Dispatches from the Lands of Gold: A Qingqiu AAR

[Scrapknight]

Dispatches from the Lands of Gold
A History of Qingqiu, 1848-1935​

Preface:

Hello everyone, and welcome to yet another attempt at an AAR. This time around, I will be trying a couple things differently. Firstly, I will be using the Divergences mod, perhaps the most developed alternate history mod for Victoria 2. I highly recommend checking it out, as I credit it for keeping me interested in the game. I will be playing as Qingqiu, a republic founded by Chinese colonists on the west coast of what we know as North America. I won't be explaining the history of Qingqiu or any of the rest of Divergences in depth, but if you're confused, you can look at a timeline of the mod's events up to 1836 for both the world and Qingqiu specifically in the Appendicies section. Secondly, the AAR will shift in style as I see fit, including history-book, narrative and other sections. The idea is to explain the history of Qingqiu with a bit of character, rather than painstakingly detail every last war and election throughout the whole game. (It is also my sincere hope that this broad-strokes approach will prove conducive to actually finishing it this time around.) I have already played through the entire game, and will try to reconstruct it as a series of interesting vignettes. I hope everyone finds it enjoyable.

So without further ado, let's begin!

Table of Contents:

I. Gold Fever
II. Run to the Hills
III. The Arcadian Wars
IV. Breaking the Iron Ring
V. Constitutionalism

---

Appendicies:

A. History of Divergences
B. History of Qingqiu, 1430-1836​

(Table of Contents subject to change as updates are produced)

 

[DarthShizNit]

Interesting premise. I shall be watching!

 

[DKM]

subbed

 

[Scrapknight]

I. Gold Fever​

Excerpt from "The Golden Gate: The Gold Rush and the Making of Qingqiu" by Jacob Ma, Anglo-Qingqiuren Historian [1]​

Qingqiu (in light blue on the west coast, just north of Mexico) on the eve of the Gold Rush, 1847​

Now, if I was to start this book exactly one hundred years before the Great European War, as you might expect me to do, you would endure fifteen years of nothing particularly interesting happening. Qingqiu in 1836 was not really that different from Qingqiu in 1736, except slightly more developed. Qingqiu was born from a federation of city-states, and to this day, the population is very heavily concentrated in urban areas. Back in those days, the Qingqiu Federation was not called the Qingqiu Federation; it was a very loose confederation, and it took several power-hungry Presidents of the Council of Twenty to concentrate enough power in the government to create the Federation. When the Council of Twenty was abolished in 1812 and the Federal Parliament created, we saw the beginning of the Federation in its modern form. Of course, only men with a certain amount of money could vote, which would remain true up until the Silent Revolution, but it marked a transition from what could charitably be called "quasi-democracy" into a modern democratic state, even if it was one where the poor were second-class citizens.

The Qingqiu Federation in 1836. Maps from this period have faded a bit with age.​

Immigrants still came to Qingqiu before 1848, but in nowhere near the numbers they would eventually come in. The government would make attracting immigrants a major point of its foreign policy from 1836 onwards, realizing that without manpower, it would eventually be outstripped by its continental neighbors. The population was still concentrated in the former city-states, now big enough to be called just plain states, of Sanbao, Yongle, Xinye, Xiaosu and so forth [2]. People were beginning to leave the cities and settle in smaller communities on the outskirts, but much of what was marked "Qingqiu" on international maps was really essentially lawless wilderness, filled with small families trying to eke out a living, bandits, a few army units and not much else. Before 1848, families coming here were mostly drawn by that very promise; a place where land was plentiful and authority was not, where they could claim what they could without any interference from the government like in the old country. My own grandparents were one of these types - proud Englishmen (well, an Englishman and an Englishwoman, if you want to get all technical about it) from Liverpool who upped sticks and came to Dongji Shan [3] with little more than the clothes on their backs and dreams of free land. In those days, English fleeing the Dual Monarchy's imposition of French culture on their lands and Japanese fleeing the chaos of the Boshin War were the main immigrant groups. Combined, immigrants from those countries were nearly six percent of the population! Many of us formed something of a friendship, both unable to speak the Qingqiu language (which is not quite Chinese, for my international readers; a Chinese speaker can understand Qingqiuese, but not vice-versa, as our grammar is heavily simplified. I hear the Boers have a similar issue with the Dutch). Of course, we couldn't understand each other either, which led to its fair share of fights, but on the whole, most early immigrants to Qingqiu got along fairly well, perhaps in large part because they lived so far apart they usually wouldn't bump into each other.

