Mauritania
- Thread starter Haggis
- Start date
France, being the largest nation in Western Europe, had many prominent inventors and thinkers flocking to its shores. Many of these inventors were English, having fled the violence in their own land.
A truly revolutionary mind had arrived in Amsterdam in 1833. William Ness had served as a military advisor to Canadian partisans in the Reckoning War and when he returned home to Britain in 1820 he had set to work designing a useful rifle that could be used to great effect.
His Ness Partisan Long Rifle Model 1826 was a massive step forward in rifle technology. A breech loading design that allowed for quicker reloading times was universally applauded by gun manufacturers from all parts of Europe.
Ness lived in Britain until he was invited by French rifle designer Joris Zeldenthuis to come to Amsterdam and work in his shop. Ness brought his Model 1826 and a few glaring problems came forward. The breech would fail to close after more than ten rounds and this would burn the skin of the soldier carrying the weapon, the firing pin would break under battlefield conditions, and even though it could reload faster than muzzle loaders it still lacked their range.
Zeldenthuis, who had spent years working with the French Artillery, adopted a rubber ring to help seal the burning gases inside the rifle into place. The firing pin was strengthened by using Von Drais Steel. [1]
The Ness-Zeldenthuis Rifle was completed in 1836. After performing several tests for the French military, one of which took place in front of Napoleon II himself, it was decided that this new rifle would become the standard service rifle of the French infantry.
Both Ness and Zeldenthuis were ecstatic and used their first loan to not only purchase a factory but also to acquire the patent for Von Drais Steel. Over the next few years the name Ness would be dropped by most French troops, especially the Dutch from what was once the Kingdom of Holland, and the Zeldenthuis Rifle would become renowned throughout all of Europe.
Other great inventors made their home in the French Empire. Amongst them was Nicephore Niepce whose invention, the velocipede, was enormously popular with the French government which financed his later inventions and research, notably the pyreolophore which when powered by Gesner Oil greatly enhanced the speed of the velocipede. [2]
[1] Karl von Drais, who in OTL made an early bicycle like thing, ITTL he invents what we would call the Bessemer process in 1830.
[2] The velocipede is like a giant tricycle and the pyreolophore was a very early internal combustion engine. Gesner Oil is kerosene, named after its discoverer. Niepce just invented a really early form of the motorcycle, except it’s a tricycle.
A truly revolutionary mind had arrived in Amsterdam in 1833. William Ness had served as a military advisor to Canadian partisans in the Reckoning War and when he returned home to Britain in 1820 he had set to work designing a useful rifle that could be used to great effect.
His Ness Partisan Long Rifle Model 1826 was a massive step forward in rifle technology. A breech loading design that allowed for quicker reloading times was universally applauded by gun manufacturers from all parts of Europe.
Ness lived in Britain until he was invited by French rifle designer Joris Zeldenthuis to come to Amsterdam and work in his shop. Ness brought his Model 1826 and a few glaring problems came forward. The breech would fail to close after more than ten rounds and this would burn the skin of the soldier carrying the weapon, the firing pin would break under battlefield conditions, and even though it could reload faster than muzzle loaders it still lacked their range.
Zeldenthuis, who had spent years working with the French Artillery, adopted a rubber ring to help seal the burning gases inside the rifle into place. The firing pin was strengthened by using Von Drais Steel. [1]
The Ness-Zeldenthuis Rifle was completed in 1836. After performing several tests for the French military, one of which took place in front of Napoleon II himself, it was decided that this new rifle would become the standard service rifle of the French infantry.
Both Ness and Zeldenthuis were ecstatic and used their first loan to not only purchase a factory but also to acquire the patent for Von Drais Steel. Over the next few years the name Ness would be dropped by most French troops, especially the Dutch from what was once the Kingdom of Holland, and the Zeldenthuis Rifle would become renowned throughout all of Europe.
Other great inventors made their home in the French Empire. Amongst them was Nicephore Niepce whose invention, the velocipede, was enormously popular with the French government which financed his later inventions and research, notably the pyreolophore which when powered by Gesner Oil greatly enhanced the speed of the velocipede. [2]
[1] Karl von Drais, who in OTL made an early bicycle like thing, ITTL he invents what we would call the Bessemer process in 1830.
[2] The velocipede is like a giant tricycle and the pyreolophore was a very early internal combustion engine. Gesner Oil is kerosene, named after its discoverer. Niepce just invented a really early form of the motorcycle, except it’s a tricycle.
The United States had undergone a shift from a strong Congress to a strong Executive during the Reckoning War and later the Armstrong Years. Nobody in the nation minded too much when John Armstrong ran for election in 1830, unopposed, but his actions in condoning the Devil’s Tariff enraged many members of his own party. [1]
The main source of opposition to the ever increasing protective tariffs came from the West and the South; these two zones quickly organized anti-Armstrong parties and called themselves several different names though eventually the supporters of William Rufus deVane King came to the fore.
The supporters of King would be primarily from the South and call themselves the Girondist Party. They spoke of a need to protect small farmers by not overburdening them with hidden taxes and professed a strong belief in the principles and policies of Thomas Jefferson, who they saw as the spiritual forerunner of their own party. [2]
These Girondist Democrats had a wide reaching appeal, thanks in part to the highly charged religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening, William King got many preachers to “ride the circuit” and declare that God was shining on the Girondist Party.
The fames of the Girondists was only enhanced when Brigham Young, a Representative from Vermont, managed to get the Sedition Act of 1833 passed, which like the Alien and Seditions Act of 1791 outlawed speaking against the government, this new piece of legislation was instrumental in passing the Girondists off as martyrs, yet another thing that the circuit-riders used in their fiery sermons.
In 1834 the Girondist Party declared their intention to run William King for President of the United States in the first ever National Convention held by any political party, it was yet another small nod to the early and idyllic days of the French Revolution.
The decision as who to run for Vice President was challenging, however the Orleans wing of the party managed to get their golden child, J.F. Davis, Jefferson Finis, onto the Girondist ticket. The solely Southern ticket was thought by many politicians of the day as a sure fire way to distance the party from its western extremes, however Davis was extremely popular in the west, where he had spent the last three years of the war guarding homes from British-Canadian partisans.
The Democratic-Republicans set out to nominate John Armstrong. However he refused to take the nomination and William Henry Harrison had become “too old.” So Solomon Van Rennselaer, who had formed part of the Executive Council during the Reckoning War, ran on his party’s ticket in 1834.
Their decision for Vice President was a little known Ouisconsin lead mine owner and lawyer named Peter Yaga. The Girondist Party swept the ballots and almost took the Presidential Palace, however the nation remembered Solomon’s service during the Reckoning War.
Adding to the Girondist defeat was the nation’s realization that Vice Presidential nominee J.F. Davis was only 26 years old at the time and that the Orleans party bosses had fudged a few records in their attempt to try and get an Orleanist into the Presidential Palace.
This “misunderstanding” cost many of the Orleanist bosses their careers, however J.F. was able to come out of it clean and would be more careful before accepting potentially illegal bargains in the future.
Solomon Van Rennselaer continued many of the policies of his predecessor, increasing tariffs and westward expansion amongst them. However on a hunting trip in the early part of 1836 he was mauled to death by a bear in the woods of New York.
The 35 year old Peter Yaga came into power untested and unsure of how to control the Congress. Alexander Porter, the President Pro Tempore and a Senator from Missouri sensed this and sponsored several bills that would limit the President’s power, while none of these passed it served as a quick display of power on Porter’s part as he attempted to gain more influence for himself. [3]
President Yaga knew that the only way to make sure that he retained power was through the force of his personality. So he went for broke to seem larger than life, this included hosting more than a few free banquets for the average voter of Washington DC, almost constantly touring the nation, listening to the complaints of the average man, enlarging the American presence around Cape Horn, and even threatening war with Texas and the FEM if they continued to resist American expansion.
In short, President Yaga became very popular, very quickly. So popular in fact that in 1838 William King and the Girondists lost handily again, though they did make a few gains in the Congress and more than a few governors were now officially part of the Girondist Party.
By 1842 Peter Yaga had sealed his place in history as an incredibly popular, if relatively inactive, President. By this time the Girondists were standing on the edge, unless they won soon it seemed as if their broad base of support would just give up and keep voting the Democratic-Republican line.
With no strong contenders and a resigning, if popular president, the Democratic-Republicans nominated Brigham Young, who used his fame as the man responsible for the Sedition Act of 1833 while the Girondist Party once again nominated William King, along with the barely old enough J.F. Davis.
Then King won. The first Girondist President-elect and the first President from Alabama entered the Presidential Palace in January of 1843 and soon things would change forever in the United States.
