Look to the West Volume VIII: The Bear and the Basilisk
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
Nitpick: 'Anse-Kurra' is actually Sumerian and it means "horse" (well, 'mountain ass'; Sumerians were not very familiar with horses, unlike Hittites). The term exists in Hittite as well, as borrowed character from Sumerian via Akkadian (but pronounced very differently in both Akkadian - 'sisum' - and Hittite - probably 'ekkus' or 'akkuwas' or something of the sort).
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IIRC, what's been revealed so far is that in the 50s there's something called the "Sunrise War", which ends with multiple Russian cities getting nuked and causes the collapse of the Russian Empire. Exactly who is doing the nuking and why is still mysterious, although it's probably societists of some sort and the name of the war may be related to Japan, the so-called "Land of the Rising Sun".
Kinda my reaction as well. The future of Russia is confusing as hell.
I guess Zapadnaya/Soviet Russia got back together with Vostochnaya Russia sometime in the early 21st century.
[edited to make the declension less awful]
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I don't believe it's come up, but I thought I'd check in case- have you discussed, thus far, the development of any ideology that is akin to OTL Anarchism? Either the Anarcho-Capitalist or various flavors of Anarcho-Socialist varieties? You have discussed Mentianism (which is the closest thing this TL has to communism) but one would think someone would think up something similar to Anarchism, even if it never goes anywhere.
It's been implied that Sanchez was an anarcho-societist. Or it was at least what he was called by someone on here as part of the discussion.
297.2
Thande
Donor
From: “The Black Twenties” by Errol Mitchell (1973)—
The immediate reaction to Operatio Rubikon in the corridors of power in Fredericksburg was not so much one of panic as one of confused paralysis. General Daniel A. Curtis, a native of Westernesse and then Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance,[13] compared the experience to ‘a hunter, who has been lying doggo and patiently creeping up on a hind for half an hour with rifle in hand, suddenly finding a knife has been slipped between his ribs’. All the Imperial government’s attention had been focused on the war with Russia; or rather, all its military and intelligence attention had been. While America had handled the plague pandemic more competently than many nations, we should not forget the fact that managing the situation was also a vast drain on the Government’s attention and resources.
This is not to say that the Imperial military did not act swiftly; Admiral Wycroft did receive precious minutes of warning of the attack on Daniels’ fleet at the Nicaragua Canal, for example. On a political level, it was a different matter. Even the minority of MCPs who had warned of a Societist military buildup (such as New Englander and Liberal backbencher Stephen Hayes) were stunned by how rapidly the situation had escalated. Princess Daniela and Jorge Suárez were too shocked to take credit that their calls not to underestimate the Combine had not been heeded. Not even they had dreamed that Alfarus would go this far, this fast.
As Bertrand Cazeneuve of France was infamously well aware, this new war was legally unlike anything the Americans had ever seen. There had been no declaration of war, and there could be none in return, as there was nothing to declare war on. There was no ambassador to summon. Gilmore, not the most imaginative of men, tried to carry on as though he could fit reality to his preconception that the Combine was simply a new form of the old UPSA, but hamstrung by simplistic Pacifism. For such a conception to hold, in the face of an attack which had just sunk a greater tonnage of American capital ships in one day than the Russians had managed in four years, illustrates his limitations as a leader. At a time when the Continental Parliament should have rallied around their President, instead doubts began to be voiced even within his own party—and these murmurs would grow louder as the disaster unfolded further.
It was true there was no Combine ambassador to the Court of Cornubia, but in practice, the pragmatic Alfaran regime had required someone to handle matters of trade during the First Interbellum. Professions of udarkismo aside, trade was a useful tool for the Societists to gain influence, most infamously with the supply of Tremuriatix to Carolina. Trade between North and South America might be a trickle of what it had been at its height in the Long Peace, but it was still sufficient to require a ‘local trade official’ to cover the details of such matters. Damgarus Luzius Karriegus was a man who seemed to view the chief qualification for his role as being possessed of supreme arrogance.[14] His manner was frequently compared to that of late-Beiqing Chinese officials of the 1890s who acted as though they were still representatives of a supremely powerful emperor, rather than the mere lackeys of a Russian puppet. Of course, such comparisons were made by Americans during the First Interbellum who dismissed the Combine as a threat; afterwards, a different and earlier Chinese comparison was to compare him to one of the Phoenix Men who had looked down upon the ‘primitive’ Qing and helped the Feng rise to power. The more classically educated might instead compare him to a Roman ambassador who possessed imperium and regarded himself as the personification of his superior state, unwilling to bow to mere barbarians. Regardless, the message was clear.
Despite his offensive manner, Karriegus possessed a keen mind, and indeed some suggest that he deliberately exaggerated his pomposity in order to make others underestimate him. He did not receive much in the way of attention from the IIC (of course, when the war broke out its attention was directed mostly towards Russia). In hindsight, some allege that he was the ‘controller’ of the supposed Societist spy, Gerald Sawyer. Regardless of the veracity or otherwise of this point, Karriegus was certainly closely informed of Alfarus’ plans as they moved forward. Societist ‘diplomatic’ communications were carried out primarily by the unbreakable encryption of the One-Time Pad. The Celatores’ research division had invested heavily in new breakthroughs in ypologetics; unlike Professor Lacke’s ‘Big Betsy’ versatile engine which the IIC used, most Societist mechanical ypologists were smaller, more specialised machines aimed at churning out sufficient OTPs for all communications to use them. Even Markus Garzius claims that his small group had access to them. The Societists did also, it seems, have versatile engines like Lacke’s. It is often claimed that Societist cryptography was superior to the ENA’s in the Black Twenties, but it seems more likely that the distinction was simply that the Americans had been focused on breaking Russian codes and ignored the Societists, while the Societists had been focusing mainly on the French and Americans. With few opportunities for expansion at the expense of the Russians, the latter had not been a priority for Societist codebreakers. As the war escalated, the Societists were eventually unable to keep producing sufficient OTPs for all purposes, and resorted to the use of a code machine called Zesar, similar to the ENA’s Kenning system.[15] Lacke’s team in Harvard did manage to break Zesar in the final weeks of the conflict, too late to do much good; unlike the Societists, they were starting from scratch.
Because of this, Karriegus had already been briefed on the outcomes of the attacks before he was summoned by Gilmore to the Opal Office in order to answer for the the actions of his ‘government’. No minutes of the meeting have ever been declassified; however, rumours leaked from Gilmore’s secretarial staff led to a number of lurid and improbable renditions from the medium of film…
*
From: “The Big Book of 100 War Film Scripts”, edited by P. Alvey (1984)—
GILMORE: So now you attack, like savages, without a declaration of war.
KARRIEGUS: Savages? (Laughs) Did it make your grandfathers savages when you neglected to declare war before you sent your murderers you name soldiers, to kill those you name Indians and take their land? No, Amigo Gilmorus. It made you men of a higher level of civilisation, the Third Society, properly contemptuous of those hunter-gatherers without city or lord who have barely mastered the First.
GILMORE: A higher level of civilisation, is it?
KARRIEGUS: Indeed, as we are to you mere bandit-gangsters who glory in your borders and your fetishes. But just as those men whose land you stole could offer no resistant to a higher level of civilisation, so your Third Society are mere savages before the superiority of the Fourth. Of the Men of Earth. Of Humanity.
GILMORE: Cease your madness! Let us talk! Call off your men! What do you want?
KARRIEGUS: It is not what we want, Amigo Gilmorus, but what the people of this world deserve. You cannot negotiate with the tides of history. We are history. We are inevitable.
GILMORE: And we are Americans. (Pause) We are all Americans, that is what your Mateovaron said, yes? The two great American nations?
KARRIEGUS: Do not insult me, senjor. That Amigo is no more ‘my’ Mateovaron than he is yours. A continent is nothing more than a geographic location. Do not seek artificial common ground with the man who happens to live across the street, as though he is any more your neighbour than he in the next street.
GILMORE: Make sense, sir! You say you want peace! Your whole movement wants peace! Let us have it!
KARRIEGUS: You can have peace, senjor. (Pause) You can have peace, when the last flag is burned and the last map bearing the obscenity called borders is shredded into cat litter. When the last drop of blood has been shed in the name of a lie. For now, wait, and watch. For one day, the sun shall be blotted out, and you shall look up into that shadow, and see the wings over the world…
*
From: “Decade of Hell: The Black Twenties” by Michael P. T. Emmerson (1988)—
…regardless of any such claimed rhetoric, one point Karriegus was very careful to make to Gilmore – evidently on Alfarus’ orders – was to reinforce a declaration Alfarus himself made on VoxHumana a few hours after the initial Rubikon attacks. Alfarus’ words, in Novalatina, were rebroadcast in their original and in English translation by Imperial Photel stations as well (despite some efforts by the government to impose censorship). They had often been delivered anonymously, recorded on groovetapes, to the Photel studios. Evidently, the Societists had been planning this for a while.
Alfarus’ speech, in English translation, goes as follows:
“Amigos and Amigas, Fellow Humans of All Classes, rejoice in jubilance! I am here to tell you of a successful breakthrough by our brave law enforcers in their operations to subdue the bandit gangs squatting on parts of the Zones and oppressing their humans with their menaces money. I know you are all worthy folk who support the bold Celatores, but if you have doubted in your heart of hearts whether you will live to see true progress made at ridding the world of the gang infestation, take heed of the miracles we see unfolding before us.
“The humans living in bondage in the Unliberated Zones have seen how little their gangmasters care for them. Many of them have died senselessly from this horrible plague, while their resources are flung at grotesquely murdering their fellow men for the sake of a coloured rag on a stick. Many have seen the light of Sanchez, and are ready to join us, their brothers and sisters, in the eternal peace and prosperity we already know.
“Was it the great Sanchez, or his disciple and my friend, Raúl Caraíbas, who said that a man who burns his apple tree and loses all twelve of its apples, rather than share any one of them with his red-haired neighbour, is on the path to destruction? That small-minded pettiness, that narrow focus on ‘me and mine’, like some toddler who thinks he can stand up to an adult—that is what we fight. Not in joy of violence, but in the necessity to subdue a drunken madman before he can harm the innocent.
“The people of the largest island of Zone 11, Zon11Ins1, are only the latest to recognise the lie they have been trapped in. They have been starving and plague-ridden for no reason other than because their gangmaster was bullied by a larger gang, that calling itself ‘the Empire of North America’. But now that gang has grown weak from its long war. Our brave Celatores are even now aiding the people of Zon11Ins1 in throwing off their oppressors and returning the island to the legitimate rulership of the Rej of Zone 11. Incidentally, in the process, we cleared out a number of these ‘American’ bullies who were trying to enforce their gangmaster’s will on that Zone.