Another major factor that prompted immigration here was the devastation of the 1844 Scottish War and those fleeing it​

By 1848, the Federation was expanding eastward and claiming most of the unsettled land to the east that wasn't claimed by the Platagenians or the Vinlanders. To our credit, we were a fair bit nicer in our dealings with the native Arcadians [4] than the other powers; sure, enlistment in Confucian schools and Qingqiuese classes wasn't really optional, but at least they could travel where they pleased (unlike Vinland, which forced them onto reservations) and we certainly didn't give them blankets infected with smallpox (I'm looking at you, Platagenia!) None of it was necessarily good, especially the treatment of the Rohnnst [5], but perhaps the surest sign of the difference is that Native Arcadians are about ten percent of our population even into the modern day, compared to marginal amounts in the Seven Republics. [6] Land was drawing people from Europe and Asia, but things like the language barrier and a dose of what might be called "cultural narcissism" were keeping them away as well. That all changed with the discovery of gold at Fu's Mill in 1848.

You can still see the mill today, in fact!​

Xiang Fu, whose lumber mill in southern Dongji Shan was the legendary site at which gold was first found in Qingqiu, is one of the most celebrated characters in Qingqiu history. Contrary to popular legend, he did not actually steal his neighbor's horse to run one hundred miles to Sanbao to tell everyone he knew about the news. Nor did he actually scream into the first saloon he ran into, "Gold! There's gold in them thar hills!" What is not in dispute, however, was that he became an extremely rich man (who got himself into Parliament) and that his famous find would bring the world to Qingiu's gates. That's how the entrance Bay of Sanbao was named the Golden Gate, you know [7]. When another vein of gold was found in Xinhe Territory just a few years later [8], the deal was sealed. Sanbao would become one of the most densely populated cities in America practically overnight, as miners and those hoping to make money off of miners swarmed to the capital. Prospectors would even camp outside the Presidential Palace for lack of available space. The President at the time, Qiang Liu, was a devout Buddhist who thought that turning away the poor was unjust, and so for most of his administration let the miners camp there, waving at them as he would go to address the Federal Parliament.

Politics in those days was defined by its civility. A shocking concept these days, I know​

A new wave of immigrants crashed onto our shores; mostly Italian and German stock, but really a little bit of everywhere. All these people shared one characteristic: a complete inability to read Chinese. The government decided to take two actions to remedy this. First of all, it sent emissaries to Burgundy and the Dual Monarchy to find out how they educated their populations, as both were also large multi-lingual nations with large numbers of people who could not, or would not, speak the lingua franca. Secondly, it decided to make several large changes to the Qingqiu language itself. The first was that in all public places Qingqiuese would be read left to right, in order to make it supposedly more intuitive for the European migrants. When a reactionary Senator asked why the government would kowtow to immigrants over the native Qingqiuese population, a liberal retorted: "I have more faith in the intelligence of the Qingqiu people than the ability of these immigrants to change their ways" [9]. The second was that from this point forward, all names would be recorded in the Western style of personal name, surname rather than vice versa. The third was a much grander project; the liberals in Parliament comissioned a project to eventually write Qingqiuese using the Latin alphabet [10]. As scholars worked fiendishly to develop a workable system, people would react with shock, disgust, and confusion. I'm sure I would have had a much stronger opinion on this if I lived in the 1840s, but personally I think that this last reform genuinely did help immigrants learn the language. I won't say we are a nation of immigrants to justify this, though we are. What I will say is that we needed those immigrants to be able to settle the frontier and compete on the world stage. If the world was going to come to Qingqiu, who were we to say no?

One defining feature of Qingqiu society in this period was that, no matter where you came from or how badly you mangled the Qingqiu language, if you could make a fortune, you were as good as a man whose family sailed here with Zheng He. A piece of legislation designed to increase military spending in this period was called the "Smith-Yamamoto Bill," after the Senators who wrote it, to give you an idea of how this was put into practice. If you couldn't meet the wealth requirement to vote, however, life was a bit different: you probably lived on a farm, away from the relatively prosperous cities, and either were broke from failing at gold panning or knew someone who was. For all its forward-thinking immigration policies and language reform, the Federal government was still legendarily conservative. It's somewhat amazing that Qingqiu had no real revolution during this period. My own theory is that, as the government consistently made even the poorest of its citizens have an ability to make an honest living in the city, if they could be motivated to do it, muted the impact of not letting those same citizens vote. Sure, the Federation may have been run by a conservative oligarchy in nearly unbroken fashion for eighty years, but at the time, nobody really seemed to mind! And even with the franchise requirements, it was still a lot more democracy than most people ever experienced in the Old World, so people didn't really complain too much.

Now I'm not going to pretend that the Federation in the 1840s was only preoccupied with language reform and immigrants; they were merely the main cultural forces at play. Politically speaking, this period was defined as much by the Platagenian War and the Vinlandic Incursion as much as the gold rush. Both of these conflicts could be traced back to the Treaty of Torsmark, the document with which the Rohnnst would join the Federation...

