importance of rebuilding our identities in the aftermath of the National Coma, lest we forget our distinct cultures and allow our oppressors to win after all. Let us separately celebrate our freedom to be ourselves, not ground into a grey and soulless mess that calls itself ‘humanity’. We are not Good Humans. Nor are we Americans, though we rejoice in peace with our neighbours. We are Carolinians, and – as White and Black and Red – we are who we are.
“That message again...”
[19] For comparison, the Third Plague in OTL is thought to have killed about 12-15 million, mostly in India and China; the Spanish Flu is estimated to have killed about 25-50 million, but – like the figures in TTL – all these are hotly disputed.
[20] This is a considerably compressed version of Paul’s real title, which (like its OTL counterpart) describes him ruling Moscow, Kiev, Vladimir, Novgorod, etc. etc. as their Tsars and lists many other peoples separately. ‘Tartars’ here is doing a lot of work to describe essentially all native peoples in the Russian Empire, including ones such as the Nivkhs or Aleuts which this label doesn’t even tenuously apply to. The term ‘protector’ is also vague, as Paul rules the ‘Tartars’ with varying levels of directness, certainly rules Yapon directly, but Abyssinia is ruled by itself and is (was) merely under Russian influence.
[21] See Part #215 in Volume V.
[22] See Part #250 in Volume VI.
[23] Similar to Mackinder’s World Island theory from OTL – see Part #269 in Volume VII.
[24] Les Allègres is the French term for the youth subculture called Flippants in the English-speaking world, i.e. Mercier is saying that it feels as though the Flippant Era never ended in Vienna.
[25] As mentioned in Parts #246 and #247 of Volume VI; this is Petras III, Grand Duke of Lithuania. Note that the text of the story quoted in the former notes that Foreign Minister Prince Saltykov wishes Petras was there to negotiate with the French rather than the Grand Duke of Courland (Alexander III’s less-capable father Alexander II); this is probably the author drawing a comparison to these negotiations a quarter-century later, rather than Petras being considered a realistic choice at the time.
[26] Šventpilis and Raušiai are the Lithuanian names for towns known traditionally in OTL by their German names Heiligenbeil and Rauschen, and today (thanks to forced movement of people after WW2) by the Russian neologisms Mamonovo and Svetlogorsk.
[27] As is usual, Mercier is mostly using the local dialect names (e.g. Ossenbrügge not Osnabrück, Mönster not Munster), which the Belgians have encouraged to try to separate these regions from a German identity.
[28] Because France in TTL already includes much of Wallonia, there is not the urgency of 20th century France in OTL to obtain places like the Saar in order to secure the coal resources lacking in the rest of France.
[29] Luxemburg/Luxembourg was promoted to Grand Duchy status in OTL for the opposite reason, to compensate it for the loss of territory at the Congress of Vienna. As Luxemburg was never partitioned in TTL (being a subsection of Flanders, then Belgium) it was already much larger than the OTL modern country of Luxembourg even before being expanded here.
[30] As it turns out, the French liked to call them Greater and Lesser (or Little) Poland, historic regional names that conveniently make their part of Poland sound bigger than the Russian part, when it’s actually the reverse; the Russians call them Poland-Warsaw and Poland-Poznan, which had the opposite effect of making their part sound more legitimate; and many neutral observers simply call them East and West Poland.
[31] The comparison made more usually in OTL is the time gap between Cleopatra and the Pyramids, but recall that TTL has seen earlier focus on the archaeology of the Fertile Crescent over Egypt, which is reflected in pop-culture references.
[32] This is referring to ‘polychrome mathematics’, the TTL term for fractals (only named in 1975 OTL), itself named for polychromatoscope, the TTL term for kaleidoscope (because of the sense of endless multiplying complexity).
[33] While the Societist control zone in North America is not identical to any previous definition of the bounds of Carolina (lacking the region then called Wragg and possessing parts of Africa Nova and Charlotte which were in Old Virginia), most writers will simply describe it as ‘Societist Carolina’.
[34] This is slightly confusingly phrased – it means all rats have been eliminated in certain parts of the world, not globally. The only place in OTL where this has been achieved is Alberta in Canada, initially due to the same fear that the rats would spread plague into the province in the 1950s, though later also because of their general status as invasive pests.
[35] In OTL the plague persists, in part because it is usually easily treatable with antibiotics and there has been less of a concerted movement to eliminate it (unlike smallpox or polio). Most plague cases are now found in sub-Saharan Africa and especially Madagascar, though there are occasional cases in parts of China and North America.
Interlude #25: Northward Bound
Transcript of Thande Institute Zoom meeting with TimeLine L Field Team Delta with Director Stephen Rogers
Time: 16:00 hours (GMT)
Date: 20/08/2020
TimeLine L Location: Waccamaw Strand, Kingdom of Carolina (de jure), Empire of North America trust territory (de facto).
Analogous location of Portal receivers in Our TimeLine: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, United States of America
Director Rogers’ location: Cambridge, United Kingdom
DIRECTOR STEPHEN ROGERS (SR): Alright, can you hear me now? Are you – I think you’re frozen? I-
SERGEANT BOB MUMBY (BM): Oh, sorry sir, that’s a cardboard cutout of Captain Nuttall I left there by accident.
SR: Oh – wait – why do you have a card-
SERGEANT DOMINIC ELLIS (DE): Apparently it’s for a bet, sir, I wouldn’t worry about it.
SR: I – fine. Where’s Captain Nuttall and Captain MacCauley?
CAPTAIN CHRISTOPHER NUTTALL (CGN): Ah – sorry to keep you waiting there, sir, we’re here now. I was packing and lost track of time.
SR (sighs): Very well. So your intention is now to depart for the, er, the ENA proper?
CGN: That’s right. Ultimately we want to go to Fredericksburg, but I think...
CAPTAIN BEN MACCAULEY (BMcC): Based on our previous experiences, probably best not to go straight to the capital.
SR: Yes, let’s avoid any more rescue missions please, I’d never get the funding. (Laughs) Well, so long as your plans are in place. Again, I’m regretful that we can’t bring you back yet, but while the disease is somewhat better under control now, it’ll still be months before we have a vaccine.
BM: I thought you said Dr Pataki said we’d never have a vaccine?
DR BRUNO LOMBARDI (BL): Yes, but he’s an idiot.
(laughter)
CGN (coughs): Er, you seem to be in good spirits, sir.
SR: Well, I must admit I’m getting the hang of this blasted Zoom now. And those boosters do seem to have boosted our signal nicely for other timeline communication so it’s more reliable, don’t they?
CGN: Now that you mention it, sir, yes.
SR: In fact, I thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-ghhhhhhhhhh (electronic chord sound plays)
CGN: Dammit!
DE: You jinxed it, sir. Now he’s reconnecting.
ENSIGN CHARLTON CUSSANS (CC): Ugh. Well, I suppose they’re right to be concerned, at least. Did you see there was a story on the TV, I mean the Motoscope, here about a disease outbreak?
LT THOMAS BLACK (TB): No. What was it about?
CC: Can’t remember. I think they said it was in Oxford in the UK, I mean England?
TB: Oh. Yeah, I suppose it’s a problem everywhere.
(electronic beep sound)
SR: ...sorry about that, speak of the devil, eh? (Laughter) Well, we’ll need to know where you’re going to set up the transmitters on this side.
CGN: Yes, that’s the difficult part, sir, as we’re not sure. What I’m thinking of doing is sending Ben and some of the team up to find a place while we stay here, so we can keep in touch and let you know when we have a new location.
SR: That makes sense.
DR DAVID WOSTYN (DW): Of course, it will take time, and I thought you said it was a matter of urgency-
SR: Never mind that now. The UN has plenty of other things on its mind with this pandemic. But I haven’t forgotten what I said. It’s only a matter of time before someone in this timeline starts to figure out what’s going on. We need to know as much as we can before we do.
BL: Message received, sir – we’ll do our best.
SR: Good. Call in again when you have a location in Virginia, and I’ve sent one of my men to talk to the Governor on our side so we can set up.
CGN: Thank you, sir.
BM: And Merry Christmas.
SR: Than – wait, it’s August!
BM: Yes, but they start that early with cards and offers in the shops here too, sir.
SR (laughs): I suppose some things really are universal...