“We will not stop there, of course. There are other parts of Zone 11 whose local illegitimate bandit regimes are still in thrall to so-called America, the regime squatting on Zones 13, 9 and 4. But soon Augusdus Guelfus, the gangmaster of the America gang, will find the influence of his weakened bully-boys fading from Zone 11 altogether. In time, he will find the humans of the zones he claims to rule directly joining them.
“I ask you for patience. This is not the bloody and mindless wars of the Third Society nation-gangs we have seen of late. This is a liberation, and only a fool fights to keep the irons on his hands and the ball chained to his feet. Such men will choke to death on the ill wind of their own destruction that blows hope for the human race. Soon enough, it will all be over, and together we will rejoice anew in a world where yet more humans can live their lives in peace.
“Kapud Alfarus, on behalf of the 28 Zonal Rejes, the only true and legitimate rulers of Humanity, out.”
Most American commentators focused on his fiery rhetoric, of course. Some, still influenced by analyses like those of Peter Randall, focused on the implication that Alfarus intended to attack further targets in ‘Zone 11’. It was reasonably well known that the Societists’ definition of Zone 11 consisted of the Caribbean plus most of Mexico and Guatemala. His wording also seemed to suggest that any Societist attack on continental North America north of the Rio Grande (Zones 13, 9 and 4) was a distant future aspiration. This influenced Gilmore’s immediate actions, though his own preconceptions had already led him to fixate on the Pablo Sanchez Canal as supposedly key to the Societists’ plans. It is not clear if this was deliberate deception on Alfarus’ part, as his plans – as well as those of Dominikus and Legadus Rivarius – were still evolving at this time.
What was certainly deliberate was the use of the phrase ‘choking to death on the ill wind’ as an allusion to death-luft. The Societists were darkly hinting to their ‘opponents’ that they would be unleashing the Scientific Weapon upon them. The lesson taken by the Americans was to ensure any troops facing the Societists were equipped with modern, frontline anti-luft protective equipment and training – as those facing the Russians already had been. Some did wonder just why Alfarus was so keen to emphasise this point; perhaps merely an intimidatory tactic for the less-well-equipped Cuban and Guatemalan troops, but some more cynical IIC analysts suggested there was an ulterior motive. They argued that soldiers equipped with counter-luft equipment (such as rubberised suits and filtration masks) were necessarily disadvantaged in other roles due to impaired movement and vision, especially in the tropical heat that would worsen as the months passed. The implication was that Alfarus was trying to make American soldiers paranoid about the need to don such equipment by default, and thus undermine their overall performance, when perhaps the Societists had less of a death-luft arsenal than thought. They did not need to deploy the Scientific Weapon every time; it was enough for American soldiers merely to fear the possibility and hamper themselves accordingly.
It was a reasonable theory, but not sufficiently compelling to dissuade the mainstream position, and American troops were indeed instructed in the importance of counter-luft training and use of equipment. As the world would later learn, the analysts had had it half right; the purpose of the rhetoric was indeed to make the Americans focus on counter-luft equipment and training, but not for the reasons they had imagined.
Despite such poring over the speech’s details, one crucial point was missed. Very few American commentators were sufficiently familiar with Societist writings to note that Alfarus, dictator in all but name of all Societists, had seemingly completely fluffed his invocation of Sanchez’s writings. It was odd he’d admit to confusion over whether Sanchez or Caraíbas wrote something, to start with – though it did mean that even those experts who knew Sanchez had never written about an apple tree, assumed Caraíbas must have somewhere instead. Perhaps a few of them assumed Alfarus was mistakenly remembering Sanchez’s parable about bobbing for apples.[16]
Nobody, it appears, even the IIC, considered that Alfarus might have said all of that just as an excuse to throw out the words ‘twelve’ and ‘red’. Or that these terms might correspond to something in a set of code phrases memorised by Societist Agendes in the ENA…
*
From: “Mme. Mercier’s Diaries, Volume III: Exile’s Return” (1978, authorised English translation 1981)—
February 23rd 1926.
I find myself with little ink to spare for domestic matters at present. We play the most perilous of games with France’s future. The Duc knows it, Bertrand knows it, I know it. But what can we do? We cannot afford to hedge our bets across the Rouge-et-Noir table as we might in happier times, taking small losses in return of a measured hope for moderate wins. We must instead go all-in one one number and pray to the good God that was have not miscalculated.
Our informal feelers to the Russians are moving apace. For now, they work through their puppet Courland and we through Navarre, playing on the latter’s historic ties. If our tentative discussions are exposed, the hope is that this surreptitious action through proxies will allow deniability. Yet Petrograd seems eager to proceed. I dread to see what Pasha’s opening gambit will be; he will probably demand we help him conquer Constantinople, or force the Americans to give him all of Noochaland, or something equally absurd.
The Americans. Their situation weighs heavily on my mind. The reports we receive are still garbled, censored, affected by a will from Fredericksburg to suppress the reality of the circumstances. But that reality is reflected by the urgent tone of the despatches we have received from their Ambassador, M. Clinton, and the climate which our own, the Duc de Broglie, now pervades their capital. This is no mere border skirmish. The Societists have exposed their claimed Pacifism as a mere flag of convenience. In deed, if not in heart, the old Provinces-Unies is back. And with their opening volley, they have sank a large part of the entire Imperial Navy.
I have found time to speak with my old friend Admiral Lefebvre. I remember Roger when he was youthful and dashing; in retirement, he has the build and the big red face more suited to his name than his actual history.[17] But his mind is still keen, even if his politics belong more to the party I left long ago, and its extremes at that. He was called back to man a desk months ago, and has seen that idiot Chambord’s reports and read between the lines. “It is the end for war at sea as we know it, my little Horatie,” he says (recalling my youthful fixed idea to idolise and emulate Horatie Bonaparte). “Just as my grandfather mourned the end of wood and sail, said that all the soul had gone out of La Royale. Well now, ships shall be reduced merely to floating aeroports.”
He takes a drag on his pipe and scowls at the foul taste of the faux tobacco. “That is the lesson the black-flag boys have seized with both hands, while the rest of us pussy-foot around it, fearful of offending tradition. Old men, old admirals! Men like me! I am not so blind, little Horatie!”
He sips his glass of beer. At least the beer is still good; the Germans have to pay us for all the ammunition we sell them somehow, after all, and not even war, plague and racial strife could stop them getting the breweries of Prague up and running again. “Mark my words. There is no way – no way – that lineships can stand up to these new ways of attacking from the air. They tell me it is like wishing a steeltooth into existence, without having to patiently get an ironshark all the way there under cover. Or doing the same for an artillery shell from a coastal battery; but instead, a bomb dropped from flying artillery, dozens of leagues from land. It would be like asking one of Marshal Saxe’s cavalry brigades to stand up to cingular guns or Russian armarts! No, the rules have changed! No way, I say!”
For emphasis, he gesticulates with his pipe. A little burning ash falls on the map of the Caribbean Sea we have been studying together. Not far from the cross I have marked in pencil, the map is singed, irregular brown spots appearing. It is as though he has marked the watery graves of the American lineships.
“What do you think will happen next?” I ask.
Roger shrugs expansively, colourfully. One does not truly appreciate our gestures in this country until one travels. One does not even have to leave the Francophone world. I was shocked on my visit to Pérousie how restrained and reserved they are by comparison, hardened by a frontier country where showing emotion was equated with showing weakness. As some of their more radical parlementaires opine, perhaps they no longer see themselves as French at all, anymore than the Americans see themselves as English. It is a frightening thought.
“What happens next?” Roger asks, shocking me from my reverie. “I am not on the cutting edge, Mademoiselle.” I am never sure if he is knowingly making a condescending reference to our age difference and the fact he knew me as a young girl, or if he has genuinely forgotten my marriage. Perhaps he prefers not to think about the circumstances of how I left the Verts. “But I can guess. It is the end of lineships, the end of big guns. Aerocraft can better take on other ships; they can also bomb the coastline effectively. These so-called hiveships will be the new measurement of sea power. But they can still be sunk by ironsharks, I think, so they will need protecting; dentists, frigates and the like will survive.”
He knit his brows for a moment, thinking hard. “Perhaps, as dromes continue to improve, their range will, too. Maybe hiveships will not only be used for what lineships are – have been, in the past,” he added bitterly. “Possibly they might even be able to send dromes deep into the interior of a country; park a hiveship in the Baltic and you might be able to bomb Moscow,” he suggested.
That seemed like an impossible suggestion, but so many impossible things have become a reality since I was a girl. I only wish more of them had been in fields other than war.
I took my leave soon afterwards, wishing him good health, privately glad that the plague had spared him. I did not point out that he had taken my last question in a different direction than I had expected, if still a worthy one. He had focused on how naval doctrine will change in this brave new world the Societists have unleashed, what sea power will be like in years to come. But I am focused on the now. I want to know what will happen in this new war.
I have never been too fond of the Americans as a people, always seen them as only allies of convenience. But from what de Broglie hints at, from what I know of the Societists’ brutal activities in Africa and the East Indies – that, I would not wish on anyone.
[This Mme Mercier segment has been split for length; it continues in the next update]
[13] The roles of Master-General, Lieutenant-General and Secretary-General of the Ordnance have been duplicated in the ENA from their British originals; the Master-General is effectively the most senior military officer in the Army and also de facto commander-in-chief, an office which does not legally exist under the Imperial Constitution. (This is partly because of an inherited American distrust for a standing army, much like the mother country, which leads to euphemistic titles for offices).
[14] Damgar is a Sumerian word (possibly of Akkadian origin) for merchant or trader.
[15] Zesar (Caesar in Novalatina) is named in reference to Julius Caesar’s ‘Caesar Cipher’ used on campaign, although the latter is a simple substitution cipher that is easily broken. Both Zesar and Kenning (named for a riddling figure of speech in Old English and Old Norse poetry – revived thanks to Iceland being closely connected with the ENA) are purely mechanical code machines without electrical components. Their level of encryption is more comparable to a superior and refined form of the Vigenère cipher (simple mechanical versions of which were used during the US Civil War in OTL among other uses, although they would become breakable from the 1860s onwards) than anything approaching the better-known Enigma machine.
[16] See Interlude #18 in Volume IV.
[17] An allusion to ‘Roger’ being seen as the stereotypical name of a butcher in French-speaking cultures.
The immediate reaction to Operatio Rubikon in the corridors of power in Fredericksburg was not so much one of panic as one of confused paralysis. General Daniel A. Curtis, a native of Westernesse and then Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance,[13] compared the experience to ‘a hunter, who has been lying doggo and patiently creeping up on a hind for half an hour with rifle in hand, suddenly finding a knife has been slipped between his ribs’. All the Imperial government’s attention had been focused on the war with Russia; or rather, all its military and intelligence attention had been. While America had handled the plague pandemic more competently than many nations, we should not forget the fact that managing the situation was also a vast drain on the Government’s attention and resources.
