Summarize

"From: “America and the World” by David Browne (1978)—

Many American treatments of the War of 1926, especially when used as the backdrop to works of fiction, tend to pass over the months separating the Battle of Corte from the Siege of Fredericksburg with an air of profound embarrassment. There is a distinct sensation of feet being shuffled, gazes being avoided, excuses being mumbled. If alluded to at all, this time is mostly suggested to be one in which American forces gave way on all fronts to the invincible Societists, armed with the unbeatable, dice-loading wonder weapon, the Alkahest. The Celatores are described in such Superhuman terms that the implied message is, of course, that no nation could possibly have hoped to stand in their way.

The reality is quite different, as illustrated by the accounts of our (limited) Societist sources such as Markus Garzius and Dionysus Oderus. From the Societist perspective, the great victory of Corte was undermined by constant problems stemming from that same victory. No Societist antebellum plan had realistically seen them penetrate this far into Carolina by this point, or the American response to be as limited. Indeed, Societist planning had repeatedly been rendered obsolete by American troops failing to move to positions they had hoped for in order to launch attacks, notably in the Floridas. This is not intended as a value judgement on the quality of the American soldier, but rather an indictment of the maddeningly indecisive and cautious leadership he was saddled with. As in the Great American War (and unlike the Pandoric War, to the same extent), generalship was constantly interfered with by decisions on the political level, made for political reasons.

It is not as if the period from late May to August 1926 was one of continuous American defeats, either. Most obviously, the Westernesse Confederal Guard forces along the Mississippi, reinforced by regulars from the local garrisons, successfully resisted the Celatores even when (following Corte) Celator forces on all fronts began using Alkahest shells. General Bernard Fawcett, in overall command of the Army of the Mississippi (as it became known), adopted tactics of simply retreating from the Societist armoured spearheads that used Alkahest weapons, while using his superior numbers to outflank them and advance on their conventionally-armed rearguard.[1] Fawcett’s success puts a lie to the claim that the Americans could not have stopped the Societists. Granted, Lugallus Gonzalus’ army was given the highest priority by Rivarius (in overall command) and possessed greater numbers, weapons and quantities of Alkahest than Arminius’ force facing the Mississippi; but, conversely, even after the destruction of General Bennett’s armies at Corte, the Americans in Virginia also possessed greater forces than Fawcett. The difference was that Fawcett was able to plan his moves rationally and with freedom (occasionally ‘creatively interpreting’ certain suicidal orders from Fredericksburg that arrived via Lectelgram) whereas the eastern commanders were not so lucky.

General Dan Curtis, second-in-command of the Imperial Army and a fellow man of Westernesse, lobbied heavily for the eastern forces to adopt a strategy like Fawcett’s. However, a policy that involved strategic, Fabian-style retreats before the Societists was anathema to the political leadership (and not a few generals). Fatally, Curtis’ boss, Marshal Rupert Golding, was similarly cold on the idea. Golding was a now-elderly veteran of the Pandoric War, who had fought in the conquest of Carolina (though owing his present position more to backroom political skill than military ability) and who had formed a hostile view of the Carolinian people thanks to his experiences on occupation duty there.[2] Golding’s dislike of the late Lewis Faulkner, whom he blamed in part for ruining an opportunity for his troops to be welcomed as liberators by the black population of Carolina, was a key factor in Faulkner posthumously receiving much of the blame for the loss of the War of 1926. Sometimes such claims were founded in something approaching reality, while others were simply taking advantage of a scapegoat who could conveniently not speak up to defend himself, and were careless of any logical connection (or lack thereof).

Marshal Golding’s view of this war was therefore founded on the ideas that 1) Carolina was hostile territory whose people had gone over to the Societists as soon as they landed, 2) it was underdefended thanks to Lewis Faulkner’s policies (partially but not entirely true), and 3) that, as in the Pandoric War, every inch of territory had to be fought over, and giving up land as part of a strategy was unthinkable. These impressions collided to produce a worldview in which Golding argued that Americans must fight to the last man to defend ‘real American’ land, as opposed to Carolinian, and also that American soldiers would see more success when fighting on that land, rather than surrounded by Carolinian saboteurs. This, together with an outdated sense of tactics, led to numerically superior American reinforcements being frittered away on trench after trench when they were easy pickings for the Alkahest-armed Societists. Golding’s much-vaunted ‘Neuse Line’, whose forts would supposedly stop the Societists dead in their tracks (after all those luft-slaughtered trenches bought time for them to be hastily constructed) would be tossed aside by Gonzalus’ Celatores on June 22nd-25th. Understandably, the will to build a second, Roanoake Line on the border of Chesapeake and Africa Nova provinces, as Golding then proposed,[3] was rather lacking. Golding claimed until his dying day that if Faulkner’s government had not dismantled the grander Jones Line of forts that, prior to the Pandoric War, had lined the ENA-Carolina border, the Societists could have been stopped there. Few latter-day analysts agree with him. War had changed.

At least Golding was trying to defend the Empire, however. In Fredericksburg, politicians pointed the finger at one another. President Gilmore, who had become embattled ever since the reversals in Kamchatka, found his political career hanging by a thread after firstly the Societist ‘Rubikon’ attacks on the American fleets in the Caribbean, followed by the ‘Libramendum’ landings in Pensacola. It is remarkable that Gilmore’s government did not fall then and there, but events conspired to paralyse the corridors of power in Fredericksburg. Gilmore, still refusing to recognise the scale of the disaster America faced, was convinced he could battle his way through the calls for him to resign. The opposition Supremacists, led by Roderick Marley (and, unofficially, co-led by his wife Lilian) scented blood in the water and began calling death-votes [confidence votes].

Paradoxically, this probably strengthened Gilmore’s position. Dame Eleanor Cross’ Patriots began calling for negotiation with the Societists, a naïve stance that they were fortunate did not stick to them in the public imagination. Gilmore benefited from the fact that Anthony Washborough, leader of the ‘Overripe’ cobrist faction within the Liberals, was trapped on the other side of the country, negotiating with Prince Yengalychev and unable to return due to the sabotaged railway network. (Washborough did attempt the trek twice before giving up). As Washborough’s supporters could not openly admit he was not in Fredericksburg (the cover story being that he was ill) they also could not appoint a replacement de facto leader and coordinate effectively to put pressure on Gilmore; Washborough both there and not there. Michael Briars’ ‘Thicket’ old-guard faction of the Liberals continued to support Gilmore as the lesser of two evils (as they saw it). In order to maintain his majority, Gilmore needed to keep his jittery Mentian coalition partners on side. Against the prescient wishes of leader Magnus Bloom, the other Mentian MCPs agreed to continue voting with the Liberal government in return for a number of social reforms being pushed through Parliament. Many of these, such as certain legal limits on working hours and an expansion of the state pension, were positive and urgently needed steps for the ENA, but the timing was exceptionally tone-deaf. In the middle of a desperate fight for survival, when men like Golding and ex-President Tom Gedney were blaming Faulkner’s Social American focus on domestic over military spending for the current losses, when Societist-infiltrated trade unions had just been behind a number of the acts of internal sabotage that had paralysed the country – nothing could better have been calculated to make the American people see the Mentian Party as forever stained by association.

The Marleys did not time their own interventions well, with Roderick overly confident that he could build a majority coalition himself and wrest control from the Liberals as President. He did not realise that this was not realistic until it was too late, and no longer politically feasible to instead form an American Coalition with Gilmore’s Liberals, as had been achieved in both the Great American and Pandoric Wars.[4] Instead, he began offering this as an option if, and only if, the Liberals first replaced Gilmore as their leader and President.

Emperor Augustus was hesitant to become directly involved and overstep his constitutional authority; his judgement was also impaired by mourning the death of his father, the abdicated Emperor George IV, who had lived quietly in exile at an estate on Long Island. Many works of fiction imply George died of shock after hearing of the Rubikon attacks, when in fact he passed away of natural causes several days before, ultimately because his health had been weakened after an attack of the plague two years earlier. Unlike some monarchs of the war, though, Augustus did not allow this personal tragedy to halt him altogether. In May he gave Gilmore a quiet backroom ultimatum to step down, and even Gilmore was forced to concede before this uncharacteristic invocation of the reserved powers of the Emperor of North America.

