Malê Rising

[Dragos Cel Mare]

So, what does Waruihe mean?

 

[Admiral Matt]

Some good points made by all. I'll unpack my thinking below, and make a proposal.

Correct. Anywhere Flashman appears, you can assume that the account is fictionalized, but that the historical events described in the story actually happened and that the details are roughly accurate (albeit filtered through the lens of a nineteenth-century bigot and cad).

You're entirely correct about Switzerland's internal situation and the political ramifications of the incident. The Swiss government was anxious to avoid both external and internal conflict, and also to preserve its constitutional structure, so it was at pains to support the cantonal governments (as it did during the OTL Ticino revolt, which was motivated by roughly the same electoral crisis), to police the border, and to prevent Italy from establishing a military presence on Swiss soil. The policing was, as you suggest, done with a wink and a nod - the army made sure the smugglers/radicals knew they were coming, and those foolish enough to get caught faced short prison sentences at worst - but the federal government's attitude was still one of friendly neutrality toward both the BOGs and the FARs.

Then, the Ticino Incident happens.

The Pope probably could end the matter right there with an apology and a promise of reparations, and there would certainly be ministers in the exiled Curia telling him to do just that. Unfortunately, he's been radicalized by being driven out of Rome, and he has a major blind spot where Italians are concerned - after all, they're the anticlerical bastards who booted him out of the Vatican! So rather than apologize at once, he hems and haws, and the more time that passes, the worse the situation gets.

Also, given that the Papal Legion is a recently-formed polyglot volunteer army without established traditions or institutions, it almost has to have a loose command structure. Many of the officers, especially the company-grade ones, are ultramontanes who bring their political and religious views to the battlefield, and they won't react well to orders that go against those views. The Pope may be supreme commander, but he can't say "lay off Ticino" with any guarantee that his orders would be obeyed, and if he tried to enforce those orders, he might lose soldiers to desertion.

In the meantime, the Swiss have at least two factors pushing them toward a tough stance. First, while neutrality is valuable to Switzerland, its ability to maintain that neutrality depends on its neighbors seeing it as a country not to be messed with. If the Swiss army lets a foreign military force invade its territory, kill its soldiers and claim the right to control the border without responding forcefully, then its defensive deterrence will be compromised. This is more or less the point Falecius made. Second, the Sonderbund war wasn't that long ago, and some of the ultramontanes might want to use the global conflict as an excuse to relitigate it, so if the federal government looks weak in the face of armed force, that might also compromise its ability to maintain internal order.

That's why I imagined that Switzerland would deliver an ultimatum to the French and Austrians - it would be politically untenable to deliver one to the Pope, much less to threaten war against him, so the ultimatum would go to his allies. At that point, all parties would be caught in a political bind: France and Austria would want to conciliate, but wouldn't be able to offer any conditions the Swiss could accept, and Switzerland, having issued an ultimatum, couldn't back off without appearing weak. So - at least as I had envisioned it - everyone ended up in a war that no one really wanted.

Upon further thought, though, I tend to agree that the escalation would be slower - as you and galileo034 have mentioned, a FAR blockade would have drastic enough consequences to make Switzerland think twice even when provoked. Maybe what would happen instead was that the Swiss government would condemn the attack, order a partial mobilization along the border and summon the French and Austrian ambassadors. Negotiations would commence, but they would be hampered by each side's political constraints. In the meantime, the Swiss government would shift toward a pro-BOG neutrality: it would open the border for trade with the Italians in Milan, stop conciliating the ultramontane-ruled cantons, maybe even step in to force a unity government and free elections in Ticino.

That would carry things through the winter of 1895-96, but the situation would remain fragile: there would be pro-FAR secession movements in some of the more conservative cantons, the Papal Legion might commit more provocations, and the Swiss would no doubt claim the right to pursue invading legionnaires into FAR-held Italian territory. Any or all of those things could eventually pull Switzerland into the war, and would certainly cause the federal government to move in a pro-BOG direction, but would be unlikely to lead to formal belligerence before the late spring or summer of '96.

Does that retcon suit everyone? Flashy would still accomplish his mission (after a fashion, of course, but he never does anything else), and nothing about the last update would have to change except the final footnote.

I'm comfortable with it.

Remember, though, that the offensive into Sudetenland was premature, and that the North Germans pulled enough men and materials from other fronts to support it that they almost collapsed when confronted with French and Russian offensives that fall. The British and North Germans have now reached the level of readiness they should have had before mounting such an ambitious offensive. So while they're definitely mounting an offensive in southern Germany, and while the conditions now favor them, they wouldn't have overwhelming superiority.

In any event, given the retcon I've proposed re Switzerland, the French and Austrians will be in a somewhat better position vis-a-vis their support troops.

Be that as it may, there's no argument on the BOGs being much stronger and the FARs notably weaker, yes?

Offensives like the one that ended camped down the road from Prague were vanishingly rare during our WWI. There were the opening moves and national collapses, but those really don't count for obvious reasons. The big Eastern Front offensives were all on the flat where retreats to avoid flanking were common, and both sides had limited road and rail to feed killing strength to the defensive lines. The only comparable assaults were the Battle of Caporetto and arguably Operation Michael. Both of those, though, were operating under better circumstances than the Bohemian Offensive here. In the case of Caporetto, Italy was on last legs. In both cases, the offensives followed favorable terrain.