This is not to say that the Imperial military did not act swiftly; Admiral Wycroft did receive precious minutes of warning of the attack on Daniels’ fleet at the Nicaragua Canal, for example. On a political level, it was a different matter. Even the minority of MCPs who had warned of a Societist military buildup (such as New Englander and Liberal backbencher Stephen Hayes) were stunned by how rapidly the situation had escalated. Princess Daniela and Jorge Suárez were too shocked to take credit that their calls not to underestimate the Combine had not been heeded. Not even they had dreamed that Alfarus would go this far, this fast.
As Bertrand Cazeneuve of France was infamously well aware, this new war was legally unlike anything the Americans had ever seen. There had been no declaration of war, and there could be none in return, as there was nothing to declare war on. There was no ambassador to summon. Gilmore, not the most imaginative of men, tried to carry on as though he could fit reality to his preconception that the Combine was simply a new form of the old UPSA, but hamstrung by simplistic Pacifism. For such a conception to hold, in the face of an attack which had just sunk a greater tonnage of American capital ships in one day than the Russians had managed in four years, illustrates his limitations as a leader. At a time when the Continental Parliament should have rallied around their President, instead doubts began to be voiced even within his own party—and these murmurs would grow louder as the disaster unfolded further.
It was true there was no Combine ambassador to the Court of Cornubia, but in practice, the pragmatic Alfaran regime had required someone to handle matters of trade during the First Interbellum. Professions of udarkismo aside, trade was a useful tool for the Societists to gain influence, most infamously with the supply of Tremuriatix to Carolina. Trade between North and South America might be a trickle of what it had been at its height in the Long Peace, but it was still sufficient to require a ‘local trade official’ to cover the details of such matters. Damgarus Luzius Karriegus was a man who seemed to view the chief qualification for his role as being possessed of supreme arrogance.[14] His manner was frequently compared to that of late-Beiqing Chinese officials of the 1890s who acted as though they were still representatives of a supremely powerful emperor, rather than the mere lackeys of a Russian puppet. Of course, such comparisons were made by Americans during the First Interbellum who dismissed the Combine as a threat; afterwards, a different and earlier Chinese comparison was to compare him to one of the Phoenix Men who had looked down upon the ‘primitive’ Qing and helped the Feng rise to power. The more classically educated might instead compare him to a Roman ambassador who possessed imperium and regarded himself as the personification of his superior state, unwilling to bow to mere barbarians. Regardless, the message was clear.
Despite his offensive manner, Karriegus possessed a keen mind, and indeed some suggest that he deliberately exaggerated his pomposity in order to make others underestimate him. He did not receive much in the way of attention from the IIC (of course, when the war broke out its attention was directed mostly towards Russia). In hindsight, some allege that he was the ‘controller’ of the supposed Societist spy, Gerald Sawyer. Regardless of the veracity or otherwise of this point, Karriegus was certainly closely informed of Alfarus’ plans as they moved forward. Societist ‘diplomatic’ communications were carried out primarily by the unbreakable encryption of the One-Time Pad. The Celatores’ research division had invested heavily in new breakthroughs in ypologetics; unlike Professor Lacke’s ‘Big Betsy’ versatile engine which the IIC used, most Societist mechanical ypologists were smaller, more specialised machines aimed at churning out sufficient OTPs for all communications to use them. Even Markus Garzius claims that his small group had access to them. The Societists did also, it seems, have versatile engines like Lacke’s. It is often claimed that Societist cryptography was superior to the ENA’s in the Black Twenties, but it seems more likely that the distinction was simply that the Americans had been focused on breaking Russian codes and ignored the Societists, while the Societists had been focusing mainly on the French and Americans. With few opportunities for expansion at the expense of the Russians, the latter had not been a priority for Societist codebreakers. As the war escalated, the Societists were eventually unable to keep producing sufficient OTPs for all purposes, and resorted to the use of a code machine called Zesar, similar to the ENA’s Kenning system.[15] Lacke’s team in Harvard did manage to break Zesar in the final weeks of the conflict, too late to do much good; unlike the Societists, they were starting from scratch.
Because of this, Karriegus had already been briefed on the outcomes of the attacks before he was summoned by Gilmore to the Opal Office in order to answer for the the actions of his ‘government’. No minutes of the meeting have ever been declassified; however, rumours leaked from Gilmore’s secretarial staff led to a number of lurid and improbable renditions from the medium of film…
*
From: “The Big Book of 100 War Film Scripts”, edited by P. Alvey (1984)—
GILMORE: So now you attack, like savages, without a declaration of war.
KARRIEGUS: Savages? (Laughs) Did it make your grandfathers savages when you neglected to declare war before you sent your murderers you name soldiers, to kill those you name Indians and take their land? No, Amigo Gilmorus. It made you men of a higher level of civilisation, the Third Society, properly contemptuous of those hunter-gatherers without city or lord who have barely mastered the First.
GILMORE: A higher level of civilisation, is it?
KARRIEGUS: Indeed, as we are to you mere bandit-gangsters who glory in your borders and your fetishes. But just as those men whose land you stole could offer no resistant to a higher level of civilisation, so your Third Society are mere savages before the superiority of the Fourth. Of the Men of Earth. Of Humanity.
GILMORE: Cease your madness! Let us talk! Call off your men! What do you want?
KARRIEGUS: It is not what we want, Amigo Gilmorus, but what the people of this world deserve. You cannot negotiate with the tides of history. We are history. We are inevitable.
GILMORE: And we are Americans. (Pause) We are all Americans, that is what your Mateovaron said, yes? The two great American nations?
KARRIEGUS: Do not insult me, senjor. That Amigo is no more ‘my’ Mateovaron than he is yours. A continent is nothing more than a geographic location. Do not seek artificial common ground with the man who happens to live across the street, as though he is any more your neighbour than he in the next street.
GILMORE: Make sense, sir! You say you want peace! Your whole movement wants peace! Let us have it!
KARRIEGUS: You can have peace, senjor. (Pause) You can have peace, when the last flag is burned and the last map bearing the obscenity called borders is shredded into cat litter. When the last drop of blood has been shed in the name of a lie. For now, wait, and watch. For one day, the sun shall be blotted out, and you shall look up into that shadow, and see the wings over the world…
*
From: “Decade of Hell: The Black Twenties” by Michael P. T. Emmerson (1988)—
…regardless of any such claimed rhetoric, one point Karriegus was very careful to make to Gilmore – evidently on Alfarus’ orders – was to reinforce a declaration Alfarus himself made on VoxHumana a few hours after the initial Rubikon attacks. Alfarus’ words, in Novalatina, were rebroadcast in their original and in English translation by Imperial Photel stations as well (despite some efforts by the government to impose censorship). They had often been delivered anonymously, recorded on groovetapes, to the Photel studios. Evidently, the Societists had been planning this for a while.
Alfarus’ speech, in English translation, goes as follows:
“Amigos and Amigas, Fellow Humans of All Classes, rejoice in jubilance! I am here to tell you of a successful breakthrough by our brave law enforcers in their operations to subdue the bandit gangs squatting on parts of the Zones and oppressing their humans with their menaces money. I know you are all worthy folk who support the bold Celatores, but if you have doubted in your heart of hearts whether you will live to see true progress made at ridding the world of the gang infestation, take heed of the miracles we see unfolding before us.
“The humans living in bondage in the Unliberated Zones have seen how little their gangmasters care for them. Many of them have died senselessly from this horrible plague, while their resources are flung at grotesquely murdering their fellow men for the sake of a coloured rag on a stick. Many have seen the light of Sanchez, and are ready to join us, their brothers and sisters, in the eternal peace and prosperity we already know.
“Was it the great Sanchez, or his disciple and my friend, Raúl Caraíbas, who said that a man who burns his apple tree and loses all twelve of its apples, rather than share any one of them with his red-haired neighbour, is on the path to destruction? That small-minded pettiness, that narrow focus on ‘me and mine’, like some toddler who thinks he can stand up to an adult—that is what we fight. Not in joy of violence, but in the necessity to subdue a drunken madman before he can harm the innocent.
“The people of the largest island of Zone 11, Zon11Ins1, are only the latest to recognise the lie they have been trapped in. They have been starving and plague-ridden for no reason other than because their gangmaster was bullied by a larger gang, that calling itself ‘the Empire of North America’. But now that gang has grown weak from its long war. Our brave Celatores are even now aiding the people of Zon11Ins1 in throwing off their oppressors and returning the island to the legitimate rulership of the Rej of Zone 11. Incidentally, in the process, we cleared out a number of these ‘American’ bullies who were trying to enforce their gangmaster’s will on that Zone.
“We will not stop there, of course. There are other parts of Zone 11 whose local illegitimate bandit regimes are still in thrall to so-called America, the regime squatting on Zones 13, 9 and 4. But soon Augusdus Guelfus, the gangmaster of the America gang, will find the influence of his weakened bully-boys fading from Zone 11 altogether. In time, he will find the humans of the zones he claims to rule directly joining them.
“I ask you for patience. This is not the bloody and mindless wars of the Third Society nation-gangs we have seen of late. This is a liberation, and only a fool fights to keep the irons on his hands and the ball chained to his feet. Such men will choke to death on the ill wind of their own destruction that blows hope for the human race. Soon enough, it will all be over, and together we will rejoice anew in a world where yet more humans can live their lives in peace.
“Kapud Alfarus, on behalf of the 28 Zonal Rejes, the only true and legitimate rulers of Humanity, out.”
Most American commentators focused on his fiery rhetoric, of course. Some, still influenced by analyses like those of Peter Randall, focused on the implication that Alfarus intended to attack further targets in ‘Zone 11’. It was reasonably well known that the Societists’ definition of Zone 11 consisted of the Caribbean plus most of Mexico and Guatemala. His wording also seemed to suggest that any Societist attack on continental North America north of the Rio Grande (Zones 13, 9 and 4) was a distant future aspiration. This influenced Gilmore’s immediate actions, though his own preconceptions had already led him to fixate on the Pablo Sanchez Canal as supposedly key to the Societists’ plans. It is not clear if this was deliberate deception on Alfarus’ part, as his plans – as well as those of Dominikus and Legadus Rivarius – were still evolving at this time.
What was certainly deliberate was the use of the phrase ‘choking to death on the ill wind’ as an allusion to death-luft. The Societists were darkly hinting to their ‘opponents’ that they would be unleashing the Scientific Weapon upon them. The lesson taken by the Americans was to ensure any troops facing the Societists were equipped with modern, frontline anti-luft protective equipment and training – as those facing the Russians already had been. Some did wonder just why Alfarus was so keen to emphasise this point; perhaps merely an intimidatory tactic for the less-well-equipped Cuban and Guatemalan troops, but some more cynical IIC analysts suggested there was an ulterior motive. They argued that soldiers equipped with counter-luft equipment (such as rubberised suits and filtration masks) were necessarily disadvantaged in other roles due to impaired movement and vision, especially in the tropical heat that would worsen as the months passed. The implication was that Alfarus was trying to make American soldiers paranoid about the need to don such equipment by default, and thus undermine their overall performance, when perhaps the Societists had less of a death-luft arsenal than thought. They did not need to deploy the Scientific Weapon every time; it was enough for American soldiers merely to fear the possibility and hamper themselves accordingly.