The question was, who would replace Gilmore? Though riddled with factionalism, the Liberals still outnumbered the Supremacists and would not agree to Marley as President, even as a temporary war appointment. A Liberal candidate must be found whom Marley and the Supremacists could support. Washborough would have been an unlikely choice even if he were not available, and most of the other cabinet position holders were non-starters (Foreign Secretary Archie Cooper was briefly considered, but seen as too much of a seat-warmer). Many speculative romantics will opine great essays about George Spencer-Churchill the Younger as President, but such an idea is profoundly unrealistic and was only discussed by the most excitable political journalists at the time.

Then, inspired by practices in France, Augustus and his informateurs instead turned to the idea of re-appointing a former President as a unifying figure. Such a plan, however, also seemed fraught with problems. Stuart Jamison, Lewis Burwell and Lewis Faulkner were now all dead, Burwell having succumbed to the plague only months before. Jack Tayloe was considered tainted by his hypocrisy on women’s suffrage, and was thousands of miles away in Cygnia. Michael C. Dawlish had served only briefly as President, and after losing the 1909 general election had left politics and become a successful businessman in California. David Fouracre had suffered a nervous breakdown after being unseated by Gilmore and was in no position to return to Fourteen Culpeper Road. The most realistic choice seemed to be Tom Gedney, still around and writing vitriolic memoirs from his home in New Connecticut, but Gedney was a Supremacist and still a divisive figure.

Perhaps Gedney could still have been chosen, but in the end the Emperor’s negotiators secured an American Coalition behind perhaps the most unlikely of Liberal Presidents. After being passed over for the Presidency three times – in 1900, 1908 and 1914[5] – Michael Briars, much to his own surprise, became President of the Empire of North America.

The same qualities that made Briars a sufficiently unifying figure made him a poor war leader; he was past his prime, colourless and bitter. Nonetheless, perhaps by drawing a line under Gilmore’s disasters and announcing this new coalition, evocative of the old days of victories, Briars’ installation could have changed the tone of the war and restored American morale. Unfortunately, he became President only a few short days before the Battle of Corte, and thus its disaster became associated with him rather than Gilmore. In this sense, his presidency was doomed before it began.

Nonetheless, Briars (now with Marley as Foreign Secretary) made a number of important moves. Unlike the cautious Gilmore, he tore up the remaining plague-control rules (as far as they applied to the military) and allowed mass troop movements across the country, as much as the sabotaged railways and roads permitted. Repair efforts for the latter were also masterminded from the top rather than dealt with on a piecemeal Confederal level. The raising of Confederal Guard regiments, which had often been ordered by Governors regardless in defiance of Gilmore’s plague-control orders, were retroactively authorised. All of this did indeed lead to a resurgence of the plague and a new wave of infections, but in Briars’ eyes this was the lesser of two evils.

Gilmore had been fixated on the idea of the war as a predominantly Caribbean naval conflict, as it had seemed at first, and his own war leadership (such as it was) had focused on attempting to build up an American hiveship force that could challenge the Societists. In this, at least, Briars inherited a solid plan and was able to take credit for it. While the Celatores were able to take the now-underdefended Ultima and Savannah in Georgia following their victory at Corte, and surged into South Province, they found themselves faced by a significant American garrison in Charleston. Even with the Alkahest, Gonzalus’ troops were unable to reduce the embattled pocket under the command of General Tobias Ewing. This substantially slowed the Celatores’ advance and complicated their plans. According to Oderus, despite their pre-war planning for rapid supply lines that could keep up with their armoured spearheads, in practice the Societists found those spearheads outrunning their supplies; however, this was considerably exacerbated by the stubborn Charleston pocket. Accordingly, Dominikus ordered that two of the Societists’ four veteran hiveships (which had been dispersed to support actions against American aeroports in the Floridas) should pass the Straits of Florida, enter the Atlantic and use their celagii to bombard the Americans in Charleston from the sea.

The Americans were fortunate that this came right around the time that Professor Mark Lacke and his team at Harvard had successfully begun to break Societist codes. As the war expanded, the Societist demand for one-time pads exceeded the supply, and they turned instead to their complex, but not unbreakable, Zesar code machines. Many historians note the curiosity that the Americans seemed strangely blind to the fact that the Societists had long broken their own codes even as they now broke the Societists’; the real picture seems to be more complex, with many at the IIC at least suspecting it. Some accuse the government of simply covering up the story to avoid hurting morale, even though this would hamper efforts to come up with a countermeasure. Of course, Societist crytography was another reason, besides the Alkahest and Golding spreading out his troops unhelpfully to take on Pandoric-era defensive formations, why Gonzalus’ armies won skirmish after skirmish, battle after battle, as they slowly crept north. The Celatores often knew where American soldiers would be ordered almost before the soldiers did themselves.

Now, however, Lacke’s ‘Big Betsy’ versatile engine had broken the simpler version of the Zesar code used by Sea Celatores, who (it appears) were institutionally more complacent than their land counterparts about data protection. The Government was made aware of the movement of the Societist hiveships Lagash and Memphis to attack Charleston. At this time, the Cygnia had only just escaped its remarkable gauntlet fleeing through the Caribbean, and so Briars was forced to order into battle two untested hiveships to face the Societists, the Eyrie and the barely-completed Hornet.

The so-called Battle of Fort Eveleigh was named after the former name of the old fortress on an artificial sandbank island protecting Charleston Harbour.[6] This is a remarkably inaccurate name, given that the battle took place nowhere near the fort (being many miles out to sea) and at the time it had been renamed Fort Jamison after the Pandoric War. Its later renaming by historians is symptomatic of American Diversitarian policies towards Carolinian heritage. Regardless, the battle (May 25th) was a qualified victory for the Americans, and a much-needed win after the disaster at Corte. The Societist pilots were considerably more experienced than their American counterparts, but the Americans had numbers on their side, drawing from the two hiveships plus the dromes based at the Charleston aerobase. Neither side inflicted fatal damage on a hiveship, but Lagash’s steering gear was temporarily disabled and she suffered a near miss from a steeltooth fired by the American ironshark HIMS Barracuda. If that steeltooth had hit, the history of the war might have been quite different. In the end, the Americans forced the Societists to retreat. Though the Alkahest was still feared on land, this limited win at sea proved that the Societists were not invincible – and that command of the air was, indeed, the new path to victory at sea.

Unfortunately for Briars and the Americans, this victory was short-lived; Ewing’s troops soon ran out of ammunition and fuel (despite attempts at resupply by ironshark) and the Charleston pocket was forced to surrender on June 5th. By this point, Lacke’s decryptions revealed something alarming reported in many American newspapers. While the Celatores on land were still using a more complex form of Zesar which the Harvard team were generally unable to crack, some logistical or ‘political’ communications criss-crossing the land between the Societist commanders were treated with less care. An argument had arisen between many of the senior Societist leaders in the immediate aftermath of Libramendum and the Pensacola landings: what to do with captured American soldiers? Strict Sanchezista doctrine was that, as murderers licensed by an entity that ‘Liberated Humanity’ did not recognise, they should face execution, or at least life imprisonment, as criminals. This was, after all, the same policy that the Societists adopted towards their own Celatores, even if Alfarus had carefully compromised by delaying the execution part by a few decades. It was also a policy which the Societists had enforced against their ‘opponents’ in the Celatores’ previous conflicts. However, it was one thing to execute the soldiers of states like the Sultanate of Sulu or the Kingdom of Lunda, which were not recognised by the western diplomatic community or realistically protected by the laws of war under the Ratisbon Conventions. It was quite another to do the same to the soldiers of one of the world’s major powers.

It had always been the case that the rights of prisoners of war were, ultimately, protected by the implict threat of mutual retaliation. If a nation abused its prisoners of war, those prisoners’ home nation would retaliate by abusing the same rights of the prisoners it possessed from the first nation. Some Societists argued that this implied threat should be ignored; partly because the Americans had not had much opportunity to take many Societist prisoners of war in return, and partly because Celatores should be ready to die at any time regardless. Markus Garzius was a fervent advocate of the latter point of view, as he states in his memoirs. The pragmatic Alfarus, however (according to Oderus) believed such a strict interpretation of doctrine would alienate other groups whom the Societists were attempting to court, such as certain rebel groups in the disintegrating Iberian Peninsula. Instead, American prisoners of war were placed in camps in occupied Carolina not dissimilar to those one might see in other fronts of the war. In response to an angry reaction from many other senior Societists (and a rare challenge to his authority, it appears) Alfarus placated them by suggesting that the Americans would later be placed in re-education camps (as used for some low-level violent offenders in the Combine) and possibly sterilised to prevent their ‘corrupt’ teuches being passed down. There even appears to have been some speculation about recruiting Celatores from them, just as the Societists had from violent individuals they had imprisoned from the lands they currently controlled.

