Once Upon a December: A Different Decembrist Russia

[MarshalBraginsky]

Since the Decembrists had taken over the Russian Empire and presided over the reign of Constantine, most of Russia had changed for good. With the abolition of serfdom and the promotion of settlement in faraway Siberia, the mobility of the peasantry had increased tenfold. Around twenty thousand foreign students from Europe and Asia had registered and studied in Russian universities, renowned for its complete overhaul of its educational program because they were staffed by Decembrist supporters. However, Russia had its own tragedy while Europe focused on events in the Balkans. Tsar Constantine had died in 1855 while he resided in his summer villa in the Crimea. The ensuing coronation of Vladimir Constantinovich as Tsar marked a second stage in the Pestelist revolution as Russia gradually entered into its isolation mode, with the Korean and Japanese expedition as an exception to the Pestelist ideology.

The Life of Vladimir Constantinovich:

Vladimir Constantinovich Romanov was born in February 28th, 1818 in a Russia that was still under the ancient regime of Alexander I. Young Vladimir spent most of his childhood in St. Petersburg among other children of the nobility and the military officers. When the Decembrist Revolution broke out in 1825, Vladimir and his siblings were sent to Kazan, to keep them away from the ensuing violence that threatened to rip the Russian Empire apart. When their father took the crown as Tsar, his children returned to St. Petersburg to rejoin their family. Under the Decembrists, all of the Imperial Family’s children would be educated under famous Decembrists, with Vladimir himself educated under Pestel’s tutelage. In 1836, Vladimir was sent to Poland to complete his education and he had witnessed for the first time the reality of Polish life under Russian control. Though Poland became a free nation in 1825, most of its inhabitants fiercely resisted Russian rule.

During Vladimir’s tenure in Warsaw, he met up with Polish intelligentsias and discussed daily events, such as the Pestelist revolution in Russia and Poland’s desire to break free from Russian control. As a shrewd observer, Vladimir kept a diary and wrote his experiences with the Poles inside. Vladimir joined the Imperial Russian Navy as soon as he returned from Poland, rising in ranks as a common sailor. During the Spring of Nations, Vladimir was stationed aboard the newly constructed Russian steamship, the Izhora. His ship participated in Putyatin’s expedition to Japan but had to return to Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka for repairs. When news of his father’s death reached the Tsarevich, Vladimir joined the Korean delegation on their way to St. Petersburg for the coronation. Once Vladimir took the crown as Tsar, he began to discuss with naval officials about reforming the Russian Navy along British lines. As Tsar, Vladimir toured the shipyards around the Russian Empire and wrote in his diary of the deficiencies facing the shipbuilding industry. He also discussed with Prime Minister Ryleyev about the possibility of reforming the Russian Army along Prussian lines, something Pestel and Muraviev supported.

Outside Europe:

The 1850s was not a good decade for the British Empire in a sense that they had two rebellions on their hands. First, the Eureka Revolt occurred in Australia over excessive taxation of the mining licenses the Australian miners had to pay. The resentment over such high taxes in Australia had echoed the American resentment over the taxes they paid to support the British war efforts in Europe, but the main difference was that the Australians demanded the right to vote, and to resolve the murder of James Scobie in a court led by a corrupt magistrate, in which Scobie’s killer had been acquitted. The final catalyst for the Eureka Revolt was the unfolding of the Eureka flag and the miners’ militant stance against the British authorities. Though the Eureka Revolt was seemingly crushed in December of 1854 by British soldiers, the miners would become more militant, thanks to the ascension into power of two prominent Australian figures: Peter Lalor, who represented the disgruntled miners and Charles Banson Humffray, the leader of the Ballarat Reform League. Though Humffray was captured in the aftermath of the Eureka siege, tried and executed soon after, Peter Lalor managed to flee from Australia, arriving in the Dutch East Indies at first before boarding a ship bound for Pusan. Lalor and his band of miners who chose to leave Australia in exile eventually wound up in Korea as guests of the previous Korean king before the Russian coup which brought the young Gojong into power. Lalor’s faction was somehow caught up in the chaos and had been sent into a Siberian katorga by mistake before Menshikov arrived in the Ob River Katorga and interviewed with Lalor. Although Russia didn’t have an extradition treaty with Great Britain, they were certainly not comfortable with Lalor’s presence as it would certainly jeopardize Russia’s fragile relations with Britain.

To ease up on the situation, Lalor and his men were allowed to leave Russia and head for the United States instead, without alerting the British authorities. Within six months of sea travel from across the Pacific, the unnamed ship carrying the Australian exiled miners arrived in San Francisco. The California Gold Rush had already ended as prospective local miners had moved northwards into neighboring Oregon to search for a bigger source of gold, leaving California deserted for a while. It was not until 1857 that Lalor began to set up his own émigré community in San Francisco, consisting of all the Australian miners who came with him. To this day, the county of Lalor is named after Peter Lalor.

Great Britain however, did not abandon the issue with regards to Lalor’s whereabouts and indeed, a British admiral on a visit in San Francisco had located one of Lalor’s deputies inside a local bar. He asked the deputy where Lalor is located, but he refused to answer. The incident could have been avoided had David Price immediately returned to his ship docked in San Francisco harbor, but it was not to be. In the cover of night, twenty Royal Marines secretly raided Lalor’s makeshift community and dragged all the exiled miners and placed them on Price’s ship, bound for Australia. This act of violation on American soil triggered a hostile response from President Franklin Pierce, who wrote a scathing letter to Queen Victoria, condemning her navy’s conduct of capturing ‘political exiles’ and dragging them out in the middle of the night, unaware of Lalor’s real status as a political activist among the remnants of the Eureka Revolt. The tit-for-tat communication between the United Kingdom and the United States would become the vocal point for the latter’s permanent enmity with its former colonial master and indeed, it would certainly have devastating effects in any future wars.

Upon returning to Australia, the British colonial authorities charged Lalor with inciting a rebellion, high treason and political agitation. The verdict was a foregone conclusion, with Lalor and several of his exiled countrymen sentenced to death by a firing squad. Most of Europe reacted positively to Britain’s crackdown on political agitation but Prime Minister Ryleyev in his 1857 Moscow speech on the ‘Lalor Affair’ had criticized both Britain and the United States for not paying attention to the plight of political activists from all corners of the globe. Pestel and Muraviev agreed on Ryleyev’s comments, though they were unsure if pursuing a cordial relationship with Britain would be in their best interests, or to ally with their main idol, the United States.

British Affairs within the Empire:

The Eureka Revolt was one of the major events which shaped British political nature around its empire, though the biggest rebellion occurred in their Indian Raj. Incensed by a new generation of British administrators, who cared little for the traditions of their subjects, whether they were Hindu, Sikh or Muslim, a major rebellion was going to break out sooner or later. The main crux of the rebellion’s origins was the introduction of a rifle which required a soldier to bite the cartridge. In this case, animal fat would be used to help break the cartridge, though they either used tallow from cattle, considered forbidden by Hindus, or lard from pork, also considered forbidden by Muslims. In what became known as the Indian Rebellion, the British East India Company’s reign and the Mughal Empire had both come to an end as all of the Indian states under direct or indirect British control were now consolidated from London.

Change of Guard in Russia:

At the same time the American Civil War broke out, Pavel Pestel died at the age of 68 and was buried in St. Petersburg. Within three months, Nikita Muraviev also passed away but his remains were interned in a quiet Poltava military cemetery. It was not until 1905 that the bodies of the Decembrists would be interned altogether in a special monument built in St. Petersburg, overlooking the Kronstadt naval base. Nikolay Milyutin soon succeeded Ryleyev as Prime Minister of Russia and presided over the blossoming of the new generation of liberal minded politicians, including Pyotr Stolypin, Sergei Witte, and Feliks Yusupov. An unknown wildcard politician soon arose however, as the Ulyanov family soon became the most vocal supporters of the Pestelist ideology, and indeed Ilya Ulyanov became the most celebrated politician among the peoples of Siberia when Vladimir III Romanov and Milyutin appointed Ulyanov as Governor General of Siberia in 1862. It was worth noting that some of the next generations of Pestelist romanticists were of non-Russian origin, with most revolutionaries of Tatar descent. There were some Jewish supporters of Pestelism, particularly among the younger generation who longed for an autonomous Jewish homeland within the Russian Empire. While Pestel was still alive, he proposed the Trebizond region as a potential homeland for the Jews, although Milyutin and Vladimir Constantinovich wanted to earmark a part of Central Asia as a better homeland for Russia’s own Jewish population, based on the belief that the lands on the eastern side of the Caspian was once a part of the Judaic Khazar Empire.