It was a reasonable theory, but not sufficiently compelling to dissuade the mainstream position, and American troops were indeed instructed in the importance of counter-luft training and use of equipment. As the world would later learn, the analysts had had it half right; the purpose of the rhetoric was indeed to make the Americans focus on counter-luft equipment and training, but not for the reasons they had imagined.
Despite such poring over the speech’s details, one crucial point was missed. Very few American commentators were sufficiently familiar with Societist writings to note that Alfarus, dictator in all but name of all Societists, had seemingly completely fluffed his invocation of Sanchez’s writings. It was odd he’d admit to confusion over whether Sanchez or Caraíbas wrote something, to start with – though it did mean that even those experts who knew Sanchez had never written about an apple tree, assumed Caraíbas must have somewhere instead. Perhaps a few of them assumed Alfarus was mistakenly remembering Sanchez’s parable about bobbing for apples.[16]
Nobody, it appears, even the IIC, considered that Alfarus might have said all of that just as an excuse to throw out the words ‘twelve’ and ‘red’. Or that these terms might correspond to something in a set of code phrases memorised by Societist Agendes in the ENA…
*
From: “Mme. Mercier’s Diaries, Volume III: Exile’s Return” (1978, authorised English translation 1981)—
February 23rd 1926.
I find myself with little ink to spare for domestic matters at present. We play the most perilous of games with France’s future. The Duc knows it, Bertrand knows it, I know it. But what can we do? We cannot afford to hedge our bets across the Rouge-et-Noir table as we might in happier times, taking small losses in return of a measured hope for moderate wins. We must instead go all-in one one number and pray to the good God that was have not miscalculated.
Our informal feelers to the Russians are moving apace. For now, they work through their puppet Courland and we through Navarre, playing on the latter’s historic ties. If our tentative discussions are exposed, the hope is that this surreptitious action through proxies will allow deniability. Yet Petrograd seems eager to proceed. I dread to see what Pasha’s opening gambit will be; he will probably demand we help him conquer Constantinople, or force the Americans to give him all of Noochaland, or something equally absurd.
The Americans. Their situation weighs heavily on my mind. The reports we receive are still garbled, censored, affected by a will from Fredericksburg to suppress the reality of the circumstances. But that reality is reflected by the urgent tone of the despatches we have received from their Ambassador, M. Clinton, and the climate which our own, the Duc de Broglie, now pervades their capital. This is no mere border skirmish. The Societists have exposed their claimed Pacifism as a mere flag of convenience. In deed, if not in heart, the old Provinces-Unies is back. And with their opening volley, they have sank a large part of the entire Imperial Navy.
I have found time to speak with my old friend Admiral Lefebvre. I remember Roger when he was youthful and dashing; in retirement, he has the build and the big red face more suited to his name than his actual history.[17] But his mind is still keen, even if his politics belong more to the party I left long ago, and its extremes at that. He was called back to man a desk months ago, and has seen that idiot Chambord’s reports and read between the lines. “It is the end for war at sea as we know it, my little Horatie,” he says (recalling my youthful fixed idea to idolise and emulate Horatie Bonaparte). “Just as my grandfather mourned the end of wood and sail, said that all the soul had gone out of La Royale. Well now, ships shall be reduced merely to floating aeroports.”
He takes a drag on his pipe and scowls at the foul taste of the faux tobacco. “That is the lesson the black-flag boys have seized with both hands, while the rest of us pussy-foot around it, fearful of offending tradition. Old men, old admirals! Men like me! I am not so blind, little Horatie!”
He sips his glass of beer. At least the beer is still good; the Germans have to pay us for all the ammunition we sell them somehow, after all, and not even war, plague and racial strife could stop them getting the breweries of Prague up and running again. “Mark my words. There is no way – no way – that lineships can stand up to these new ways of attacking from the air. They tell me it is like wishing a steeltooth into existence, without having to patiently get an ironshark all the way there under cover. Or doing the same for an artillery shell from a coastal battery; but instead, a bomb dropped from flying artillery, dozens of leagues from land. It would be like asking one of Marshal Saxe’s cavalry brigades to stand up to cingular guns or Russian armarts! No, the rules have changed! No way, I say!”
For emphasis, he gesticulates with his pipe. A little burning ash falls on the map of the Caribbean Sea we have been studying together. Not far from the cross I have marked in pencil, the map is singed, irregular brown spots appearing. It is as though he has marked the watery graves of the American lineships.
“What do you think will happen next?” I ask.
Roger shrugs expansively, colourfully. One does not truly appreciate our gestures in this country until one travels. One does not even have to leave the Francophone world. I was shocked on my visit to Pérousie how restrained and reserved they are by comparison, hardened by a frontier country where showing emotion was equated with showing weakness. As some of their more radical parlementaires opine, perhaps they no longer see themselves as French at all, anymore than the Americans see themselves as English. It is a frightening thought.
“What happens next?” Roger asks, shocking me from my reverie. “I am not on the cutting edge, Mademoiselle.” I am never sure if he is knowingly making a condescending reference to our age difference and the fact he knew me as a young girl, or if he has genuinely forgotten my marriage. Perhaps he prefers not to think about the circumstances of how I left the Verts. “But I can guess. It is the end of lineships, the end of big guns. Aerocraft can better take on other ships; they can also bomb the coastline effectively. These so-called hiveships will be the new measurement of sea power. But they can still be sunk by ironsharks, I think, so they will need protecting; dentists, frigates and the like will survive.”
He knit his brows for a moment, thinking hard. “Perhaps, as dromes continue to improve, their range will, too. Maybe hiveships will not only be used for what lineships are – have been, in the past,” he added bitterly. “Possibly they might even be able to send dromes deep into the interior of a country; park a hiveship in the Baltic and you might be able to bomb Moscow,” he suggested.
That seemed like an impossible suggestion, but so many impossible things have become a reality since I was a girl. I only wish more of them had been in fields other than war.
I took my leave soon afterwards, wishing him good health, privately glad that the plague had spared him. I did not point out that he had taken my last question in a different direction than I had expected, if still a worthy one. He had focused on how naval doctrine will change in this brave new world the Societists have unleashed, what sea power will be like in years to come. But I am focused on the now. I want to know what will happen in this new war.
I have never been too fond of the Americans as a people, always seen them as only allies of convenience. But from what de Broglie hints at, from what I know of the Societists’ brutal activities in Africa and the East Indies – that, I would not wish on anyone.
[This Mme Mercier segment has been split for length; it continues in the next update]
[13] The roles of Master-General, Lieutenant-General and Secretary-General of the Ordnance have been duplicated in the ENA from their British originals; the Master-General is effectively the most senior military officer in the Army and also de facto commander-in-chief, an office which does not legally exist under the Imperial Constitution. (This is partly because of an inherited American distrust for a standing army, much like the mother country, which leads to euphemistic titles for offices).
[14] Damgar is a Sumerian word (possibly of Akkadian origin) for merchant or trader.
[15] Zesar (Caesar in Novalatina) is named in reference to Julius Caesar’s ‘Caesar Cipher’ used on campaign, although the latter is a simple substitution cipher that is easily broken. Both Zesar and Kenning (named for a riddling figure of speech in Old English and Old Norse poetry – revived thanks to Iceland being closely connected with the ENA) are purely mechanical code machines without electrical components. Their level of encryption is more comparable to a superior and refined form of the Vigenère cipher (simple mechanical versions of which were used during the US Civil War in OTL among other uses, although they would become breakable from the 1860s onwards) than anything approaching the better-known Enigma machine.
[16] See Interlude #18 in Volume IV.
[17] An allusion to ‘Roger’ being seen as the stereotypical name of a butcher in French-speaking cultures.
My prediction: to make the deployment of chemical countermeasures to state-of-the-art rubberized suits more shocking and awesome.
And here I thought you meant the red face looked like he was suffering from a high fever
Idk if you ever mentioned, but I'm curious how the boundaries of the "Zones" were created - who laid them out and on what lines? Cultural affinities are of course irrelevant to a Societist, but geographically, if Zone 11 is, say, centered around the Caribbean, it would make just as much if not more sense to put Florida in Zone 11 rather than Mexico....
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I don't think the actual parameters were described, except that geographic details and cultural history were completely ignored and they were designed to not be able to survive independently of one another. There was some discussion given the number of them (28) that it could involve some modification of standard time zones OTL (24) but that was just a theory.
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Excellent updates; finally getting into the Midnight of the Nations (patent pending)!
I imagine I'm reading too much into this, but between this line and the "Black and White Courts", it does make me wonder if the post-Combine Carolina is two states, a Black Carolina and White Carolina. Given how much ink has been spilt highlighting the racial issues in independent Carolina, it does seem like an appropriately Diversitarian solution that might be on the table.
Foreshadowing intensifies...
I imagine I'm reading too much into this, but between this line and the "Black and White Courts", it does make me wonder if the post-Combine Carolina is two states, a Black Carolina and White Carolina. Given how much ink has been spilt highlighting the racial issues in independent Carolina, it does seem like an appropriately Diversitarian solution that might be on the table.
Foreshadowing intensifies...
I read the thing about the successor states as talking about the South American states e.g. Platinea
Yeah, on re-reading later, I figured that's what was meant. But a boy can dream...
297.3
Thande
Donor
[cont'd from last segment]
February 24th 1926.
Meeting with the Cabinet. Bertrand is positive about the noises coming indirectly from the Russians. We shall float the idea of a ceasefire. I find myself in the crux of a dilemma. Anything that spares another poor boy from a bullet in Poland should be considered. But I worry the Russians are trying to split us off from our allies. We must tell the Germans and Italians, probably also the Scandinavians and English, if a ceasefire is coming – and then we have to reveal our negotiations. The longer the latter go on alone, the more betrayed they will feel. What if this is all a ruse on Pasha’s part to divide the alliance? It is the kind of low cunning I associate with that stain of a man.
I raise the fact that M. Clinton has asked for a meeting with me. It is clear he and his Government want France to do something. It does not take a genius to predict that Gilmore hopes to interpret the Treaty of Bermuda as requiring us to declare war on the Societists, and encourage our allies to do the same.
Bertrand shakes his head firmly. “You know what the people – and the Rubis,” he adds darkly, “would say if we added another war to our balancesheet. Especially before we can reveal the ceasefire with Russia.”
The Duc looks haunted. “It seems only yesterday they were terrorists lobbing grenades at my men in São Paulo,” he murmurs, his eyes distant, fixed on the past not the present. “Now they humble one of the world’s great powers. What have they been planning?”