THE END OF
LOOK TO THE WEST VOLUME VIII:
THE BEAR AND THE BASILISK
TO BE CONTINUED
IN
LOOK TO THE WEST VOLUME IX:
THE ELECTRIC CIRCUS
Since the outbreak of war in June 1922, and the arrival of the plague in (around) March 1924, millions of men, women and children had died in Europe, from princes to paupers. The death toll was staggering. Modern estimates suggest that the worldwide military death toll of the Black Twenties conflict in general was around 10-12 million, with as many as 25 million in plague deaths; separating the two is problematic, as soldiers or civilians might die from a survivable plague infection due to war shortages of medical supplies. Some argue that 25 million is an undercount, given questions over figures reported by some nations (and the Societists) and lack of data from the interiors of India and Africa.[19]
Plague deaths were heaviest in places lacking medical support, good sanitation, and access to poisons to kill rats and fleas (or lack of understanding that those were the vectors). Yet, despite Europe possessing all those things, European nations still had substantial plague death tolls, proportionately greater than in the ENA, mainland Societist South America and perhaps even China (again, the numbers are disputed). This was both caused (in part), and exacerbated, by the fact that Europe was the epicentre of the armed conflict, certainly after the exit of Persia. A striking plurality of war deaths (a majority if one considers the Russo-Ottoman conflict to be separate) took place over a small area of Poland and Germany, as the fronts of the Oder bridgehead froze and both sides were hollowed out from within by the plague.
All the wonderful technological and tactical innovations developed over the past few decades had come to naught, as the deadly animalcule – ‘no respecter of persons’ as the old saying went – wrought disproportionate damage by killing a small number of skilled leaders, technically-proficient engineers, trained pilots and protgun drivers, etc. Too often, both sides found themselves regressing to the kind of tactics that had characterised the Nightmare War between France and North Italy, the latter stages of the Great American War, or the worst parts of the Pandoric War (as some were now beginning to name it). With more reliable access to untrained, conscripted infantrymen, who were essentially interchangeable (unlike their skilled veteran counterparts) when plague ripped through a camp, both sides resorted to mass march tactics evocative of the Jacobins. Trenches were built and wreathed with spike-wire, then hordes of young men were sent to their deaths in the hope of overwhelming them by sheer weight of numbers. As the Societists observed in propaganda that began to hit home, all this achieved was to kill them even faster than they were already dying of the plague.
Throughout the ‘Two Years of Hell’ period of plague-ridden frozen warfare around the Oder bridgehead and the rest of the Polish front, leaders on both sides were keen to bring the war to an end, yet both wanted a stronger position from which to negotiate – and so the war continued according to horrible, ineluctable logic. Later historiography on the European or ‘Protocol’ side would place the blame more firmly on Tsar Paul’s intransigence and indifference to his own people’s suffering, for the very important reason that (like Lewis Faulkner in the ENA) he was no longer around to defend himself.
Millions had died, both small and great, yet none were received with the shock around the world that dawned with the news of September 3rd 1926. Paul III, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, Protector of the Tatars, Yapontsi and Abyssinians, was dead at the age of sixty.[20] The man who had dominated Russian politics for much of his adult life, years before he became titular tsar with his amiable father Peter V’s passing in 1919, had shuffled off this mortal coil. Or rather, as whispered in the taverns of Russia and openly discussed in the salons of Europe and bars of America, someone had pushed him off it.
Paul had been born in the year 1866, a golden age of peace and prosperity for Russia under Emperor Theodore IV (interrupted only briefly by the Euxine War). However, he had grown to majority under the more indifferent rule of his grandfather and namesake, Paul II – who is perhaps best remembered for his questionable decision to exile the embarrassing Prince Sergei Dolgorukov to Yapon, ultimately igniting the Hanran rebellion thanks to the prince’s misrule.[21] The elder Paul died after only thirteen years on the throne, in probably natural circumstances. By this point, the younger Paul, now aged twenty, was already beginning to be an active player in court intrigue. He soon became the real power in his father Peter V’s new court. Perhaps one of the better things that could be said about Paul was that he desired the power to make the changes he felt were necessary, rather than the pomp and circumstance of titles. Some Russian tsareviches would have murdered their own fathers to ascend the throne, but Paul was quite happy for Peter to retain the crown, and Peter tolerantly allowed Paul to take a lead on policy while he focused on the ceremonial aspects of being tsar. Peter’s eventual death in 1919 is thought to be unambiguously natural and Paul seemed genuinely saddened by it. Some court observers also note that Paul now having to take on the role of tsar, rather than just having its power effectively delegated to him as a sort of ‘reverse regent’, wore heavily on him and probably played a part in his judgement growing more erratic over the years.
Paul was generally noted as a cool and calm operator who usually made decisions based on cold, rational analysis rather than his own whims and prejudices. Even choices he made seemingly out of romanticism, such as attacking the Ottomans after their invasion of Greece, were usually calculated based on how he thought they would be received by the Russian people, rather than something he genuinely believed in. There were exceptions to this, notably his burning dislike of French stateswoman Héloïse Mercier, which appears to have started when they negotiated part of the close of the Pandoric War in 1900 – when she was merely parlementaire Mademoiselle Rouvier, and was standing in for her ill future husband, Foreign Minister Robert Mercier.[22] Many consider one of Paul’s blind spots to be a dislike of women, with different biographers taking different tacks on whether this was merely a prejudiced opposition to Cythereanism, or actively casting aspersions on the tsar’s sexual activities (with little evidence).
As both tsarevich and tsar, Paul was a consummate planner, someone who tried to become an expert on all aspects of his empire, though this did make him prone to Passeridic management at times. One way in which he did resemble his namesake Paul II was in his lack of interest in Yapon, the RLPC and Russia’s Pacific possessions (including Russian America) which fed into how he concocted his policies. Paul appears to have independently concocted something similar to Wiegel’s Ecumene Theory,[23] believing that Russia could dominate the world if she secured critical resource areas and sea access points in Eurasia. For centuries, Russian tsars had desired to take Constantinople from the Ottomans, primarily for religious and ideological rather than strategic reasons; while Paul would not say no to this, his policies for territorial expansion would be more pragmatic. In particular, he was determined that Russia should gain sea access to the Indian Ocean, both to challenge the western European powers and to support her own small network of colonies. Hence both the establishment of Pendzhab in India as a stepping stone, and the focus on taking and subduing Persia in the Black Twenties. Russian domination of eastern, and increasingly central, Europe following the Pandoric War would provide crucial control of what Wiegel regarded as a critical pivot point for global influence. Russian intervention in Belgium following the Pandoric War would also lead to a new puppet state with strategically important colonies, a dagger hanging over its neighbours in the west. Paradoxically, however, this very threat aimed at the western European powers would lead them to unite against Russian expansion in the Black Twenties.
Ultimately, Paul’s plans would only illustrate the limitations of a political system that was so dependent on the will of one individual. Though a strong and capable ruler himself, he could scarcely be everywhere at once. His focus on the Indian Ocean access and control of eastern Europe, with a bit of Ottoman war on the side (we must remember the Ottomans attacked first in the Pandoric War), would inevitably lead to neglect elsewhere. Inevitably, this manifested itself in neglect of the overseas Russian colonies, the RLPC possessions and particularly Russian America – where victory in the Pandoric War led to a false confidence in the upper echelons of the Soviet. Beiqing China was lost at the end of the Pandoric War, the Russians were outmanoeuvred for influence in Corea by the Chinese after the Panic of 1917, and in the end Paul gave up and sacrificed Russian lands in the region (to the RLPC’s fury) to bribe China into staying out of the coming war.
The result of this narrow focus was that, by 1926, Russia had obtained Paul’s longstanding policy aim by gaining effective control over Persia and had even driven through the Tarsus salient to reach the Mediterranean – but it had all come at a heavy cost. Purely in terms of moving counters on a map (as in Paul’s own worldview) the Russians had been thrown out of North America and India, briefly threatened in Kamchatka and attacked in Yapon, pushed back in Poland, Finland and Romania, had lost influence over Abyssinia, Belgium and the Matetwa Empire, had lost Erythrea, and had only held on to Gavaji and Povilskaja against the odds thanks to good generalship and luck. The war might have started over Khiva and the Tartar rebellion in general (which, ironically, had still not been fully subdued five years on due to troop shortages) but merely having taken Persia could scarcely be called a victory.
