Union and Liberty: An American TL
- Thread starter wilcoxchar
- Start date
Indeed.
The 95th anniversary would be on June 18, 1907. That's a little under a year away.
Every time I see the word gaudy, I think of Gaudi instead. And that just gave me the idea of putting the Temple of the Sagrada Familia in Puebla as the Temporalist Basilica.
You know, I'm okay with this.
If that is the case, it would probably help both sides to just call a Church Council and finally solve the issue. Having an anti-pope around doesn't help the Church's prestige in the same way that it doesn't help Puebla's relationship with its Roman Catholic neighbors. I don't think the Italian government would be opposed to something similar to the Lateran Treaty.
Assuming the schism did get solved, what would Puebla call itself? A Bishopric? A Cardinalate?
Every time I see the word gaudy, I think of Gaudi instead. And that just gave me the idea of putting the Temple of the Sagrada Familia in Puebla as the Temporalist Basilica.
You know, I'm okay with this.
Totally cool with it to.
It might be a matter of pride. The Catholic Church probably doesn't want to deal with what is now likely a full out heresy, especially because it left Europe and is now in a tiny country not many care about. Meanwhile the Temporalists just don't want to admit defeat and have found themselves a confortable niche ruling a small country, while influencing local politics. I take it the Mesoamerica Federation and most Mexican Republics around it are not too happy about their pretense. But Veracruz and the US have likely been using it to their advantage to influence the region.
konigmarke333
Donor
Awesome TL! Please continue.
Naturally I'm rooting for the UK/Russia alliance though from hints earlier it looks like the US will enter the war on the other side so I guess I shouldn't hold out too much hope...
Naturally I'm rooting for the UK/Russia alliance though from hints earlier it looks like the US will enter the war on the other side so I guess I shouldn't hold out too much hope...
Part One-Hundred Four: War By Other Means
Done!
Part One-Hundred Four: War By Other Means
Diplomatic Overtures:
The battlefield was not the only place the New Coalition and the Alliance Carolingien clashed during the first year of the Great War. Through 1906, the diplomatic corps on both sides scrambled to get neutral countries to join the conflict, or at least grant them diplomatic and economic support. The greatest diplomatic venture during this time was to Egypt. The French advisory delegation under Charles Jonnart suggested that Ibrahim II[1] close the Suez Canal to any shipping by members of the New Coalition. However, the British and Russian ambassadors to Egypt strongly heard of the potential closure and protested to the Egyptian Sultan. Nikolai Achinov, the Russian ambassador, even tried to convince the Egyptians to throw off the French and join the New Coalition. This Achinov Plan would have given Egypt the Nile valley and all the French territory on the Red Sea coast, but the offer was soon scrapped after the Tsar received word and rejected it. The British ambassador, Evelyn Baring, gave Ibrahim II a more subtle offer through his Vizier, Boutros Ghali[2]. Ghali favored keeping the canal neutral and soon convinced Ibrahim of his position. Ibrahim II formally declared the Suez CAnal a neutral waterway in November of 1906, but in deference to France the Suez Canal Company charged British ships a higher fee to pass through the canal and sent some of the profits to the French government through the company's French holders.
Other diplomatic overtures were sent to other minor European countries, but few countries were receptive to either the New Coalition or the Alliance Carolignien. Belgium refused British attempts to bring them in, still remembering the devastation to the country from the Second Napoleonic War. Both Germany and Italy made overtures to the kingdom of Illyria. Germany certainly had an advantage over Italy in Ljubljana from the start of the country's courting. The emissary from Kaiser Frederick offered Illyria the ports of Fiume and Trieste. While many of the German members of the Auersperg court and the Illyrian parliament supported an entry into the war on Germany's side, king Adolf Anton declined the German representative and sought to continue neutrality in the conflict. The decision was largely taken due to Illyria's reliance on Italy and Hungary for access to the Adriatic Sea and international trade.
Istanbul was also the recipient of diplomatic missions by the New Coalition. The attempts to bring Turkey to the side of the New Coalitions were also met with indifference. The Ottoman Empire was still recovering from the Turkish War less than five years before. Additionally, the Russian and Greek participation in the war led to frigid relations between the Sultan and the New Coalition. The war had also incited internal tensions as Bulgarians and Albanians launched revolts soon after French soldiers left the Balkans. The Bulgarian uprising was put down quickly by Ottoman forces. But the Albanian rebellion, which began in Skadar after protests against the city's transfer to Montenegro escalated and spread to Durrazzo and other Albanian cities, continued due to the removal of Turkish forces from the area as part of the Treaty of Rome.