Garzius was disappointed with this decision, and despite his nigh-fanatical loyalty to Kapud Alfarus, stated that he believed it was one of his biggest mistakes. Ironically, given Garzius’ distaste for the ‘revisionist-deviationist’ regime that later ruled the Combine after the Silent Revolution, its advocates would similarly hold this ‘weak’ compromise up as one of Alfarus’ greatest ‘crimes’ and ‘betrayals of the Final Society’.

However, grumblings among the Societists were nothing as compared to the panic that was unleashed when American newspapers printed leaked copies of the decoded messages arguing about the decision. Suddenly, every American mother’s worst nightmare was not ‘merely’ that her son would die in a muddy trench with the glass eye portals on his rubber suit turning red as the Alkahest-brimstone mustard mixture melted him from within, but that he might be taken alive, sterilised and sent to a camp that would indoctrinate him into a mindless fanatic for a foreign ideology. Many American soldiers either deserted, were urged to by their families, or at least avoided battle when they thought they could get away with it. Others, of course, steadfastly refused to be intimidated and fought grimly to the bitter end rather than be taken prisoner. But chaos and uncertainty nonetheless reigned. The great irony is that all of this was entirely unintentional on the Societists’ part, many of whom were obliviously confused as to why the Americans were reacting that way to their perfectly reasonable proposals. Some historians argue that this matter actually caused more damage to American morale than the whole elaborately-orchestrated plan with the Alkahest had in the first place.

After the temporary defeat at Charleston, Dominikus and Rivarius resolved to not divide their hiveship forces again. With the Charleston pocket now defeated, Gonzalus’ army could focus on a northward march. Once again (according to Oderus) the Societist leadership seemed somewhat vague on what their actual goals were, merely moving in the general direction of Fredericksburg – perhaps even following old Meridian war plans from the pre-Pandoric era, as some have suggested. Gonzalus’ forces first crossed from Carolina into the Empire proper on June 9th.[7] Cities which had been storied in the Great American War by long battles, such as Crosscreek [Fayetteville], were casually pocketed and swept aside in this new era of armoured warfare, aided by the Alkahest. American troops often stood and faced the Societists, despite the factors mentioned above, but Golding had deployed them in too piecemeal a fashion, and often there were refusals to retreat – which cost them. In Africa Nova province, demographically and politically dominated by black Americans, popular resistance to the Societists was at its fiercest – but, like elsewhere, the Societists would deal with Kleinkriegers ruthlessly.

After the Neuse Line was broken and then the abortive Roanoake Line, the Societists finally entered Chesapeake Province on July 5th. The flotilla of four hiveships and their escorts moved up the Atlantic coastline in time, providing air support to the army. The Americans still held much of Charlotte Province, and General Curtis continued to lobby fruitlessly for a concentration of troops and a flank attack from the west that could cut off Gonzalus’ isolated spearheads, similar to General Jones’ strategy against the Carolinians in the early part of the Great American War. But it was held that this would strip too many troops from the defence of Fredericksburg and leave it vulnerable.

The Societists had reached their stop line of the James River by July 19th. Richmond was now besieged and even the naval base of Norfolk threatened, but Gonzalus’ army was exhausted and had once again outrun its supply lines. July 23rd saw the Battle of Chesapeake Bay between the American and Societist hiveship fleets, now evenly matched. This, the largest battle between hiveships for many years to come and constantly over-analysed by military historians and game designers, is worthy of a book in itself. Admiral Newbury faced Lugallus Simonus in a game of cat-and-mouse that saw American Buzzard bombers under Major Worth finally sink the Memphis. However, the Societists played a trump card, not as part of a master plan but simply by coincidence. On the Uruk was an aero company of Piranha celagii which had been outfitted with new, miniaturised Photel sets, an experiment exploring the idea of a company being able to communicate coordinate by Photel in mid-fight – rather than relying only on Photel intelligence from large, bulky spotter planes as pioneered by the Russians.[8] The company had already been practicing with the new technology, and were now able to use this breakthrough to coordinate and shoot down many of the escorting American Blackhawk fighters. This left a path open for the Societists’ Alpaca tooth bombers, which successfully sank both the new, untested HIMS Wasp and the veteran HIMS Cygnia. The loss of the latter, after its grand adventure through the Caribbean, was another huge blow to American morale.

Though the Battle of Chesapeake Bay had hardly been an unambiguous victory for the Societists, it meant that the Americans had failed to wrest aero supremacy from them. Simonus proceeded to fly bombers threateningly over Fredericksburg and drop propaganda leaflets, though with no real object in mind other than intimidation. It certainly succeeded in that, with mass panic in the streets of the capital. Many attempted to flee, and some politicians began calling for the evacuation of Fredericksburg and the movement of the capital to a safer location – which the Emperor, Briars and Marley all steadfastly opposed.

Their reasoning was that, intimidation aside, the Societists were still many miles away, across difficult terrain, with an increasing number of American troops between them and Fredericksburg. Further, unlike the many defences that Golding accused Faulkner’s government of dismantling or failing to maintain, Fredericksburg was still well-protected by its modern ‘Diamond Ring of Cornubia’ defences: six fortresses in a roughly hexagonal shape. Due to arguments in Parliament about honouring particular generals or politicians, they had instead been named after the official Confederal birds of the six earliest Confederations (excluding treacherous Carolina), which had been hastily chosen as symbols for one of the earlier WorldFest pavilions. From the north going clockwise, the forts were Chickadee (New England), Robin (New York), Goldfinch (Pennsylvania), Black Swan (Cygnia), Cardinal (Virginia) and Bluebird (Drakesland).

The Diamond forts guarded all approaches to the city by land or by sea, ensuring that enemy naval forces could not creep up the Rappahannock or Potomac Rivers and opposing armies that might attack from south, west, or even north. Originally built after the Great American War as a hedge against a Meridian attack that never materialised, the Diamond Ring forts had periodically been modernised. It was true that they had not been set up for aero defence, as no-one had dreamed such a thing might be necessary after steerables had seemed obsoleted; however, after Simonus’ initial bomber flights, General Curtis has the forces hastily re-equipped with modern counterdrome artillery weapons. On August 4th, another raid by Simonus saw the Societist bombers shot down in flames or turned back, leading to a boost in public morale: the Empire had struck back, her capital once again protected.

In practice, as Gonzalus well knew, he was in no position to threaten Fredericksburg even if the Diamond Ring had ceased to exist. Nonetheless, reading intercepted and translated papers from the capital, he guessed that neutralising it might be sufficient to terrorise his ‘opponent’ into a precipitous action. To that end, he turned to yet another war-changing weapon which, suitably disassembled, had slowly been making its way northwards from Pensacola…

*

From: “Mme. Mercier’s Diaries, Volume III: Exile’s Return” (1978, authorised English translation 1981)—

August 12th 1926.

It seems that each day of the nightmare that life has become now bleeds into the next. I collapse into bed each night consumed with exhaustion, and barely see my son’s governess, never mind Valéry himself.

I convince myself that if I had been there, if it had been agreed that I could go personally to negotiate in Vienna, things would have been different. The talks would not have collapsed for the second time, and we would not have plunged headlong into this pit of ruin once more. It cannot continue. The papers are circumspect; as of yet, they still respond to our threats of censorship and do not openly report on the mutinies among our troops in Poland. Doubtless the same must be true among our allies, and presumably our foes as well, or else the Russians would have taken more advantage.

The Russians. The good God damn Pasha to hell, though I doubt even M. Alighieri could conceive of a damnation more ruinous than the one which that odious little man has put his own people through, along with millions of others. Of course, that is why Bertrand and the others were sure I cannot go myself. They spoke of how Pasha hates me, ever since the negotiations at the end of the Great War – or La guerre pandorique, as Renée tells me some of the young people are calling it now. Strange, for at the time, the collapse of the UPSA into revolution seemed more of a footnote, at least at first. Now, though, the younger generation define the whole bloody conflict by the fact that Societism emerged from Pandora’s Box, as they put it, to terrorise the world now. Seeing the horrors visited upon our erstwhile allies in America, I can scarcely disagree.