And that was just the cost in terms of political reversals. More viscerally, Russia had suffered badly in terms of both military casualties and plague deaths. Two entire armies had surrendered, Privalov’s in Pendzhab and Yengalychev’s in Alyeska. Against the wishes of the Orthodox Church, women had entered the workplace, labouring in factories to support the war efforts of their men, who lay sickened in trenches from Hammerfest to Mersina. Agricultural labourers in the Ruthenian breadbasket were worked from dawn till dusk like the serfs of old. Serfs in truth were sometimes brought in from Yapon and other oppressed regions to replace Russian workers who had been conscripted for the front. This sparked resentment and occasionally race riots against this alien intruder, no matter that he was scarcely there by choice. Popular resentment was growing, and class consciousness with it.
For the past century of industrialisation in Russia, the primary class conflict had consisted of tensions between the traditional aristocracy and the rising bourgeois captains of industry, with the equally wealthy and bourgeois traders of the RLPC serving as a third wheel. The nature of the restoration of Paul I and the later accession of Theodore IV had tended to weaken the aristocracy at the expense of the industrialists, though (as can be seen from any list of generals in the Pandoric War and the Black Twenties) the aristocrats still exercised considerable influence over the military. The Orthodox Church also remained a power player with influence over the common people, and tsars, aristocrats and industrialists would all court its favour to help gain a stronger position. Paul’s break with the Church over women in factories was therefore a significant shift in power dynamics, though this was little noted at the time by foreign observers. The Slavicist cultural movement, which had used a celebration of Russian and Slavic traditional culture as a tool to attack (when convenient) either the foreign elements of the aristocracy or imported industrial leaders, also proved a wild card.
By the 1920s, factory workers were growing discontented with a system in which their bosses were no longer seen as bourgeois Slavic allies granting them dignity and skilled positions against the traditional semi-foreign aristocrats who still viewed them half as serfs, but as exploiters who refused to allow their wealth to trickle down to those who had built their empires for them. Some of the more idealistic industrialists had constructed modern factory villages for their workers and encouraged them to become educated and cultured through social programmes, but this well-intentioned policy also served to help the workers organise against their less beneficient counterparts.
Some among the bourgeoisie and aristocracy did sympathise with the proletarian workers in the cities, who at this stage generally did not collaborate with agricultural labourers (looking down on them as uneducated country cousins). This can be considered a kind of analogue to the Hochrad (High Radical) movement in Germany at the time, in which aristocratic reformists would forge alliances with discontented but disorganised workers to pursue policies in the interests of both. Best-known of these figures in Russia was Privy Councillor Nikolai Ulyanov, who had been a thorn in the side of the monarchy since before the Pandoric War, yet was too popular to remove. Paul finally imprisoned him in 1923, accusing him of fermenting popular unrest against the decision to go to war against the Ottoman Empire. However, public anger grew too great (especially when Ulyanov grew sick in prison in the winter of 1925-6 and was near death) and Paul was forced to release him, a concession seen as a sign of growing weakness. Paul had also been visibly affected by the death of his son and heir Tsarevich Mikhail on the Anatolian front in February 1925, and some biographers believe he never recovered from this. His second son Theodore (Fyodor) had still to reach the age of majority and his father had neglected his own preparations due to a focus on Mikhail.
By September 1926, following two failed ceasefires and negotiation rounds, it is an open question whether Paul was merely mule-headedly convinced that fighting to the last man would force the Protocol forces to blink first, or whether he had a plan. Certainly, later events in Italy have led some to suggest that Paul might have been able to break the Protocol alliance and secure a more favourable peace for Russia. However, such notions lie within the futile speculation of counterfactuals.
The Tsar was allegedly found dead in his bed, having suffered a fatal heart attack – officially, thanks to the stress of his position, but most believe his heart was helped along with poison. The biggest historical argument about this incident is not whether Paul was assassinated, but how big was the circle of people behind it. Most believe that the Dowager Empress Anna (Paul’s mother and a former rival for influence over his father Peter V) was one of the prime movers thanks to her existing court faction; the Meridian Refugiado exile General Pichegru, who may have been Anna’s lover, appears to have been involved; Arkady Streshnev, a key ally of the RLPC in the Soviet, may have contributed the Yapontsi nindzhya whom are speculated as being responsible for the poisoning. Others are much more debatable; there is particular controversy over whether Paul’s wife, the Empress Elizabeth, was involved, and whether Alexander III, Grand Duke of Courland, was informed of the plot before or after its execution. Some have claimed that Paul’s cousin Vasily, Grand Duke of Finland, may have been involved in the early stages before getting cold feet, agonising over whether to inform Paul but finally electing not to. About the only thing that seems reasonably certain is that Prince Kirill Dashkov was not involved, as he had become Paul’s closest advisor and had been responsible (with his brother, the Russian Ambassador to Danubia) for the direction of the talks in Vienna; the brothers Dashkov would be purged and exiled to Yekaterinsk after Paul’s death and the ensuing coup d’état.
As noted above, Tsarevich Theodore was entirely unready to be Emperor Theodore V, and in any case was still underage. In a still poorly-understood series of rapid and ruthless political manoeuvres, Alexander of Courland became Regent. As the historically-aware noted (in hushed tones) the great irony was that a descendant of Catherine the Usurper and her lover Potemkin finally, de facto, sat on the throne of Russia. However, Alexander had no intention of literally taking the throne for himself; some have argued it might have been better for Russia if he had. Opposition forces to his regency, stripped of the Dashkovs as potential leaders, attempted ineptly to court Paul’s younger brother Grand Duke Nicholas and Marshal Kobuzev, the hero of Persia. But Nicholas was a lover and patron of the arts with no interest in politics, and Kobuzev (who had been sidelined by Paul after the fall of Persia out of fear of his popularity) had no intention of supporting a probably-doomed counter-coup. Alexander’s position seemed secure...
*
From: “The Black Twenties” by Errol Mitchell (1973)—
With a new regime in Russia and a new (and final, as it turned out) armistice, negotiations resumed in earnest in Vienna on September 27th 1926. This was near-contemporary with the ‘negotiations’ between the Americans and Societists – which largely consisted of talking past one another and basing the post-war arrangement on uti possidetis, as the Societists were unwilling to grant their foes the dignity of equivalence that would be required for the Americans to suggest swapping Carolina for Guatemala, for example. Though bitter in tone, the Treaty of Vienna could scarcely be less cordial than that, and belonged much more to the traditional world of diplomacy.
As in the previous rounds of negotiation (which had got nowhere) both sides began with entirely unrealistic negotiating positions; Russia wanted Czechosilesia and Pendzhab back, for example, and would probably have demanded Russian America too if those negotiations with the ENA had not been pursued separately. The Protocol, whose positions were much more murky due to disagreements between the Five Powers (France, Germany, Italy, England and Scandinavia) similarly would initially demand the total Russian evacuation of Poland and Finland, which they were in no position to enforce. However, unlike the previous rounds, progress proved possible to make. For the first time, the French Dictateur Berry allowed Héloïse Mercier to negotiate directly on behalf of France...
*
From: “Mme. Mercier’s Diaries, Volume III: Exile’s Return” (1978, authorised English translation 1981)—
October 15th 1926.
I fall into bed, my head hurting thanks to drink and loud music. Vienna feels like an unearthly island of normality after the last few years of hell. Only a few posters (with Martial Latin at the top and German and Hungarian in rather small characters below) warn of the importance of staying vigilant against the plague. Here, it is as though the années des allègres never ended.[24] Young people enjoy life, a tragic vision of what poor Renée should be living. Eat, drink and be merry; but tomorrow we shall not die.
What tempers the guilt is a sense of satisfaction: that, for the first time in years, I feel I am making real progress, making a difference. Unlike everything we saw in previous negotiations, we seem to have Russian counterparts who can recognise reality. It will be a hard fight for peace, but at least I believe it is possible to obtain.
(Translator’s note: parts of the following section were written in code)
Persia is lost; we have not publicly accepted it yet, but it is understood. Bertrand will struggle to spin this as a victory, even though the frustration of Russian interests elsewhere may have been worth the trade – if it had not cost so many lives. None shall challenge Russia in Tartary; perhaps the Chinese, one day. At least Grand Duke Petras, the chief negotiator, is sensible enough to admit that Pendzhab is also unrecoverable, though I fear the new regime in Petrograd may not be so sane. He is old now, and it is many years since his logistical triumphs against the Turk in the last war; I understand he has mostly given up rule of Lithuania to his like-named son. But there is still keen wisdom in his eyes.[25]
At least the Russians also seem to understand that control of Persia does not necessarily translate to control of her former vassals, either, though I suspect that will be a flashpoint in years to come. They have also given up asking about Belgium, just as we have given up asking about Finland. In some ways that is a bad thing, as it means the argument over what to do with Belgium is, once again, beginning to divide our alliance. The Germans are growing fractious as they assert questionable historical claims, but it is the Italians who truly worry me.
