Theft, Rhetoric, and Fixed Bayonets: The Lone StAAR Empire

I had planned on the good ol' beat-Portugal-up-and-take-their-empire trick in the early 20th, but wouldn't you know it, the time just wasn't there... too busy being a sonofabitch elsewhere to give Africa the time it deserved, really.

Glory and Empire or Whatever Else is Left

At Singapore, it all went pear-shaped. England had enough problems dealing with "Prince Houston", as the Allies derisively called the young wonder. He had a grasp of tactics that would have made his ancestor, the Sam Houston who essentially brought Lamar's ambitions to their great present fruit, green with envy; not only that, but the world's best equipment and a horrible stranglehold on the heart of the Empire.

She was prepared to cut India loose altogether - leave the garrisons at Calcutta and Delhi free to fight with one another. Efforts to ferment revolution in Austria had failed; the horrific specter of a Russian invasion prevented German intervention; England had only its wits and the Ottoman Empire behind it, and they were finding themselves at wits' end.

Singapore was the Empire's saving grace. The Japanese navy, as yet unproven against Western forces, interdicted the new Texan navy off Singapore.

Then the campaign in the east became a struggle to hold onto Indonesia. The Dutch were the only locals with guns, and the Japanese had no problems getting them to rise up in rebellion. Calcutta was a lost cause.

All of a sudden, the unthinkable was happening.

Texas was losing. Texas was failing.

In the final months of 1914, Prince Houston made his final mistake: an uncharacteristic and premature push on Southend turned into a bloodbath and lead to the gradual counterassault that would push the Texan Army out of London. It was a brutal, year-long fight - parts of the city which had held pockets of resistance since its capture in 1912 were joined back up with the army.

The Texans made every mile Britain reclaimed hellish, blood-soaked. Slough was very nearly destroyed; Windsor Castle was reduced to ruins by small-arms fire and mobile artillery. In the early days of 1915, the army was growing mutinous; the English people were desperate for peace, and even with the Japanese running roughshod over the Texans in East Asia, there seemed to be nothing short of a miracle that would save the old order - the Empire in tatters and the monarch cowering in Edinburgh.

Lev Bronstein saved the British Empire with a declaration of war. Fresh Russian troops turned the tide in England and, backed by new, terrifyingly powerful bombers, shattered the Texan front.

In 1916, three things of note occurred: early in the year, a massive air bombardment of Cardiff drove the Texan Expeditionary Force towards the Irish Sea, and the Russian Army dislodged it from the city - taking as a casualty Prince Houston and destroying the Texan will to fight.
Meanwhile, the fever-stricken colonial detachments in the African savannas defected en masse, leading peasant revolts against Texan authority.
And finally, on the seventh hour of the seventh day of the seventh month of 1916, what was left of England accepted the surrender of what was left of Texas.

...

At Holyrood, Japanese and the Russians were granted various temporary government and territory accessions; Africa was split into three dominions, with various small gifts to Japan to balance out Ottoman gains, and the Portuguese gaining more than they could swallow. America was given its independence back, and its outlying states put under its semi-effective government.

The Holyrood Treaty was, the Texans declared, signed under duress - and, indeed, it was an incredibly ambitious declaration, putting areas Texas had never claimed under English or Ottoman jurisdiction 'by default', creating nations which had no feasible reason to exist, throwing millions of acres and millions of men in imperial concessions to nations that could barely rule over what they already had, and leaving the once and future masters of destiny angry and desperate for a second round.



And as the proud rulers of the Old World prepared for a golden era of peace and prosperity, Texas would wander in the darkness, boxing at shadows and steeling its will for the day theft, rhetoric, and fixed bayonets would rule the Earth once more.

Next time: The Maelstrom Oriental: A Korean AAR

To disambiguate it from Texas, also with claims in the region, I fired a German unification event for Japan in order to change its color to gray (which no one else was using, so far as I am aware - and certainly no one important).

Oh... and I can tell you one thing. The next AAR probably ain't coming for a while (and MY next AAR will probably precede it, or be one from the large pool which I've slacked off on), but it won't be in Victoria.

Korea will have her day in the sun...

I bounced from country to country a tad, and also made liberal use of Neville, but actually did most of the satellite-releasing myself. (I also set up a few ad hoc events to try and absorb the parts of the uncivilized world that shouldn't have existed as independent in 1921, but after the treaty - on the understanding that the Texans left much of the African interior ungoverned but the English & al didn't quite either understand or accept that.)