On March 3rd, 1861, Vladimir announced his personal project of the Russian Empire: the creation of an autonomous homeland for Russia’s Jewish population that could replace the Pale of Settlement. In his Tsaritsyn speech on the same day, Vladimir proposed three locations that might be a perfect spot for Jewish settlement: the Trebizond, where Jewish settlement could spearhead Russian trade with the rump Ottoman Empire and Persia, the eastern side of the Caspian in Central Asia, where the Jews could forge their financial links with the cities of Samara and Tsaritsyn, and Alaska, where massive colonization efforts and Swedish-style industrial-agricultural seasonal tandem can be applied. Upon further discussions with the Jewish community across the Russian Empire, Vladimir and Prime Minister Milyutin agreed that placing the Jews on the Trebizond would certainly invite trouble from the British Empire, while Central Asia might take some time because they needed to integrate the Central Asian Turkic tribes into the empire a lot closer, so in the end Vladimir officially declared Alaska as the best place for a Jewish homeland. After yet another round of discussions within all levels of the Russian government, the Jewish Alaskan Settlement Act became legal, resulting in a Jewish exodus eastwards. Prime Minister Milyutin also met up with Vladimir’s brothers, Mikhail the King of Hungary, and Vladislav/Wladyslaw the King of Poland in seeking their permission to invite the Polish and Hungarian Jews to settle in Alaska. Both brothers agreed, while congratulating their eldest brother for solving the thorny issue of the Jewish problem.

When the Civil War broke out, Vladimir authorized the formation of three Russian regiments to fight alongside the Union forces: the Dmitry Pozharsky Regiment, St. Mikhail Arkhangelsk Regiment (one of the most famous regiments in all of Russia, as it was known for its acceptance of Orthodox Christian volunteers from the Balkans and the Caucasus), and the Pugachev Cossack Volunteers Regiment (the Cossack cavalry regiment). He was not alone in recruiting potential soldiers that will bring back experiences from the civil war: the Prussians created their own regiments and in some cases the Prussian military even sent their own generals to enlist individually in the Union forces and Wladyslaw V Romanov created the Kosciuszko Regiment for Polish volunteers. Countries which sent their volunteers to fight for the Confederacy were Spain, which sent a token regiment to observe the Confederate battle tactics, while mercenaries would often enlist for the Confederates as well.

 

[Razgriz 2K9]

It seems Petelist Russia is increasingly becoming Liberal. Though the matter of the fact is, how do you still plan on extraditing Russia's Jewish population (and quite likely, all of Europe's as well) to Trebizond or Central Asia, wouldn't that create a great problem?

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

American Civil War – A House Divided:

It was inevitable for the industrial Northern region and the agrarian Southern region of the United States to clash, as abolitionists called for the end of slavery, while slave holders feared the declining slaveocracy as a result of mass production of consumer goods in Northern factories. The issue of slavery expanded further when the Congress of Vienna in 1815 had condemned the international slave trade, although a few countries still practice the abduction of slaves from African territories. One famous incident which occurred in the United States was the La Amistad incident in 1839, in which two Spanish officials were arrested and charged with slavery. The Africans, who were illegally seized from their homes and were declared as the slaves coming from Cuba, eventually returned to Africa. Spain continued to demand for compensation from successive US governments until the Civil War, when the Confederate States promised to pay the compensation Spain demanded in exchange for Spanish recognition of the Confederacy.

Within the Civil War era, immigrants from Europe opted to move towards Australia and New Zealand instead. Indeed, the Irish immigration would fuel Australia’s drive for democracy a bit further, especially with the Ned Kelly Rebellion, as it will be mentioned later on. Although a few countries were extremely far away from war-torn North America, they were affected by the Civil War’s outcomes, in particular to Prussia since it supported the Union’s goal of defeating the Confederacy, and many of its officers who volunteered on the battlefields of the divided United States would become prominent leaders in the new German Army. Nations like Mexico would have been affected by the Civil War as well, since most of the slaves living within the Confederacy would opt to move into Mexican territories instead of the Northern states, while colonies like British North America would eventually form a new nation later called Canada.

Tragedy at Fort Donelson – Demise of Two Generals:

From February 12th to March 8th of 1862, the Union armies led by Ulysses Grant launched an attempt to capture the important Confederate base at Fort Donelson. As the Confederate forces under General Buckner made a breakout attempt on the other side of the Cumberland River, logistical issued plagued the Union forces on the front lines. General Grant returned to the front line and led the attack on the Confederate position, even as ammunition began to run out. Confederate artillery pounded the Union lines as Grant spotted the lower river batteries bombarding his position. Before Grant could give orders for the destruction of the batteries, one of the shells exploded beside him as Grant fell off his horse but could not move after a second shell knocked his horse off the ground. Grant was pronounced dead after he arrived in the medical tent, forcing Lew Wallace to take command. However, Grant was not the only US general who was killed in the attempted capture of Fort Donelson. Back in February of 1862 General Charles Smith had injured his leg while jumping on a rowboat and coupled with dysentery, he died in April. The deaths of both experienced Union generals was devastating to the Union army attempting to capture the fort, though their deaths were meaningless to the retreating Confederates until General Robert E. Lee was notified by a jubilant President Jefferson Davis about Grant’s death.

Perryville to Chattanooga – Luck Favors the Confederates:

General Braxton Bragg’s invasion of Kentucky gave General George Henry Thomas an opportunity to display some of his qualities that made him famous, even after the Civil War ended. As a man who preferred to allow more qualified generals to command the Union armies, Thomas would often serve as the second in command to most Union generals, though he could have managed well without the presence of his dead rival, General Grant. Although the Battle of Perryville ended in a draw with both sides claiming victories, there are several battles in which the Union would run out of luck and the Confederates’ fortunes would change. However, the Battle of Chickamauga in which Thomas bravely defended his position even as the Union would suffer a defeat there resulted in Bragg’s lost chance to deal more damage to General Rosecrans’s retreating army. It would be in the fields of Chattanooga where Confederate fortunes have taken a turn for better.

Chattanooga Campaign – Failure at the Cracker Line:

General Smith’s plan to link up with Hooker’s main army arriving from Bridgeport, Alabama was ambitious enough. Sure, capturing Brown’s Ferry was the first objective in opening up the so-called Cracker Line, which the Union forces under General Henry Slocum managed to accomplish rather easily. The Confederate leadership began to develop countermeasures to prevent the Cracker Line from opening, and General Bragg had given Longstreet a written order to obey his commands, or he will report to President Davis on Longstreet’s acts of insubordination. With the threat of demotion hanging over his head plus a court martial as well, Longstreet grudgingly decided to obey.

Longstreet’s four divisions were ordered to deploy close to Lookout Mountain, accompanied by artillery units. True to Bragg’s prediction, the Union forces assigned to capture Brown’s Ferry moved closer to the Confederate position. Coupled with weather delays on part of the Union leadership, Bragg’s own units arrived in both Lookout Mountain and Moccasin Point even when it was raining hard. On October 27th, 1863, Longstreet gave orders for an artillery barrage upon the descending Union forces led by General Hazen. The result was devastating. Within the first half hour, twenty percent of the Union advance guard was wiped out as Hazen himself was struck by a second barrage and instantly died. Colonel William Oates of the 15th Alabama Infantry then joined in the ambush as John Turchin’s brigade rushed to hold the line lost by Hazen’s brigade.

When Hooker’s main army joined up with Smith’s besieged units in Lookout Mountain, Bragg ordered more artillery units to fire a barrage upon the reinforcements while maintaining high ground. Successive Confederate counterattacks upon Turchin’s brigade forced its leader to retreat from Lookout Mountain as Hooker responded by sending his own artillery corps to bombard Bragg’s mountain stronghold. To make sure the Union would run out of supplies, Longstreet ordered Evander Law to block the roads which led to Moccasin Point and to capture any supplies that might fall into Union hands. Three more regiments led by Law were sent to block the roads leading into Lookout Mountain, forcing Smith to look elsewhere for another route to the Cracker Line. However, it soon became clear that Bragg’s intention was to force the Union into a war of attrition, though he has a geographical advantage over Hooker’s hapless position.

Chattanooga Campaign – Wauhatchie and Missionary Ridge:

Having accomplished the difficult task of defending both Lookout Mountain and Mocassin Point from the Union forces, Longstreet and Bragg turned their attention to an incoming Union force led by John Geary, presumably to reinforce Hooker’s position. A Confederate scout reported on the presence of supply mules to Bragg by 2200 hrs, allowing him to relay the order to hold the line to Longstreet’s forces. Because the attack on Wauhatchie occurred at nightfall, the end result became inconclusive. Though by the time dawn had arrived in Wauhatchie, the Confederate forces had a clear picture of what the Union was up to, which was to open up the Cracker Line. It was worth noting that both Grant and Bragg expressed their disappointment with their chosen subordinates, contributing to the poorly executed plans each side had in accomplishing their objectives.

