Chapter 74: The Fourth Lapplandkrieg
"There is another."
-Reinhard Gabriel
"Give the Russians a cookie, and they will demand another cookie. Give the Slavs Finland, and they will demand Sweden and Norway. Seriously, do these guys ever learn?"
-Court Cartographer Mercator
The London insurrection was quickly put down after reserve legions were brought in from Gallia. The rebels were crushed and scattered across the countryside, where they surrendered to Wilhelmina. The leaders were executed immediately.
The Manchu Empire continued its expansion into both Siberia and Japan, sending settlers to claim the frozen wastes and to "find the lost Manchu brothers and sisters" who fled the Mongol conquests. Korea, though opposed any further Manchu expansion, launching an invasion to retake its core territories from the Jurchens. On the islands of Japan, the Shiba daimyo consolidated his power. He now had more influence than even the Ashikaga shoguns, and it would not be long before he decided that the Ashikaga had to go.
While the Indians launched an invasion of Mutapa, a Flemish man named Mercator became well known for his maps and was hired as the court cartographer, though he refused to fix the Reich's name placement on the official maps.
Provincia Sudafrika and the current imperial government.
Reinhard Gabriel continued mapping out the coast of North Eimerica. From reports by Mexica sympathizers, he learned that there was a vast empire that was located north of the Triple Alliance. He resolved to find this empire and make contact with it. As he sailed up the Pacific coast, his fleet encountered fishing boats and trade vessels that looked quite similar to the Song ships, though they were much larger, easily dwarfing his own ships.
The Ming concluded another war with the Yuan Dynasty, forcing the Great Khan to cede large amounts of northern China. The Mongol situation wasn't helped much by the fact that the Onggirats and the Manchu were also being crushed by the Ming and Tran forces.
Mali continued its colonization of the Eimericas as Makarios, the "hero" of the Majapahit War, passed away. Tibet was humiliated yet again (the first time being when it lost half of its land to U-tsang separatists) by the rising nation of Lan Na, which was quickly becoming a regional power.
In 1546, the Russians called the Reich to war yet again against the Norse. Though she accepted, Wilhelmina sought to continue her father's policy of trying to deny the Russians any land and as such sent only enough forces to defend Provincia Germania.
After hearing about Gabriel's reports of an unknown empire located in the north of Cemanahuac, Wilhelmina authorized him to carry out another mission, this time to map the coast. She could not pass up on an opportunity to find another ally which bordered the Triple Alliance. Gabriel set sail at once from Singapura, sailing up the coast of Asia until he reached the easternmost edge of Siberia, where Asia fell into the ocean, with Eimerica lying across a narrow strait. Farther north was impenetrable ice, so Gabriel turned east towards the Eimerican coast. At first, he was surprised by the Indian fleet that was apparently doing the same thing as he was doing. For a couple of days they sailed side by side, sharing beers and
naan and other things, before the Indians sailed out to sea to map out the ocean.
Upon returning to chart out the coast, Gabriel spotted a city in the frozen north. A Chinese city.
He took a small party of soldiers and rowed to the shore, where he was immediately greeted by a division of queue-wearing soldiers, all armed with guns. After a tense standoff, Gabriel's Singapuran translator explained that the Reich had come in peace and wished to know what nation he had just discovered.
The commander of the Manchu army simply laughed. He said, "
Zhongguo Da Jin." The Jin Dynasty. In exile in Eimerica.
Once the Manchus were sure of Gabriel's peaceful intentions, they welcomed him and treated him and his soldiers to a luxurious feast. They explained that the city he had landed in was just a colony, and that the imperial capital was far to the south; they provided a map and an interpreter for the expedition, as the Chinese language that they spoke had evolved drastically over the years and was almost its own dialect now. Gabriel then returned to his ships and sailed down the coast of North Eimerica, following the map. When he arrived at the location specified on the map, he found no city, only rocky coast and an entrance to a river. Yet he saw Chinese ships of all sizes sailing in and out of the river mouth. So he followed the ships and found himself in a magnificent bay, and on the shores of the bay magnificent cities with beautiful architecture rose out of the marshes and golden hills of the Eimerican landscape. The fleet docked in one of the harbors of the largest city, which sat on the tip of a peninsula and overlooked the bay's entrance. He was impressed by the large fortifications that had been built to defend what the Manchus called the Golden Gate, with no less than twenty cannons pointed at the Pacific ready to repel any invasion fleet. His men stared at the large harbor that the ships were moored in; each ship docked besides them was easily three times larger than the largest Reich ocean-going ship. The city had to have a population in the hundreds of thousands, almost as much as the metropolises of Berlin, Constantinople, Kiev, Delhi, Nanjing, and Tenochtitlan. The Jin called it Jinshan, or "Golden Mountain," after the rolling golden-colored hills surrounding the bay (and the rich gold mines in the empire's east).