The last map showing an independent Rohnnst nation, 1847​

---

[1] With apologies to InvisibleSandwich and his excellent The Australia Project, whose style was [SUB]shamelessly ripped off for[/SUB] the inspiration for this section.
[2] OTL San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle, respectively.
[3] OTL Sacramento.
[4] Arcadia is the Divergences name for OTL North America. America, or in this case "Ameriga," exclusively refers to South America.
[5] A nation formed by the Cree after contact with and intermarriage with Scandinavian and Chinese traders from what would become Vinland and Qingqiu. They have formed a small proto-state in the wilderness of OTL Montana and Alberta. We'll deal with them in the next chapter.
[6] This doesn't include those Native Arcadians who fully assimilated into Qingqiu society and thus wouldn't report it on the census. You wouldn't know they were a native unless they told you. - Ma
[7] I see no reason why this nickname wouldn't still exist.
[8] OTL Northern Utah.
[9] In later years, the government would become famous for encouraging all immigrants to become part of the Qingqiu identity. This was a different era. - Ma
[10] Believe it or not, the PRC once tried to abolish characters during the late 50s and early 60s. They eventually thought better of it.

 

[99KingHigh]

Oh Scrap, switching AAR's like Tanzhang, eh?

 

[The B]

Imgur does not work well with Vicky screenshots, you can solve the problem by opening them up in paint and copying them from there. A good start, I will be watching with interest!

 

[GoshDaMule]

Subbed.

 

[oxfordroyale]

Nice Divergences AAR, Scrapknight. I will be following

 

[VibraniumTaco]

Subbed.

 

[Attalus]

Subbed as well

 

[Scrapknight]

Interesting premise. I shall be watching!

subbed

Subbed.

Nice Divergences AAR, Scrapknight. I will be following

Subbed.

Subbed as well

Thank you, everybody, and welcome aboard! I hope you enjoy it.

Oh Scrap, switching AAR's like Tanzhang, eh?

Yeah... To be honest, it's been a fairly long time since I played Darkest Hour and the truth is that doing thirty years' worth of updates as large and detailed as the first one at this point seems like somewhat of a daunting prospect. I'm not ruling out a slapdash epilogue to quickly go through the end result of the game, but it was just too much work at the time. I think this format, where I can write basically however I want, will be of a much more manageable size and keep me engaged with writing it and hopefully end up as my first completed AAR. Glad to have you along for the ride.

Imgur does not work well with Vicky screenshots, you can solve the problem by opening them up in paint and copying them from there. A good start, I will be watching with interest!

Ah, I'll have to try that. Thanks and welcome aboard! I have to catch up on The Greatest Germany.

--

The second update is being written as we speak and will probably be out in the next few days. Again, welcome aboard, everyone!

 

[LordTempest]

Oh Scrap, switching AAR's like Tanzhang, eh?

The irony.

Yeah... To be honest, it's been a fairly long time since I played Darkest Hour and the truth is that doing thirty years' worth of updates as large and detailed as the first one at this point seems like somewhat of a daunting prospect. I'm not ruling out a slapdash epilogue to quickly go through the end result of the game, but it was just too much work at the time. I think this format, where I can write basically however I want, will be of a much more manageable size and keep me engaged with writing it and hopefully end up as my first completed AAR. Glad to have you along for the ride.

I'm sorry to hear that your RoC AAR is, to use a less harsh term, dormant for the foreseeable future. Good though this AAR may be, I must admit that I wait in hope that you'll revive your other AAR someday.

 

[SotoElTerremoto]

I really like the telling of history in this AAR, but about The Golden Gate...

It wasn't named after the Gold Rush IRL, it was named after the port of/in Constantinople when it was first discovered.


Still a fitting nickname, though.

 

[Scrapknight]

Thanks to you both. And who knows, Tanzhang, maybe I'll feel like writing it again someday. It can't be ruled out

Anyway, just a note that the next update will be out tomorrow, or if it ends up being significantly longer than I had in mind, the day after tomorrow.

 

[Scrapknight]

II. Run to the Hills​

Excerpt from A Land Apart: Memoirs of Feng Zhu, High Chief and Governor-General of the Rohnnst Territory, published 1888​

Heading of a briefing from the Qingqiu Federation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1847​

The Treaty of Torsmark was not the first time my people met the Qingqiuren. We had met them before, centuries ago, as they came north, looking for resources. They had little of real value to us, but they did bring us some useful things; horses, spices, tobacco. There were bad men amongst them, but they at least seemed to want to make an honest deal. The Vinlanders seemed to be more upfront about their designs on our land, but brought us different things; their language, their food, even their name for us became our own. We learned much from both of them. We bred our own horses and reaped the benefits of riding them. We armed ourselves with guns to hunt more than enough food and defeat those men who would hurt our tribe. With the help of my father, who became High Chief in 1801, we built a government that could effectively rule our people as they increased in number. Many amongst us would say no, that these new influences were destroying the old ways. My father disagreed with them. "If we did not adopt some of the ways of the Qingqiu and the Vinlanders," he told the High Council, "they would be forced upon us, one way or another. Better to stand up on our own than to save tradition for a few years and watch it all be destoyed in time." There was a great deal of unhappiness with my father's policies. Some even took up arms against him, forcing brother against brother, father against son. Yet my father's ways prevailed, and during his time as High Chief the Rohnnst moved our world closer to that of the settlers.

