Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
Mélisande is an interesting character. She believes she is some sort of prophet, she is considered a prophet by some, but she also seems young, inexperienced and naive. Bahá'í Alternate Trotsky in the Ottoman Empire, though, isn't interesting, he's just fucking awesome. 
Shit is really hitting the fan in Ireland. So we have nationalist leftists against nationalist fundamentalists against other, more moderate nationalists. I fear the British will be happy to see the Irish slaughter each other...
Shit is really hitting the fan in Ireland. So we have nationalist leftists against nationalist fundamentalists against other, more moderate nationalists. I fear the British will be happy to see the Irish slaughter each other...
Mélisande is an interesting character. She believes she is some sort of prophet, she is considered a prophet by some, but she also seems young, inexperienced and naive. Bahá'í Alternate Trotsky in the Ottoman Empire, though, isn't interesting, he's just fucking awesome.
Shit is really hitting the fan in Ireland. So we have nationalist leftists against nationalist fundamentalists against other, more moderate nationalists. I fear the British will be happy to see the Irish slaughter each other...
well, until they all gang up against the British.
Well, let's see. Counting the postwar updates only, there's been civil war in France and Hungary, ethnic Germans being violently expelled from Transylvania, wounded soldiers begging on the streets of Tokyo, political terrorism in Ireland and unrest all over the Ottoman Empire. It's just getting better and better every day.
But yeah, I take the point. I'm telling the stories I want to tell. Evil doesn't fascinate me - I tend to agree with Arendt about its banality - and I'm not comfortable describing atrocities in detail. I tend to prefer writing about decent people trying to make their way in a tough world (albeit sometimes messing things up), and I guess that comes through.
Certainly, anyone who wants to explore the darker side of TTL, and there's plenty of fertile ground for that, is welcome to do so - as I said above, just run your ideas by me first.
Mélisande is an interesting character. She believes she is some sort of prophet, she is considered a prophet by some, but she also seems young, inexperienced and naive. Bahá'í Alternate Trotsky in the Ottoman Empire, though, isn't interesting, he's just fucking awesome.
Every blind spot Paulo Abacar the Elder had, Mélisande has in spades. The reason she's survived so long is that the commoners adore her, and that after the failure of the first couple of assassination attempts, even many of her opponents believe that she's divinely protected. It helps that Tippu Tip is imposing a Pax Omanica on the region, so she doesn't have to worry about external invasion as Paulo the Elder did, but there's more than enough internal threats to keep her occupied.
She won't last forever in power, although she'll have a softer landing than Joan of Arc or Alice Lakwena, and her prophetic political theology will have a lasting presence. Paulo the Younger is headed for a fall too, although he'll recover.
Baha'i-Jewish Trotsky, on the other hand, is going places.
well, until they all gang up against the British.
The Irish nationalist factions are fighting each other and the British, and they do sometimes team up. Britain isn't happy about any of it - even when the nationalists are slaughtering each other, the atmosphere of unrest and civil strife isn't anything the British government wants.
I'm not sure Tolstoyism could work well in Ireland, given that the narodnik ideology from which it springs is very Russia-specific, but the Irish do need a bridge between the Church and the left. They'll get one... eventually.
Anyway, I think I'm going to do the two 1899 narrative updates (there really will be just two) before the academic ones on Eurasian and African politics - the other way will spoil a couple of the stories. So the next update will be Burgenland, northeastern Italy, India and offshore Corsica during the first half of 1899.
I propose that you reconsider that name - Bauernhaus means "farmhouse" in German, and sounds somewhat ridiculous as the name of a political institution. I'd say Bauernkammer is a better proposal - Kammer is a usual word to designate houses of multicameral parliaments. (I hope you don't mind that most of my posts seem to be proposals to change something - I think pointing things out comes easier to me than repeating how awesome I find this TL.)
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Thanks! I've edited the update to change Bauernhaus to Bauernkammer, and I don't mind being corrected - quite the contrary.