The War at Home:
While diplomatic efforts by both sides of the Great War was focused in Europe, discussion of the war in Washington and elsewhere in the country became just as heated. While public interest in the war has small at first, by the fall many prominent Americans were arguing over the course of the war and how involved America should be. While there was disagreement on American involvement, the debate over which side it should be on was very one-sided. As conflict escalated and Great Britain attempted to blockade French shipping across the Atlantic, politicians and business leaders in the Northeast were quick condemned of the British actions in the war. However, calls for the United States to outright enter the war were hesitant. President Roosevelt made an early commitment to neutrality in his letter to the Olympic Committee, and later reaffirmed this position. Despite calls by Congressmen from the Democratic and his own Progressive Party, Roosevelt adopted a wait and see approach to the war. However, in a letter to Secretary of War Taft, Roosevelt revealed his private support for war against the British and advised the War Department to draft plans for an American entry.
The American position regarding the Great War quickly became one of the most decisive issues of the 1906 midterm election campaign. With several major newspapers openly declaring support or opposition to an entry into the war, the media created a large factor in the campaigns. Newspapers such as Joseph Pulitzer's Saint Louis Post-Dispatch and New York Herald advocated immediate entry into the war in support of the Alliance Caorlingien, while the rival New York Post[3] pushed for continued neutrality and noninterference. A journalist for the New York Post, Oswald Garrison Villard[4], blended media and politics by running as a Republican for New York's 5th Congressional district. Villard won the seat as one of the few victories the Republicans had that year. Anti-war candidates also performed well in the Old Northwest where opposition to the war was greater.
Meanwhile, pro-war candidates were bolstered by the anti-British propaganda and a more friendly association of the French in the mindset of most Americans. Areas with large Irish communities saw the greatest support for pro-war candidates owing to the animosity of Irish diaspora toward Great Britain. In Maryland, a traditionally Republican stronghold at the time, pro-war Democratic and Progressive candidates performed unusually well in the 1906 elections. The large Irish community in Baltimore and the state's connection to the trade across the Atlantic helped these candidates, and gained the Progressives two of the state's twelve Representatives. In Louisiana, however, the popularity of pro-war candidates led to a surprising result. Both the Democratic senator and the Progressive challenger split the vote in Louisiana, giving the election result to Republican isolationist Frank Caffery[5].
[1] TTL son of Sa'id Pasha.
[2] OTL Prime Minister of Egypt from 1908-1910 and grandfather of UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
[3] Then the New York Evening Post, whose editor, Edward Lawrence Godkin, was an anti-imperialist.
[4] Also an anti-imperialist. As a sidenote, ITTL his father Henry Villard is not in Wiesbaden but in New York when Oswald is born.
[5] TTL son of Donelson Caffery, post-war Democratic senator from Louisiana. He had sons in OTL but I couldn't find their names.
P.S. The composition of the 60th Congress is as follows:
Senate: 39 D (-2), 36 R (+1), 21 P (+7) (Total 96)
House: 151 R (-18), 122 D (+5), 59 P (+16), 1 AS (+0) (Total 336)
Part One-Hundred Four: War By Other Means
Diplomatic Overtures:
The battlefield was not the only place the New Coalition and the Alliance Carolingien clashed during the first year of the Great War. Through 1906, the diplomatic corps on both sides scrambled to get neutral countries to join the conflict, or at least grant them diplomatic and economic support. The greatest diplomatic venture during this time was to Egypt. The French advisory delegation under Charles Jonnart suggested that Ibrahim II[1] close the Suez Canal to any shipping by members of the New Coalition. However, the British and Russian ambassadors to Egypt strongly heard of the potential closure and protested to the Egyptian Sultan. Nikolai Achinov, the Russian ambassador, even tried to convince the Egyptians to throw off the French and join the New Coalition. This Achinov Plan would have given Egypt the Nile valley and all the French territory on the Red Sea coast, but the offer was soon scrapped after the Tsar received word and rejected it. The British ambassador, Evelyn Baring, gave Ibrahim II a more subtle offer through his Vizier, Boutros Ghali[2]. Ghali favored keeping the canal neutral and soon convinced Ibrahim of his position. Ibrahim II formally declared the Suez CAnal a neutral waterway in November of 1906, but in deference to France the Suez Canal Company charged British ships a higher fee to pass through the canal and sent some of the profits to the French government through the company's French holders.
