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And Belgium and Holland?There as part of First French Empire
French speaking Belgium makes sense as part of the empire - the dutch speakers would be better off as a satellite state.
The Libyan War
Following the decision to expand the Empire for the glory of France, the French fleet set sail from Marseille to Tunisia, carrying an entire corps of soldiers.
This marked the start of a military build-up on the border with Libya, with French forces rapidly building up to 12 divisions strong.
However, despite the force on the border already being larger, better trained and better equipped than the entire Libyan army, the decision was taken to delay an invasion of Libya until the troops had acclimatised to the desert conditions and had a chance to train repeatedly for invasion. This would be France’s first post Second Weltkrieg conflict and a key desire by the Cabinet was to ensure that not only would the conflict end in victory but that it would also end with the world having been comprehensively impressed by the display of force by the French Empire.
During this period just prior to the start of the Libyan war, important strides were made in the rebuilding of France. The husband and wife team of Joliot and Joliot-Curie succeeded in gathering together the scientists and technicians needed to begin France’s atomic bomb project and, simultaneously, a massive expansion of the merchant marine was launched in order to enable the adequate supply of the French armies in north Africa.
Then, in the 29th of July, the French Empire declared war on Libya. Unlike the war with Liberia, this time the Empire made no pretence as to its motives. This would be an imperial war of conquest which did not hide its nature.
In the first two days of the war the Imperial Guard made rapid progress, sweeping the border guard before them and pushing several miles along the coast road.
With French soldiers on the outskirts of Tripoli, an attack was made at Libyan forces to the south in order to remove any threat to the flanks of an assault on the Libyan capital.
With this threat contained, the First Army then launched their attack on Tripoli. With the defenders outnumbered eight to one, French soldiers were soon billeting in the Libyan Royal Palace.
As the First Army continued to push eastwards on the coast road to Misratah, a crucial development occurred. The French Navy, sent along the Libyan coast to bombard any Libyan forces within range in order to disrupt the potential for a counter-attack, discovered that so many Libyan soldiers had been sent west that Libya’s second city of Benghazi was defenceless.
The Imperial Guard were immediately sent to take advantage of this, launching an amphibious assault on the city before the Libyans came to their senses and sent troops to garrison it.
The attack was a complete success and the city fell into French hands.
The navy then discovered that Tobruk was similarly undefended and the process was repeated again, Imperial Guardsmen storming the beaches and capturing the city unopposed.
With every major Libyan city now in French hands, the remnants of the Libyan government and army were forced to surrender the entire country into the hands of the Empire.
With less than 200 French casualties the war was a resounding success for the Empire, demonstrating military superiority and proving that France was still a force to be reckoned with.
Having won the war in Libya, all that remained for the Empire was winning the peace. Fortunately the French had learned the lessons of Algeria and the French occupation would be very light on the Libyans. Schools and hospitals were built throughout the country and the sons (though not the daughters) of the most powerful and influential Libyan families were given generous scholarships to French universities with the ultimate result that they would grow up in the French culture, speaking French and considering themselves French citizens rather than Libyans.
Much as the British Raj in India had been maintained by anglicising the sons of the Maharajahs, so too would the French Empire win and maintain control of Libya through making relatively cheap improvements to the lives of ordinary Libyans whilst all the while continuing a subtle policy of francification.
The end result of this would be a peaceful Libya that would prove a stark contrast to the troubles the Empire had faced in Algeria and whose oil revenues would help fund the French Empire for decades to come.
Following the decision to expand the Empire for the glory of France, the French fleet set sail from Marseille to Tunisia, carrying an entire corps of soldiers.
This marked the start of a military build-up on the border with Libya, with French forces rapidly building up to 12 divisions strong.
However, despite the force on the border already being larger, better trained and better equipped than the entire Libyan army, the decision was taken to delay an invasion of Libya until the troops had acclimatised to the desert conditions and had a chance to train repeatedly for invasion. This would be France’s first post Second Weltkrieg conflict and a key desire by the Cabinet was to ensure that not only would the conflict end in victory but that it would also end with the world having been comprehensively impressed by the display of force by the French Empire.
During this period just prior to the start of the Libyan war, important strides were made in the rebuilding of France. The husband and wife team of Joliot and Joliot-Curie succeeded in gathering together the scientists and technicians needed to begin France’s atomic bomb project and, simultaneously, a massive expansion of the merchant marine was launched in order to enable the adequate supply of the French armies in north Africa.
