Little Great War - Intro

Friendless, the Settee Empire's remaining days are numbered.

So it seems. Turcowaz is under siege. Centuries in the building, the hundred years consolidating, have led to the building resentment on all sides of the Settee Empire as well as among the polyglot populations within its frontiers. Resentment leads to insurrection, insurrection to outright attack. The ceaseless conflicts have steadily drained the Sultanate's resources and stamina. In the last quarter of the 19th Century, its compass has already become much diminished. A good deal of its former territories are now sovereign nations - and, far from content with their new-found liberty, are eager to to expand their borders at the expense of the Empire from whose servitude they have escaped. It was with such an ambition in mind they formed the Blacklands League.

The first major naval action in the Blacklands War

Not long before the present time, the Turcowaz has demonstrated that, tired though the Sultanate is, it wants not in vigour. A two month campaign saw off the Blacklands' assault, and not merely broken the Hellenic blockade of the Golipolu Strait, but has seriously damaged its fleet as well. True, the Turcowaz brief incursion into Chervenia has exposed the limits of its power, but the Europeian portion of its empire still stretches to the Ionian Sea. 

The drawn battle of Dimitrovgrad - and the end of the Turcowaz
invasion of Chervenia.

There remain other menaces. From the south, a Ruberian expedition advanced far up the Pardis River, almost reaching Sakhdad before finally being turned back. Nazreddin Pasha forced an entire Sangrian Division to surrender at Hak-al-Kumara, whilst seeing off with heavy loss the expedition mounted for its relief.  Not apt to take a reverse lying down, Ruberia is preparing to mount a more powerful expedition, with the objective of conquering the whole of the Medifluvian region. But this is more than mere vindictiveness. There are other motivations afoot, something to do with the discovery of petra oleum in the nearby deserts.

The second attempt to relieve the siege at Kut-al-Kumara

From the hyperborean regions to the northeast, the Kavkaz campaign has ended rather unfortunately from promising beginnings, with a shattering defeat of the Coastal Corps at Zugdidi, and the discomfiture at the Tekhuri River of the redoubtable Abdul Abulbul Ameer's bashi-bazouk army.

Kavkaz Campaign: First Battle of Zugdidi

The Czar of Izumrud-Zeleniya of course accepted the victory as a matter of course. Indeed it could be said that the Czarate has been and remains the most enduring and formidable enemy Turcowaz has ever had to face. Time was, much of the northern littoral of the Karadeniz formed the most northern territories of its realm; now it belongs to the Czar - and, judging by recent shipbuilding programmes in the expanded seaport of Sebastianople - he means more than merely to keep it.

Izumrud-Zeleniya's powerful new battleship: 
IZN Radetzki

But Turcowaz is not altogether friendless. Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, Turcowaz retains long-lasting ties with the Frankish Republic of Azuria. Much has been the trade traffic between Ionople and Azuria's Mesogesean seaports, notably Venuseille and Froulon. Although Ionople's importance as the entrepot between the Frankish States and distantly fabulous Khitai had much diminished during the course of the last couple of centuries; nevertheless, what remained continued to profit well Ionopolitan merchants and Frankish factors established here and there throughout the empire. Azuria sends manufactured goods, machinery, and manufacturing staples; woollen fabrics, glassware and paper. From Turcowaz, the ladies of Azaris-Lutetia demanded the oriental luxury items, spices, fashions sartorial and otherwise, but the heaviest demands, industrial and consumer, was for agricultural products and staples, raw materials, silks and cotton. Such are Azuria's commercial interests within Turcowaz that in any conflict that threatens these interests is very likely to bring Azuria on the side of the Settee Empire.


It has become clear that, hostilities far from ending with the Kavkaz and Medifluvian campaigns, a state of open war now exists between Turcowaz and its major foes, Izumrud-Zeleniya and Ruberia. Already wearied, if not yet completely exhausted by recent conflicts, Turcowaz finds itself having to divide its attention between two widely separated fronts, whilst still having to concern itself with the simmering, though for the moment quiescent, situation in the Blacklands. 

Azuria undertook to send whatever aid, financial, material and/or military to aid the tottering Empire. Possibly as a warning to potential enemies of Turcowaz, Azuria sent a large proportion of the Mesogesean Fleet, comprising four capital ships, as many torpedo boats and a couple of gunboats, on a goodwill visit to Ionople. To reach the Turcowaz capital, the fleet had to pass by the Hellenic archipelago of islands, in particular the strait between Serifos and Snifnos. There they were intercepted by a hostile Hellenic fleet. 

Action in the Snifnos Strait: Azuria versus Hellenia...

Openly harbouring malevolence towards Turcowaz, not helped by having in recent times suffered some humiliating defeats on land and sea at the hands of the Sultan's forces, Hellenia took umbrage that the waters it claimed for its own were being violated upon such a mission. Not that the Azuria fleet had any choice as this archipelago lies right across the sea routes to and from the Golipolu Strait. Simply ignoring Athenean demands that the fleet turn back, the Azurian government merely passed on to Admiral Ganteaume instructions that he was to oppose any attempt to halt his mission - even unto firing upon any vessels that tried to do so.

The upshot was a considerable naval action - and the Azurian Navy got the worse of it. A capital ship and two torpedo boats lost, and the most powerful vessel reduced to a near sinking condition, the goodwill mission came to an ignominious end. Admiral Ganteaume's career was to come to an abrupt end from the court martial that inevitably followed. However, the tactical defeat brought certain surprising strategic advantages. The Azurian fleet had shown its teeth, it could bite, and, having been bitten, Hellenia found itself without a navy for a considerable time afterward. No vessels has been sunk, but all four capital ships would be laid up for repairs for months to come, and only one destroyer remained even half-way fit for service. At least Azuria still has a fleet well and truly in being in the Mesogesian - as of course, does Turcowaz. 

Getting wind of political developments in the Eastern Mesogesean, the Ruberian government in Trinovantum-on-Thamesis  has taken alarm. A military alliance between Azuria and Turcowaz might close the Mesogesean Sea to Ruberian shipping, military and mercantile. If not serious enough, Ruberia also has cause to concern itself for its own projects farther east. The result might have been expected from a choleric a realm as Ruberia.

Thunderous communiques from Whitechamber, and acerbic philippics from the Times of Trinovantum against the 'Aggrandising Acquisitiveness' and 'Bloated Ambition' of the 'Gronwy' government have been, to begin with, blandly ignored in Azaris-Lutetia. The 'Gronwy' epithet derived from some would-be wit writing of the grenouille blowing itself up to match the bull - James Bull - with the dire result of spreading itself explosively about the countryside. With their traditional talent for discovering threats imagined, pretended or actual. The whole of Ruberia has worked itself up to a fever pitch for war.

 

Ruberian Army landing upon Azurian shores...

Nothing would do but to bring the Republic to heel, once and for good; and for that, nothing would do but to march a Ruberian army into Azaris-Lutetia itself. The traditional, centuries long hostility between Azuria and Ruberia, still simmering in times of peace, has led the Ruberian military long ago to develop its plans for a beach landing of large forces upon the Azurian coast. Of such long standing were they, constantly revisited, exercised and upgraded, withal, that the Troisième Bureau could hardly fail to be aware that such a plan existed. However, they were not to know that the landing would not be arriving at the Pas d'Artois coast...

Battle of the Maunch, 6 June 1884. The Ruberian 
1st Battle Squadron faces the whole Azurian 
Oceanic Fleet.

To be continued...