Photograph of High Chief Laoying, Feng Zhu's father, on a visit to Sanbao, 1859​

My father always said that the Rohnnst nation would stand strong and free, but by the 1840s it was becoming increasingly more difficult to believe him for many of our people. Vinlandic explorers were rapidly staking claims to the wilderness, and began to appear near our territory more and more often. They weren't even coming to trade anymore; they were building houses and towns throughout the wilderness. They made it quite clear that they were not going to leave, and even sent delegations to my father to try and buy our land. We would not sell, of course. One of my first memories, in fact, is one of those Vinlander negotiators attempting to strike at my father in anger, and his bodyguards forcing him to leave our house. It was terrifying as a young child, and looking back on it now, it is more terrifying still.

The Vinlanders were not the only ones, of course. The Qingqiuren [1], too, were marching north into the wilderness. Their settlements came after those of the Vinlanders, but they would not leave, either. For the first few years, they seemed content to let us live in peace; when my father told the that they could not establish settlements on our land, they respected our decision and even helped us set up early industry in our southern lands. As Qingqiuren and Vinlanders became increasingly numerous on our border, however, the situation could not hold. It would be not long before the Vinlanders would come for us. Already they claimed that our land rightfully belonged to them, and they seemed to be growing impatient with our willingness to stay on it. The Federal Parliament realized something had to be done, and so sent Ambassador Xiaoping Li to present us with an offer.

Ambassador Xiaoping Li, architect of the Treaty of Torsmark​

The ambassador, after having a meal with my father and our family, began to make his case. The Rohnnst and Qingqiu people shared a common history, he argued, and the Federation was diverse enough that our nation would fit in it well. He extolled the prosperity of Qingqiu and how membership in the Federation could advance it even further. And when my father expressed his gratitude but insisted that the current arrangement was just fine, he reminded my father that if he did not join the Federation, Vinland would come instead, and they would come with guns instead of words. My father said that all he could do was bring it to a vote in the High Council, where real power in the tribe lay. Ambassador Li agreed, and returned to his camp outside the city.

The next day sent all of our people into an uproar. Many were outraged at the notion of joining an outside power, eqating it to surrendering and betrayal of the Rohnnst nation. Those who already disliked my father's policies of adopting some Western ways were nearly in open revolt; already, we heard word of disgruntled minor chiefs and braves raising forces to contest the decision. My father, for his part, took no side, saying he would respect the word of the people. It was the High Council who ultimately pushed for my father to agree. Some were outright sympathetic to Qingqiu, appreciating the fruits of industrialization and modernization that contact with the West had brought us and wanting to see them spread from the capital to the rest of our lands. Others disliked Qingqiu but hated the Vinlanders more, and saw signing the treaty as the best way to protect us from them. Others still hated both, but realized that should we refuse, it might not just be Vinland that would take our lands by force; there was no reason that Qingqiu would not take our lands by force as well. Whatever the reasons its membership had in mind, the Council voted 28-21-1 [2] to accept the offer. Ambassador Li was delighted, and said that my father would become the first Governor-General of the Rohnnst Territory.

Perhaps predictably, with my father taking the title of "Governor" and Qingqiuren beginning to settle on our lands, many of our people were angry. Some would take up arms in the coming years, and would be met in battle not by Rohnnster soldiers but by the regulars of the Federal Army. "Run to the hills!" the rebel chiefs would cry in their raids, hoping to convince the people to join them in their campaign of resistance. Surprisingly few did; perhaps the people dared not rebel against their Chief and Council. Perhaps they were simply tired of fighting. Whatever the reason, apart from Vinlandic raids, my lands were fairly peaceful after the treaty. Apart from the Federal flag and a new green-yellow-blue tricolor [3] flying over the buildings in the capital, things were not very different from the time before we joined the Federation. Of course, the coming war would change all that...

Artist's depiction of the Battle of Bergsvik, an uprising by rebel chief Heishou Dang in the north of the Rohnnst lands, 1848​

---

[1] - Or "Qingqiuese person / people."
[2] - Only High Chief Laoying abstained.
[3] - The ((republican)) flag of Rohnnst. ((It starts as a monarchy, whose flag is a white Celtic cross on a green field.))

((This update began to get really long and wander off topic a bit, so I split it into two. Expect the next part either later tonight or tomorrow.))

 

[LordTempest]

You have quite the talent Scrapknight for fleshing out the histories of insane alternate timelines, it seems. If not 100% plausible, then at least 100% entertaining. As a novice to the mod, one wonders what shape exactly this future war shall entail.