For what it's worth, "Bauer" is a noble title in all but name in Southwest Africa, reserved for large landowners who hold the charters to their land directly from the colonial government. The Bauernkammern are the district councils, made up of all the landlords in the district - basically local Houses of Lords. The legislature for the entire colony has two chambers: an upper house in which the Bauern rotate on an annual basis (three of them from each district represent that district for a year, and then another three get a turn) and a lower house elected by all Europeans in the colony as well as those Africans who hold freehold land or livestock.
As I've said before, the setup is quasi-feudal - it wasn't intended to be that way, but that's what it has become. The managers of the Bauers' estates, some of whom are African, often cast their legislative votes by proxy, and the Bauern have certain judicial and police powers on their own property.
1899, Part 1
Burgenland:
The farmhouse where the Freikorps volunteers camped had lately belonged to a Hungarian family, and from all appearances, they’d left in a hurry. A holiday dress lay on the floor amid a pile of other clothing. An old dulcimer with a broken string rested near the door, obviously carried partway out before someone decided there wasn’t room for it. There’d been some straw hats there too, before they – like the curtains – had gone to feed the fire where the chicken was roasting.
Alfred Theuermann waited for the chicken to finish cooking and built a picture of the family in his mind. He imagined the lady of the house wearing that dress in better times, the children singing together as the father played the dulcimer, and wondered where they were going now. He’d heard that the Hungarian government was sending refugees to Transylvania and the Banat – if it were the latter, maybe they’d trade houses with him.
“What are you smiling at?” asked Gerhard, giving the spit another turn. Alfred ignored the question, knowing that the other volunteer wouldn’t understand. Like the other men from Germany, Gerhard had come to the Burgenland out of patriotism, but he also liked to fight; he’d actually enjoyed the war, and he wanted more of it. The fate of the house’s former owners had likely never crossed his mind. The Burgenland uprising had attracted such men like moths to a flame, and they scared the hell out of Alfred even though they were on his side.
Fortunately, he didn’t press the issue, and started holding forth instead about the Hungarian forces dug in to the east. “Not enough of them to make a proper trench line,” he was saying, “and their artillery’s very thin. Send some storm troops in to break ‘em up, then the army goes in from the front and we come around the flank, and…” His eyes were eager with anticipation of the next day’s battle.
“Like Silesia?” Alfred asked. He’d been there in the Kaiserlich und Königlich army when the North Germans had first used storm troops, and he remembered the confusion of that attack and the death of too many comrades.
“Exactly! You were there too?”
“That’s where I got shot – outside Stettin, fighting your ’94 offensive.”
“That was a hell of a battle. You bastards fought well, I’ll give you that.” Gerhard seemed lost in memory, and then brightened as something occurred to him. “Maybe I was the one who shot you.”
“Maybe so.” From Gerhard’s expression, the thought didn’t bother him, and Alfred realized that he didn’t care either. They’d been enemies once, but they’d both survived, and now the fortunes of another war had brought them together. That, and there’s really no bitterness in it for Gerhard; he’d have shot me gladly in the battle, but he wouldn’t have thrown my family out of our homeland afterward.
He heard footsteps and felt a presence next to him as another man joined the circle. He was in Austrian uniform and black as coal, and he’d come to this war by an even stranger route than Alfred or Gerhard had; he’d been with the British expeditionary force in Silesia and Bohemia, married a German girl, and gone to Austria with her family after their county was made part of the Czech kingdom. He was another one who’d discovered that he liked military life, and he’d enlisted happily when Austria had decided to make its support of the Burgenland uprising official.
“Slumming, Khabane?” asked Gerhard cheerfully.
“Not from choice,” Khabane answered, although he dropped by the volunteers’ encampment most nights. His German was fluent and colloquial, although his accent would always hold a trace of Basotholand. “I’ve got a message for you from the captain – he wants to make sure everyone knows the plan for tomorrow.”
“So tell me, then.” Gerhard motioned for someone else to attend to the spit and knelt by Khobane as the latter sketched a map in the dust on the floor. From what Alfred could see, it looked like the attack would go much as Gerhard had predicted. It didn’t matter; he’d follow his orders, whatever they were.
“Might work better here,” Gerhard was saying, one professional to another, “but tell your captain we’re right with him. Stay and have some chicken first, though.”