The one good result which came out of the Wauhatchie battle was the arrival of General Beauregard’s Army of the Potomac on November 7th, a few days after Longstreet departed with the Army of Virginia. Beauregard and Law were given the task of cutting off Union reinforcements through Lookout Mountain, now that Confederate defenses improved with the addition of the Confederate Army’s own Irish volunteer regiments. To bolster Confederate chances of relieving the beleaguered garrison in Chattanooga, Beauregard ordered General Patrick Cleburne to launch an attack on the Union stronghold in Missionary Ridge, currently held by a larger Union army under William Sherman. Sherman’s faulty assumption on Confederate defensive strength and his improper positioning of his troops led to a disastrous Union attack on the Confederate stronghold. Upon arriving with fresh reinforcements, General Thomas ordered his forces to attack the entrenched Confederate positions, even as Bragg’s artillery bombardment had wiped out the remaining number of Sherman’s units.

By 2130 hrs on November 10th, the remaining Union forces were exhausted from their assaults on Missionary Ridge as additional Confederate artillery barrages whittled down a few more number of Union soldiers remaining, and Beauregard ordered a few artillery units to create a horseshoe formation around the trapped Union troops. Once Thomas’s troops stopped at the rifle pits coming under fire from Confederate artillery, three Confederate platoons began to take potshots at them as Beauregard gave out an additional order to the artillery corps to redirect their shots at the rifle pits. Beauregard’s decision to aim the artillery barrage at the rifle pits proved to be a mistake as Thomas’s troops knew exactly what the Confederates were up to. The additional bombardment against the Union rifle pits only cut the casualty rates in half, but at the same time, the bulk of Law’s forces shifted to Rossville Gap.

Chattanooga Campaign –Rossville Gap:

On November 16th, the Union forces regrouped under Hooker’s command. Their aim now, was to open up the Rossville Gap in order to regain the momentum and to put pressure on the defending Confederate forces entrenched in not only Missionary Ridge, but Moccasin Point and Lookout Mountain. There was only one problem with Hooker’s plan to seize Rossville Gap: the only bridge connecting Chattanooga to Rossville Gap was destroyed by Confederate sappers and a high rapid flowed through the creek. Moreover, General Law’s armies were descending into Rossville Gap after they steadily gave bits of territory in Missionary Ridge to Sherman’s remaining forces. A Union pioneer unit was ordered to construct a makeshift bridge to help move the Union troops across a footbridge constructed by the 27th Missouri Infantry Corps. Once the Union infantry crossed the Chattanooga Creek, Law ordered the 21st Georgia Division to prevent the Union pioneer units from completing the bridge while Confederate sharpshooters were deployed to pick off one sapper at a time.

Bragg received reports from Beauregard about the Confederate progress in plugging the Union’s supply lines and was pleased with how Hooker’s troops were being starved to submission while Confederate patrol units captured a small sized Union supply corps on their way into Moccasin Point. Immediately after Confederate artillery destroyed the makeshift bridge by November 21st, he began to demand for Hooker’s surrender, which he had no intention to do. Frustrated at the Union’s fierce counterattacks against his position, Bragg ordered all Confederate troops to occupy any rifle pits, or dig up trenches and position their artillery while the Confederate cavalry would raid any isolated supply routes for any Union supply mules to capture. His intention was not to push the Union back from Missionary Ridge, but to simply exhaust them into submission. The attrition lasted well into December, when winter conditions made the Union’s counterattacks impossible to achieve.

The aftermath of the Union’s failed attempt to relieve the Confederate siege of Chattanooga proved valuable for the Confederate military leadership. While they could not defeat the Union in terms of war materiel and number of soldiers under their command, they could use the Union’s own strengths and turn it into their weaknesses. As Bragg had demonstrated in the defense of the Cracker Line, the Union’s generous distribution of supplies to each of its own armies would only fail if some portion of the supplies fell into enemy hands. Among the captured supplies obtained by the Confederacy was the newest Union rifle, the Spencer repeating rifle. With the Spencer rifles acquired by the Confederate Army, they only equipped it to their best sharpshooters, but they were good enough to deal some heavy damage to the Union forces. The second Union weakness the Confederates revealed was related to the first weakness, and that is the war of attrition. If the Union’s supplies were to be lost, they wouldn’t be able to continue in their offensive while the Confederates could simply dig in and deny their enemies some valuable ground. Finally, the deaths of not only General Grant, but those like Smith and Ord had dealt a serious blow to the Union’s military leadership. To make matters worse, General Thomas was among the Union soldiers captured by General Beauregard’s men. Thomas’s capture received a positive response from among the Virginian population whose view of Thomas was negative at its finest. Indeed, Thomas was imprisoned, tried and executed for his ‘crimes’ against the Confederacy, simply by remaining loyal to the Union when the Civil War broke out. In the United States, Thomas’s sham court martial would result in President Lincoln’s decision to escalate the blockade of all Confederate ports.

Confederate Change of Strategy – Prelude to a Bigger Conflict:

By December 28th, 1863, President Davis and the Confederate military leadership gathered in a schoolhouse outside Appomattox and redrew their strategy in light of the Union defeat in the Chattanooga Campaign. The Confederate capture of Chattanooga had wielded three regiments of Union POWs, including the Confederacy’s most hated opponent, the Virginian-born Union General Thomas. From January until April of 1864, the Confederate Army began to build makeshift border fortifications that would run across the border between the USA and the CSA. Although the border fortifications were at first ineffective against Union raids and bombardments, support for the war within the United States began to decline. Within the same time period, Robert E. Lee was ordered by Davis to create an effective plan to drain the Union armies of their fighting strength through irregular warfare, should Union troops occupy some portions of Confederate territory.

Confederate trenches during the American Civil War. These makeshift trenches would pave the way to the development of the permanent border fortifications constructed by the United States in defending its borders with Maximillian's Mexico, the Confederate States and British North America.

Battles for the Tennessee Valley:

The Confederate Army managed to launch a counterattack in response to a Union attack on Tennessee Valley on April 12th, 1864. Almost all of the valley ridges were captured, but the next day a larger Union army under the command of General George Custer recaptured the entire valley, depriving the Confederates of their only defense in all of Tennessee, leaving the path to Huntsville and possibly Chattanooga once again. Only one hill held out against three successive Union attacks, which the Confederate soldiers would later name it ‘Beef Steak Hill’ mainly because the dead soldiers who were killed in ‘Beef Steak Hill’ were wounded and had no way of returning back to the infirmary. In another ridge, aptly named ‘T-bone Ridge’, it was the Union soldiers who had to fight off successive Confederate counterattacks and held out for thirteen days. However, weather conditions in the Tennessee Valley turned wet as rainfall made resupplying difficult for both sides. Once again, General Bragg ordered Confederate artillery to reduce ‘T-bone Ridge’ to ruins, with the Union soldiers maimed or killed in the process. Two Confederate army corps led by Nathan Forrest enveloped T-bone Ridge with his own cavalry corps as Union infantrymen inside the trenches attempted to slow down the Confederate advance by were overrun. Custer responded by sabotaging T-bone Ridge of their own defenses, making it unusable to the Confederates.

Static Border Warfare:

From May of 1864 onwards, both the Union and Confederate forces had dug in as they waited for a major breakthrough to arrive. In a report sent to President Davis from General Forrest, Bragg’s strategy of weakening the Union armies through the confiscation of their supplies became less effective as General Sherman’s forces soon formed a countermeasure to prevent crucial supplies from being captured. To protect the supply mules, three squadrons of Union cavalry troops escorted the mules, deterring Confederate cavalry troops from raiding the supply lines, yet this brought out more casualties. Moreover, what the Confederacy needed in Forrest’s opinion was not just more reinforcements, but additional pressure on the Union from foreign powers. Britain and France were willing to recognize the Confederate States as an independent nation, though they had to wait until the United States was in a position of weakness to do so.

McClellan’s Presidential Campaign:

News of the Confederate successes in stopping the Union’s offensive in the Chattanooga Campaign had dented the Union’s public opinion in regards to the Civil War itself. Indeed, Lincoln wrote in his diary that he might be replaced by someone who was more willing to work with the Confederate government. George McClellan on the other hand, saw to it that the Civil War had to be concluded if the United States were to recover from its political and economical malaise before Britain and France would jump on the weakened USA. Indeed, one of his campaign promises was to seek an armistice with the Confederacy, short of recognizing it as an independent state. While McClellan was busy campaigning, Generals Sherman and Meade were busy negotiating with Lee and Bragg on arranging an armistice and an eventual ceasefire agreement. There were some factors which played in McClellan’s huge chance of becoming president, mainly the state of the economy and the US fears of a British invasion from its Canadian base. To everyone’s surprise, Lincoln had announced in his June campaign that he was going to withdraw from the campaign due to health reasons. (Apparently Lincoln’s mental and physical health had taken a toll from his constant supervision of the Union’s war effort)

Lincoln’s decision to withdraw his election campaign received a mixed result from Copperheads, War Democrats, Peace Democrats and Republicans. McClellan soon won the Presidency and true to his word, he began to negotiate with President Davis on the proposed armistice, short of recognizing the CSA’s independence. Though Davis was careful not to antagonize McClellan’s government with terms of the armistice talks, it soon collapsed and neither of them was responsible for the breakdown of the talks.

 

[Razgriz 2K9]

How much longer theoretically can each nation keep up in the war?