This timeline has an offensive not only breaking through; not just advancing rapidly over long distances; but doing so up enemy rail lines into a logistically supported region across a mountain range. The implications for the future are bleak.

Definitely better without a Swiss war, though.

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

I still feel bad, pushing you into it. It's good though--unless you really really wanted a Swiss civil war.

No need to feel bad - if I'm wrong about something, and Switzerland isn't exactly my area of expertise, I appreciate being called on it.

The Swiss are still going to be walking a tightrope, given that the switch to pro-BOG neutrality won't be that gradual, and at least some of the conservatives will double down in response to their position being threatened. France and Austria won't try to subvert Switzerland - they have enough on their plate already, and there'd be no strategic advantage to it - but the Papal Legion might, or more likely, the ultramontanes would try to use the Pope as a rallying point. Switzerland may well avoid civil war, but its internal politics might get ugly for a while, and if it does eventually join the BOG team, things may play out as you suggest.

So, what does Waruihe mean?

Damned if I know, actually - I don't speak Kinyarwanda, and I couldn't find a translation anywhere.

For what it's worth, "ri" in Kinyarwanda is "to be" and can be attached as a suffix, and one of the meanings of "he" is "his" or "hers," so at a wild guess, "warurihe" has something to do with romantic attachment - maybe "I want to be his" or "I will always be his."

Any Kinyarwanda speakers in the audience, please correct me.

Offensives like the one that ended camped down the road from Prague were vanishingly rare during our WWI. There were the opening moves and national collapses, but those really don't count for obvious reasons. The big Eastern Front offensives were all on the flat where retreats to avoid flanking were common, and both sides had limited road and rail to feed killing strength to the defensive lines. The only comparable assaults were the Battle of Caporetto and arguably Operation Michael. Both of those, though, were operating under better circumstances than the Bohemian Offensive here. In the case of Caporetto, Italy was on last legs. In both cases, the offensives followed favorable terrain.

This timeline has an offensive not only breaking through; not just advancing rapidly over long distances; but doing so up enemy rail lines into a logistically supported region across a mountain range.

... against the weak link in the FAR alliance, at a time when it was overextended in Silesia and was rushing troops to another front in reaction to a major defeat, and through a region that was either actively disloyal to Austria or at least not hostile to North German occupation. But I certainly take your point, and there's no argument that the BOGs are now notably stronger in central Europe than the FARs - their latent strength has had time to come into play. At this point, it's not a matter of whether they have the strength but of whether internal factors will impede them from bringing that strength to bear.

 

[Shevek23]

No need to feel bad - if I'm wrong about something, and Switzerland isn't exactly my area of expertise, I appreciate being called on it.

I wouldn't claim it's an area of my expertise either though; I daresay you know a bit more than I do. Mainly I've been wondering how it looks to your Swiss readers.

I've been working with the simple model I get from generic common knowledge plus what I read last week or the week before in Wikipedia, that the Confederation exists because a bunch of small communities saw value in banding together despite differences, and although sometimes wracked by severe conflict the Confederation continued to exist divided by the religious fault lines of the Reformation, throughout that entire period. And then took on still greater diversity, with a spectrum of language communities that mixed up the usual religious divisions still further (assuming Geneva was still basically a Calvinist city-state when it joined). So obviously there are political values that say keeping the Confederation together despite polarized opinions, even ones that line up entire communities against each other, is pretty important. Therefore the politicians have to be careful.

So it's one thing if Switzerland is shanghaied into war on what a lot of its people think is the wrong side by some high-handed clique. It's quite another if one side in the Great War distinguishes itself by acts threatening the safety and sovereignty of the Federation.

The Swiss are still going to be walking a tightrope, given that the switch to pro-BOG neutrality won't be that gradual, and at least some of the conservatives will double down in response to their position being threatened. France and Austria won't try to subvert Switzerland - they have enough on their plate already, and there'd be no strategic advantage to it - but the Papal Legion might, or more likely, the ultramontanes would try to use the Pope as a rallying point. Switzerland may well avoid civil war, but its internal politics might get ugly for a while, and if it does eventually join the BOG team, things may play out as you suggest.

Aside from the likelihood approaching certainty that there are hotheads on both sides--so the ultramontanes in general will have some annoying examples of anti-Catholic bigots who have been foolhardily eager to jump in on the BOG side from the get-go to point to and worry about, and of course there will be some who take it as a mission from God to fight for the Pope no matter what their countrymen are generally willing to do--we have at least one example of a community, Tricino, that has customarily been ruled by conservative Catholics, who have lost their grip on the basis of their power lately and have taken advantage of the charged wartime situation to get the federal government to back them in spite of losing elections. Presumably there are other cantons like that. So as the FARs in general and the Papal Legion in particular make the ultramontane position less and less popular throughout Switzerland, they are likely to be turned out in favor of more balanced canton governments--indeed, having resorted to chicanery to keep power and then abusing that power, their replacements won't be in any conciliatory mood and their safety will be dependent on federal norms of keeping the peace holding--which will depend on how much they look like loyal Swiss citizens following the rules.

So in addition to ultramontanes who are radical out of religious passion, there will be many others who are disgruntled former elites who have had the tables turned on them.