Bertrand’s great idea was always that we would reward the Italians by making the Italian king, or his representative, King of a freed Poland. I feel that was always questionable (and would the Italian people really see that as a win?) but it has become politically impossible. Even if we divided Poland and merely sought to impose a king on the part we hold (now there’s an idea...), the Poles have become highly Italophobic after the Italian rocket attacks. If that is not an option, what remains? The Italians wanted Erythrea, but the Scandinavians refuse to give it up. Povilskaja...we have also given up on, I fear. Perhaps we could pressure the Omanis to give up Zanguebar to them, or part of it? There is no kicking the Ottomans out of Greece, that is clear. The Bengalis have effectively taken over Ceylon. And while we shuffle these colonial cards, the Legion of Romulus is instead calling on France to cede Italy chunks of Provence and thousands of French subjects(!) I fear this contradiction will lead to cataclysm...
...
November 2nd 1926
Now the negotiations are over, I look back on my diary and thank the good God that my worst fears did not come to pass, at least.
Revolution in Italy! It seemed so at the time, though I suspect writers in times to come will paper over it. The people, demanding their own unified Parliament, not merely a government selected from the members of the four national parliaments. The monarchist Union Party of Orsini and Borromeo defeated and discredited, while both the Romulans and the old Alliance Party of Adamantians and Mentians have gained power. I fear that the Alliance may prove merely useful idiots for the Romulans, long-term. If I were King Carlo, I would fear for my position.
I fear revolution in general, of course, as any right-minded burgess should; but I particularly feared that our position would collapse with the new Italian government withdrawing from our alliance. Fortunately, the Russians did not push their luck – they seemed as surprised by this as we were. With the anti-French and anti-German rhetoric coming out of Rome, people calling of betrayal and a war of waste, I am not optimistic about our future relations with the new Italian regime. But for now, all are too exhausted to consider a new war any time soon.
Everything has been such a whirlwind of confusion in my head, all the rejected proposals and lines on maps pencilled and rubbed out again, that I feel I need to set out the final agreements in black and white. If one can call them that; Vachaud is an idiot, but I agree with him that this is not so much a peace as an armistice for a generation – two, if we are lucky.
The Germans have got Czechosilesia – Bohemia – back. But they too are discontented with us, if not to the same extent. It is too obvious to Ruddel that we fear Germany as a potential future enemy, and are keen to limit their expansion. They have pushed outside the old boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire and have managed to secure West Prussia, eliminating Poland’s coastline. I already hear of racial purging in Danzig. At least we have managed to prevent it in East Prussia. I was particularly proud of that compromise. Poor Grand Duke Petras could not fight too hard to regain Karaliaučius, lest the Russians claim he had sacrificed Russian lands to prioritise Lithuanian ones. But we could not let it go to the Germans and become Königsberg again, as it was in the days when the Hohenzollerns ruled here rather than being stuck in a house in the Floridas (I wonder what happened to their last heir now the Societists have taken over). Both because it would make them too powerful, and because it would probably lead to racial tension that could spark the next war.
We needed a neutral third party that could govern over a mixed city of German- and Lithuanian-speakers. Meanwhile, Charles Grey, who has become something of a pen friend of mine over the last few years, needed a victory to cover England’s embarrassing loss to the Matetwa. The result is that the English have taken over the key port and its hinterland, tying them to Baltic interests for the future. To try to prevent future wars, slices around Šventpilis and Raušiai on either side have been given to the Scots and the Scandinavians as buffers, respectively; let treacherous Ireland see there is no reward for such behaviour, though I doubt they would want a Baltic foothold regardless.[26] I do not know what the Scots and the Scandinavians will call their small colonies, but Charles has told me that he is thinking of throwing a romantic sop to certain members of his party enthusiastic for what some are calling ‘Diversitarianism’, an antithesis to the disturbing ideas of the Sanchezistas. He has decided to render the old German name into an English equivalent: from this time forth, this important Baltic port will be named Conisbrough. Naturally, the Germans are furious.
Not so furious, however, at what we did to Belgium. It is clear that no-one wanted to allow that blight of a nation continue as an entity, but splitting it up let the Germans start staking claims to worryingly industrial regions. Our stance was that, as they did not do enough to help against the Belgians early in the war, they do not deserve the spoils now. Naturally, this has not been well received. We have not been able to prevent them gaining East Frisia, Mainz and parts of the Ossenbrügge region, but their quest for Mönster and Essen, or any more of the Ruhr valley, has been quashed.[27] We have made a point of not adjusting our own borders, preferring influence over the successor states.[28] There shall be three of these, it has been decided. In the north, the old Dutch Stadtholder Willem will be made King of a continuing Belgium; in the middle, the Republic of Liége-Luik; in the south, the old Duchy of Luxemburg will be expanded into a Grand Duchy.[29] As that includes most of the old Palatinate from which the Wittelsbach Kings derived their authority, we shall award the Grand Duchy to Charles Theodore III, then make him immediately abdicate in favour of his brother and send him into exile. That brother is another Maximilian, sadly; hopefully a better-starred one than his predecessors.
I look back on those words in wonder. France, creating a Republic centred on Liége and staffed largely by local rabble-rousers who resented Belgian rule? A century ago, that would have set Europe alight; folk would have said that Lisieux had come back. Now, even I will sign up to it. Rouvroy defanged republicanism; though I came to the Diamantine Party late, I have always admired him for that.
In the north, the Scandinavians have pushed their border eastwards and now have the old Russian naval base of Khanko, but any ambitions farther have been stymied by Finland remaining loyal to the Tsar, and they have withdrawn from the other regions they occupied. At least we will force Reval [Tallinn] to shepherd a lot of weight if the entire Russian Baltic fleet is forced there; or at least, there plus allied ports like Klaipeda in Lithuania and Riga in Courland. With the loss of – ah – ‘Conisbrough’ as well, we may have weakened the Russians and Vitebsk Pact in the Baltic for a generation, at least.
As for Poland itself, I weep for its people, fated to live at the crossroads of conflict between greater empires. After already suffering when the Russians fought their way through in the last war (so many are now calling it ‘Pandoric’, as though the rise of the Societists at its end was the only important event in it! ...perhaps future generations will think so, but I digress) Poland had an even worse fate in this one. At least the Russian puppet Poland before this conflict was structurally intact, even if its Jews in particular were persecuted after they used to enjoy a fair place in society when I was a girl. (So much I have lived through feels like regress, for all the advances in technological wonders). Now, though, we face an ugly compromise. The Russians refused to agree to the proposal, which I think started with Orsini before he was toppled, to turn Poland into a neutralised buffer state akin to Bavaria. The Poles I managed to speak to seemed to favour this option, and the Danubian hosts were also keen on it – of course, they might benefit from their own influence there. But the Russians refuse, and the Germans weren’t too happy, either. So instead we face an unlovely divide. Poland in the east, still ruled by Casimir from Warsaw under the Russian thumb, and Poland in the west, ruled from Poznan. There is talk of drumming up an Election Sejm and forcing them to choose the Duc as their king, providing him a neat exit from French politics! I fear this will not make us any friends with our alleged new puppet state, even if the Poles might prefer us to the Germans. Their old days of Pressburg Pact alliance are long gone. I wonder how long this division of Poland will last, and what the two halves will end up being called.[30]
Of course, we have no authority here to decide what happens on the Ottoman fronts. It seems that the Turks – both sets of them – cannot break the Russians on their Tarsus salient, and the Russians cannot break the Turks in Wallachia. I suspect that conflict will peter out from exhaustion until the next round, whenever it comes, and frozen front lines will become lasting borders – just as they have in Poland. The Turks are looking weaker in North Africa, as well; I wonder if this fierce new Italian government is watching and taking notes.