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

Depends on the logistics and materiel that each nation has. Britain, Germany and Russia would be close.

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

This is going to be a two-part update, so it won't have to be congested.

(Part One)

At the same time the Civil War broke out, Mexico was in the middle of a crisis of its own. It all began when Benito Juarez suspended Mexico’s debt payment to its creditors: Spain, France and Great Britain. French Emperor Napoleon III wanted to create a friendly regime in Mexico from which he could siphon off its riches to fund France’s growing empire, but Britain and Spain declined to join in when they learned of Napoleon III’s true motive: the restoration of the First Mexican Empire, with the Austrian Hapsburgs as the dominant rulers. However, the French intervention was supported by conservative elements of the Mexican government, who feared American monopoly of the greater American common market, plus their staunch Protestant stance. However, with the Civil War occurring within the United States and the breakaway Confederate States, Napoleon III had an advantage in exploiting America’s current malaise. However, the French intervention in Mexico would work to the new Austrian emperor, Maximillian I.

As Maximillian arrived in Mexico with his Belgian wife in 1864, he found himself in the middle of a power struggle between the Juarez-led Liberals and the Conservatives. To no one’s surprise in the Mexican government, Maximillian I was either too liberal or too conservative but the Austrian monarch had made huge contributions to Mexico’s common masses. He issued reforms on curbing the working hours and banned child labor, while at the same time he tried to reconcile the Conservatives and Liberals by offering Juarez the position of Prime Minister. Juarez at first refused to work alongside the puppet emperor but with Confederate successes on the battlefield and McClellan’s election as president after Lincoln withdrew his candidacy in 1864, Juarez had fewer options. What was worse though was Maximillian was chosen by the French to lead the Second Mexican Empire, despite his background as a Hapsburg prince while the Republicans had been supported by the United States.

Maximillian of Mexico, in a painting done by one of his servants.

Maximillian’s Reforms in Detail:

On June of 1864, Maximillian began his ambitious project of bringing in the fractured factions of Mexican society in an attempt to unite the country once more. Despite being a Hapsburg prince, Maximillian drew inspiration from Great Britain’s form of a constitutional monarchy and to a lesser extent, the moderate variant of the Decembrist ideology though he was careful not to draw too much influence from the Muravievist ideas due to the heavy presence of Conservatives and the Roman Catholic clergy. The main issue facing Mexican society was the rights of Mexico’s indigenous peoples. Maximillian responded by giving them the right to vote, only for the selection of candidates in the Lower Parliament while the nobility would be appointed by the Emperor himself as members of the Upper Parliament. Conservative elements within Maximillian’s government refused to go along with his plan of enfranchising the lower classes, while liberal elements felt that his reforms would not be implemented wholeheartedly.

British Foreign Minister Lord Palmerston advised Napoleon III not to focus on actual control of Mexico and instead on helping Maximillian’s reign stabilize in face of Republican opposition in August of 1864. Though Napoleon contemplated on ignoring Palmerston’s advice, he realized that British and Spanish support for the debt payment from the Mexican government was crucial in strengthening Western Europe’s united coalition in the face of a growing Russian and Prussian power. Although it wasn’t yet official, Europe might just have entered into an unofficial cold war, with a conservative-liberal bloc led by the triumvirates of Britain, France and Spain against a liberal-radical bloc led by its own triumvirates of Russia, Prussia and Hungary. Dejected by his realization that the French might be squeezed out of the New World if he continued with his current ambition of siphoning off Mexico’s riches, Napoleon reluctantly agreed to help Maximillian instead. No sooner did the French began to help the royalist government quell the Republican revolt did Austria joined in its support for its prince, who sent three regiments to aid the royalists in fighting the Republican movement.

Anglo-Russian Tensions and Net Gains:

Great Britain was not idle during the French intervention in Mexico in terms of planning its own campaign to deflect the British public’s attention from domestic concerns. Three months after the United States signed an armistice with the Confederate States; the Russian regiments who fought for the Union returned to Russia and began to reorganize itself into a modern, fighting machine. Aided by Union officers who were eager to take their talents elsewhere without having to worry about the British next door, the Imperial Russian Army was re-equipped with modern rifles, mainly the Berdan rifle and some Russian manufactured variants of the Spencer repeating rifles. Under Vladimir III and Prime Minister Milyutin’s orders, the Gatling gun was also purchased by the Imperial Army as a test bed for future Russian weaponry.

The Russian Army was supplied in limited numbers with the Gatling Gun, as seen above. The usage of this deadly weapon in the Central Asian conflict would prove to be costly for the British offensive.

Central Asia was the hotspot for the biggest overt diplomatic competition between the British and Russian Empires, as any territory controlled by one side would have serious consequences on the other. Russia has expertly demonstrated her newly improved army with a limited conflict against the Khanate of Bukhara, though when Pestel was still alive, he initiated his so-called ‘benevolent assimilation’ policies, teaching the Central Asian Turkic peoples the Russian language, culture and institutions while the remaining Decembrists who were still alive back in 1858 were eager to help devise a new writing system based on the Russian Cyrillic alphabet for the Turkic languages there. Pestelist ideology was often taught by Russian military officers, who were also instructed upon fear of execution if disobeyed, to show some respect to the locals and to treat them as if they were their own national minorities. Pestelist influence even reached Persia, for which Vladimir promised Shah Naser al-Din that Russia will respect Persia’s territorial sovereignty and to help modernize the country.

The American Civil War also added to a boiling point in Anglo-Russian hostilities when Queen Victoria instructed the British garrison to commence hostilities against the United States should it continue to battle against the breakaway Confederate States. Indeed, in September of 1864 a group of US soldiers of Irish descent launched border raids into British North America, with the intention to blackmail the British Empire into giving Ireland back its independence. Although President McClellan forbade the Fenians as they were now called from raiding British towns across the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, most of these Fenian soldiers raided on their own. By October 21st, 1864, Lord Palmerston sent a letter to McClellan, threatening the United States with the British invasion if the Fenians didn’t stop their raids. The Fenian response to the ultimatum was rather hostile; they refused to give up their struggle to end British rule in Ireland through violent means. McClellan was at loss as to what to do with the radicalized Fenians. On one hand, he could simply order the Fenian regiments to disband and to change their strategy of fighting British tyranny but General Meade was against disbanding the Fenians as they’d turn against the United States government and take their frustrations out by terrorist attacks in US cities. Alternatively, McClellan might need the Fenians’ services in a potential conflict against Great Britain but without involving British North America. Surely, there should be a solution to utilizing the Fenians’ anger against the British Empire. It was at a meeting three days after Palmerston’s letter arrived in Washington that Russian Prime Minister Milyutin and President McClellan spoke of sending the Fenians far away from British North America, into one of Britain’s other faraway colonies. The secret meeting was not recorded for security reasons, but Milyutin told McClellan of how Menshikov had encountered a group of miners who fled from a colony in the South Pacific and somehow ended up inside a Siberian katorga. Moreover, Milyutin spoke, Peter Lalor had been taken forcibly by the British Navy while he stayed in San Francisco, returned to Australia from which he was eventually tried and executed. McClellan began to realize what Milyutin’s offer had really sounded like. To send the Fenians into Australia from which they could possibly hasten the collapse of the British colonial government there and to replace it with a republican regime.

Fenians Down Under – When Meagher Meets Kelly:

In January 19th of 1865, three US Navy warships secretly sailed out of San Francisco harbor, carrying around two thousand Fenian volunteers, and around fifty US Army officers including Thomas Meagher and a young, rising star named George Custer. Under strict orders not to divulge any information to the Fenians, the US officers kept them inside their quarters and forbade them from entering the deck. Some Fenians began to suspect that their US superiors would actually give them to the British authorities as the journey took an unusually long time to complete. By the time the three US Navy ships sighted Australia; they landed in the Gulf of Carpentaria and silently began to march inland. However, the mission itself from its inception had several flaws: the British are aware of the Fenians’ arrival through their reliable informers who infiltrated the Fenian forces, while the United States had completely drained some of their forces for a useless expedition. Moreover, Palmerston began to suspect Russian involvement in the Lalor debacle, though it remains unfounded.

Thomas Meagher, who participated in the Fenian Expedition in Australia, was eventually killed in combat.

Ned Kelly was rarely known outside Australia. However, Prince Andrei Vladimirovich has compared Ned Kelly to the fallen Cossack rebel Yemelyan Pugachev in terms of their outlaw behavior.

A British cavalry squadron spotted the Fenians and fired on them, forcing Meagher’s forces to fire back. By noon, reinforcements from Darwin had arrived on the Gulf of Carpentaria as the three US warships which transported the Fenians began to fire their cannons at the British soldiers, allowing the Fenians to retreat deeper into the interior with Meagher leading them. News of the Fenians’ skirmish with the Loyalist troops in the Gulf of Carpentaria had given Queen Victoria’s government an opportunity to teach the Americans a lesson they’ll never forget, despite the fact that there are two American states, not one.