Other diplomatic overtures were sent to other minor European countries, but few countries were receptive to either the New Coalition or the Alliance Carolignien. Belgium refused British attempts to bring them in, still remembering the devastation to the country from the Second Napoleonic War. Both Germany and Italy made overtures to the kingdom of Illyria. Germany certainly had an advantage over Italy in Ljubljana from the start of the country's courting. The emissary from Kaiser Frederick offered Illyria the ports of Fiume and Trieste. While many of the German members of the Auersperg court and the Illyrian parliament supported an entry into the war on Germany's side, king Adolf Anton declined the German representative and sought to continue neutrality in the conflict. The decision was largely taken due to Illyria's reliance on Italy and Hungary for access to the Adriatic Sea and international trade.
Istanbul was also the recipient of diplomatic missions by the New Coalition. The attempts to bring Turkey to the side of the New Coalitions were also met with indifference. The Ottoman Empire was still recovering from the Turkish War less than five years before. Additionally, the Russian and Greek participation in the war led to frigid relations between the Sultan and the New Coalition. The war had also incited internal tensions as Bulgarians and Albanians launched revolts soon after French soldiers left the Balkans. The Bulgarian uprising was put down quickly by Ottoman forces. But the Albanian rebellion, which began in Skadar after protests against the city's transfer to Montenegro escalated and spread to Durrazzo and other Albanian cities, continued due to the removal of Turkish forces from the area as part of the Treaty of Rome.
The War at Home:
While diplomatic efforts by both sides of the Great War was focused in Europe, discussion of the war in Washington and elsewhere in the country became just as heated. While public interest in the war has small at first, by the fall many prominent Americans were arguing over the course of the war and how involved America should be. While there was disagreement on American involvement, the debate over which side it should be on was very one-sided. As conflict escalated and Great Britain attempted to blockade French shipping across the Atlantic, politicians and business leaders in the Northeast were quick condemned of the British actions in the war. However, calls for the United States to outright enter the war were hesitant. President Roosevelt made an early commitment to neutrality in his letter to the Olympic Committee, and later reaffirmed this position. Despite calls by Congressmen from the Democratic and his own Progressive Party, Roosevelt adopted a wait and see approach to the war. However, in a letter to Secretary of War Taft, Roosevelt revealed his private support for war against the British and advised the War Department to draft plans for an American entry.
The American position regarding the Great War quickly became one of the most decisive issues of the 1906 midterm election campaign. With several major newspapers openly declaring support or opposition to an entry into the war, the media created a large factor in the campaigns. Newspapers such as Joseph Pulitzer's Saint Louis Post-Dispatch and New York Herald advocated immediate entry into the war in support of the Alliance Caorlingien, while the rival New York Post[3] pushed for continued neutrality and noninterference. A journalist for the New York Post, Oswald Garrison Villard[4], blended media and politics by running as a Republican for New York's 5th Congressional district. Villard won the seat as one of the few victories the Republicans had that year. Anti-war candidates also performed well in the Old Northwest where opposition to the war was greater.
Meanwhile, pro-war candidates were bolstered by the anti-British propaganda and a more friendly association of the French in the mindset of most Americans. Areas with large Irish communities saw the greatest support for pro-war candidates owing to the animosity of Irish diaspora toward Great Britain. In Maryland, a traditionally Republican stronghold at the time, pro-war Democratic and Progressive candidates performed unusually well in the 1906 elections. The large Irish community in Baltimore and the state's connection to the trade across the Atlantic helped these candidates, and gained the Progressives two of the state's twelve Representatives. In Louisiana, however, the popularity of pro-war candidates led to a surprising result. Both the Democratic senator and the Progressive challenger split the vote in Louisiana, giving the election result to Republican isolationist Frank Caffery[5].
[1] TTL son of Sa'id Pasha.
[2] OTL Prime Minister of Egypt from 1908-1910 and grandfather of UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
[3] Then the New York Evening Post, whose editor, Edward Lawrence Godkin, was an anti-imperialist.
[4] Also an anti-imperialist. As a sidenote, ITTL his father Henry Villard is not in Wiesbaden but in New York when Oswald is born.
[5] TTL son of Donelson Caffery, post-war Democratic senator from Louisiana. He had sons in OTL but I couldn't find their names.
P.S. The composition of the 60th Congress is as follows:
Senate: 39 D (-2), 36 R (+1), 21 P (+7) (Total 96)
House: 151 R (-18), 122 D (+5), 59 P (+16), 1 AS (+0) (Total 336)
Great update, Wilox!