Alfred looked at the chicken again and saw that it was ready. Sorry, old bird, you should’ve left when the farmer did. I wonder if there’s any paprika in the house.
West of Corsica:
“Two ships bearing south, sir,” said the rating at the periscope. “A transport and a corvette escort. I think it’s them.”
Can’t imagine who else it would be, thought Lieutenant Alioune Diop. No one’s still fighting at sea but us and the rebels, there’s nothing of ours headed that way right now, and no one else’s navy is dumb enough to come waltzing into a war zone. “Lucien, take her down to five meters and let’s go meet them.”
“Pas de problem, Chief,” Lucien said, and the S-11 dived. Diop stifled a sigh; the navy had never been as formal than the army, and it had become even less so since the change of government, but submarine crews tended to take things to extremes. The lieutenant’s last posting on the old Prairial had been as a commander of marines, the most militarily correct branch of the navy, and to go from that to the least was a shock to the system. But he’d been in the service long enough to know that it was futile to set himself up against his sailors’ institutional culture.
He concentrated instead on their quarry: the two ships of the French State, packed with arms and soldiers and steaming toward Algeria. The State didn’t hold much of southern France anymore, and it was getting out what it could before the Emperor’s army closed in. Everyone they could put on a ship was headed for Bône or Algiers, and Diop’s job was to make sure a little less of it got there.
The S-11 pushed steadily through the water; Diop thought they were on course to intercept the transport, but the sub was blind as a bat when it dived and he was going purely on dead reckoning. Whose idea was it to send these things out to sea? We used them for port defense in the big war – out here, it’s a race to see whether the enemy or our own equipment sinks us faster. He took a deep breath – a chancy proposition in the hot, thick air within the S-11’s hull – and asked Lucien to go to periscope depth so they could check their bearings.
They were on course that time, and the next one too, but that wasn’t the only thing they had to worry about. “I see them,” the rating said on their third look. “They’re… the transport is turning, sir! It’s running!”
Maybe someone had seen an oil slick, or caught sight of the periscope, or noticed the movement in the water as the submarine changed depths, but they’d been spotted. And if only the transport was running…
“Dive, Lucien!” shouted Diop. “Fifteen meters, now!” The water had barely closed over them when a shell from one of the corvette’s guns exploded in the space where they’d been. At fifteen meters, it did no more than rock the S-11; had they still been near the surface, they’d very likely be headed for the bottom.
“Our turn now.” There was no chance of getting the transport any more, but the corvette was in extreme torpedo range. Diop had two, and he aimed them with as much care as he could before launching them and turning tail.
A moment later the S-11 surfaced and Diop took the periscope himself; to his satisfaction, he saw that the corvette was listing badly. “Once we get out of their range, Henri, get on the radio and call Ajaccio. They’ll need to send someone out to pick up survivors.”
Henri looked rebellious – like the others, he’d heard the stories about what the State did to sailors it shot out of the water – but the French Navy still played by the rules, and who knew if the stories were really true? He nodded and acknowledged the order.
“We should follow the bastards to Algeria,” Lucien said.
“Not likely.” The Algerian harbors were all bristling with shore batteries; the French army would have to get in through the mountains, like the British and Ottomans had. The tirailleur regiments were marching north now; Diop had cousins in three of them, and he wished them luck.
The civil war continued, and the S-11limped back toward Corsica.
Friuli:
“So, Signor Malatesta,” said General Baratieri, “am I to assume that your Free Community will not contest the reestablishment of Italian authority?”
That depends on what you mean by ‘contest,’ thought Malatesta, but he was careful not to say so or even let it show on his face. The man in front of him had subdued Venetia by means as ruthless as the Austrians and the Papal Legion had used – the Republic of Venetia had shot every mayor and editor who angered the priests, and Baratieri had taken care of the priests themselves. He’d declared that every captured Legionnaire was a partisan and every soldier in Venetian uniform was a traitor, and before the government had countermanded him, he’d shot five thousand prisoners. He was willing to talk to Malatesta, because he was a leftist and because the Free Community had fought the occupiers rather than the Italian army, but let him once think that the Friulans were rebels, and he’d treat them the same way.