He was escorted to the imperial palace, which happened to be on one of the medium-sized islands dotting the bay. There, he did the kowtow to the Emperor Wanyan Linmei and learned from the court scholars how the Jin came to be so far away from their homeland.
Like the Song, the Jin also sought refuge abroad. Some fled to Korea, but the king expelled them under pressure from the Mongols. Others made it to Japan and Ryukyu, but when the Mongols invaded Japan (and ultimately failed), the Japanese closed their borders, refusing to take in more refugees. The rest, then, tried to flee on their ships. However, their navy wasn't as developed as the Song, and any fleets sent into the Pacific were forced to return. The vast majority of the Jin population fled over land, subsequently, into the wasteland of Siberia. The harsh climate took its toll on the Jin, with thousands succumbing to cold, disease, and tiger attacks. And they were still pursued by the armies of the Great Khan. The Mongols were relentless in their pursuit, forcing the Jin to sometimes hide on their ships, which were moored off the coast of the mainland.
The Jin followed the coast north and east, discovering some tribes in the frozen north. These tribes at first took them in but expelled them as soon as Mongol scouts appeared in the distance. The Siberians knew they could not stand against the might of the Mongols and thus could not help the Jin much.
And so the Jin ran on through the snow, coming to the northeastern extremity of the continent. Here they ran into a dead end, with nowhere left to run. Ocean stretched across the horizon before them, and behind them the Mongols were closing in. If they stayed where they were, they were dead. If they jumped into the ocean, they would also die. They decided that death at sea was preferable to slavery and slaughter under the Mongols, and they got on their ships and sailed as far away as they could from Asia, hoping that they could die peacefully in the calm waters of the Pacific.
To their surprise, eighteen days after evacuating from Asia they discovered land. Large forested land, apparently untouched by man. Eager to get off their ships again, they set foot on this new land, which they named Fusang, after the mythical eastern land. They thanked the powers that be for giving them a miracle and for saving them from the Mongols.
After a few expeditions to map out the region, the Jin determined that they could not live on this land, ironically. So they trudged south, except instead of fleeing from an unstoppable enemy they now had hope they could find land they could settle on.
Finally, after several months of walking down the coast of the continent, they came to a large inland bay, surrounded by rolling golden hills, vast marshes, and small woods. Though the soil was poor, this land was habitable. So the Jin settled down around this bay and used what remained of their ships to build a grand city which they named Jinshan.
Life was hard in this new environment. The Jin diet relied mainly on seafood and game, as rice farming was limited for now. They had brought very little livestock with them, and what little they brought died off on the voyage. So they turned to the local flora and fauna, of which there apparently was no limit. Hundreds upon hundreds of the colossal redwood trees found in the south were cut down and made into buildings and ships. The fishermen went out to the bay every morning and came back with their nets full of fish. Hunters sent out to the eastern side of the bay came back lugging dead bears, mountain lions, deer, and other animals.
It appeared that animals weren't the only thing plentiful around here either. Tribes of men lived here as well. At first they were hostile, raiding the first settlements of Jinshan and the outer cities frequently, but once the Jin managed to perfect their gunpowder weaponry the tribes reversed course. Natives brought gifts to the Wanyan emperors in Jinshan, and some settled down in the cities. Like the Song, the Jin population also intermarried with the natives and assimilated their culture into their own. Most natives adopted Buddhism and Confucian ideals, while the Chinese loosely adopted the idea of totems.