I reckon Egypt will still be dragged into the war sooner or later. The British are getting a shitty deal and it is not unlike them to try an bully a non-European country into doing their bidding. Especially since the canal is of particular importance to them, as a link to India. (At the same time I can see Egypt pulling a 180 on France and joining the Coalition since it seems to have more to gain there).
For the Ottomans neutrality is the smartest move, and who knows maybe that is how they survive. I am more suprised with Illyria's neutrality even if they depend on Hungary and Italy for shipping that is why they would have more to gain from joining the Alliance. I reckon that the moment the Alliance has a clear upper hand they will join to get some spoils. If not directly involved, I suppouse they wouldn't be against stirring some Croat nationalism.
I am a bit surprised that the war talks in the US are already that heated. The war has been going on for less than a year, and my guess is that there are still no signs it will be a long and tedious conflict. For now it should still look like a conflict over Mediterranean supremacy. By 1908 the situation will certainly be diffrent.
Keep it up!
I reckon Egypt will still be dragged into the war sooner or later. The British are getting a shitty deal and it is not unlike them to try an bully a non-European country into doing their bidding. Especially since the canal is of particular importance to them, as a link to India. (At the same time I can see Egypt pulling a 180 on France and joining the Coalition since it seems to have more to gain there).
For the Ottomans neutrality is the smartest move, and who knows maybe that is how they survive. I am more suprised with Illyria's neutrality even if they depend on Hungary and Italy for shipping that is why they would have more to gain from joining the Alliance. I reckon that the moment the Alliance has a clear upper hand they will join to get some spoils. If not directly involved, I suppouse they wouldn't be against stirring some Croat nationalism.
I am a bit surprised that the war talks in the US are already that heated. The war has been going on for less than a year, and my guess is that there are still no signs it will be a long and tedious conflict. For now it should still look like a conflict over Mediterranean supremacy. By 1908 the situation will certainly be diffrent.
Keep it up!
The southern accent of 150 years ago was no where near what it is today. It's actually MORE pronounced today that it was then. Accents as such are quite fluid. Also, there is the interesting aspect culturally of American Imperialism NOT to change names from Spanish to English...see all cities in California if you don't believe me...or San Antonio, etc, in Texas.
Um...why did you reply to a post three years old with a complete non sequitur?
Because a long discussion followed that post about which was easier to pronounce by Southerners. He's probably just started reading the TL.
Part One Hundred-Five: The First Winter of the Great War
Update time!
Part One Hundred-Five: The First Winter of the Great War
Clash of Eagles: As summer turned to autumn, Russia finally brought the full strength of its western armies to the front. The Russian advance continued to be stalled at the Masurian Lakes, but further north Russia kept pushing closer to Königsberg and the heart of East Prussia. By the middle of October the Russians had advances up to the Deime River, which put them at just 20 miles from Königsberg. The German army had set up defensive positions earlier at Labiau at the mouth of the Deime, but now the front continued south along the river as the Germany slowly fell back under the cover of the forests. With the German effort concentrated in the south against Hungary, there was little forthcoming support for the front in East Prussia. Insterburg fell in October and the Russians were able to link up the front on the right bank of the Deime and the front at the Masurian Lakes with the capture of the towns of Wehlau, Nordenburg, and Drengfurth[1].
Further south, the German armies began their first offensive into the Russian Empire in October. The German armies embarked south from Posen and camped in the town of Ostrowo before pressing east into Congress Poland. While the shortest route to Warsaw was straight east from Posen, the marshes along the Warta River and the lakes north of Kolo presented difficult terrain for the German army to pass through. Instead, the Germans entered Poland from Ostrowo and defeated the Russian defensive position at the city of Kalisz just across the border. From Kalisz, the German army advanced as far east as Sieradz, but in the Battle of the Warta failed to cross the swampy ground of the Warta River before winter. In southern Poland, German forces attempted to surround Krakow further from the north and cut off a supply route from Warsaw. This offensive captured the town of Olkusz to the northwest of Krakow, but failed to take the city of Miechow, which lay on the rail line between Warsaw and Krakow. As winter set in and temperatures in Krakow reached below freezing, the Germans continued to lay siege to the city. In early December, Conrad von Hötzendorf[2], commander of the forces south of the Vistula River, ordered an assault on the city[3]. But the Russian defensive positions at Przeogrzaly on the north bank of the Vistula and Lasota Hill south of the river prevented the German army from reaching the Vistula or the city itself and the assault was called off after four days. A total of 30,000 soldiers died in the assault on Krakow, and German casualties continued to rise as the siege went on through the winter.