Name of a name! While our boys die in muddy Polish trenches amid plague and death-luft, all for a front line that now once again refuses to move, M. Alfarus’ fanatics surge across a continent as though they were re-enacting the Great Race. It seems the Septens are unable to do anything to slow them down. Who can guess what will happen? Nothing good, I fear.

I sense that same weakness, that horror, when I first told M. Clinton we would do nothing to help. This should be the business of the Tuilleries, dammit. France should have an interest in the outcome of this strange new war. But gone are the days when M. Leclerc would stretch forth his hand and send a multinational fleet to South America to safeguard our interests. As the Duc keeps saying, the ragtag rebels he fought there have become a frighteningly powerful nation – or whatever they claim they are instead. I think of the examples of history, of meteoric rises like that of Alexander the Great, toppling the vast Persian Empire in a single campaign. Are we living in such a time?

And are we next? Les Temps carries today an asimcon showing the latest group of Spanish rebels raising a flag over the cathedral of Salamanca. A black flag. Now they openly declare their allegiance to Alfarus, and what can our men do to stop it now the poor Duc is gone? The journalist claims Salamanca was where Pablo Sanchez, founder of Societism, was at University. Is that correct, I wonder; too many of the reporters who knew what they were doing are in plague graves these days. I wish I had asked M. Degenlis of this while he was still with us; but his ideology seemed nothing more than a comic piece of secret-society pantomime in those days.

My eyes sting from the smoke of the hookahs. Once again I have met with the Ambassador of the Sublime Porte, Cemil-effendi.[9] My visits are always an experience. In these times of austerity, the Embassy remains palatial, hung lavishly with rugs and tapestries, full of remarkable and exotic works of art from the length and breadth of the Sultan’s domains. For four centuries, France and Turkey have enjoyed positive relations, and that is mirrored in the fact that the Embassy has remained well-established and stable enough to safely build up such a collection.[10] As for Cemil-effendi himself, he always reminds me of a retired pirate (and indeed he was a naval officer at one point, I believe). A roguish glint in his eye, betraying that there is a keen mind between his voluminous, greying beard and his large turban, the latter a reminder of his alien culture.[11] “It is always a delight to see you once again, O my lily of the valley,” he tells me smoothly in his perfect French. “Let us take tea and cakes, and forget the cares of the darkening world outside for a little longer.”

Turkey is an odd land. One moment we hear of women locked in veils, or dirty Diane’s fascination with paperbacks about good Christian ladies being abducted to serve as harem slaves, and the next we are reminded that the Valide Sultan exercises more political power than even I ever did when I was unofficially covering for René in his times of malady. The circuitous diplomatic language makes my head hurt, though again, the hookahs don’t help that either. I just want Cemil-effendi to get to the point. But then, perhaps there is no point to get to.

Any dreams we had of true coordination died long ago; we cannot even get our titular allies to agree to give up territory as part of a peace deal with Petrograd, never mind a country that is, at best, a cobelligerent. (Orsini’s embattled government in Rome is already on the verge of falling, our agents tell me). As for any suggestions that Constantinople might pull out of Greece in return for the Tarsus salient, even if the Russians agreed to it, those are dismissed out of hand by Cemil-effendi. What are the affairs of a mere rebellious province to us?

I point out that the Turks’ attempts to crush the Tarsus salient have failed, and coordination between the two halves of the empire have deteriorated, with Ahmet Ismail ignoring directions from the Valide Sultan since he launched his coup last year. Meanwhile, Algiers has revolted and the damned Moroccans are moving in – much to the displeasure of the handful of voyou types here who still have mad crusader dreams of a French Algiers.[12] Is the Sublime Porte really in a position to stand alone?

Cemil-effendi merely smiles that infuriating smile of his. “Do not underestimate us, Hêloïse-hanim.” Our scholars of the Orient tell me that this is a respectful title, like an equivalent of Madame, and appending it to my Christian name is simply because surnames as we know them are not used among the Turks. Personally, I am quite certain Cemil-effendi is doing it on purpose because he knows it puts me off-balance. “From the Moon Lakes to Vienna, from Petrograd to Shiraz, the graveyards are full of men who underestimated the House of Osman. The Tsar’s time will come.”

I cannot get through to him. Or else, he cannot get through to his leader. Leaders. Is he following instructions from Alexandria, Constantinople, or both? Perhaps I am not the only one with headaches…

*

From: “Memoirs of the First Born: The Authorised and Annotated Edition with Commentary” by Markus Garzius, edited and annotated by Albert Whitley and Maria Aydenia (1987)—

A question I have been asked many times over the years, ever since I began relieving the monotony of this cursed exile by giving interviews, is my opinion of the late Legadus Gonzalus.[13] I fear some of the opinions I expressed early on, when I was as green to the pernicious traps of journalists as raw recruits to my Celatores once were to the ambushes of Alimudinus Atindus’ gang.[14] Like those boys, I needed to find more experienced veterans to train me to spot the tricks those gentlemen can pull off with words. Therefore, I now feel I need to set the record straight on my views of the good Legadus.

First and foremost, I should say that as a good Societist, I am naturally aware that the meritocratic tests did not name me to the same office as Amigo Gonzalus, and thus I am no more qualified to critique the gentleman’s record than he would be to do the same to mine. One should take any and all views I express with this caveat in mind. But good Societists – unlike those morons currently mismanaging the Liberated Zones – are also men and women who think in terms of Human Science and do not surrender to the despair of the Pladonik cave.[15] At the end of the day, it is better to offer a knowingly flawed interpretation of limited data than it is to simply give up before one starts. If I took that purist view, I would have been unable to plan attacks against opponent forces, as I would simply have thrown up my hands and said that I could not know their battle plans in perfect detail, so I would not know where to start. Such is nonsense, so I feel I can offer my views on the Legadus, with the aforementioned caveats.

With all that in mind: Gonzalus was an idiot.

I still remember the histrionic expressions of shock around the Globe of Man’s Abode when I first incautiously let that slip. How dare this mere Celator badmouth a man whom even the nationalistically blinded had reluctantly fêted as a great general? But, of course, one has to do so. If one is beaten at chess by a child, one talks him up as a great chess prodigy; if he was a rather stupid child, what does that say about one’s own intelligence and ability as an adult? Naturally, Amigo Gonzalus is frequently contrasted to those murderers-in-chief among the bandit gangs who became stuck in miserable, immobile slaughters throughout what they call the Black Twenties. As though he must be a genius if he was able to achieve movement in that age of deadlocks. But if one runs a casino and awards payouts to any man who can flip a coin and have it come up heads, do we call a man a genius because he brought a two-headed coin, when his rivals brought a two-tailed one? At best, he might be well-prepared, at worst he might merely be lucky.

I am probably too harsh; I choose my words in contrast to the hagiography that the good Legadus has enjoyed since the campaign, and in particular since his martyrdom at the hands of the vile, pathetic scum running the Zones who are not fit to shine the Kapud’s boots with their tongues. I can respect the man for standing up to their cowardly persecutions and going to his death resolutely. But, frankly, the fact that they caught him was as much down to his own dunder-headedness as his bravery and principle. Naturally, I speak from the perspective of one who slew his own would-be captors and have done the same to every so-called ‘deleter’ they have sent after me since following my escape.

Yes, perhaps ‘idiot’ is the wrong word. Gonzalus was, generally, competent in his role, if unimaginative. I must reluctantly confess that, even in those days before doctrine became corrupted, true meritocratic vocationalism was still undermined by politics, and Gonzalus’ popularity outstripped his ability. (Of course, in those days we naïvely thought that this was a forgiveably flawed chrysalis stage on the way to perfect Sanchezism; how sad the contrast of the reality we live in!) Throughout the campaign, Gonzalus had fulfilled his role quite adequately, following Legadus Rivarius’ well-conceived plan. (I never thought I would be grateful that that brilliant man died young, just so he never lived to see what happened to the Zones; that sentiment is true of so many). Some point to Gonzalus’ greater success against our opponents, as though Arminius and Kadarus facing more organised and motivated foes was some sort of minor background detail. Unquestionably, he executed the Alkahest reverse trap very well; fundamentally, it was the sort of logistical staff work that he excelled at, ensuring the shells went to the right gun emplacements and none were used before time. We grasped the alienistic moment perfectly to destroy and panic two Septen armies in one fell swoop; but that was not some brilliant insight of Gonzalus’. Rather, it was Gonzalus’ competent execution of Rivarius’ brilliant plan. Trouble started when Gonzalus was expected to think for himself.