Vachaud coughs, trying to return us to immediate concerns. “I agree with Citoyen Cazeneuve,” he says, raising a faint smile from the latter. It began as a running joke that he was reluctant to call the Prime Minister ‘Bertrand’, but also refused to call him ‘Monsieur Cazeneuve’, so resorted to a form of address from his own party’s despicable tradition. Frankly, I find the use of Jacobin language offensive, but Bertrand laughs it off. So long as he doesn’t call me Citoyenne Mercier, I won’t demonstrate the self-defence savate moves I learned as a young Cytherean on him.
“The people will not take it,” Vachaud continues. “We have already asked so much of them, and they have delivered. Furthermore, I thought half the point of bribing Gilmore with our old colonies was to finally draw a line under that whole ill-fated enterprise, and proclaim that the Novamund is no longer our business, one way or the other.”
“In theory,” Bertrand grunts. “In practice, yes, of course Héloïse is right, he will invoke the Treaty of Bermuda. We asked them to fight for us, they will do the same.” He pauses, drumming his fingers on the table with its map of Europe. “Wait. Vincent – Pichereau – was involved with the drafting of the treaty. If he condemns us supporting the Americans, can we not call him a hypocrite?”
I shake my head, privately both impressed by, and mildly disgusted at, Bertrand’s politicking at a time like this. “It’s too much of a stretch; he was only involved with the preliminary stages, as you well know.” I did not come out and say that Bertrand himself was the key mover in the final signing of the treaty, though on paper it was that idiot Changarnier who’d been Foreign Minister at the time.
“There has to be something,” Vachaud argues. “Do we have the text of the treaty?”
It is found soon enough. We pore over it.
I would not compare even Vachaud to Pasha, but he, too, has a certain compelling low cunning. He finds a loophole. Bertrand likes it. The Duc likes it. Both are clearly just desperate for all this to be somebody else’s problem, so they can focus on all the delicate balancing acts of the proposed ceasefire and negotiations with Russia.
I do not like it. I do not like it at all. The Americans will see it as a slap in the face, a betrayal. It could poison France’s image abroad for decades to come, that we do not honour our promises. The sort of pedantic lawyering that Vachaud advocates will cut no ice.
I am asked for my alternative. I propose we do, indeed, declare war, but then take no explicit action as a consequence. The Societists already have a trade boycott with us as a warring power, already refuse to trade us their chemical methods for tackling the plague. They can scarcely spare any of their so-called Celatores to attack us when they are fighting the entire Empire of North America. It will assuage the Americans, at least in the short term – and, I add, let us take direct action against Societists operating in Spain. I knew that was a mistake as soon as I said it; they have all long openly scoffed at what our sources there claim. Even if there’s any truth to it, the Duc says, Orléans will soon deal with it once he gets back from his latest adventure.[18]
I lose the vote, as I knew I would. I fear this is a great mistake for France, one that will resonate down the years. For a moment, I almost wonder if it is worth threatening to withdraw my support and bring down the Government. But they would know I am bluffing; we cannot afford to endanger a united front at this fragile moment. Any sign of disunity among the alliance and the Russians would pounce.
Nonetheless, on the way home from the meeting, I call on Alain [Orliac]. He has always been my strongest supporter among the coalition Diamantine caucus, and key in whipping my supporters to back the war bills. Though he was only a minor figure in government when René was still with me, he has grown into his role.
Now, I tell him it is only a matter of time before the Government collapses, whether by the Duc’s hand through stepping down, or not. We need to prepare for a snap election, held under plague conditions no less – things are just about under control at present, but the movements of a campaign could ignite the dark flame again. I sincerely hope that Dr Vicaire’s new drugs can save us.
Regardless, it is clear that this election will be like none we have ever seen. The rumour is that Vincent and his Vert breakaway lickspittles, like little Marin, will keep their parties formally separate but issue a letter of Rubis endorsement. The thought is that this will let them keep their traditional voter bases, while still making it clear they will work together. Bertrand is dismissive of the idea, a ‘coupon’ as he calls it, like one of the ration coupons we have all spent so many of over the past few years.[19] I fear he underestimates its utility. Rather than persuade him to do the same, for the first time I shall go behind his back.
Good old Alain will do it for me. We will have our own coupon; my Diamantines, and as many of Bertrand’s Verts as we see fit. Perhaps even one of two of Vachaud’s less despicable Noirs. Let us fight fire with fire, and avoid being squeezed out.
February 25th 1926.
M. Clinton is a consummate diplomat, yet he cannot quite hide the look in his eyes. Helplessness, frustration. It is hard for him to be far from his homeland as it is embroiled in a new war, after so much sacrifice in the one we have all become used to.
He deplores the Societists’ cowardly and treacherous act. I agree with him, and effusively say the Tuilleries will, of course, issue a condemnation. He promises that America will emerge victorious over this new foe, merely a crazed shadow of the UPSA they once crushed. I continue to agree with him. Not very subtle; surely he’ll begin to suspect just why I’m nodding along so much – to soften the blow when I have to start saying ‘no’. Frederick Clinton is usually, as his kinsfolk would say, a smart guy. He speaks excellent, if accented, French. Yet here, it seems his attention is too far away, his righteous anger too boiling, to perceive what I am carefully not saying.
Finally, inevitably, the Treaty of Bermuda is invoked. I sigh, probably too theatrically, like some misanthropic railway cashier who is secretly delighted that the pompous customer she’s dealing with has lost his ticket and will have to purchase a new one. But these are not such petty matters, but the affairs of nations.
“The Court of Saint-Denis is greatly aggrieved to see our great ally suffer such misfortune,” I say, carefully. “France will, of course, be ready to render whatever assistance we may to those poor Americans afflicted by this disaster.”
“Good!” Clinton pronounces, still not seeing it. “Then in that case…” He pauses, his eyes narrowed. “Misfortune. Disaster. You make it sound as though we have been hit by a hyperstorm. This is a declaration of war!”
I opened my mouth and softly, reluctantly, treacherously, let out a little sound like ‘ah’. It is as though I have noticed my opponent making a mistake in our high-stakes chess match. “As you imply, Your Excellency, the Treaty does indeed require any party to respond to a declaration of war by joining the other against its foe,” I begin.
“Well, then!” Clinton retorts. “When can we expect the announcement from the Tuill—”
I raise a hand a little, cutting him off. “I am afraid, Your Excellency, that your Empire has received no declaration of war, as France did from Russia four years ago. Unless, of course the Societists have since issued one, in which case—”
“Damn you!” Clinton roars, slamming his fist down on the table. I force myself not to flinch, though my heart hammers in my chest like the drum of an old slave galley. An apt metaphor; I feel I am being forced into this dishonourable course of action like some enslaved oarsman of old, not in control of my own decisions. “You know we won’t receive a formal declaration of war! The ----ing Sanchezistas don’t think other nations exist, or something! Their kind-of Ambassador gave the President some loony patter about how we’re all barbarian savages at the gates!”
His understanding of Societism is evidently even more fragmentary than my own. “They also do not consider themselves a nation,” I say carefully, “and the treaty specifically uses the language of an aggressor nation…”
Clinton seeths, but manages to keep his own control. “So that’s it, is it? You’ve found a way to weasel out of your obligations, while thousands upon thousands of young Americans have bled and died in the frozen north for France?”
I hold his gaze, though burning ice forms in my veins. “Those Americans bled and died for the interests of the American Government in driving the Russians from North America,” I say, my voice as cold as the battlefields we were talking about. “And then they bled and died because we bribed you with Guiana. Which, I understand, the Societists have now crossed the border into.”
“They…” Clinton shakes his head. “Damn you. You did this. It’s all because they want it, isn’t it? So they can have all their continent. So you drop it into our laps so this is our problem now, not yours…”
“That wasn’t deliberate,” I say. And it wasn’t. But, perhaps, the Americans thinking of as diabolical, Machiavellian backstabbers is better than them thinking of us as just too weak, too fragile, to help them at this time of need. Which is closer to the reality. “It is to be regretted that—”
“‘It is to be regretted’,” he mockingly shoots back at me. “Like you are apologising for a train being late. Well, I have my answer.” He pulls his chair back. “You have shown the world what France’s word is worth, Madame. And for that, I say: DAMN YOU!”
I almost call him back, tell him that I know this is a mistake, that I will cry into my pillow this night for what we have unleashed on the world by our fear, our apathy, our lack of trust in our own people not to mutiny at the mere whisper of another war. And yet, I cannot say for certain that Bertrand and the Duc are wrong. We are so close to breaking point. Civilisation is so close to breaking point.
Ah, this is what the Societist writers meant by ‘the Doctrine of the Last Throw’, is it not? I recall old Jules Degenlis speaking of in the Parlement before the war, the first war, back when he was just seen as a harmless eccentric. Dead now, of course. Plague, though some of his supporters claim Alfarus had him poisoned for going off-message. We thought that was a silly idea at the time. Now, I begin to wonder.
Will future generations call us imbeciles, I wonder? The Societists never made any secret that they planned to use the fatigue of a long war as a time to strike. And we blundered right into one – no, two. It will be hard for our children’s children to understand. It never seemed like a real threat…
Unlike the Russians. Now, as Bertrand wanted, we must shut our eyes to the chaos unfolding in the Novamund (and Spain, I fear) and focus on Russia, on ending the slow apocalypse that has cost so many lives…
*
From: “The First Interbellum and the Black Twenties” by Stuart McIntyre and Jemima Clarke (1982)—
France’s noncommittal response to Operatio Rubikon set the tone for responses from America’s other nominal allies. Exhaustion from war and plague meant that enthusiasm for military aid was nil, just as Raúl Caraíbas had long predicted. Neutral powers which were growing fat off the war, such as Morocco and China (though the latter continued to have its own plague problems) had an attitude which could be summarised as ‘Oh dear, how sad, never mind’ and happily sold arms and supplies to America – for a price. What is most striking, and almost inconceivable from the point of view of a reader today, is how no nation regarded the Societists’ act as merely the first move in a global game which sought the death of all nations. Even the Americans themselves did not invoke such a concept in their appeal for assistance, merely clinging to treaty obligations for collective security, which the French were able to weasel out of. Even then, most still saw the Societists as merely attempting to reassert the old global power of the UPSA for its own sake, and did not take their rhetoric seriously. That would soon change.
Ex post facto analysis of the Societists’ plans and aims is fraught with trouble and based on little data, but here we will stick to the most widely-accepted theory, as outlined by Prof Serge Duvalle of the University of Nouvelle-Orléans. Initially, it appears the Societists’ primary aim in the Rubikon attacks was to clear the Imperial Navy out of the Caribbean and, perhaps, dissuade the Americans from sending further reinforcements. This explains the focus on blocking the Nicaragua Canal. Certainly, though the Americans had five further lineships on patrol in the Imperial Sea, President Gilmore rejected proposals from the Supremacist opposition to redeploy these and their accompanying flotillas to the Caribbean.[20] Gilmore accepted the analysis of the IIC and Navy, that sending more lineships in (especially piecemeal) would just result in more of them being sunk by the Societist hiveships.