Anglo-Russo-Yankee War:

On February 23rd, 1865, Queen Victoria and Lord Palmerston formally declared war on the United States over the Gulf of Carpentaria incident, as the term was labeled to the skirmish between the Fenians and the British. The British hoped to take advantage of the United States’s exhausted condition to impose an even bigger compensation for them to be paid, though they were completely aware of the Russian position as well. Two days later, Britain declared war on Russia over its support for the United States, and the border skirmish in Central Asia. Prussia was not yet ready to participate in any wars, though Austria was preparing for a war against Prussia in order to come out on top as the premier leader of a unified German state.


Afghanistan was the key point in Russia’s overall strategic goals in hoping that the Afghans would stay out of the conflict, but it was not to be. Pestelist notion of neutrality no longer applied as Britain now had a chance to eject the Russians from Central Asia. From March of 1865 until April of 1865, British and Russian troops clashed in the Khyber Pass that demarked Afghanistan’s borders with the British Raj and Russian Central Asia. Although there were no gains yet on either side in Central Asia, there was one gain in the New World, and it came in May.

Battle for the Pacific:

British troops who were stationed in British Columbia were given orders to engage both the US and Russian Armies if they invaded parts of British North America. The Northwest Territories were vulnerable to a Russian invasion, while British Columbia was vulnerable from a US invasion. Furthermore, there was the British war in Central Asia and a Fenian-inspired rebellion in Australia, meaning that British logistics would be stretched to the limit. A weakness both the Russians and the Northern Americans (or Yanks) have tried to exploit.


In May 8th, 1865, the British Army launched its invasion of the United States from its British Columbian base. John Stoughton Dennis, the British commander of the Oregon Theater, wanted to open up a reliable supply route for his troops to capture Portland, Oregon in what soon became known as the Cascade Line. In the US side, General Sherman was placed in charge of defending the Oregon territories, with an additional 23,000 troops on the way to reinforce the lightly garrisoned city of Portland. Within three days later, British troops had occupied Seattle and made plans for direct incorporation of the lost Oregon territories into the Colony of Greater British Columbia. On May 14th, another British invasion was launched, this time into the state of Maine, led by Alfred Booker. Booker’s attack on Maine had failed because of Hooker’s staunch defense there, plus with additional cavalry reinforcements arriving from New York State. By May 26th, the Oregon progress had been bogged down by US night raids, something that was soon perfected by General Sherman.

Battle of Spokane:

On June 2nd, 1865, General Sherman launched a siege of Spokane on the Columbia River. His goal was to cut off the British Army from their forward base in Fort Vancouver, precipitating in the collapse of the British offensive in Portland. US artillery corps bombarded the town occupied by the British as local civilians began to launch their uprising against the occupiers. By 1900 hrs, three additional British reinforcements including several hundreds of Canadian militiamen began to relieve the besieged defenders, but General Charles Doolittle was ordered by Sherman to cut off the British at the Cascade Line.

Battle of Cascade Line:

Doolittle arrived in the Cascade Line, located between the cities of Olympia and Seattle on June 8th in an attempt to capture the strategic railway linking up between those two cities. Unlike the Battle of the Cracker Line where Smith actually failed to dislodge the Confederates from the Cracker Line, Doolittle launched two offensives to capture the railway lines but British defense of those railways were fierce. Frustrated with the disastrous results from his attacks, Doolittle opted to sabotage the lines instead, making it unusable to the British occupiers. A squad of sappers was sent to the Cascade Line and quietly planted dynamite on the rails. Ten dynamites were planted on the railway bridge in addition to seven dynamites planted on the tunnel. After Doolittle ordered the dynamites to be lit, several sectors of the rail were blown apart while the tunnels caved in. To make matters worse, a British train troop was on their way along the Union Pacific Railroad to Portland when the dynamites planted on the rail bridge blew up, derailing the trains and plunging an unknown amount of British soldiers to their deaths. The rail lines between British Columbia and Oregon were unusable for several months as the majority of the repairs involved removing the boulders from the tunnels.

Buoyed by the successful sabotage of their own railroads, Sherman launched the final attack against the encircled British forces in Spokane. The result was devastating; 2,230 British troops were killed in the US capture of Spokane while several more thousand British troops were captured. As a result of the sabotage, Doolittle was able to capture the Cascade Line and allowed the US forces to move towards Seattle. By June 15th, Doolittle and Sherman were able to liberate Seattle from British control as they positioned their troops close to the future Canadian border. However, President McClellan ordered the two US generals to wait until fresh reinforcements would arrive from California and the rest of the country so they could attack key towns, such as Fort Langley, New Westminster and eventually, Yale. 80,000 US troops arrived in Seattle by July 3rd of 1865, by which time news of Britain's war against Russia had been officially leaked in the media.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Ahahaha this is glorious! Beats the (already implausible-seeming) historical Fenian invasion of Canada by a longshot.

Too bad it's too early for the U.S. to support a Metis uprising in Rupert's Land at the same time. That'll teach the Limeys.

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

Ahahaha this is glorious! Beats the (already implausible-seeming) historical Fenian invasion of Canada by a longshot.

Too bad it's too early for the U.S. to support a Metis uprising in Rupert's Land at the same time. That'll teach the Limeys.

Which one? The US defense or the epic failed Fenian expedition in Australia?

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Both, it's a lot more overt and thrilling than the anemic Fenian invasion of OTL.

Any chance for the James brothers to show up in Oz?

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

I have no clue as to who are the James brothers are, though if I knew more about them, I'll see if I can make their debut a bit good. Although Australia may not be able to completely break away from the Commonwealth, at least they could be a mixture of Canada and the United States. Oh, and expect Southern Unionists to defect into the North or to head towards Australia in a weird, bizzare defection attempt. The Yanks however, may implement a policy that results in a Juche-done-right.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

I just want to see Wild West outlaws hobnobbing with Aussie convicts. Road agents and bush rangers!

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

I just want to see Wild West outlaws hobnobbing with Aussie convicts. Road agents and bush rangers!

Now that's a good idea. How about cowboys in the Outback, along with some Russian trained Irish-Australian bush Cossacks?

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

(Part Two)

British Khyber Offensive:

At the same day General Sherman launched an attack on Spokane, British General Samuel Browne crossed the Indian border into Russian Central Asia. Within the time period between June 6th and June 30th, the British Army managed to defeat the Russians in almost every single battle inside Central Asia. There were main reasons as to why the British won in the first few weeks: preparations were made as early as 1861 on the British side while the Russian Army was still upgrading its fighting strength through the shipments of US-made Spencer repeating rifles and Gatling guns.

Battle of Samarqand:

On July 1st, 1865, the British arrived in Samarqand with a simple goal: to capture the once famous city of Tamerlane’s empire and to incorporate it into Afghanistan. 30,000 British troops laid siege to the ancient city, defended by 36,000 Russian and local Central Asian troops. To make sure that the defenders were severely weakened, Samuel Browne ordered the pro-British Afghan troops to incite a rebellion against the Russian occupiers. By July 4th, the Russian Army was now dealing with three Muslim rebellions in Bukhara, Khiva and Tashkent. As a result, the Russian defense in Samarqand was paralyzed as the British offensive annihilated around 19,000 Russian soldiers. By July 6th, Samarqand was taken by the British Army as their Russian captors were massacred in huge numbers, provoking an outrage in St. Petersburg.

Russian Internal Crisis:

News of Samarqand’s capture by Britain reached Prime Minister Milyutin by July 10th. His response was for the Russian Army to keep on recruiting more soldiers to fight in the Central Asian front, and the atrocities reported in the newspapers angered most of ordinary Russians. At this time, Muraviev’s idealistic stance on Russia maintaining its constitutional monarchy on the British model had now began to be discredited as nothing more than an unofficial kowtowing to British supremacy and that Pestel’s republicanism is the only solution. Vladimir III’s son Ivan Vladimirovich from his wife Marie of Hesse was appointed as the Russian commander in charge of retaking lost lands in Central Asia, while his brother Andrei Vladimirovich was tasked with expanding Russian Alaska’s borders. Buoyed by the increasing number of free peasants who were looking for work, the Russian military reached the wartime maximum number of over 900,000 armed soldiers. One of the enlisted soldiers fighting alongside Ivan Vladimirovich was the father of future National Revolutionaries leader Ivan Smirnov, Nikita Smirnov.

Russian Counteroffensives:

Prince Ivan Vladimirovich and Nikita Smirnov arrived in Almaty on August 16th with 200,000 Russian soldiers who finished their training in Russian military academies set up with US help. There were only ten US Army officers who traveled to Russia in order to gain experience on fighting a future battle against the British Army, among them the former Russian Army officer John Turchin, or as his former colleagues called him, Ivan Turchaninov. Turchaninov was given command of the Imperial Russian 33rd Cavalry Corps, a cavalry group consisting mainly of Cossacks who would spearhead the attack on British positions, as well as to help recapture the city of Samarqand. By August 18th, the Russian Army began to march from Astana, beginning a two week trek into the heart of Central Asia. It was not until September 4th of 1865 that Turchaninov’s army bombarded Samarqand while Ivan Vladimirovich’s forces launched an attack on Tashkent and Smirnov’s army headed towards the Afghan border.