The problems really started in Hextember when we had reached a river which the locals called James, besieging a town they called Richmond.[16] (Tragically, both are still misnamed this by their deluded inhabitants as I write these words). For months, we had benefited from the Septens wasting their murder-gangs in pointless exercises clearly born of panic and poor leadership. Sometimes they tried to make stands in trench defences, which made them sitting ducks for our Alkahest. Other times, they tried attacking with ansukarrus forces whose mobility made them less vulnerable to the Scientific Weapon, enhanced or otherwise. Yet they never attacked in sufficient numbers to achieve a breakthrough. They usually also tried to face us head-on rather than attacking our supply lines. Since the campaign, I have read accounts suggesting that this was because their leaders felt they could not sign up to tactics that would give ground to us in order to leave our rear vulnerable. And so they wasted their reserves one iota at a time, while the forces of free Humanity, undaunted, marched ever northwards.

But things had changed by this month. A capable Septen legadus named Curtis had finally managed to seize control of their military with a change of leadership at the top. Together with a subordinate named Taft, he planned a strategy to sweep in from the west and take us in our flank, using armoured spearheads of ansukarrii in a way that showed they had learned from our example. The Septens had been stymied and weakened by the sacrifice of our cadres and agendes in internal sabotage. One of their leaders, a man named Washborough, was being heralded as a hero for ‘miraculously’ bringing back their army from Zone 15 intact, where it had been fleeing from Pablus Romanovius’ gang, with the assistance of turncoats from that same gang of the army that had fought in Zone 13. I did not care for the details of these squabbles between children, but I was concerned that this more capable army would be heading our way as soon as the railway links were repaired – and Washborough’s scheme had seemingly even rescued much of their karrii, celagii and other equipment. We had a narrow window of opportunity before this Septen force could arrive and turn the tide of the conflict. Furthermore, with Curtis in charge, no longer could we rely on the Septens to waste this force in worthless piecemeal head-on attacks against us.

We were in a perilous position. We were overextended. Just as the elongated siege of the town then named Charleston had slowed us down and left our rear vulnerable, the same was now true of our failures to subdue the towns called Portsmouth and Petersburgh. Multiple forces of Celatores were limited to siege duty as we tried to reduce the defences of the cities in question. Meanwhile, Gonzalus was still trying to press onwards, throwing everything at the capital city miscalled Fredericksburg, hoping in the vain hope that taking it would somehow cancel all other concerns and head off the reputed Septen reinforcements.

It was an absurd view, atavistic, Jacobin, based on nothing more than wishful thinking. Aside from anything else, the Septens’ misguided form of government was decentralised. The entity in the western part of Zone 4, calling itself Westernesse, had already fought quite capably without help from the central government. And even if that wasn’t true, we lacked the force to achieve what Gonzalus envisioned. We had conquered all before us, but too many ansukarrii were still smoking hulks on the roads between here and once-Pensacola, too many good Humans lay tragically in shallow graves, too many bullets and shells had been expended. Furthermore, the Septens had finally worked out a strategy to interfere with our resupply; their ironsharks hunted our ships with impunity throughout the seas of Zone 4, and suddenly the squeeze had been put on our supplies of men, munitions and more. Gonzalus’ army might as well be alone, surrounded by hostile territory. We had overrun parts of the regions called Raleigh and Charlotte or Africa Nova (at least that is halfway to a good Novalatine name!) by its people, and the dark-skinned inhabitants were uncertain of our intentions. Unlike the so-called Carolinians, who usually turned quiescent after a few threats, there was the worry of them rising up and stabbing us in the back if the Septens attacked. Curtis could overturn all the victories we had won, and all because of Gonzalus’ recklessness and incompetence, charging ahead into hostile territory.

Gonzalus was finally persuaded, probably by his wiser (but loyal) subordinate Amigo Kasdrus, that trying to push across the river and make it to Fredericksburg was futile. Rivarius and Prokapud Dominikus might take his command away if he persisted. So he hit upon another scheme, a very, very stupid scheme, a very Gonzalus scheme. He would use a new weapon we had been equipped with, a weapon whose complex disassembled parts had taken up many trains and waggons which could have been better used for bullets or shells or rations. He would use rockets to destroy the six forts protecting Fredericksburg and then batter the Septens into submission.

Here were my objections to this madness at the time:
1) We only had six rockets, one per fort, and they were notoriously unreliable.
2) The ones we possessed were not yet as capable as the ones that Karlus Borbonus-Habsburgus’ gang had used in much greater numbers, too.
3) Setting up and firing the rockets was a complex task, and most of the crews assigned to do so had never done it before.
4) We did not have the pre-built bunkers and the element of surprise that the aforementioned gang had, so our rockets would be obvious targets to the increasingly capable Septen celagii.
5) Even if every rocket succeeded, we still lacked the strength to defeat the new Septen forces in our path and actually take Fredericksburg.
6) Even if we could take Fredericksburg, it had plenty of paths for evacuation, and the bandit government which Gonzalus hoped to capture could simply escape before we arrived.

Throughout this time, Curtis was launching his attack, using many of a new type of ansukarrus with a gun and armour equal or superior to our own, a model they called ‘Knight’. As was correctly rumoured at the time, the army Washborough was painstakingly shifting from the west coast to the east was not only equipped with many such vehicles, but with veteran murderers skilled in operating them, rather than Curtis’ enthusiastic but inexperienced greenhorns. For a time, skill and experience and the Alkahest let us hold our own against his initial attacks against our forces along the river miscalled Appomattox, but that could only last so long. The Septens still had plenty of young men, even with the ravages of the plague, and their factories were busy turning out ever more karrii. Curtis and Taft and the others were learning how best to counter the Alkahest, through their understanding that our supplies were limited. If we used the weapon to block their advance, they would simply withdraw and try another route. We could use the Alkahest to control their axes of advance, but not to block all of them. We did not have enough Alkahest, our supplies were growing strained as the ironsharks began to bite our supplies from Zone 13, and it was a hazardous weapon to use at the best of times. Every day we lost another few artillerymen we couldn’t afford because of terrible leaks and contaminations from the fatal shells. This could not continue.

And through all this, instead of focusing on ways to try to halt Curtis’ attacks before they broke us, Gonzalus was obsessed with his lunatic rocket plan. And so, even while I worried if I would ever see Persephone again, on Hextember 29th the day had finally come.

Two days earlier, I had fought alongside my fellow Celatores in an attempt to repel one of the latest Septen attacks. Curtis’ ansukarrii were routing us in a place miscalled Amelia, threatening to cut off our forward force around Richmond, while all Gonzalus could think of was those six rockets as he proudly unveiled them. Sutardus, now promoted to Segundus and long since recovered from the wound he had sustained earlier in the campaign, used his sniping skills to pick off any opponent commanders sufficiently incautious to stick their heads out of their karrii’s turrets. Most soon learned their lesson, and instead Sutardus was relegated to being one of the many infantrymen using firefist weapons against the powerful new Septen ‘Knight’ karrii. But the Knights had strong and well-shaped glacis armour, and mostly our weapons simply glanced off it – after which the Septens would rake our positions with cingular gun fire from their coaxial turret gun. Too many good men lost their lives that way. Sometimes the Knights could even stand up to bombs dropped by our Llama flying artillery celagii, those few which would dare venture over our position now the Septens had deployed more and more celagii of their own.

The one weak spot of the Knight, like any karrus, was its chaintracks. A good shot could blow a track off and immobilise the karrus, leaving it easy pickings for a heavy gun or one of our own karrii. Or, in this case, some foolish Spekulador who had been handed a ‘devil brew’ spirit bottle bomb. I smashed the bottle over the opponent’s engine and fled as the spirit ignited; the Septen murderers hastily popped their hatch and escaped before they could be cooked alive. One of them, however, had the presence of mind or singular purpose to draw his sidearm and put a bullet in my leg.

It was not a major wound, but it took me out of the action to a field hospital. It meant I was lying on my back on a stretcher, two days after the incident, staring at the sky in the northern area Gonzalus’ army held. I was close enough to see the trails of smoke through the sky, like strange, unnatural, thready clouds, tracing lines northwards.