 

[Athalcor]

Here I am, looking forward to read more . And with Tanzhang and you actually here, we could actually figure out what does the Qingqiu flag letters mean .

Btw, seeing the interest in Qingqiu by the community, I dare to say it won't get removed .

 

[Scrapknight]

III. The Arcadian Wars
Excerpt from "The Blue and White Forever: A Military History of Qingqiu in the 19th Century" by Meiling Chua​

The Rohnnst War was, by and large, not anticipated by anyone in Sanbao until the declaration of war was on the President's doorstep. With some hindsight, the motivations for what Qingqiu politicians at the time decried as a "barbarous and unprovoked attack" are clear, at the time the Federal government was blindsided. Although the Rohnnst nation had joined Qingqiu in the sumer of 1847 and had been a Federal territory for nearly two years, the Vinlandic government did not recognize the annexation as valid and had been scheming to acquire it ever since the ink was dry on the Treaty of Daqiao [1]. Vinlandic diplomats worked tirelessly to stir up discontent in the Vinlandic settlements in Rohnnst territory, even arming rebellious chiefs who they thought might be of help against the Federal government. Governor-General Laoying either did not know or did not report any discontent in his territory until nearly the moment that the invasion came, and thus the Federal government was nearly completely unaware of the situation in the territories even after new President Hongzhang Yu took office. It was clear that Vinland had designs on the Rohnnst teritory one way or another, and even the Rohnnst becoming part of another sovereign nation would not stop them.

Hongzhang Yu's election, like that of Qiang Liu before him, reflected the utter dominance of the Federalist Party and their conservative policies​

The newly elected President Yu, having barely unpacked from moving into the Presidential Palace, called a meeting of both his cabinet and the two highest ranking generals in Qingqiu. As news was just breaking in Sanbao that the Federation was at war with Vinland, the government needed a plan to strike hard and fast against the Vinlandic menace before they were overwhelmed. General Gao Zhao, the Minister of War and commander of the 33,000-man 1st Army of the Standard of Qingqiu, initially planned to lead both the 1st Army and the 2nd Army under General Luo Dong on a march north to the Rohnnst territories to meet the Vinlandic forces. This would be the Federation's first real war against a civilized power since the Battle of Yongle against the Spanish in the pre-Federal era, and many in the Federal Parliament, while publically pledging support for the war, privately worried that the Federation could not match the northerners. The Vinlandic army significantly outnumbered the Qingqiu forces, and while the Qingqiu armies wielded muzzle-loaded rifles against the standard flintlocks of the Vinlanders, the two armies were otherwise roughly evenly matched in quality and discipline. Any Federal victory would rely on luring the Vinlandic forces into traps, taking defensive positions to separate the Vinlanders and then re-conerging, meeting small Vinlandic formations with the entire might of the Qingqiu Army. It was a bold plan, but Gao Zhao swore that he would be up to the task. Even with the Federal government's confidence in his abilities, however, Zhao would need a lot more than a sound strategy to defeat Vinland. By the estimates of the Railway Minister, even with the highest priority for governmet usage, Daqiao and the rest of the Rohnnst territories were still roughly two to three weeks away from the First Army's base in Sheng Matai, a small fort outside Sanbao. Even the Second Army, stationed in Yulin [2], would not be able to reach the Rohnnst Territory before the week was out, during which time Vinlandic armies on the Federal border could already march across and begin occupying the Rohnnst lands. Regardless, Gao Zhao promised the President that this was a war that he could win, and prepared to march eastward on July 4th, 1849.

General Zhao marches east from Sanbao​

He did not even have time to reach Dongji Shan before he was recalled to Sanbao with more distressing news: the Kingdom of Plantagenia, who was competing with Qingqiu for control of the Grande Plaines, declared war on the Federation not three days afterwards, beginning the Plains War. Plantagenian armies numbering 30,000 men each began marching west from Mission Saint Francois towards Qingqiu territores. When panicked Qingqiu diplomats petitioned the King of Plantagenia for a reason for the war, he simply replied that the "upstart Federation of Qingqiu, populated by mongrels and savages who keep up the pretension of being a great power in Arcadia, must know her place, that is, at the feet of her betters." It was widely known in Qingqiu that other Arcadian nations thought less of the Federation , as its people were very different from their own, but this was one of the first times this hostility manifested as open aggression. While prejudice was likely a factor in the Plains War, the largest concern was a more practical one; Qingqiu, as a nation with a thriving immigrant population, plentiful resources and wide-open land available for development, was beginning to appear to be a genuine threat to the Plantagenian kingdom. Already having lost the states of Galles-Occidentales and Haute Leonie to the Seven Republics [3] and their pursuit of Arcadianism [4], Plantagenia decided to strike pre-emptively at the next potential power player and threat to their livelihood.