We seem to have hammered out a peace that pleases exactly no-one, which is the way of the world. I am so thankful that at last this horrible war is coming to an end, and an end that is not, as we feared, our defeat and slavery at the hands of the Tsar’s Armart Legions – which now seem like a childhood fairytale. Yet part of me fears that we have been fighting the wrong war all along. These new innovations, rockets and aerodromes that fly from ships, may render all our calculations obsolete. Like men centuries ago would fight for the ownership of strong stone castles, only for them to become worthless when gunpowder came along. And then there are the Societists. Some of our press mock the Americans for their defeats, for effectively allowing the black-flag armies to sit so close to their capital now. But I fear that soon, we will have no cause to point the finger. Down in Spain and Portugal things go from bad to worse, and there is no public enthusiasm for sending more young men to die. I fear that before too long, we too will have Alfarus’ armies on our southern border. Maybe the last war was, truly, Pandoric.
I look at the political situation, too. I fear that our people will not reward us for this peace after all their sacrifices, and I cannot blame them. We have already seen it, in a way, in Italy. I doubt many of the governments that have fought our way through this war will survive, for better or for worse. I fear what the alternative will be. In France we have worked so hard to preserve our position in the world, and I do not trust Vincent not to throw it away.
But I cannot let myself think that way. That path leads down to thinking I know who should run the country, better than the people do. And then, well, Lisieux and the Jacobins might as well have come back after all.
No. I must speak to Alain. We shall focus on ensuring the people have an alternative, when they are tired of Vincent...
*
“...further quarantine measures. Now, (coughs) my apologies for the delay, ladies and gentlemen, but once again, another reminder of the upcoming frequency shift.” (sotto voce) “This second cart had better work, Ultima. If someone has magged over it with that footage from the last office Christmas party...”
– Transcription of a C-WNB News Motoscope broadcast,
recorded in Waccamaw Strand, Kingdom of Carolina, 04/08/2020
recorded in Waccamaw Strand, Kingdom of Carolina, 04/08/2020
*
From: “Decade of Hell: The Black Twenties” by Michael P. T. Emmerson (1988)—
When did the Black Twenties end?
History is never so neat as to comply with our arbitrary divisions of time. Scattered conflicts often persist years after wars are declared over, or precede and blur into them. Periods of fashion, musical movements, youth subcultures, unaccountably show up years earlier than they ‘should’ in books written at the time, or else fail to be visible when we expect them. From the perspective of years, decades, centuries later, we can pretend that this blurry mess resolves into a neat progression from a suitable distance – and then, of course, become upset that the times we live through ourselves are not so clear-cut. Our children’s history books carelessly put Hammurabi’s portrait next to the Ishtar Gate, ignoring the fact that as many centuries separate them as do Pablo Sanchez and Mohammed, or Christopher Columbus and Emperor Constantine.[31] History is never so simple as we like to think, once viewed up close; it becomes a polychrom of endless complexity even when viewed through a microscope.[32]
We might as well ask when the Black Twenties began. War did not break out until 1922, yet the foundations were laid by the Treaty of Bermuda in 1920, which formalised a Franco-American alliance aimed at Russia, and the Treaty of Guiling in 1919, which normalised Sino-Siamese relations and opened up the trade routes that allowed the plague to spread from Yunnan province. Of course, one can endlessly chase precursor events in chains back to the dawn of time; if we must make a cutoff, these do seem to fall close enough to the beginning of the titular decade of the 1920s. Perhaps it is understandable, then, that we similarly turn to the end of that decade to define the close of the Black Twenties.
The war was over, at least on paper, by the end of 1926. In practice, many corollary conflicts continued into 1927 and 1928, such as the Russians finally putting down the Tartar revolt that had originally started the war, and the Societists brutally consolidating control over their new possessions of Cuba, Jamaica and Carolina.[33] But then, where do we draw the line? Conflicts in southern Africa would bleed smoothly from the Black Twenties into resistance to further Societist expansion there in the supposedly peaceful 1930s. The Russians would launch a failed attempt to reclaim Pendzhab in 1935, which would help further catalyse the wave of anti-colonial revolt against the French and Chinese in the Indian subcontinent which had already begun. Many other minor conflicts would continue throughout the background of the Second Interbellum, an age where our eyes are instead turned to times of prosperity and peace, of the drama of the Second Black Scare and the wonders of world-changing technology. Once again, history is never so neat as we would like to think.
But the Black Twenties were not merely about war, nor about the expansion of Societism, but about the plague pandemic that afflicted the world and worsened the misery of war; as men continued to fight in a burning house, this response to the plague would endlessly feed the Societist propaganda machine and make Sanchezism seem far more sensible to the average person. Such pragmatism would not last, of course; if Alfarus’ more fanatical successors had been in charge in the 1920s, the Combine would likely have been as prone to blithely continue military conflicts throughout the pandemic. But in the short term, this distinction would play well for the cause of the Threefold Eye.
And yet, despite all this – or because of it – epidemic diseases, the great and deadly enemies of mankind, have served to unite all men in a cause far less objectionable than the fever dream of Sanchez. Even in the worst excesses of Societist rule and Diversitarian reaction, men and women of all nations and none have come together across the divides to unite against our common foe. Never again, it was proclaimed, would we allow pursuing our own disagreements to come before our honourable war against a merciless and alien foe. In the past, individuals had sometimes used the spread of disease as a weapon, notably against the native peoples of the Novamund. Some even suggest that the Black Death began in Europe due to the Mongol Golden Horde hurling infected corpses over the walls of the besieged city of Kaffa (now Beth Mataniel) in the Crimea. But no more.
After the Black Twenties, despite the continuing bitter divisions between the sides, all resolved to abominate such practices at the Fourth Convention of Ratisbon in 1933. While attempts to limit the use of chemical weapons were less successful (no-one wanted to disarm themselves before the Societists) some restrictions were also passed. Finally, the laws of war were reaffirmed, that attacks from the air (or artillery bombardments) against civilian targets in cities, whether using death-luft or conventional weapons, were classed as crimes de guerre and their perpetrators would be excluded from the legal protection afforded to prisoners of war. The Russian government agreed to this move providing there was an amnesty for past incidents, though a number of senior officers had already been punished for the Shiraz Massacre which had sparked this movement. As a corollary to this ruling, it was agreed that attempts to use civilians as human shields by moving military targets into cities would also be considered an actionable crime de guerre. In practice, this was very difficult to enforce, but the existence of the rule (and the fact that violating it would likely lead to the rule on civilian attacks being cast aside) led to greater civilian awareness of the threat. This resulted in widespread civic movements to reject any construction within cities which could be construed as future military targets. Concern was particularly deep as the development of hiveships, rockets and longer-ranged aerocraft seemed to give nations the ability to strike directly at one another’s heartlands with impunity; suddenly, nowhere was safe. Naturally, attempts to limit these weapons also got nowhere. Some argued that their very existence might be sufficient to ward off future wars, as no-one would be willing to risk their heartlands by starting one.
Not only did the nations reject the use of biological weapons, but they also resolved to cooperate at long last against the threat of the plague – and, eventually, other epidemic diseases. In contrast to the jealous guarding of patents during the war, research was freely traded in the final years of the decade. The French traded Peptobrim culicide drugs for American Birline, and even Alfarus magnanimously allowed the Tremuriatix formula and Societist vaccine-production techniques to be shared at last. There had been a major shift of public opinion around the world; everyone had lost a loved one to the invisible foe, and all were resolved to ensure it never happened again.
In hindsight, we can bemoan the damage to our environment inflicted by the widespread use of indiscriminate insecticides and rat poisons; some parts of the world are still suffering from the effect caused by the elimination of all rats on the balance of nature.[34] But we do so from a lofty position of privilege, for all that the modern world still has many problems of its own. The plague was battered down from a pandemic to merely localised epidemics in the final years of the 1920s, with China in 1929 suffering the last well-recorded major outbreak. In practice, the plague burned on at a lower level out of (outsiders’) sight in the interiors of Africa and India. But the will to suppress G. pestis continued. Vaccination, treatment with Peptobrim drugs, and first and foremost the destruction of carrier species was pursued for decades. The final reservoirs of plague were eliminated, one by one. Finally, in 1965 G. pestis was declared extinct, and the world rejoiced as one, no matter the continuing bitter differences that divided Societist from Diversitarian. Children were born into a world that would never know another case of plague, would never know the sickening black buboes or the cruel septicaemia that the disease inflicted upon mankind. The Black Death, which had killed so many over thousands of years, was finally consigned to the history books.[35] Other diseases would join it, such as smallpox a decade later.