America urgently needed more of her own hiveships. HIMS Cygnia was trapped in the Pacific by the blocked Nicaragua Canal. In Norfolk, the new HIMS Eyrie had just been completed and was undergoing sea trials, built on a purpose-built new hiveship design rather than a converted lineship like Cygnia. Also under construction in the Braintree Shipyards of New England were two more hiveships of the same design, tentatively named Hornet and Wasp. Construction on these had slowed over the past couple of years, as it seemed that supplying more lineships for the Pacific was crucial; now, this decision was hastily reversed.
In the meantime, Gilmore ordered the reinforcement of land-based aeroports in the former Carolinian province of East Florida; in practice, this often turned into construction and redevelopment work, as so many of them had either fallen into decay or never been rated for modern aerocraft. Gilmore’s hope was to project American land-based aero power over Cuba, providing an umbrella which would allow naval combat to commence again. What is very clear is that, whether influenced by Alfarus’ speech or not, no senior American politician expected to see Societist troops landing in mainland North America.
It is a more challenging question as to whether any Societists expected to see it, either. Military historians have fought fruitlessly over this question; one side of the argument claims that the Societists’ actions were too competently executed to be the result of a spur-of-the-moment decision without planning, while the other side argues that their other actions up to this point cannot be explained if this was their plan all along. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between; the Societists certainly had theoretical war plans, as the nations did, and the experience of men like Garzius in the Nusantara conflicts had left them perhaps the most-qualified power to plan and execute island-hopping amphibious assaults. The Americans had been the first to really develop a modern warfare take on this strategy, with Bartley in the Pandoric War, but they had never been on the receiving, defensive end of it; their Caribbean attacks in the latter phase of the war had not seen sufficient Meridian resistance to suffer setbacks. By contrast, the Celatores had sometimes had to retreat before locally superior Sulu forces in the Nusantara, and understood both the risks and rewards of such an approach to warfare.
Up to this point, it is claimed, the Societists’ primary war aim was to take Cuba and then, while the Imperial Navy was on the back foot, further spread their control to Jamaica and other Caribbean islands, perhaps even Hispaniola. At most, they might hope to draw an American army into Cuba and destroy it with their new breakthrough. Second-rank Celator troops began moving into Guiana and prepared to seize Guadeloupe and Martinique, as well as Trinidad. Gilmore’s dreams of the Caribbean as an ‘American lake’ would be shattered. Yet, if this had been the case, the situation had changed. Analysis is based both on Garzius’ account and that of Dionysus Oderus, a civil servant and sometime secretary to Legadus Julius Rivarius. Oderus’ account was later criticised for embellishment, with some evidence that he was not so consistently exposed to Rivarius’ planning meetings as he had claimed after his defection. Nonetheless, it is our best ‘native’ Societist source for analysis of this stage of the conflict.
Apparently, Rivarius, a veteran of the Nusantara conflicts, had been called upon primarily in a planning capacity. After a while, he began expressing doubt about the plans that Prokapud Dominikus was asking him to work on, and argued that he was wasting time on unrealistic hypotheticals. Dominikus, a man who respected Rivarius’ abilities, went to visit him personally in Zon13Urb17 [OTL Cumaná, Venezuela]. This is the meeting which Oderus allegedly was called to take notes for, and later recounted – albeit probably with the aforementioned embellishments. Rivarius protested that he wanted to have a more in-depth role looking at the attacks on Jamaica and so on, not be stuck planning hypothetical raids on the North American coast. Dominikus, however, had brought with him his subordinate Tribunus Teofilus Barredus. Barredus, the old patron of Markus Garzius, explained that he had been monitoring the reports sent back from Societist Agendes operating in Carolina. Up to now, he had been uncertain how far he could trust the scattered reports, but Garzius – quite by accident, at first – had used his military experience to perform a more in-depth study of the decaying state of the former Carolina’s defences.
Dominikus outlined an outrageous objective, which Rivarius regarded with shock. Even if the old Ciudad Alexander Line could be used for such a purpose – even if Garzius was right about the dire state of the defences – surely the Americans could easily crush them on the beaches? First, Dominikus argued from the Americans’ current, rather cautious responses. When the Speaker of the Pennsylvania General Assembly had asked Governor Prewitt to call up the Confederal Guard to reinforce the Army, Gilmore had vetoed it.[21] It was clear that Gilmore did not see the situation as sufficiently existentially threatening that the need for such help would outweigh the danger of plague control being destabilised by the movement of men. For similar reasons, though American troops had begun flowing southwards along the railways to Ultima and Savannah for a hypothetical reinforcement of Cuba, it was slow and tentative. The Cuban government – or rather, the multiple factions at each others’ throats that all claimed legal succession to the deceased Oquendo – were screaming into their quisters, demanding that the Americans act faster, but Gilmore remained resolute. Furthermore, as their Agendes had told them, the Americans had never gotten around to replacing most of the narrow-gauge Carolinian railways; they had only extended their own as far south as the hubs at Ultima and Savannah, with a spur to the university at Corte only half-completed before the Panic of 1917 led to funding drying up. This meant that even when the American troops were assembled, it would take time for them to travel farther south.
It also meant that the Societists’ hopes of trapping an American army in Cuba were likely unrealistic, though Dominikus proposed they use the Ciudad Alexander Line to their advantage. This line, stretching roughly between the city of Móron in the north and Júcaro in the south and passing by the city of Ciudad Alexander, marked the old border of the days when Cuba had been divided between American and Meridian control, between the Great American War and the Braithwaite-Araníbar accords. In that time, it had been fortified and reinforced in case of a future war – though by the time the Pandoric War came, Cuba had been united as an independent republic.[22] Celatores, now operating openly in Cuba, had seized the line and would use it to cut their enemy in half. Societist control would be established in the west, while the east would merely be contained for now. This was both to save time and to keep bait dangling in front of the Americans, that some Cuban government forces were fighting on and needed reinforcement to survive.
It is unclear just how crucial Garzius’ testimony was to the plan. Oderus did claim that, at the very least, his information about Pensacola changed Rivarius’ tentative plan. Rivarius planned for a feint on the southern swamplands of East Florida, the so-called Pahokee (as dubbed by the Seminole people) or Spirit Glades (as called by Carolinians).[23] At the same time, he would make an all-out attack on Tampa Bay, which Agendes reported was the best-defended part of the province, but isolated. Historically, the region had theoretically been under the control of the Cherokee Empire’s Seminole exclave, which the Meridians had casually ignored to build Fort Insulza on the strategically-important Tampa Peninsula.[24] Insulza had since grown into a significant town with a large Meridian population, and the Americans had moved in and taken over – finding it politically and legally easier than elsewhere, as this area had rarely been treated as truly under Carolinian control beforehand. As a result, the Insulza forts were still well-manned. Rivarius sought to bottle up and capture the local American forces there. However, the very isolation of the site (with few good roads or railways) meant that it was not that useful for an invader to hold.
Instead, Garzius’ information revealed that Pensacola, despite its distance from the Societists amassing troops in Cuba, was both sufficiently underdefended and sufficiently connected to the Carolinian-gauge railways, that it would make a better target. Rivarius remained nervous about crossing the Gulf of Mexico, and even considered another feint raid against Nouvelle-Orléans – which never materialised, and would have probably resulted in a slaughter of the Societists, as the city’s defences had been kept much more upt-o-date due to its status as a full part of Westernesse.
Despite all of Dominikus’ assurances, Rivarius was still unconvinced, and Dominikus was forced to reveal the secret weapon. Oderus, in a rare moment of self-aware frankness, confesses that at the time the ‘Alkahest’ seemed like some philosopher’s toy to him, and he could not have dreamed what impact it would have on the coming conflict…
[18] NB this is three weeks before Orléans’ death; he is still fighting the Barbary pirates at this time.
[19] The OTL 1918 British general election was dubbed the ‘coupon election’ after H. H. Asquith similarly coined the dismissive term for the letter of coalition endorsement issued by the Conservative Party.
[20] The Imperial Sea is a name used for the part of the Atlantic off the eastern seaboard of the Empire, derived from a briefly-used OTL name from the 1760s, ‘the Sea of the British Empire’. It overlaps with the western part of the Sargasso Sea.
[21] The Confederal Guard is a late-nineteenth century rationalisation of the local militias, somewhat equivalent to the National Guard in OTL. As the American Imperial government is particularly suspicious of independent militaries after Henry Frederick’s Virginia antics during the Great American War, Guard members must swear allegiance to the Empire over their Confederation, and are officially considered paramilitary armed police rather than a part of the military.
[22] This is similarly located to the OTL Trocha de Júcaro a Morón, a fortified line which the Spanish built to trap Cuban revolutionaries in only the eastern part of the island and avoid them spreading their rebellion to the west.
[23] The OTL Everglades, here incorporating part of their old Spanish name, the Lake of the Holy Spirit.
[24] Near OTL St Petersburg, Florida (in OTL Fort Brooke was instead built at the mouth of the Hillsborough River).
February 24th 1926.
Meeting with the Cabinet. Bertrand is positive about the noises coming indirectly from the Russians. We shall float the idea of a ceasefire. I find myself in the crux of a dilemma. Anything that spares another poor boy from a bullet in Poland should be considered. But I worry the Russians are trying to split us off from our allies. We must tell the Germans and Italians, probably also the Scandinavians and English, if a ceasefire is coming – and then we have to reveal our negotiations. The longer the latter go on alone, the more betrayed they will feel. What if this is all a ruse on Pasha’s part to divide the alliance? It is the kind of low cunning I associate with that stain of a man.
I raise the fact that M. Clinton has asked for a meeting with me. It is clear he and his Government want France to do something. It does not take a genius to predict that Gilmore hopes to interpret the Treaty of Bermuda as requiring us to declare war on the Societists, and encourage our allies to do the same.
Bertrand shakes his head firmly. “You know what the people – and the Rubis,” he adds darkly, “would say if we added another war to our balancesheet. Especially before we can reveal the ceasefire with Russia.”
The Duc looks haunted. “It seems only yesterday they were terrorists lobbing grenades at my men in São Paulo,” he murmurs, his eyes distant, fixed on the past not the present. “Now they humble one of the world’s great powers. What have they been planning?”
Vachaud coughs, trying to return us to immediate concerns. “I agree with Citoyen Cazeneuve,” he says, raising a faint smile from the latter. It began as a running joke that he was reluctant to call the Prime Minister ‘Bertrand’, but also refused to call him ‘Monsieur Cazeneuve’, so resorted to a form of address from his own party’s despicable tradition. Frankly, I find the use of Jacobin language offensive, but Bertrand laughs it off. So long as he doesn’t call me Citoyenne Mercier, I won’t demonstrate the self-defence savate moves I learned as a young Cytherean on him.