Within five years the nation would be drawn to the brink of war with not just one power, but four.
[1] Also known as the Hawley Tariff of 1832. It was named for Jess Hawley Junior, the son of the flour merchant who convinced everyone to build the Erie Canal.
[2] Named after the Girondist Club during the French Revolution, the ones who tried to curb the excessive violence and anarchism of the early days and the excessive violence and anarchism of the later Jacobins.
[3] Thanks in part to more acceptance of Executive Power in TTL there isn’t such a ruckus over the VP taking over the President’s job until the next scheduled election.
The main source of opposition to the ever increasing protective tariffs came from the West and the South; these two zones quickly organized anti-Armstrong parties and called themselves several different names though eventually the supporters of William Rufus deVane King came to the fore.
The supporters of King would be primarily from the South and call themselves the Girondist Party. They spoke of a need to protect small farmers by not overburdening them with hidden taxes and professed a strong belief in the principles and policies of Thomas Jefferson, who they saw as the spiritual forerunner of their own party. [2]
These Girondist Democrats had a wide reaching appeal, thanks in part to the highly charged religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening, William King got many preachers to “ride the circuit” and declare that God was shining on the Girondist Party.
The fames of the Girondists was only enhanced when Brigham Young, a Representative from Vermont, managed to get the Sedition Act of 1833 passed, which like the Alien and Seditions Act of 1791 outlawed speaking against the government, this new piece of legislation was instrumental in passing the Girondists off as martyrs, yet another thing that the circuit-riders used in their fiery sermons.
In 1834 the Girondist Party declared their intention to run William King for President of the United States in the first ever National Convention held by any political party, it was yet another small nod to the early and idyllic days of the French Revolution.
The decision as who to run for Vice President was challenging, however the Orleans wing of the party managed to get their golden child, J.F. Davis, Jefferson Finis, onto the Girondist ticket. The solely Southern ticket was thought by many politicians of the day as a sure fire way to distance the party from its western extremes, however Davis was extremely popular in the west, where he had spent the last three years of the war guarding homes from British-Canadian partisans.
The Democratic-Republicans set out to nominate John Armstrong. However he refused to take the nomination and William Henry Harrison had become “too old.” So Solomon Van Rennselaer, who had formed part of the Executive Council during the Reckoning War, ran on his party’s ticket in 1834.
Their decision for Vice President was a little known Ouisconsin lead mine owner and lawyer named Peter Yaga. The Girondist Party swept the ballots and almost took the Presidential Palace, however the nation remembered Solomon’s service during the Reckoning War.
Adding to the Girondist defeat was the nation’s realization that Vice Presidential nominee J.F. Davis was only 26 years old at the time and that the Orleans party bosses had fudged a few records in their attempt to try and get an Orleanist into the Presidential Palace.
This “misunderstanding” cost many of the Orleanist bosses their careers, however J.F. was able to come out of it clean and would be more careful before accepting potentially illegal bargains in the future.
Solomon Van Rennselaer continued many of the policies of his predecessor, increasing tariffs and westward expansion amongst them. However on a hunting trip in the early part of 1836 he was mauled to death by a bear in the woods of New York.
The 35 year old Peter Yaga came into power untested and unsure of how to control the Congress. Alexander Porter, the President Pro Tempore and a Senator from Missouri sensed this and sponsored several bills that would limit the President’s power, while none of these passed it served as a quick display of power on Porter’s part as he attempted to gain more influence for himself. [3]
President Yaga knew that the only way to make sure that he retained power was through the force of his personality. So he went for broke to seem larger than life, this included hosting more than a few free banquets for the average voter of Washington DC, almost constantly touring the nation, listening to the complaints of the average man, enlarging the American presence around Cape Horn, and even threatening war with Texas and the FEM if they continued to resist American expansion.
In short, President Yaga became very popular, very quickly. So popular in fact that in 1838 William King and the Girondists lost handily again, though they did make a few gains in the Congress and more than a few governors were now officially part of the Girondist Party.
By 1842 Peter Yaga had sealed his place in history as an incredibly popular, if relatively inactive, President. By this time the Girondists were standing on the edge, unless they won soon it seemed as if their broad base of support would just give up and keep voting the Democratic-Republican line.
With no strong contenders and a resigning, if popular president, the Democratic-Republicans nominated Brigham Young, who used his fame as the man responsible for the Sedition Act of 1833 while the Girondist Party once again nominated William King, along with the barely old enough J.F. Davis.
Then King won. The first Girondist President-elect and the first President from Alabama entered the Presidential Palace in January of 1843 and soon things would change forever in the United States.
Within five years the nation would be drawn to the brink of war with not just one power, but four.
[1] Also known as the Hawley Tariff of 1832. It was named for Jess Hawley Junior, the son of the flour merchant who convinced everyone to build the Erie Canal.
[2] Named after the Girondist Club during the French Revolution, the ones who tried to curb the excessive violence and anarchism of the early days and the excessive violence and anarchism of the later Jacobins.
[3] Thanks in part to more acceptance of Executive Power in TTL there isn’t such a ruckus over the VP taking over the President’s job until the next scheduled election.
When the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville smuggled himself into England in the late 1840s he found a hermit kingdom, well, a hermit republic. By 1835 any and all contacts with the outside world had stopped and the only foreigners that the New Republicans met were those same people who were trying to invade them.
In the years since the Forced Hand the average Briton had become more reactionary than revolutionary, everyone carried guns, and there was a great amount of general agreement that all kings should be killed and that anyone with a funny sounding name, primarily of the Swedish variety, would be shot on sight.
So who led this network of alliances that had coalesced into the de facto Republic of England? His name was John Pershing, Lord-Protector of the Republics of England and he was a former sailor/butcher/soldier/gunsmith and American. [1]
The highly xenophobic nature of the Republicans astonished de Tocqueville, though he did remark that he was extended a great amount of generosity by the locals wherever he went, he just found that their table talk consisted of the harvest, the upcoming elections, and wiping out the Swedish population by force.
What shocked the world the most was when de Tocqueville decided to simply send his manuscript to the printers by way of a passing ship, he had decided to stay in the Republic of England and see what would happen.
**
Nobody was sure where Denmark was getting all the gold from. All they knew was that less and less slaves were being imported to the Danish Caribbean and instead were finding their way to Danish California.
At first nobody suspected too much to come of the Dane’s romp in the New World but when 1835 rolled around and Denmark was exporting more cotton than Europe could consume, which also cut deep into the pockets of Egypt, everyone began to take notice. [2]
Then when Denmark began to quickly modernize its forces, not just the European ones either, soon Asante tribesmen were wielding the newest Zeldenthuis rifles and marching in all cotton uniforms as they continued to pacify massive swathes of the African coast for Denmark.
Economists of the day were certain that Denmark’s treasury would soon be exhausted, that any move by the Danish to actually use their new rifles in enforcing order on the world would overstretch their monetary supply, of course nobody realized what the Danish had found in California.
**
When Morocco realized the truly massive extent of the armies arrayed against it, it was forced to try and find some friends on the Continent, and quickly. In Valencia, the most independent and lawless territory in Europe, they would find that friend.
Since the latter half of the Napoleonic Wars, Valencia had attracted every type of person from all over Europe, Anarchists, Hegelians, Kasparites, and many other stripes of political dissidents. [3]
The odd mix present in Valencia meant that as an institution it reminded people more of Republican France than the philosophical goldmine that it was. The Hegelians particularly those influenced by Strauss, attacked religion on an almost daily basis. They claimed that all corrupt societies until this point had been based in one way or another on religious principles.
Marx’s New Economy opened the way for the command economy that would evolve in Valencia, especially the famous quote “When all owners are elected then all workers are paid.”
Indeed, the many works of the early and mostly German “philosopher-kings” of Valencia had a great amount of influence in the day to day running of the first “Anarchist State.”
Feuerbach argues for Platonic Breeding and laws were enacted to decrease human weakness in the gene pool, Ruge states that the only path to progress is a General Will and children are taught to sacrifice all for the group, Martinez claims that only through Action can Progress appear and Valencia declares a common cause with Morocco against the Papal States. [4]
[1] John Pershing was the father of Black Jack Pershing in OTL, in this one his life is dramatically different and he ends up signing on with the British after being captured in the Reckoning War, if only to avoid sitting in a cell in Quebec.
[2] Though the Danish do hammer out a trade agreement which limits Danish cotton imports in return for Egyptian protection of Danish shipping in North Africa.
[3] Kasparites are named after Johann Kaspar Schmidt who in OTL is better known as Max Stirner. In this timeline he wrote his treatises on nihilism and anarchism under his middle name instead of a pseudonym. Hegelians are actually the Young or Left Hegelians.