If Switzerland ultimately enters the war because forbearance has manifestly been met with insults and threats, this group won't have the traction to raise a rebel army or take any cantons out via mass secession. But some will become outlaws of one kind or another, some will flee, others will make serious trouble. This kind of thing will actually undercut the position of those who try to make trouble within the law. I guess that Switzerland has not been under serious threat of occupation since the Napoleonic Wars, so there probably haven't been any situations parallel to what the various belligerents of the OTL Great Wars, World Wars that is, went through on the home fronts. I'm thinking of the purge of things German in the USA during WWI in particular, when businesses and even families changed their names, when "frankfurters" became "hot dogs" and so forth.

It may be anyone's guess whether Switzerland, in this evolving situation, will react sharply against the ultramontanes on a cultural level. The very tricky thing is, the country can't react severely against Catholicism as such, because it is half-Catholic and the only way a BOG alliance will work will be if a lot of Catholics find a way to justify it on terms that don't call their faith into question. The Protestants will have to stress that formula too, they can't afford to denounce all Catholics tout court.

So I don't know how the cultural dimension of it might look. Politically though the name of anyone praising the virtues of the FAR side would be Mudd, especially if extremists join with PL expeditions in violent acts against other Swiss.

Another thing I can't guess at is how policing works in Switzerland, and how it might be changed by this war emergency. Again since Switzerland hasn't actually been at war in such a long time, all we have to go on would be whatever contingencies have been prepared against the possibility. Again your Swiss readers probably have interesting perspectives on it.

I have been referring to "the Federal government" because some Wikipedia articles mention it, and you have in terms of there being Federal forces and the central government upholding the conservative government in Ticino. But my general impression is that most government devolves to the cantons. Will there then be different situations in different places, cantons where perfectly respected leaders from another canton might be jailed on sight (or most likely simply escorted to the border, perhaps passed in a chain of custody back to where they came from)? Or is there enough of a central regime to have federal censorship, federal security police, and so forth? Would such duties simply fall to the federal army?

Perhaps the more respectable ultramontanes can restrain their most extreme members, at least to the extent of forcing them to leave the country rather than engage in fanatical vigilantism, and thus preserve their standing to voice unpopular views without being forcibly silenced, either by executive authority or fed-up mobs the executive authorities are too exasperated to restrain.

I'd think it would just take a few infamous ones to ruin the day of all the others, however scrupulously they follow the rules.

As I said, I've never thought so much about Switzerland in decades. I'm just speculating here. What do y'all Swiss think of it?

...But I certainly take your point, and there's no argument that the BOGs are now notably stronger in central Europe than the FARs - their latent strength has had time to come into play. At this point, it's not a matter of whether they have the strength but of whether internal factors will impede them from bringing that strength to bear.

Well, last time I looked the French were still gaining ground on North German soil, which really messes up NG's industrial potential and ties down her men. If we say that the BOG is strong in "central Europe" we can only mean "along the German front." The Franco-Austrians still are occupying Bavaria and present in the other south German principalities; Austria-Hungary has lost ground in Bohemia but behind that front is the rest of what I would call "central Europe." The Ottomans, last time I looked, were doing well to hold their own lines for the most part, and to inflict heavy costs on the Austro-Hungarians for their advances.

Presumably civil order in much of Hapsburg central Europe is very shaky and held mainly by martial law. (I think you actually said as much in some recent post). The Russian and French armies keep the Germans and the allies fighting with them on their own soil from doing much to take advantage of this though. Whenever they advance into these weakly-held lands they will benefit from it, if they are astute enough to flatter local ambitions and avoid major gaffes. But it seems premature to say they hold the upper hand there already, only that their assets are growing and solidifying while the Austro-Hungarian ones are deteriorating. The BOGs probably won't find it costly to hold whatever territory they take. But at this point they still have to fight a serious army to take it first. That army might itself disintegrate eventually but clearly, not yet.

I even wonder what are the chances, that it won't be the German army, even augmented as it is by a large contingent of British Empire forces fighting integrated with it, that will advance deep into AH territory first. What about the Ottomans? Last time I noticed as I said, they were holding, well enough despite serious losses of territory to get the benefit of doubt of the subjects.

But could it be that while the French and Austrians and Russians react to every reinforcement of the British-German alliance on the German front with reserves and build-ups and counterstrategies of their own, behind their backs the Ottoman forces have hit bottom, their prewar complacency and backwardness has been largely shaken out, new recruits (alongside partisans behind enemy lines or on them) have been trained, British industry (and growing Ottoman ones too) have armed them, and they are being marshaled along their northern frontiers?

A lot of any such second wind the Ottomans may be catching will have to be sent northeast, to hold and beat back the Russians. But Russia too is focused on the German front, and meanwhile unrest is blazing up, both among Orthodox Christian Russian villagers and city workers, and more spectacularly in Central Asia.

So the Sultan may soon be in a position to go on the offensive against Austria-Hungary's south, regaining what was lost and perhaps driving deep into territories the Ottomans haven't seen for centuries. Hungary itself may be in grave danger soon; they might have to ask Russian armies to come in and those armies might not be fully forthcoming. Even if with Russian help, fighting battles in the Hungarian heartland, they can stall the Ottoman advance, the Dual Monarchy would then be gravely discredited indeed. Might nationalist Hungarians consider holding a coup, denouncing their allegiance to the Hapsburgs and suing for a separate peace?

Never mind that I for one suppose a big part of why AH was so reactionary and jingoistic in the first place was thanks to Magyar influences! Nor would the BOG negotiators point that out if they can dismember the Empire in that way--maybe the Ottomans would if they felt they were on a roll and stood to take a big bite of southeast Europe if they kept fighting. But the British and Germans probably would not support such ambition.

