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Absolutism = Liberty :D .Republic = Only the sensation of Liberty :sad:

I'm a product of three centuries of british liberalism - I might have to disagree with you on that one XD
 
I'm a product of three centuries of british liberalism - I might have to disagree with you on that one XD

It isnt British if its not back up by a constitutional monarch!

Wot wot ;3
 
Precisely. Except we don't bother with the constitution bit :D

Down to earth common sense people we are, we don't need it written down, we pull it out of the thousands of bits of legislation and acts of the land!
 
Okay, just finished the next update. Unfortunately it's way too late for me to be faffing about with uploading pictures right now so expect to see the update tomorrow :)
 
A New Age

Despite the crushing disappointment of the Treaty of Bordeaux, the French Empire quickly established itself in southern France following the partition.

In many ways, the partition can actually be considered crucial to the success of the Return (as it later became known). While the Empire would have struggled to enforce its authority across the whole of France -especially over the syndicalist working class strongholds of Paris and the Channel ports - the smaller area of land it had to control actually made the Empire’s efforts at undoing two decades of syndicalism much more effective.

Additionally, the Communards themselves had found much use in promoting both patriotic dedication to France herself and hostility towards the imperialism of Germany. The rapidly expanding Imperial Bureau de L’Esprit Public built upon and subverted this message by blaming the Communards for France’s defeat and directing public animosity towards the German-imposed protestant king of northern France and his puppet government. This message, broadcast through the new national radio corporation, promoted the Emperor as the ‘Saviour of France’ who had prevented the fortunate southern French from falling under German occupation and who would protect the French from the Germans and restore the glory of France.

This message proved a success with thousands of recruits flocking to join the Empire’s military - so many that an immediate reorganisation of the army was announced.

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The volunteers rallying to “rebuild the glory of France” and to “defend the sacred motherland from the Prussians”, as the slogans had it, were readily armed with the weapons and equipment captured in Communard supply dumps overrun during the Fall of France.

In particular, those deemed to be sufficiently loyal to the Emperor were formed into the newly formed Garde Impériale as a re-establishment of the Imperial Guard of the previous emperors. Three divisions strong it was stationed in the new capital of Bordeaux and charged with the direct defence of the Napoleon IV and his household.

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However, the army was not the only branch of the Empire’s military to benefit from the influx of new recruits and captured equipment. A light cruiser, two destroyers and a flotilla of transports captured in Marseille harbour were refitted and added to the navy to act as a light squadron to ferry military personnel across the Mediterranean.

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The first duty of this unit was to transport hundreds of coffins from Algiers to Marseille. These coffins contained the remains of Pieds-Noirs - many who were veterans of the first Weltkrieg and the French Civil War - who had expressed a desire in their wills to be buried in France once the homeland was liberated.

Upon the arrival of the coffins in Marseille, hundreds of horses conducted them in a several mile long procession to a newly established temporary cemetery in the Provence countryside - the long-term goal was for the remains to be ultimately relocated to the war cemetery at Verdun when it was once again in French hands.

This ceremony was an example of the heavy symbolism woven into every action of the government during the first year of the Return.

However, among the ceremonial actions there were also several hard-headed actions as well.

A grand plan was drawn up to rebuild France’s shattered industries and to expand the military in order to achieve superiority over the forces of northern France.

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Though ravaged by war the factories of southern France, coupled with those of the Algerian coast, were already sufficient to have propelled the French Empire to the status of being the member of the Catholic League with by far the largest industrial base. This, including the plans for expansion, would prove the basis for future diplomatic efforts to move France into a position of leadership within the League.

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In addition to these well publicised, the cabinet and the Emperor, in a top secret meeting, also approved three proposals from a selection of suggestions by top scientific, military and diplomatic minds as to how to boost the power of the Empire and to achieve ultimate parity with the Mitteleuropa.

The first of the proposals approved was the establishment of a network of agents and propagandists throughout occupied northern France. Inspired by the American Underground Railroad, this network would work to persuade people to cross the border to the French Empire and to undermine the efforts of the northern government to establish its authority.

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The second of the proposals was the investment of a huge portion of the research budget on weapons research. Though top secret, it would become known to foreign governments, through various sources, that the Empire was working to develop and test rockets suitable for use in war.

However, this was a cover for the true nature of the project: the development of some of the more obscure, but plausible, theories of atomic researchers that hypothesised the potential for a bomb capable of destroying entire cities in an instant. Though many remained highly sceptical of the project, De Gaulle had been convinced of the merits of the project through its huge potential and the indications from research from other leading countries that such a weapon was possible. The ultimate product of this project, codenamed Jericho, would be the Atomic Bomb.

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The third proposal approved was much more to the taste of the conventional military thinkers.

The breakup of the Ottoman Empire during the Arab Revolt had seen the establishment of an independent Libya and the territorial expansion of Egypt and Hashemite Arabia at the expense of the Turks.

With the French military being far superior to that of the Arab alliance and Libya combined, and with the situation in Europe stable for the time being, the possibility now existed for the expansion of French Africa at the expense of the Arab blocked.