The Russian siege of Samarqand began in the different manner from the British forces. Having put down the Muslim rebellion that had nearly devastated Russian position in Central Asia, Smirnov took no chances and incarcerated several thousands of Central Asians in Siberian katorgas for the duration of the war. By September 6th, the Russians finally recaptured Samarqand and in retaliation for the British massacre of the Russian POWs, 69,000 British POWs were executed. Now that the Russians have showed the world that they could retaliate at will against any foreign power, Pestelism’s very ideology was viewed with skepticism. Milyutin wrote in his diary that the atrocities had helped speed up the process of entering the final stages of Pestelism, and whether or not Pestelism would actually transform into an ideology that can mix ultra-nationalism, statism and collectivism in a similar manner to the Japanese national revival a few years later.

Invasion of Alaska:

Prime Minister Milyutin intervened in the Russian war effort in Central Asia during the months of October to December as the winter climate had kicked in. While Smirnov and Prince Ivan Vladimirovich rested in liberated Samarqand, Prince Andrei Vladimirovich’s army stationed in Alaska was poised to invade the Northwest Territories. By now, the British war effort began to take a full swing as its industrial might churned out materiel in order to teach the Russians a lesson on meddling in British affairs, even though more European countries are not too keen on allowing either the British or the Russians dominate the continent. With additional reinforcements coming from Siberia, Prince Andrei Vladimirovich’s army reached 700,000, including some of General Turchaninov’s army, which traveled from Samarqand, across the Siberian plains as workers were recruited from all over Siberian villages to build the new Trans-Siberian Railway as an effort to move the Russian soldiers more quickly. Because the time duration of the railway’s construction would take ten years to complete, Lord Palmerston urgently told all British commanders in British North America to step up their raids against Russian border towns in Alaska, as well as against the Russian defenses in their border with the Raj.

Frustrated by the Russian counteroffensive which liberated Samarqand from British control, Browne was given the task of coercing the Afghan Shah to allow British troops travel through Afghanistan so they could invade Russian Central Asia once again. However, the coercion had backfired because of the Afghan memories of their first war against the British and they were not going to allow the British Army to march through their territory once again. However, the Russian invasion of Alaska on January 19th, 1866 would occur during one of the harshest snowstorm ever witnessed.

Andrei Vladimirovich and General Turchaninov’s 700,000 Russian troops crossed their border with the Northwest Territories and began to set up defensive perimeters around Beaver Creek and the town of Dawson. Russian Cossacks and Aleutian auxiliaries spearheaded the attack on Dawson, which eventually fell within twenty one hours, starting from 0310 hrs in January 21st until 0010 hrs in January 22nd. British reinforcements couldn’t arrive in the Yukon on time, as there were no railways to transport at this time, and the so-called Fathers of Confederation have yet to come up with a coalition government that will result in the foundation of Canada as a Dominion. In Quebec City, John A. MacDonald had discussions with figures like George Brown and George Etienne Cartier on whether or not Confederation should be achieved sooner than the proposed date, July 1st, 1867, or later than the proposed date.

Turchaninov however, was well aware of the British position in her Pacific colonies, which could be utilized to draw enough manpower to push the Russians back. Indeed, the British authorities in Victoria allowed the merger of Vancouver Island and New Caledonia into the united Colony of British Columbia in January 25th, 1866. However, British logistics had taken a severe hit due to US General Doolittle’s sabotage of its own railways, which was used to transport British Army soldiers into Seattle and Portland, Oregon. With Britain facing its own delays in repairing the Union Pacific Railway currently in its possession, the Russian advance into the Northwest Territories continued on a rapid pace. By February 12th, 1866, the Russians laid siege to Fort Selkirk, which was defended by only 2,100 British troops plus several hundred First Nations auxiliaries recruited by the Hudson Bay Company to fight for the British. Within four days, the fort fell and all of the defenders were forced to surrender. Unlike what happened in Central Asia where the Russian Army under Ivan Vladimirovich’s command had killed all of the British POWs, the Russian Army under Turchaninov’s command decided to ship the POWs into hastily made katorgas across the Bering Sea.

The Russian advance continued on, even as the city of Whitehorse was preparing for the inevitable siege. However, the harsh blizzards had significantly delayed the Russian troop movement, and as a result, the siege of Whitehorse didn’t start until March 6th of 1866, by which time the snow had begun to melt and the British had completed the repairs on the rails themselves. The reconstruction of the destroyed rail bridges and the removal of the boulders from the tunnels would take a bit longer, but General Dennis could not afford any more delays. He ordered the remaining British garrison in Tacoma to harass the US Army poised to attack New Westminster and Fort Langley, though General Sherman was aware of the British presence in the West Coast, just south of Vancouver Island.

The Battle of Whitehorse:

On March 7th, 1866, Turchaninov launched the siege of Whitehorse with several hundred artillery cannons perched from the hilltops. He was lucky to have maintained some of his artillery pieces because the treacherous winter climate had been the main factor in his loss of twenty cannons and fifteen Gatling Guns, an irreplaceable loss for a Russian expeditionary force. This time, the Russians would have their first setback as the pro-British First Nations auxiliaries raided Russian supply routes for weapons. Russian First Nations auxiliaries were used to deter their pro-British counterparts from launching further raids, though Turchaninov’s materiel losses continued to pile up. To soften up the defense in Whitehorse, Turchaninov ordered the Siberian Cossacks who joined him in the Alaskan campaign to block off all roads leading into the city, confiscating supplies which would have reached the city. Yet despite these countermeasures, more Russian soldiers were dying in the siege than in all of the other battles of the Alaskan Campaign. One of the effects of the long siege of Whitehorse was Turchaninov’s written recommendation to Prime Minister Milyutin that an Alaskan Host for any Cossack willing to move into Alaska to be established. Although the letter was eventually lost in the vast, Siberian steppes, Turchaninov opted to stay behind in Alaska until fresh reinforcements and additional artillery pieces could be shipped across the Bering Sea.

As the siege dragged on into April of 1866, Turchaninov’s losses continued to pile up, even as their Tlingit allies have finally stopped their pro-British
counterparts from raiding Russian supply lines from Dawson to Whitehorse. It was not until April 8th of 1866 that the commander of the Whitehorse defense, a certain Lieutenant Colonel Malcolm McDougall started to send two British soldiers for possible truce and armistice talks with Turchaninov. Turchaninov saw McDougall’s desperate talks as a weakness and continued to bombard the already battered city into rubble. Finally on April 21st, the Russian Army entered the city, amidst a fierce house to house battle as the civilians began to flee from the burning city.

Advance into British Columbia:

With Whitehorse under the Russian boot, Turchaninov had begun to consolidate the city as a forward base from which he could launch attacks on the rest of the Northwest Territories. Because his army had suffered around 42% casualties, it was prudent for Turchaninov to rest up and wait until the Russian Navy could supply his troops and to raid coastal settlements along the Haida Gwaii. What the repatriated Russian general didn’t know was that back in St. Petersburg, Prime Minister Milyutin had second thoughts on keeping Alaska and had negotiated with Tsar Vladimir III on when to sell Alaska, if they will sell it at all. In May of 1866, Milyutin had doubts about his tenure as Prime Minister as he contemplated on resigning and allowing a younger Prime Minister to succeed him, but Vladimir III refused to take his resignation.

Northwest British Columbia fell under Russian occupation by the time the British had completed the rail bridge repairs and were almost halfway done with the removal of the boulders which blocked the tunnel. By then, General Dennis’s intact forces had arrived at Fort Langley in May 28th, 1866, three days after General Sherman’s force began to lay siege to the fort. American miners from the Northern states had migrated into British Columbia from Oregon as early as the 1850s, looking for gold. However, the Anglo-Russo-Yankee War threatened to deprive these miners of their acquisition of gold, and indeed the British authorities began to round up the miners and marched them southwards. Only when General Sherman arrived in Fort Langley did these miners begin to form their own self-defense units to support the US Army.

While Sherman continued on with his siege of Fort Langley, Turchaninov ordered the reconstruction of Whitehorse for suitable settlement as it was briefly renamed Turchinsk in his honor. The only majority of the settlers who arrived in newly named Turchinsk were Tlingit migrants who fought alongside the Russian Army and were rewarded with a place to live in Turchinsk. For a while, Turchinsk became the headquarters of Turchaninov’s army in the occupied Yukon until the end of the war. Cossacks began to claim some land just outside Turchinsk, from which they could create their own independent Cossack hosts without any encouragement from the Imperial Russian Army officers or even the Tsar. Life in Turchinsk returned to normal as the previous inhabitants of the city came back to see if their homes were safe, only to come too late as the Russian soldiers had confiscated their properties.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

I wonder how McClellan will be viewed- brokering peace with the Confederates, only to get into war with the British in a Bay of Pigs type boondoggle? Yet a war they seem to be winning, however?