Three trails, to be precise, one of which terminated long before it reached its target.

It was a stupid plan and it should not have succeeded. It succeeded not because of any merits of Gonzalus or the plan itself, but because the Septens reacted in illogical ways that no sensible person could have predicted. I do not care if it delivered the victory that freed millions of people in the south-east of Zone 4 from bondage to the lies calling themselves nations. I do not care if it meant I lived to spend happy years with Persephone. It was still an exercise in idiocy that should never have worked.

Some say there is a special providence that protects fools. If so, it was working overtime for Gonzalus. I have always been tempted to attribute unlikely successes by the Human Cause to the grace of Dyeus, but in this case I cannot bring myself to believe that the Creator would look favourably on this. The universe is not so poorly designed.

The Kapud, of course, realised this. While others celebrated Gonzalus after the fact, he never elevated the man above Arminius or Kadarus, honouring them all equally. Some had the audacity to claim that he feared that Gonzalus was too popular and a threat to his own position! As though the Kapud would be motivated by such base concerns. Envy is a terrible thing...

*

From: “The Black Twenties” by Errol Mitchell (1973)—

The end of the War of 1926 is one of the most bizarre occurrences in all the Black Twenties, an era which has a surfeit of candidates for such an award.

It came at a peculiar moment for the invading Societists and the American defenders. The Societists had conquered all before them in the east, sweeping northwards through the Piedmont plain shared by Carolina and Old Virginia, before Gonzalus’ leading army was finally in a position to threaten Fredericksburg – almost. In practice, though few Americans truly realised this until years later, the Societists were overstretched and could have shattered into retreat if faced with the right blow in the right place. Perhaps Marshal Curtis might have even achieved such a blow if he had had a little more time.

There is no profit in counterfactuals; but if he had, it is curious to imagine what might have happened. The Societists might have fallen back to, perhaps, Charleston, their position routed. But their other armies had already secured control of the Floridas, Georgia and much of the Cherokee lands, with Ohioan forces holding them back in Tenessee and Franklin but certainly not advancing. The Westernesse forces along the Mississippi were more successful, but still could not push back an enemy armed with the Alkahest. It seems likely that, even if Curtis had defeated Gonzalus in Chesapeake, the Societists could not have been expelled from North America altogether. Perhaps if America had been willing to sustain great losses in order to do so; but in the exhausting aftermath of years of war with Russia and plague (a plague which was seeing a new wave as President Briars tore up restrictions in order to move troops and supplies) this seems unlikely.

Gonzalus gambled everything on a weapon that had broken the stalemate for the Italians in Poland: rockets. Though the Societists’ effort was not so sophisticated as Pazzaglia’s Marte weapon, the bigger problem was that Gonzalus only had six of them, sent in one of those vague and unhelpful cut-back compromises common to war departments everywhere, even in the so-called Liberated Zones. He proposed to use them to neutralise the six ‘Diamond Ring’ forts around Fredericksburg. The eyewitness Markus Garzius, as well as many military analysts since, point out that the statistical likelihood of pulling this off was astronomically low given the nature of the rockets at the time, and even if achieved, it would not deliver Fredericksburg to the Societists.

Indeed, of the six rockets, only three successfully launched – the other three blew up on takeoff, and, thanks to their Alkahest warheads, slew dozens of Societist ground crew in horrific incidents (far worse than the Alkahest accidents that had already occurred on a small scale with artillery shells). Gonzalus had, at least, managed to avoid American spotter dromes from noticing and reporting the rockets for bomb attacks before they launched, which later analysts attribute to a failure of communication in the chain of command coupled to a focus on Curtis’ push into the town of Amelia. Of the three rockets which launched, one quickly spun off due to a fault and exploded in midair, raining diluted death-luft and Alkahest near the town of Hanover; three locals died and twenty-nine more received long-term health complications.

However, two rockets successfully made it to their targets – which the same analysts believe is actually on the optimistic end of what the statistics suggest. The Americans did belatedly receive a report from a spotter drome, too late to strike the launch sites. The Diamond Ring forts had been equipped with Photel-corrupter antennae of the type used by the Russians on the off-chance that a Photel-guided weapon might be used against them (or, more likely, that a Photel spotter drome of the enemy might be used). To their horror, however, these countermeasures proved ineffective against the Societist rockets, which continued to fly straight and true regardless of any corrupted guidance beams.

The reason for this lay in the one component of the Societist rocket design which was more advanced than its Italian counterpart. Pazzaglia had experimented with guidance solution engines, only to reject them: he found that the moving parts of the mechanical engines of the day created recoil, meaning that any calculation performed to make a correction would itself introduce a new error in the trajectory. The Societists, however, had solved or at least minimised this problem: their ypologetic engineers had successfully built a small, specialised solution engine out of finely-machined alumium components, small and light enough that the recoil was minimised to acceptable levels. This is an example of a technological dead end, as before the next major war surfinal ypologists would replace mechanical solution engines in such roles.[17] Nonetheless, here and now it made a huge, significant difference.

The result was that the two remaining rockets arced straight and true to their designated targets, following the corrections of their solution engines. It is strange to imagine how history might have been different if their fates had been traded with two of the others, and if two other forts had been destroyed. On paper, it would seem to make no difference, and yet thanks to the vagaries of humanity and the fortune of war, it made all the difference in the world.

The two targets of the surviving rockets were Black Swan, the fort directly south of Fredericksburg, and Chickadee, directly to the north. The capital city of the Empire of North America was positioned almost exactly in the middle of these two forts, as one might expect. Both attacks were successful, drenching the forts in Alkahest-enhanced death-luft and killing most of their garrisons, with the few survivors often horrifically injured and with life-shortening conditions. Tactically, they achieved little. The Diamond Ring was designed to continue functioning with the loss of one fort due to secondary defences in between. Taking out Black Swan would only help the Societists a little in any quest to push north towards the capital, and taking out distant Chickadee helped them not at all.

Strategically, however, was a different matter. It took many decades, and the publciation of Markus Garzius’ memoirs, before American historians analysts would accept that the destruction of those two forts alone had been a fluke, the result of four out of six rockets failing. That Gonzalus’ plan, in Garzius’ disparaging view, had simply been to destroy Fredericksburg’s defences with a showy new weapon and hope this would somehow lead to the capital falling, even though the Societists were in no position to exploit such a breakthrough (in fact, they were retreating before Curtis’ flank attacks). That was very much not how it was seen in Fredericksburg on that fateful day of August 29th 1926.

The Societists were, apparently, unaware of Tales from the Trenches. This book was published in 1925, the memoir of Captain Albert Hartman, an American-born career soldier and traveller who had instead joined up with the German army and fought in the miserable Oder pocket on the Polish front. The book was promoted by the Imperial government, both because the Germans were seen as a sufficiently worthy ally that Hartman’s allegiance was not viewed as suspect, and also because of an implicit propaganda message that no matter how bad things were with American soldiers on the Alyeska/Kamchatka front, things were worse in plague-ridden Europe. Despite its harrowing subject matter, the book had proved a hit, and there was even talk of a stage play adaptation when the theatres were allowed to reopen consistently. It had been a best-seller among many of the American chattering classes, businessmen and tradesmen and their wives who wanted to pretend that they understood war. All of this meant that much of the American middle classes, especially those in the fashionable capital, would recognise a reference to what Hartman called the Bracketing Threat.

According to Hartman (some other Polish Front veterans later disputed his claim), it was routine in the darkest days of the Oder pocket to play a ‘game of chicken’ with the foe when it came to artillery ranging. Usually, of course, the purpose of artillery ranging was to find a target by spotting where shells landed and then adjusting the guns. At first, an artillery piece might drop its shell a hundred yards short of where the enemy trench sat; then, after adjustment, it might fall fifty yards behind it. By making corrections and adjustments, the artillerymen would improve their aim until their shells were striking the target consistently, at which point other guns might use the same firing solution and open up. Such had been common in the Pandoric War and again in this one. However, Hartman claimed that a different kind of artillery ranging was frequently used in the pocket. This was when the firing solution was already known (perhaps due to having good maps and solution engines, or just because this miserable stretch of mud had already been fought over so many times). But due to that same drawn-out nature of the war, both sides might be short of ammunition and working artillery. So they would pointedly fire fake ‘ranging shots’, one deliberately aimed fifty yards (for instance) short of the enemy position, one deliberately aimed fifty yards beyond. The idea was to pose an implicit threat to the enemy, to exploit his paranoia, to make him guess whether one actually possessed the guns and ammunition to follow up the ‘ranging’ shots with a full bombardment or not. By doing so, the Germans and their allies (or the Russians on the other side) could bluff the enemy into withdrawing from a trench when they did not actually have the ability to bombard it. Then, after this had been tried a few times, there would be a ‘Boy who cried ‘Wolf!’’ scenario where a complacent enemy, refusing to withdraw, would be caught unawares by an actual bombardment. Hartman compared it to the old, half-legendary practice of nineteenth-century Meridian gauchos shooting at an enemy’s feet to make him dance.