The Black Twenties therefore showed the worst of humanity, but also were a catalyst for bringing out our best, as times of trial often are. As the 1930s dawned, they brought with them a great unwinding, a feeling of relief and joy, a desire to seize the day. The new decade, often called the Flirty Thirties or the Dirty Thirties, would be a time in which new generations shocked their parents, who conveniently forgot their own Flippant days of ‘debauchery’. It would be a time of the Archie and Recky warring subcultures in their many forms, a time of political theorising as men struggled to respond to the rise of Societism, and most of all, a time of technological progress. Technology had already transformed war; now, it would transform peace.
The age of the Electric Circus had dawned.
*
(a rather low-quality recording, obviously having suffered from having been played many times)
“Ladies and gentlemen. This is an important announcement. Please take note.
“From September 4th 2020, your Motoscope pulse-rates are changing. You will need to retune your receptor in order to pick up the Motostreams and Motext sources you are currently using. Please go to Motext page 201 for more details, or you can order a print booklet by calling 0550-2134-PR or writing to us at Carolina White News Broadcasting, number 44 Adams Street, Ultima 44A-ULT.
“Please ensure you select the correct pulse-rates for tuning. Our sister stations C-BNB and C-RNB are staffed by our esteemed colleagues from the Black and Red races and will be giving the news from their perspectives, not those suitable for a White viewer. You will recall from your school classes the importance of rebuilding our identities in the aftermath of the National Coma, lest we forget our distinct cultures and allow our oppressors to win after all. Let us separately celebrate our freedom to be ourselves, not ground into a grey and soulless mess that calls itself ‘humanity’. We are not Good Humans. Nor are we Americans, though we rejoice in peace with our neighbours. We are Carolinians, and – as White and Black and Red – we are who we are.
“That message again...”
– Transcription of a C-WNB News Motoscope broadcast,
recorded in Waccamaw Strand, Kingdom of Carolina, 04/08/2020
recorded in Waccamaw Strand, Kingdom of Carolina, 04/08/2020
[19] For comparison, the Third Plague in OTL is thought to have killed about 12-15 million, mostly in India and China; the Spanish Flu is estimated to have killed about 25-50 million, but – like the figures in TTL – all these are hotly disputed.
[20] This is a considerably compressed version of Paul’s real title, which (like its OTL counterpart) describes him ruling Moscow, Kiev, Vladimir, Novgorod, etc. etc. as their Tsars and lists many other peoples separately. ‘Tartars’ here is doing a lot of work to describe essentially all native peoples in the Russian Empire, including ones such as the Nivkhs or Aleuts which this label doesn’t even tenuously apply to. The term ‘protector’ is also vague, as Paul rules the ‘Tartars’ with varying levels of directness, certainly rules Yapon directly, but Abyssinia is ruled by itself and is (was) merely under Russian influence.
[21] See Part #215 in Volume V.
[22] See Part #250 in Volume VI.
[23] Similar to Mackinder’s World Island theory from OTL – see Part #269 in Volume VII.
[24] Les Allègres is the French term for the youth subculture called Flippants in the English-speaking world, i.e. Mercier is saying that it feels as though the Flippant Era never ended in Vienna.
[25] As mentioned in Parts #246 and #247 of Volume VI; this is Petras III, Grand Duke of Lithuania. Note that the text of the story quoted in the former notes that Foreign Minister Prince Saltykov wishes Petras was there to negotiate with the French rather than the Grand Duke of Courland (Alexander III’s less-capable father Alexander II); this is probably the author drawing a comparison to these negotiations a quarter-century later, rather than Petras being considered a realistic choice at the time.
[26] Šventpilis and Raušiai are the Lithuanian names for towns known traditionally in OTL by their German names Heiligenbeil and Rauschen, and today (thanks to forced movement of people after WW2) by the Russian neologisms Mamonovo and Svetlogorsk.
[27] As is usual, Mercier is mostly using the local dialect names (e.g. Ossenbrügge not Osnabrück, Mönster not Munster), which the Belgians have encouraged to try to separate these regions from a German identity.
[28] Because France in TTL already includes much of Wallonia, there is not the urgency of 20th century France in OTL to obtain places like the Saar in order to secure the coal resources lacking in the rest of France.
[29] Luxemburg/Luxembourg was promoted to Grand Duchy status in OTL for the opposite reason, to compensate it for the loss of territory at the Congress of Vienna. As Luxemburg was never partitioned in TTL (being a subsection of Flanders, then Belgium) it was already much larger than the OTL modern country of Luxembourg even before being expanded here.
[30] As it turns out, the French liked to call them Greater and Lesser (or Little) Poland, historic regional names that conveniently make their part of Poland sound bigger than the Russian part, when it’s actually the reverse; the Russians call them Poland-Warsaw and Poland-Poznan, which had the opposite effect of making their part sound more legitimate; and many neutral observers simply call them East and West Poland.
[31] The comparison made more usually in OTL is the time gap between Cleopatra and the Pyramids, but recall that TTL has seen earlier focus on the archaeology of the Fertile Crescent over Egypt, which is reflected in pop-culture references.
[32] This is referring to ‘polychrome mathematics’, the TTL term for fractals (only named in 1975 OTL), itself named for polychromatoscope, the TTL term for kaleidoscope (because of the sense of endless multiplying complexity).
[33] While the Societist control zone in North America is not identical to any previous definition of the bounds of Carolina (lacking the region then called Wragg and possessing parts of Africa Nova and Charlotte which were in Old Virginia), most writers will simply describe it as ‘Societist Carolina’.
[34] This is slightly confusingly phrased – it means all rats have been eliminated in certain parts of the world, not globally. The only place in OTL where this has been achieved is Alberta in Canada, initially due to the same fear that the rats would spread plague into the province in the 1950s, though later also because of their general status as invasive pests.
[35] In OTL the plague persists, in part because it is usually easily treatable with antibiotics and there has been less of a concerted movement to eliminate it (unlike smallpox or polio). Most plague cases are now found in sub-Saharan Africa and especially Madagascar, though there are occasional cases in parts of China and North America.
Interlude #25: Northward Bound
Transcript of Thande Institute Zoom meeting with TimeLine L Field Team Delta with Director Stephen Rogers
Time: 16:00 hours (GMT)
Date: 20/08/2020
TimeLine L Location: Waccamaw Strand, Kingdom of Carolina (de jure), Empire of North America trust territory (de facto).
Analogous location of Portal receivers in Our TimeLine: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, United States of America
Director Rogers’ location: Cambridge, United Kingdom
DIRECTOR STEPHEN ROGERS (SR): Alright, can you hear me now? Are you – I think you’re frozen? I-
SERGEANT BOB MUMBY (BM): Oh, sorry sir, that’s a cardboard cutout of Captain Nuttall I left there by accident.
SR: Oh – wait – why do you have a card-
SERGEANT DOMINIC ELLIS (DE): Apparently it’s for a bet, sir, I wouldn’t worry about it.
SR: I – fine. Where’s Captain Nuttall and Captain MacCauley?
CAPTAIN CHRISTOPHER NUTTALL (CGN): Ah – sorry to keep you waiting there, sir, we’re here now. I was packing and lost track of time.
SR (sighs): Very well. So your intention is now to depart for the, er, the ENA proper?
CGN: That’s right. Ultimately we want to go to Fredericksburg, but I think...
CAPTAIN BEN MACCAULEY (BMcC): Based on our previous experiences, probably best not to go straight to the capital.
SR: Yes, let’s avoid any more rescue missions please, I’d never get the funding. (Laughs) Well, so long as your plans are in place. Again, I’m regretful that we can’t bring you back yet, but while the disease is somewhat better under control now, it’ll still be months before we have a vaccine.
BM: I thought you said Dr Pataki said we’d never have a vaccine?
DR BRUNO LOMBARDI (BL): Yes, but he’s an idiot.
(laughter)
CGN (coughs): Er, you seem to be in good spirits, sir.
SR: Well, I must admit I’m getting the hang of this blasted Zoom now. And those boosters do seem to have boosted our signal nicely for other timeline communication so it’s more reliable, don’t they?
CGN: Now that you mention it, sir, yes.
SR: In fact, I thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-ghhhhhhhhhh (electronic chord sound plays)
CGN: Dammit!
DE: You jinxed it, sir. Now he’s reconnecting.
ENSIGN CHARLTON CUSSANS (CC): Ugh. Well, I suppose they’re right to be concerned, at least. Did you see there was a story on the TV, I mean the Motoscope, here about a disease outbreak?
LT THOMAS BLACK (TB): No. What was it about?