The Presidential Palace was the site of much frenzied war-planning during the early 1850s. Pictured, the Palace today​

Whatever the reason, the Federation was now at war with two Arcadian powers with fewer men than either one of them, let alone the two combined. Frantic war plans were redrawn in Sanbao to hopefully force peace with one of the powers while decisively defeating the other. General Dong's initial recommendation was to focus on one front and let the other fall, trading territory for time in the hopes of reaching a victory on one front quickly so as to concentrate on the other. This was far from a ludicrous proposal; the Rohnnst territories were bitterly cold, while the Luoji Shanmai [5] would force the Plantagenians to take heavy casualties if they wished to advance beyond Yulin, especially if the line could be held until winter. Ulimately, however, his plan was not undertaken for two reasons. First of all, it was politically unacceptable; letting rightful Federal lands be overrun was not the favored proposal of the President or his cabinet, and especially in the case of Vinland, letting the Double Alliance [6] exercise de facto control over territory was one step away from granting them de jure control. Secondly, there were concerns that allowing the Plantagenians advance unhindered into Qingqiu territory might embolden them to claim it for themselves, and two other powers attempting to claim its territory at once had the potential to do more damage to the Federation than it could bear.

An alternative plan by Gao Zhao, bowing to political pressure, was concieved by July 7th. Zhao would march east with the First Army to meet the Platagenians on the Grandes Plaines, hoping at the very least to stop them from taking Yulin. Meanwhile, General Dong would march north to meet the Vinlandic forces, hoping that they could not quickly marshal overwhelming force to the remote northern territories. General Zhao, who many characterised as extremely au fait with affairs both military and political, appeared unflappable when leaving Sanbao, promising the city's people swift victory. Privately, he had many doubts about how much he could do against the Platagenian forces, but vowed to do his duty to the best of his ability.

General Dong prepares to march north to battle Vinlandic forces​

General Dong's Second Army arrived to battle the Vinlanders by July 14th. Contrary to the pessimistic pundits and dire predictions of the anti-military wing of the Federal Parliament, the Second Army was holding its own in the North. The Vinlanders, having scarcely updated their military since the War of the Double Alliance [7], had fallen behind the Federal military tehnology. Without even muzzle-loaded rifles, the Vinlanders could not beat the Qingqiu army in an even fight, and were forced to fall back repeatedly and abandon any serious invasion of the Rohnnst teritories as winter drew closer. With the Battle of Bergsvik in November 1849 resulting in a massive rout of Vinlandic troops, General Dong was able to telegraph increasingly positive news back to Sanbao. However, Vinlnd still possessed the advantage of numbers, and was able to hand the Federation several defeats in spite of superior Federal equipment and tactics. The most severe of these came at Daqiao, just south of Bergsvik, when in early February a bold cavalry charge by General Dong was repulsed and severe casualties were inflicted on Qingqiu positions. The disastrous Battle of Daqiao ended with over 8,000 Federal soldiers killed, wounded or taken prisoner. The war was far from lost, but General Dong needed more men to win it, men that he quite simply did not have. As winter began to lift, and with it the Federation's advantage at holding the Rohnnst territories, Dong notified President Li that he would need either more men or a technological breakthrough to be able to even hold Rohnnst, let alone decisively beat the Vinlandic army. As February drew to a close, he appeared to be receiving neither.

Map of the Rohnnst Territory, where most of the Rohnnst War's major battles took place​

At the same time, General Zhao was facing even worse news on the Plantagenian front. While initially able to surge into Terres-Cau [6], taking the border fort of Mission Saint Francois with ease and winning a commanding victory at Ouachita, he was quickly forced back on the defensive as Plantagenian reinforcements arrived. Unlike the disorganized and relatively weak Vinlandic forces that General Dong was able to defeat in the North, Plantagenian armies uniformly wielded state-of-the-art weaponry and tactics that were tested in the Leonie War with the Seven Republics. To compound the problem further, Plantagenian armies were even more numerous than the Vinlandic forces. General Zhao, upon receiving reports of two 30,000-man Plantagenian army groups converging on Ouachita, was not only forced to retreat back into Yulin but had to seriously contemplate the possibility of total defeat. While an adept general, Zhao's older weaponry and relatively unprofessional army was no match for the Plantagenian regulars. In open battle, Zhao would regularly suffer casualties on the order of 3 Qinqiuren to 2 Plantagenians, and even in the defensive warfare that he preferred, he often suffered unsustainable levels of casualties simply trying to drive back the Plantagenians. Running low on options and getting increasingly desperate, Zhao was forced to abandon Yulin City to the Plantagenians, who occupied it by March. With the 1st Army's remaining forces preparing for a battle for control of Anquan Pass in Changfeng, close to the Qingqiu heartland, if nothing changed, the Federation would be facing total defeat.