“The people will not take it,” Vachaud continues. “We have already asked so much of them, and they have delivered. Furthermore, I thought half the point of bribing Gilmore with our old colonies was to finally draw a line under that whole ill-fated enterprise, and proclaim that the Novamund is no longer our business, one way or the other.”
“In theory,” Bertrand grunts. “In practice, yes, of course Héloïse is right, he will invoke the Treaty of Bermuda. We asked them to fight for us, they will do the same.” He pauses, drumming his fingers on the table with its map of Europe. “Wait. Vincent – Pichereau – was involved with the drafting of the treaty. If he condemns us supporting the Americans, can we not call him a hypocrite?”
I shake my head, privately both impressed by, and mildly disgusted at, Bertrand’s politicking at a time like this. “It’s too much of a stretch; he was only involved with the preliminary stages, as you well know.” I did not come out and say that Bertrand himself was the key mover in the final signing of the treaty, though on paper it was that idiot Changarnier who’d been Foreign Minister at the time.
“There has to be something,” Vachaud argues. “Do we have the text of the treaty?”
It is found soon enough. We pore over it.
I would not compare even Vachaud to Pasha, but he, too, has a certain compelling low cunning. He finds a loophole. Bertrand likes it. The Duc likes it. Both are clearly just desperate for all this to be somebody else’s problem, so they can focus on all the delicate balancing acts of the proposed ceasefire and negotiations with Russia.
I do not like it. I do not like it at all. The Americans will see it as a slap in the face, a betrayal. It could poison France’s image abroad for decades to come, that we do not honour our promises. The sort of pedantic lawyering that Vachaud advocates will cut no ice.
I am asked for my alternative. I propose we do, indeed, declare war, but then take no explicit action as a consequence. The Societists already have a trade boycott with us as a warring power, already refuse to trade us their chemical methods for tackling the plague. They can scarcely spare any of their so-called Celatores to attack us when they are fighting the entire Empire of North America. It will assuage the Americans, at least in the short term – and, I add, let us take direct action against Societists operating in Spain. I knew that was a mistake as soon as I said it; they have all long openly scoffed at what our sources there claim. Even if there’s any truth to it, the Duc says, Orléans will soon deal with it once he gets back from his latest adventure.[18]
I lose the vote, as I knew I would. I fear this is a great mistake for France, one that will resonate down the years. For a moment, I almost wonder if it is worth threatening to withdraw my support and bring down the Government. But they would know I am bluffing; we cannot afford to endanger a united front at this fragile moment. Any sign of disunity among the alliance and the Russians would pounce.
Nonetheless, on the way home from the meeting, I call on Alain [Orliac]. He has always been my strongest supporter among the coalition Diamantine caucus, and key in whipping my supporters to back the war bills. Though he was only a minor figure in government when René was still with me, he has grown into his role.
Now, I tell him it is only a matter of time before the Government collapses, whether by the Duc’s hand through stepping down, or not. We need to prepare for a snap election, held under plague conditions no less – things are just about under control at present, but the movements of a campaign could ignite the dark flame again. I sincerely hope that Dr Vicaire’s new drugs can save us.
Regardless, it is clear that this election will be like none we have ever seen. The rumour is that Vincent and his Vert breakaway lickspittles, like little Marin, will keep their parties formally separate but issue a letter of Rubis endorsement. The thought is that this will let them keep their traditional voter bases, while still making it clear they will work together. Bertrand is dismissive of the idea, a ‘coupon’ as he calls it, like one of the ration coupons we have all spent so many of over the past few years.[19] I fear he underestimates its utility. Rather than persuade him to do the same, for the first time I shall go behind his back.
Good old Alain will do it for me. We will have our own coupon; my Diamantines, and as many of Bertrand’s Verts as we see fit. Perhaps even one of two of Vachaud’s less despicable Noirs. Let us fight fire with fire, and avoid being squeezed out.
February 25th 1926.
M. Clinton is a consummate diplomat, yet he cannot quite hide the look in his eyes. Helplessness, frustration. It is hard for him to be far from his homeland as it is embroiled in a new war, after so much sacrifice in the one we have all become used to.
He deplores the Societists’ cowardly and treacherous act. I agree with him, and effusively say the Tuilleries will, of course, issue a condemnation. He promises that America will emerge victorious over this new foe, merely a crazed shadow of the UPSA they once crushed. I continue to agree with him. Not very subtle; surely he’ll begin to suspect just why I’m nodding along so much – to soften the blow when I have to start saying ‘no’. Frederick Clinton is usually, as his kinsfolk would say, a smart guy. He speaks excellent, if accented, French. Yet here, it seems his attention is too far away, his righteous anger too boiling, to perceive what I am carefully not saying.
Finally, inevitably, the Treaty of Bermuda is invoked. I sigh, probably too theatrically, like some misanthropic railway cashier who is secretly delighted that the pompous customer she’s dealing with has lost his ticket and will have to purchase a new one. But these are not such petty matters, but the affairs of nations.
“The Court of Saint-Denis is greatly aggrieved to see our great ally suffer such misfortune,” I say, carefully. “France will, of course, be ready to render whatever assistance we may to those poor Americans afflicted by this disaster.”
“Good!” Clinton pronounces, still not seeing it. “Then in that case…” He pauses, his eyes narrowed. “Misfortune. Disaster. You make it sound as though we have been hit by a hyperstorm. This is a declaration of war!”
I opened my mouth and softly, reluctantly, treacherously, let out a little sound like ‘ah’. It is as though I have noticed my opponent making a mistake in our high-stakes chess match. “As you imply, Your Excellency, the Treaty does indeed require any party to respond to a declaration of war by joining the other against its foe,” I begin.
“Well, then!” Clinton retorts. “When can we expect the announcement from the Tuill—”
I raise a hand a little, cutting him off. “I am afraid, Your Excellency, that your Empire has received no declaration of war, as France did from Russia four years ago. Unless, of course the Societists have since issued one, in which case—”
“Damn you!” Clinton roars, slamming his fist down on the table. I force myself not to flinch, though my heart hammers in my chest like the drum of an old slave galley. An apt metaphor; I feel I am being forced into this dishonourable course of action like some enslaved oarsman of old, not in control of my own decisions. “You know we won’t receive a formal declaration of war! The ----ing Sanchezistas don’t think other nations exist, or something! Their kind-of Ambassador gave the President some loony patter about how we’re all barbarian savages at the gates!”
His understanding of Societism is evidently even more fragmentary than my own. “They also do not consider themselves a nation,” I say carefully, “and the treaty specifically uses the language of an aggressor nation…”
Clinton seeths, but manages to keep his own control. “So that’s it, is it? You’ve found a way to weasel out of your obligations, while thousands upon thousands of young Americans have bled and died in the frozen north for France?”
I hold his gaze, though burning ice forms in my veins. “Those Americans bled and died for the interests of the American Government in driving the Russians from North America,” I say, my voice as cold as the battlefields we were talking about. “And then they bled and died because we bribed you with Guiana. Which, I understand, the Societists have now crossed the border into.”
“They…” Clinton shakes his head. “Damn you. You did this. It’s all because they want it, isn’t it? So they can have all their continent. So you drop it into our laps so this is our problem now, not yours…”
“That wasn’t deliberate,” I say. And it wasn’t. But, perhaps, the Americans thinking of as diabolical, Machiavellian backstabbers is better than them thinking of us as just too weak, too fragile, to help them at this time of need. Which is closer to the reality. “It is to be regretted that—”
“‘It is to be regretted’,” he mockingly shoots back at me. “Like you are apologising for a train being late. Well, I have my answer.” He pulls his chair back. “You have shown the world what France’s word is worth, Madame. And for that, I say: DAMN YOU!”
I almost call him back, tell him that I know this is a mistake, that I will cry into my pillow this night for what we have unleashed on the world by our fear, our apathy, our lack of trust in our own people not to mutiny at the mere whisper of another war. And yet, I cannot say for certain that Bertrand and the Duc are wrong. We are so close to breaking point. Civilisation is so close to breaking point.
Ah, this is what the Societist writers meant by ‘the Doctrine of the Last Throw’, is it not? I recall old Jules Degenlis speaking of in the Parlement before the war, the first war, back when he was just seen as a harmless eccentric. Dead now, of course. Plague, though some of his supporters claim Alfarus had him poisoned for going off-message. We thought that was a silly idea at the time. Now, I begin to wonder.
Will future generations call us imbeciles, I wonder? The Societists never made any secret that they planned to use the fatigue of a long war as a time to strike. And we blundered right into one – no, two. It will be hard for our children’s children to understand. It never seemed like a real threat…
Unlike the Russians. Now, as Bertrand wanted, we must shut our eyes to the chaos unfolding in the Novamund (and Spain, I fear) and focus on Russia, on ending the slow apocalypse that has cost so many lives…
*
From: “The First Interbellum and the Black Twenties” by Stuart McIntyre and Jemima Clarke (1982)—
France’s noncommittal response to Operatio Rubikon set the tone for responses from America’s other nominal allies. Exhaustion from war and plague meant that enthusiasm for military aid was nil, just as Raúl Caraíbas had long predicted. Neutral powers which were growing fat off the war, such as Morocco and China (though the latter continued to have its own plague problems) had an attitude which could be summarised as ‘Oh dear, how sad, never mind’ and happily sold arms and supplies to America – for a price. What is most striking, and almost inconceivable from the point of view of a reader today, is how no nation regarded the Societists’ act as merely the first move in a global game which sought the death of all nations. Even the Americans themselves did not invoke such a concept in their appeal for assistance, merely clinging to treaty obligations for collective security, which the French were able to weasel out of. Even then, most still saw the Societists as merely attempting to reassert the old global power of the UPSA for its own sake, and did not take their rhetoric seriously. That would soon change.
Ex post facto analysis of the Societists’ plans and aims is fraught with trouble and based on little data, but here we will stick to the most widely-accepted theory, as outlined by Prof Serge Duvalle of the University of Nouvelle-Orléans. Initially, it appears the Societists’ primary aim in the Rubikon attacks was to clear the Imperial Navy out of the Caribbean and, perhaps, dissuade the Americans from sending further reinforcements. This explains the focus on blocking the Nicaragua Canal. Certainly, though the Americans had five further lineships on patrol in the Imperial Sea, President Gilmore rejected proposals from the Supremacist opposition to redeploy these and their accompanying flotillas to the Caribbean.[20] Gilmore accepted the analysis of the IIC and Navy, that sending more lineships in (especially piecemeal) would just result in more of them being sunk by the Societist hiveships.