[4] In Plato’s Republic he argued for a form of eugenics that was to be imposed upon the lower classes by the philosopher elite, this happens in Valencia, thus the term Platonic Breeding will come to mean something similar to eugenics, it also carries a strong atheist aspect because faith is seen as a weakness by Feuerbach.
In the years since the Forced Hand the average Briton had become more reactionary than revolutionary, everyone carried guns, and there was a great amount of general agreement that all kings should be killed and that anyone with a funny sounding name, primarily of the Swedish variety, would be shot on sight.
So who led this network of alliances that had coalesced into the de facto Republic of England? His name was John Pershing, Lord-Protector of the Republics of England and he was a former sailor/butcher/soldier/gunsmith and American. [1]
The highly xenophobic nature of the Republicans astonished de Tocqueville, though he did remark that he was extended a great amount of generosity by the locals wherever he went, he just found that their table talk consisted of the harvest, the upcoming elections, and wiping out the Swedish population by force.
What shocked the world the most was when de Tocqueville decided to simply send his manuscript to the printers by way of a passing ship, he had decided to stay in the Republic of England and see what would happen.
**
Nobody was sure where Denmark was getting all the gold from. All they knew was that less and less slaves were being imported to the Danish Caribbean and instead were finding their way to Danish California.
At first nobody suspected too much to come of the Dane’s romp in the New World but when 1835 rolled around and Denmark was exporting more cotton than Europe could consume, which also cut deep into the pockets of Egypt, everyone began to take notice. [2]
Then when Denmark began to quickly modernize its forces, not just the European ones either, soon Asante tribesmen were wielding the newest Zeldenthuis rifles and marching in all cotton uniforms as they continued to pacify massive swathes of the African coast for Denmark.
Economists of the day were certain that Denmark’s treasury would soon be exhausted, that any move by the Danish to actually use their new rifles in enforcing order on the world would overstretch their monetary supply, of course nobody realized what the Danish had found in California.
**
When Morocco realized the truly massive extent of the armies arrayed against it, it was forced to try and find some friends on the Continent, and quickly. In Valencia, the most independent and lawless territory in Europe, they would find that friend.
Since the latter half of the Napoleonic Wars, Valencia had attracted every type of person from all over Europe, Anarchists, Hegelians, Kasparites, and many other stripes of political dissidents. [3]
The odd mix present in Valencia meant that as an institution it reminded people more of Republican France than the philosophical goldmine that it was. The Hegelians particularly those influenced by Strauss, attacked religion on an almost daily basis. They claimed that all corrupt societies until this point had been based in one way or another on religious principles.
Marx’s New Economy opened the way for the command economy that would evolve in Valencia, especially the famous quote “When all owners are elected then all workers are paid.”
Indeed, the many works of the early and mostly German “philosopher-kings” of Valencia had a great amount of influence in the day to day running of the first “Anarchist State.”
Feuerbach argues for Platonic Breeding and laws were enacted to decrease human weakness in the gene pool, Ruge states that the only path to progress is a General Will and children are taught to sacrifice all for the group, Martinez claims that only through Action can Progress appear and Valencia declares a common cause with Morocco against the Papal States. [4]
[1] John Pershing was the father of Black Jack Pershing in OTL, in this one his life is dramatically different and he ends up signing on with the British after being captured in the Reckoning War, if only to avoid sitting in a cell in Quebec.
[2] Though the Danish do hammer out a trade agreement which limits Danish cotton imports in return for Egyptian protection of Danish shipping in North Africa.
[3] Kasparites are named after Johann Kaspar Schmidt who in OTL is better known as Max Stirner. In this timeline he wrote his treatises on nihilism and anarchism under his middle name instead of a pseudonym. Hegelians are actually the Young or Left Hegelians.
[4] In Plato’s Republic he argued for a form of eugenics that was to be imposed upon the lower classes by the philosopher elite, this happens in Valencia, thus the term Platonic Breeding will come to mean something similar to eugenics, it also carries a strong atheist aspect because faith is seen as a weakness by Feuerbach.
The VOC had been languishing in relative obscurity for quite some time, now a French owned business, parts of it had been swallowed and maligned and for the past twenty years it had been trading less and less with its primary source of income, Nehaun. [1]
This lack of trade caused a fair amount of instability in the Nehauni economy and resulted in the Nehauni opening a few more ports to trade from Qing China and even India. [2]
When in 1851 a renewed “Dutch” (French) interest in the country brought a small fleet from the French Philippines to Decima, the former VOC artificial island from which all trade was conducted.
When Nehauni officials tried to search the French ships the captain took this as an over aggressive move and ejected the officials from his boats. Nehauni officials declared this to be an act of war and tried to bar the French from entering Nagasaki Bay.
The French captain, Alphonse Henri Eduard, was bemused at the Nehauni junks firing arrows at his men. He then ordered the flagship Saint Bonaventure de Bagnorea to return fire with the newest French weapon, the Kingston Rockets. [3]
The rockets worked well, not only scattering but destroying most of the Nehauni fleet that had been protecting the entrance to Decima and Caseux beyond. [4]
This act only helped to sour the newborn relationship between the Shogunate and the French. So much so that it would lead to war.
Henri Eduard would send for native Filipino troops to help police the small French outpost, though he definitely made a net gain when he armed the few secret Christian groups that came forward. Eduard believed that in the coming war France’s would need all the manpower that it could get.
These troops arrived within the month, just in enough time for the first of the Nehauni attacks. Eduard had been expecting something, anything more than a medieval army. Though his French and Filipino troops soon learnt to not engage the samurai in hand to hand combat. They opted instead to drop back and fire through their leather armor.
The battles were really just slaughters, with modern rifles and modern artillery pieces and modern rockets most Nehauni charges were cut down before the need to apply the bayonet. The Nehauni troops were considered so easily terrified and so easy to beat that Eduard authorized some of his fleet to take a battalion or two of marines and raid the northern parts of the country as well.
Throughout 1852 the French burned most of the coastal areas of Hocaedo to the ground. This resulted in a panic, especially after the usually bitter Ainu were armed. Peasants who swore allegiance to Napoleon II were given old issue muskets, and masterless samurai, known as ronin, who promised their lives to the French cause, were rewarded with captured horses and captured rice.
The Nehauni obsession with rice was often times hilarious to the French who would mock these simplistic “hut dwellers” on numerous occasions by executing prisoners through tying large sacks of rice, and a few cannonballs, to a group of ten or so and throwing them overboard. The journals of one marine stated that the shooting of the few who would struggle free made for good sport.
The Shogun, Tokugawa Ieyoshi, was entirely uncertain of how to deal with the French, though the general sentiment was that they were nearly invincible supermen who would kill everyone. The French played this up, a famous tactic in pacifying villages was to shoot a criminal and then load a pistol, leaving the shot out, and have villagers shoot as French soldiers.
The loud flash and bang accompanied with a still standing Frenchman was more than enough to convince hordes of superstitious Nehauni that these men were invincible. [5]
These French were so invincible that by 1854 all Nehauni armies were defeated or in hiding, the daimyo had acquiesced to every French demand and the incredibly public execution of Tokugawa Ieyoshi, as well as his sons and daughters and most of his family, had terrified the Nehauni into submission.
They were so terrified in fact that when Emperor Komei was forced to abdicate, on behalf of Napoleon II, only a few of the most loyal daimyo rebelled. After their executions everyone in the nation just stood back as the French became the undisputed masters of Nehaun.
When Alphonse Henri Eduard sent word to the court of his Emperor that he had opened up yet another domain in Asia in the name of the French Empire Napoleon II was said to balk at the ease of which the Nehauni were conquered.
“If merchants, Filipinos, and half a fleet could conquer these people then who would want them?”
[1] It is Japan; you’ll see why it’s spelled that way later.
[2] Mostly conducted via the Ryuku Kingdom, similar to how Korea traded in OTL.
[3] Holy shit, nitroglycerin packed inside of a traveling ricochet tube? Why yes sir I think that’s deadly.
[4] Kyushu
[5] Actual tactic used by the Belgians in the Congo, also Hocaedo is Hokkaido, come on, you know this by now.
This lack of trade caused a fair amount of instability in the Nehauni economy and resulted in the Nehauni opening a few more ports to trade from Qing China and even India. [2]
When in 1851 a renewed “Dutch” (French) interest in the country brought a small fleet from the French Philippines to Decima, the former VOC artificial island from which all trade was conducted.
When Nehauni officials tried to search the French ships the captain took this as an over aggressive move and ejected the officials from his boats. Nehauni officials declared this to be an act of war and tried to bar the French from entering Nagasaki Bay.