So it conceivably could be, the Austrian army holds against the Germans, or at least is pushed back by them slowly--but when the Ottomans charge, that's when the Empire disintegrates at last, and only then does the advance out of Germany become a sweep.

And even then, the French and Russians will still have Germany in quite a tight vise. Insofar as war is a game of kings, that would be a good moment to call it quits already, but this Great War like the OTL one has its own perverse momentum. The Germans can only rush so far into former Austrian holdings even if the Viennese government is completely abject; they can't expose their flanks to their major foes.

Again, while the Ottomans won't be able to do much to the French directly in Europe, they have been harassing French colonies and would continue with redoubled force if Austria-Hungary collapses, while such a collapse would mean that their European war consolidates into a broad front with Russia, from Georgia to Poland. We don't know how close Russia is to collapsing itself; the Tsar may hold even in such dire circumstances, but we do know the domestic situation already looks ugly from the regime's point of view and the spectacle of major Ottoman armies, leapfrogging over the collapsing corpse of Austrian power to menace Russia itself can't look good to the Ohkrana.

It seems vain to speculate on any particular scenario for the endgame, and I've gone off on a fanciful Ottoman-wank mainly for the charm of how surprising it would be to the arrogant European powers--even the British and Germans might be quite disturbed to contemplate it! I can only dare to imagine it because of how rotten the Hapsburg realm might have gotten to be.

But picture it--Austria in abject collapse, barely able to keep order in the German territories, Hungary suing for separate terms that probably must agree to free passage of BOG (read, Ottoman, with token British expeditionaries along for the ride) forces; Russia perhaps not collapsed yet but forced to halt or even strategically withdraw, perhaps even having to abandon a hostile Poland and hunker down defensively while trying to keep order internally--leaving France, still quite formidable and in an advanced position, but clearly no match for the steamroller the BOGs could bring to bear eventually with no other allies to distract them, to negotiate....

 

[Some Bloke]

Another alternate Flashman excerpt?! Now you're just spoiling us Shabash!

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Baden, Bavaria and Berlin, December 1895

​

“Coffee, Captain?” asked Sergeant Dobusch.

Even after six weeks, Paul Bödeker still felt a thrill when he was called “Captain.” He’d been a machinist foreman in Bremen before the war, and his kind never got made officers – or at least, they hadn’t been made officers until enough aristos and bourgeois got killed to leave no choice. Since autumn, they’d been pulling senior sergeants off the line, giving them sixty days’ training in a “tent academy” and sending them back as lieutenants or captains, and Bödeker was one of the first graduates. Maybe tomorrow he’d go the same way all those Junkers went, but if he did, he’d die a captain, by God!

“Yes, thank you, Sergeant,” he answered. That was another new thing – he and Dobusch had worked at the same factory and belonged to the same union, and it was strange to suddenly be the other man’s superior in rank. Dobusch, at least, didn’t seem to resent it, but Bödeker wasn’t sure how much he liked the sudden distance between them.

Well, there’s nothing to be done about that now. He found a comfortable place by the trench wall and began sipping what the quartermaster corps fondly called “coffee.” Dobusch was reading a newspaper; some of the others were writing letters or playing cards, keeping warm as best they could. There wasn’t much else to do, with the North German army’s advance proceeding at a glacial pace; the high command seemed determined to make up for last year’s excess of boldness with this year’s excess of caution. The army had held in place for months before the offensive began, making sure the French were really committed in northern Italy, and now that it was under way, everything was planned and re-planned, checked and re-checked.

Not much choice, I guess, with the reinforcements being diverted to the Apennines or the eastern front – and the more careful the brass is, the less chance I’ll end up lying next to a Junker in a military graveyard.

“Bastards,” Dobusch was saying. At Bödeker’s questioning look, he shook the newspaper in his hand and said, “The Reichstag. They’ve passed a new trade union law – trying to shut us down while we can’t organize against them. They figure they’ll call it a war measure and no one will complain.”

“Trying to bring back the socialist laws?” On this point, the captain and sergeant spoke with one voice. “We’ll show them when we get home.” That there would be a reckoning, Bödeker had no doubt: the Bavarians had shown what Germans could do when a government tried to trample the people’s will…

The morning was suddenly interrupted by a barrage of shots. Soldiers dropped notebooks and cards and grabbed up their weapons; they’d expected resistance to stiffen now that they’d crossed the Baden border, but there hadn’t been any warning that an attack was imminent.

“Get a periscope up there!” Bödeker shouted as he got the men into line. Dobusch did so, and a moment later, looked back at the captain with a distinctly puzzled expression.

“There’s no one coming. And nobody’s shooting at us.”

Bödeker was as confused as the sergeant, but he realized that there was no artillery bombardment, and that the sounds of confused fighting were all coming from within the enemy lines. “Then what the hell…”

“Wait a minute. Someone’s coming now, Captain – one man over the top with a white flag. There are others behind him.”

The noise of fighting had ceased, and now Bödeker could hear shouting from no man’s land: “Long live the German nation!”

“They’re coming over to us!” cried one of the soldiers, and the men began cheering. One or two even began climbing out of the trench to greet their late enemies.

“Get back down here now!” the captain ordered. “We don’t know if this is a trick.” He called out to the Baden troopers, who were now nearly halfway to the North German line. “Hands in the air, and advance one at a time!”