Then, in the 29th of July, the French Empire declared war on Libya. Unlike the war with Liberia, this time the Empire made no pretence as to its motives. This would be an imperial war of conquest which did not hide its nature.
In the first two days of the war the Imperial Guard made rapid progress, sweeping the border guard before them and pushing several miles along the coast road.
With French soldiers on the outskirts of Tripoli, an attack was made at Libyan forces to the south in order to remove any threat to the flanks of an assault on the Libyan capital.
With this threat contained, the First Army then launched their attack on Tripoli. With the defenders outnumbered eight to one, French soldiers were soon billeting in the Libyan Royal Palace.
As the First Army continued to push eastwards on the coast road to Misratah, a crucial development occurred. The French Navy, sent along the Libyan coast to bombard any Libyan forces within range in order to disrupt the potential for a counter-attack, discovered that so many Libyan soldiers had been sent west that Libya’s second city of Benghazi was defenceless.
The Imperial Guard were immediately sent to take advantage of this, launching an amphibious assault on the city before the Libyans came to their senses and sent troops to garrison it.
The attack was a complete success and the city fell into French hands.
The navy then discovered that Tobruk was similarly undefended and the process was repeated again, Imperial Guardsmen storming the beaches and capturing the city unopposed.
With every major Libyan city now in French hands, the remnants of the Libyan government and army were forced to surrender the entire country into the hands of the Empire.
With less than 200 French casualties the war was a resounding success for the Empire, demonstrating military superiority and proving that France was still a force to be reckoned with.
Having won the war in Libya, all that remained for the Empire was winning the peace. Fortunately the French had learned the lessons of Algeria and the French occupation would be very light on the Libyans. Schools and hospitals were built throughout the country and the sons (though not the daughters) of the most powerful and influential Libyan families were given generous scholarships to French universities with the ultimate result that they would grow up in the French culture, speaking French and considering themselves French citizens rather than Libyans.
Much as the British Raj in India had been maintained by anglicising the sons of the Maharajahs, so too would the French Empire win and maintain control of Libya through making relatively cheap improvements to the lives of ordinary Libyans whilst all the while continuing a subtle policy of francification.
The end result of this would be a peaceful Libya that would prove a stark contrast to the troubles the Empire had faced in Algeria and whose oil revenues would help fund the French Empire for decades to come.
Well that was quick another wonderful update and the first really short, glorious little war.
Soviet Amerika,why you make to make New Vegas your place of Birth?
Unfortunately the problem with the war is that it's a bit like Chinese food - satisfying at the time but half an hour later you feel hungry for more XD
Why thank you
The only problem is I think it could do with being a wee bit further west
in case of war with germany you are in a very good position to secure the suez channel thus making the mediterrenean a catholic pond
Good question.
I'd meant to do an interlude with him during the liberation of France but I was running late with updates and I thought that people wouldn't want a wall of text with no actual action.
That said, I'll try and whip something up. I did intend to have a lot more interludes with him when I set out to write this AAR so it's just a question of finding the time to write them and an apropriate setting for them.
Interlude the Third
Project Jericho, the Algerian Desert
The Commandant’s wooden hut was sweltering in the middle of the Algerian summer. The electric fan, powered by a primitive and temperamental paraffin generator, moved so slowly that all it accomplished was to sluggishly move hot air from one part of the hut to the other. The only saving grace of the cabin was the shade it provided.
Fabien Lebeau was hot and bored and irritated. The strange new installations that had sprung up in the middle of the desert all had air conditioning so that the precious scientists and technicians could work in comfortable conditions.
Fabien, on the other hand, decorated hero of the Battle of Lyons, had to put up with these barbaric conditions - all because the Commandant was a geriatric old fool who insisted on being somewhere where he could see the base’s perimeter - despite the fact that this meant that both he and his second-in-command, Capitaine Lebeau, had to put up with sweating like pigs from seven o’clock in the morning to eight o’clock at night.
Not that there was anything for them to do inside the hut, Fabien mused. Commandant Vauban simply read through tedious paperwork and reports, sipping wine until he dozed off. Fabien, on the other hand, had nothing to do but twiddle his thumbs and read through the reports of the petty offences the soldiers were being disciplined for. Drinking. Gambling. Fighting. Petty thievery. It was to be expected when soldiers were cooped up in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do and nothing to keep them on edge. Nominally they were in charge of defending the facility but who on earth would even know where or what it was, let alone attack it?
And to think that this was meant to be a promotion!