Even the most strident cheerleaders of the war effort found good news hard to come by in the winter of 1850​

The mood in Sanbao was extremely tense in the first week of March, 1850, as the Cabinet pondered what to do. Foreign Minister Xiaoping Li, fresh out of a promotion from Ambassador to the Rohnnst, put the situation quite succintly when he said, "Your Excellency, the problem is one of arithmetic. The Federation has enough men and weapons to fight and win one war. We currently have two wars. If we do nothing to fix this situation, we will win not two wars, not one war, but zero." When President Yu responded with the obvious question of how his Foreign Minister intended to fix the situation, Li explained his proposal. The King of Plantagenia, so it seemed, was unaware of how close the Federation was to total loss, and the Foreign Office seemed to think he would settle for relatively little. He was not demanding land or blood; rather, Li reported that peace could be declared if the Federation would pay Platagenia a small indemnity, recognize Plantagenia as the "dominant power and rightful lord of Central Arcadia," and, surprisingly, that the President would be forced to prostrate himself before the Plantagenian king. President Yu's first reaction to the proposal was to smack Li in the face, screaming that he would never agree to something so ridiculous, but General Zhao's report of the total loss of Yulin and lack of any particularly good news from General Dong made him reconsider. The President agreed to the Treaty of Ouachita on April 14th, and with his humiliating visit to Nouvelle Orleans complete, he could redirect his attention to more important matters: the defeat of the Vinlanders and their expulsion from Rohnnst lands once and for all.

King Charles III of Plantagenia often put his ego before logic in foreign affairs, which many say eventually doomed his nation​

General Dong, by this point commanding an exhausted Second Army a mere 10,000 men strong, was overjoyed to hear of General Zhao's coming to join him. He temporarily fell back to Yixiu, just south of the Rohnnst Territory, where he could obtain supplies and reinforcements more effectively. The combined attack of the First and Second Armies, now numbering 48,000 in total including 5,000 reinforcements for General Dong, was scheduled for May 1st, 1850. When the fateful day came, Gao Zhao marched into Daqiao to secure it from Vinlandic troops while General Dong launched a surprise attack on Vinlandic positions in Bergsvik. The Second Battle of Bergsvik, as it was known, was a smashing success, with Dong's forces pummeling an unprepared and ragged Vinlandic army nearly half again its size. Qingqiu's military had improved significantly since the beginning of the Rohnnst Wars, and the Federation's establishment of a General Staff and increased training for its standing armies had formed it into a far more effective fighting force, while the Vinlandic armies had stagnated. Even the Vinlandic advantage of numbers was beginning to fade, as extremely ineffective supply lines in Vinland's Northern Territories made the Vinlanders unable to replace men they had lost, whereas Qingqiu's building of railroads and infrastructure in the region far increased their ability to move men to the front lines. By September, General Dong and General Zhao were on the offensive, pushing into the neighboring Vinlandic state of Torsmark. They expected to stiff Vinlandic resistance, or at the least, some form of resistance, but all Federal scouts reported no Vinlandic army groups in the state or the surrounding area. General Dong would famously telegram the President to say "HAVE KILLED ALL VINLANDIC SOLDIERS IN TORSMARK STOP ALL ZERO OF THEM STOP". The reason for the apparent disappearance of the Vinlandic army lay to the east, on the border with the Seven Republics.

If the First Army's arrival did not doom the Rohnnst Campaign for the Vinlanders, events to the east of the Federation did. Stadtholder Georges Valentin Lebeau of the Seven Republics [8] was in a complicated position. On the one hand, he and his Parti National Libéral had just banned slavery throughout the Republics, which was extremely popular in the northern states but far less so in the ex-Platagenian republics of Valoise and Leonie [9], where he could not even travel for fear of assassination by pro-slavery radicals. On the other hand, the emerging industrial class in those republics agitated for expansion of the nation into new territories to dilute the power of the dominant Northern republics of Nouvelle Bruges, Phillippa and Carolina [10]. Without appealing to one side or the other, the Statholder realized he would face the very real threat of civil war. Appalled by slavery on a personal level, and knowing the PNL would totally ostracize him for any concessions on the matter regardless, Lebeau knew the first option of conceding to the slaveholders was off the table. Therefore, he decided to choose the latter, and expand at the expense of Vinland. Fortunately, eastern Arcadia had no shortage of border disputes, and any of the three eastern Arcadian states could (and often did) go to war with little other pretext. Therefore, to the applause of the Congress, the Seven Republics declared war on Vinland in August of 1850, aiming to extend the border of the Republic of Carolina westward into Storsjoarna [11]. Vinlandic troops were diverted from the Qingqiuese front to fight the far more numerous and better-armed Septima forces, but that only meant that they would be able to win neither war. As 1851 dawned, Vinland appeared to be facing defeat on both fronts.