“I’m not the head of a government,” Malatesta said carefully, “and I have no power to make treaties…”
“Don’t play games, Signor. Your Community listens to you – if you tell them not to fight, they won’t fight.”
For a second, Malatesta almost wished that were true. If he could simply order the Friulan fighters to stand down, then they would, and the bloodshed would end now. But he didn’t have that power; there would be debates and arguments, and although his words would carry weight, he would have no more than moral authority.
He felt sure that the Community would accept the inevitable eventually. They couldn’t fight the Italian army, and the new law ratifying the confiscation of collaborators’ estates meant that they’d be able to keep their collectives. Better to accept the state and then ignore it – better to build their tomorrow through their farms and schools and mutual-aid committees – than to go down in a wave of blood. But it would take time to reach that decision, and right now he needed to buy them that time.
“It isn’t that simple, General. There will have to be meetings, the committee will have to…” He stopped himself before saying ‘debate,’ knowing what the general would think of any suggestion that the return of state authority was debatable. “... ratify the decision to stand down. Give us a week, and it will be accomplished.”
“Your comrades in Venice city have stood down already. Why do you need a week?”
“It takes less time to gather people in one city. Our fighters will have to come in from all across the region – some of them are still in Venetia, and may not have heard the news of the surrender…”
“You have three days, Signor.”
Malatesta nodded, and willed himself not to show any satisfaction. Three days would be enough, which was why he’d asked for the week. “Very well, General,” he said, turning to leave. “Three days, and you will have our answer.”
“How did it go?” asked Testa from Uruguay, two hours later in the encampment.
“You’ve heard the saying, Buonatesta, about how man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest? They need to make room for the generals somewhere.”
Bukasa Island:
The Ssese Islands had been the spiritual heart of Buganda for centuries; they were places of pilgrimage, and home to the shrines of the most important lubaale. It was only natural that the new religions would take their places with the old; there was a mosque on Bubembe, a shrine to the Christian martyrs at Buyovu, and here on Bukasa, next to the temple of Musisi of the Earthquakes, a synagogue.
I wonder what Rabbi Kasztner would make of this place, thought András Weisz, accepting the patterned mantle that one of the women placed over his head and walking through the door. The inside was a single great room, rising to a thatched roof high overhead, with a platform in the center where the Torah scroll was kept. It was an ancient one from somewhere in Egypt or Arabia, brought by a merchant thirty years past, and brought here in a great procession of boats across Nalubale.
Weisz had heard something of these Jews’ story in the months since he’d settled here – the old king Mutesa had claimed to be a Jew as well as a follower of all the other religions, and a few of his subjects had felt duty-bound to give him a quorum for prayer. He’d already seen that it was a Buganda sort of Judaism; there might be no gods before God, but there were plenty beneath him, and the prayer the brightly-clad rabbi was singing to the accompaniment of an enanga harp was interwoven with stories of great ancestors. Weisz’ parents would no doubt be horrified, but he was no more than an indifferent Jew himself, and he’d made the journey here more for himself than for God.
The rabbi was saying a prayer of thanksgiving now, and pilgrims from all corners of the kingdom came forward to make an offering and name the thing for which they were grateful. Weisz joined the line and wondered what he would say when the time came. Was it the military command that the two kings had given him, or the civil office that had been conferred on Nagy the Magyarab? Was it the land that the kings had offered him and the men who’d followed him in exchange for their promise to train the army and serve in the militia? Was it the warehouse he already had his eye on, the one he planned to buy when his six years’ enlistment was done and it was time to set up shop as an importer?
The line moved slowly forward, and the others’ prayers took shape around it. Now the rabbi took the Torah down off the platform, and with each beat of the drum, he flourished it to one side, carrying it around the room so that the worshipers could touch it. “Hear, oh Israel!” sang the women, and “He is One!” the men, their simultaneous chants merging into a round. The line moved forward, and the prayers built into a crescendo, every drum beating and the flutes playing with dizzying speed.
