Update's done. Footnoes will be added tonight or tomorrow.
Part One-Hundred Fourteen: 1908 in the Great War
War Rages Across Europe:
Through 1908 the Great War raged across Europe as the French and German armies continued to push outward against the members of the New Coalition. German forces in Hungary advanced in the south where the New Coalition forces were weakest, and finally marched into Slavonia. Varasd was captured by Germany in May of 1908, and Varpalota was retaken in July. Budapest, however, remained firmly entrenched by the New Coalition through the German offensive. The war in Poland progressed more slowly, but the German advance finally converged on Warsaw in July and after a two month assault, the city finally fell in September. The spring of 1908 also had one of the few naval actions of the war in the Baltic Sea. Alexander Kolchak[1] led the Russian Batlic squadron toward Danzig and Königsberg and met a German fleet in the Bay of Danzig. Kolchak's squadron managed to defeat the Germans and proceeded to blockade the bay until a section of the High Seas Fleet was sent into the Baltic and forced the Russians to withdraw.
Meanwhile, the fleet actions in the Mediterranean continued to heat up between the New Coalition and the Alliance Carolingien. For Great Britain, the Mediterranean offered a way to complete the blockade of French trade outside the European continent. However, with the French navy having a larger presence in the Mediterranean than in the North Atlantic, the British resorted to the stealthier use of submarines. Using bases on the Spanish and Italian coasts, the two British submarine squadrons intercepted French shipping primarily going through the Straits of Sicily and between France and North Africa after the Strait of Gibraltar was thoroughly cut off to the French. In March of 1908, a brief expedition was sent to lay mines along the Egyptian coast around the Suez Canal, but after a French destroyer sailing through the strait was sunk and divers discovered the cause of the wreckage, outrage from the Egyptian government ended any more action there.
On the Spanish front, the French advance continued to focus on consolidating French control north and east of the Ebro River. As the harsh winter of the northern Spanish coast turned to spring, the French forces finally broke the British and Spanish hold on Bilbao and captured the city in March. As Bilbao fell, the French once again started a multi-pronged advance toward Zaragoza. The Battle of La Rioja stalled the French for months northwest of Zaragoza, but the French forces in Catalonia could now bear their full brunt moving west. Zaragoza fell to the French in August of 1908. It was also around this time that the political momentum in Spain began to turn against the conservative ruling party in the Cortes. In a strange alliance, the ultraconservative supporters of the Carlist pretender found friends in the anarchists and cantonalists. Both opposed the centralization of the Alfonsine Reforms, and with the poor course of the war both groups were gaining influence as the people turned against king Alfonso and the Cortes[2].
The War Around the World:
While the progress of the war on the European continent was shifting in favor of the Alliance Carolingien, elsewhere in the world the New Coalition was having more but mixed successes. In Asia, Japan and Russia continued harassing Corean ships in the Sea of Japan and made occasional threats on Cheju. Further south, the British East Asian Squadron moved north along the Chinese coast from Guangzhou to blockade Amoy, Fuzhou, and other nearby French and Koean treaty ports. Meanwhile, rumblings in Spain also surfaced in the colonies. With covert French support to the underground Katipunan organization, a guerrilla rebellion by the Filipino independence group began in the summer of 1908 that soon controlled a large area north of Manila[3].
In Africa, the New Coalition fared worse than in east Asia. Coordinated offensives by South Africa and German forces in Tanganjika attacked into the Portuguese colony of Mozambique, moving down the coast of the sparsely garrisoned colony. By the end of 1908 nearly all of Mozambique had ostensibly fallen under control of the Alliance Carolingien, though many interior areas of the colony were still largely unreachable. The Portuguese held out, however, in two places with support of the British navy. First was the capital, the island fortress of Mozambique. The second holdout was the town of Chinde on the delta of the Zambezi River. The combination of British naval patrols up and down the coast and the coastal fortifications established in the towns prevented any extended assault by Germany or South Africa on the two cities.
Meanwhile, the German commander Reinhard Kandt launched another offensive with his colonial troops west from Tanganjika into British Katanga. This time Kandt was better prepared than in the 1907 expedition, and successfully ousted the British from the fort at Kasama. From Kasama, Kandt led the expedition southwest to the shores of Lake Bangueolo and south down the Luapula River. Kandt was able to skirt around the British outpost at Fort Rosebery[4] and in early 1909 engaged the British garrison at Victoria in Katanga[5]. Kandt was forced to retreat but again the expedition slipped past Fort Rosebery and now held camp on Lake Bangweolo. The attack on Victoria and South African raids on Bechuanaland worried the governors of the Cape Colony. After these incidents, a resolution was passed to lease a vast area of the northwest part of the Cape Colony to Belgium in order to keep the Tsumeb mine safe from raids[6]. This region, called Hereroland after the native inhabitants, was originally leased for five years but the lease was extended after the end of the Great War.
[1] Alexander Kolchak was a navy commander and a leader of the Whites in the Russian Civil War in OTL.
[2] With no Third Carlist War and Spanish Republic the Carlists remain more influential in TTL. I still haven't decided if this is still Alfonso XII or if Alfonso XIII is on the throne.
[3] Still led by Andres Bonifacio as in OTL.
[4] Fort Rosebery is now Mansa, Zambia.
[5] Victoria = Lubumbashi.
[6] Of course, the governors of the Cape Colony keep their stakes in the mine and their share of its profits.