CC: Can’t remember. I think they said it was in Oxford in the UK, I mean England?
TB: Oh. Yeah, I suppose it’s a problem everywhere.
(electronic beep sound)
SR: ...sorry about that, speak of the devil, eh? (Laughter) Well, we’ll need to know where you’re going to set up the transmitters on this side.
CGN: Yes, that’s the difficult part, sir, as we’re not sure. What I’m thinking of doing is sending Ben and some of the team up to find a place while we stay here, so we can keep in touch and let you know when we have a new location.
SR: That makes sense.
DR DAVID WOSTYN (DW): Of course, it will take time, and I thought you said it was a matter of urgency-
SR: Never mind that now. The UN has plenty of other things on its mind with this pandemic. But I haven’t forgotten what I said. It’s only a matter of time before someone in this timeline starts to figure out what’s going on. We need to know as much as we can before we do.
BL: Message received, sir – we’ll do our best.
SR: Good. Call in again when you have a location in Virginia, and I’ve sent one of my men to talk to the Governor on our side so we can set up.
CGN: Thank you, sir.
BM: And Merry Christmas.
SR: Than – wait, it’s August!
BM: Yes, but they start that early with cards and offers in the shops here too, sir.
SR (laughs): I suppose some things really are universal...
THE END OF
LOOK TO THE WEST VOLUME VIII:
THE BEAR AND THE BASILISK
TO BE CONTINUED
IN
LOOK TO THE WEST VOLUME IX:
THE ELECTRIC CIRCUS
Thande
Donor
And that's it.
Since the pandemic kicked off in March 2020, I've not really been in the right headspace to write narrative fiction, hence why I've not started posting the sequel to "Well Met By Starlight" yet. But I have been able to write LTTW, once a week, and it's mounted up. The result is this volume, which has somehow grown to 255,000 words. I remember when I switched to 25 parts per volume in the hope of splitting it up more, but I think this is longer than any of the 50-part volumes!
Of course there has been a George Lucas pretentious 'rhyme' between this volume and real world events. There was a discussion on the AH.com thread about this and how much of it I'd planned in advance. The answer is that I 'knew' there was going to have to be some big world event beyond just a war in the 1920s to explain things that were going to happen later, but I didn't know what it was. When Covid came and I began reading about past pandemics and responses to them, I learned about the Third Plague, which is barely mentioned in the western world despite its importance. It is because of the work done on the Third Plague that we know of the bacterium that caused the First and Second, which our children's history books are silent on; in the UK, the plague went away in 1666 and nothing has happened since then, as far as our historical narrative is concerned. With this new pandemic, there has been greater attention paid to this and other past pandemics, such as a BBC article about the Waldemar Haffkine, the man who developed the first plague vaccine during the Third Plague. This is probably a positive thing for the future, just as the Black Twenties have led the world of LTTW to focus more attention on the global elimination of diseases. As always, I would also pay tribute to one of my chief AH inspirations, @Tony Jones, whose 'Cliveless World' scenario (and novel set in it, "The Plague Policeman", available from Sea Lion Press) accurately predicted a number of the measures taken in our own world in response to Covid. I don't know if we'll ever all be taking routine blood tests at airports (or if the aeroplanes we board will all have only one wing) but it's still impressive.
So the plague has formed a centrepiece to this volume of LTTW. It also came at a time when my framing device story, set in the comfortably futuristic year of 2019 back when I started writing in 2007, caught up to reality. I could have ignored the real-world pandemic which has inspired this volume and suggested that the Thande Institute (originally an idea by the real Chris Nuttall , I should point out, I'm not egotistical enough to name it after myself!) comes from a timeline that's almost, but not quite, like ours. But I decided that would be a little bit intellectually dishonest. And so the real-world Covid pandemic has also upset the plans of the Institute, for better or for worse, and the rhyme is reflected in the text itself rather than implicit.
I will now be taking a rest from LTTW until probably September 2022, and try to get back to narrative writing at last - with the Markus Garzius bits of this volume being a bit of a stealth dry run for getting back into that form of writing. In the meantime, I will be coming up with more ideas for LTTW, which take time to gestate before flowering into something, hopefully, worth reading about.
Anyway, I am now going offline over Christmas as is my wont, so I wish you all a merry, blessed and restful Christmas period. Thanks everyone for their comments, speculation and suggestions over this current volume. 2021 has been a better year than 2020 despite everything, and I hope further progress is made for 2022.
"All glory be to God on high, and to the earth be peace,
Goodwill henceforth from heaven to men, begin and never cease."
Merry Christmas.
Since the pandemic kicked off in March 2020, I've not really been in the right headspace to write narrative fiction, hence why I've not started posting the sequel to "Well Met By Starlight" yet. But I have been able to write LTTW, once a week, and it's mounted up. The result is this volume, which has somehow grown to 255,000 words. I remember when I switched to 25 parts per volume in the hope of splitting it up more, but I think this is longer than any of the 50-part volumes!
Of course there has been a George Lucas pretentious 'rhyme' between this volume and real world events. There was a discussion on the AH.com thread about this and how much of it I'd planned in advance. The answer is that I 'knew' there was going to have to be some big world event beyond just a war in the 1920s to explain things that were going to happen later, but I didn't know what it was. When Covid came and I began reading about past pandemics and responses to them, I learned about the Third Plague, which is barely mentioned in the western world despite its importance. It is because of the work done on the Third Plague that we know of the bacterium that caused the First and Second, which our children's history books are silent on; in the UK, the plague went away in 1666 and nothing has happened since then, as far as our historical narrative is concerned. With this new pandemic, there has been greater attention paid to this and other past pandemics, such as a BBC article about the Waldemar Haffkine, the man who developed the first plague vaccine during the Third Plague. This is probably a positive thing for the future, just as the Black Twenties have led the world of LTTW to focus more attention on the global elimination of diseases. As always, I would also pay tribute to one of my chief AH inspirations, @Tony Jones, whose 'Cliveless World' scenario (and novel set in it, "The Plague Policeman", available from Sea Lion Press) accurately predicted a number of the measures taken in our own world in response to Covid. I don't know if we'll ever all be taking routine blood tests at airports (or if the aeroplanes we board will all have only one wing) but it's still impressive.
So the plague has formed a centrepiece to this volume of LTTW. It also came at a time when my framing device story, set in the comfortably futuristic year of 2019 back when I started writing in 2007, caught up to reality. I could have ignored the real-world pandemic which has inspired this volume and suggested that the Thande Institute (originally an idea by the real Chris Nuttall , I should point out, I'm not egotistical enough to name it after myself!) comes from a timeline that's almost, but not quite, like ours. But I decided that would be a little bit intellectually dishonest. And so the real-world Covid pandemic has also upset the plans of the Institute, for better or for worse, and the rhyme is reflected in the text itself rather than implicit.
I will now be taking a rest from LTTW until probably September 2022, and try to get back to narrative writing at last - with the Markus Garzius bits of this volume being a bit of a stealth dry run for getting back into that form of writing. In the meantime, I will be coming up with more ideas for LTTW, which take time to gestate before flowering into something, hopefully, worth reading about.
Anyway, I am now going offline over Christmas as is my wont, so I wish you all a merry, blessed and restful Christmas period. Thanks everyone for their comments, speculation and suggestions over this current volume. 2021 has been a better year than 2020 despite everything, and I hope further progress is made for 2022.
"All glory be to God on high, and to the earth be peace,
Goodwill henceforth from heaven to men, begin and never cease."
Merry Christmas.
Another fantastic update Thande! I’m glad you can take a bit of a break from LTTW, but am excited to see where this world continues. LTTW was basically my introduction into alternate history way back in 2014 or so, around when Part IV was wrapping up, where I saw a map of large, royalist America and thought “this looks neat”. Nothing could hav prepared me for the unparalleled depth and level of world building and creation of wholly unique ideologies that this story. I remeber being so disheartened that Carolina and the UPSA won the Great American War that I couldn’t wait for some sort of revolution to topple them. Be careful what you wish or I guess.
Thanks for the wonderful world of Timeline L, all started from a wrinkle in the carpet. I wish you a merry Christmas and a great new year (Fingers crossed it’s better than the last two)
Thanks for the wonderful world of Timeline L, all started from a wrinkle in the carpet. I wish you a merry Christmas and a great new year (Fingers crossed it’s better than the last two)
Also, I was wondering if you had any more maps of the world or the ENA in the pipelines, or if it would be worth trying to craft my own for the post-black 20s era.