Germany also faced further difficulties in Hungary as the Russian armies sent to bolster the Hungarian forces arrived. Much of the fighting in the northern end of the Hungarian front was in the midst of the Carpathian Mountains, and so movement was slow. The German army moved east from Zilna in late September, but was repelled by the Hungarians and Russians at Zazriva. The Germans set up a position at a narrow pass at Terchova where they blocked the Coalition counteroffensive, extending their hold of Zilna through into 1907. In central Hungary, the Alliance and Coalition forces were on flatter ground in the Danube Valley. However, the arrival of the Russian forces soon stabilized the front and devolved the combat into trench warfare. With the Russian and Hungarian lines stretching from Lake Balaton in the south to the Carpathians in the north, the Germans were unable to secure a solid advance and the goal of capturing Budapest by the end of the year failed. The town of Kisber marked the furthest reach of the German advance in the New Year, only twenty miles southeast of Gyor and still 40 miles west of Budapest. The Coalition also kept Germany from securing the entire northern shore of Lake Balaton, with the bluffs north of the lake providing good defensive positions for the Coalition forces.
The War at Sea: While the Germans were engaging the Hungarians and Russinas on the eastern front, the British and French navies were engaged all around the globe. The concentration of the naval action remained in the Northeast Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea. The North Sea was one of the few locations where French and German forces coordinated together, as the combined French-German fleet defeated the Home Fleet in an engagement in the Southern Bight. However, the sinking of the battleship Mecklenburg and two German cruisers and the damaging of the battleship Friedrich Wilhelm forced the German fleet to withdraw to Wilhelmshaven and could not assist the French in the Manche as planned. The Royal navy also won another victory in November in the Bay of Biscay as the French Atlantic Fleet attempted to draw out the British and disrupt the blockade of the French Atlantic coast.
Naval action in the Mediterranean was more subdued than in the Atlantic. British and Spanish submarines helped the New Coalition sink a French cruiser and repel a French attack on Mallorca in September. Meanwhile, the Italian navy began preparations for an assault on Malta, moving its small fleet in Tunisia to Sicily to escape the French forces in Africa. The end of 1906 also saw the first combat of the Great War in the Americas. In September, Great Britain seized the islands of Saint Pierre et Miquelon off the coast of Acadia, and two months later captured the island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean[4]. In the Pacific, the British brought California into the war on the side of the New Coalition in the beginning of 1907. Soon after the San Francisco earthquake, the California government had gone bankrupt and agreed to enter an alliance with Great Britain and sell Clipperton Island and Isla Socorro to the British in exchange for annulling all its debts. Soon after California entered the war, the British moved the ships in Prince Rupert to Alameda to put them in a more useful position.
It was also around this time that the fighting of the Great War spread to eastern Africa. As a French regiment in Mocha moved south along the Arabian Peninsula seized the port of Aden, the shipping lanes between the Cape Colony and the Indian subcontinent were becoming increasingly threatened. John Jellicoe, Commander of Good Hope Station, led an expedition by the Cape fleet up the eastern coast of Africa in October of 1906. After coaling at the Portuguese port at Mozambique[5], the Cape fleet moved east and raided Rostenbucht, the capital of the German Madagaskar. Jellicoe then led the fleet north where it met the German Ostafrikan squadron off the coast of southern Tanganjika near Mikindani Bay. At the Battle of Mikindani Bay, the Ostafrikan fleet was soundly defeated by the British under Jellicoe. The Ostafrikan Expedition by the Cape fleet ended in January 1907 when the Cape fleet raided Zanzibar and Pangani. The shelling of Zanzibar struck a blow to German pride at home, as the city had become seen as the jewel of the German colonies. While the Ostafrikan Expedition was considered a success, it did not lead to any significant territorial gains for the British aside from a brief occupation of the Majot archipelago in the Mozambique Channel[6].
The Fall Advance: While the French were being stalemated in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, the advance in Spain and Italy was gaining ground. In the Basque country, the combined British-Spanish forces kept the French from capturing San Sebastian. However, French forces did advance south and took the city of Pamplona in late October. From Pamplona, the French contingent there broke into three smaller forces and fanned out from the city as the front moved from the Pyrenees into the Ebro River valley. The three targets of these smaller armies were Vitoria, Logroño, and Tudela by way of Sangüesa. The western French army captured Vitoria in late November after a fierce fight with Spanish forces. The Spanish withdrew to Miranda de Ebro, but now the quickest pass north to Bilbao had been blocked by the French. The Logroño offensive was also successful, but the offensive against Tudela failed to advance beyond the ridge south of Sangüesa.