The defecting soldiers made to obey, but just then, shooting started again: this time it came from another part of the enemy line, aimed at the deserters. Cries of consternation and pain came from no man’s land as soldiers fell.

If that doesn’t prove they’re for real, I don’t know what would. “Get in here, all of you!” Bödeker called. “Run! But keep your hands up!”

A moment later, the survivors – maybe two thirds of those who’d defected – were safe in the North German trench, with Bödeker’s soldiers slapping them on the back and pressing coffee on them. “Don’t let them get too comfortable,” the captain muttered to Dobusch. “We’ll have to send them back to be interrogated – I’m still not sure they’re really on our side.”

The sergeant nodded. “I’ll get a party together to escort them. But think about it – they might be our worry, but all their comrades on the other side are now Leclair’s…”

*******

​

​

Captain Chatterjee had got his commission a few months before Bödeker, but with at least as much reluctance. Since Bhuiyan had been killed in Bohemia, he’d been the head of the Congress cadre in his company, and the man his mates had elected to run it – the one who did run it, regardless of who the British thought was in charge. It had taken two years for the British command to realize that the path of least resistance lay in giving the title to the men who actually did the job. They’d done it with bad grace, and they still insisted on picking the field-grade officers themselves, but they now recognized the company-grade officers that the men chose.

I wonder how much of that has to do with what’s happening at home. It was hard to tell what was going on in India right now – since things went to hell in Gwalior, censorship had tightened so much that almost no political news got through – but the very fact of the news blackout meant that the situation must be bad. The Congress against the maharajahs, with the Raj stuck in the middle: it would take a lot of luck for anyone to come out of that a winner.

However bad things were, though, Chatterjee had definitely noticed a change in the British command’s attitude. They were watching the Congress regiments much more closely, but also treating them with kid gloves, and the belated decision to recognize the cadres’ choice of officers was only part of that. They must be afraid we’ll mutiny, Chatterjee realized, and wondered what that said about matters back home.

“Ghosh!” he called, shaking off the thought. His executive officer looked up at the sound of his name. The man had never been very political, and had become even less so since he’d married a German girl he’d met on leave, but he was an excellent officer. “Come help me write this report. Maybe it’ll get us our damned reinforcements.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Ghosh answered, and Chatterjee couldn’t help but agree. The flow of new jawans to the front had slowed to a trickle, even when he accounted for how many were being diverted to Italy or East Africa. Recruiting must have slowed – hardly a wonder, when there was a fight going on at home and the Raj mostly on the wrong side of it, but that was no help to the men already here.

“We’ll write a letter home afterward and ask the cadres to send us more men,” he said. “We need to get that report written now. Make sure you let them know we need coats. Also write up the last probing attack, and tell them about the counter-infiltration traps the Frogs are using…”

“Captain!” Chatterjee turned around to see another officer in the uniform of the Free Bavarians, the ones who’d fought on the North German side all through the war and were now back on their own soil. Next to him was a lieutenant from one of the Zulu regiments that held the next section of the front. What a motley crew we’ve all become.

“There’s a meeting,” the Bavarian was saying. “Twenty minutes. We’re pulling back in the morning, and they’re giving out the new dispositions.”

“We’re retreating?”

“Only a mile or two. The French are counterattacking east of here, and the brass are worried that they’ll break through and flank us. We’ll pull back and regroup, and attack again in a few days.”

“Let’s go, then.” Chatterjee motioned to Ghosh, and the executive officer laid aside his report and stood up. Maybe this would get them reinforcements – the brass were always quick to plug a leak even if they were damnably slow at preventing one. If not, though, it might take more than a few days before they regained the ground they were ceding…

*******

​

​

“Is it real?” asked King Wilhelm.

“To all appearances, yes, your Majesty,” Colonel von Ziehlberg answered. “We’re getting reports of movements over there, of stockpiles and caches. They’re preparing for something.”

“I still don’t like it.” Wilhelm looked again at the document on the table – a manifesto that, if the colonel was right, would begin circulating throughout Galicia and Congress Poland come the new year. It called on all Poles to rise against their Russian and Austrian masters and restore their ancient nation.

“If I may say so, your Majesty, the Russians are still advancing,” said Danvers, the British general. “This would give them another front to fight on – the Austrians too. And it would give us an almost perfect chance for a counterattack.”

“Need I remind you, General, that Posen is also behind enemy lines? If Galicia and Congress Poland rise, nothing will stop Posen from rising, and that will be as much of a mess for us when we counterattack as for the Russians.”

“Or we could simply wait for Russia and Austria to crush the Poles, and attack when the Poles are beaten and the enemy weakened.”

“There are Polish soldiers in the North German army,” Wilhelm countered. Thoughtfulness had never been characteristic of him before the war, but two and a half brutal years had beaten it into him. “What will they say, if they see us standing by while the enemy slaughters their people? Not to mention that even if the Russians and Austrians crush the Poles, their memories won’t fade so easily.”

“Then we’re to support the uprising, your Majesty?” von Moltke asked.

“No. I said I don’t like it. We can’t stand by like cynics, but I won’t pay and arm men to fight against my own kingdom.” Wilhelm paused and changed his tack. “Can we counterattack in Posen? Take as much of it as possible before the uprising spreads there?”

“We’d have to pull troops from the western front, but we’re in much better shape than we were last year. I think we can organize an attack without weakening any of the other fronts fatally.”