After Lyons, and the carnage that still gave him nightmares, Fabien had convalesced in a country estate outside Marseille, been decorated, given a month’s leave and, thanks to the string pulling of Georges, offered a choice of postings: a desk job at the ministry and a promotion, a position in the Imperial Guard, or a posting as second-in-command of the garrison at a top secret military facility where, if he did his job well, he would come to the attention of all the right people in the government and skip several rungs of the ladder.
What Georges had not told him, and perhaps not even known himself, was that the facility in question was in the middle of the Algerian desert. And now Fabien still felt like kicking himself for his stupid ambition and disdain for a desk job. After all, in Bordeaux the ministry work might have been dull and tame but at least he could have gone out in the evening chasing the pretty young women of the Empire’s fair capital - instead of dying of boredom and the heat hundreds of miles away from home.
Of course, the work at the facility was important, Fabien knew that. After all, why else would a military base, dozens of hangars and laboratories, a brigade of soldiers and three hundred scientists have suddenly sprung up around an abandoned airstrip in the middle of the desert? Why else would mysterious convoys arrive in the middle of the night and offload their secret cargoes into the hangars that even he was forbidden from entering. Why else did soldiers from the garrison escort strange looking men in labcoats onto a massive firing range where they would erect strange and tall constructs of pipes and tanks and metal plates before retreating into concrete bunkers to watch them either shoot up into the sky or, more often, explode and cover the barren landscapes with smoke and fuel and flaming wreckage?
Fabien knew that the teams of scientists and engineers behind the exploding plumbing were actually developing rockets of course. He had been briefed on that when he arrived. And some of the engineers were decent enough in their own way, he supposed. Many of the engineers also held, nominal at least, commissions in the army and, after he had got to know them in the officer’s mess, they had told Fabien about their secret experiments with the equipment used to produce the ethanol fuel for the rockets - and even given him some of the product of the experiment to taste. The product in question kicked like a mule and made your eyes water but nothing was better when it came to making a man forget the dreariness of life at the facility. In Fabien’s eyes, that made the rocket scientists men worthy of respect and he supposed that the rockets they were developing could ultimately prove useful to the empire in war.
However, what nagged at Fabien was the other part of the facility. He knew that in the event of an attack their orders were to protect a certain collection of buildings at all costs. But he also knew that these buildings were not the ones used by the engineers building the rockets. In addition to which, he was also fairly certain that he was the only one on the facility sharp enough to have noticed that there were two separate groups of scientists - the rocket scientists who were happy to talk about their work and the tight-lipped, wild-eyed mathematicians, chemists and physicists who would talk all about Fermat’s Last Theorem and the origins of the universe and make obscure jokes about the names of elements but never even hint at what they actually did. And these were the ones who worked in the buildings that Fabien’s orders were to defend at all costs.
Fabien was not a fool of course. He knew that this facility was to build a superweapon, something to crush France’s enemies, but everyone else assumed that this superweapon would be some kind of rocket. Fabien did not believe this. He was sure that the second group of scientists were working on something bigger and that that was the real aim of the facility - though he doubted that even the Commandant realised that.
Speaking of the Commandant, Fabien suddenly realised that the old fool had dozed off again. This was his cue to get out the photograph of the Kaiser, cut from a newspaper, and play darts to while away the time.
As he started peppering the Kaiser with yet more tiny holes, Fabien reflected that it was only ten more days until he would be allowed to take five days leave, make the two hour’s journey to Algiers, catch a plane to Marseille and then have three days of wine, women and song before he had to come back again. He couldn’t wait.
“Take that you connard!” yelled Fabien in triumph as a dart hit the Kaiser right between the eyes.
The Commandant started and began to wake up, prompting Fabien to quickly hide the evidence of the game of darts. The old man opened his eyes blearily, peered around slowly, and then closed them again - after a few minutes of silence his snoring began to fill the hut once more.
Project Jericho, the Algerian Desert
The Commandant’s wooden hut was sweltering in the middle of the Algerian summer. The electric fan, powered by a primitive and temperamental paraffin generator, moved so slowly that all it accomplished was to sluggishly move hot air from one part of the hut to the other. The only saving grace of the cabin was the shade it provided.
Fabien Lebeau was hot and bored and irritated. The strange new installations that had sprung up in the middle of the desert all had air conditioning so that the precious scientists and technicians could work in comfortable conditions.
Fabien, on the other hand, decorated hero of the Battle of Lyons, had to put up with these barbaric conditions - all because the Commandant was a geriatric old fool who insisted on being somewhere where he could see the base’s perimeter - despite the fact that this meant that both he and his second-in-command, Capitaine Lebeau, had to put up with sweating like pigs from seven o’clock in the morning to eight o’clock at night.