The Catalonian front had much more success for the French army. After dislodging the Spanish army from the hilly range west of Vic, French forces continued to move west, taking more and more of inland Catalonia. The northern Catalan army captured the town of Manresa in early October and Igualada a week later. The quick push back of the Spanish further inland also helped the French advance closer to the coast. As the French Mediterranean fleet shelled Tarragona, the Spanish diverted some armies there for fear of a naval landing. This allowed the French coastal army to advance into the Catalan Precoastal Depression. The Battle of Sant Llorenc del Munt was a decisive battle in this offensive, and ended with the French taking the cities of Sabadell and Terrassa and dispersing the Spanish forces from the eponymous mountain to the north. By the beginning of December, the French forces had isolated Barcelona from the rest of Spanish-held territory, but were held back by the mountains that overlooked the city. The resulting month-long Siege of Barcelona was one of the bloodiest battles of the Catalan campaign. With fighting concentrated at the breaks between the mountains at Singuelin and Llobregat, the Spanish were able to inflict over 70,000 casualties on the French attacking force before Barcelona fell on January 6, 1907.
Meanwhile, the progress of the war in the Alps remained just as slow and difficult as it had been since the start of the Great War in April. The French finally pressed back against the Italians on the coast and crossed the Italian border taking Nice. In Savoy, Chambery also finally fell to the French, but the Alps prevented any further advancement. The Italians had continued to push up the Adige River and reached Meran before they were pushed back by the Germans. However, by November Germany had retaken both Meran and Bozen and had pushed across the Italian border as far as Egina while the Italians had retreated to Mezzolombardo. Germany had also maintained control of Ampezzo despite an Italian assault on the city from San Vito in September. While the Alliance was slowly gaining ground in the Alps, there was worse trouble for the Italians on the African front. The French army that had been sent north from Ghadames continued to move north from Nalut in October as temperatures began to cool and took the small fishing village of Zuwarah in early November. The army moved east toward Tripoli and took Sabratah, but was unable to take Tripoli by the end of the year. The French were more successful in Tunisia, however. Henri de Gaulle's armies continued east and captured Bizerte with assistance by the French navy in early November. The next few weeks were spent planning the final attack on Tunis, with the navy blockading the Gulf of Tunis as the army marched east through Jedeida. While Tunis fell, the Italian navy based in the city escaped before the blockade to Sicily.
[1] I'm using a lot of German names for cities here. Labiau is Polessk, Insterburg is Cherniakovsk, and Nordenburg is Krylovo.
[2] OTL Chief of Staff of the Austro-Hungarian army at the start of WWI.
[3] The assault is similar to the OTL Russian Siege of Przemyśl, where 40,000 Russians died in the brief assault on the city.
[4] The extension of the war to the Americas is part of why it's such as issue in the US for the midterms.
[5] With Delagoa Bay divided between Portugal and Zuid-Afrika and a French Suez, the isle of Mozambique doesn't lose its importance ITTL.
[6] The Majot archipelago is the Comoros, with Majot being my best German approximation of Mayotte.
Part One Hundred-Five: The First Winter of the Great War
Clash of Eagles: As summer turned to autumn, Russia finally brought the full strength of its western armies to the front. The Russian advance continued to be stalled at the Masurian Lakes, but further north Russia kept pushing closer to Königsberg and the heart of East Prussia. By the middle of October the Russians had advances up to the Deime River, which put them at just 20 miles from Königsberg. The German army had set up defensive positions earlier at Labiau at the mouth of the Deime, but now the front continued south along the river as the Germany slowly fell back under the cover of the forests. With the German effort concentrated in the south against Hungary, there was little forthcoming support for the front in East Prussia. Insterburg fell in October and the Russians were able to link up the front on the right bank of the Deime and the front at the Masurian Lakes with the capture of the towns of Wehlau, Nordenburg, and Drengfurth[1].