And Weisz suddenly realized that he had reached the offering-place, and that he knew what to say. He knelt low to place his three gold coins on the ground, stood up again, and said “home.”
Burgenland:
The farmhouse where the Freikorps volunteers camped had lately belonged to a Hungarian family, and from all appearances, they’d left in a hurry. A holiday dress lay on the floor amid a pile of other clothing. An old dulcimer with a broken string rested near the door, obviously carried partway out before someone decided there wasn’t room for it. There’d been some straw hats there too, before they – like the curtains – had gone to feed the fire where the chicken was roasting.
Alfred Theuermann waited for the chicken to finish cooking and built a picture of the family in his mind. He imagined the lady of the house wearing that dress in better times, the children singing together as the father played the dulcimer, and wondered where they were going now. He’d heard that the Hungarian government was sending refugees to Transylvania and the Banat – if it were the latter, maybe they’d trade houses with him.
“What are you smiling at?” asked Gerhard, giving the spit another turn. Alfred ignored the question, knowing that the other volunteer wouldn’t understand. Like the other men from Germany, Gerhard had come to the Burgenland out of patriotism, but he also liked to fight; he’d actually enjoyed the war, and he wanted more of it. The fate of the house’s former owners had likely never crossed his mind. The Burgenland uprising had attracted such men like moths to a flame, and they scared the hell out of Alfred even though they were on his side.
Fortunately, he didn’t press the issue, and started holding forth instead about the Hungarian forces dug in to the east. “Not enough of them to make a proper trench line,” he was saying, “and their artillery’s very thin. Send some storm troops in to break ‘em up, then the army goes in from the front and we come around the flank, and…” His eyes were eager with anticipation of the next day’s battle.
“Like Silesia?” Alfred asked. He’d been there in the Kaiserlich und Königlich army when the North Germans had first used storm troops, and he remembered the confusion of that attack and the death of too many comrades.
“Exactly! You were there too?”
“That’s where I got shot – outside Stettin, fighting your ’94 offensive.”
“That was a hell of a battle. You bastards fought well, I’ll give you that.” Gerhard seemed lost in memory, and then brightened as something occurred to him. “Maybe I was the one who shot you.”
“Maybe so.” From Gerhard’s expression, the thought didn’t bother him, and Alfred realized that he didn’t care either. They’d been enemies once, but they’d both survived, and now the fortunes of another war had brought them together. That, and there’s really no bitterness in it for Gerhard; he’d have shot me gladly in the battle, but he wouldn’t have thrown my family out of our homeland afterward.
He heard footsteps and felt a presence next to him as another man joined the circle. He was in Austrian uniform and black as coal, and he’d come to this war by an even stranger route than Alfred or Gerhard had; he’d been with the British expeditionary force in Silesia and Bohemia, married a German girl, and gone to Austria with her family after their county was made part of the Czech kingdom. He was another one who’d discovered that he liked military life, and he’d enlisted happily when Austria had decided to make its support of the Burgenland uprising official.
“Slumming, Khabane?” asked Gerhard cheerfully.
“Not from choice,” Khabane answered, although he dropped by the volunteers’ encampment most nights. His German was fluent and colloquial, although his accent would always hold a trace of Basotholand. “I’ve got a message for you from the captain – he wants to make sure everyone knows the plan for tomorrow.”
“So tell me, then.” Gerhard motioned for someone else to attend to the spit and knelt by Khobane as the latter sketched a map in the dust on the floor. From what Alfred could see, it looked like the attack would go much as Gerhard had predicted. It didn’t matter; he’d follow his orders, whatever they were.
“Might work better here,” Gerhard was saying, one professional to another, “but tell your captain we’re right with him. Stay and have some chicken first, though.”
Alfred looked at the chicken again and saw that it was ready. Sorry, old bird, you should’ve left when the farmer did. I wonder if there’s any paprika in the house.
*******
West of Corsica:
“Two ships bearing south, sir,” said the rating at the periscope. “A transport and a corvette escort. I think it’s them.”