Both the Emperor and De Gaulle were supportive of the vision of a new imperium stretching from west to east across the whole of Africa and readily supported the third proposal: to begin making preparations to annex Libya and the Sudan directly into the Empire.

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Right, I'm afraid I'm not entirely happy with the prose in the update I just posted but it was written while feeling very tired so hopefully you'll overlook any jumpiness in the flow of the text. I was originally going to put in much more detail about the political system but I decided it against it in order to save you all from a wall of text :p
 
i wonder how long will the build up take, before your ready to take on germany.
and i think napoleon should ask italy for some rightfully french land, after all a napoleonic empire without corsica seems odd :D
 
Man,this events must be added to KaiserReich mod,you are a INCREDIBLE GENIUS!!!!!!!
 
Shouldn't the Underground Railroad event hurt relations with FauxFrance and Germany? For that matter, I think there should at least be a small increase in belligerence for raising claims on Libya and Sudan (or does raising claims via event do that automatically?)
 
Going strong still. The Treaty of Bordeaux and French Army events are really good as well, and could probably be added to KR itself if you just made the description more generic, and added some extra decisions/events for Germany's reaction (Like either disagreeing, or maybe even giving all of France to the Nationals if they have Paris save for Western Flanders).
 
gooy, Corsica is something I intend to get to. I need to think up a plausible way to get the Italians to hand it over though.

gukpa, thanks :)

blitzthedragon, the Germans don't know about the underground railway yet but when refugees start arriving I've got it set up to seriously lower relations (and trigger the building of the Occitan Wall).

I didn't really think about beligerrence over Libya and the Sudan :S but it should be balanced out when I declare war on them :D

NoMoreSanity, to be honest, the events are mostly big kludges when it comes to triggering them - though I did design the reorganisation and the treaty of bordeaux to have several options. When I'm done with this AAR I'm going to send them off to the KR team and hopefully the professionals over there will be able to tidy them up and get them working properly :)
 
Perhaps you could get Corsica back from the Italians with a trade: Libya for Corsica. Not sure what Papal Italy's policy is regarding colonization, but I bet they would love to have control over a big Libyan colony. In exchange, you get rightful French territories back, not only Corsica, but some of those border areas like Nice, which should rightly belong to France.

That could work out especially well if you also discover Oil in Libya, I bet the Italians would chomp at the bit to get access to that in exchange for some rightful French border territories going back to France.
 
well you have actually liberated the whole southern italy, for that reason i think they should should give you back any french territory they possess.
 
well you have actually liberated the whole southern italy, for that reason i think they should should give you back any french territory they possess.

But Italy has a good as a claim on France on Corsica - it's been fought over for a long, long time, after all. And the Papacy helped out during the liberation of France as part of the Catholic League, and making demands within your own alliance won't look pretty. Hugely bad PR and diplomacy. I say leave Corsica alone for now, and get them back by beating up the Pope later; there's also Chambery and Nice to get back as well, and you've already mentioned the Catholic League is only one of convenience. Giving away Libya sounds like a plausible idea, but I doubt the Pope is really all that fanatic about colonies however.

Also, I'm not sure if I agree on the whole Catholic propaganda against the Germans bit. The French are rather sensitive towards religion after all, and I have a feeling that such things might have a bad backlash instead of its intended effect. Then again, it's the Germans though, so....
 
Ooh, Occitan Wall. That sounds interesting.
 
With Corsica the Napoleons have a fairly strong claim on it given that they were originally the noble family that ruled it. I'm also going after Nice and Chamberey though.

I think the best way of resolving the situation might be with plebiscites - I can code an event for each province with a certain probability of them choosing to either join France or join Italy.

With the Catholic propaganda aspect, this is one of the things I didn't really describe properly. Basically the propaganda is mainly anti-Prussian (a fairly feeble attempt to also win the sympathy in the other German states - especially Bavaria) and the Catholic thing comes in more of "look at the nasty Prussians waging a kulturkampf against Catholics in Germany [which, historically, they were doing] and look at how they've imposed a German pretender on northern france who's anti-catholic and intolerant and who's stuffing the government with protestant german advisors"

The French Empire is basically trying to portray itself an enlightened beacon of religious tolerance to other Frenchmen and contrasting that with the way the Germans discriminate against minorities - especially Catholics. However, it's also using the Catholic element more outside France in order to try and undermine the Germans by getting local catholic populations in the Mitteleuropa to sympathise with the League. And there's also a distinction inside France as to where propaganda is used. In the urban, more leftish areas the Empire emphasises the anti-German propaganda. In the rural, more religious, more conservative countryside, it emphasies the Catholic element a bit more.

Of course, it's also worth remembering that syndicalism has caused a fairly big polarisation in KR. All the non-syndicalist countries in europe are politically more right wing and conservative than they were in our TL. After all, this is a europe where the monarchies and empires still exist and where the closest thing to democracy that exists are authoritarian democracies such as the rigged German reichstag where a tiny minority of the population has most of the votes or the Imperial French National Assembly which has no real power at all.
 
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