The French captain, Alphonse Henri Eduard, was bemused at the Nehauni junks firing arrows at his men. He then ordered the flagship Saint Bonaventure de Bagnorea to return fire with the newest French weapon, the Kingston Rockets. [3]
The rockets worked well, not only scattering but destroying most of the Nehauni fleet that had been protecting the entrance to Decima and Caseux beyond. [4]
This act only helped to sour the newborn relationship between the Shogunate and the French. So much so that it would lead to war.
Henri Eduard would send for native Filipino troops to help police the small French outpost, though he definitely made a net gain when he armed the few secret Christian groups that came forward. Eduard believed that in the coming war France’s would need all the manpower that it could get.
These troops arrived within the month, just in enough time for the first of the Nehauni attacks. Eduard had been expecting something, anything more than a medieval army. Though his French and Filipino troops soon learnt to not engage the samurai in hand to hand combat. They opted instead to drop back and fire through their leather armor.
The battles were really just slaughters, with modern rifles and modern artillery pieces and modern rockets most Nehauni charges were cut down before the need to apply the bayonet. The Nehauni troops were considered so easily terrified and so easy to beat that Eduard authorized some of his fleet to take a battalion or two of marines and raid the northern parts of the country as well.
Throughout 1852 the French burned most of the coastal areas of Hocaedo to the ground. This resulted in a panic, especially after the usually bitter Ainu were armed. Peasants who swore allegiance to Napoleon II were given old issue muskets, and masterless samurai, known as ronin, who promised their lives to the French cause, were rewarded with captured horses and captured rice.
The Nehauni obsession with rice was often times hilarious to the French who would mock these simplistic “hut dwellers” on numerous occasions by executing prisoners through tying large sacks of rice, and a few cannonballs, to a group of ten or so and throwing them overboard. The journals of one marine stated that the shooting of the few who would struggle free made for good sport.
The Shogun, Tokugawa Ieyoshi, was entirely uncertain of how to deal with the French, though the general sentiment was that they were nearly invincible supermen who would kill everyone. The French played this up, a famous tactic in pacifying villages was to shoot a criminal and then load a pistol, leaving the shot out, and have villagers shoot as French soldiers.
The loud flash and bang accompanied with a still standing Frenchman was more than enough to convince hordes of superstitious Nehauni that these men were invincible. [5]
These French were so invincible that by 1854 all Nehauni armies were defeated or in hiding, the daimyo had acquiesced to every French demand and the incredibly public execution of Tokugawa Ieyoshi, as well as his sons and daughters and most of his family, had terrified the Nehauni into submission.
They were so terrified in fact that when Emperor Komei was forced to abdicate, on behalf of Napoleon II, only a few of the most loyal daimyo rebelled. After their executions everyone in the nation just stood back as the French became the undisputed masters of Nehaun.
When Alphonse Henri Eduard sent word to the court of his Emperor that he had opened up yet another domain in Asia in the name of the French Empire Napoleon II was said to balk at the ease of which the Nehauni were conquered.
“If merchants, Filipinos, and half a fleet could conquer these people then who would want them?”
[1] It is Japan; you’ll see why it’s spelled that way later.
[2] Mostly conducted via the Ryuku Kingdom, similar to how Korea traded in OTL.
[3] Holy shit, nitroglycerin packed inside of a traveling ricochet tube? Why yes sir I think that’s deadly.
[4] Kyushu
[5] Actual tactic used by the Belgians in the Congo, also Hocaedo is Hokkaido, come on, you know this by now.
For much of the nineteenth century the continent of South America was a no man’s land. Yes, some success stories existed, the rapid growth of Suriname and the regional stability of the Viceroyalty of Peru contrasted with the increasing isolationism of the United Kingdom of Portugal and Brazil.
For the most part though South America was a land ruled at the local level by local despots. Gran Colombia is a good example of this. Though it officially declared independence in 1818 by 1850 no nation, other than itself, even recognized its right to exist. Large swathes of its territory were ruled by New Spain and Suriname.
The central section of Gran Colombia was a base for bandits, slave traders, feuding “Liberators” and a dozen other illegal activities that would have been clamped down upon in any other nation.
So it was understandable when Haitian troops landed in Orinoco in 1853 that no Colombian armies marched to meet them. In fact the only troops that did show up were militiamen from Suriname who came to protect local farms from Haitian raiding tactics. [1]
Brazil was on the decline, Mato-Grosso was mostly lawless by the 1830s and Surinamese farmers were rapidly expanding into Grão-Para by 1840. By 1845 most of the elite and upper crust population of Brazil had left for the relative stability of life in Portugal. This left only local Brazilians and the poorest nobles in charge of the country.
The increasing localization of politics and thought Brazil would be constantly embroiled in civil war after civil war by the 1880s, eventually leading to its complete dissolution as a nation.
Increasing American presence in Cape Horn and at the Falklands resulted in the steady Americanization of the southern Cone. English is growing in popularity as a second language in the south and with recent Conscription Means Citizenship policies most of the men with guns in the south have pledged their allegiance to the Americans.
Peru, now that is a land with ambition. Its Viceroy, Joaquin de la Pezuela, had managed to expand direct control over many parts of the Viceroyalty that had once been autonomous. By the 1820s it was the most powerful nation in South America and when Joaquin died in 1830 his equally ambitious son, Juan, stepped forward to continue the conquest of most of northern South America.
The Viceroyalty of Peru technically claimed about half of the continent, a hold over from the very early colonial days before the establishment of the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata, and it was Juan’s ambition to extend that kind of control over South America once again.
So in 1840 he cut the last ties to the Kingdom of Spain-in-exile and declared himself Emperor of Peru and would come to be affectionately known by his subjects as El Emperador and soon his subjects would become Los Romanos. [2]
So now El Emperador would need to find his empire, and he looked northwards at the massive vacant chunk of the continent that had once been known as Quito, though now was known as Republica de Gran Colombia.
[1] Nobody wants to risk a war with Haiti, they recently conquered pretty much the entirety of those islands that constitute the Grenadines, Turks and Caicos and all that.
[2] The Romans, because they’re going to conquer everyone.
For the most part though South America was a land ruled at the local level by local despots. Gran Colombia is a good example of this. Though it officially declared independence in 1818 by 1850 no nation, other than itself, even recognized its right to exist. Large swathes of its territory were ruled by New Spain and Suriname.
The central section of Gran Colombia was a base for bandits, slave traders, feuding “Liberators” and a dozen other illegal activities that would have been clamped down upon in any other nation.
So it was understandable when Haitian troops landed in Orinoco in 1853 that no Colombian armies marched to meet them. In fact the only troops that did show up were militiamen from Suriname who came to protect local farms from Haitian raiding tactics. [1]
Brazil was on the decline, Mato-Grosso was mostly lawless by the 1830s and Surinamese farmers were rapidly expanding into Grão-Para by 1840. By 1845 most of the elite and upper crust population of Brazil had left for the relative stability of life in Portugal. This left only local Brazilians and the poorest nobles in charge of the country.
The increasing localization of politics and thought Brazil would be constantly embroiled in civil war after civil war by the 1880s, eventually leading to its complete dissolution as a nation.
Increasing American presence in Cape Horn and at the Falklands resulted in the steady Americanization of the southern Cone. English is growing in popularity as a second language in the south and with recent Conscription Means Citizenship policies most of the men with guns in the south have pledged their allegiance to the Americans.
Peru, now that is a land with ambition. Its Viceroy, Joaquin de la Pezuela, had managed to expand direct control over many parts of the Viceroyalty that had once been autonomous. By the 1820s it was the most powerful nation in South America and when Joaquin died in 1830 his equally ambitious son, Juan, stepped forward to continue the conquest of most of northern South America.
The Viceroyalty of Peru technically claimed about half of the continent, a hold over from the very early colonial days before the establishment of the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata, and it was Juan’s ambition to extend that kind of control over South America once again.
So in 1840 he cut the last ties to the Kingdom of Spain-in-exile and declared himself Emperor of Peru and would come to be affectionately known by his subjects as El Emperador and soon his subjects would become Los Romanos. [2]
So now El Emperador would need to find his empire, and he looked northwards at the massive vacant chunk of the continent that had once been known as Quito, though now was known as Republica de Gran Colombia.
[1] Nobody wants to risk a war with Haiti, they recently conquered pretty much the entirety of those islands that constitute the Grenadines, Turks and Caicos and all that.
[2] The Romans, because they’re going to conquer everyone.
