Chapter XVI – Carthage Defiant
Despite the vastness of the British Empire, there were few direct borders between it and Tunis, although once the latter’s allies were taken into account there were more.
In the Mediterranean, the only British base was Malta. With Suez under Tunisian control, if the Straits of Gibraltar could be patrolled by the bulk of the Tunisian navy, things could be manageable.
The British territories in Arabia bordered Tunisia in Djibouti, which could be defended effectively if the British didn’t land troops behind it.
Niger was expected to be the premier battleground, at least unless hordes of enemy troops invaded by sea, and so some armies had been stationed there as a precaution even before the war broke out. Sokoto, just to the south, would likely be invaded as well, but by the time war was declared Tunis hadn’t yet made arrangements for its defence.
In the south of the continent, there was no land border between Tunis and the UK; but the same could not be said of Transvaal, which could not be reached by Tunisian troops because Portugal hadn’t taken kindly to its recent defeat and wouldn’t grant military access.
The first theatre of war, the Mediterranean, proved surprisingly easy. The Royal Navy may have had over 1500 ships, but only few of them appeared there and they were all antiquated – commerce raiders at best. By October they had been swept away and Tunisian cruisers guarded the entrance to the Med.
Meanwhile, the nation mobilized its reserves in early August, after the early panic had subsided – 404 brigades’ worth of able-bodied men, while theoreticians scrambled to come up with new solutions to the problems presented by such a modern war.
The first allied attack on British ground took place in September – a brave but doomed expedition from Madagascar. Tunis saluted those crazy souls.
A month later, the 7th Poeni Corps ‘Algiers’ scored the first major victory on land, bringing joy to all patriotic Tunisians.
Things were going much worse in Sokoto, where a belated Tunisian expedition failed to relieve the country, which signed a white peace after half a year of resistance. The Tunisian forces retreated to the east while the British moved back north. The two sectors would meet again in Niger.
In November, the Poeni Sacred Band invaded Malta, under the protection of the Tunisian Navy. The occupation of that island would constitute the first land gain against the British Empire, which was about to kick Transvaal out of the war like it did Sokoto. With the Mediterranean pacified, Sokoto’s borders closed to the British, and Djibouti secure, Niger became the only continuously ‘hot’ theatre of war, with the battles of Alrit, Agades and Bilma taking the form of ceaseless trench warfare, which Tunis struggled to find ways to exploit.
In March 1932 a breakthrough was made. Tunisian forces found a way across the trenches of Bilma and on to Zinder. From there, more troops were directed west, in an attempt to cut off the British lines of retreat.
By the end of the month, fresh British troops appeared on the scene and intercepted the Tunisian elements, creating a fourth battle.
Those maneuvers aside, the war in Niger was one of attrition, with armies rotating in and out of all four major battles, all the while the central African climate taking its bloody toll on them. Then, in June, the first of the battles was won.
The loss of 245,000 men was a great blow to Britain, which could not easily justify such sacrifices to its people. However, that outcome only made its soldiers fight more fiercely in the other battles. The British troops were better organized than the Tunisian ones, who also suffered from a low rate of reinforcements. But continuous battle had left the British armies without proper command while the Tunisians had a home advantage. In November, tank experiments led to the development of Tunis’ first armours. Four armoured brigades were immediately ordered.
In November, the second great battle, that of Bilma, was won. The British lost over 300,000 men, and for the first time appeared at a disadvantage, having lost the war prestige they had gained by defeating Transvaal and Sokoto early in the war.
Meanwhile, a British attack on Suez through the Red Sea was dealt with by the Levantine armies, kept there in reserve for just such a predicament. The British army retreated to Dumyat where it was surrounded.
In the technological front, steel breech-loaded artillery was quickly followed by indirect artillery fire, after which the Tunisian War Office asked for the development of ways of increasing the rate of reinforcements.
At the end of 1932, the Socialist Faction was placed in power, since the Red Threat was once again rearing its ugly head in Tunis, and the sultan hoped that some sort of compromise could be reached on pension reform. Unfortunately, only 45% of the upper house was prepared to take such a step. With 6 million reds ready to revolt, that might well be the last mistake the upper house would make.
By January 1933, the Tunisian army in and around Niger was hundreds of thousands of men strong, and was making land gains against the British.
Faced with that predicament, the UK accepted Tunis’ offer of a white peace and the Great Nigerien War ended on 9 January 1933.
There was much jubilation in Tunisia and Ahmad II, assured of his great nation’s safety, took that opportunity to proclaim himself caliph of the new Carthaginian Empire. Festivities in the capital lasted for over a month, before, during and after his coronation in the renovated city of Carthage (a renovation based more on romantic nationalism than on historical accuracy, as some foreign archaeologists would maintain, surely out of jealousy).
The Carthaginian Empire was indisputably the great power of Africa. So it came as a puzzling surprise when Spain declared war on Egypt, claiming the infamous Sidi Barrani region, in March.
The Empire didn’t allow the Spanish to come anywhere near Egypt. Troops from Valencia poured into Spain, with the aim of bringing the conflict to a quick end. But less than a month into those operations, the social contract finally snapped. The appointment of the Socialist Faction in December was too little too late for the Communists and in April the last Great Communist Revolution began.
Tunisian forces were outnumbered in most regions, but they had a lot of experience to draw on, from the previous two communist uprisings. By September, the last of the rebels had been neutralized and operations could resume against Spain. The first armoured brigades were developed during the Great Nigerien War but were too late to see action in that conflict. In the Spanish War, the first four brigades formed the skeleton of a new corps, the 11th Armoured Corps ‘Baal’, and were tested in the sands of Arabia.
The sandy conditions did not prove quite optimal for the engine parts of the tanks, while the scorching sun turned them into cooking pots for their crews. This led to some considerable attrition, but when pitted against enemy forces they proved satisfactorily devastating.
In February 1934 Spain accepted a white peace and by November of that same year the Carthaginian Empire’s infamy had dropped to civilized levels. It seemed like at least a couple more years of peace were in store, since no country in its right mind would pick a fight in Africa after the UK failed marginally and Spain failed completely. Over 2,000 years later, the Carthaginians still underestimated Roman stubbornness…
The Italian declaration of war was met with an instant naval blockade of Italy. This time, the Tunisian government decided that simply waiting for the Italians to get frustrated and ask for a white peace wasn’t enough – an invasion of Sicily was in order. In September 1935, Operation Husky was initiated with the Poeni Sacred Band and the 11th Armoured Corps landing in Sicily. They were soon joined by two more infantry corps, the 4th ‘Hannibal’ and 9th ‘Libya’.
In mid-December, the Italian armies in Sicily surrendered and Carthaginian troops moved on to Reggio di Calabria.
The Carthaginian corps would march on north to Naples, Rome, past Rome, until the Italian will for war was broken. Although there were those in the Carthaginian Senate, an extremist but vocal lot, who called for a final solution to the Italian threat, and to that posed by the rest of Europe, by setting an example. No more would Rome plan and plot against Carthage and its allies in Africa. Its armies would be defeated, one by one on the way north and then…
Roma Delenda Est.
The Carthaginian Empire and the rest of the world in 1936: