The Long Twentieth Century : a Franz Ferdinand Lives TL

[MaskedPickle]

« Je dis « Le sais-tu ? »
Tu dis « Je n’en sais rien »
Je dis « sors-moi d’ici ! » »

Sors-moi d’ici, Jaurès, 2004​

“Emperor-King Francis Joseph of Austria-Hungary finally died on November, 21 1916, at the age of eighty-six, in the Schönbrunn Palace. His death was a result of developing pneumonia of the right lung several days after catching a cold while walking in Schönbrunn Park with Louis III of Bavaria. Even if he had drawn particular intention to military preparedness and the numerous crisis in the Balkans, his reign was relatively uneventful after 1908. (...) At least, his demise led to the coming to the throne of his nephew, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who took the regnal names of Ferdinand II of Austria and Ferdinand VI of Hungary…”

-The Tragedy of Francis Joseph of Austria, M. Bartholomaüs, Vienna 1987

Emperor Ferdinand II of Austria and King Ferdinand VI of Hungary, c. 1914

“The Archduke of Austria-Este came in 1916 to a throne from which he had been sidelined, due to his morganatic marriage and his stormy relations to Franz Joseph. In 1916, when Ferdinand II & VI came to power, Austria-Hungary was between a rock and a hard place. Internally, its army was ruled by bellicose generals obsessed by preemptive attacks, its army well behind those of its German ally. The balance of power were torn apart between the Hungarians, who refused to relinquish their status, and the Austrians, who had to keep in check Italiens, Slovenes, Croats, Serbians, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ukrainiens and Romanians. It was surrounded by various irredentist states such as Serbia and Romania, who wished nothing more than to dismember the old Habsburg monarchy.

Not a believer in parliamentarianism, a firm believer in the destiny of the Habsburgs to rule, but also aware that the Dual Monarchy would not survive any longer under its current form, Ferdinand II & VI was above all a fierce opponent of the Hungarians and their Minister-President, Istvan Tisza. “The Hungarians are all rabble, regardless of whether they are minister or duke, cardinal or burgher, peasant, hussar, domestic servant, or revolutionary” he wrote in 1904 ; they had to share their status with the other peoples of Austria-Hungary, in order to avoid its downfall ; if they refused, they were all traitors and they had to be kept in check.

First concentrating his efforts on Cisleithania (Austria), Ferdinand focused on affirming his power, as replacing Count Tisza would have failed. He sacked Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, Chief of the General Staff and the main hawk of the Austrian Army, and replaced the old Karl von Stürgkh by Maximilian Hussarek von Heinlein as Minister-President of Austria, who was more aligned to his views…”

-The Danubian Confederation : An Essay, C. Italiano, Rome 1978

“The concept of Danubian Confederation was as old as the Austrian Empire itself, as its numerous ethnicities and, later, its division solely between Germans and Hungarians, left the other peoples of the Habsburg Monarchy upset. The idea of federalization had been proposed by Hungarians Miklos Wesselenyi and Lajos Kossuth, until Romanian Aurel Popovici laid his plans for the “United States of Greater Austria” in 1906 with a federal state split along ethnic lines. Even if Popovici had interviews with the new Emperor-King prior to his demise in 1917, Ferdinand II & VI was not quite confident in a constitutional union, believing in the divine right of the Austria Emperor, and his policy was to break the Hungarian hold…”

-History of the Habsburgs, R. Verner, Vienna 2013

“PRESSBURG PROCLAMATION : Proclamation by Emperor-King of Austria-Hungary Ferdinand II & VI on May, 27 1917, at the Pressburger Schloss in Pressburg (Pozsony) that laid the plans for a Danubian Confederation (See : Danubian Confederation) to replace Austria-Hungary. An initiative of the Emperor-King, it provided for the creation of a Crown of Bohemia, that would provide autonomy for the Czech lands (minus the Sudetenland), on the same level than the Crowns of Austria and Hungary, and options open for granting autonomy to Croatia, Galicia and other peoples. The proclamation met with immediate backlash of the Hungarian government who saw it as a transgression of the statu quo and an undermining of their authority. A conference to determine the constitution of the new federal state was to take place in Prague in 1918, but the outbreak of the First Great European War (See : First Great European War) forced Ferdinand II & VI to postpone it. (See: Prague Conference)”

-Encyclopedia of the Twentieth Century, Kerner 2002


“The reign of Ferdinand II & VI of Austria-Hungary, which had some many repercussions on the modern world, almost never happened : he who was then the Archduke of Austria-Este and his wife, Duchess Sophie von Hohenberg, were targeted on June, 28 1914 in Sarajevo by an assassination attempt by the Black Hand, a Serbian nationalist group. During his state visit, the Archducal motorcade was targeted by a bomb thrown by Bosnian Serb terrorist Nedljko Cabrinovic. The bomb bounced off the folded back convertible cover of the Archduke’s car into the street and wounded 16 to 20 people. The Archduke managed to go back to Vienna unscathed after the attack. Nevertheless, after a failed assassination attempt on Austro-Hungarian Governor of Bosnia Oskar Potiorek, his would be assassin, Gavrilo Princip, confessed during the trial that he had been part of the commando who tried to murder the Archduke, but gave up after the bomb failure to eat a sandwich in a café, which happened to be next to the road taken by the Archduke when he decided to visit the wounded at Sarajevo’s hospital. One could wonder what would have happened had Gavrilo Princip not eaten his sandwich…”

-Sic Semper Tyrannis : A Short History of Assassinations, G. Lellouche, Montreal 2017


***
MELANIA OF SERBIA SUES FOR DIVORCE

Melania of Serbia, spouse to Crown Prince Peter Karadjordjevic, has announced today in a press release that she would sue for divorce from her husband, citing “irreconciable differences”.

Various tabloids had been tracking the signs of estrangement between the two royals for the last five months. She had been spotted in Budapest at fashion events, without attendance of her husband and her son, Boris, aged 12. Rumours of the Crown Prince’s infidelity emerged.
Melania of Serbia, since her marriage to Crown Prince Peter in 2004, had always been the target of harsh criticism in Serbia and abroad. Born Melania Knauss in Germany, an ethnic Slovene, she was better known as a model and an actress in movies “You Only Live Twice” and “The Lion In Winter”. Since her engagement to Crown Prince Peter in 2002, she drew considerable controversy in Serbia, due to many reasons : her Slovene heritage, in the quite ethnocentric kingdom ; her appearing nude during her past work ; her lack of noble heritage, proving a mismatch for royal standards. The refusal of the Crown Prince to leave her resulted in the King threatening to abdicate and a mass resignation of the cabinet. Becoming the Crown Princess of Serbia upon her marriage, the gave birth to a son, Boris, in 2006, her only child.

Crown Prince Peter Karadjordjevic, 43, is first in line to succeed the aging King Alexander III on the throne of Serbia. A high tech enthusiast, he came under high criticism in his country for repeatedly referencing the urge for his father, now 73, to abdicate, and for his marriage to his ethnic Slovene wife. The Royal Household Agency could be not reached for further comment.

-Transocean Press Dispatch, October, 24 2018

TL;DR : Archduke Franz Ferdinand isn't murdered in Sarajevo in 1914, succeeds Francis Joseph and presses for a Federal model in order to diminish Hungarian power and to help the Empire survive, but the broke-out of alt-WWI impedes him.

 

[MaskedPickle]

« The General lighted his pipe, then began to moan about this forsaken battlefield. The same old lesson of geopolitics he had been dwelling for months.
-Albania was then an anomaly in the turmoil of the Balkan Wars, peaceful in 1913 yet ripe for trouble. The Balkanic powers had decided to strip the Ottomans for their last chunk of Europe, fighting each other for its share. The Great Powers, in spite of the fact that they didn’t understood anything to anything south of the Danube, wanted to impose some control on the situation. So they put on the so-called Albanian throne a German prince, Wilhelm von Wied. He arrived in his so-called princedom to see that there were other princes, eager to revolt for their own independance and power. Adding to that the Greeks who wanted to annex Northern Epirus, the Serbians who were after northern Albania, and the Italians who believed they were the new Venetians. It all made up for a good war. »​

-After the Earthquake, Ismail Kadare (Nobel Prize of Literature 1993)​

Wilhelm von Wied, when he was officially proposed the title of Prince of Albania on February, 21 1914, was accepting an uneasy job. This petty German noble, now to be known as Skanderbeg II (after the country’s national hero), accepted to rule a country that was widely seen in Europe as backward, poor and lawless, that had only become independant on November 1912, in the aftermath of the First Balkan War, and recognized by the Great Powers in May 1913. Divided between Catholics, Muslims and Orthodox, between democrats, clans, and those who refused foreign rule, the country was on the brink of anarchy when the new Prince arrived in Albania in March, 7.

In spite of the help of the International Gendarmerie, led by Dutch officers, a massive islamist revolt broke out in Central Albania against his chief minister, Essat Pasha Toptani, and foreign domination. Essat Pasha, an opportunistic man who had already been able to surrender the fortress of Shkodër, in northern Albania, to the Serbs in order to cultivate their approval, quickly rode on the wave of discontent and attempted a coup, that ultimately failed and resulted in him taking arms with the rebels. Surrounded by rebels, Skanderbeg II left Albania on September 1914.
Albania was in shambles and in total anarchy, without a central government, when Greek troops entered Northern Epirus on October 1914. The region, which had a sizeable Greek minority, had declared its own autonomous republic in February 1914, and the promises from the central authority to acknowledge their autonomy failed, leaving Greece to take their chance. For Serbia and Montenegro, who had their own eyes set on the splitting of Albania, it was the final straw, and they declared war on Greece on November, 2 1914, triggering the Third Balkan War.

-Balkans for Dummies, New York, 2013


The Third Balkan War, also known as the Albanian War, was a conflict centered in Albania between Greece on one side, an alliance of Serbia and Montenegro on the other, and later Italy that lasted from November, 2 1914 to April, 23 1915.
It was triggered by the Greek invasion of Northern Epirus in October 1914, to which Serbia and Montenegro reacted by an invasion of northern Albania. The war quickly turned to a war of attrition between the three belligerants, due to the mountainous and harsh landscapes of Albania, pitting them against Albanian rebels and the unrecognized government of Essat Pasha Toptani (who had declared himself Prince of Albania after Skanderbeg II went into exile), and small skirmishes in Macedonia between Serbia and Greece. Winter forced both sides to a truce in Macedonia.

With spring getting back, Italy, which supported Essat Pasha and held its own colonial views over Albania, threatened to intervene and occupied Valora on March, 4 1915. Failing to make any moves against the Greeks, and with Serbians approaching the Albanian capital of Durazzo, Italy threatened to call to arms its allies Austria-Hungary and Germany, who were on cold terms with Serbia. Unprepared for a war on this scale, Serbia agreed to peace talks that resulted into the Treaty of Corfu on April, 23 1915.

Under the terms of the treaty, Valona remained under Italian occupation ; Essat Pasha Toptani was recognized as Prime Minister and Regent of Albania, even if Skanderbeg II remained in exile ; Northern Epirus was annexed by Greece ; northern Albania was split between Montenegro and Serbia.

-Omnipedia article for “Third Balkan War (1914-1915)

Essat Pasha Toptani was the true winner of the Albanian War, but in his thirst for power, he inherited a powder keg. Most Albanians resented his collaboration with Serbia and Montenegro, and he did nothing to convince them otherwise, as he quickly moved away from Italy to bolster relations with Serbia and Montenegro, even proposing them an alliance (Serbia refused). Having to fight the democrats, the Italians, the Christians, the Muslims with his autocratic rule, his rule never went further than Central Albania.

An islamist revolt in 1916, asking for Serbian-Moncenegrin withdrawal and the return of the Ottomans, occupied all his available troops, while Christian declared their own republic in northern Albania, where they were quickly recognized and helped by the Serbs. But the nail in the coffin was on April, 12 1917 : Essat Pasha Toptani, while manoeuvring against Islamists in Gramsh, was shot and killed by an ambushed sharpshooter. To this day, no one knew if it was an Albanian rebel or an Italian agent. Albania was again in anarchy.

But the climax was reached two weeks later, on May, 2, when Muslim crowds in Valona, agitated by nationalist preachers and led by resentment against the Italian occupation, attacked the Regia Marina’s headquarters and foreign residents in the city. The Valona Vespers, as they came to be known, lasted for one week, and left 1,200 Italian sailors and civilians dead, their families massacred, with children and women sold into slavery by Albanian clans. In the context of the First Great European War, the matter was explosive ; but for a small country like Albania, it was an Italian affair.

-The Tragedy of Albania, C. Coaster, London 1955

The Valona Vespers, as they came to be known, and the state of anarchy that resulted from the death of Essat Pasha Toptani, decided Italy to do something : taking advantage of the outbreak of the First Great European War, Italian troops landed in Valona on June 1917 and quickly occupied the Albanian shore, under direct supervision of the Navy. The Serbs, who had tried to propose their protection to the revolting Christians in Mirdita, were forced to back down to avoid being dragged into the war. Italian troops repressed Arif Hiqmenti’s peasent revolt.

Gaining a momentum after the peace treaty with Greece, that confirmed their control on Northern Epirus, Italy furthered their hold, imposing the Treaty of Messina, ratified on October, 31 1919, according to which Skanderbeg II was restablished as Prince of Albania, under the premiership of Sami Bey Vrioni, pawn of Rome in Durazzo. Albania became a de facto Italian protectorate, having its neighbour as its only economic partner, granting unlimited access to Italian troops and citizens and giving full control of peacekeeping and foreign affairs. Serbia, Montenegro and Greece, all trying to avoid the turmoil of the war, had to keep in check.
The assassination of Prince Skanderbeg II on April, 12 1920, by revolutionary Beqir Valtieri, in the streets of Durazzo, convinced Italy to further their grasp, occupying the capital and launching pacification campaigns in the Albanian countryside. Princess Consort Sophie, regent to the child-Prince Skanderbeg III (a month short of his 7th birthday when he acceded), was the agent of Italian influence in government. The assassination of Vrioni in 1923 led to the premiership of Ahmet Zogu, who died two years later, in 1925, in a car accident ; rumours had it that Zogu was planning a massive uprising against Italy.

The uprising arrived two years later, on June 1927. Led by Christian leader Fan Noli and democrat activist Avni Rustemi, the June Revolt took place in Tirana, Gjirokaster and Durazzo, and tried to expel the Italians, like the Valona Vespers ten years ago. This led to a massive Italian response, as they wouldn’t dare to lose influence in Balkans now re-ignited by war. The reprisals killed 20,000 Albanian citizens : the leaders left for exile in Kosovo or Greece and Italy imposed a Governor-General, Grand Admiral Paolo Thaon di Revel, Duke of the Sea, that was an evidence of total control over Albania.
The Princedom of Albania ceased to exist when, shortly after the outbreak of the Croatian-Serbian War, on November, 23 1934, Italian troops invaded Prince Skanderbeg III’s palace, forced him at gunpoint to abdicate and abandon his title of Prince of Albania, acknowledge the surrender of his whole country to the King of Italy, and left Durazzo by plane for a golden exile in Rome. Albania had ceased to exist, with a stroke of a pen.

-Balkans for Dummies, New York, 2013

The extension of Italy into Albania, from the Valona Vespers to the Annexation, 1917-1934

***

FORMER PRINCE OF ALBANIA DIES

Skanderbeg III of Albania, also known as Karl Viktor von Wied-Neuwied and Carlo Vittorio di Albania, died yesterday, December, 8 1973, in Palazzetto Scanberg, in Rome, Italy, aged 60. He is survived by his wife, Maria Adelaide.

One of the lesser known royals of Europe, Skanderbeg III was less than one-year-old when his father, Wilhelm von Wied, accepted the Princedom of Albania in 1914, then a newly independent country that no monarch wanted to rule. He succeeded his father at only 6, when the latter was assassinated in 1920 and his country was on the verge of annexation by Italy. A figurehead prince, under the regency of his mother, Princess Consort Sophie von Waldenburg, he came of age when his country was already a protectorate of Italy, and had to relinquish his crown in 1934, when Albania was formally added to the Kingdom of Italy. He was only 21.

Skanderbeg III’s life was quite uneventful, living in a dilapidated palace allocated by the Italian Government, located on a Piazza that bore his regnal name. His wedding in 1937 to Infanta Maria Adelaide, then sister to the royal claimant of Portugal, remained childless, he wasn’t given a seat at the Italian Senate and lived in obscurity. He wasn’t even allowed to go back to Albania.

-The New York Times, December, 9 1973

TL; DR : Albania becomes the theatre of a third Balkan War between Serbia and Greece, resulting in annexations on both sides, before Italy decides to move on and completely annexes the country by 1934.

 

[MaskedPickle]

“Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right !”
Randolph Churchill, 1886​

“Prime Minister Asquith depended on the Irish vote, controlled by John Redmond ; since the 1910 election, in which the Liberals emerged as a minority party, the Prime Minister promised Redmond that Irish Home Rule would be the highest priority. On the other side, the Conservatives, due to the support of the Ulster Unionists, were die-hard opposed to Home Rule. A Third Home Rule Bill drafted in 1911 opposed any special status for Protestant Ulster within majoiryt-Catholic Ireland, even if Asquith personally thought otherwise. In spite of that, the bill as introduced in April 1912 contained no such provision. Neither partition nor a special status for Ulster was likely to satisfy either side. The self-government offered by the bill was very limited, but Irish Nationalists, expecting Home Rule to come by gradual parliamentary steps, favoured it. The Conservatives and Irish Unionists opposed it.
Since Parliament Act (1911), the Unionists could no longer block Home Rule in the House of Lords, but only delay Royal Assent by two years. Asquith decided to postpone any concessions to the Unionists until the bill's third passage through the Commons, when he believed the Unionists would be desperate for a compromise. Edward Carson threatened a revolt if Home Rule was enacted. The new Conservative leader, Bonar Law, campaigned in Parliament and in northern Ireland, warning Ulstermen against "Rome Rule", that is, domination by the island's Catholic majority. Many who opposed Home Rule felt that the Liberals had violated the Constitution—by pushing through major constitutional change without a clear electoral mandate, with the House of Lords, formerly the "watchdog of the constitution", not reformed as had been promised in the preamble of the 1911 Act—and thus justified actions that in other circumstances might be treason. Bonar Law was pushing hard--certainly blustering and threatening, and perhaps bluffing--but in the end his strategy proved both coherent and effective.
As the Commons debated the Home Rule bill in late 1912 and early 1913, unionists in the north of Ireland mobilised, with talk of Carson declaring a Provisional Government and Ulster Volunteer Forces (UVF) built around the Orange Lodges, but in the cabinet, only Churchill viewed this with alarm. These forces, insisting on their loyalty to the British Crown but increasingly well-armed with smuggled German weapons, prepared to do battle with the British Army, but Unionist leaders were confident that the army would not aid in forcing Home Rule on Ulster.
As the Home Rule bill awaited its third passage through the Commons, the Curragh incident occurred in April 1914. Some sixty army officers, led by Brigadier-General Hubert Gough, announced that they would rather be dismissed from the service than obey. With unrest spreading to army officers in England, the Cabinet acted to placate the officers with a statement written by Asquith reiterating the duty of officers to obey lawful orders but claiming that the incident had been a misunderstanding. War minister John Seely then added an unauthorised assurance, countersigned by General John French (the head of the army), that the government had no intention of using force against Ulster. Asquith repudiated the addition, and required Seely and French to resign. Asquith took control of the War Office himself.
On 12 May, Asquith announced that he would secure Home Rule's third passage through the Commons (accomplished on 25 May), but that there would be an amending bill with it, making special provision for Ulster. However the Lords made changes to the amending bill unacceptable to Asquith, and with no way to invoke the Parliament Act on the amending bill, Asquith agreed to meet other leaders at an all-party conference on 21 July at Buckingham Palace, chaired by the King.”
-The Irish Question, F. Weinling, London, 2017

Dramatis personae : from left to right, the Prime Minister (Liberal), H. H. Asquith ; the Leader of the Opposition (Conservative), Andrew Bonar Law ; the Irish nationalist leader, John Redmond ; the Ulster Unionist leader, Edward Carson.
The original Government of Ireland Bill provided for a bicameral Irish Parliament in Dublin, composed of a 40-member Senate and a 164-member House of Commons, with powers to deal with most national affairs (matters such as defence, international trade or foreign affairs would be left to the Crown and the London Parliament), while 42 MPs would continue to sit in Westminster and the Dublin Castle administration would be abolished. Such a situation was a deep concern for the Northern Irish : the House of Lords then passed an amendment excluding the whole of Ulster from Irish Home Rule until 1920. It was unacceptable for the government who wanted deeply to avoid a civil war and divided the Emerald Island, as such a solution would be unacceptable for the Southern Irish. It was to avoid renewed debate that King George V called the Buckingham Palace Conference with MPs from each of the British Liberal (Asquith, David Lloyd George) and Conservative Parties (Bonar Law) and from the Irish Nationalist (John Redmond, John Dillon) and Unionist factions (Edward Carson, James Craig, Lord Lansdowne).
Held from July,21 to August, 5, the conference resulted in the temporrary exclusion of the nine Ulster counties of Antrim, Down, Armagh, Tyrone, Londonderry, Cavan, Donegal, Moneghan and Fermanagh, their status in relation to the Dublin Parliament to be discussed in 1920. The Conference didn’t help to put an end to the Home Rule Bill, being still incomplete, and both the Nationalists and Unionists being bitter about it, the former not gaining the control of the whole Ireland and the latter having not resolved the issue of their place within the United Kingdom.
On September, 18, the King gave His Assent to the Bill, making it law, even if both sides had not be satisfied, at the urge of Asquith...
-The Irish Civil War, F. Chesterfield, London, 2016

“LIBERTY AT LAST”
-Daily Irish Independant, September, 19 1914

“Oh do I wish a big jolly war would distract us from all this nonsense.”
-Attributed to King George V regarding Irish Home Rule

Ireland after the Government of Ireland Law of 1914 : the light green area is directly concerned by Home Rule (effective on January, 1 1916), while the status of Ulster counties (darker green) has to be discussed further in 1920.

The readiness of the Unionists to fight, in the most military sense, against Catholic rule was a secret to no one : the Ulster Volunteers, founded in 1913 by Edward Carson, had more than 100,000 militamen ready to fight in their ranks and were heavily armed by rifles, bayonets and ammunitions purchased from Germany. For the Irish nationalists, led by John Redmond, a proper show of force was needed now that Home Rule came into force. The Irish Volunteers, formed in reaction to the Ulster ones, numbered nearly 200,000 men, armed with British guns, some provided by elements of the government.
The two forces would clash repeatedly clash during the riots that rocked Ireland during the months of November and December 1914…
-The Irish Civil War, F. Chesterfield, London, 2016

“I have decided to refuse to sit, with my fellow MPs, in the current Parliament. I hope that a new debate, far from the riches of Buckhingham Palace, will be held to determine how Mr. Asquith’s government will truly determine the status of the fine people of Ulster.
-But you would siege if a Conservative government, under Mr. Bonar Law’s authority perhaps, was to be elected ?
-I’m considering all options.”
-UUP leader Edward Carson, interview with the Times, October, 24 1914

“From Our election to the Holy See to succeed His Holiness Pope Pius X, Our concerns went to the Irish people, now gaining freedom for their Reformist dominators after centuries of massacres, vexations and oppression, now teetering on the verge of conflict…”
-Extract from Cura Ardente (With Burning Concern), encyclical by Pope Nicholas VI

UUP MP ARTHUR O’NEILL MURDERED IN LONDON
-The Times, November, 6 1914

“Don’t mess with the Crown !”
-Repeated slogans during the December, 1 anti-Irish riots in Great Britain

When Irish Volunteers stormed British Army barracks in Londonderry on Christmas 1914, in order to seize guns, the assault left 13 dead on the Britih side and 27 on the Irish one. The incident showed how the Nationalists were now prepared to wage war and displayed military tactics, and as a setback to Asquith and his ally Redmond, who didn't manage to keep his most radical allies in line…
-The Irish Civil War, F. Chesterfield, London, 2016

Asquith knew that Ireland was on the verge of civil war and both sides on the island were dissatisfied with the results ; his cabinet ally, John Redmond, was now unable to control the radical factions of the Irish Volunteers, and all negotiations had been broken with the Unionists who were now refusing to seat in Westminster.
Convinced that a new election, in the current context of a good economy and a powerful empire, alongside the overall achievement of Home Rule, would result in an increased majority for the Liberals, Asquith convinced the King to dissolve Parliament and call for new elections, scheduled for March, 14 1915. The King accepted.
Bonar Law, who was facing his first general election, proved a good campaigner, roaming the countryside by promising a repeal of the Government of Ireland Bill, in order to undertake new negotiations that would not leave “Britain’s best allies, the Unionists” under “Papist domination”. Whenever the Tory leader went campaigning, riots were arising against or for the Irish community, and he was followed by Ulster Volunteers.
Taking advantage from the fact that the Government of Ireland Law had been taken into effect and that elections hadn’t taken place for the Dublin Parliament, both IPP and UUP threw their forces into the battle, and even punches and guns when the occasion came at bay.
Asquith’s gamble proved to be fruitless when on March, 14, it appeared that the Conservative-Unionist alliance had reached a mere majority of 7 seats…”
-Asquith, M. Mendoza, London, 1974

TL; DR : Ireland manages to gain home rule but the Unionists don’t accept the failed compromise for Ulster. Both sides fight, until Asquith decides to call an early election that is won by the Conservatives.

 

[MaskedPickle]

« Badges? We don't need no badges! »
From the movie Der Schatz der Sierra Madre, Mihail Kertesz, Germany, 1940​

« …The fall of Victoriano Huerta and the American withdrawal Tampico and Veracruz did nothing to stop the Mexican Revolution, on the contrary. The dissensions between newly installed President Venustiano Carranza, who was in favor of ending the revolutionary bloodshed and implement most of the reformist agenda, and rebels leaders Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, who asked for greater upheavals and agrarian reform, soon proved impossible to heal. The two leaders, the first in the Native-majority South, the other near the northern American border, made some sort of uneasy alliance to remove Carranza and his Constitutionnalists. Mexico felt in December 1914, but Pancho Villa’s harsh occupation went uneasy with the inhabitants of the capital, who forced him to withdraw in early 1915… »
History of the Mexican Revolution, Arturo Villaraigosa, McGraw-Hill, Los Angeles, 1998

“The First and Second Battles of Celaya (April, 6-7 1915 ; April 15-16 1915) served the legend of Alvaro Obregon well, but also Pancho Villa’s, as both sides claimed victory. Carranza’s minister of War could claim of having withstood Villist cavalry charges, that outnumbered them 2 to 1, and even to have survived himself, losing his right arm in the early stages of the battle ; the Centaur of the North managed to retreat in good order and stood on in northern Mexico, waging war against the Constitutionalists…”
Guide to the Guerilla War, N. d’Astier, Paris, 1941

“The German Foreign Office had been bent on triggering a conflict between the United States and Mexico : under the Prussian perspective on America, the United States were considering Mexico as their colony and their back alley and were ready to take any opportunity to intervene ; furthermore, a war on their southern border would divert American resources from trade competition and attention at the would-be European war, a hot issue during the 1910s. Later historians would look at German involvement in Latin America as the « Maximilian Doctrine », christened from the Austrian Archduke imposed as Emperor of Mexico by Napoleon III, who had taken advantage of the Civil War to try to carve a Latin Catholic empire in America.
German Mausers were a common sight in revolutionary Mexico, not due to German involvement as it was said in the United States, but due to their success as a modern and easy-to-handle weapon. Germany first tried to influence and to fund the Huerta regime ; when the dictator felt from power, German agents in New York, where “the Jackal” was living in exile, took contact with him to foster his return”...
Enemy Mine, A History of German-American Relations 1871-1984, Arthur M. Schleslinger, Jr., Mc-Graw-Hill, New York, 1984

“General Pascual Orozco Vasquez had been one of the first supporters of Francisco I. Madero when he toppled President Diaz in 1910, before falling out with him and revolted against Madero, provoking his downfall and taking sides with Victoriano Huerta. After trying to hold his ground in Guanajuato, he followed his former President into exile, joining him in his secret contacts with German agents before touring the United States to meet other Mexican exiles. The two men met in Newman, New Mexico on June, 27 1915, having amassed 895 000 dollars worth of weapons, and crossed the border, only 25 miles away, during the night, intent on returning to power in Mexico…”
History of the Mexican Revolution, Arturo Villaraigosa, McGraw-Hill, Los Angeles, 1998

CARRANZA KILLED IN COUP LED BY HUERTA AND OROZCO
-New York Times, November, 21 1915

“Having won the support of various wings of the Constitutionalist Army dissatisfied with the slow progress against Zapata and Villa and viewing Carranza as too soft, as well as German money, the Huerta-Orozco alliance managed to enter Mexico disguised as Constitutionalist soldiers and storm the presidential palace, killing President Carranza in the process. Nevertheless, Huerta immediately lost the support of other generals, who refused to serve the dictator they had removed less than two years earlier : Alvaro Obregon, among others, deserted with his own army to join Zapata in the South.”
History of the Mexican Revolution, Arturo Villaraigosa, McGraw-Hill, Los Angeles, 1998

WILSON : “NO WITHDRAWAL FROM VERACRUZ UNTIL MEXICO STABILIZES”
Washington Post, December, 2 1915

“Huerta didn’t have the time to appreciate his return to power : he succumbed to a cirrhosis of the liver on January, 13 1916, after a whole life of excesses and drunkiness. Orozco knew that, and he quickly rose to power, giving Mexico his most furious dictator since the beginning of the Revolution…”
History of the Mexican Revolution, Arturo Villaraigosa, McGraw-Hill, Los Angeles, 1998

TL; DR : Carranza and the Constitutionalists fail to beat the revolutionaries at Celaya and are later coup’ed by returning former dictator Victoriano Huerta and General Pascual Orozco, reinforcing the revolutionaries...

 

[MaskedPickle]

1914​

June, 28
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, survives a bomb attack during an official visit in Sarajevo, capital of the province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, hotly contested between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. The Archduke and his wife, Sophie Chotek, visit the sixteen wounded at Sarajevo’s hospital, without trouble. Nedeljko Cabrinovic, the perpetrator, was immediately arrested after failing his suicide attempt ; being a minor, he was sentenced to perpetuity and not executed.

June, 29
Monk Grigori Rasputin, a protégé and confidant to the Russian imperial family, is murdered in Pokrovskoye by Khionia Guseva, a mystic. Guseva stabbed three times the starets in the middle of the street, yelling that « she had killed the Antichrist ». Rasputin, after massive blood loss, collapsed in the street, falling into a coma. Guseva was killed on spot by the crowd.

The International Exhibition of Bristol begins.

June, 30
The U.S. Government sold two decommissioned battleships — the USS Mississippi and the USS Idaho — to the Greek Navy at a sum of US$12 million. The ships were renamed Kilkis and Lemnos respectively.

July, 1
The Naval Wing of the British Royal Flying Corps was separated from the Royal Air Force and established as a separate service, the Royal Naval Air Service, under the control of the Royal Navy.
The United States Navy established its first air department, the Office of Naval Aeronautics, Division of Operations, predecessor to the Bureau of Aeronautics.

July 2
Joseph Chamberlain, Conservative MP for Birmingham West, former Leader of the Opposition and Secretary of State for the Colonies, dies aged 77 in Birmingham, England.

Grigori Rasputin dies of his wounds. Czarina Alexandra, who had put her trust in the starets, falls into a deep depression.

July, 3
The Simla Accord is sealed by Great Britain and Tibet, defining the borders between Tibet and British India, dividing the country into two political regions, the “outer” under Tibetan rule from Lhasa while the “inner” region fell under Chinese control. China rejects the accord entirely.

July, 4
An anarchist bomb attack directed against John D. Rockefeller fails at the last moment, exploding prematurely in New York City, killing 4.


July, 8
Mexican revolutionary leader Alvaro Obregon defeats 6 000 federal troops sent out from Guadalajara to halt his progresses.

While exiled in Tokyo, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen reorganized the Kuomintang party under the new name Chinese Revolutionary Party after Yuan Shikai, self-proclaimed emperor of China, outlawed the political party.


July,9
Guadalajara falls to the Mexican revolutionaries.

July, 10
German Reinhold Böhm establishes a new record for an one-man-flight after flying his Albatros-biplane for 24 hours and 12 minutes without refueling.

July,12
Albania rebels take Berat.

A Chinese naval gunboat explodes in Shanghai harbour, killing 35 naval cadets.

July, 14
The Government of Ireland Bill completes its passage through the House of Lords in the United Kingdom ; having been overruled for the third time, it was passed for Royal Assent under the Parliament Act of 1911. The Asquith governement has never been so close to solve the Home Rule issue, by devolving some authority to a bicameral Irish Parliament, but the protestant Ulster counties refuse the idea of being ruled from Catholic Dublin, fearing oppression and conflict. The issue would result into a civil war between Ulster and Irish Volunteers, each struggling for their vision of freedom. The Asquith government propose a temporary exclusion of six of the Ulster counties, to be still ruled from London for six years, not satisfying any side.

July, 15
General Victoriano Huerta, having seen its defeat at the ends of the Constitutionnalists (Venustiano Carranza, Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, Alvaro Obregon) at the Battle of Zacatecas on June, resigns the Mexican presidency and goes into exile.

July, 18
Austro-Hungarian Governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina Oskar Potiorek escapes an assassination attempt in Sarajevo. The perpetrator, Gavrilo Princip, is arrested. Being a minor, he is sentenced to perpetuity and not executed. Anti-Serb pogroms are organized against ethnic Serbs throughout Austria-Hungary.

July, 19
British King George V summons a conference in Buckingham Palace, gathering Conservatives, Liberals, Unionists and Nationalists, in order to find a solution to the Home Rule issue.

July, 20
The trial of Henriette Caillaux, wife of former French President of Council Joseph Caillaux, begins in Paris. She is judged for the murder of Gaston Calmette, editor of Le Figaro newspaper, in March, after a slender campaign.

July, 21
The Buckingham Palace conference begins, gathering on one side Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, Irish Parliamenty Party leader John Redmond, and on the other Opposition Leader Andrew Bonar Law and Irish Unionist Alliance leader Edward Carson.

The Komagata Maru was a Japanese vessel filled with Indian immigrants who tried to migrate to Canada. Arriving in Vancouver, it was denied authorization to disembark and the HMCS Rainbow, a former Royal Navy ship, filled with soldiers, forced her to return to India. The incident causes shockwaves among the Indian independance movement.

July, 22
Enver Pasha, Minister of War for the Ottoman Empire, proposed an Ottoman–German alliance to Baron Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim, the German ambassador in Constantinople, but had it turned down on the grounds the Empire had nothing of value to offer German. The grand vezir Said Halim Pasha also made similar propositions to Austria-Hungary.

July, 25
Khedive of Egypt Abbas II is assassinated in Constantinople. He is succeeded by his 15-years-old son Muhammad Abdul Moneim ; the British, occupying Egypt since 1882 while being still nominally a part of the Ottoman Empire, continue to exert their influence during the regency, and the death of the late Khedive weakens the Egyptian nationalist movement.

July, 26
British army fires on Dubliners, killing 3.

July, 28
Henriette Caillaux is found acquitted of the murder of Gaston Calmette.

July, 29
The Cape Cod Canal opens in Massachussetts.

July, 30
The American Consul at Canton reported massive flooding from the West River in the Kwangtung and Kwangsi provinces of China resulted in 3,300 deaths and $43 million in property damage. Around 112,000 homes were lost and close to 8 million people in need of emergency supplies.

August, 1
Marcus Garvey founds the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Jamaica.

August,2
The police investigation into the murder of Grigori Rasputin finds defrocked hieromonk Iliodor, now known as Sergei Trufanov, as guilty of having inspired Guseva into murdering the starets, a former ally of his whom he had repeatedly cricitized. To avoid a public trial that would expose Rasputin’s rather scandalous way of life, Czar Nicholas II was Trufanov banished in Siberia, where he concentrates into building up his own faction of the ultranationalist Black Hundreds.

August, 5
The Buckingham Palace conference ends with an adoption of the Asquith proposal of a six-year exclusion of the nine Ulster counties of Antrim, Down, Armagh, Tyrone, Londonderry, Cavan, Donegal, Moneghan and Fermanagh, their status in relation to the Dublin Parliament be discussed in 1920.

Bryan-Chamorro Treaty between the United States and Nicaragua, establishing a quasi-protectorate over Nicaragua and reserving the possibility of a new trans-oceanic canal on Nicaraguayan soil.

August, 6
First Lady of the United States Ellen Axson Wilson dies.

August, 7
The Viviani government in France falls, due to shockwaves stemming from the Caillaux affair.

August, 8
Duala King Rudolf Duala Manga Bell and officer Martin-Paul Samba, both Kameroonian rebel leaders, are executed by German colonial authorities.

Sir Ernest Shackelton’s Imperial Trans-Antartic Expedition sets sail on the Endurance from Plymouth in an attempt to cross Antartica.

August, 9
Mexican Revolution – Leaders of the Constitutional Army met with Mexican president Francisco Carvajal and negotiated a safe passage of all federal troops and senior government leader out of Mexico City in exchange for unconditional surrender. Caravjal agreed to the terms and ordered the federal army to evacuate from Mexico City the following day.[

President of Argentina Roque Saenz Pena dies and is succeeded by Vice President Victorino de la Plaza.

August, 11
The Mexican regime is officially dissolved and the leaders of the Constitutional Army allowed to set up a new governmenet.

August, 12
Gaston Doumergue becomes French President of Council.

August, 13
Mexican Acting President Francisco Carvajal resigns.


August, 14
Rebel forces fail to capture Durrazo, capital of Albania.


August, 15
Inauguration of the Panama Canal.

General Alvaro Obregon enters Mexico City.

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright is murdered by a dismissed servant at his Taliesin, Wisconsin home.

The International Exhibition of Bristol ends.

August, 20
Pope Pius X dies at 79 in the Apostolic Palace in Rome.

Venustiano Carranza and his supporters set up a new Mexican government.

August, 21
Rebel forces captured Vlorë, Albania.

August, 25
Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata agreed to lay down arms and recognize the new Mexican government on condition it accepted the agrarian reforms laid out in the Plan of Ayala.

August, 29
The conclave to choose a new pope at the Sistine Chapel in Rome begins.

Alfonso Quinonez Molina succeeds Carlos Meléndez as President of El Salvador.

August, 30
Mexican Revolution – Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata agreed to support the new Mexican government under Venustiano Carranza.

Autumn
The rebellion of Bai Lang in China is crushed by Yuan Shikai’s troops, making a new setback for the Kuomintang cause of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen.

September, 2
Cardinal Domenico Serafini, accessor to the Holy Office, is elected Pope on the third day of conclave. He takes the name of Nicholas VI and continues his predecessors’ policy of not recognizing the authority of the Kingdom of Italy over Rome, and considering himself as the prisoner of the Vatican.

September, 3
Prince Skanderbeg II (Wilhelm von Wied) of Albania is forced to flee his own country after six months of rule due to revolts and opposition from his own ministers.

September, 5
The Australian Labor Party wins the federal elections, sending Andrew Fisher back as Prime Minister.

The Social Democratic Party wins a majority of seats in the early general elections in Sweden, even as the Electoral League won a majority of the votes. Hjalmar Hammarskjöld (Electoral League) returns as Prime Minister.

September, 12
Pyotr Bark succeeds Ivan Goremykin as Prime Minister of Russia among numerous strikes. He retains his Ministry of Finance.

September, 17
Essad Pasha Toptani of Albania and Nikola Pašić of Serbia signed a secret alliance known as the Treaty of Niš.

September, 18
King George V, in spite of being worried on the state of things in Ireland, caves in to Asquith’s pressure and gives Royal Assent to the Government of Ireland Bill, making it law.

September, 20
Irish Parliamentary Party John Redmond presides over the celebrations in Dublin for the Government of Ireland Bill. The Dublin celebration is the occasion for a show of force for the paramilitary wing of the IPP, the Irish Volunteers.

October, 4
Lake Burdur Earthquake in the Ottoman Empire.

October, 5
Essat Pasha Toptani becomes Prime Minister of Albania.

October, 10
King Carol of Romania dies in Sinaia, Romania, aged 75. A scion of the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen family, he had been the ruling prince of the Romanian United Principalities since 1866 before becoming the first King of Romania in 1881. He is succeeded by his nephew, Ferdinand, who, in spite of being a relative to the German Emperor, grows closer to France and Russia.

The Convention of Aguascalientes opens.

October, 12
The Greek Army enters Northern Epirus, its claimed area in Albania, and controlled since May by the Greek-supported Provisional Government of Northern Epirus.

October, 14
Former President of Argentina Julio Argentino Roca dies, aged 71.

October, 24
Unionist Leader Edward Carson and his fellow MPs decide to quit Westminster, protesting against the bad shape of the Home Rule Bill. The Nationalists threaten to do the same, asking for the integration of Ulster.

October,25
Haitian President Oreste Zamor is ousted from the presidency by Joseph Davilmar Théodore after four months of civil strife.

October, 28
Riots begin in Dublin and Cork.

October, 31
Government troops defeats a rebel army of 300 in Esmeraldas, Ecuador.

November,1
Pope Nicholas VI delivers his encyclical letter Cura Ardente about the situation in Ireland.

November, 2
Serbia and Montenegro declare war on Greece over Albania.

November,3
The United States general elections see the Democratic Party retaining control of both houses of Congress while the Seventeenth Amendment allowed American voters to elect candidates to the US Senate.

November, 5
The Regia Marina dispatches several vessels along the Albanian shores to watch over the Albanian War.

November, 6
Eulalio Gutierrez is declared President of Mexico.

Ulster Unionist MP for Mid Antrim Arthur O’Neill is assassinated in London by members of the Irish Volunteers.

November, 9
The Convention of Aguascalientes ends with a renewal of the Mexican Revolution, with Villa and Zapata’s partisans refusing to acknowledge Venustiano Carranza’s authority.

November, 12
Serbian troops enter Durrazo in Albania.

November, 15
Venceslau Bras is inaugurated as the President of Brazil.

November, 21
President of Council Antonio Salandra resigns over his poor handling of the Albanian Crisis. He is succeeded by his mentor and longtime head of government, Giovanni Gioletti.

November, 23
American troops withdraw from Veracruz.

November, 27
Earthquake in Lefkada, Greece

December, 1
Anti-Irish riots in London, Birmingham, Manchester and other cities.

December, 3
Greek troops encounter Serbian and Montenegrin forces in Tirana, the battle remains inconclusive.

December, 5
Tashi Magyal becomes King of Sikkim, succeeding his half-brother Sidkeong Tulku Namgyal who died of heart failure.

The Norwegian schooner Endurance, carrying members of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition led by British explorer Ernest Shackleton, departed after month-long preparations from the British-governed South Georgia Islands in the south Atlantic Oceanand set course for the Antarctic.

Juan Isidro Jimenes Pereyra succeeds Ramon Baez as President of the Dominican Republic.

December, 6
Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa’s Conventionalist troops enter Mexico City. Carranza flees to Veracruz.

Adolfo Diaz re-elected President of Nicaragua.

December, 10
Max von Laue (Germany) receives the Nobel Prize for Physics ; Theodore William Richards (USA) receives it for Chemistry ;Robert Barany (Austria-Hungary) for Medicine ; Henri Bergson (France) in Literature ; Otto Umfrid (Germany) for Peace.

The Reform Party retains its majority in the New Zealand general election, returning Prime Minister William Massey to power.

December, 11
United Kingdom and Germany agree on a co-funding of the Berlin-Baghdad Railway (Baghdadbahn), ressurrecting the project.

December, 15
A gas explosion at the Mitsubishi Hojyo coal mine in Kyūshū, Japan killed 687 miners.

December, 25
Heavily armed Irish Volunteers storm British Army barracks in Londonderry. Known as the Christmas Massacre, the Nationalist attack is finally repelled but makes 13 dead on the British side and 27 on the Irish one. It’s a massive setback for both Asquith and Redmond, who didn’t managed to keep his more radical allies in line.

 

[MaskedPickle]

“Today, we celebrate the second day of our movie cycle about the film career of Charlie Chaplin. It is hard to find the features among the vivid filmography of the creator of the Tramp, a character who experienced, from its creation in 1915, a century ago, recognizable around the world. Today, we will make a departure with Escape from St. Helena, his 1938 movie where he plays French Emperor Napoleon managing to escape from his exile and live a peaceful life as a nobody in Paris, espousing a pacifist philosophy, turned against capitalism. This drama was not well-received at the time, as audiences didn’t prepare themselves to see Chaplin turn to more serious matters”...
-The Movies Network, January, 16 2015

“Following his disastrous divorce with Mildred Harris in 1920, Chaplin would earn an unofficial motto: “Don’t marry her even if she’s pregnant”. As a way to avoid scandal, it didn’t impeded Chaplin from continuing his various affairs. (...) In 1936, the censorship of his movie “Modern Times” in his homeland and the degrading situation in Europe convinced Chaplin to seek and to obtain United States citizenship…”
-Chaplin Unauthorized, anonymous, 1980

“The rise of the Social Progressive Party in the United States, and the lukewarm reception of his Napoleon movie convinced Chaplin that there was some breeding ground for it in the United States. He campagined heavily for both Upton Sinclair’s campaigns for Governor of California and was approached to run for Governor in 1942, when Sinclair’s term was finishing. Beating Lt. Gov. Culbert Olson for the nomination, he became the governor best known outside of the United States from 1943 to 1951. His two terms proved quite uneventful, but he had to wait after his second inauguration to marry his longtime mistress, Oona O’Neill, who was the unofficial First Lady of the Golden State, even if he was almost compelled to resign due to the scandal…”
-A short history of California, M. Musa, San Francisco, 2014

“Apart from becoming the first actor-turned-politician ever in the history of the United States, he was the first former governor to be nominated for an Academy Award. Chaplin made his return to the big screen with Limelight (1953), two years after leaving Sacramento, an almost biographical story about an actor running a dark horse campaign for President… In 1972, he would run in the Best Movie and Best Director categories for The Freak, his last movie and one of the most celebrated, about a winged girl found in South America, portrayed by his daughter Victoria…”
-Early Hollywood For Dummies

“Having an actor running for President can look ridiculous in the United States. But we must think of Charlie Chaplin, a legendary artist, who became Governor of this great state of California more than sixty-five years ago. That’s why I’m declaring my candidacy to the presidency of the United States, running under the Progressive banner !”
George Clooney (P-CA), Los Angeles, California, September, 10 2007

 

[MaskedPickle]

Prime Minister - First Lord of the Treasury : Andrew Bonar Law
Lord Chancellor : Arthur Balfour
Lord President of the Council : The Baron St. Audries
Lord Privy Seal : Stanley Baldwin
Chancellor of the Exchequer : Austen Chamberlain
Home Secretary : Edward Carson
Foreign Secretary : The Marquess of Lansdowne
Secretary of State for the Colonies : The Marquess of Salisbury
Secretary of State for War : The Viscount Midleton
Secretary of State for India : The Earl Curzon of Kedleston
First Lord of the Admiralty : George Cave
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster : The Baron Farquhar
President of the Board of Trade : The Earl of Derby
Secretary for Scotland : Halford Mackinder
Chief Secretary for Ireland : Walter Long
President of the Local Government Board : James Craig
President of the Board of Agriculture : The Earl of Crawford
President of the Board of Education : Hugh Cecil
Postmaster General: Ronald McNeill
First Commissioner of Works : Max Aitken
Attorney General : F. E. Smith

Nine years of Liberal government, two hotly contested elections five years prior, the unification of the Conservative and Liberal Unionist parties, the rise of the Labour Party and the debate over Irish Home Rule… All these factors had helped to the Tory landslide in 1915. Asquith barely managed to keep his head in leadership contests but now, Bonar Law had assembled the “Most Unionist Cabinet”. (...)
Bonar Law, a Scot born outside of the British Isles, a backbencher who rose as a compromise candidate to Leader of the Opposition, had concentrated his leadership and his electoral campaign over Unionism and felt compelled to leave free reins to the Unionist wing of the Conservatives ; the fusion between both parties was only three-years-old, and with a seven-seat majority, the Conservatives weren’t safe from a massive Ulster Unionist defection followed by a Liberal-Irish Parliamentary Coalition. Leaving to Edward Carson, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, the most prized Home Office, and appointing as Chief Secretary for Ireland his predecessor, Walter Long, and allowing rabid Unionist F. E. Smith to enter the Cabinet as Attorney General, Bonar Law appointed other fierce Unionists throughout the government. His hands were tied and he knew it.
-The Irish Question, F. Weinling, London, 2017

GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND ACT FULLY REPEALED
-The Times, May, 15 1915

JOHN REDMOND AND IPP MPS REFUSE TO TAKE SEATS IN WESTMINSTER
-The Times, May, 21 1915

John Redmond (IPP) speaks to Home Rule supporters in Dublin, 1915

The Emerald Island looked like a pressure cooker ready to explode in these days. Due to the repeal of the Government of Ireland Act and the absence of Irish Parliamentary MPs, the Irish Volunteers were becoming more and more powerful, led by John Redmond who had come back to Dublin to further lead the organization. It was a time when skirmishes with British policemen and soldiers in Ireland were numerous and where political violence was widespread. The situation was worse in Ulster, where James Craig led the Ulster Volunteers into ethnic violence against Catholics living there, with the full support of Home Secretary Carson and Chief Secretary Long. (...)
Eoin MacNeill, leader of the Irish Volunteers, pressed Redmond into entering negociations with the Gaelic League, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, Sinn Féin, the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Irish Citizen Army to plot a bigger action against British rule ; a legalist, Redmond refused outright but condoned MacNeill’s efforts, as he felt that a line had been crossed with the repeal of the Government of Ireland Act and further measures had to be taken. The help of diplomat Roger Casement into securing German arms was no stranger to it, as Germany saw with great interest British affairs turning internally instead of externally…
-The Irish Civil War, F. Chesterfield, London, 2016

LORD KITCHENER APPOINTED LORD LIEUTENANT FOR IRELAND
-The Guardian, July, 3 1915

BONAR LAW PROPOSED NEW BILL TO FIX ULSTER STATUS
-The Times, September, 24 1915

TROOPS SENT INTO IRELAND
-The Daily Telegraph, October, 2 1915


The sign that things were becoming awry in Ireland was most certainly the London Irish Rifles’ revolt on October, 18 1915. Garrisonned at the Duke of York’s Barracks in Chelsea, the 18th Battalion’ soldiers learnt that they were to be dispatched to Ireland to uphold law and order ; the mostly Irish regiment refused to fight their brothers and mutineed in the morning, killing their colonel and threatened to march upon Westminster and ask the Prime Minister to reinstate the Government of Ireland Act.
Of course, the government ordered even before dusk the massive quelling of the mutiny, bombing the headquarters, killing most of the mutinees and sentencing the survivors to death in court martial. Some soldiers managed to escape London and join their Home Island, but the devastating effect of a military mutiny in the middle of the Capital was a public relations’ disaster for the government.
-The Irish Civil War, F. Chesterfield, London, 2016

IRISH ARMY UNITS DISBANDED ; ULSTER VOLUNTEERS ENLIST EN MASSE IN BRITISH ARMY
-The Times, November, 24 1915

The “Uprising Bill” was introduced in Parliament on January 1916 ; if becoming law, it would give the military emergency powers in areas part of the Home Islands and subject them to martial law…
-The Irish Civil War, F. Chesterfield, London, 2016


POBLACHT NA hÉIREANN
THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND

IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN:

In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.
Having organised and trained her manhood through her open military organisations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.
We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaimIreland as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades in arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.
The Irish Government is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Government guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien Government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.
Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of Ireland in trust for the people.
We place the cause of the Ireland under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.
Signed on behalf of the Provisional Government:

Eoin MacNeill
Eamon de Valera
Joseph Devlin
Patrick Pearse
Arthur Griffith
James Connolly
-Text of the Declaration of Independence of Ireland, known as the “Saint Patrick’s Rising”, March 17 1916

IRELAND REVOLTS ON ST. PATRICK’S DAY ; GOVT DECLARES MARTIAL LAW IN IRELAND
-The Times, April 18 1916

TL;DR : Bonar Law is elected Prime Minister with a Conservative Majority and repeals Irish Home Rule ; tensions arise until Ireland declares its independence in 1916 and erupts into civil war.

 

[MaskedPickle]

While the early Chinese Republic was shaken by the takeover of Yuan Shikai (1912), his self-proclaimation as the Hongxian Emperor (1915), the National Protection War (1915-1916), Yuan Shikai’s death (1916), Duan Qirui’s rise as the paramount leader of China (1916) and the beginning of the Warlord Era, foreign powers were also to be dealt with, as the Middle Empire was in ruins. In 1914, the Simla Accord defined the borders of Tibet within China and with British India; when the Chinese government rejected it, the British nevertheless enforced it and the Tiberans as well ; the following year, Russia, who maintained the Manchurian Railways and signed the Kyakhta Agreement with the Bogd Khan, the true ruler of Mongolia, recognizing the latter’s autonomy within China. While France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Russia, Germany and Japan were expanding at the expanse of China, many territories on the border looked ripe for Western expansion. The most violent attack on Chinese sovereignty were the Seventeen Demands edicted by Japan, asking the Chinese government for expanded control of Manchuria and economic interests in China, accepting Japanese advisors who would have controlled China’s finance and police and closing China to other foreign countries. This treaty, that would’ve meant China becoming a true puppet state of Japan, was almost accepted by Yuan Shikai’s government and it took the concerted efforts of Britain, Russia, France, Germany and the US to make Japan back down their demands…
-After the Mandate of Heaven : A History of China in the Early Twentieth Century, C. Mraffko, New York, 2017

The new master of China, Duan Qirui, who succeeded Yuan Shikai as Premier of China and inaugurated the Warlord Era

Germany proved in these days a double player in Chinese politics : ever since the Boxer Rebellion, the Kaiser looked on Chinese affairs with great interest, and having Germany grow out Kiautschou Bay and curb British, French and Russian influence seemed at bay in a time of great upheaval for China. In the same year of 1917, Germany provided money and weapons to Sun Yat-Sen, the great Chinese revolutionary, who had decided to come back from his Japanese exile to further the cause of the Republic after the downfall of Yuan Shikai; and a few weeks later, the very same German agents provided financing and advisors to General Zhang Xun’s eleven-day doomed attempt to restore the Empire of China, seizing Beiping, a grotesque expedition that saw the immediate reaction of the Republican Army; the German Army was even keen enough to provide Zhang’s with a safe-conduct throughout Shandong and then to Germany…
A Place Under The Sun : German Diplomacy under Wilhelm II, G. Laffitte, Paris, 1999


DEATH OF THE XIANDAI EMPEROR PUTS FORBIDDEN CITY IN TURMOIL
For decades, the Forbidden City had been one of the world’ strangest countries ; the Ming dynasty’s administrative complex had become, during the Warlord Era in China, the world’s tiniest independant country (72 hectares only) in the center of Beiping, created as such in 1924 to give some authority to the deposed last Emperor of China, Xuantong, then to his brother, Xiandai. Out of respect for the Mandate of Heaven, in order to content the still strong monarchist sentiment in China, to serve as a golden jail for a former monarch : the reasons behind this creation were numerous, and it continued to be respected by the masters of Beiping and, by extension, China.
Now that the Xiandai Emperor died childless, the government in Nanjing is pursuing claims to absorb the Forbidden City, as the Imperial Court can’t be sure if the late Emperor had made either his brother, Puren, or his cousin, Yuyan, his successor. The politics of the Forbidden City are among the most complicated in the world, and the Chinese government could’ve plenty to win in symbolism and in the steady incomes the small “empire” enjoyed from tourism…
-The New York Times, March 7 1994

TL;DR : Events go in China as IOTL, except that the Shandong Problem is removed and Germany continues to yield influence in the country, leading to a stronger monarchist element.

 

[MaskedPickle]

The assassination of Grigori Rasputin was a great upheaval in the Russian Imperial Court. Considered as a holy man by many, as a religious charlatan by others, holding immense power over the Czarina due to his so-called healing powers over the hemophilia of Tsarevich Alexei, Rasputin wasn’t able to save himself, as peasant woman Chionya Guseva had managed to stab him outside his home in Pokrovskoye on July, 12 1914. The religious mentor of Guseva, Hieromonk Iliodor, was banished, and the holy man died a few days later.
Even if growing protests against his supposed influence over the Czar and his family died out quickly, the news sent the Czarina into the depths of depression, crying out loud that her son was now condemned. Leaving his wife into comfort, the Czar buried himself under the high burden of work, trying to do the best he could do as Czar…
-Grigori Rasputin : The Mad Monk, M. Rak, Moscow, 1972

The death of Count Sergei Witte on March, 13 1915 sent shockwaves throughout Russia. The first Prime Minister of Russia, he had drafted the October Manifesto, a declaration in favor of civil liberties and parliamentary democracy, had designed Russia’s first Constitution
Manifestations, presided over the first general elections ever but the powers of conservatism and personal opposition of the Czar had led to his dismissal, only six months into his premiership. The Constitution was afterwards gutted by Nicholas II and the Duma became a consultative body.
The death of the man who would have been Russia’s Great Reformer awakened the calls for parliamentary monarchy and the full implementation of the October Manifesto ; the burial of Count Witte on March, 18 in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in Saint Petersburg quickly degenerated into a full riot, with people calling him a saint. Throughout the spring, protests occurred throughout the industrial areas of Russia, helped by Bolchevik and SR agitators. The high point was the strike at Baku’s oil fields, that lasted throughout the month of June 1915, until the army was sent to crack down on the protesters. Neverthless, contrasting with his previous stance as it was seen in 1905, the Czar formally quelled down the protest by proposing that the Fifth Duma, due to be convened in 1917, would study the full implementation of the Constitution according to Witte’s proposals ; even if it did not much to calm the opposition down, such a move was unprecedented from the sovereign…
-The Sleeping Bear : Russia in the Twentieth Century, M. Golkov, Petrograd, 2003


Even if some historians claimed that Nicholas II’s relatively soft approach to the 1915 Protests was caused by his own insecurity following Rasputin’s assassination, others evidenced that the ongoing modernization of the Russian military guided him, as nothing was to impede it.
In the aftermath of the shock created by the Russo-Japanese War, a full process of industrialization was on the maps : with the support of France, railroad infrastructures were building up throughout the country, economy was in a boom, the Navy was being rebuilt, an Air Force was assembling and Feodrov semi-automatic rifles were being distributed to the troops. The terrible state of affairs in the Ottoman Empire, Persia and China, all favoured ways of expansion, sharpened Russian appetites, and the build-up in Russia was to the liking of France, frightened Germany but also the United Kingdom, which saw the rise of the Russian military as a looming threat over Europe…
-The Road to the Great War, P. Robertson, New York, 1997

His only son, the Tsarevich Alexei, being crippled by hemophilia, and his brother, Grand Duke Mikhail, having been excluded from the line of succession by his scandalous marriage to Natalia Wulfert in 1912, Nicholas II was teetering. Following him and his son, the next in line was his cousin Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, whom he deeply disliked due to a previous scandal due his marriage with Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a divorcee, in 1905. The hatred of the Czarina towards both her in-law and the Princess, her own first cousin, was intact and she persuaded her husband not to see him as a suitable Czar.
On the other hand, Nicholas had four healthy daughters, excluded from the line of succession due to the Pauline Laws, established by Emperor Paul I of Russia who had been traumatized by the overbearing power of his mother, Catherine the Great. Women could only succeed if the entire line of legitimately-born male dynasts had gone extinct. The Pauline Laws had put into question by the marriage of Princess Tatiana Konstantinova to Princess Konstantin Alexandrovich Bagration-Mukhransky, morganatic in fact, that led her to renounce her rights to the throne. (...)
The death of Rasputin also reminded the Czar of his own mortality and he began to make plans towards a new law of succession… (...)
The 1915 Russian Law of Succession discontinued the exclusion of women from the succession, given that she was married to a Russian dynast/a non-reigning foreign of royal or imperial blood, far enough from the immediate line of succession. Inspired by the British Law of Succession, it was changed to male-preference primogeniture, allowing Grand Duchess Olga, the eldest daughter of the Czar, to become second in line…
-Olga the Great, V. Pons, Paris, 2008

“-And so, you never regretted having lost your position in the line of succession ?
-Not at all. I have never wanted to pursue the throne, and I think both of my brothers - Nicholas and George - would never have thought of it either had they knew how much upheavals Russia would endure. I love my country, I love my family, I served it happily during the War, but I never loved power. When Nicky decided to remove me from the line of succession, he called me selfish due to the disease of his son; but now, I could marry the woman I loved, live in peace and raise my beloved son as I wanted.
-But you could have been the Czar now.
-My niece is doing great right now ; I have a family here in England, I have my business there, I’m ready to help Russia if it needs me. What would a man like me prefer ? I decided to pursue happiness.”
-Interview with Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich of Russia, for The Times, October, 13 1927


TL;DR : Rasputin is assassinated and Russia endures huge protests in 1915, but Nicholas II manages to tone them down by promising a full Constitution by 1917. In the mean time, army modernization goes on and the law of succession is changed, allowing female accession.

 

[MaskedPickle]

In the aftermath of the 1913 coup d’Etat by the Three Pashas (Enver, Talaat and Cemal), the two Balkan Wars and the single-party general election in 1914, the Ottoman Empire passed the year 1914 with difficulty, happy to be left out of the Albanian War and strengthening their grip on the fledgling centuries-old Empire and keeping Caliph Mehmed V in check. That’s why, when Britain strenghtened their control over Egypt in the aftermath of the assassination of the Khedive, followed by a build-up in Cyprus, the Young Turks dared not to protest...
-The Ailing Man of Europe : the Modern Ottoman Empire, G. Günes, Berlin, 2014

On January, 1 1915, under the terms of the Armenian Reform Package passed into law on February, 8 1914, Armenia was divided into two autonomous provinces, under the supervisions of two European inspectors general, appointed to oversee matters related to the Armenian issues. The vilayets of Erzurum and Sivas were unified under Dutch representative Louis Constant Westenenk, while Van, Bitlis, Diyarbakir and Kharput were to be overseen by Norwegian Nicolai Hoff. The situation rejoiced the Armenian Ottoman cause, but the Sublime Porte was growing weary, as Russia had put in place a genuine protectorate over Ottoman Armenia…
-The Other Balkans : Caucasus in the Twentieth Century, P. Conge, Paris, 2018

The Bagdadbahn, or Berlin-Baghdad Railway, that was to become the great German thought to connect Berlin to the Middle East and allow Germany to establish a port in the Persian Gulf and control the suspected oil fields in Mesopotamia, was supposed to be completed in 1913, but in spite of several investments by the Deutsche Bank, the works were plagued with problems. In the light of this situation, the German government agreed to swallow their pride and enter negotiations with British financiers, in order to close the door to French interfering : the Corfu Agreement, signed on March, 14 1915 in the Achilleion (the personal villa of Kaiser Wilhelm II), between representatives of the Deutsche Bank and Bank of England, flanked by German and British representatives of their respective governments, agreed on a financial condominium that would complete the railway for 1920. Germany was confirmed in a 99-years-lease over the exploitation, while the Bank England took a 23,75 % share in the Turkish Petroleum Company (the same percentage had already been held by the Deutsche Bank since 1912).
In exchange, Germany officially renounced to establish military outposts in the Persian Gulf. But German diplomacy managed to counter this provision, as a secret defensive pact was signed with the Ottoman Empire in 1915, should the areas crossed by the Bagdadbahn come under foreign threat…
A Place Under The Sun : German Diplomacy under Wilhelm II, G. Laffitte, Paris, 1999


Riding on the success of both Balkan Wars and Albanian War, Eleftherios Venizelos cruised to victory in the 1915 elections, his ultimate goal of the Megali Idea, a reunion of historical Greek lands under the Kingdom of the Hellenes, never having been closer ; it drew tensions with Italy, in control of the Dodecanese, and furthermore the Ottoman Empire, with Constantinople as the ultimate prize. (...) As a result, Greece was in a crossroads : its king was married to the German Kaiser' sister, it depended on French loans and it shared its religion with Russia…
The Hellene Tiger : A History of Modern Greece, A. Christodoulou, Athens, 2011


ALI II OFFICIALLY ENTHRONED AS CALIPH AND SULTAN
The new Ottoman Sultan and Caliph, Ali II, had been officially enthroned yesterday during his Girding of the Sword ceremony at the Eyüp Mosque in Constantinople, after a mandatory grieving week for his predecessor, Bayezid III.
A seven-centuries-old practice, barely updated since, the Girding of the Sword was performed on the holy ground of the Eyüp tomb complex in the Golden Horn, in pomp and circumstances. In front of elite soldiers of the Ottoman Imperial Guard, the Grand Vizier, the Government, religious leaders and foreign ambassadors, the Sharif of Konya and the Chief of the Ottoman General Staff swore their oath to the new Commander of the Faithful, over the Sword of Osman.
Ali II, 88, had trouble lifting the Sword to those who took the oath, anonymous observers reported.
Dündar Ali Osman, great-grandson to Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1876-1909), became the eldest member of the Ottoman dynasty upon the passing of Bayezid III on January, 6, becoming the new head of the Ottoman Empire due to agnatic male seniority, the law of succession in the dynasty.
-New York Times, January, 14 2017

TL;DR : The fall of the Ottoman Empire continues, with Egypt, Cyprus entering the British Empire while Armenia becomes autonomous and under Russian protection. Nevertheless, the Ottomans enter the German sphere of influence.

 

[MaskedPickle]

January, 1
Armenia officially becomes an autonomous entity within the Ottoman Empire, with the formation of a single province from the vilayets of Erzurum, Van, Bitlis, Diyarbakir, Kharput and Sivas, under the authority of two inspector-generals : Dutch Louis Constant Westenenk and Norwegian Nicolai Hoff.

Luis Cabrera Lobato, aide to Mexican president Venustiano Carranza, release a decree on land reform in Mexico, promise to provide land to those with the most need.

January, 5
Joseph E. Carberry set an altitude record of 11,690 feet (3,560 m), carrying Capt. Benjamin Delahauf Foulois as a passenger in a fixed-wing aircraft.

January, 7
Italy established the Corpo Aeronautico Militare (Military Aviation Corps) as air force branch of the Royal Italian Army.

January, 10
The British polar exploration ship Endurance, carrying explorer Ernest Shackleton and the rest of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition crew, arrived to meet 100-foot (30 m) ice walls which guarded the Antarctic coastal region of Coats Land.

January, 12
The United States House of Representatives approves a proposal to give women the right to vote.

Carlos Meléndez becomes president of El Salvador by acclamation when no other candidates ran in the presidential election.

January, 13
An earthquake in Avezzano, Italy, registering 6.8 on the Richter magnitude scale killed more than 30,000 people.

January, 15
General Joaquim Pimenta de Casto becomes Prime Minister of Portugal.

January, 17
Rival Arab royal houses Āl Rashīd and Āl Saʻūd clashed at the Battle of Jarrab north of Al Majma'ah. The battle resulted in victory of the Āl Rashīd but the only recorded casualty was British military adviser William Shakespear, who came in contact with Ibn Saud, the head of Āl Saʻūd, in the early 1900s. His death resulted in tensions between Ibn Saud and the British and may have had some influence in the Arab Revolt the following year.

January, 18
Japanese Prime Minister Okuma Shigenobu issues to Chinese President Yuan Shikai the Seventeen Demands : Japan asks for the extension of Japan’s leasehold over the South Manchuria Railway Zone, influence over southern Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia, control of the Hanyeping mining and metallurgical complex, the closure of coastal and island concessions from China to foreign powers, the hire of Japanese advisors by the Chinese government to control China’s finance and police and control over Fujian.

January 23-26
Baptist minister John Chilembwe revolts in Nyasaland but is promptly defeated by British troops.

January, 28
An act of the U.S. Congress designates the United States Coast Guard, begun in 1790, as a military branch over 19 years.

February, 3
John Chilembwe is killed by British troops while fleeing the failure of his uprising in Nyasaland.

February,5
Avoiding the ices, the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, led by the Endurance, reaches the continent of the Antarctic; Sir Ernest Shackleton undertakes the first land crossing of the Antarctic.

February, 8
The Birth of a Nation, directed by D. W. Griffith, premieres in Los Angeles and becomes what would be known today as a “box-office hit”.

February, 12
In Washington, D.C., the first stone of the Lincoln Memorial is put into place.

February, 20
In San Francisco, California, the Panama-Pacific International Exposition is opened.

February, 25
Vilbrun Guillaume Sam seizes power in Haiti following the resignation of Presidnet Joseph Davilmar Théodore.

March-October
Palestine is infested by locusts.

March, 1
Feliciano Viera Borges becomes President of Uruguay, succeeding José Batlle y Ordonez.

March, 4
The Italian Navy occupies the city of Valona, Albania.

March 13
Sergei Witte, former Prime Minister of Russia, dies, aged 65.

March, 14
General election in the United Kingdom : the Conservatives win a majority of the popular vote and 343 seats in the House of Commons, having an absolute majority by 7 seats. Leader Bonar Law forms his cabinet and becomes Prime Minister ; The Marquess of Lansdwone becomes Foreign Secretary, Austen Chamberlain Chancellor of the Exchequer and Edward Carson Home Secretary.

Corfu Agreement : Germany and the United Kingdom decide to finance jointly the Istanbul-Baghdad railway line (better known as the Bagdadbahn), with the Bank of England taking a 23,75 % share in the Turkish Petroleum Company and to schedule the opening of the railway for 1920. Germany wins exclusive rights for the exploitation in a 99-years-lease and officially renounces to establish military outposts in the Persian Gulf.

March, 18
Witte Riot : the burial of Sergei Witte in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in Saint. Petersburg turns into a full-blown riot, repressed by the Cossacks, asking for the full implementation of the 1905 Manifesto and the restablishment of parliamentary monarchy.

April-June
Strikes and revolts against central authority happen throughout the industrial parts of Russia, asking for a full implementation of the 1905 October Manifesto, which promised universal male suffrage, the establishment of a parliamentary monarchy, freedom of cult, press and speech, and tax decrease. The Czar responds by sending in the troops.

April, 5
Boxer Jess Willard defeats Jack Johnson at Havana, Cuba, becoming the world heavyweight boxing champion.

April 6-7
First Battle of Celaya between Pancho Villa (Conventionists) and Alvaro Obregon (Constitutionalists) proves inconclusive.

April, 11
The Tramp makes his film debut in the United States, sparking the career of Charles Chaplin.

April 15-16
Second Battle of Celaya between Pancho Villa (Conventionists) and Alvaro Obregon (Constitutionalists) proves inconclusive.

April, 18
The United States Senate approves the amendment to forbid the States and the federal government to deny the right to vote to US citizens on the basis of sex, effectively giving women the right to vote. The would-be Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is sent to the state legislatures for ratification.

April, 23
The Treaty of Corfu is signed, ending the Third Balkan War : Valona remains under Italian occupation ; Essat Pasha Toptani is recognized as Prime Minister and Regent of Albania ; Northern Epirus is annexed by Greece ; northern Albania is split between Montenegro and Serbia.

April, 26
China rejects the Seventeen Demands by Japan.

April, 29
An Italian force was defeated by Senussi rebels at Gasr Bu Hadi in Libya, with casualties estimated between 3,000 and 4,000.

May, 6
Russian troops forcibly enter a arms’ factory in Rostov that had been on strike since March ; twenty-seven workers are left dead.

May, 7
The United Kingdom, France, the United States, Germany, Belgium and Russia ask Japan to stop with the sending of “demands encroaching Chinese sovereignty and the Open Door Policy in China”.

Elections in Denmark : Carl Theodor Zehle is re-elected as Prime Minister. a new Constitution is approved for the country.

May, 14
The Portuguese Army revolts in support of factions of the Parliament in order to ask for the resignation of President de Arriaga and Prime Minister Pimenta de Castro.

May, 15
The House of Commons repeals the Government of Ireland Act, suspending Home Rule in Ireland ; as a result, Irish Parliamentary Party Leader John Redmond and his fellow MPs refuse to seat in Westminster.

Argentina, Brazil and Chile sign the ABC Treaty, developing cooperation, nonaggression and arbitration of disputes between the three countries.

May, 17
José de Castro is appointed Prime Minister by rebels in Portugal.

May, 25
The Treaty of Kyakhta have Russia and China recognize Outer Mongolia’s autonomy.

May, 29
In order to restablish order in Portugal, President Manuel de Arriaga resigns, caving to the demands of the military. He is succeeded by Teofilo Braga.

June, 5
Women’s suffrage is introduced in Denmark.

June, 6
Personnel of the Baku oil fields decide to go on unlimited strike.

June, 11
Sir Ernest Shackleton becomes the first man to achieve the land crossing of the Antarctic, losing 24 men in the procecess.

June, 22
The Imperial Valley earthquakes shook southeastern Southern California, causing six deaths and financial losses of $900,000. Each shock in this doublet earthquake measured 5.5 Mw  and had a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe).

June, 25
In a heavily contested election, Javier Angel Figueroa (Liberal) beats Juan Luis Sanfuentes (Liberal Democratic) to become President of Chile, amid allegations of fraud.

June, 27
Former Mexican president Victoriano Huerta and General Pascual Orozco cross the US-Mexican border, along with supporters. In the following months, they would meet disgruntled Mexican officers plotting against sitting Head of the Executive Power Venustiano Carranza.

June, 30
The army is sent to Baku to re-open the factories : thousands of workers are killed in the repression.

July, 3
Lord Kitchener is appointed Lord Lieutenant for Ireland.

July, 16
Milo Matanovic succeeds Janko Vukotic as Prime Minister of Montenegro.

July, 17
Tsarevich Alexis, heir to the Russian Imperial throne, injures himself in the groin while playing in the stairs of the Hermitage Palace in Saint. Petersburg ; being gravely ill with haemophilia, the Tsarevich eventually manages to recover, although very slowly and painfully.

July, 21-24
Dublin and Cork are stormed by three days of unrest ; the British military charges and leaves several Irishmen dead in the streets.

July, 27
Haitian President Sam orders the execution of 167 political prisoners, including former President Zamor, sparking a revolt.

July, 28
Haitian President Sam takes refuge in the French embassy in Port-au-Prince but is dragged out and lynched by the populace. Haiti falls into chaos.

President Woodrow Wilson orders the US Marines to occupy Port-au-Prince in order to maintain order. The United States Occupation of Haiti begins.

August 5-23
Hurricane Two of the 1915 Atlantic hurricane season over Galveston and New Orleans leaves 275 dead.

August, 8
Norias Ranch Raid : Mexican Sedionists assault an American ranch in Texas and are defeated.

August, 12
Philippe Sudré Dartiguenave becomes President of Haiti.

August, 17
Jewish American Leo Frank is lynched for the alleged murder of a 13-year-old girl in Atlanta, Georgia.

August, 18
José Pardo y Barreda becomes President of Peru for the second time, succeeding Oscar Benavides after a presidential election.

September, 3
Belgium adopts universal male suffrage.

September, 16
The United States Senate ratifies the Haitian American Convention, granting the United States security and economic oversight of Haiti for a 10-Year period.

September, 20
Ernest Shackleton receives a major triumph in London upon his return from the Antarctic.

September, 24
The British Cabinet proposes a new bill that would officially exclude Ulster from juridiction from Dublin and attach it directly to London, excluding it from Home Rule.

October
Islamic militant Mirza Kuchik Khan rebels in Gilan, asking for autonomy for the province, an end to central government corruption in Persia and an end to Russian and British interference.

October, 2
The British War Office announces a reinforcement of troops stationing in Ireland.

The 6.8 Mw  Pleasant Valley earthquake shook north-central Nevada with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme), causing limited damage and pronounced fault scarps along the base of the Tobin Range.

October, 5
Bernardino Machado is elected President of Portugal.

October, 8
Battle of Chelsea : the London Irish Rifles refuse to be dispatched to maintain order in Ireland and mutiny in the Duke of York’s Barracks in Chelsea, London, killing their officers and asking the Prime Minister to reinstate the Government of Ireland Act. The government and London District troops react swiftly, quelling the uprising by the end of day.

October, 9
British colonial forces in Somaliland, allied with Ethiopian elements, begin a month-long punitive expedition against the rebellious Dervish state.

October, 12
Tsar Nicholas II receives in private audiences a delegation of the Duma, composed of President of the Duma Alexandr Guchkov, Minister of the Interior Alexei Khvovstov, deputies Pavel Milyukov, Boris Stürmer, Vassily Shulgin and Alexandr Kerensky. The delegation repeatedly asks for a gradual implementation of the October Manifesto.

Secularism crisis in Luxembourg : a proposal to remove the Church from the education system leads to the resign of Prime Minister Paul Eyschen, who had been in place since 1888. Grand-Duchess Marie-Adelaide appoints Mathias Mongenast as Prime Minister.

October, 16
Germany signs a secret defensive alliance treaty with the Ottoman Empire that would enter into full effect should the trail of the Bagdadbahn be under threat.

October, 20
Irish Parliamentary leader John Redmond gives an easing of military occupation in Ireland as a condition for his participation in new negotiations about Home Rule.

Elections in South Africa : Louis Botha is re-elected as Prime Minister.

October, 21
Ojo de Agua Raid : Mexican Sedionists assault an United States Army Signal Corps Station in Texas and are defeated.

October, 27
Luxemburgish Parliament votes a motion of no confidence to clerical Prime Minister-designate Mathias Mongenast ; a coalition government, neutral on secularism issues, is appointed under Victor Thorn.

November, 1
Second Battle of Agua Prieta : Plutarco Elias Calles (Constitutionnalists) defeats Pancho Villa (Conventionists) in Agua Prieta, Sonora.

November, 4
Residents in Dominion of Newfoundland voted in favour of prohibiting the sales and distribution of alcohol with 24,956 voting in favour through plebiscite. Prohibition was introduced on January 1, 1917 and remained in force until 1924.

November, 6
The Mad Mullah and leader of the Dervish State in Somalia, Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, secretly swears allegiance to the Emperor of Ethiopia, Iyasu V, who has secretly converted to Islam.

November, 9
Czar of Russian Nicholas II announces that the next Duma, that would convene in November 1917, will undertake a mission to have a new Constitution adopted in Russia that would guarantee much of the October Manifesto. The Duma, meanwhile, adopts a new law of succession for the Russian Empire, reintegrating women into the line of succession.

November,11
Elections in Norway : Gunnar Knudsen is re-elected as Prime Minister.

November, 13
Sweden signs a pact of friendship with Germany, secretly assorted with a pact of mutual military assistance.

November, 17
US Marines capture Fort Rivière, stronghold of Haitian Caco rebels, ending the First Caco War.

November, 21
Huerta-Orozco supporters storm the Chapultepec Castle, seat of the Mexican Presidency, in Mexico : at the end of day, Head of the Executive Carranza is killed, Congress disbanded and former President Victoriano Huerta is installed as President of Mexico.

November, 24
The British cabinet announces the disbandment of Irish British Army units due to “insidious movements”.

November, 25
Albert Einstein formulates his theory of general relativity.

November, 26
In Nogales, Mexico, General Alvaro Obregon announces to Convention troops he’s rallying them in opposition to Victoriano Huerta’s regime.

November, 27
The Second Ku Klux Klan is established in Stone Mountain, Georgia, by William Joseph Simmons, due to the national interest created by movie Birth of A Nation.


November, 29
Afonso Costa becomes Prime Minister of Portugal.

December
Ulster Volunteers register en masse in the British Royal Army, under the support of Home Secretary Carson.

Several pogroms happen throughout Russian Ukraine and Poland, targeting Jewish communities. Members of the Black Hundreds, Russia’s ultranationalist militias, are among the perpetrators..

December,2
US President Woodrow Wilson announces that in wake of the recent coup in Mexico, the United States Navy won’t withdraw from Tampico and Veracruz.


December,3
Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov, seventh in line to the throne, proposes to his cousin, Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna, eldest daughter of the Czar, who accepts. The Grand Duchess becomes the first child of the Tsar to be engaged, and it’s an unusual move, considering Grand Duke Dmitri had been a member of the anti-Rasputin faction.


December,10
The Nobel Prizes are attributed : Lawrence Bragg and William Henry Bragg (United Kingdom) share the Prize in Physics, Fritz Haber (Germany) in Chemistry, Jules Bordet (Belgium) in Medicine, Emile Verhaeren (Belgium) in Literature and Jane Addams (USA) in Peace.

The millionth Ford car is assembled in Detroit.

December, 12
Chinese President Yuan Shikai proclaims himself Emperor under the era name Hongxian, angering many of his supporters.

December, 15
General Plutarco Elias Calles announces his rallying to the Convention forces in Mexico.

December, 18
United States President Woodrow Wilson marries Mrs. Edith B. Galt while the Eighteenth Amendment, in favor of women’s suffrage, has Colorado as the 28th state ratifying the amendement.

December,19
Elections in Greece : Eleftherios Venizelos is re-elected as Prime Minister.

December, 22
Lou Tseng-Tsiang becomes Prime Minister of the Empire of China.

December, 25
Military leaders of Yunnan Cai E and Tang Jiyao declare independance, starting a national revolt against Yuan Shikai’s monarchy.

 

[MaskedPickle]

The Eighteenth Amendment (Amendment XVIII) to the United States Constitution prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex. The amendment was adopted on January 18, 1916 as the culmination of the women's suffrage movement in the United States, which fought at both state and national levels to achieve the vote. (...)
The Eighteenth Amendment was originally introduced in Congress in 1878 by Senator Aaron A. Sargent. Thirty-seven years later, in 1915, Congress submitted it to the states for ratification. It was ratified by three-fourths of the states a year later, with Oklahoma's ratification being the last needed to add the amendment to the Constitution. (1)
-Article “Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution”, Omnipedia

The suffragette movement, that had been radicalizing in the years preceding the Great European War, reached a new climax when women’s suffrage was adopted in the United States; in a context of very high tension due to the Irish Question, suffragettes attempted to renew demonstrations. Nevertheless, under the premiership of Bonar Law, suffragettes were assimilated to Irish nationalists under the Uprising Act and vehemently prosecuted ; as such, Emmeline Pankhurst and her two daughters, Christabel and Sylvia, were put under trial for “fomenting violent action against His Majesty’s Government” and jailed in 1916.
But a line was crossed on August, 7 1916 : while the Royal Family was in vacation in Holyrood Palace, Mary Richardson, a Canadian-born journalist who had been arrested numerous times for acts of arson, smashing windows at the Home Office, bomb attacks and slashing Velasquez’s Rokeby Venus at the National Gallery, was in the crowd saluting King George V and his family as they were visiting a market in Edinburgh. Richardson produced a revolver and took four shots at the King : one missed, another one stuck the King in the shoulder, while the two others were taken by the King’s second son, Prince Albert, in the left lung. The Prince collapsed and would die two days later, barely being 20 and beginning a career in the Navy....
-In the Shadow of Victoria, L. Wheeling, London, 2014

BONAR LAW : SUFFRAGETTES AND IRISH TERRORISTS ARE THE SAME
-The Guardian, August, 11 1916

One of the sources of the arch-conservatism shown by Edward VIII under his reign could be the assassination of his younger brother by a suffragette in 1916…
-In the Shadow of Victoria, L. Wheeling, London, 2014

As suffragettes were persecuted, arrested, even raped or killed by policemen and soldiers into Irish Civil War-torn Britain, a strange sight was developing within the movement : Edith Margaret Garrud had been teaching jujutsu self-defence techniques to the Bodyguard Unit of the suffragette movement, inaugurating "suffrajitsu" as a martial art. The sight of seeing suffragettes in robes and hats inflicting kung fu techniques on amazed policemen was a common sight in the center of London in the 1910s.
-Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting, Academy Award for Best Documentary 1992

“ The streets of London at night, a woman walks alone.
Title card - LONDON, 1915
VOICE-OVER : In a world where women have no right to talk…
The woman gets cornered by policemen.
VOICE-OVER : Some voices are raising.
A montage of various scenes : Suffragettes protesting, riots with women shouting “votes for women”, trials, bomb attacks…
MALE VOICE : Women shouldn’t, and never will have, the right to vote.
In a laundry, two women are talking to each other.
SYLVIA (Helen Mirren) : I heard you thought of yourself more like a soldier.
Cut to policemen on horses charging a crowd of suffragettes. Stephanie (Ronda Rousey) emerges from the misty crowd, bruised and discheleved.
STEPHANIE (Ronda Rousey) : Until when ?
Title card - ON DECEMBER
Cut to a dojo, where suffragettes are training in kung fu
Title card - FROM ACADEMY AWARD-WINNING DIRECTOR JOHN WOO
Cut to the streets from above. Stephanie is shown to be the woman cornered by policemen.
Title card-WITNESS THE RISE OF THE NEW WORLD.
She proceeds to kick the ass of all policemen through deadly and complex karate moves. Stephanie is now surrounded by stunned policemen.
STEPHANIE : Talk about the weaker sex, asshole !
Title card - SUFFRAGETTES - ON THEATERS ON DECEMBER 2015
-Trailer for Suffragettes

TL;DR : Women's suffrage is adopted in the US as early as 1916 ; the backlash over it in the UK lead to a crazed suffragette shooting at the King but killing OTL George VI, and massive crackdown over the suffragette movement.

(1) This part is a modified copy of the Wikipedia article on the Nineteenth Amendment.

 

[MaskedPickle]

The Presidency of Pascual Orozco, revolutionary from the first hour, the former best ally then traitor to Francisco Madero, was doomed from the start. Coming to power just a few months after an already ill Huerta had passed away, he dealt without Alvaro Obregon, Plutarco Elias Calles or Adolfo de la Huerta, the ablest Generals for the Constitutionalists, who preferred to turn to the Convenionists with their men and material than to serve General Huerta, the very man they had agreed to fight against. Orozco had become a household name in Mexico, as a brutal general and a chronic backstabber, and his accession triggered huge revolts in Mexico’s main cities, such as Monterrey, Quérétaro, Guadalajara and others, that turned to the Conventionists, the lesser of two evils. Puebla, a few kilometers from Mexico, became the center of the Convention.
Due to this turn of events, President Woodrow Wilson announced on March, 16 1916 that they would officially support the Conventionist Movement in Mexico, “until free elections were organized”. In the mean time, the turmoil in Europe deprived Orozco from his best ally, Germany, who had supplied his armies in ammunition, material and money...
History of the Mexican Revolution, Arturo Villaraigosa, McGraw-Hill, Los Angeles, 1998

General Félix Diaz, exiled in Cuba, tried to organize a National Reorganizer Army in Oaxaca and Chiapas in May 1916 to take advantage on the ongoing chaos in Mexico, but his efforts were unsuccesful and he was forced to go into exile again. Nevertheless, his efforts allowed Emiliano Zapata, in the South, to decisively defeat General Pablo Gonzalez, who had remained loyal to President Orozco and tried to beat him in southern Mexico…
History of the Mexican Revolution, Arturo Villaraigosa, McGraw-Hill, Los Angeles, 1998

FMR. PRES. LAGOS CHAZARO BECOMES ACTING PRESIDENT OF MEXICO ; CONSTITUANT ASSEMBLY MEETS IN PUEBLA
-The New York Times, May, 2 1917

In the Mexican Confederation, all individuals shall be entitled to the privileges and immunities granted by this Constitution. Such privileges and immunities shall not be restricted or suspended, but in the cases and under the conditions established by this Constitution itself. (1)
-Article 1, Chapter I of the Constitution of Mexico, adopted on February, 5 1918 in Puebla

Flag of the Mexican Confederation, adopted in 1916

The President has taken good note of the democratic progress in Mexico, the adoption of a new Constitution and the fair elections, although made in an uneasy context, that led to the election to a four year-term of Professor José Vasconcelos, who has worked in the United States and is well-known scholar and supporter of democratic values. In the light of these new developments, President Wilson asked Congress to officially recognize the present government in Mexico City as the rightful Mexican one, and to gradually withdraw from American positions in Veracruz and Tampico…
-Press conference by Secretary of State Robert Lansing, April, 12 1918


Masters of post-Revolution Mexico (from l. to r.) : General Calles, General Obregon, President Vasconcelos, General Villa, General Zapata

The 1918 Constitution, also known as the Puebla Constitution, was the apex of the Conventionist Movement and put an end to a process that had started in 1910 : Mexico had a new Constitution, that changed the official name of the nation (the Mexican Confederation), putting an emphasis on federalism, Mexican nationalism, extensive land reform, separation of the Church and State, inability to re-elect officials, economic independance and human rights, among the first of its kind in the world. There were tiny revolts throughout the country, but the armies of reunited Mexico were quelling them down. Peace, after eight years of violence and anarchy, finally was at hand.
In facts, Mexico had a great figurehead in the presence of elected President José Vasconcelos, who ruled in a triumvirate with General Plutarco Elias Calles, who pushed in favor of harsh anti-clericalism, and General Francisco Villa, who was more interested in the spoils of war and beginning to take interest into marxist theories. Meanwhile, Emiliano Zapata was retreating to his held territories in southern Mexico to oversee land reform…
History of the Mexican Revolution, Arturo Villaraigosa, McGraw-Hill, Los Angeles, 1998

TL; DR : The Mexican Revolution ends with a victory of the Conventionists (Villa and Zapata), joined by Alvaro Obregon and Plutarco Calles, who revolted against the disastrous Presidency of Pascual Orozco; while José Vasconcelos becomes President, the resulting Constitution is more radical...

(1) Inspired from the first article of the actual Mexican Constitution - http://historico.juridicas.unam.mx/infjur/leg/constmex/pdf/consting.pdf

 

[MaskedPickle]

The proclaimation of the independance of Ireland on Saint Patrick’s Day, 1916, was followed by an immediate retribution from Bonar Law and his cabinet. 50,000 men, composing the Ireland Peacekeeping Army, under command by General Douglas Haig (himself supervized by Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, General Kitchener), landed near Dublin on April, 5, two weeks after the uprising, while Ulster Volunteers who had been recruited by the British Army occupied Northern England ; Dublin itself was shelled and taken without much fighting on May, 1 ; the Irish Provisional Government, the name the rebels had taken, went into hiding in western Ireland....
-The Irish Civil War, F. Chesterfield, London, 2016

“Soldiers, people of Dublin, you have wonderfully restored order in this fine Ireland, forcing the Republican rabble and traitors to flee like cowards in the sight of our King’s Army. Ireland shall endure now, but Ireland shall return to peace and be a place where Catholics and Protestants shall live in good understanding, far from the Papist deviations of a minority. Martial law is a harsh decision for His Majesty’s Cabinet to make, but it shall last until all terrorists are purged…”
-Andrew Bonar Law’s speech to the Ireland Peacekeeping Army, in Dublin, during his week-long visit to Ireland, May, 12 1916

The Irish Republican Army retreated in good order from Dublin, along with the Provisional Government, and established their headquarters in Connaught, in the mountains avoiding the English troops ; while vastly outnumbered (at the time of the Saint Patrick’s Rising, the Irish Republicans numbered 40,000 soldiers, a 1 to 2,5 ratio to the occupying forces), they benefited of excellent German material provided by “Foreign Minister” Roger Casement’s dealings, extensive help from the locals who resented military occupation, military upbringing compared to English reservists deployed in Ireland, and a thorough local knowledge, compared to the Ireland Peacekeepers, none of them being of Irish origin, as the Cabinet was worried about desertions and mutinees. All was in place for a guerilla in Connaught and Munster, consisting of skirmishes against British patrols...
Lord Kitchener, due to his experience at the Second Boer War, pushed for a battle of annihilation strategy, hoping to destroy a small dedicated army...
-The Irish Civil War, F. Chesterfield, London, 2016

The situation in Ireland : Green represents the area controlled by the Irish Republican rebels ; Orange, those held by Ulster Volunteers; white, the area theoritically under control of the British Army.

On October, 29 1916, John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, finally emerged from his year-long seclusion to ask, in front of Westminster Palace where he had refused to take seat, the cabinet to rescind martial law in Ireland, arguing that “it would only convince more and more Irishmen to turn to arms”. He hadn’t finished his speech in front of reporters that he was arrested on the spot by policemen, as were various IPP MPs thanks to the Uprising Act…
-The Irish Civil War, F. Chesterfield, London, 2016

Lord Kitchener finally took the chance at his climatic battle on March, 25 1917, in Kilmallock, in County Limerick, when the bulk of Ireland Peackeeping Army reached the Irish Republican headquarters...
-The Irish Civil War, F. Chesterfield, London, 2016

TL; DR: The Irish Republican Army retreats in good order and manages to wage guerilla upon the British

 

[MaskedPickle]

“After the terrible defeat suffered in 1912 with Theodore Roosevelt running his own campaign for the Progressive Party, the Republicans addressed the 1916 election with caution. Running against an incumbent President was always difficult and Wilson had been riding with an excellent economy, successful foreign endeavours in Mexico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic and women’s suffrage, that added more than 8 million potential electors, all feeling beholden towards the President.
While President Wilson and Vice-President Marshall were re-nominated without opposition, in Chicago, from June 7 to 10, the Republican Convention had three major contenders : Senator Elihu Root from New York for the conservatives, Senator John W. Weeks of Massachuseetsand Senator Albert Cummins of Iowa for the liberals. Possible contenders, such as former President Theodore Roosevelt, Senator Warren G. Harding from Ohio or Supreme Court Associate Justice Charles Evans Hughes of New York decided to sit out this election cycle as Wilson appeared too powerful ; the absence of Roosevelt and from former Progressives allowed, on the fifteenth ballot, the victory of the conservative wing, with Elihu Root becoming the nominee.
In an effort to convince the Progressives, he nominated insurgent Senator William Borah from Idaho, but things turned awry when other Progressives decided to walk out from the Convention on June, 9…"
-Becoming the Grand Old Party, J. C. Wild, New York, 2019

INSURGENT PROGRESSIVES MEET FOR CONVENTION IN CHICAGO
-The New York Times, June, 26 1916

“When he heard of the attempt to have him drafted for a new time as the Progressive candidate for President, Teddy Roosevelt confirmed his previous intention, unwilling to further divide for good the Republican Party, but also increasing his chances for clinching the nomination in 1920…”
-Roosevelt, J. Moorhead, Washington, 1994

PROGRESSIVE 1912 VP NOMINEE CA GOV. HIRAM JOHNSON TAKES PRESIDENTIAL SPOT FOR THE PROGRESSIVES ; LA BUSINESSMAN JOHN M. PARKER FOR RUNNING MATE
-Los Angeles Times, June, 28 1916

The campaign trail was a total mess for two very competent man. Elihu Root was among the only American politicians to have earned a Nobel Peace Prize, yet his record as Secretary of State in the Roosevelt Administration and his interventionism were not well liked by average conservative Republicans, while Hiram Johnson, although a great Governor of California, had not the charisma of Roosevelt and didn’t manage to raise Progressive spirits like four years ago. In the same time, Wilson could boast of the strong economy and enjoyed the division of the Republican electorate, while knowing he had the female vote quite in hand… He could focus on congressional elections, that saw a renewed for the Democrats in both houses...
-Wilson, C. Tombyll, Harvard, 1987

The United States presidential election of 1916 was the 33rd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1916. Incumbent Democratic President Woodrow Wilson defeated Senator Elihu Root, the Republican candidate, and Governor Hiram Johnson, the Progressive candidate.
-1916 United States Presidential Election, Omnipedia

TL;DR : Woodrow Wilson wins re-election against a divided Republican Party.

 

[MaskedPickle]

RUSSIAN CZAR’S SECOND DAUGHTER MARRIES CROWN PRINCE OF SERBIA
-The New York Times, August, 3 1916

The lavish ceremony that Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia’s betrothal to Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia was somehow tarnished by the Macedonian Uprising, that occurred on the same date, coinciding with the short-lived proclamation of the Krusevo Republic in 1903.
Macedonia had been a hot spot of the Balkan Wars : claimed by Bulgaria through the nationalist organization IMRO (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization), that played a decisive role in Bulgarian politics, it had been occupied and integrated into Serbia after the Second Balkan War (1913). Dreaming of a greater Macedonia that would extend from Skopje to Salonika, the IMRO had enjoyed the support of the Bulgarian Empire and was pushing for military action against Serbia, Greece and the Ottoman Empire (powers that occupied territories claimed by Bulgaria). Todor Aleksandrov, leader of the IMRO, loaded with Bulgarian weapons, had crossed the border during the night of August,2 to 3 and managed to occupy the city of Radovis, proclaiming its annexation to Bulgaria.
As all royals, including Nicholas II, father of the bride, were congregated in Belgrad for the royal wedding, they tried to avoid a new Balkan War to explode over Macedonia, as it would most certainly lead to a greater war in Europe. Other Balkanic powers agreed to keep in check to wait for further developments ; Crown Prince Alexander, who had been assuring executive power since the semi-retirement of his father, the old King Peter, had a strong feeling of bravado : his wedding was sealing the alliance with Russia, Serbia was doing great in Albania, it had already defeated once Bulgaria, and now, it wouldn’t be Macedonian rabble that were able to defeat his troops. Nevertheless, Nicholas refused to pledge his support behind Serbia : he had plans to have his third daughter, Maria, marry the Crown Prince of Bulgaria, he didn’t wanted to have unrest between his Orthodox natural allies in the Balkans and was focused on internal reforms and modernization. He preferred to wait a few years more to become a true behemoth in Europe and by dealing in backrooms during the wedding, he didn’t feel pressured by Russian opinion. Germany was too content to have Serbia distracted with his neighbour, as his Austro-Hungarian ally wouldn’t have to deal on another front in the South in case of a new European conflict.
That’s how Serbia declared war on Bulgaria one month later, trigerring the Fourth Balkan War…
-The Sleeping Bear : Russia in the Twentieth Century, M. Golkov, Petrograd, 2003

The Fourth Balkan War became a show of Serbian self-indulgence, over-confidence and arrogance, and the first step of future King Alexander II’s hubris : without support from Russia and unprepared, the Serbian Army was routed in six months by a much larger, better prepared and revenge-driven Bulgarian Army, that enjoyed German and Austro-Hungarian support and Russian neutrality. In a humiliating settlement in Naples that was forgotten during the turmoil of the Great European War, Serbia had to cede Vardar Macedonia to Bulgaria, cancelling the effect of the Treaty of London in 1913. Bulgaria enjoyed renewed strength in the aftermath of the conflict while the prestige of Serbia was deeply diminished, while Albanian rebels were forcing Serbian troops to withdraw from Albania in 1918.
The Fourth Balkan War is interesting for military historians because it saw the first military deployment of landships, in the presence at the Battle of Morava of Bulgarian Vezdekhod landships, purchased from Russia in 1915. If the two engines proved ineffectual and difficult to manoeuver and not no influence whatsoever in the battle, its shock and awe value was assessed in the course of the battle and influenced all military engineers throughout Europe…
-Balkans for Dummies, New York, 2013

Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevic, leader of the group that had overthrown Alexander Obrenovic in 1903 and alleged spymaster of Serbia, attempted a coup against Crown Prince Alexander on June, 24 1917, in the months following the Fourth Balkan War; the Crown Prince had seen the military clique surrounding his father, commanded by Dimitrijevic, as the main cause behind the military debacle in Macedonia. Attempting to storm the royal palace in Belgrad, the putschists were quickly disposed of by the palace guards and Dimitrijevic was killed...
-Alexander of Serbia, A. Janosevic, Belgrad, 1992

TL;DR : A war is fought in 1916-1917 between Serbia and Bulgaria over Macedonia; Bulgaria wins the war and regains Vardar Macedonia (OTL North Macedonia). Grand Duchess Tatiana, second daughter of Nicholas II, marries Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia.

 

[MaskedPickle]

The event that started the Great European War was the Notaras Incident on September, 27 1916.
The Notaras, a cargo vessel (aptly named after the last naval commander of the Byzantine Empire) under Greek flag, arriving from Sebastopol and en route to Piraeus, in Greece, was captured by the Ottoman customs at Gallipoli. Prompted by strange behaviour from the crew, the customs officers descended in the hull of the Notaras and discovered a very large stash of Russian-made rifles, ammunition and even the pieces of a a Vezdekhod landship. The captain of the ship couldn’t justify for the presence of these weapons and the whole crew was promptly arrested, while the Ottoman government considered these weapons were destined for the Greek army in order to prepare for a large conflict for the control of Constantinople, in light of the ongoing conflict in the Balkans.
Eleftherios Venizelos, the Greek Prime Minister, received support from Russia who looked for an opportunity to strike upon Ottoman Armenia, while King Constantine, on a private visit in Berlin with his brother-in-law, the Kaiser, received consent from Germany “as long as Russia didn’t join the conflict and threatened the Bagdadbahn”. Britain asked for a quick resolution in order not to disrupt international trade through the Dardanelles. After a week-long ultimatum, Greece declared war upon the Ottoman Empire on October, 14 1916…
The Hellene Tiger : A History of Modern Greece, A. Christodoulou, Athens, 2011

VENIZELOS : “THE MEGALI IDEA IS AT HAND”
-The Times, October, 15 1916

The Megali Idea, the reunion of all Greek-speaking areas, seemed at hand under the reign of Constantine I, namesake to the last Byzantine Emperor.