Can’t imagine who else it would be, thought Lieutenant Alioune Diop. No one’s still fighting at sea but us and the rebels, there’s nothing of ours headed that way right now, and no one else’s navy is dumb enough to come waltzing into a war zone. “Lucien, take her down to five meters and let’s go meet them.”
“Pas de problem, Chief,” Lucien said, and the S-11 dived. Diop stifled a sigh; the navy had never been as formal than the army, and it had become even less so since the change of government, but submarine crews tended to take things to extremes. The lieutenant’s last posting on the old Prairial had been as a commander of marines, the most militarily correct branch of the navy, and to go from that to the least was a shock to the system. But he’d been in the service long enough to know that it was futile to set himself up against his sailors’ institutional culture.
He concentrated instead on their quarry: the two ships of the French State, packed with arms and soldiers and steaming toward Algeria. The State didn’t hold much of southern France anymore, and it was getting out what it could before the Emperor’s army closed in. Everyone they could put on a ship was headed for Bône or Algiers, and Diop’s job was to make sure a little less of it got there.
The S-11 pushed steadily through the water; Diop thought they were on course to intercept the transport, but the sub was blind as a bat when it dived and he was going purely on dead reckoning. Whose idea was it to send these things out to sea? We used them for port defense in the big war – out here, it’s a race to see whether the enemy or our own equipment sinks us faster. He took a deep breath – a chancy proposition in the hot, thick air within the S-11’s hull – and asked Lucien to go to periscope depth so they could check their bearings.
They were on course that time, and the next one too, but that wasn’t the only thing they had to worry about. “I see them,” the rating said on their third look. “They’re… the transport is turning, sir! It’s running!”
Maybe someone had seen an oil slick, or caught sight of the periscope, or noticed the movement in the water as the submarine changed depths, but they’d been spotted. And if only the transport was running…
“Dive, Lucien!” shouted Diop. “Fifteen meters, now!” The water had barely closed over them when a shell from one of the corvette’s guns exploded in the space where they’d been. At fifteen meters, it did no more than rock the S-11; had they still been near the surface, they’d very likely be headed for the bottom.
“Our turn now.” There was no chance of getting the transport any more, but the corvette was in extreme torpedo range. Diop had two, and he aimed them with as much care as he could before launching them and turning tail.
A moment later the S-11 surfaced and Diop took the periscope himself; to his satisfaction, he saw that the corvette was listing badly. “Once we get out of their range, Henri, get on the radio and call Ajaccio. They’ll need to send someone out to pick up survivors.”
Henri looked rebellious – like the others, he’d heard the stories about what the State did to sailors it shot out of the water – but the French Navy still played by the rules, and who knew if the stories were really true? He nodded and acknowledged the order.
“We should follow the bastards to Algeria,” Lucien said.
“Not likely.” The Algerian harbors were all bristling with shore batteries; the French army would have to get in through the mountains, like the British and Ottomans had. The tirailleur regiments were marching north now; Diop had cousins in three of them, and he wished them luck.
The civil war continued, and the S-11limped back toward Corsica.
*******
Friuli:
“So, Signor Malatesta,” said General Baratieri, “am I to assume that your Free Community will not contest the reestablishment of Italian authority?”
That depends on what you mean by ‘contest,’ thought Malatesta, but he was careful not to say so or even let it show on his face. The man in front of him had subdued Venetia by means as ruthless as the Austrians and the Papal Legion had used – the Republic of Venetia had shot every mayor and editor who angered the priests, and Baratieri had taken care of the priests themselves. He’d declared that every captured Legionnaire was a partisan and every soldier in Venetian uniform was a traitor, and before the government had countermanded him, he’d shot five thousand prisoners. He was willing to talk to Malatesta, because he was a leftist and because the Free Community had fought the occupiers rather than the Italian army, but let him once think that the Friulans were rebels, and he’d treat them the same way.
“I’m not the head of a government,” Malatesta said carefully, “and I have no power to make treaties…”
“Don’t play games, Signor. Your Community listens to you – if you tell them not to fight, they won’t fight.”
For a second, Malatesta almost wished that were true. If he could simply order the Friulan fighters to stand down, then they would, and the bloodshed would end now. But he didn’t have that power; there would be debates and arguments, and although his words would carry weight, he would have no more than moral authority.