As mentioned above, military scholars debate whether this was really as common a practice as Hartman claimed, but fundamentally, all that mattered was that the people of Fredericksburg thought it was. From their perspective, the Societists, using a new wonder weapon in place of artillery, had just pointedly bracketed the capital between two ‘shots’. Furthermore, news of the accident at Hanover, and some interpreted this as a small demonstration of what the rockets might do to a civilian target. In fact, afterwards the Societists always denied any intention of using their weapons against a city (and indeed they generally kept to the laws of war in this respect, certainly when facing a powerful foe that might respond in kind). It was a startling revelation to learn that what Americans had always dismissed as mere propaganda was a genuine statement. In their eyes, the Societists had blatantly threatened to drown Fredericksburg in death-luft.

The response of the Fredericksbourgeois people was, naturally, to panic. There had already been unrest after Lugallus Simonus flew dromes over the capital, but the forts had since shot several of them down and restored public confidence. Now, not only had the Societists wiped out two of those forts from many miles away with impunity, using a weapon that could not be countered – they had seemingly threatened the city itself. Furthermore, ex-President Gilmore’s son had been a commander of the Chickadee fort (a suitably out-of-the-way military posting that strings had been pulled to grant him). He did not die immediately from the death-luft, but lurid newspaper accounts of his painful last moments and his father’s breakdown only intensified the climate of fear and panic. Some viewed this as a deliberate targeting by the Societists, an attack on Gilmore through his family. This also fed an impression that Alfarus had a particular bone with Gilmore (perhaps due to the Venezuela reconquest comments, which now seemed to belong to a different age) and hinted to some Americans that the Societists might have less of an implacable quarrel with America’s new leadership. Perhaps this new threat was a demand to negotiate an end to the war?

Several prominent individuals went missing in the actions of the mob, as well as a number of historically important buildings being burnt down; at least two thousand Fredericksbourgeois are thought to have died in the unrest, discounting those who became infected by a new wave of the plague spread as a result. Alienists have pointed to the slow burn of resentment under the plague-control restrictions as a subtle additional reason for the unrest; the Societists had lit the spark, but the pressure had long been building. Institutions of government were often targeted; three MCPs were murdered by the mob, one (Sir Francis Cox) because he was caught attempting to flee the city, but two others simply because they were politicians. This naturally led to a major crackdown, with the Fredericksburg Metropolitan Police and the Virginia Confederal Guard both using wooden riot bullets to subdue the more violet offenders.

Emperor Augustus gave a famous and storied speech to the combined Houses of the Continental Parliament, which was also distributed across the city. He pledged that he would not flee the endangered city, but remain in place with his people, and challenged the MCPs and Lords to do the same. Privately, Augustus was terrified (as he recorded in his recently-declassified diaries) but he felt that abandoning Fredericksburg would be tantamount to surrender; that it would be ‘an end to a united Empire acting as one rather than a mass of petty confederations – an end to the Imperial Constitution and its freedoms – perhaps even an end to the Crown itself, God forbid’. By seizing the day in the eyes of the people, the Emperor at least ensured that the Hanoverian monarchy in the Novamund would live to see better times.

One person who did not hear Augustus’ speech was his erstwhile fellow royal, Princess Daniela of Venezuela, who was among those missing after the unrest. She is certainly the highest-profile case, not only because of her former position, but because her disappearance has fascinated adventurers and conspiracy theorists ever since. As the Meridian exile Jorge Suárez had died only months before, and both he and Daniela had been prominent figures warning of the Societist threat, some of those theorists claim they were both ‘removed’ by foul play – whether by American politicians to prevent ‘I told you so’ embarrassment or by Societists as a potential threat. There is no evidence for either. Exactly what happened to the Princess remains an open question to this day; for decades afterwards, a common conversation starter at debutate balls in Fredericksburg would be “Where’s Daniela?” This phrase is repeated today by young people in conversation, who frequently have no knowledge of the unfortunate Venezuelan exile to whom it refers.

According to accounts by both Markus Garzius and Dionysius Oderus, Lugallus Gonzalus was quickly replaced by his superior Rivarius, who arrived on a series of trains from Ultima, repeatedly delayed by half-repaired sabotage and the like. Garzius claims this was because Gonzalus was left nonplussed by the response to his rocket attack, which had been an embarrassing underperformance from his perspective; he had no notion of what to do with President Briars’ offer to open negotiations. Oderus implies Rivarius simply arrived to deal with it as his superior, while Garzius suggests Gonzalus was actively removed from command to stop him shrugging at this and continuing to fight, missing the opportunity which the American misconception had offered. We cannot be certain which is true.

Even more so than the negotiations in Vienna between the European powers, the so-called Treaty of Richmond would be anything but. The Societists did not acknowledge the existence of the Empire as a legitimate entity, and the Empire had no place to fit the Societists into its own framework of diplomatic perception. Much of the ‘negotiation’ consisted of both sides talking past each other. A month of ceasefire stretched out, during which time a number of things changed on the American side. Washborough and some of the Kamchatka-rescued troops from Dawson’s army arrived, while the pause in warfare and its hungry logistics meant that the surging plague was fought back under something closer to control once again. As some Societists had feared, the Americans tended to grow stronger by the day, although their forces also benefited from the pause in the ironshark attacks on their convoys in the Caribbean.

In the negotiations, Rivarius (aided by Damgarus Luzius Karriegus, now freed from prison) was somewhat hampered by his ideological doctrine making it difficult to speak of land in terms of national definitions. From the start, the Societists’ ambition was clearly to control the pre-Pandoric War bounds of Carolina, but they could not actually describe it in those terms. The success of the men of Westernesse (including the black militias of Nouvelle-Orléans) in holding back the Societists also meant that the old province of Wragg, and parts of the old Cherokee lands west of the Pearl River, were still held by American forces. The front line was close to the antebellum borders of the Ohioan provinces of Tennessee and Franklin, so there was little to dispute there. Oderus claims that the Societists would have settled for the old 1896 border otherwise, holding South Province as their most northerly holding. However, in part due to using lines of latitude as ‘neutral’ references rather than being able to refer to past national territories, Rivarius ended up tracing a border along the 36th parallel north (later corrected to 36.1) east of the Watertree-Catawba River. This put a chunk of Charlotte and Africa Nova provinces in Societist hands, with Charlotte the city just north of the ruler-straight border and Crosscreek [Fayetteville] just south. Such is the fate that mere happenstance and the slip of a ruler can hold, for Charlotte would retain its cultural identity, while Crosscreek’s peculiarities (such as its traditional hippophagia) would be consigned to destruction by the Cultural Homogenisation Authority.[18]

Otherwise, much of the borders would end up resembling those of Carolina in 1896, albeit with the Americans still holding most of Wragg and parts of Cherokee, both awarded to Westernesse. Ironically, that Confederation, many of whose people had been keen to get rid of Nouvelle-Orléans and its ‘alien’ populace before the war, had changed its views; a bond had been forged in battle between the white farmers of Arkensor and Trinity and the black tradesmen of the old French city on the Gulf. With the new lands taken over, Westernesse could finally enjoy territorial continuity and full control of the lower Mississippi River. So from that perspective, at least one Confederation of the Empire benefited from the War of 1926.

Elsewhere, of course, the peace was viewed as a humiliation. Cuba and Jamaica were also abandoned to the tender embrace of the black flag, though Briars and his fellow negotiators would claim they fought hard to regain the Windward and Leeward Islands from Societist landings (and did so). The Societists’ less than successful second-rank troops also pulled out of Guatemala’s Costa Rica province. When attacked by black politicians from Africa Nova who claimed (likely with some justice) that the Americans had agreed to Rivarius’ ruler-straight border so readily because it mostly sacrificed majority-black territory, Briars would less convincingly claim that it had been that or surrendering the much larger black population of Virginia’s Hispaniola province.