“Give me a plan, then. Give me a plan, and God help us all.”

 

[Braganza]

Poland is not yet lost! Happy to see that the Polish are mobilizing for an Uprising, plus other turning points for the BOG. The Badner's defection to the NGF really stirred my hearth.

About the death of the Junkers and the Burgeois in the frontier lines... It seems almost likely that this will lead to the strengthening of the social[-liberal] movement in Germany. But is there any indication that the new social scenariowill end - or greatly weaken - the Prussian militarism? Also, is there any chance of a Communist Germany like there was in our timeline?

Regards and thank you for your good work.

 

[imperialaquila]

It seems like Germany is going to be in for some real turmoil once the war is over. Anything the Reichstag tries during the war to clamp down on the trade unions is going to be overturned once the war is over, at the very least. If Wilhelm isn't careful, Germany could end up undergoing a full-scale revolution.

 

[Julius Vogel]

I am getting the strangest feeling that Jonathan is staging an elaborate troll and this has all been a build-up for him to end with a Heinlein Military Democracy

Brothers, these civilians, these officers know not what we struggle for!

 

[GOU Limiting Factor]

You spoil us, you really do.

 

[Some Bloke]

Will the alternate Flashman author have his own biography? Will we have a lost of Alternate Flasman book series?

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

in addition to ultramontanes who are radical out of religious passion, there will be many others who are disgruntled former elites who have had the tables turned on them.

If Switzerland ultimately enters the war because forbearance has manifestly been met with insults and threats, this group won't have the traction to raise a rebel army or take any cantons out via mass secession. But some will become outlaws of one kind or another, some will flee, others will make serious trouble. This kind of thing will actually undercut the position of those who try to make trouble within the law. I guess that Switzerland has not been under serious threat of occupation since the Napoleonic Wars, so there probably haven't been any situations parallel to what the various belligerents of the OTL Great Wars, World Wars that is, went through on the home fronts...

I have been referring to "the Federal government" because some Wikipedia articles mention it, and you have in terms of there being Federal forces and the central government upholding the conservative government in Ticino. But my general impression is that most government devolves to the cantons. Will there then be different situations in different places, cantons where perfectly respected leaders from another canton might be jailed on sight (or most likely simply escorted to the border, perhaps passed in a chain of custody back to where they came from)? Or is there enough of a central regime to have federal censorship, federal security police, and so forth? Would such duties simply fall to the federal army?

My understanding - and I'm more than willing to be corrected - is that the Swiss constitution ordinarily limits the federal government to a small standing army (conscripts and reserves don't count), with most policing and defense functions devolved to the cantons. However, in emergencies, the federal council can elect a general and order a broader mobilization. This was done during the First and Second World Wars in OTL - Switzerland wasn't at war during this time, but it needed to be mobilized for defense and border control. I'm assuming that the same conditions obtain during TTL's Great War, and that the federal government has assumed war powers that considerably exceed its ordinary peacetime authority. So I doubt that cantons would be arresting each other's leaders, unless things have gone so far that some cantons have seceded either de facto or de jure and are defying the federal government as well as each other.

How this will play out culturally remains to be seen - for one thing, I haven't entirely decided what will happen politically, and the cultural events will follow the political ones. You're certainly correct that Catholicism as such will be inviolate; however, a BOG alliance will at minimum widen the already-existing divide between liberal, democratically-minded Catholics and the ultramontanes. The Polish uprising, which will also have Catholics on both sides, might also help to harden each faction's position.

Well, last time I looked the French were still gaining ground on North German soil, which really messes up NG's industrial potential and ties down her men. If we say that the BOG is strong in "central Europe" we can only mean "along the German front." The Franco-Austrians still are occupying Bavaria and present in the other south German principalities; Austria-Hungary has lost ground in Bohemia but behind that front is the rest of what I would call "central Europe." The Ottomans, last time I looked, were doing well to hold their own lines for the most part, and to inflict heavy costs on the Austro-Hungarians for their advances.

The French offensive was stalled at Cologne, and as seen in the most recent update (which was posted after your comment), the North Germans are now on the offensive in the south. The southern front is now a few miles over the border, although the western front is still along the Rhine and the North Germans remain vulnerable to a potential French breakthrough or flanking maneuver. The North Germans are still on the defensive in the east, although that's about to change, and as you say, the Ottomans are doing well to hold on against the Austro-Russian assault.

I won't say much more about potential developments in the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary, because that's ground that I intend to cover during year four; however, some of what you project may not be too far off the mark.

Poland is not yet lost! Happy to see that the Polish are mobilizing for an Uprising, plus other turning points for the BOG.

Poland isn't yet lost, but the Poles don't stand much of a chance against the Russian and Austrian armies without help, any more than they did in 1944 OTL or in carlton_bach's 1905. Their best hope would probably be for the North German offensive through Posen to succeed, which might lead to the creation of a Polish client kingdom (even the most dedicated of Prussian expansionists might think twice about annexing millions of Polish voters). Failing that, the Poles are in for a long, grinding partisan conflict.

BTW, the Polish uprising may also play a part in the evolution of postwar Christian Democracy, given that the upper clergy and magnates will mostly be on the Austro-Russian side, while the parish priests, working class and urban middle class will be on the side of the nationalists.

The Badner's defection to the NGF really stirred my hearth.

I doubt very many French or Austrian generals would agree.