An interesting look into the internal workings of Russia. Looks like the imperial Russian tradition of regicide remains alive and well. And was that an alternate Lenin? Permitting gifted non-Russians to rise to such a high office instead of wasting their talent (or outright turning it against them as was the case here in OTL) could be one of the secrets to Russia's success so far. But as we can see Russia's success was nevertheless not bought without social strain which can cause great problems when it rises to the surface.
Conisbrough! There's something really interesting going on in Britain if Grey proposed this and then got it accepted instead of getting himself walked out of parliament in a straitjacket. Even if it had seemed expedient at the time in order to make a political point I wonder how this will be seen once the postwar realities sink in. It will be interesting to watch the countries which obtained those enclaves in what used to be Prussia decide if such distant and culturally alien posessions should be integrated as equals or treated like colonies and exploited until such a time when seems more expedient to drop them. Somewhere along the line Germany might offer to buy them from their present owners. But at least in the short term French diplomacy has strongly anchored its northern allies in Central Europe. In fact this may portrayed as so convenient to France that later British or Scandinavian governments might even go so far as to make accusations of treason or bribery. And to make matters worse a misunderstanding (such as a war) could arise if somebody intent on obtaining these territories underestimates the desire of England/Scandinavia/Scotland to keep them. It could even be that one of the latter would in principle be happy to drop its awkward Baltic enclave but feels it needs to hold on to it during a crisis in order to make a point or preserve its credibility as a French ally...
Speaking of Germany I wonder what Germany means to do with its new provinces. Germany was quite ethnically homogenous but now has 5 million potential voters of a possible future Minorities' Party. If Germany did indeed annex West Prussia and Danzig in addition to just the part of Pomerania which Russia had added to Poland after the Pandoric War this could have an additional significant consequence down the line. AFAIR up to this point Dresden had never claimed any territory east of the boundary of the old Holy Roman Empire (which had also been the western border of Poland for most of the last few centuries and was pretty much the same as the western border of Poland after the Popular Wars). As long as Dresden had no claims beyond the post-Popular-War frontier public opinion in Poland could have remained used to seeing Germany as a viable associate which might be overbearing or domineering at times. But by claiming West Prussia (which could possibly become something a like TTL's Elsass-Lothringen) Dresden might suddenly come to be seen as an existential threat. It should also be noted that West Prussia is only really valuable when it is attached to its Polish hinterland and can profit from handling the traffic coming out of it. But the vast majority of that hinterland remains under Russian influence and I expect that the Russians will prefer to transfer traffic from there to some Russian port such as Odessa rather than see Germany profit. A province with an outraged foreign population which has just lost a key source of income can become very annoying.
France pushed the influence of one Great Power (Russia) away from its borders but exhausted itself so badly that it can't prevent another (The Combine) from coming right up to them. And it will soon be realized that in the age of rockets the elimination of Russian airbases from Belgium doesn't mean anything any more. If Iberia remained under French influence it would have been easier to spin it as a victory. "Russia did occupy Persia and a lot of Turkey. So what? Europe was always our priority and over here we've managed to win an unambigous victory". This line of defense won't exist for long. Admittedly the Combine was a Russian co-belligerent. It has not actually clashed with France itself during the war. But then again the same could be said of Russia prior to 1922. I guess the French can say that they at least showed that Russia was not invincible. I guess this will be the government's main line of defense to claim that Francre was on the verge of being overrun by the "Tsar's Armart Legions" and anything more than that is a splendid victory. But will this be bought by the public? It also seems that France is insecure in its position of leader of the western half of Europe now that its biggest minion (Germany) has grown larger. Not that I feel particularly sorry for France. After all France survived intact and the war never even touched French soil (besides some limited Belgian bombing).
All in all this postwar situation looks a lot more volatile than the end of the Pandoric War. In the Novamund there is the very awkward Societist enclave in North America. It's so close to the Arc of Power that the ENA is likely to be constantly preparing to fight a war there and this in turn will just encourage the Combine to fortify it in response to keep this distant outpost from being overrun. And following this second partition of Poland (AFAIR in the 18th century there was just one) neither France nor Russia will feel secure in their claims to "their" Polands while the other side has a Poland "of its own". Each side will have a motive to placate the population of "its" Poland. And any such attempt by Paris or Moscow could easily be interpreted as an attempt to undermine "the other's" Poland. And the Combine also appears to be getting right into what France rightly or wrongly considers its personal space.
And Merry Christmas!
Conisbrough!
There's something really interesting going on in Britain if Grey proposed this and then got it accepted instead of getting himself walked out of parliament in a straitjacket. Even if it had seemed expedient at the time in order to make a political point I wonder how this will be seen once the postwar realities sink in. It will be interesting to watch the countries which obtained those enclaves in what used to be Prussia decide if such distant and culturally alien posessions should be integrated as equals or treated like colonies and exploited until such a time when seems more expedient to drop them. Somewhere along the line Germany might offer to buy them from their present owners. But at least in the short term French diplomacy has strongly anchored its northern allies in Central Europe. In fact this may portrayed as so convenient to France that later British or Scandinavian governments might even go so far as to make accusations of treason or bribery. And to make matters worse a misunderstanding (such as a war) could arise if somebody intent on obtaining these territories underestimates the desire of England/Scandinavia/Scotland to keep them. It could even be that one of the latter would in principle be happy to drop its awkward Baltic enclave but feels it needs to hold on to it during a crisis in order to make a point or preserve its credibility as a French ally...Speaking of Germany I wonder what Germany means to do with its new provinces. Germany was quite ethnically homogenous but now has 5 million potential voters of a possible future Minorities' Party. If Germany did indeed annex West Prussia and Danzig in addition to just the part of Pomerania which Russia had added to Poland after the Pandoric War this could have an additional significant consequence down the line. AFAIR up to this point Dresden had never claimed any territory east of the boundary of the old Holy Roman Empire (which had also been the western border of Poland for most of the last few centuries and was pretty much the same as the western border of Poland after the Popular Wars). As long as Dresden had no claims beyond the post-Popular-War frontier public opinion in Poland could have remained used to seeing Germany as a viable associate which might be overbearing or domineering at times. But by claiming West Prussia (which could possibly become something a like TTL's Elsass-Lothringen) Dresden might suddenly come to be seen as an existential threat. It should also be noted that West Prussia is only really valuable when it is attached to its Polish hinterland and can profit from handling the traffic coming out of it. But the vast majority of that hinterland remains under Russian influence and I expect that the Russians will prefer to transfer traffic from there to some Russian port such as Odessa rather than see Germany profit. A province with an outraged foreign population which has just lost a key source of income can become very annoying.
France pushed the influence of one Great Power (Russia) away from its borders but exhausted itself so badly that it can't prevent another (The Combine) from coming right up to them. And it will soon be realized that in the age of rockets the elimination of Russian airbases from Belgium doesn't mean anything any more. If Iberia remained under French influence it would have been easier to spin it as a victory. "Russia did occupy Persia and a lot of Turkey. So what? Europe was always our priority and over here we've managed to win an unambigous victory". This line of defense won't exist for long. Admittedly the Combine was a Russian co-belligerent. It has not actually clashed with France itself during the war. But then again the same could be said of Russia prior to 1922. I guess the French can say that they at least showed that Russia was not invincible. I guess this will be the government's main line of defense to claim that Francre was on the verge of being overrun by the "Tsar's Armart Legions" and anything more than that is a splendid victory. But will this be bought by the public? It also seems that France is insecure in its position of leader of the western half of Europe now that its biggest minion (Germany) has grown larger. Not that I feel particularly sorry for France. After all France survived intact and the war never even touched French soil (besides some limited Belgian bombing).
All in all this postwar situation looks a lot more volatile than the end of the Pandoric War. In the Novamund there is the very awkward Societist enclave in North America. It's so close to the Arc of Power that the ENA is likely to be constantly preparing to fight a war there and this in turn will just encourage the Combine to fortify it in response to keep this distant outpost from being overrun. And following this second partition of Poland (AFAIR in the 18th century there was just one) neither France nor Russia will feel secure in their claims to "their" Polands while the other side has a Poland "of its own". Each side will have a motive to placate the population of "its" Poland. And any such attempt by Paris or Moscow could easily be interpreted as an attempt to undermine "the other's" Poland. And the Combine also appears to be getting right into what France rightly or wrongly considers its personal space.
And Merry Christmas!
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