Britain’s grasp on Galicia extended not from a Galician desire to be part of some great nation, which by this time Britain was not, but Galicia’s reluctance to join other failing states. The Kingdom of Spain was still a French puppet, Portugal was trying to decide whether or not it should focus its efforts on Europe, the Americas, or Africa, and Valencia was just terrifyingly strange.
So Galicia stayed a part of Britain and did its best to fit in. When this required a whole new army to be raised in Galicia, in part from the continued protests of the Canadians who were very near tired of supporting Britain, then the Galicians stepped forward and raised an army.
The most infamous unit of this army was the 3rd Santiagon Regiment of Foot, raised primarily from Galician partisans whose fathers had taught them art of hiding in the mountain passes and given them the cruelty needed to carry out lightning swift raids and reprisals deep into the enemy territory.
It was these men who would form the backbone of the punitive columns that were to ride into the Irish countryside, arrest or kill suspected Irish Catholic rebels, known as the Óglaigh na hÉireann, or ONE.
The Santiagons soon met their match in ONE “martyrs” who willingly packed guncotton into their own clothing and engaged Santiagon troopers in hand to hand combat, often triggering the highly unstable guncotton when surrounded by Santiagons.
Reprisals were quick in coming and Santiagon troops had no qualms about killing any priest or peasant that they thought was encouraging the acts of ONE. These dead Irishmen only served to fuel the flames of hatred and when the inventor of ONE’s most effective tool, Greg Kingston, was bayoneted in the streets of Corcaigh rioting swept the nation and eighty British prisoners were found in a field, their throats slit and most of their blood drained.
The act outraged Lord Northumberland and he ordered the remaining Irish captives executed, publicly. So the game of reprisal went, ONE would blow up a garrison and Irish prisoners would be hanged in the street. It would not be long before total rebellion was imminent.
**
Jack Woley continued to serve India as a soldier. By this time he was fighting in almost exclusively Balinese and other Shaivite regiments that thought of him as a holy man who would lead them to victory.
Jack did not disappoint. In one of the first of India’s Expansionary Wars he led 40,000 Hindu troops into the Irrawaddy Basin where they proceeded to lay the local warlords low and gain massive amounts of vital territory for India’s seasonal and migration prone farming communities.
From there he moved on Tenasserim which would give India enough leverage to pressure the Siamese into signing one sided trade deals. It was India’s conquest of these majority Buddhist territories that cause Druk Yul to raise an eyebrow.
Though the many people who were part of the Dzongkha Nation were supposed to be nominally equal there was a large anti-Muslim and anti-Christian bias in the country. The Sikhs were allowed to proselytize, in majority Hindu areas, while the Buddhist heartland was sectioned off and seen as somehow separate and more important.
While it is true that Druk Malla had worked most of his life to establish a sense of cohesiveness in regards to Hinduism and Buddhism, and was even slightly successful, the Buddhist nobles still saw themselves as above the law and more influential than their Hindu counterparts, who mostly focused on military affairs.
So when the government of Druk Yul issued several proclamations that warned India of the dangers of continuing to conquer territories inhabited by Buddhists, a secondary set of proclamations declaring the rights of Hindus was issued as an afterthought, then Druk Yul would impose an embargo on India and the aggressive nature of many of the proclamations suggested possible war.
**
The Asante were more than willing to conquer inland tribes on behalf of Denmark. In fact they took a certain amount of zeal in it, journeying far into the boundaries of western Africa and exerting their will over their neighbors.
The theocratic undertones of Denmark’s rule did not help either. The Asante were the soldiers of Christ, who many adopted as a universal ancestor who watched over his chosen people. This movement towards Christian influenced animism is reflected in the name that the Asante-Danish warriors adopted for themselves, Kris Asekan. [1]
The enlightened Danish policies helped to foment this missionary and conquest minded zeal. Instead of treating the Asante as colonial subjects they were considered honorary Danes and all Danish armies operating in Africa were fully integrated units, black Asante officers even commanded white Danish troops on more than one occasion.
The first Asante general to lead European troops overseas would be Siisi Nkrumah, who in 1853 would lead Denmark in conquering the islands of Hawaii.
The reasoning behind the conquest of Hawaii was that because the Asante had conquered so many peoples, so quickly and enslaved so many of them that when those slave ships reached Danish California they were just contributing to the overcrowded state of the furthest extent of Denmark’s will.
So many of those slaves that would have worked in California’s fields and mines would have to be diverted elsewhere, the food supply was becoming stretched and Danish officials feared that if the slaves reached a critical mass then they’d rebel and there would not be enough troops to prevent its success.
The practice of dumping these unneeded slaves in the lesser populated regions of Mexico soon proved unpopular, after all it had taken so long to transport them there and cost so much why not use them elsewhere?
Siisi Nkrumah had the answer, he proposed that the Kingdom of Hawaii, which had been raiding its neighbors and causing all sorts of problems for everyone be colonized with freed slaves that would grow food and raise loyal troops for the Danish forces in California.
It had been quite some time since anyone had bothered to visit Hawaii and their immunity to the last batch of European diseases was already long gone. So when three thousand slave-soldiers, mostly of the Ga and Fante ethnic groups and some Swedish mercenaries, landed the diseases often wiped out populations before the armies of Denmark could subjugate them.
It was a hollow victory for General Nkrumah but it still sealed his place as a vital link in Denmark’s expansion and would serve as a launch pad for Nkrumah’s eventual rise to power as one of Denmark’s most influential and important men.
[1] Knives of Christ
So Galicia stayed a part of Britain and did its best to fit in. When this required a whole new army to be raised in Galicia, in part from the continued protests of the Canadians who were very near tired of supporting Britain, then the Galicians stepped forward and raised an army.
The most infamous unit of this army was the 3rd Santiagon Regiment of Foot, raised primarily from Galician partisans whose fathers had taught them art of hiding in the mountain passes and given them the cruelty needed to carry out lightning swift raids and reprisals deep into the enemy territory.
It was these men who would form the backbone of the punitive columns that were to ride into the Irish countryside, arrest or kill suspected Irish Catholic rebels, known as the Óglaigh na hÉireann, or ONE.
The Santiagons soon met their match in ONE “martyrs” who willingly packed guncotton into their own clothing and engaged Santiagon troopers in hand to hand combat, often triggering the highly unstable guncotton when surrounded by Santiagons.
Reprisals were quick in coming and Santiagon troops had no qualms about killing any priest or peasant that they thought was encouraging the acts of ONE. These dead Irishmen only served to fuel the flames of hatred and when the inventor of ONE’s most effective tool, Greg Kingston, was bayoneted in the streets of Corcaigh rioting swept the nation and eighty British prisoners were found in a field, their throats slit and most of their blood drained.
The act outraged Lord Northumberland and he ordered the remaining Irish captives executed, publicly. So the game of reprisal went, ONE would blow up a garrison and Irish prisoners would be hanged in the street. It would not be long before total rebellion was imminent.
**
Jack Woley continued to serve India as a soldier. By this time he was fighting in almost exclusively Balinese and other Shaivite regiments that thought of him as a holy man who would lead them to victory.
Jack did not disappoint. In one of the first of India’s Expansionary Wars he led 40,000 Hindu troops into the Irrawaddy Basin where they proceeded to lay the local warlords low and gain massive amounts of vital territory for India’s seasonal and migration prone farming communities.
From there he moved on Tenasserim which would give India enough leverage to pressure the Siamese into signing one sided trade deals. It was India’s conquest of these majority Buddhist territories that cause Druk Yul to raise an eyebrow.
Though the many people who were part of the Dzongkha Nation were supposed to be nominally equal there was a large anti-Muslim and anti-Christian bias in the country. The Sikhs were allowed to proselytize, in majority Hindu areas, while the Buddhist heartland was sectioned off and seen as somehow separate and more important.
While it is true that Druk Malla had worked most of his life to establish a sense of cohesiveness in regards to Hinduism and Buddhism, and was even slightly successful, the Buddhist nobles still saw themselves as above the law and more influential than their Hindu counterparts, who mostly focused on military affairs.
So when the government of Druk Yul issued several proclamations that warned India of the dangers of continuing to conquer territories inhabited by Buddhists, a secondary set of proclamations declaring the rights of Hindus was issued as an afterthought, then Druk Yul would impose an embargo on India and the aggressive nature of many of the proclamations suggested possible war.
**
The Asante were more than willing to conquer inland tribes on behalf of Denmark. In fact they took a certain amount of zeal in it, journeying far into the boundaries of western Africa and exerting their will over their neighbors.
The theocratic undertones of Denmark’s rule did not help either. The Asante were the soldiers of Christ, who many adopted as a universal ancestor who watched over his chosen people. This movement towards Christian influenced animism is reflected in the name that the Asante-Danish warriors adopted for themselves, Kris Asekan. [1]
The enlightened Danish policies helped to foment this missionary and conquest minded zeal. Instead of treating the Asante as colonial subjects they were considered honorary Danes and all Danish armies operating in Africa were fully integrated units, black Asante officers even commanded white Danish troops on more than one occasion.