Further south, the German armies began their first offensive into the Russian Empire in October. The German armies embarked south from Posen and camped in the town of Ostrowo before pressing east into Congress Poland. While the shortest route to Warsaw was straight east from Posen, the marshes along the Warta River and the lakes north of Kolo presented difficult terrain for the German army to pass through. Instead, the Germans entered Poland from Ostrowo and defeated the Russian defensive position at the city of Kalisz just across the border. From Kalisz, the German army advanced as far east as Sieradz, but in the Battle of the Warta failed to cross the swampy ground of the Warta River before winter. In southern Poland, German forces attempted to surround Krakow further from the north and cut off a supply route from Warsaw. This offensive captured the town of Olkusz to the northwest of Krakow, but failed to take the city of Miechow, which lay on the rail line between Warsaw and Krakow. As winter set in and temperatures in Krakow reached below freezing, the Germans continued to lay siege to the city. In early December, Conrad von Hötzendorf[2], commander of the forces south of the Vistula River, ordered an assault on the city[3]. But the Russian defensive positions at Przeogrzaly on the north bank of the Vistula and Lasota Hill south of the river prevented the German army from reaching the Vistula or the city itself and the assault was called off after four days. A total of 30,000 soldiers died in the assault on Krakow, and German casualties continued to rise as the siege went on through the winter.
Germany also faced further difficulties in Hungary as the Russian armies sent to bolster the Hungarian forces arrived. Much of the fighting in the northern end of the Hungarian front was in the midst of the Carpathian Mountains, and so movement was slow. The German army moved east from Zilna in late September, but was repelled by the Hungarians and Russians at Zazriva. The Germans set up a position at a narrow pass at Terchova where they blocked the Coalition counteroffensive, extending their hold of Zilna through into 1907. In central Hungary, the Alliance and Coalition forces were on flatter ground in the Danube Valley. However, the arrival of the Russian forces soon stabilized the front and devolved the combat into trench warfare. With the Russian and Hungarian lines stretching from Lake Balaton in the south to the Carpathians in the north, the Germans were unable to secure a solid advance and the goal of capturing Budapest by the end of the year failed. The town of Kisber marked the furthest reach of the German advance in the New Year, only twenty miles southeast of Gyor and still 40 miles west of Budapest. The Coalition also kept Germany from securing the entire northern shore of Lake Balaton, with the bluffs north of the lake providing good defensive positions for the Coalition forces.
The War at Sea: While the Germans were engaging the Hungarians and Russinas on the eastern front, the British and French navies were engaged all around the globe. The concentration of the naval action remained in the Northeast Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea. The North Sea was one of the few locations where French and German forces coordinated together, as the combined French-German fleet defeated the Home Fleet in an engagement in the Southern Bight. However, the sinking of the battleship Mecklenburg and two German cruisers and the damaging of the battleship Friedrich Wilhelm forced the German fleet to withdraw to Wilhelmshaven and could not assist the French in the Manche as planned. The Royal navy also won another victory in November in the Bay of Biscay as the French Atlantic Fleet attempted to draw out the British and disrupt the blockade of the French Atlantic coast.
Naval action in the Mediterranean was more subdued than in the Atlantic. British and Spanish submarines helped the New Coalition sink a French cruiser and repel a French attack on Mallorca in September. Meanwhile, the Italian navy began preparations for an assault on Malta, moving its small fleet in Tunisia to Sicily to escape the French forces in Africa. The end of 1906 also saw the first combat of the Great War in the Americas. In September, Great Britain seized the islands of Saint Pierre et Miquelon off the coast of Acadia, and two months later captured the island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean[4]. In the Pacific, the British brought California into the war on the side of the New Coalition in the beginning of 1907. Soon after the San Francisco earthquake, the California government had gone bankrupt and agreed to enter an alliance with Great Britain and sell Clipperton Island and Isla Socorro to the British in exchange for annulling all its debts. Soon after California entered the war, the British moved the ships in Prince Rupert to Alameda to put them in a more useful position.
It was also around this time that the fighting of the Great War spread to eastern Africa. As a French regiment in Mocha moved south along the Arabian Peninsula seized the port of Aden, the shipping lanes between the Cape Colony and the Indian subcontinent were becoming increasingly threatened. John Jellicoe, Commander of Good Hope Station, led an expedition by the Cape fleet up the eastern coast of Africa in October of 1906. After coaling at the Portuguese port at Mozambique[5], the Cape fleet moved east and raided Rostenbucht, the capital of the German Madagaskar. Jellicoe then led the fleet north where it met the German Ostafrikan squadron off the coast of southern Tanganjika near Mikindani Bay. At the Battle of Mikindani Bay, the Ostafrikan fleet was soundly defeated by the British under Jellicoe. The Ostafrikan Expedition by the Cape fleet ended in January 1907 when the Cape fleet raided Zanzibar and Pangani. The shelling of Zanzibar struck a blow to German pride at home, as the city had become seen as the jewel of the German colonies. While the Ostafrikan Expedition was considered a success, it did not lead to any significant territorial gains for the British aside from a brief occupation of the Majot archipelago in the Mozambique Channel[6].