The soldiers who defected are a minority - not all the people in Baden are pan-Germanists, and not all of those are willing to mutiny (some don't want to take the risk, others are loyal to their king be he right or wrong) - but there are enough to make the FARs consider any Baden front-line unit unreliable. This could also affect the political situation: depending on how the FAR governments and theater commanders react, the Franco-Austrian quasi-occupation of the southern German states could turn into a real occupation, leading to all kinds of trouble between the FARs and the southern German populations.

About the death of the Junkers and the Burgeois in the frontier lines... It seems almost likely that this will lead to the strengthening of the social[-liberal] movement in Germany. But is there any indication that the new social scenariowill end - or greatly weaken - the Prussian militarism? Also, is there any chance of a Communist Germany like there was in our timeline?

It seems like Germany is going to be in for some real turmoil once the war is over. Anything the Reichstag tries during the war to clamp down on the trade unions is going to be overturned once the war is over, at the very least. If Wilhelm isn't careful, Germany could end up undergoing a full-scale revolution.

I am getting the strangest feeling that Jonathan is staging an elaborate troll and this has all been a build-up for him to end with a Heinlein Military Democracy

Militarism will take a hit in many places, as it did after our own Great War, and the carnage among the traditional officer classes will be one of the reasons. In some places, unfortunately, this will prove to be temporary.

Assuming a BOG victory, there probably won't be an armed revolution or a Communist Germany in the short term. The German state won't be going through the kind of upheaval it experienced after World War I in OTL, and victory will give credibility to its institutions. The social democrats and trade unions will go for political reform first, although if that fails, there might be trouble in the medium term. The aristocrats certainly aren't going to give up power without a fight, not when half the reason they pushed for war was to try to reclaim it.

In the event of a FAR victory - although that's looking less likely - all bets are off, although you can safely assume that Heinlein Military Democracy is a low-probability outcome.

Another alternate Flashman excerpt?! Now you're just spoiling us Shabash!

You spoil us, you really do.

Thanks!

Will the alternate Flashman author have his own biography? Will we have a lost of Alternate Flasman book series?

One of these days, I'll post something about who F. George MacDonald is and how he came to invent a character that bears a suspicious similarity to one from OTL. (I've already mentioned that Tom Brown's Schooldays exists in TTL, because Thomas Hughes' attachment to the Rugby School predates the POD, so the ur-character of Flashman will be out there for MacDonald to appropriate.) Such a biography would of course include a list of MacDonald's works, so Flashman's ATL (mis)adventures will be made clear.

And as I said above, there may be one more Flashman excerpt coming up, set in the late 1890s, but he's getting up there in years so there won't be more than that.

Central Asia, Korea and possibly the Pacific next, hopefully by midweek.

 

[Unknown]

Good update.

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

A quick one while you wait for the next update

Honolulu
New Year’s Eve, 1895

Lieutenant Alioune Diop woke to the sound of guns.

He felt a moment of alarm, and then realized that the gunfire was far away, in the city, and that the Prairial was safe at anchor in a neutral harbor. He wondered briefly what the shooting was all about, but he was still half-conscious and it was far too early; he sank back in hammock and let himself drift off.

He woke again half an hour later, this time to commotion above.

Captain Dufour’s voice found the shortcut to Diop’s brain, and he was instantly awake and throwing on his uniform. A minute later he was on deck, joining the growing crowd that had gathered around the captain and an excitable Hawaiian courtier.

“… have to help us,” the nobleman was saying in execrable French. “The Americans have the palace under siege.” He had a document in his hand and was waving it at the assembled sailors, saying something about a treaty.

Diop could almost see the captain turning over the possibilities. The Prairial’s officers had all heard the rumors that the Americans were planning a coup, and that money and arms were flowing into the islands from mysterious sources. And France did have a treaty of friendship with Hawaii, signed by a naval captain fifty years past, so the crew would be within its rights to intervene. Having the Hawaiian king in France’s debt might come in very useful…

“We’ll go,” Dufour said; no one could survive three years against the Royal Navy on the high seas without a large helping of reckless courage, and he was true to type. He waved at officers and barked orders. “Draw weapons! Marines on deck in five minutes. Sailors too, everyone not on watch.”

And five minutes later, there they were, armed with rifles and six of the new machine guns that one person could carry, hustling down the gangplank a squad at a time. They formed up on the dock and double-timed toward the sound of the guns, a bemused Diop taking his place at the head of his marine platoon.

“Shout ‘Lunalilo,’” he called. “Let them know which side we’re on.” The streets were lined with nervous Hawaiians, and the last thing he wanted was to get in a fight before they got to the palace. “Lunalilo!” the men answered, and there were scattered cheers from the crowds.

They were less than a quarter-mile from the palace when they saw the first British uniform.

Diop’s first thought was that it was a trap: that the British had set this up to draw the Prairial’s crew away from the ship. But then he heard the British soldiers shouting “Lunalilo!” just like his marines, and realized what must have happened. There must be a British ship in port – quite possibly hunting for the Prairial – and another courtier had come to its captain to remind him of Britain’s treaty with Hawaii.

The same thoughts were going through Captain Dufour’s mind and, no doubt, that of the British commander. Each was wondering the same thing: can I take care of this enemy first? Diop wasn’t certain either side could; the crews looked evenly matched, and there was little to choose between them in armament.

