Update's finished! I'll add footnotes tomorrow.
Part One-Hundred Seven: Hot Water in the Mediterranean
Mediterranean Front:
As the Great War entered 1907, the French navy had mostly retained their dominance of the Mediterranean Sea. While the New Coalition had dealt France some blows off the Spanish coast, France kept control of its bases in Menorca and Malta, had captured Barcelona, and had pushed Italy almost completely out of North Africa. Going into 1907, the New Coalition naval forces hoped to strike at one of the most important French naval bases in the Mediterranean: the island of Malta. Starting in February, Greece, which had so far not participated in any open conflict in the Great War, joined the Italian naval forces in their assault on Malta. While much of the French navy was distracted in Tunis and the Spanish coast, the New Coalition ships shelled the French ships in Valletta and landed a regiment at Marsaskala in early March. The New Coalition navy covered the landing by shelling Fort Delimara, which allowed the Italian force to capture the towns of Marsaxlokk and Birzebbuga in weeks. While the harbor at Birzebbuga had been captured, the French fleet had arrived from Tunis before a proper blockade of the archipelago could be set up. The French fleet repelled the New Coalition navy on April 5, sinking the Italian cruiser Lorenzo di Medici. The Italian soldiers were captured over the next week, ending the first attack on Malta of the war.
While the assault on Malta was a failure, the New Coalition fleet off the Spanish coast had more success than the Italians and Greeks. The combined British, Spanish, and Portuguese fleet had come off from chasing the French fleet away from the Spanish port of Tarragona. Chasing the French ships southeast, the New Coalition fleet defeated the French yet again in the Second Battle of the Balearic Sea in March of 1907. The French loss of the cruisers Dupleix and Joachim Murat and the damaging of the battleship Égalité[1] forced the fleet to retreat to Montpelier. The New Coalition fleet then set up a blockade around the island of Menorca in late March, which lasted a month before the garrisons at Ciutadella and La Mola surrendered. The Spanish occupied the island beginning in April.
At the same time as the French navy was repelling the Italian attack on Malta, the French colonial army was continuing its occupation of the Italian possessions in North Africa. Henri de Gaulle's force in Tunis moved southward out of the city in late March after putting down months of unrest from the Tunisian natives. By April 9th de Gaulle's army reached Zaghouan after navigating the scrubland of northern Tunisia. The French army then moved east and seized the coastal towns of Hamammet and Nabeul to deny the Italians further potential harbors in the area. Further west, a smaller force tried to advance beyond the Aures Mountains. However, the Italian and native Berber force positioned at the strategic Kasserine Pass was able toe stop the smaller French army from advancing. This French army was forced to retreat north to Talah, and lost further men to an ambush by a local tribe. The French captured Talah by May, however, and remained in the town through the heated summer months with no more progress inland. The French army in Tripolitania, meanwhile, became cut off as Italian colonial troops reaffirmed control of Nalut, but despite an attack on Sabratah by the Italians, the French army continued to hold Sabratah and Zuwarah.
Spanish Front:
After the fall of Barcelona to the French, many of the Spanish forces in Catalonia were demoralized. They were constantly losing ground in the province, and now the French were encouraging the Catalan populace to rise up against them. Faced with pressure from both the French armies and the Catalan people, the Spanish government began to slowly withdraw the Spanish armies west from Barcelona while inflicting as much damage they could on the invading armies. Inland, the French army advanced much quicker than before. Moving north from Barcelona, the French retook Igualada in mid-January after it was retaken by Spain during the siege of Barcelona. From Igualada, the French armies advanced west. The town of Tàrrega[2] was captured in mid-February, but the French faced some resistance from the town and the surrounding area. As the French army kept west toward Lleida, the town posed a constant hindrance to the French supply lines and delayed the French from reaching Lleida until April. This allowed Spain the time to prepare a series of defenses in the city and along the Cinca River to the west.