Septima stadtholder G.V. Lebeau would be recognized as one of the greatest in Septima history​

With victory near, the Federal government contemplated the idea of pressing claims on the Vinlandic government. Some wanted to claim some of Vinland's territory bordering the Rohnnst lands as a payment for the unlawful aggression of the Vinlanders. Others wanted to impose a harsh treaty on Vinland limiting the size of their army to prevent further aggression. However, cooler heads prevailed; the Federation had not six months ago been on the verge of defeat, and both of the main options were unappealing. Claiming a piece of the Vinlandic northern territories would likely bring another war years later as they attempted to take it back, and the latter was estimated to require a massive invasion of Vinlandic territory before they would be prepared to accept. President Yu chose to enter negotiations with a relatively light hand, and sent Foreign Minister Li to meet his Vinlandic counterpart in Torsmark territory in the summer of 1851 to simply negotiate an end to the war and an exchange of prisoners. The Vinlanders were more than happy to agree, and the Treaty of Torsmark that confirmed Qingqiu's ownership of the Rohnnst Territories was signed on September 8th, 1851.

Though the Federation had escaped defeat in the war, it was clear that it needed a guarantor for its security, or it might well face the same alliance again soon afterwards. The choice was quite clear. Qingqiu and the Seven Republics had already de facto fought the Vinlanders together, and being at opposite ends of the continent, had few conflicting interests. In a grand ceremony in Nouvelle Bruges, Stadtholder Lebeau and President Yu shook hands and signed an alliance in the fall of 1852. This Double Entente, named in reference to the Double Alliance between Vinland and Platagenia, would be the axis around which Arcadian politics would turn for the next century, and indeed, even until today. At the time, the Seven Republics was the obvious senior partner in the alliance, having a larger military, stronger economy and better international standing. While analysts would consider Qingqiu just on the border of being a world power before the Plains War, and significantly farther from it afterwards, the Seven Republics were undoubtedly one of the world's Great Powers. Nevertheless, each nation needed the help of the other, and the Double Entente would become one of the most important alliances in Arcadian history.

The creation of the Double Entente was a watershed moment for the Seven Republics. Stadtholder Lebeau, between winning his war with Vinland, abolishing slavery and expanding the Republics, was wildly popular, which was only confirmed when his PNL won a thumping 70% majority in Congress and he was re-elected by a margin greater than 60%. Echoing the words of his predecessor, Damien Coullet, he decreed in a famous speech that "[t]he time has come to achieve our destiny as masters of Arcadia. We shall unite all the peoples of this great land under our banner and bring them freedom! By reason or force, let the eagle spread its wings!" In a serious of conflicts between the Double Alliance and the Double Entente over the next half-century, known collectively as the "Arcadian Wars," the Septima dream of uniting all eastern Arcadia under one banner began to come closer and closer to reality. With the Vinlanders and Plantagenians unable to defeat Qingqiuese and Septima forces, all of the wars ended in Entente victories that saw the Seven Republics continue to expand north, south and west. The first of the Arcadian Wars, the War of 1857, saw Qingqiu merely aid their Septiman bretheren in taking all the Vinlandic territory surrounding the Great Lakes. While Qingqiu would eventually take a more active role in the Arcadian Wars, the Federation was mainly concerned with domestic affairs for the latter half of this decade and the 1860s, beginning with Hongzhang Yu's Federalist Party [12] suffering the first real challenge to their power since the creation of the Federal Parliament...
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[1] The name of the document that formally annexed the Rohnnst state to Qingqiu. It is often conflated with the Treaty of Torsmark, which ended the Rohnnst War.
[2] OTL eastern Colorado.
[3] OTL West Virginia and North Carolia, roughly.
[4] The idea that all of (eastern) Arcadia should be ruled by a single nation. A driving ideology of the Seven Republics, it is comparable to the idea of Manifest Destiny in the United States. This idea would also profoundly influence Qingqiu political thought, as we shall see later.
[5] The Rocky Mountains.
[6] Vinland and Platagenia were steadfast allies sine 1821, attempting to keep the other powers of Arcadia in check.
[7] See *here* for more information.
[8] Refer to the above footnote for a brief history of the Seven Republics up to 1836.
[9] Very roughly, OTL Virginia / Maryland and the Carolinas. In-game, they are split into Haute and Basse Leonie/Valoise, but if we don't condense a few states, there won't be only seven republics for very long.
[10] Roughly OTL NYC / New Jersey, New England (sans Maine, which is Vinlandic) and upstate New York, respectively.
[11] The area surrounding OTL Toronto.
[12] Known as "the Loyalists" in-game. Divergences (currently) has a generic set of parties, of which each nation recieves either 1 or 2 for each ideology. Their IG policies are often different from what you might expect.

 

[Attalus]

Excellent update

 

[metalinvader665]

Interesting stuff. I've always loved the idea of a Chinese state on the West Coast, and after reading the Beornian/Britannian Divergences AAR I was wanting to see more. Could we see a map of North America/Arcadia after the last war?