Not that there was anything for them to do inside the hut, Fabien mused. Commandant Vauban simply read through tedious paperwork and reports, sipping wine until he dozed off. Fabien, on the other hand, had nothing to do but twiddle his thumbs and read through the reports of the petty offences the soldiers were being disciplined for. Drinking. Gambling. Fighting. Petty thievery. It was to be expected when soldiers were cooped up in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do and nothing to keep them on edge. Nominally they were in charge of defending the facility but who on earth would even know where or what it was, let alone attack it?
And to think that this was meant to be a promotion!
After Lyons, and the carnage that still gave him nightmares, Fabien had convalesced in a country estate outside Marseille, been decorated, given a month’s leave and, thanks to the string pulling of Georges, offered a choice of postings: a desk job at the ministry and a promotion, a position in the Imperial Guard, or a posting as second-in-command of the garrison at a top secret military facility where, if he did his job well, he would come to the attention of all the right people in the government and skip several rungs of the ladder.
What Georges had not told him, and perhaps not even known himself, was that the facility in question was in the middle of the Algerian desert. And now Fabien still felt like kicking himself for his stupid ambition and disdain for a desk job. After all, in Bordeaux the ministry work might have been dull and tame but at least he could have gone out in the evening chasing the pretty young women of the Empire’s fair capital - instead of dying of boredom and the heat hundreds of miles away from home.
Of course, the work at the facility was important, Fabien knew that. After all, why else would a military base, dozens of hangars and laboratories, a brigade of soldiers and three hundred scientists have suddenly sprung up around an abandoned airstrip in the middle of the desert? Why else would mysterious convoys arrive in the middle of the night and offload their secret cargoes into the hangars that even he was forbidden from entering. Why else did soldiers from the garrison escort strange looking men in labcoats onto a massive firing range where they would erect strange and tall constructs of pipes and tanks and metal plates before retreating into concrete bunkers to watch them either shoot up into the sky or, more often, explode and cover the barren landscapes with smoke and fuel and flaming wreckage?
Fabien knew that the teams of scientists and engineers behind the exploding plumbing were actually developing rockets of course. He had been briefed on that when he arrived. And some of the engineers were decent enough in their own way, he supposed. Many of the engineers also held, nominal at least, commissions in the army and, after he had got to know them in the officer’s mess, they had told Fabien about their secret experiments with the equipment used to produce the ethanol fuel for the rockets - and even given him some of the product of the experiment to taste. The product in question kicked like a mule and made your eyes water but nothing was better when it came to making a man forget the dreariness of life at the facility. In Fabien’s eyes, that made the rocket scientists men worthy of respect and he supposed that the rockets they were developing could ultimately prove useful to the empire in war.
However, what nagged at Fabien was the other part of the facility. He knew that in the event of an attack their orders were to protect a certain collection of buildings at all costs. But he also knew that these buildings were not the ones used by the engineers building the rockets. In addition to which, he was also fairly certain that he was the only one on the facility sharp enough to have noticed that there were two separate groups of scientists - the rocket scientists who were happy to talk about their work and the tight-lipped, wild-eyed mathematicians, chemists and physicists who would talk all about Fermat’s Last Theorem and the origins of the universe and make obscure jokes about the names of elements but never even hint at what they actually did. And these were the ones who worked in the buildings that Fabien’s orders were to defend at all costs.
Fabien was not a fool of course. He knew that this facility was to build a superweapon, something to crush France’s enemies, but everyone else assumed that this superweapon would be some kind of rocket. Fabien did not believe this. He was sure that the second group of scientists were working on something bigger and that that was the real aim of the facility - though he doubted that even the Commandant realised that.
Speaking of the Commandant, Fabien suddenly realised that the old fool had dozed off again. This was his cue to get out the photograph of the Kaiser, cut from a newspaper, and play darts to while away the time.
As he started peppering the Kaiser with yet more tiny holes, Fabien reflected that it was only ten more days until he would be allowed to take five days leave, make the two hour’s journey to Algiers, catch a plane to Marseille and then have three days of wine, women and song before he had to come back again. He couldn’t wait.
“Take that you connard!” yelled Fabien in triumph as a dart hit the Kaiser right between the eyes.
The Commandant started and began to wake up, prompting Fabien to quickly hide the evidence of the game of darts. The old man opened his eyes blearily, peered around slowly, and then closed them again - after a few minutes of silence his snoring began to fill the hut once more.
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