America urgently needed more of her own hiveships. HIMS Cygnia was trapped in the Pacific by the blocked Nicaragua Canal. In Norfolk, the new HIMS Eyrie had just been completed and was undergoing sea trials, built on a purpose-built new hiveship design rather than a converted lineship like Cygnia. Also under construction in the Braintree Shipyards of New England were two more hiveships of the same design, tentatively named Hornet and Wasp. Construction on these had slowed over the past couple of years, as it seemed that supplying more lineships for the Pacific was crucial; now, this decision was hastily reversed.
In the meantime, Gilmore ordered the reinforcement of land-based aeroports in the former Carolinian province of East Florida; in practice, this often turned into construction and redevelopment work, as so many of them had either fallen into decay or never been rated for modern aerocraft. Gilmore’s hope was to project American land-based aero power over Cuba, providing an umbrella which would allow naval combat to commence again. What is very clear is that, whether influenced by Alfarus’ speech or not, no senior American politician expected to see Societist troops landing in mainland North America.
It is a more challenging question as to whether any Societists expected to see it, either. Military historians have fought fruitlessly over this question; one side of the argument claims that the Societists’ actions were too competently executed to be the result of a spur-of-the-moment decision without planning, while the other side argues that their other actions up to this point cannot be explained if this was their plan all along. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between; the Societists certainly had theoretical war plans, as the nations did, and the experience of men like Garzius in the Nusantara conflicts had left them perhaps the most-qualified power to plan and execute island-hopping amphibious assaults. The Americans had been the first to really develop a modern warfare take on this strategy, with Bartley in the Pandoric War, but they had never been on the receiving, defensive end of it; their Caribbean attacks in the latter phase of the war had not seen sufficient Meridian resistance to suffer setbacks. By contrast, the Celatores had sometimes had to retreat before locally superior Sulu forces in the Nusantara, and understood both the risks and rewards of such an approach to warfare.
Up to this point, it is claimed, the Societists’ primary war aim was to take Cuba and then, while the Imperial Navy was on the back foot, further spread their control to Jamaica and other Caribbean islands, perhaps even Hispaniola. At most, they might hope to draw an American army into Cuba and destroy it with their new breakthrough. Second-rank Celator troops began moving into Guiana and prepared to seize Guadeloupe and Martinique, as well as Trinidad. Gilmore’s dreams of the Caribbean as an ‘American lake’ would be shattered. Yet, if this had been the case, the situation had changed. Analysis is based both on Garzius’ account and that of Dionysus Oderus, a civil servant and sometime secretary to Legadus Julius Rivarius. Oderus’ account was later criticised for embellishment, with some evidence that he was not so consistently exposed to Rivarius’ planning meetings as he had claimed after his defection. Nonetheless, it is our best ‘native’ Societist source for analysis of this stage of the conflict.
Apparently, Rivarius, a veteran of the Nusantara conflicts, had been called upon primarily in a planning capacity. After a while, he began expressing doubt about the plans that Prokapud Dominikus was asking him to work on, and argued that he was wasting time on unrealistic hypotheticals. Dominikus, a man who respected Rivarius’ abilities, went to visit him personally in Zon13Urb17 [OTL Cumaná, Venezuela]. This is the meeting which Oderus allegedly was called to take notes for, and later recounted – albeit probably with the aforementioned embellishments. Rivarius protested that he wanted to have a more in-depth role looking at the attacks on Jamaica and so on, not be stuck planning hypothetical raids on the North American coast. Dominikus, however, had brought with him his subordinate Tribunus Teofilus Barredus. Barredus, the old patron of Markus Garzius, explained that he had been monitoring the reports sent back from Societist Agendes operating in Carolina. Up to now, he had been uncertain how far he could trust the scattered reports, but Garzius – quite by accident, at first – had used his military experience to perform a more in-depth study of the decaying state of the former Carolina’s defences.
Dominikus outlined an outrageous objective, which Rivarius regarded with shock. Even if the old Ciudad Alexander Line could be used for such a purpose – even if Garzius was right about the dire state of the defences – surely the Americans could easily crush them on the beaches? First, Dominikus argued from the Americans’ current, rather cautious responses. When the Speaker of the Pennsylvania General Assembly had asked Governor Prewitt to call up the Confederal Guard to reinforce the Army, Gilmore had vetoed it.[21] It was clear that Gilmore did not see the situation as sufficiently existentially threatening that the need for such help would outweigh the danger of plague control being destabilised by the movement of men. For similar reasons, though American troops had begun flowing southwards along the railways to Ultima and Savannah for a hypothetical reinforcement of Cuba, it was slow and tentative. The Cuban government – or rather, the multiple factions at each others’ throats that all claimed legal succession to the deceased Oquendo – were screaming into their quisters, demanding that the Americans act faster, but Gilmore remained resolute. Furthermore, as their Agendes had told them, the Americans had never gotten around to replacing most of the narrow-gauge Carolinian railways; they had only extended their own as far south as the hubs at Ultima and Savannah, with a spur to the university at Corte only half-completed before the Panic of 1917 led to funding drying up. This meant that even when the American troops were assembled, it would take time for them to travel farther south.
It also meant that the Societists’ hopes of trapping an American army in Cuba were likely unrealistic, though Dominikus proposed they use the Ciudad Alexander Line to their advantage. This line, stretching roughly between the city of Móron in the north and Júcaro in the south and passing by the city of Ciudad Alexander, marked the old border of the days when Cuba had been divided between American and Meridian control, between the Great American War and the Braithwaite-Araníbar accords. In that time, it had been fortified and reinforced in case of a future war – though by the time the Pandoric War came, Cuba had been united as an independent republic.[22] Celatores, now operating openly in Cuba, had seized the line and would use it to cut their enemy in half. Societist control would be established in the west, while the east would merely be contained for now. This was both to save time and to keep bait dangling in front of the Americans, that some Cuban government forces were fighting on and needed reinforcement to survive.
It is unclear just how crucial Garzius’ testimony was to the plan. Oderus did claim that, at the very least, his information about Pensacola changed Rivarius’ tentative plan. Rivarius planned for a feint on the southern swamplands of East Florida, the so-called Pahokee (as dubbed by the Seminole people) or Spirit Glades (as called by Carolinians).[23] At the same time, he would make an all-out attack on Tampa Bay, which Agendes reported was the best-defended part of the province, but isolated. Historically, the region had theoretically been under the control of the Cherokee Empire’s Seminole exclave, which the Meridians had casually ignored to build Fort Insulza on the strategically-important Tampa Peninsula.[24] Insulza had since grown into a significant town with a large Meridian population, and the Americans had moved in and taken over – finding it politically and legally easier than elsewhere, as this area had rarely been treated as truly under Carolinian control beforehand. As a result, the Insulza forts were still well-manned. Rivarius sought to bottle up and capture the local American forces there. However, the very isolation of the site (with few good roads or railways) meant that it was not that useful for an invader to hold.
Instead, Garzius’ information revealed that Pensacola, despite its distance from the Societists amassing troops in Cuba, was both sufficiently underdefended and sufficiently connected to the Carolinian-gauge railways, that it would make a better target. Rivarius remained nervous about crossing the Gulf of Mexico, and even considered another feint raid against Nouvelle-Orléans – which never materialised, and would have probably resulted in a slaughter of the Societists, as the city’s defences had been kept much more upt-o-date due to its status as a full part of Westernesse.
Despite all of Dominikus’ assurances, Rivarius was still unconvinced, and Dominikus was forced to reveal the secret weapon. Oderus, in a rare moment of self-aware frankness, confesses that at the time the ‘Alkahest’ seemed like some philosopher’s toy to him, and he could not have dreamed what impact it would have on the coming conflict…
[18] NB this is three weeks before Orléans’ death; he is still fighting the Barbary pirates at this time.
[19] The OTL 1918 British general election was dubbed the ‘coupon election’ after H. H. Asquith similarly coined the dismissive term for the letter of coalition endorsement issued by the Conservative Party.
[20] The Imperial Sea is a name used for the part of the Atlantic off the eastern seaboard of the Empire, derived from a briefly-used OTL name from the 1760s, ‘the Sea of the British Empire’. It overlaps with the western part of the Sargasso Sea.
[21] The Confederal Guard is a late-nineteenth century rationalisation of the local militias, somewhat equivalent to the National Guard in OTL. As the American Imperial government is particularly suspicious of independent militaries after Henry Frederick’s Virginia antics during the Great American War, Guard members must swear allegiance to the Empire over their Confederation, and are officially considered paramilitary armed police rather than a part of the military.
[22] This is similarly located to the OTL Trocha de Júcaro a Morón, a fortified line which the Spanish built to trap Cuban revolutionaries in only the eastern part of the island and avoid them spreading their rebellion to the west.
[23] The OTL Everglades, here incorporating part of their old Spanish name, the Lake of the Holy Spirit.
[24] Near OTL St Petersburg, Florida (in OTL Fort Brooke was instead built at the mouth of the Hillsborough River).
Wouldn't this be Confederal Guards, if it is a single organization that exists above the Confederations? Using a plural to denote a singular entity (perhaps to disguise it as a collective with only loose overall coordination from above) wouldn't be that weird, just look at the federal government of the United States.
Where to after Pensacola? Looking at a map... it's too far west to try and go straight east to cut off Florida and the troops there. Trying to encircle New Orleans is impossible without forces on both sides of the river. There's really nothing to do but just go straight for Ultima by way of Alabama (or, the eastern Cherokee Empire). It remains to be seen who exactly the Cherokee are in this society-- IIRC they're a slave-owning minority indistinguishable from the white planters aside from their ethnicity, and they may have kept portions of their prior status through both the Meridian and Septen occupations. It's possible that news of what's happened in Superior (plus the background of the Supremacists dissolving the Howden realm) has made the Cherokee uniquely ill-disposed to Septen occupation, but whether this really leads to, for example, a higher likelihood of violence against occupation authorities here depends on just how influential a minority the Cherokee are in their own "Empire". At the very least it's possible the Cherokee are more insistent on the autonomy of their Neighborhood Associations than most. Those who have given up on taking back their Empire may call for a retreat into spheres of whatever autonomy they can support. But maybe they ought not to lose hope-- if the Dutch in Guyana and the East Indies went Societist in hopes of preserving their minority rule, it's not impossible for the Cherokee to see the world through different Eyes.
In any case, there's also less reason for the Septens to place large amounts of troops here (well, outside the *Birmingham ironworks) when they could be placed in Georgia and South Carolina (more cities and rails, larger and more restive middle class and elite). This whole Pensacola thing might be a even better idea than Garzius intended.
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So I'm currently reading the pandora war, and something interesting came up about trading and the world economy:
With the effects of the glacial aeon, the pandora war, and the fall of the UPSA and allies to Societists, the world trade on products like tobacco and others in relation to the UPSA, is going to lead to bad quilty, if not outright disappearance, thanks to all of the events having a knock-on effect on them, something that has never happened in otl. Heck, I can see even the bad quilty tobacco that's being discussed be seen as good in the future nobody in the world have had an actually good tobacco and related products, in a long while.
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