While much of the Spanish army in Catalunya retreated west after the fall of Barcelona, a number of Spanish soldiers began conducting guerrilla raids from Montserrat, one of the predominant mountains in the Prelittoral Range in Catalunya. With the French supply lines running through the region either from Manresa or Barcelona going to Igualada, the raids were often successful at disrupting communications wires and the area's rail lines. While the French increased the strength of the garrisons in the region to stop these attacks, a true assault on the Spanish soldiers on the mountain was not launched until May[3]. Over the first week of May, over three hundred men were captured in Montserrat and the monastery Santa Maria de Montserrat was seized and closed by the French forces. While the abbey was spared the burning it received by Napoleon's armies a century before, seven monks were killed after two soldiers were found trying to escape disguised as monks and the collection of books and art was seized. While the French were dealing with Montserrat, the army also advanced west from Barcelona as far as Vendrell before the assault on the mountain temporarily halted the French advance.
In the Basque County, the French victory at Vitoria seemed short-lived. The Spanish army in Bilbao and at Miranda de Ebro soon launched a counterattack on Vitoria. The hastily erected defenses in Vitoria provided the French an initial hold on the area surrounding the city, but the Spanish attack from both the north and the south spread the French occupation force thin. The Spanish were close to driving the French out of the city and plans had already been made to retreat east to Agurain in March. However, the French occupying force was saved as the army in Logroño attacked Miranda de Ebro over the ridge from the south of that town, forcing the Spanish force to cease their assault from the south and double back to the Ebro. With the French able to focus on the northern front of Vitoria, the Spanish force was easily defeated and Bilbao was placed under siege by the middle of May.
Italian Front:
With the New Coalition invasion of Malta repulsed and the Alliance campaign in the Alps stalled, the French sought other avenues of invasion to put more pressure on the Italian army and possibly allow a spearhead out of the Alps into the largely industrial Po Valley. French military commander Joseph Joffre[4] laid out plans for a naval landing in Tuscany that was intended to draw Italian troops away from the Alpine front. The first step of the plan was launched on May 3, the same date in 1814 that Napoleon had arrived on the island in exile. With a French fleet guarding the landing against an Italian naval defence, Elba was captured in a week. The French forces moved onto the mainland after defeating an Italian squadron in the Gulf of Follonica, while the army landed near Follonica and cut off the city of Piombino. On a narrow peninsula and surrounded by French forces on both land and sea, the Italian garrison at Piombino soon surrendered. Meanwhile, the French navy sailed north and caught the Italian fleet at La Spezia heading south to meet them. The Italian fleet was defeated and sailed back to the naval base in La Spezia.
The diversion succeeded at drawing Italian forces away from the Alps, and sped up the French and German advance through the mountain passes. Much of the French army movement in the first months of 1907 was repositioning its Alpine armies for an offensive across the mountains. Between December 1906 and March 1907, the French army that had taken Nice was moved north to Barcelonette. In the next months, the French pressed downriver along the Stura di Demonte river. The Italian army prevented the French from reaching the eastern foothills of the Alps, but the French army did advance as far as the village of Sambuco approximately halfway between Barcelonette and river's namesake of Demonte. In Savoy, the French advanced up the Alps to Modane by the beginning of April. Beginning in May, the French Savoyard Army pushed across the pass at Mont Cenis and down the Susa Valley toward Turin. After taking the city of Susa, instead of continuing down toward Turin, the French kept south up the Doire River[5] to Oulx and Claviere at the Franco-Italian border. This secured the French line of supply from Briançon.
While the French offensive progressed faster as a result of the landing at Piombino, the German section of the Alpine front was still mostly stalemated. THe Italians held the German advance north of Mezzolombardo until March of 1907. However, on March 17, the German offensive broke through the Italian line at Rovere della Luna and took Mezzolombardo. In the months after the German breakthrough, the lines continued to slowly advance, and Germany reached Trent by April and Rovereto by the end of June. Meanwhile, the German army in Ampezzo pressed down the river basin to the southeast. After seizing the village of San Vito in early April, the German army entered the Cadore valley and pushed the Italian army out of much of the valley between Petarolo and Domegge.
[1] The French had a battleship Liberté in OTL, so I figured with more battleships in TTL they'd name two others Égalité and Fraternité.
[2] Formerly the seat of the Bishopric of Urgell.
[3] For those who are curious,
this is what Montserrat looks like.
[4] Joffre was an OTL WWI general.
[5] The Dora Riparia river.