The Fall Advance: While the French were being stalemated in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, the advance in Spain and Italy was gaining ground. In the Basque country, the combined British-Spanish forces kept the French from capturing San Sebastian. However, French forces did advance south and took the city of Pamplona in late October. From Pamplona, the French contingent there broke into three smaller forces and fanned out from the city as the front moved from the Pyrenees into the Ebro River valley. The three targets of these smaller armies were Vitoria, Logroño, and Tudela by way of Sangüesa. The western French army captured Vitoria in late November after a fierce fight with Spanish forces. The Spanish withdrew to Miranda de Ebro, but now the quickest pass north to Bilbao had been blocked by the French. The Logroño offensive was also successful, but the offensive against Tudela failed to advance beyond the ridge south of Sangüesa.
The Catalonian front had much more success for the French army. After dislodging the Spanish army from the hilly range west of Vic, French forces continued to move west, taking more and more of inland Catalonia. The northern Catalan army captured the town of Manresa in early October and Igualada a week later. The quick push back of the Spanish further inland also helped the French advance closer to the coast. As the French Mediterranean fleet shelled Tarragona, the Spanish diverted some armies there for fear of a naval landing. This allowed the French coastal army to advance into the Catalan Precoastal Depression. The Battle of Sant Llorenc del Munt was a decisive battle in this offensive, and ended with the French taking the cities of Sabadell and Terrassa and dispersing the Spanish forces from the eponymous mountain to the north. By the beginning of December, the French forces had isolated Barcelona from the rest of Spanish-held territory, but were held back by the mountains that overlooked the city. The resulting month-long Siege of Barcelona was one of the bloodiest battles of the Catalan campaign. With fighting concentrated at the breaks between the mountains at Singuelin and Llobregat, the Spanish were able to inflict over 70,000 casualties on the French attacking force before Barcelona fell on January 6, 1907.
Meanwhile, the progress of the war in the Alps remained just as slow and difficult as it had been since the start of the Great War in April. The French finally pressed back against the Italians on the coast and crossed the Italian border taking Nice. In Savoy, Chambery also finally fell to the French, but the Alps prevented any further advancement. The Italians had continued to push up the Adige River and reached Meran before they were pushed back by the Germans. However, by November Germany had retaken both Meran and Bozen and had pushed across the Italian border as far as Egina while the Italians had retreated to Mezzolombardo. Germany had also maintained control of Ampezzo despite an Italian assault on the city from San Vito in September. While the Alliance was slowly gaining ground in the Alps, there was worse trouble for the Italians on the African front. The French army that had been sent north from Ghadames continued to move north from Nalut in October as temperatures began to cool and took the small fishing village of Zuwarah in early November. The army moved east toward Tripoli and took Sabratah, but was unable to take Tripoli by the end of the year. The French were more successful in Tunisia, however. Henri de Gaulle's armies continued east and captured Bizerte with assistance by the French navy in early November. The next few weeks were spent planning the final attack on Tunis, with the navy blockading the Gulf of Tunis as the army marched east through Jedeida. While Tunis fell, the Italian navy based in the city escaped before the blockade to Sicily.
[1] I'm using a lot of German names for cities here. Labiau is Polessk, Insterburg is Cherniakovsk, and Nordenburg is Krylovo.
[2] OTL Chief of Staff of the Austro-Hungarian army at the start of WWI.
[3] The assault is similar to the OTL Russian Siege of Przemyśl, where 40,000 Russians died in the brief assault on the city.
[4] The extension of the war to the Americas is part of why it's such as issue in the US for the midterms.
[5] With Delagoa Bay divided between Portugal and Zuid-Afrika and a French Suez, the isle of Mozambique doesn't lose its importance ITTL.
[6] The Majot archipelago is the Comoros, with Majot being my best German approximation of Mayotte.
If France wins i imagine that they'd want Basque Country but how does Andora play into this with its enemy neighbors
Speaking of Europe, I really wish hope consider detaching Croatia from Hungary....it just doesn't look right.
On the other hand, is Turkey going to join the war? I'd love to see their asses handed to them.....