He felt sure that the Community would accept the inevitable eventually. They couldn’t fight the Italian army, and the new law ratifying the confiscation of collaborators’ estates meant that they’d be able to keep their collectives. Better to accept the state and then ignore it – better to build their tomorrow through their farms and schools and mutual-aid committees – than to go down in a wave of blood. But it would take time to reach that decision, and right now he needed to buy them that time.
“It isn’t that simple, General. There will have to be meetings, the committee will have to…” He stopped himself before saying ‘debate,’ knowing what the general would think of any suggestion that the return of state authority was debatable. “... ratify the decision to stand down. Give us a week, and it will be accomplished.”
“Your comrades in Venice city have stood down already. Why do you need a week?”
“It takes less time to gather people in one city. Our fighters will have to come in from all across the region – some of them are still in Venetia, and may not have heard the news of the surrender…”
“You have three days, Signor.”
Malatesta nodded, and willed himself not to show any satisfaction. Three days would be enough, which was why he’d asked for the week. “Very well, General,” he said, turning to leave. “Three days, and you will have our answer.”
“How did it go?” asked Testa from Uruguay, two hours later in the encampment.
“You’ve heard the saying, Buonatesta, about how man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest? They need to make room for the generals somewhere.”
*******
Bukasa Island:
The Ssese Islands had been the spiritual heart of Buganda for centuries; they were places of pilgrimage, and home to the shrines of the most important lubaale. It was only natural that the new religions would take their places with the old; there was a mosque on Bubembe, a shrine to the Christian martyrs at Buyovu, and here on Bukasa, next to the temple of Musisi of the Earthquakes, a synagogue.
I wonder what Rabbi Kasztner would make of this place, thought András Weisz, accepting the patterned mantle that one of the women placed over his head and walking through the door. The inside was a single great room, rising to a thatched roof high overhead, with a platform in the center where the Torah scroll was kept. It was an ancient one from somewhere in Egypt or Arabia, brought by a merchant thirty years past, and brought here in a great procession of boats across Nalubale.
Weisz had heard something of these Jews’ story in the months since he’d settled here – the old king Mutesa had claimed to be a Jew as well as a follower of all the other religions, and a few of his subjects had felt duty-bound to give him a quorum for prayer. He’d already seen that it was a Buganda sort of Judaism; there might be no gods before God, but there were plenty beneath him, and the prayer the brightly-clad rabbi was singing to the accompaniment of an enanga harp was interwoven with stories of great ancestors. Weisz’ parents would no doubt be horrified, but he was no more than an indifferent Jew himself, and he’d made the journey here more for himself than for God.
The rabbi was saying a prayer of thanksgiving now, and pilgrims from all corners of the kingdom came forward to make an offering and name the thing for which they were grateful. Weisz joined the line and wondered what he would say when the time came. Was it the military command that the two kings had given him, or the civil office that had been conferred on Nagy the Magyarab? Was it the land that the kings had offered him and the men who’d followed him in exchange for their promise to train the army and serve in the militia? Was it the warehouse he already had his eye on, the one he planned to buy when his six years’ enlistment was done and it was time to set up shop as an importer?
The line moved slowly forward, and the others’ prayers took shape around it. Now the rabbi took the Torah down off the platform, and with each beat of the drum, he flourished it to one side, carrying it around the room so that the worshipers could touch it. “Hear, oh Israel!” sang the women, and “He is One!” the men, their simultaneous chants merging into a round. The line moved forward, and the prayers built into a crescendo, every drum beating and the flutes playing with dizzying speed.
And Weisz suddenly realized that he had reached the offering-place, and that he knew what to say. He knelt low to place his three gold coins on the ground, stood up again, and said “home.”
Not to mention how the Venetians themselves will feel - first occupied by Austria, then spun off as a puppet republic, and then, in all but name, conquered and occupied by the Italian army.
That, and the Italian government is taking a hard anti-clerical turn, much more so than before the war, leading to church-state relations that will resemble Mexico under the PRI.