Evidently theBritish captain had come to the same conclusion, because he waved down his officers and extended a languid hand toward the Prairial’s company. His next words were in bad French: “Would Mademoiselle Frog care to join the dance?”

Dufour, again, took only a split second to decide. “Very well, as long as you clumsy rosbifs don’t step on our toes.” There was an answering bark of laughter, a brief whispered conference, a new disposition, and without quite realizing what had happened, French and British sailors quick-marched toward the palace together.

The sight of battle greeted both crews as they reached the palace garden. All at once Diop understood why the defenders had held out so long; they had Maxims, and they’d set up impromptu machine gun nests amid the barricades. Evidently the Hawaiian king’s loyalists had their own sources of weapons.

The rebels outnumbered the loyalists and they had the palace surrounded, but they clearly hadn’t expected that kind of resistance; they had only two machine guns of their own, and they’d abandoned their assault on the barricades and pulled back to the outer gardens. They’d found some old cannon somewhere – a brace of six-pounders that were seventy years old if they were a day – and were bombarding the defensive positions, hoping to silence the Maxims and open a breach that they could force.

It all seemed like a comic-opera battle to a marine from a modern navy, but it was deadly serious business to the participants. There were bodies on the ground.

The defenders noticed the newcomers first, and evidently the Senegalese and Indian sailors were what caught their eye. “Pōpolo!” they called – it meant “blackberry,” and was what the Hawaiians called foreigners with dark skin.

Unfortunately, that also gave the game away to the rebels, and they erupted in consternation as they realized that reinforcements had arrived for the king. Their machine gun crews began wrestling their weapons around to face the French sailors, and officers shouted for the men to form a skirmish line.

“Down!” Dufour called as the British crew broke off and doubled around to attack the cannon. “Form line where you are! Machine gun fire!” Diop relayed the orders to his platoon and dropped to the ground. They were on the street, exposed, no cover to be had, but they could bring their machine guns to bear much faster than the rebels could, and they were trained soldiers rather than militia and hired guns. Bullets tore into the rebels’ flank; one of their Maxim crews was down before it could bring the weapon around, and their skirmish line dissolved even as it was forming.

“Up!” Dufour shouted. “Twenty meters and give it to them again!”

The Prairial’s sailors shouted and charged for the outer gardens, where there would at least be cover. But the rebels still had more men, and their fire, undisciplined as it was, was taking a toll. This would be the perfect time for the British to hang us out to dry, Diop realized, and for a moment, he felt a chill as he wondered whether the British captain had decided to let the rebels annihilate the French before he pressed his own attack home.

But then he heard gunfire coming from the rebels’ rear as the British sailors crashed into the gun crews. There was a moment’s sharp fighting, and the cannon fire ceased. The rebels wavered, and all of a sudden they broke, Americans and hired Hawaiians fleeing pell-mell down Beretania Street. That was the Hawaiian word for “Britain,” and the irony wasn’t lost on Diop as he counted up his men.

*******​

“… and we had two ships behind the convoy that you Frogs – begging your pardon – didn’t know about. So we waited till you were in among us, and then we brought ‘em around to trap you…”

Diop, bemused, listened to the British lieutenant across the table. Out on the street, Frenchmen and Senegalese were holding up British and Indians and being supported in their turn, trying their best to sing each other’s drinking songs. Diop, far from sober but needing food more than drink, had found a kindred spirit among the British crew, and they shared a heaping portion of kalua pig in a dockside restaurant.

“You got lucky,” he said, and started on a story of his own: a successful commerce raid that the Prairial had conducted two months before, after which it had led three Royal Navy corvettes on a merry chase through the Marquesas.

“I’ll grant that you’re a match for us ship against ship,” the Englishman said; he was enough in his cups to be honest. “But we’ve got three times the ships you do. Why the hell did you get into this war anyway?”

“Ask Leclair, if you meet him before he goes to hell.”

The British sailor laughed. “There’s a New Year’s toast for you. To hell with Leclair, and may our own brass keep him company.” It was a proposition both men could drink to, and both did.

“And next year,” the lieutenant continued, “let me be back in London, and you in… hell, Dakar or some such bloody place?”

“Marseilles,” Diop answered, laughing. “My father was navy and merchant marine, and my parents opened a chandlery after he got out. When this stupid war is over, you should come visit.” On impulse, he tore a page from his notebook, scribbled his parents’ address, and handed it to the British officer. The other man looked nonplused for a second, but then he did the same.

“Prairial, back to the ship!” called the deep voice of Maître Villeneuve. “Our new English lady friends have graciously given us a day’s head start, so we need to be fresh in the morning!”

“I guess this is it,” Diop said, putting coins on the table to settle his share of the bill. “Get through safe.” The Englishman echoed the sentiment and downed the last of his beer.

A moment later, Diop was on the street, walking toward the docks where the royal Hawaiian flag was flying.

 

[Dragos Cel Mare]

Heartwarming as always, JE!

 

[imperialaquila]

Talk about strange bedfellows. This seems like it will push the US closer to entering the war on its own side, since the French and British seem happy enough to combine to stop American ambitions.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

Alright, you just know that that incident is going to become part of every schoolboy's legend of the war....

 

[eliphas8]

Yes! Hawaiian independence guaranteed for the time being. To hell with Leclair and The British Brass indeed.

 

[Braganza]

This remembers the Christmas' fraternisations.

 

[eliphas8]

So once this reaches the 1900s will we be changing thread or is it gonna stick around here?