Such arguments cut little ice with the infuriated American public, who had seen (in their eyes) them forced to suffer under plague-control restrictions, their young men die in an icy wasteland nobody except Gus Gilmore cared about, and then their government incite a war with a powerful southern neighbour which no-one had prepared for. Meanwhile, Washborough, from his safe position outside Fredericksburg (supposedly ‘under Societist guns’ in the sense of the rockets which they no longer had) strongly opposed the peace deal and said America should fight on and be damned to the consequences. His defiance commanded respect from the public, but little enthusiasm. Fundamentally, few Americans cared one way or the other about what happened to Carolina, as had been evidenced by the way they had been voting over the past quarter-century. What they did care about was getting their own young men home, and - after all the frantic speculation due to the intercepted Societist messages about putting prisoners of war in re-education camps - they would be repatriated to America as part of the treaty. Some Supremacists did doubt the wisdom of a peace which placed the enemy so close to Virginia and the capital, but Dame Eleanor Cross of the Patriots argued presciently that, as rocket technology would doubtless improve in the future, soon everyone’s capitals would be within range of attack regardless of distance. Some MCPs also argued that the capital should be moved to a less vulnerable location, perhaps to a central site like Chichago or Occidentalia. Strangely enough, those MCPs all seemed to be from the western Confederations and fed up of the Arc of Power often getting first dibs on public spending. Regardless, nothing came of such a proposal.

Things were not helped when a hyperstorm, near the end of hyperstorm season in November, hit Pensacola and wrecked much of the Societist fleet there. Armchair generals claimed that if America had fought on, the Societists would have been defeated thanks to this factor – as though anyone could have predicted it. Some invoked a sense of Providence, that God had provided for the Americans if they had had the faith to fight on.

In February 1927, after a separate peace with Russia that de facto put the border down the Bering Strait, the long-delayed election finally took place under public pressure. The old Liberal Party, founded by John Vanburen almost a century earlier, finally broke apart as Washborough’s Overripes formed the core of a new party, the Pioneers, who took inspiration from the old western Neutrals and Democrats. The Pioneers also ate much of the vote of the Mentians, who had been discredited due to association with Societist-infiltrated trade unions, their accepting policy bribes from Gilmore at a poor time, and infighting between Magnus Bloom and other leaders. Their party would never rise again, but its tendency would be a strong influence within the Pioneers. The rest of the Liberals (led by the less than inspiring Archie Cooper, as Briars had retired) were battered down to a shadow of their former selves. Possibly only George Spencer-Churchill, now enormously popular, remaining loyal saved the party long-term. The landslide was intensified by the nature of the voting system at the time – something which some observers took note of. In a situation comparable to a reverse of that in 1900, the Supremacists benefited from the Liberals’ troubles, but seemed to win no great enthusiasm themselves. The Patriots also benefited from public admiration of Cross’ speeches.

Roderick Marley formed a shaky Supremacist minority government, supported intermittently by the Patriots and the remnants of the Cooperite Liberals in an echo of Faulkner’s Social American Coalition, while the Pioneers plotted in opposition. History had repeated itself in another way, too; the American political classes had signed up to what they hoped would be a temporary border, more of an armistice than a peace, until the next war would drive the Societists from North America. And, like in the 1850s, that border would end up lasting a lot longer than anyone could have dreamed.

As for Carolina, most of her, along with Cuba and Jamaica, she was now merely another part of Liberated Zone 4, as far as Kapud Alfarus was concerned. And their peoples would soon learn just what that meant...

*

“...er...yes, those headlines again. England’s Minister for Heath, Bes. Jocasta Smith, has reiterated that there is no cause for alarm, as she announces that quarantine measures have now been extended to the whole of the English county of Cambridgeshire and the Gendarmery has closed its borders. Smith stated that health scientists are studying the novel respiratory disease, six cases of which have been reported in the historic University town. She also denied a rumour that the disease had escaped from a lab, as seen in this clip:”

“...I don’t know if the Herald’s journalists still bother to check their sources, sir, but did you by any chance notice that the lab from which you alleged the leak had taken place isn’t even a biology lab? It’s a physics research lab! Didn’t you see the recent New Year lecture Motoscoped from there by Doctrix Beatrice Bristow? I...I’m sorry, a voice in my ear is telling me we need to move on. Next question...”

– Transcription of a C-WNB News Motoscope broadcast,
recorded in Waccamaw Strand, Kingdom of Carolina, 04/08/2020​




[1] This is similar to the strategy used by the Coalition against Napoleon in the leadup to the Battle of Leipzig in OTL, except in that case they were avoiding confronting Napoleon’s tactical genius on the battlefield, rather than refusing to face the enemy’s limited supply of a superweapon.

[2] See Part #229 in Volume VI.

[3] I.e. the OTL North Carolina-Virginia border.

[4] Recall that ‘American Coalition’ is the generic term in TTL for what we would call a grand coalition (i.e. a coalition of the two largest, usually opposing, parties), and is associated with national war governments.

[5] See footnote 10 to Part #288 in this volume.

[6] OTL Fort Sumter – approximately, the island is not quite in the same place. It was also built decades later than Fort Sumter, as Carolina did not require significant coastal defences until after the Great American War (in contrast to OTL, where the United States built up its sea defences after the War of 1812 due to the threat of the Royal Navy).

[7] In OTL terms, crossing from South Carolina to North Carolina.

[8] It is a reminder of the varying pace of technology in this world, compared to OTL, that the planes are roughly as technically capable as designs from the mid-1930s in OTL, but radio technology is around where it was in the late 1910s in OTL: the idea of a two-way voice radio small enough to fit in a fighter is groundbreaking.

[9] The Ottoman Ambassador’s name (and title) is Cemil Murad Pasha; Mercier is using an honourific form of address similar to ‘sir’ in English (or ‘Monsieur’ in pre-revolutionary French).

[10] Alluding to the Franco-Ottoman alliance established between King Francis I and Sultan Sulemain the Magnificent in 1536.

[11] This timeline has not seen the adoption of the fez over the turban by Ottoman officials as part of modernisation programmes, as was the case in OTL, although turbans have become more standardised; the fez is still associated more with North Africa specifically.

[12] Either Mercier or the discourse she’s alluding to are getting slightly confused with their 19th century French history; the voyous were the mostly National-supporting groups who warned of a possible German invasion and advocated a pre-emptive strike, whereas it was Diamantine leader François Resnais who wanted to invade Algiers and claim it for France (but missed his chance).

[13] Recall that ‘Lugallus’ is more of a temporarily commissioned position than a rank, so Garzius is referring to Gonzalus by the permanent rank he would revert to as soon as that commission is over.

[14] Garzius’ somewhat questionable rendering into Novalatina of the name of the Sultan of Sulu, i.e. he is referring to his early days fighting Sulu forces in the Nusantara.

[15] Garzius is alluding to the Scientific Method in what we would call Popperian terms, i.e. that no theory is ever ‘the truth’, but is knowingly used until falsified by data which leads to a new and improved (but still not ‘true’) theory. He contrasts this with the notion of Plato’s cave, a thought experiment in which prisoners are chained up facing a wall all their lives, seeing only shadows cast on the wall by those moving behind him, as a metaphor for how human perception of the world is fundamentally limited. Whereas many ancient Greek scholars used this kind of argument to dismiss the idea of empirical science and evidence in favour of pure mathematics and logic in philosophy (if our data is inherently flawed, we cannot reach ‘the perfect truth’ based on it), the Scientific Method instead argues that that data can still be good enough to make useful progress and proceed to a deeper level of understanding. Garzius is relating this to the rigid Societist view of vocations determined by meritocratic tests, and arguing that the philosophy of Human Science authorises him to give comment on those occupying vocations other than his own. As one may be able to tell, this is something of a point of controversy in the Combine at the time he is writing.

[16] I.e. August. The Societists mix Greek and Latin prefixes somewhat; for example, they use Hex and Sept for six and seven respectively, to avoid the similarity of Sex / Sept and Hex / Hept.

[17] I.e. electronic computers.

[18] See Part #189 in Volume IV."