Northern Italy is going to feel the legacy of this war for a long time.
Well, I figured he deserved it.
For the record, about eighty Hungarians, half the Magyarabs and nearly all the Africans he'd picked up along the way followed Weisz back inland (the others went to Hungary, and we'll eventually see what happened to some of them). Most of the Africans melted away along the route, returning home or finding other jobs, and he arrived in Buganda with a force of about a thousand. There, he was able to make a deal with the co-kings, who wanted to take advantage of the institutional expertise of the Hungarian officers and Magyarab headmen. They'll marry into the local population - several have already done so - but will have an outsized cultural influence, and tourists in TTL's 21st century will be amused by how many Hungarian loanwords there are in Luganda.
As can also be seen, Judaism among the Baganda is a bit... different. The story Weisz heard is basically true: Mutesa claimed to be a follower of all the major religions at once during the 1870s and early 1880s (see post 916), a few of his subjects volunteered to give him a ten-man quorum at Jewish prayers, and they made the services up as they went along based on what they figured Jews would do. They knew a few things about Judaism from foreign merchants, but a lot of their knowledge was based on rumor, and what came out of the mix was very syncretic. More families became Jewish during the Eight Kings' War in order to stay out of the Catholic-Protestant-Muslim-pagan squabbles, and as of 1899 there are a few thousand Jews in the kingdom out of a total population of maybe a million. They have Jewish books by now which they're using as backfill, but by this time the original improvisations have become tradition and will stay that way.
Yes, I realize Jewish Uganda is something of an AH cliche, but I don't think it's usually done this way.
The second 1899 narrative will be next - India, Paris, and probably the Cape Colony, although I may change my mind about the last. After that, the academic updates, and then one final one to close out the century.
Loved the update as per usual.
My one problem with it is that I somehow find it a bit unbelievable that in a civil war one side would use *submarines to sink their compatriots. Now I realise that we as a species are perfectly capable of that but it kind of rings false to me.
I guess this is perhaps in part due to years of reading about the terrible Germans and their submarine campaigns and I would on that metric think it unlikely one would do it to one's countrymen no matter how bad it is
My one problem with it is that I somehow find it a bit unbelievable that in a civil war one side would use *submarines to sink their compatriots. Now I realise that we as a species are perfectly capable of that but it kind of rings false to me.
I guess this is perhaps in part due to years of reading about the terrible Germans and their submarine campaigns and I would on that metric think it unlikely one would do it to one's countrymen no matter how bad it is
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Submarines were used in the Spanish Civil War in OTL - the Republican side had several of them, and a couple of Italian ones served on the Nationalist side.
In TTL, without the unrestricted submarine warfare campaign of our own Great War, I doubt that submarines would be seen as anything more than a new and unreliable weapon, or that killing fellow sailors with them would be seen as any worse than killing them with battleships.
Keep in mind also that the *French civil war is an ideological war - one of TTL's first - and as such is bitterly fought even if relatively short.
Ah, our beloved Jewish friend returns, and has made the most interesting of Jewish Ugandas.
Or rather, the pre-existing Ugandan Jews (well, kinda-sorta Jews) are helping to remake him.
Seeing how Argentina has been reduced to a geographical designation in this TL makes me feel that this scenario will be viable ITTL.
I guess I am seeing it as an atrocity rather than 'normal' actions in a civil war. While it is acceptable for an atrocity to occur in a civil war, it almost seems to quick a movement.
Hard to explain more than that.
Hard to explain more than that.
Why would it be an atrocity? I mean it's only slightly different from the commerce raiding which was pretty normal in wartime? Hell this is against entirely military targets too.
Hnau
Banned
It's a great point. The war and other recent developments will make immigration to the United States and other countries proceed very differently. We've already talked about more Italians moving to the gaucho states, and Koreans moving to Brazil, now I guess its time to look at other divergent trends throughout the Americas.
Yeah. Two ships from warring faction A encountered a ship from opposing faction B. One of the faction A ships exchanged fire with the faction B craft, and was sunk. The B craft sent for help to rescue faction A survivors.
Ducking under water occasionally does not turn that into a warcrime.