The new Ottoman Grand Vizier, Mehmed Talat Pascha, who had replaced Said Halim Pascha in the road to the Greek-Ottoman War, inherited an uneasy situation. The Young Turks, since they had come to power, were obssessed with the idea of a “Fifth Column” that would trigger enormous troubles behind the enemy lines; and the attack from Greece meant 1,8 million people, in Thrace, Ionia, Pontus and Cappadocia were ready to rise and to destroy the Empire from the inside. In order to exhalt the Turks, the Grand Vizier approached the Caliph for a formal declaration of Djihad against the Orthodox Greeks, in order to bolster the Ottoman Muslims, and the bombing of Constantinople on October, 16 gave the occasion to foster different pogroms against Ottoman Greeks, supported by the police and directed at the Greek communities scattered around Asia Minor.
Yet, on October, 18, one such incident degenerated in Trabzon, as rioters invaded the Russian Consulate where fleeing Greek families had taken refuge. Helped by drunken Turkish soldiers, the fanatics stormed the Consulate. In the ensuing confusion, the Russian consulate was lynched and killed…
-The Ailing Man of Europe : the Modern Ottoman Empire, G. Günes, Berlin, 2014

"Oh, shit."
-Reportedly said by Grand Vizier Mehmed Talat Pascha upon learning of the Trabzon Incident, October, 18 1916

Saint Petersburg immediately condemned the lynching of the Russian Consul in Trabzon, yet Nicholas II was worried about blowing the war out of proportion. He was assured of an easy breakthrough in autonomous Armenia, as delegations from the nationalist organizations Dashnak, Armenakan and Huntchak promised the Czar that Ottoman Armenians would rise as if they were one ; the Ottoman Army was no match to the modernized armies of All the Russias; Constantinople, since the founding of the concept of the Moscowian “Third Rome”, had been a permanent target of Russian expansionism, along with the access to the “warm seas”; France were a committed ally.
Nevertheless, it came upon October 1916. Nicholas knew the military modernization program wouldn’t yet be over, and so were the infrastructures and logistics destined to the troops ; an attack over Armenia would meant a direct threat to the Bagdadbahn, so endeared by the Germans, and thus having to fight a war on two fronts ; he had accepted last year a precarious and blurry process of democratization, a war would mean trouble behind the lines ; the Russian Empire was as diverse as the Ottomans, and many Muslim peoples scattered throughout southern Russia and Central Asia could rise up in revolt after an attack over their Caliph ; Britain, who had did everything it could to avoid a Russian takeover of Turkey, would be worried about a possible invasion of the Dardanelles’ Straits.
Nevertheless, the Czar was pressured by his cabinet, who repeated the majority of pros against the cons, arguing that a quick war would be better to reinforce the position of the throne; the pressure for war was led by Count Alexei Bobrinsky, a devout monarchist, Minister of the Interior, who would become Prime Minister after the deposition of Peter Bark, who sounded too much German for the nationalists. Nicholas II bowed in favor of the war party, even if he decided to delegate the overall commandment of the Army to his cousin, the very popular Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich…
-The Sleeping Bear : Russia in the Twentieth Century, M. Golkov, Petrograd, 2003

“Russia has always been the Third Rome, the seat of Orthodox Christianity, but when the Second Rome is at risk and in hostile hands, it is the duty of all Christians to defend it…”
-Nicholas II’s speech in front of the Duma, October, 21 1916

As the Russian speech became more and more bellicose, so was the German government. Even if the German cabinet wasn’t officially condoning the warmongering barkings from the Kaiser, the opportunity of an European war wasn’t to be avoided : the chance to take down France and Russia once and for all was too tempting, to secure large colonial gains in Africa from the French and large swarthes of land in Central Europe from the Russians and secure, at least, the “Place under the Sun” that was promised to Germany by Wilhelm II. The Ottomans were a puny ally, but Austria-Hungary was kept in check as the new Emperor-King, Ferdinand II, was committed to his alliance, and even if Italy wasn’t as secure, Germany had a little chance to reach for Sweden… Plus, the new Chief of General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, although dim-witted, had relied on the opinions from his underlings (such as a young officer named Erich Ludendorff) and of the new Minister of War, retired General Paul von Hindenburg, and had successfully abandoned the Schlieffen Plan in favor of a “Russia First” strategy.
But the times had changed, and since 1912, the pacifist and left-wing SPD had a majority in the Reichstag; even if the Junkers had kept the Social Democrats in check, they proved a noisy opposition ; when Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg appeared in front of the Reichstag on October, 23 in order to lecture the deputies on the need to protect the Bagdadbahn, he was unable to finish his speech. But the death blow came on October, 27, four days later, when the Social Democrats managed to gain enough votes to proclaim a motion of no confidence against Bethmann-Hollweg, forcing him to resign.
The SPD, through the dual voices of its leaders Friedrich Ebert and Hugo Haase, called for an appointment of a Social Democrat Chancellor, the maintaining of peace, along with an enactment of the Erfurt Program, with universal suffrage, nationalization of major industries, representation of Alsace-Lorraine, enablement of a welfare state and a reduction of Prussia’s importance within the Empire. Of course, the Kaiser outright refused the SPD’s claims and he turned to the old leader of the Catholic Zentrum, Bavarian Minister-President Georg von Hertling, to form a war-ready coalition government. The Junkers were horrified at the idea of a Catholic Reichskanzler, a civilian moreover, but they hoped it would be a momentaneous setback, in order to secure parliamentarian support for the war and to counter the opposition that arose against Bethmann-Hollweg.
When Graf von Hertling announced the formation of his government on November, 15, created by the coalition of the Zentrum, the FVP, the NLP and the KP, still Prussians were seen everywhere and its dedication to war was apparent…
-Wilhelm II, P. Goodhead, London, 2019

RUSSIA ASKS OTTOMANS TO ACCEPT GREEK CLAIMS AND TO GRANT ARMENIA INDEPENDANCE
-The New York Times, November, 14 1916

RUSSIA DECLARES WAR ON TURKEY
-The Times, November, 17 1916

“It appears to this government that Germany economic interests are as important to Germany as the homeland…”
-Chancellor Georg von Hertling’s general policy declaration in front of the Reichstag, November, 18 1916

Britain was bound to France since the Entente Cordiale in 1904, yet the French warmongering, that had been discontinued since 1913 and the establishment of a three-year-draft, worried London ; the dedication to war and the reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine was so happy in France that Jean Jaurès’ efforts to replicate the attempts of his fellow German Social Democrats and to threaten the governement with a general strike were completely silenced. Not only the Bonar Law cabinet had to deal with a conflict in Ireland on one hand, but if Britannia had feared German hegemony over the continent, now it looked like a modernized Russian steamroller was ready to take over Europe and the Dardanelles. And it was something His Majesty’s Government would never allow.
The time was precious for Germany : newly appointed German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann secretly reached London on November, 22 and met privately with Prime Minister Bonar Law in the residence of Prince Louis of Battenberg, with an offer he couldn’t refuse. If the United Kingdom were to declare itself neutral in the conflict, Zimmermann said, not only would Germany cease immediately its support to the Irish Insurgency (that Irish Volunteers were armed with Mausers was a very open secret) but also guarantee the free passage of the Dardanelles’ Strait after the war, even under an international agreement should the Ottomans lose the war, and an increased British share in the Bagdadbahn and Middle Eastern oil; something a Greek or a Russian conquest wouldn’t guarantee. Bonar Law dismissed his nighttime secret visitor with a straight face yet, driven by his will to take down the Irish Rebellion, he had already made his mind…
A Place Under The Sun : German Diplomacy under Wilhelm II, G. Laffitte, Paris, 1999

GERMANY MOBILIZES
-Paris-Soir, November, 24 1916

GERMANY DECLARES WAR ON RUSSIA, AUSTRIA-HUNGARY TO FOLLOW
-Berliner Morgenpost, November, 27 1916

BONAR LAW : “BRITAIN WILL REMAIN NEUTRAL”
-The Guardian, November, 30 1916

FRANCE DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY
-Le Petit Journal, December, 3 1916

Europe on December 1916 : Blue indicates the Entente (France, Greece, Russia) ; Red the Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire), white the neutral states and the targets indicate the ongoing conflicts in Europe (Irish Civil War, Albanian War, Fourth Balkan War)

“It begins.”
-Reportedly said by Kaiser Wilhelm II on the outbreak of the Great War, December, 3 1916

 

[MaskedPickle]

January, 1
Income tax is introduced in France.

January, 13
President of Mexico Victoriano Huerta dies; he is succeeded by Pascual Orozco.

January, 15
Bergen, in Norway, is victim to a great fire, destroying 300 buildings in the City Centre.

January, 17
Manuel Estrada Cabrera is re-elected President of Guatemala.

January, 18
Oklahoma votes to ratify the Eighteenth Amendement to the United States Constitution, making its adoption official and allowing women’s suffrage throughout the United States.

January, 26
The Uprising Act is passed by the United Kingdom Parliament : “all activities tantamount or in favor of fomenting violent action against His Majesty’s Government and the territories of the Crown” are to be prosecuted with very harsh penal measures. In territories concerned with martial law, the habeas corpus is to be suspended.

February
An islamist revolt starts against Serbian and Italian occupation in Albania.

February-March
Guizhou, Guangxi, Guangdong, Shandong, Hunan, Shanxi, Jiangxi and Jiangsu declare their independance in opposition of Yuan Shikai’ self-proclaimed Empire, while the National Protection Army, led by General Cai E, routs the Imperial Armies.

Throughout Mexico, major cities, such as Monterrey, Quérétaro, Guadalajara and Puebla revolt against the dictatorship of President Orozco and defect to the Convention.

February, 3
The Russian and Serbian governemnts announce the bethrothal of Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna, second daughter of the Czar, to Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia; the announcement is rushed due to pressures from the Serbian governement in light of the situation in Europe.

February, 5
The Cabaret Voltaire opens in Zurich, Switzerland.

February, 11-18
As the Summer Olympics are to be held in Berlin, the German Olympic Committee organizes a winter sports week with speed skating, figure skating, ice hockey and Nordic skiing in Garmisch and Partenkirchen, setting the trend for the organization of the Winter Olympic Games.

February, 14
Riots erupt against Irish residents in Liverpool.

In French Indochina, supporters of jailed rebel, mystic and self-proclaimed Emperor Phan Xich Long revolt throughout Cochinchina. The revolt is put down by the French.

February, 22
Phan Xich Long is executed by French authorities.

March-April
The Anglo-Sudanese expedition reaches Darfur.

March, 4
The Land Tax Reform Act is adopted in the United Kingdom, changing land taxes and tariffs in the United Kingdom, according to the Conservative Platform of 1915.

March, 6
Former Mayor of Cleveland (OH) Newton D. Baker is appointed United States Secretary of War, succeeding Lindley Garrison.

March, 15
Antonio José de Almeida succeeds Afonso Costa as Prime Minister of Portugal.

March, 16
The United States Government announces it won’t recognize Pascual Orozco as the legitimate President of Mexico.

March, 17
Saint Patrick’s Rising - A Irish Republican Provisional Government, led by Eoin MacNeill, declares the independance of Ireland from the British Crown in a proclaimation in Dublin. The Irish Republican Army is established.

March, 18
The British Cabinet declares martial law in Ireland and send order to send 50,000 soldiers under the Ireland Peacekeeping Army, under command of General Douglas Haig.

March, 22
The Hongxian Emperor abdicates and becomes again President of China Yuan Shikai, in light of the victories of theNational Protection Army. Xu Shichang becomes Premier of the Republic of China.

April, 5
The Ireland Peacekeeping Army lands near Dublin.

April, 23
Duan Qirui becomes Premier of the Republic of China.

April, 27
Prime Minister of Australia Andrew Fisher resigns due to a motion of non-confidence iniatiated by Billy Hughes, who succeeds him as Labor Leader and Prime Minister.

May, 1
The Ireland Peacekeeping Army enters Dublin without a battle ; the Irish Republican Army and the Provisional Government have retreated in good order to Connaught.

May, 5
Two companies of Marines land at Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, beginning the American occupation.

May, 7
Dominican President Juan Isidro Jimenes Pereyra resigns in light of a rebellion by his former Secretary of War Desiderio Arias.

May, 12
British Prime Minister Bonar Law begins a week-long visit of Ireland and reitirates his will for a lasting martial law until “all terrorists are purged”.

May, 15
Santo Domingo is occupied by US Marines.

May, 17
General Felix Diaz lands in Yucatan and organizes a National Reorganizer Army ; after several defeats in Oaxaca and Chiapas, he becomes a mere warlord in war-torn Mexico but creates further turmoil for the Orozquista forces.

May, 22
El Fasher, capital of the Sultanate of Darfur, is taken by the Anglo-Sudanese Expedition.

June, 1
John Hessin Clarke is confirmed as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

June, 6
President of China Yuan Shikai dies.

June, 7
Li Yuanhong succeeds Yuan Shikai as President of China ; the reality of power is held by Premier Duan Qirui.

June, 7-10
Republican National Convention : Senator Elihu Root (New York) and Senator William Borah (Idaho) are nominated respectively for President and Vice-President in Chicago, Illinois.

June, 9
The Progressive faction of the Republican Party walks out of the Republican National Convention in protest.

June, 11
The Count of Ramonones succeeds Eduardo Dato as Prime Minister of Spain.

June 14-16
President Woodrow Wilson and Vice President Thomas R. Marshall are nominated by the Democratic Party for re-election at the Democratic National Convention in St. Louis, Missouri.

June, 18
Colonel General Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, Chief of the German General Staff, dies, aged 68. He is replaced by Minister of War Erich von Falkenhayn. General Paul von Hindenburg, retired, becomes Minister of War.

June 26-28
Progressive National Convention : Governor Hiram Johnson (California) and businessman John M. Parker (Louisiana) are nominated respectively for President and Vice President in Chicago, Illinois.

June, 31
Khenifra falls to the French colonial troops in Morocco, putting an end to the Zaian War.

July, 1
The Social Democratic Party of Finland wins a majority at the local Parliament.

July 6-22
The Games of the VI Olympiad are held in Berlin, Germany. Germany wins the most gold medals, while the United States win the most medals.

July, 6
Dominican rebel leader Desiderio Arias flees the Dominican Republic after several defeats against the US Army.

July, 9
An assassination attempt on Argentine President Victorino de la Plaza fails.

July, 14
The Damas Manifesto is read aloud at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich ; it sparks the birth of the Negativist Movement, calling into question all bourgeois aesthetics and art values.

July, 17
In Mirdita, Albania, northern Christians proclaim their own separate Republic and ask for Serbian protection.

July, 19
The city of Oulu, in Finland, burns.

July, 22
Anarchists try and fail to assassinate James Rolph, the Mayor of San Francisco.

August
Deodato Manuel Ramos, head of the rebels in Parana State, is captured by the Brazilian Army, putting an end to the Contestado War.

August, 3
Crown Prince and Regent Alexander of Serbia marries Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia in Belgrad, Serbia.

At the same time, Todor Aleksandrov, leader of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, proclaims the annexation of Vardar Macedonia in Radovis.

August, 7
Suffragette Mary Richardson tries to assassinate King George V in Edinburgh, mortally wounding Prince Albert.

August, 8
The Lord Chelmsford is appointed Governor-General of Canada.

August, 9
Prince Albert, second son of King George V, dies of his wounds in Edinburgh.

August, 15
Manuel Franco succeeds Eduardo Schaerer as President of Paraguay.

August, 16
The Uprising Act is extended to suffragettes.

August, 29
The United States Congress votes the Jones Act, acting as a Constitution for the Philippines and creating a fully elected Philippine legislature.

September, 1
Alfredo Baquerizo succeeds Leonidas Plaza as President of Ecuador.

The Keating-Owen Act is voted by the United States Congress, prohibiting the sale of products of child labor.

September, 4
Afonso Costa suceeds Antonio José de Almeida as Prime Minister of Portugal.

September, 5
Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov marries his cousin, Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna, eldest daughter of Czar Nicholas II. Olga is second in line to the Russian throne.

Intolerance, a movie by David Wark Griffith, premieres in the United States.

September, 8
The United States Tariff Commission is established.

September, 11
Rejecting Russian offers to mediate, Serbia declares war on Bulgaria over the Macedonian Uprising, triggering the Fourth Balkan War.

September, 18-October, 12
Serbian-Bulgarian War, Battle of Morava : Bulgaria defeats Serbia, and the battle sees the first military use of landships on the Bulgarian side.

September, 21
Elections in Canada : Incumbent Prime Minister Robert Borden increases his majority and returns as head of a Conservative governement.