Can't comment much on the Central Asian campaign, but the numbers seem interesting. The British fielded tens of thousands of troops in the region?

Also please have the Cossacks and other Russians stay in Turchinsk, keep the North weird y'all.

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

I wonder how McClellan will be viewed- brokering peace with the Confederates, only to get into war with the British in a Bay of Pigs type boondoggle? Yet a war they seem to be winning, however?

Can't comment much on the Central Asian campaign, but the numbers seem interesting. The British fielded tens of thousands of troops in the region?

Also please have the Cossacks and other Russians stay in Turchinsk, keep the North weird y'all.

Inevitably Alaska might be sold to the US, except that in exchange the Russians would get extra boost in upgrading their ports (Vladivostok, Okhotsk, plus improving on the settlement in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Chukhotka), and they'll be getting a lot of help in completing the Trans-Siberian Railway. In exchange for Alaskan resources, the United States would also help modernize Russia a bit further into its full fledged republican side and with a little luck, Russia could become a modern Social Democratic state on the Canadian model. Think Michael Ignatieff as Russian Prime Minister. Another thing: what do you think of Cossacks in the United States?

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

Alaskan Negotiation:

The Russian and Northern American ambassadors met in St. Petersburg on July 4th, 1866 in a negotiation over the fate of Alaska. Representing the United States was William Seward, who was tasked by McClellan on drafting a plan for a possible American administration of Alaska, while Nikolai Bobrikov represented the Russian side. The negotiation began with Bobrikov’s explanation, as stated below:

“Alyaska has become a white elephant in which we had to pay more for its maintenance while churning out little profits. As the British had demonstrated, they will stop at nothing to eject us from Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Balkans, and even in North America, from which we alone can possess an advantage over them. We need a reliable ally to entrust Alaska, and we could only think of the United States. Think of Alaska as compensation and a gift of thanks for letting us fight alongside you in the insurrection against those slave owners. Just tell us what you can offer in return.”

The Northern American delegation discussed among them after Bobrikov’s speech had ended. Seward had this to say:

“The United States of America recognizes the efforts of the Russian Empire to promote and develop democracy in the aftermath of their upheaval of December of 1825. By taking an inspiration from our founding fathers, the Russian people were able to experience freedom and liberty. When Britain and France backed our enemies to the south, only the might of Russia had shielded us from our enemies’ ambition. We are humbled by Russia’s offer of territory to our great Republic, and we in return, wish to finance the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway so we may gain experience on building our own railways back home.”

Unfortunately, the war was still raging between Russia and the United States against Great Britain, meaning that they can’t complete the transaction right away. There were contingent plans made by Russia to capture Haida Gwaii and supply materiel to the US Army, though that was quickly shelved because of its liability and impracticality. To complicate things further, the Royal Navy had begun to deploy their ships to deter the US Navy from raiding Victoria, although Russian warships were also spotted close to Haida Gwaii, forcing the Royal Navy to venture out north. The remainder of the war was now dominated by sea battles between British, US and Russian warships in the Pacific, though there are no major naval battles that took place.

Armistice:

Threatened by the US position in British Columbia and the Russian position in their occupied portion of the Northwest Territories, Queen Victoria was forced to seek an armistice. Granted, the British Army in India was still strong enough to retake parts of Central Asia from the Russians but their position in British Columbia was somehow complicated by the US occupation of Fort Langley, which fell in July 17th, 1866 and New Westminster two days later. The Russians were exhausted from their campaigns in Alaska and Central Asia, while Milyutin was in the middle of implementing reforms which would allow foreign investors to come and invest in Russia’s industrialization efforts. The two sides came together in Paris on July 26th as each diplomat was tasked with drafting the contents of the eventual Treaty of Paris (1866), which will end the Anglo-Russo-Yankee War. The 1866 Treaty of Paris’s contents were as follows:

- Great Britain is to pay to the Russian Empire 800,000 pound sterling for its damage to the city of Samarqand. All military officers who took part in the Central Asia battle will not be tried in a military court, as both sides had committed atrocities against each other.
- Great Britain is also to pay to the United States 1,300,000 pound sterling for its occupation of Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland, Oregon. In addition, the remainder of the 49th parallel will divide the remaining disputed Oregon territory, and the fate of British Columbia can remain undecided until a future negotiation will determine its fate.

Although the British felt that they were the losers of the war, they also managed to pay their reparations while losing only a small portion of their territories. For the United States however, they had the greatest gains in securing more territory from the Oregon boundary dispute while at the same time, there are more Northern American miners who would participate in both the Fraser Canyon and Cariboo Gold Rush. However, the Northern American miners would arrive in British Columbia, knowing that they’re protected by their army. Russia ironically however, might have become the de facto loser of the war despite their gains, because other nations like France, Spain, and even Prussia had second thoughts on cultivating the friendship of the Russian giant. Moreover, their conquest of the Yukon proved to be the biggest financial drain on their resources in the entire war, although they would later make it up with the final conclusion of the Alaska Negotiations.

Spain in Turmoil and the La Gloriosa de la Pestelista:

Before the La Gloriosa Revolucion broke out, Spain was in the midst of an economical and political crisis. Although it had participated in the defense of Catholic friendly Croatia against revolutionary Hungary in the Spring of Nations, they felt cheated by the fact that Great Britain had become the de facto master of the Croatian state and dictated its internal affairs. Numerous uprisings within Spain’s colonies had made a terrible drain on its financial resources, and the First Carlist Wars had threatened to split the Spanish Kingdom apart. As mentioned earlier, Isabella’s negotiations with several US Presidents on the La Amistad incident had gone unheeded until the Confederate States became independent in 1864. However, because the Confederate economy had suffered in its first years as a sovereign state, it was unable to pay Spain the compensation it demanded. It didn’t also help that Britain threatened to withdraw its recognition of the Confederacy as a sovereign state if the Confederate government agreed to pay the compensation, as the British were enforcing the ban on the Atlantic Slave Trade.

In 1868, Queen Isabella was overthrown by liberal minded officers who embarked on instituting secularism, liberalism and republicanism on the Muravievist or Pestelist model, despite the fact that these two founders of their own ideology were long dead. However, the liberals faced a strong opposition from the Carlists, conservative minded people who were loyal to the pretender Carlos VII. The Carlists were exactly Pestelism is in reverse: legitimists, loyalists to the Catholic Church and passionate nationalists. These Carlists were united in opposition to what they viewed as Spain’s mortal enemies: revolutionary Pestelism, with the focus on gradually shifting the political landscape from an absolute monarchy to a republican state. La Gloriosa de la Pestelista, as the Carlists had mockingly called the progressive revolution, ushered in a government rife with infighting among the liberals. Estanislao Figeras was chosen to lead a provisional government in the summer of 1868, though his attempt to stabilize the Spanish government had proved to be disastrous. La Gloriosa was about to become a civil war, and not only were the Carlists and Pestelist pretenders ready to fight each other to death, but the Third Carlist War will end before the War of the Prussian Succession, which would eventually lead to the foundation of another European state: Germany.

In what became known in Europe as The Carlist War of National Survival, and unofficially, ‘the War in which Pestelism grounded to a halt’, foreshadowing the failures of the republican movement. The main cause however, was another coup d’etat in September of 1868. This time, the coup was aimed at Figeras’s government and to appoint Alfonso XII as King of Spain. Carlos VII reacted by setting up a provisional kingdom, centered around Barcelona on September 13th. Officially, there are now two rival Spanish kingdoms set up by Carlos VII and Alfonso XII in Barcelona and Madrid respectively after October 2nd, 1868.

On October 6th, 1868, the first battle of the ‘Third Carlist War’ occurred in the foothills of Catalonia, as the Carlists raided loyalist military bases and called on the general population to launch an uprising against the pro-Pestelist government led by Figeras (later on against Alfonso XII) but new recruits fighting for the Carlist cause dwindled as government forces later launched an offensive to capture a major Carlist stronghold in Bilbao on October 9th, and the ensuring capture of 2,300 Carlist recruits had denied Carlos VII some additional manpower he needed to attack Madrid and possibly smaller cities of great value to the loyalists.

1869:

Although Figeras had finally been overthrown in October 9th of 1868 and his incarceration by the Carlists in Sevilla three days later, his eventual release on orders of a young Spanish brigadier named Ramon Blanco resulted in Figeras’s bid to regain his position as the president of the Spanish Republic. On January 8th, 1869, Blanco led the Republican army against a loyalist force commanded by royalist officer Jenado Quesana in the Battle of Maneru. The two sides fought each other to a standstill, though Blanco’s decision to fight the royalists fell into the hands of the Carlists, who now viewed the republicans as dangerous radicals. Starting in January 15th, Carlos VII sent his most trusted officer named Camillo Polavieja to negotiate with Quesana on a possible truce and an alliance against the republicans. Enraged by Figeras’s naked grab for power, the reluctant Alfonso XII agreed. The Royalist-Carlist alliance would doom the republican cause, but not before the Royalist-Carlist alliance would suffer their setbacks as well.