The first Asante general to lead European troops overseas would be Siisi Nkrumah, who in 1853 would lead Denmark in conquering the islands of Hawaii.
The reasoning behind the conquest of Hawaii was that because the Asante had conquered so many peoples, so quickly and enslaved so many of them that when those slave ships reached Danish California they were just contributing to the overcrowded state of the furthest extent of Denmark’s will.
So many of those slaves that would have worked in California’s fields and mines would have to be diverted elsewhere, the food supply was becoming stretched and Danish officials feared that if the slaves reached a critical mass then they’d rebel and there would not be enough troops to prevent its success.
The practice of dumping these unneeded slaves in the lesser populated regions of Mexico soon proved unpopular, after all it had taken so long to transport them there and cost so much why not use them elsewhere?
Siisi Nkrumah had the answer, he proposed that the Kingdom of Hawaii, which had been raiding its neighbors and causing all sorts of problems for everyone be colonized with freed slaves that would grow food and raise loyal troops for the Danish forces in California.
It had been quite some time since anyone had bothered to visit Hawaii and their immunity to the last batch of European diseases was already long gone. So when three thousand slave-soldiers, mostly of the Ga and Fante ethnic groups and some Swedish mercenaries, landed the diseases often wiped out populations before the armies of Denmark could subjugate them.
It was a hollow victory for General Nkrumah but it still sealed his place as a vital link in Denmark’s expansion and would serve as a launch pad for Nkrumah’s eventual rise to power as one of Denmark’s most influential and important men.
[1] Knives of Christ
Nobody is really sure where Li Yixuan came from. Some say he was a holy man who just stayed on Earth instead of dying; others say he was the son of a whore from Hebei who got lucky and mumbled some stuff about nothingness and enlightenment before killing hundreds of thousands of people and fathering over two hundred children.
Either way, everyone agrees that he killed hundreds of thousands of people and fathered over two hundred children. Li Yixuan was a symptom of China’s decline in power.
While the Middle Kingdom continued to stratify and crumble from the opium pouring into its borders the officials of the Empire whispered lies of China’s grandeur into the Emperor’s ears.
No one in the Empire had any idea of what was coming next.
Zuo Zongtang had failed the entrance exams multiple times before finally deciding to drop out all together and retire to reasonably priced lands in Xinjiang. [1]
It was while in Xinjiang that he became enamored with the newer Western sciences being practiced in Druk Yul, after all most of Tibet had been conquered by the Dzongkha armies and Zuo felt that he should at least have some understanding of their society. What else did he have to do?
And so he whiled away his time on intellectual and mechanical pursuits, becoming a great scholar and eventually a great inventor. However his first invention happened quite by accident, after spilling some Maotai onto a sheet of gelatinized guncotton. Thinking the guncotton ruined he decided to take it outside and blast it. [2]
Imagine his delight when it produced little to no actual smoke. He immediately set out to recreate the experiment and found that each time he mixed the liquor with the gelatinized guncotton and let it dry the result would be no smoke.
So while Zuo Zongtang was busy inventing one of the next great military marvels Li Yixuan was just getting his start as a “wayward monk” often referred to as a madman this 19th century philosopher was quite fond of the Linji school of Zen Buddhism which said in no unclear terms “kill the Buddha, kill the arhat, kill your parents, kill your kinfolk, kill pretty much everything.”
Li Yixuan and his eventual followers would have a prosperous career ahead of them.
[1] Butterflies are a-flappin’ their wings on this one. He originally retired in Hunan but in this timeline thanks to small shifts here and there cause that deal to fall through.
[2] Zuo Zongtang is a big fan of explosions.
Either way, everyone agrees that he killed hundreds of thousands of people and fathered over two hundred children. Li Yixuan was a symptom of China’s decline in power.
While the Middle Kingdom continued to stratify and crumble from the opium pouring into its borders the officials of the Empire whispered lies of China’s grandeur into the Emperor’s ears.
No one in the Empire had any idea of what was coming next.
Zuo Zongtang had failed the entrance exams multiple times before finally deciding to drop out all together and retire to reasonably priced lands in Xinjiang. [1]
It was while in Xinjiang that he became enamored with the newer Western sciences being practiced in Druk Yul, after all most of Tibet had been conquered by the Dzongkha armies and Zuo felt that he should at least have some understanding of their society. What else did he have to do?
And so he whiled away his time on intellectual and mechanical pursuits, becoming a great scholar and eventually a great inventor. However his first invention happened quite by accident, after spilling some Maotai onto a sheet of gelatinized guncotton. Thinking the guncotton ruined he decided to take it outside and blast it. [2]
Imagine his delight when it produced little to no actual smoke. He immediately set out to recreate the experiment and found that each time he mixed the liquor with the gelatinized guncotton and let it dry the result would be no smoke.
So while Zuo Zongtang was busy inventing one of the next great military marvels Li Yixuan was just getting his start as a “wayward monk” often referred to as a madman this 19th century philosopher was quite fond of the Linji school of Zen Buddhism which said in no unclear terms “kill the Buddha, kill the arhat, kill your parents, kill your kinfolk, kill pretty much everything.”
Li Yixuan and his eventual followers would have a prosperous career ahead of them.
[1] Butterflies are a-flappin’ their wings on this one. He originally retired in Hunan but in this timeline thanks to small shifts here and there cause that deal to fall through.
[2] Zuo Zongtang is a big fan of explosions.
The White Lotus Rebellion helped more than any sermon in securing followers for Li Yixuan. Though the White Lotus Society was eventually crushed by the Qing it was not before some embarrassing military blunders by the Manchus.
So when Li Yixuan began preaching to the Uighur people in Xinjiang he reminded them that the Han were conquerors and prone to raise taxes at the slightest provocation. Li was quick to gain followers amongst the Uighur, even if he was not a Muslim.
He very quickly gained more than a few female followers. In fact it was well known that within a decade Li had more bastard children than the Emperor. His voracious sexual appetite only helped to increase his legend. Uighur men spoke of Li’s supposed exploits, which include more than a few stories stating that he was part monkey, which could be the only explanation for his penchant for darting around on rooftops and death defying stunts.
Dzongkha monks compared him to Drukpa Kunley, the divine madman and patron saint of Druk Yul, stating that he was most likely the reincarnated form of the Divine Flaming Thunderbolt.
Other stories stated that he drank an entire army under the table, ate a herd of pigs in a single sitting, and cured a eunuch of his woes by stealing him a tiger’s penis. Li’s skill with oratory, his growing legendary status, and his devoted followers, and extensive family, would eventually make him a marked man in the Qing Empire.
The legend of Li’s Long Life goes a little something like this: Imperial troops were ordered to question the beggar/saint/pervert/terror of all the earth but when they tried to apprehend him he ran up a wall and perched on a rooftop, where he promptly began throwing feces, the legend does not state if it was his or someone else’s, and straw at them.
The soldiers were understandably angered by this and began firing their crossbows at the man. Li simply danced out of their way and supposedly sang a song about the warmth of their mother’s thighs until some of the soldiers tried climbing onto the roof with him.
He was reported to have shouted “I shall take your lives and make them my own, also your mother is still a whore,” before jumping on the climbing men from above and crashing down to the earth below with them underneath him.
They were dead and he was uninjured. At this the other soldiers were said to have charged, which Li responded to by ripping them apart with his bare hands. Historical records are a little bare on this topic though most historians believe Li was aided by pissed off peasants and a few drunks that stumbled out of a tavern.
Either way Li Yixuan was able to thoroughly impress a local stable hand that had been helping Zuo Zongtang out at his farm. When the stable hand presented Li to Zuo the pair became fast friends and it was not uncommon to see Li, and his devoted band of followers, visiting Zuo for long periods of time.
One of these visits resulted in the fateful muttering of Li regarding Zuo’s new smokeless gunpowder. “A man could conquer the world if he could see.”
So when Li Yixuan began preaching to the Uighur people in Xinjiang he reminded them that the Han were conquerors and prone to raise taxes at the slightest provocation. Li was quick to gain followers amongst the Uighur, even if he was not a Muslim.
He very quickly gained more than a few female followers. In fact it was well known that within a decade Li had more bastard children than the Emperor. His voracious sexual appetite only helped to increase his legend. Uighur men spoke of Li’s supposed exploits, which include more than a few stories stating that he was part monkey, which could be the only explanation for his penchant for darting around on rooftops and death defying stunts.