September, 23-October, 23
Serbian-Bulgarian War, Battle of Ovche Pole : Bulgaria defeats Serbia.

September, 27
Notaras Incident : the Notaras, a cargo vessel voguing from Sebastopol to Piraeus under Greek flag, is stopped and detained by Ottoman customs at Gallipoli; the ship illegally contains large caches of illegally purchased Russian weapons, including pieces for a Russian landship. The whole crew is detained by Ottoman authorities under suspicion of weapon smuggling for the Greek Army.

September, 28
Notaras Incident : the Greek government asks for the release of the Notaras’ crew.

September, 29
Notaras Incident : The Ottoman Empire launches a criminal investigation upon the weapons found aboard the Notaras.

September, 30
Notaras Incident : Russia denies having purposedly offered undeclared weapons to Greece.

October, 1
Ramon Maximiliano Valdes suceeds Belisario Porras Barahona as President of Panama.

October, 3
Elections are held to the newly created Philippine Senate.

October, 4
Notaras Incident : Greek Prime Minister Eletherios Venizelos makes a speech in front of the Parliament, advocating retribution should the Notaras crew not be returned safely to Greece.

October, 5
Antonio José de Almeida succeeds Afonso Costa as Prime Minister of Portugal.

October, 7
Notaras Incident : Greece offers a week-long ultimatum to the Ottoman Empire to release the Notaras’ crew; else, the detention of Greek citizens would be considered as an act of war by the Greek government.

October, 8-October, 18
Notaras Incident : anti-Greek pogroms happen throughout the Ottoman Empire due to the Greek ultimatum.

October, 9
Field Marshal and Governor-General and Korea, Count Terauchi Masatake, becomes Prime Minister of Japan, succeeding Prince Okuma Shigenobu.

October, 10
Notaras Incident : the United Kingdom warns Germany, Russia, Greece and the Ottoman Empire that the opening of the Dardanelles’ Straits, even in case of war, is a major concern for the British government.

The Rikken Doshikai, the Chuseikai and the Koyu Club merge and establish the Kensaikai, a new opposition party in Japan.

October, 10-November, 4
Serbian-Bulgarian War, Battle of Kosovo : Bulgaria defeats Serbia and Montenegro.

October, 11
Mehmed Talaat Pascha becomes Great Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, replacing Said Halim Pascha.

Otto, King of Bavaria from 1886 to 1913, dies.

October, 12
At the end of a very bitter election, Hipolito Yrigoyen is elected President of Argentina, the first hailing from the Radical Civic Union.

Russia mobilizes troops alongside the Russian-Ottoman border.

October, 14
Greece declares war upon the Ottoman Empire.

October, 15
The Ottoman Empire closes the Dardanelles’ Straits to all ships, of any nationality.

October, 16
Greek-Ottoman War : Constantinople, capital of the Ottoman Empire, is bombed.

Due to the passage of universal suffrage, an anticipated election takes place in Belgium, seeing a Liberal breakthrough : Paul Hymans succeeds Charles de Broqueville as Prime Minister.

October, 17
Germany declares its neutrality on the Greek-Ottoman conflict.

October, 18
Trabzon Incident : during an anti-Greek pogrom in Trabzon, rioters flanked by Turkish soldiers storm the Russian Consulate where ethnic Greeks had taken refuge. The Russian consul is lynched and killed during the storming.

October, 19
Trabzon Incident : the Ottoman Empire proposes financial compensation and free crossing of the Dardanelles to Russia.

October, 21
Trabzon Incident : Czar of Russia Nicholas II delivers his infamous “Third Rome Speech” where he stresses the strategic and symbolic importance of Constantinople for Russia and the despicable attitude of the Sublime Porte.

October, 23
Trabzon Incident : during a speech to the Reichstag where he outlines the risk poised by a Russian-Ottoman War to the Bagdadbahn and German economic interests, German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg is heckled by SPD parliamentarians.

October, 24
Trabzon Incident : Bonar Law stresses in the House of Commons the risk of a major European war.

October, 25
Trabzon Incident : France officially assures Russia of its support.

Birth control activist Margaret Sanger is arrested in Brooklyn, nine days after the opening of a family planning and birth control clinic, due to a law prohibiting distribution of contraceptives in the State of New York.

October, 26
Trabzon Incident : Germany warns against any steps taken by the Russian Army in Armenia and threats made to the Bagdadbahn works.

October, 27
The SPD imposes the vote of a motion of non-confidence against Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg who resigns, the day he was poised to ask for parliamentarian rallying for protection of the Bagdadbahn.

October, 28
SPD leaders Friedrich Ebert and Hugo Haase ask the Kaiser for the appointment of a Social Democrat Chancellor, the maintaining of peace and an enactment of the Erfurt Program.

October, 29
IPP MP John Redmond is arrested in front of Westminster Palace while he was calling the Cabinet to rescind martial law in Ireland.

The Russian Ambassador in London assures Great Britain that, in the event of a Russian-Ottoman War, control of the Dardanelles would be offered to Greece should the Ottoman Empire be defeated.

October, 30
Greek-Ottoman War: Serbia and Bulgaria declare their neutrality.

Feng Guozhang is elected Vice President of China.

October, 31
Greek-Ottoman War: A French military mission arrives in Athens.

November, 2
German Kaiser Wilhelm II refuses the SPD’s demands and asks Zentrum leader Georg von Hertling to form a new government.

November, 6
France partially mobilizes in Lorraine, at the French-German Border. The French government assures its Belgian counterpart it has nothing to fear from their troops.

November, 7
United States presidential election : President Woodrow Wilson (Democrat) is re-elected in landslide against Elihu Root (Republican) and Hiram Johnson (Progressive) ; Democrats hold both houses of Congress.

November, 9
Greek-Ottoman War: Nicholas II meets representatives from Armenian nationalist parties Dashnak, Armenakan and Huntchak.

November, 10
Greek-Ottoman War: US President Woodrow Wilson proposes to mediate on the Russian-Ottoman Conflict.

November, 11
Nicholas II announces his cousin, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, will assume overall comandment of the Russian Army.

November, 12
Germany evacuates personnel on the Bagdadbahn works.

November, 13
Russia partially mobilizes.

Emiliano Zapata defeats and kills General Pablo Gonzalez in San Cristobal de Las Casas, in Mexico.

November, 14
Greek-Ottoman War: Russia gives a two-day ultimatum to the Ottoman Empire to cede to Greek territorial claims and to give full independance to Armenia and autonomy to Christian minorities within the Empire.

November, 15
Georg von Hertling becomes Chancellor of Germany, forming a Zentrum/FVP/KP/NLP government.

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Nobel Prize in Literature 1905, dies in Vevey, Switzerland, aged 70.

November, 17
Russia declares war upon the Ottoman Empire.

November, 18
Chancellor von Hertling’s general policy declaration in front of the Reichstag stresses the economic and national interest Germany has on the Bagdadbahn and affirms any move against its outline would prove an act of war against Germany territory.

November, 19
Russian-Ottoman War: Russia invades Armenia.

November, 20
Serbian-Bulgarian War : the Bulgarian Army enters Skopje.

November, 21
Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria-Hungary dies ; he is succeeded by his nephew, Franz Ferdinand, who takes the titles of Emperor Ferdinand II of Austria and King Ferdinand VI of Hungary and immediately affirms his loyalty to the German-Austro-Hungarian alliance.

November, 24
Germany mobilizes.

November, 25
Germany offers France to cede to Germany military redoubts in Toul and Verdun during the duration of a Russian-German conflict, in exchange for no war.

In a referendum, Uruguay adopts a collective presidency system, establishing a National Council of Administration of nine members that would replace the office of President of the Republic, based on the Swiss executive.

November, 26
Austria-Hungary mobilizes.

November, 27
Germany declares war upon Russia and Greece, trigerring the Great European War.

November, 28
Great European War: Austria-Hungary declares war upon Russia and Greece. Germany takes Kalisz, Czestochowa and Bedzin in Russian Poland.

November, 29
Great European War : Battle of Libau. Russia defeats Germany.

Alexei Bobrinsky becomes Prime Minister of Russia, replacing Piotr Bark, viewed as to much of a germanophile.

A military government under Captain Harry Shepard Knapp is installed in Santo Domingo.

November, 30
Great European War : the United Kingdom declares its neutrality.

December, 1
French missionnary and Berber expert Charles de Foucauld is murdered in his fortress in Tamanghasset by bandits.

December, 2
France mobilizes. An attempt by SFIO leader Jean Jaurès to wage a general strike fails due to massive enthusiasm for the war in the French populace.

December, 3
Great European War : France declares war upon Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. The date is generally considered as the official beginning of the Great European War.

Russia invades East Prussia.

December, 4
Great European War : Austria-Hungary attacks Kielce and Lublin.

Maximilian Hussarek von Heinlein replaces Karl von Stürgkh as Minister-President of Austria, who has been sacked by the new Emperor; similarly, Field Marshal Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf is removed from his position as Chief of the General Staff, replaced by the Emperor himself. Count Istvan Tisza, Minister-President of Hungary, insists he won’t resign to comply to his King.

December, 6
Great European War : France invades South Alsace.

Russia fully mobilizes.

December, 8
Great European War : Mulhouse falls to French troops.

Gaston Doumergue returns as French President of Council of a Grand Coalition government, the Union Sacrée (Holy Union) concerning parties from the whole spectrum, except the SFIO, as leader Jean Jaurès has declared his opposition to the war.

December, 10
The Nobel Prize for Physics is attributed to Max Planck (Germany) ; Chemistry goes to ira Remsen (USA) ; Emile Roux (France) wins in Medicine ; Per Hallström (Sweden) receives the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Peace Nobel Prize is not attributed due to the Great European War.

Great European War : the Germany takes back Mulhouse.

Serbian-Bulgarian War: The Bulgarian Army enters Nis.

December, 11
Great European War : Russia defeats Germany at Stalluponen.

December, 14
Great European War : Russia defeats Austria-Hungary at Gumbinnen.

December, 14-December, 21
Great European War : Battle of Morhange. Germany beats France.

December, 15
Great European War : Dogubeyazit and Köpruköy (Ottoman Empire) fall to Russian troops.

December, 17
A general election is held in New Zealand : William Massey (Reform) is re-elected as Prime Minister.

December, 20
Great European War : Battle of Krasnik. Russia defeats Austria-Hungary.

December, 21
Great European War : after the defeat at Morhange, French troops decide to retreat in good order behind the Meuse River.

December, 21-December, 28
Great European War : Battle of Allenstein, Russia narrowly defeats Germany.

December, 21-January, 7
Great European War : Battle of Lemberg. Russia defeats Austria-Hungary and occupies the city.

December, 24-December, 25
Great European War : Belligerants observe a Christmas truce.

December, 28
Great European War : Germany retreats in good order behind the Vistula River.

December, 29
The Stock-Raising Homestead Act is passed by the United States Congress for settlers seeking 640 acres of public land for ranching purposes.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is published by James Joyce.

December, 30
Tax reform in France : income tax rates goes to 10 %.

December, 31
The Lucknow Pact is passed between the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League : the “garam dal”, or the hot extremist faction, composed by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai and Bipinchandra Pal, against cooperation with the British, wins a majority in light of the events in Ireland. The moderates, led by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, gets into his own way.

 

[MaskedPickle]

The turmoil that followed the establishment of the Portuguese Republic found its resolution on with the coup led by Major Sidonio Pais, on December, 8 1917. A staunch Republican, the former Ambassador to Germany inaugurated the “Republic Nova”, the New Republic, concentrating all the powers in the presidency (as evidenced by the 1922 Constitution, that abolished the office of Prime Minister), created a corporative Senate, established a single party, overcame the rifts with both monarchists and Catholics… The President-King, as he came to be known for his supporters all alike, survived dozens of assassination attempts, coup attempts (most notably from the monarchists in 1919) and strikes. Considered one of the best examples of the Fuhrerprinzip (leader principle) and as such as an early model of Integralist regimes in the Twentieth Century, he’s still revered in Portugal as a true patriot and a stabilizer of the chaos that followed the 1910 Revolution. Astute choices that proved fruitful for his long presidency until his demise in 1943, his particular relationship with United Kingdom and the upheavals that Portugal would experience in the early century…
Integralism - A study of the roots, Zeev Sternhell, Berlin, 2006

The 1919 monarchist uprising was almost a success but didn’t enjoyed enough support from Germany, that was embroiled at the time in the Great European War. Germany, always a supporter of monarchism, was much interested in a new era of troubles in Portugal, as it would become an opportunity to overtake Portuguese colonies in Angola and Mozambique and, as such, ending the isolation of Tanganyika and Southwest Africa on the continent.
A Place Under The Sun : German Diplomacy under Wilhelm II, G. Laffitte, Paris, 1999

The Braganza cause for Portugal came in 1932, when deposed King Manuel II finally died in exile in Fulwell, Middlesex. In the light of the Pact of Dover and the Pact of London, that had cured the rift between the absolutist Miguelist line and the constitutionalist Braganza-Saxe-Coburg-Gotha line. The son of Miguel of Portugal, Duarte Nuno, became the rightful claimant…
-The Twentieth Century Renewal of Monarchy, M. Diagola, Madrid, 1997

 

[MaskedPickle]

According to the Schlieffen Plan, the Western Front against France was supposed to be a priority, passing through Belgium to defeat France as soon as possible, before the Russians could fully mobilize. But the world of 1916 wasn’t the world of 1905, and Hindenburg and Falkenhayn were aware of that. Russia became the priority and invading Belgium would only infuriate the United Kingdom instead. Russia had become the priority: instead of the seven armies thought for the Western Front, only two (the 7th Armee, under Albrecht Duke of Wurttemberg; the 8th Armee, under Josias von Heeringen), both tasked with defending Alsace and Lorraine, were deployed against France.

Meanwhile, in France, the Plan XVII was in full motion. The French General Staff, under Joseph Joffre, hoped for a general uprising from the Alsatian and Lorrain communities within the German Empire (due to German garrisons, these riots were quite limited and severely repressed): the French First Army was tasked with attacking towards Baccarat, Sarrebourg and Sarreguemines for a part, while the other would take Colmar then Strasbourg ; the Second Army had to take Château-Salins and Sarrebruck; the Third had Metz as a goal; while the Fourth and the Fifth would only undertake German counter-offensives if necessary.

The December Offensive from France was quickly derailed. The German Eighth Army quickly destroyed all hopes for a downfall of Metz, while the First and Second Armies, in spite of a temporary successs in Mulhouse, were bogged down in Morhange (December, 14-December, 21 1916), “the Bloodiest Week of the French Army”: 45 000 French soldiers died in front of Morhange, prompting Joffre and the General Staff to stop all attempts at offensives, as the Alsatian revolt had failed to materialize and that the road to the Rhine would prove bloodier and bloodier ; on December, 21, a retreat was decided behind the Meuse River.

But the Duke of Wurttemberg felt emboldened by the French retreat and asked General von Falkenhayn for an authorization to pursue the French Army on its own territory during the Winter. It was granted. While the Eighth Army would conquer the Briey iron and steel industries in Lorraine and stop at Lunéville (January, 16-January, 23) after defeating General Ruffey in a decesive victory and a fall of Nancy without much of a fight. The Seventh Army pursued at close the French armies throughout Lorraine and Champagne, until the French Army, under command of General Edouard de Castelnau, after unsuccesfully trying to stop the Germans at Verdun (January, 22-January, 24), Saint-Dizier (January, 26-January, 30), finally forced a German pyrrhic victory at Châlons-en-Champagne (February, 4-February, 15), where only frantic French resistance and failure to reinforce German positions allowed the French to hold Reims and to cut short the German road to Paris.

The Germans prepared for a attrition power, fixing the Western Front along a Charleville-Mézières/Châlons-en-Champagne/Saint-Dizier/Neufchâteau/Epinal/Belfort line, building trenches in order to hold against the French Army until the Russians could be defeated; in fact, France had lost much of its industrial capacity with the fall of Briey, along with its agricultural capacity with Champagne occupied by German forces. The German General Staff considered for some time taking advantage of the state of disarray of the French army to push further to Paris, but the heavy losses at Châlons-en-Champagne and the state of emergency on the Eastern Front convinced them not to.

The French tried a new offensive in September 1917 in Champagne, focusing on Aubérive, but the recent unveiling of the Ninth Army (under Hermann von Eichhorn) blocked all their perspectives. Aristide Briand, the French President of Council, did his best to preserve the Union Sacrée : Edouard de Castelnau was praised as “the Savior of Châlons” while the French press bloated on the quick takeovers of the German colonies in the Samoas, Cameroon and Togo, and describing the German bombing of Reims that practically levelled the cathedral. Nevertheless, the French had a dubious victory, when phosgene gas was used against German forces near Bar-le-Duc on August, 8 1917, marking the first use of chemical warfare on the Western Front...

The Western Front on January, 1 1918

TL;DR : France gets bogged down early against Germany in Champagne and the Vosges and turns to trench and chemical warfare. Belgium and Luxembourg aren't invaded.