By now, the republicans only managed to hold on to the Basque Country as their base of operations, though Figeras had also made contingency plans to escape into France and to form a Spanish Republican government in exile, but decided against it because of Napoleon III’s hostile stance against his government. Figeras also negotiated with Lord Palmerston of Great Britain on allowing the Spanish republican movement to stay in Britain until the time is right for the republicans to regain power. In February of 1869, Blanco led an attack on a major Royalist-Carlist stronghold in Morella, intending to cut off the supply route Quesada and Polavieja were using to resupply their armies. By March 2nd, Morella would eventually fall to Blanco’s forces while Baltasar Hidalgo laid siege to Cuenca the next day. The siege of Cuenca would last just as long as the Russian siege of Whitehorse during the Alaskan Campaign of the Anglo-Russian-Yankee War, though a bit less bloodier as both sides ran out of foodstuffs and medical supplies to treat their wounded comrades.

Cuenca and Morella were two major supply bases held by the Royalist-Carlist alliance before their capture by the republican forces. With those two cities under republican control, Blanco and Hidalgo could launch a simultaneous attack on Madrid and Barcelona respectively. However, most of the Royalist-Carlist forces soon retreated southwards to Sevilla in order to allow the republicans to tire them out.

1870:

During the year 1870, Polavieja was given command of the Royalist-Carlist army stationed in Sevilla by Alfonso XII. He quickly began to formulate a plan to crush the republicans before it was too late, and news of a possible foreign intervention loomed in Spain. On April 12th of 1870, the Kingdom of Prussia under Wilhelm II offered a small amount of Prussian soldiers to help fight off the republican forces in return for some concessions in Spain’s colonies. Carlos VII declined the Prussian offer of soldiers, but balked at having to part ways with some of Spain’s colonies. Five days later, Carlos VII received reports from Quesana about a possibe British or Dutch intervention on the republican side, but dismissed the reports as false alarms.

By May of 1870, the Royalist-Carlist armies under the combined leadership of Alfonso XII and Carlos VII began to launch an offensive against Blanco’s army. Indeed, their first target to capture was Cuenca, which was held by Hidalgo and around 12,000 republican soldiers. The 1870 siege of Cuenca was shorter than the republican siege in Cuenca, though both sides sustained mild casualties. However, Blanco would launch another attack on the Royalist-Carlist position by May 27th, this time in Camunas. Although Camunas was a minor Spanish town, Blanco saw its potential as a forward base from which he could capture Madrid if he had to abandon it, or use Camunas as a starting point for his army in which they could launch guerrilla attacks. Two major losses would occur on both sides in the May 27th to June 9th Battle of Camunas, and both would have a devastating effect.

Ramon Blanco was a rarity. Raised as a royalist, he joined the republican side because of his personal rivalry with Camillo Polavieja and detested every moment with him. His survival would change the course of Spanish colonial history in the Philippines.

General Hidalgo joined Blanco just outside Camunas on May 28th as the battle had started already. Just opposite from Blanco’s position was a larger Royalist-Carlist army under Alfonso XII’s supervision. Carlos VII left his Royalist counterpart in charge of the Royalist-Carlist force while he himself would take charge of another Royalist-Carlist army that was poised to re-conquer Morella through Cantavieja. Both sides launched artillery barrages at each other while the republican infantry advanced into Quesana’s position. Alfonso XII saw an opening in Blanco’s position and led a cavalry charge to break apart Blanco’s infantry position. The ensuing destruction of Blanco’s left flank forced him to pull the remains of his army back and to lure Alfonso XII’s troops into a defensive position on the hills. Most of the republican soldiers resorted to guerrilla tactics of raiding Alfonso’s army while they marched along a dusty road. Though the guerrilla raids only succeeded in deterring the Royalist-Carlist army from attacking the republican home base, it was not without any failure as well. Just inside a town on the outskirts of Bilbao, a Carlist regiment had managed to rout an incoming republican army’s advance into the town.

Battle of Mutriku:

It was in a small, quiet port of Mutriku where the biggest battle inside the republican stronghold was fought. On June 12th, 1870, Alfonso XII’s army had besieged the quiet port, defended by 8,000 republican forces, led by Hidalgo himself. On the morning of June 12th, Polavieja’s divisions advanced into the port’s gates as Hidalgo’s artillery barrage had taken out the advance guard before another Carlist force was poised to reinforce Polavieja’s position. Royalist-Carlist troops then descended into the city’s gates as they met fierce resistance from the republican defenders. Fierce urban fighting took place within the city’s square by 1300 hrs, with massive casualties on both sides. However, a turn for the worse has yet to come.

Alfonso XII wanted to know his army’s progress in advancing into Mutriku but most of his officers were killed while making an attempt to bring news to their king. Frustrated at the lack of news and the ensuing republican offensive against Polavieja’s crumbling position, the king himself set out with 400 cavalry troops to help Polavieja retake lost ground. Hidalgo spotted the cavalry advance led by the king and ordered the artillery to launch a barrage on the cavalry squadrons. Twelve cannons bombarded the advancing horsemen, resulted in their deaths, including Polavieja himself, who unfortunately took the wrong time to help a wounded comrade before another shell killed him. Thirty sharpshooters were positioned from the ruined houses and shot down the remaining cavalry troops before a Carlist artillery barrage eliminated them. Hidalgo then ordered another barrage against a second cavalry attack, with the same results. Alfonso XII, who bravely led the charge against the entrenched republican infantry, was finally killed by a thirteenth artillery shell as he and five other cavalry officers were hit.

The end of the battle had been inconclusive because no one had completed their objectives, with the Royalist-Carlist coalition failing to destroy the republican forces in Mutriku and the republicans failing to hold on to Mutriku. Unofficially, it was a tactical Republican victory in a way that the republicans had finally killed Alfonso XII and Camilo Polavieja, but their deaths had played into Carlos VII’s hands since he was now in virtual control of the coalition. At this point, their tactical victory had ironically resulted in their eventual downfall.

Camillo de Polavieja was one of Spain's most prized military officers during the Third Carlist War. His death would shape Spanish colonial politics in its far flung territories.

France and Prussia in Collision Course:

With the death of Alfonso XII during the siege of Mutriku, France intervened in July of 1870 in hoping to install one of their own princes as King of Spain, though they also supported the Carlist faction of Carlos VII. Prussia wanted to install their prince as King of Spain, namely Leopold, Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. Bismarck’s policy by this time was to ensure that France under Napoleon III would be surrounded by rivals. Since 1866 during the La Gloriosa, Bismarck worked hard to speed up the unification of all German states into a single, German Empire. His suggestion that Leopold of the Hohenzollern branch should become King of Spain would offend the French, since they swung behind Carlos VII. Moreover, Wilhelm I of Prussia supported Bismarck’s suggestion in hoping for Prussia to acquire some of Spain’s colonies right after German unification was completed.

Austria on the other hand, wanted to nominate its own Hapsburg Prince in hoping to trump both the Prussian Hohenzollerns and the French Bourbons. Archduke Karl Kudwig was chosen by the Austrian parliament as a candidate to become King of Spain. Austria’s decision to nominate their prince would eventually bring them into the collision course with France and Spain. However, what brought the French and Austrians together once again was a meeting with Carlos VII in the Franco-Spanish border on August 9th, 1870. If France and Austria support the Carlists, Carlos VII would support French and Austrian attempts to curve Prussian power and to weaken Prussia’s domination of the Germanic states. Both Napoleon III and Franz Joseph I agreed with Carlos VII’s plans, though the repercussions would be felt in one of the unexpected places on Earth: Mexico under the reign of Maximillian I.

 

[galileo-034]

Andrei Vladimirovich and General Turchaninov’s 700,000 Russian troops crossed their border with the Northwest Territories

I doubt that such a big army could be fielded because of the logistical problems that the wild ground of Western Canada and Alaska would cause.

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

I doubt that such a big army could be fielded because of the logistical problems that the wild ground of Western Canada and Alaska would cause.

Yeah, which is why I wrote that the Alaskan expedition was a gigantic waste of resources, though the Russians might get a good trade off. I also forgot to mention that they were coming from Alaska itself, and troop buildup in Alaska had gone on since 1861, but I will mention that later on. On the other hand, could the German Empire be unified without Bavaria?

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Wait, so the Russians didn't get the Yukon? I wonder if the analogue to Marxism will gain fertile root in Spanish soil a few decades from now.

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

Wait, so the Russians didn't get the Yukon? I wonder if the analogue to Marxism will gain fertile root in Spanish soil a few decades from now.

Well, Carlism is ultra-conservative version of Pestelism, with Victorianism the less ultra-conservatism and Meijism the Japanese amalgamation of Carlism, Prussian constitutionalism and a bit of traditionalism. On the other hand, would Germany look good without Bavaria?