Dzongkha monks compared him to Drukpa Kunley, the divine madman and patron saint of Druk Yul, stating that he was most likely the reincarnated form of the Divine Flaming Thunderbolt.
Other stories stated that he drank an entire army under the table, ate a herd of pigs in a single sitting, and cured a eunuch of his woes by stealing him a tiger’s penis. Li’s skill with oratory, his growing legendary status, and his devoted followers, and extensive family, would eventually make him a marked man in the Qing Empire.
The legend of Li’s Long Life goes a little something like this: Imperial troops were ordered to question the beggar/saint/pervert/terror of all the earth but when they tried to apprehend him he ran up a wall and perched on a rooftop, where he promptly began throwing feces, the legend does not state if it was his or someone else’s, and straw at them.
The soldiers were understandably angered by this and began firing their crossbows at the man. Li simply danced out of their way and supposedly sang a song about the warmth of their mother’s thighs until some of the soldiers tried climbing onto the roof with him.
He was reported to have shouted “I shall take your lives and make them my own, also your mother is still a whore,” before jumping on the climbing men from above and crashing down to the earth below with them underneath him.
They were dead and he was uninjured. At this the other soldiers were said to have charged, which Li responded to by ripping them apart with his bare hands. Historical records are a little bare on this topic though most historians believe Li was aided by pissed off peasants and a few drunks that stumbled out of a tavern.
Either way Li Yixuan was able to thoroughly impress a local stable hand that had been helping Zuo Zongtang out at his farm. When the stable hand presented Li to Zuo the pair became fast friends and it was not uncommon to see Li, and his devoted band of followers, visiting Zuo for long periods of time.
One of these visits resulted in the fateful muttering of Li regarding Zuo’s new smokeless gunpowder. “A man could conquer the world if he could see.”
I've enjoyed your TL Haggis. It's creative and has a nice flow to it. I'm looking forward to reading more. I'll have to keep the name "Girondist" in mind if I need a law & Order type party in my CoHE TL.
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
The timeline continues to sweep forward like a runaway locomotive, unfettered by any sense of historical decency. Godspeed, Haggis, you brave, wonderful man.
(It's funny you mention the lack of historical decency...)
The Haitian economy was non-existent, their foreign relations consisted of threatening letters to countries that refused to recognize them, and they had been stagnating long enough that they realized they’d need to do something about it, and quickly. So in true Haitian fashion they used their forward base on the Orinoco to raid the New Spanish province of Istmeńo. [1]
The Viceroy of New Spain was not a stupid man. He knew that the Haitians, and their allies in Jamaica and the Bahamas and eventually tribesmen on the Orinoco, were responsible for the lightning fast raids in his territory and he responded with reprisals, principally the seizing of Haitian ships at sea.
In 1855 the Haitians realized that if they continued on this path of expansion, which they planned to, and yet had no way to replenish their troops, which they in fact did not, then they would surely lose.
Emissaries were sent to the remaining Bosneger holdouts in Suriname, they were granted Haitian citizenship, armed and then told that they would have to move to the Haitian occupied lands near the Orinoco. The Bosnegers grudgingly obliged. Still, this was not enough.
So, the President who came after Petion, Michel Felix, used Haiti’s ties to the French to get some old muskets and lots of ammunition, then beseeched the Republic of Valencia to send engineers who could copy the steam and paddle design that had been perfected on the open seas by Rhiner, Valencian, and Spanish sailors.
All of these requests were met almost without hesitation. Possibly only because the French assumed the Haitians were their puppets and the Valencians assumed that Haiti could be made into a protectorate of some sort. Both nations wanted to keep good ties with the growing power of the Caribbean, both nations never realized that Haiti would move beyond the mere Caribbean and cast its eyes elsewhere.
It had been a dream of Michel Felix, growing up in a relatively well educated household in Haiti to establish some contact with “our African brothers at home, who have yet to hear the light of revolution.”
So when Haitian frigates arrived at the Téké village of Nsasa in the fall of 1855 it was really no small wonder that Michel’s son, Noir Felix, led the Haitian delegation that inquired as to where one could purchase hundreds of thousands of slaves. [2]
As luck would have it they could begin their purchases in Nsasa. This is also where they would begin their empire. Noir Felix ordered the well armed, well trained, and well provisioned Haitian troops to seize the entirety of the city, confiscate all slaves already within the city, and enslave anyone who resisted and then confiscate them, and round up the strongest men from the caravans that came threw and then confiscate them.
These “freed” men would find themselves transported, rather comfortably but still against their will, across the Atlantic where they would be trained and armed to fight for the Haitian cause against all who may threaten her.
[1] Panama
[2] Nsasa is the village on the south side of the river where Stanley established what would become Kinshasa.
The Haitian economy was non-existent, their foreign relations consisted of threatening letters to countries that refused to recognize them, and they had been stagnating long enough that they realized they’d need to do something about it, and quickly. So in true Haitian fashion they used their forward base on the Orinoco to raid the New Spanish province of Istmeńo. [1]
The Viceroy of New Spain was not a stupid man. He knew that the Haitians, and their allies in Jamaica and the Bahamas and eventually tribesmen on the Orinoco, were responsible for the lightning fast raids in his territory and he responded with reprisals, principally the seizing of Haitian ships at sea.
In 1855 the Haitians realized that if they continued on this path of expansion, which they planned to, and yet had no way to replenish their troops, which they in fact did not, then they would surely lose.
Emissaries were sent to the remaining Bosneger holdouts in Suriname, they were granted Haitian citizenship, armed and then told that they would have to move to the Haitian occupied lands near the Orinoco. The Bosnegers grudgingly obliged. Still, this was not enough.
So, the President who came after Petion, Michel Felix, used Haiti’s ties to the French to get some old muskets and lots of ammunition, then beseeched the Republic of Valencia to send engineers who could copy the steam and paddle design that had been perfected on the open seas by Rhiner, Valencian, and Spanish sailors.
All of these requests were met almost without hesitation. Possibly only because the French assumed the Haitians were their puppets and the Valencians assumed that Haiti could be made into a protectorate of some sort. Both nations wanted to keep good ties with the growing power of the Caribbean, both nations never realized that Haiti would move beyond the mere Caribbean and cast its eyes elsewhere.
It had been a dream of Michel Felix, growing up in a relatively well educated household in Haiti to establish some contact with “our African brothers at home, who have yet to hear the light of revolution.”
So when Haitian frigates arrived at the Téké village of Nsasa in the fall of 1855 it was really no small wonder that Michel’s son, Noir Felix, led the Haitian delegation that inquired as to where one could purchase hundreds of thousands of slaves. [2]
As luck would have it they could begin their purchases in Nsasa. This is also where they would begin their empire. Noir Felix ordered the well armed, well trained, and well provisioned Haitian troops to seize the entirety of the city, confiscate all slaves already within the city, and enslave anyone who resisted and then confiscate them, and round up the strongest men from the caravans that came threw and then confiscate them.
These “freed” men would find themselves transported, rather comfortably but still against their will, across the Atlantic where they would be trained and armed to fight for the Haitian cause against all who may threaten her.
[1] Panama
[2] Nsasa is the village on the south side of the river where Stanley established what would become Kinshasa.
The retirement of Andrew Jackson was a relatively uneventful one. He lived until the ripe old age of 93 when instead of going on a third pilgrimage to Mecca before his death he decided to do some good with his life and visit the Danish controlled slave market at Ouidah, in the Asantehene province of Dahomey.
All accounts say that he was planning to use his vast wealth to buy as many slaves as he could and resettle them on some of the tracts of land that until now he had left untouched. We know from his own diary that Jackson was becoming kinder in his old age and historical records show that he had already freed all of his former slaves and had been treating them well as tenant farmers.
The fact that almost to the person his former slaves adopted the last name Jackson of their own free will speaks to how much they came to love him.
However, when Jackson arrived in Ouidah, with his second wife Ching Shih, he was told by Danish port authorities that he had to remove his sword. Now, Jackson had worn this particular sword almost every day of his life. He had acquired it on his first trip to Mecca in 1820 and it had great significance to him. Some even said that it was the famed Zulfiqar; the Cleaver of Spines that Ali himself had carried.
Jackson refused to remove his sword and when an Asante guardsman reached to take it from him the 93 year old man knocked him out with a single punch. The other guards then tried to apprehend him but he managed to shrug them off, breaking his left shoulder in the process.
When Ching Shih saw what they were doing to her husband, even if it had been a political marriage to tie the Chinese immigrants closer to the nation, she was outraged and proceeded to seize a rifle from one of the unsuspecting guards, bayonet him, and then threaten the others.
Nobody is sure who fired the first shot, though most everyone suspects it was Ching Shih because a second guard died before she did, but soon a fire fight had broken out. Now, Jackson only had his beloved sword in order to fight with but he was said to cut down six men before being shot in the throat.
After he was shot in the throat he killed three more before bleeding to death. Ching Shih, his 75 year old wife was wrestled to the ground by eight men, arrested and hung for murder.
Their bodies were sent back to Mauritania where an outraged public called for the blood of all Danes. It was noted by most of his family members that the Danish governor of the province of Dahomey, Dagfinn the Stupid, did not return Jackson’s sword. [1]
So Jackson’s eldest son Maurice would call upon his cousins amongst the Mauritanian Navy. He would ask for his father’s former slaves, his own mother’s Indian contacts, he begged whoever would listen that they must seek revenge. [2]
So he rounded up over four hundred massive troop transports and almost a hundred thousand angry Mauritanians, most of them former slaves of Jackson’s or Shia Muslims that were royally pissed that their main representative in Mauritania was now dead.
One of Ching Shih’s pet reforms would come to the fore in this mobilization. As a former pirate she had always seen the need to be able to sail against the wind and so had thrown her weight around and insisted that Mauritania adopt ships that could run off of coal, steam, and Gesner Oil. [3]
These ships performed extraordinarily well in getting the troops to Ouidah quickly and the newer, more powerful guncotton cannons completely destroyed the Danish fleet parked outside the city.
After a three hour battle in which only two Mauritanian ships were lost the raiding fleet put its one hundred thousand or so angry men ashore where they spent four days looting, burning, raping, killing and pillaging. In accordance with his father’s wishes, Maurice Benovsky Jackson ordered all slaves in the market freed and transported back to Mauritania.
Everyone who was captured in Ouidah was transported back as slaves. Along with most of the wealth of the city, in fact the only thing that the Mauritanians left in their wake was only of value to vultures, maggots, and jackals.
Maurice Benovsky Jackson returned home with his father’s sword strapped on tightly, along with enough gold, incense, silk, fine cotton, ivory, slaves, peacock feathers, tobacco, coffee, tea, salt, and other assorted goods to jumpstart a small economy.
After handsomely paying the men who had gone with him he kept the rest of the wealth for his family and their tenants. He had Dagfinn the Stupid, the former governor of Dahomey brought into his house, castrated, and kept in a cage as a pet for the rest of his days.
Maurice was the new head of the Jackson family. He was also more than willing to sell an emissary of Li Yixuan five hundred “slave girls of surpassing beauty for the Prophet’s needs in spreading his Enlightened word.”
Of course, Mauritania’s raid against a Danish outpost could not go unpunished and it was no small thing when Denmark declared war on Mauritania in 1860. Mauritania escalated the conflict by declaring all out war against Denmark’s perceived ally in Africa, Morocco.
So thanks to the strange twists of fate what had started as a simple war between Egypt and al-Jazair, which then morphed into a war between Egypt and Morocco, which then became a war between Egypt, Naples, the Papal States, and Italy on one side and Morocco, Valencia, and to some small extent Denmark on the other was now:
Egypt, Naples, the Papal States, Italy, Mauritania, and later the Mtetwa Empire against Morocco, Valencia, a now fully fledged Denmark, and in acting in unity with their allies in Valencia, Haiti. [4]
[1] His real name was Dagfinn Ebbeson but he would acquire “the Stupid” for not returning the sword.
[2] The Mauritanian Navy is still mostly made up of Chinese pirates and Arab merchants, with a few renegade Scotsmen thrown in for good measure.
[3] Remember, Gesner Oil is kerosene.
[4] Makings of something like a World War, eh?
All accounts say that he was planning to use his vast wealth to buy as many slaves as he could and resettle them on some of the tracts of land that until now he had left untouched. We know from his own diary that Jackson was becoming kinder in his old age and historical records show that he had already freed all of his former slaves and had been treating them well as tenant farmers.
The fact that almost to the person his former slaves adopted the last name Jackson of their own free will speaks to how much they came to love him.
However, when Jackson arrived in Ouidah, with his second wife Ching Shih, he was told by Danish port authorities that he had to remove his sword. Now, Jackson had worn this particular sword almost every day of his life. He had acquired it on his first trip to Mecca in 1820 and it had great significance to him. Some even said that it was the famed Zulfiqar; the Cleaver of Spines that Ali himself had carried.
Jackson refused to remove his sword and when an Asante guardsman reached to take it from him the 93 year old man knocked him out with a single punch. The other guards then tried to apprehend him but he managed to shrug them off, breaking his left shoulder in the process.
When Ching Shih saw what they were doing to her husband, even if it had been a political marriage to tie the Chinese immigrants closer to the nation, she was outraged and proceeded to seize a rifle from one of the unsuspecting guards, bayonet him, and then threaten the others.
Nobody is sure who fired the first shot, though most everyone suspects it was Ching Shih because a second guard died before she did, but soon a fire fight had broken out. Now, Jackson only had his beloved sword in order to fight with but he was said to cut down six men before being shot in the throat.
After he was shot in the throat he killed three more before bleeding to death. Ching Shih, his 75 year old wife was wrestled to the ground by eight men, arrested and hung for murder.
Their bodies were sent back to Mauritania where an outraged public called for the blood of all Danes. It was noted by most of his family members that the Danish governor of the province of Dahomey, Dagfinn the Stupid, did not return Jackson’s sword. [1]
So Jackson’s eldest son Maurice would call upon his cousins amongst the Mauritanian Navy. He would ask for his father’s former slaves, his own mother’s Indian contacts, he begged whoever would listen that they must seek revenge. [2]
So he rounded up over four hundred massive troop transports and almost a hundred thousand angry Mauritanians, most of them former slaves of Jackson’s or Shia Muslims that were royally pissed that their main representative in Mauritania was now dead.
One of Ching Shih’s pet reforms would come to the fore in this mobilization. As a former pirate she had always seen the need to be able to sail against the wind and so had thrown her weight around and insisted that Mauritania adopt ships that could run off of coal, steam, and Gesner Oil. [3]
These ships performed extraordinarily well in getting the troops to Ouidah quickly and the newer, more powerful guncotton cannons completely destroyed the Danish fleet parked outside the city.
After a three hour battle in which only two Mauritanian ships were lost the raiding fleet put its one hundred thousand or so angry men ashore where they spent four days looting, burning, raping, killing and pillaging. In accordance with his father’s wishes, Maurice Benovsky Jackson ordered all slaves in the market freed and transported back to Mauritania.
Everyone who was captured in Ouidah was transported back as slaves. Along with most of the wealth of the city, in fact the only thing that the Mauritanians left in their wake was only of value to vultures, maggots, and jackals.
Maurice Benovsky Jackson returned home with his father’s sword strapped on tightly, along with enough gold, incense, silk, fine cotton, ivory, slaves, peacock feathers, tobacco, coffee, tea, salt, and other assorted goods to jumpstart a small economy.
After handsomely paying the men who had gone with him he kept the rest of the wealth for his family and their tenants. He had Dagfinn the Stupid, the former governor of Dahomey brought into his house, castrated, and kept in a cage as a pet for the rest of his days.
Maurice was the new head of the Jackson family. He was also more than willing to sell an emissary of Li Yixuan five hundred “slave girls of surpassing beauty for the Prophet’s needs in spreading his Enlightened word.”
Of course, Mauritania’s raid against a Danish outpost could not go unpunished and it was no small thing when Denmark declared war on Mauritania in 1860. Mauritania escalated the conflict by declaring all out war against Denmark’s perceived ally in Africa, Morocco.
So thanks to the strange twists of fate what had started as a simple war between Egypt and al-Jazair, which then morphed into a war between Egypt and Morocco, which then became a war between Egypt, Naples, the Papal States, and Italy on one side and Morocco, Valencia, and to some small extent Denmark on the other was now:
Egypt, Naples, the Papal States, Italy, Mauritania, and later the Mtetwa Empire against Morocco, Valencia, a now fully fledged Denmark, and in acting in unity with their allies in Valencia, Haiti. [4]
[1] His real name was Dagfinn Ebbeson but he would acquire “the Stupid” for not returning the sword.
[2] The Mauritanian Navy is still mostly made up of Chinese pirates and Arab merchants, with a few renegade Scotsmen thrown in for good measure.
[3] Remember, Gesner Oil is kerosene.
[4] Makings of something like a World War, eh?
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
Well, not much more like a World War than a lot of the Great Power conflicts that had preceded it, but Napoleon's Wars never came along to usher in a century of relative peace. I'm sure you'll have Gatling-gun equipped velocipedes and the like in your World War anyway.