Population grew over the years, and the emperor began ordering settlements established in the interior of the continent. The settlers came across first a fertile valley, which they used for crop growing, and then an imposing mountain range, which they could not traverse for now. However, gold was discovered in the foothills, improving the economy significantly.
The new Jin empire was put to the test in the mid-13th century when a settlement to the south of Jinshan was attacked by a large native force, which was more organized than usual and at times behaved like an Eurasian army. The emperor sent an army to defeat the natives, provoking a war with the Navajo Confederation. The Navajo, despite their advanced military organization, were ultimately defeated by the Jin's gunpowder weapons, and the Jin armies marched into the Navajo capital at Anasazi and forced the government to swear fealty to the emperor, in effect imposing vassal-status on the Navajo. At that moment, the Triple Alliance invaded the Navajo, who called the Jin to war. The emperor, not expecting a barbarian empire to be so powerful, was forced to mobilize his entire military to stop the advance of the jaguar warriors. He sent out his newly built fleets to search for more allies to fight the Mexica, finding the Tawatinsuyu and sharing Chinese gunpowder technology with them in exchange for Quechua intervention in the war.
Meanwhile in Cemanahuac…
Zolin trudged through the thick jungle, his jaguar pelt used as crude camouflage. His battalion was supposed to attack a Tawatinsuyu military base in Darien and free the Nahua prisoners there, in the process helping to halt the Quechua advance into southern Cemanahuac. The air was hot and heavy, and he could barely breathe. His sword felt heavier than usual.
Of course, the Quechuas had to attack at that moment.
There was a shout, and the man in front of him collapsed, a thunder-stick projectile embedded in his heart.
As the rest of his battalion collapsed and the Quechuas moved to capture him, Zolin sensed there was something different about this Tawatinsuyu force. For one, there were among them yellow-skinned men from a tribe he did not know. They spoke an unknown language, and their thunder-sticks looked slightly more advanced than the Tawatinsuyu ones. They made frequent references to “Da Jin,” which was probably the name of their tribe.
Then they hit him on the head, and he blacked out.
Luckily for him and his empire, the Mexica ultimately focused on the Tawatinsuyu threat in the south, moving their armies away from the Jin and concluding a peace. But the Jin knew that it was only a matter of time before the Alliance managed to make its own gunpowder weapons.
For the next several decades, the Jin devoted as much time and resources as they could to building up their military so that it could stand up against the Mexica armies. The Navajo were integrated further into the Jin empire by being designated a march in the late fourteenth century. By 1370, the Jin Empire had become the dominant naval and military power in western Cemanahuac. As the fifteenth century dawned, more settlers moved north, claiming more land for the emperor. They advanced across what Gabriel called the Eimeria River (Columbia River) up to a large sound where numerous tribes lived. Salish, Chinook, Haida...they were all assimilated into the growing Jin Empire. Around this time the Acatls were driven out of Europe and subsequently seized control of the Alliance. The new dynasty focused heavily on military matters and sought to eliminate the Jin. A cold war developed between the two rival empires, though with the Navajo now securely established as a shield against the Nahua, the Chinese began looking overseas, back to their homeland, which they hadn't forgot. They dreamed of home so badly...
Yet while they sent settlers to claim the rest of the Pacific Northwest, their ships were not sturdy enough to survive a voyage across the Dahai, as they called the ocean. And they still had to focus on the Mexica threat in the south, where the Alliance had defeated Tawatinsuyu in several decisive wars and was now looking to expand in all directions.
An opportunity to return to the mainland presented itself in the 1530s, when a fisherman named Tang got lost in the ocean and drifted for months all the way to China, where the Ming found him and shared maps with him. Upon his return, Tang presented his maps to the Jin emperor and was promoted to admiral. Formal relations were established with the Ming, as they both had an enemy in the Manchu Empire. The Jin viewed the Manchu Empire as upstarts and usurpers, not fit to rule over the Manchus. They claimed to be the true Manchu dynasty. In a secret agreement with the Ming, the Jin recognized Ming claims to the Chinese heartland in exchange for recognizing any Jin conquests against the Manchu Empire.
The arrival of the Reich gave the Jin hope too, though not the right kind of hope. Despite the emperor, his family, and most government officials wanting to return home to China, the majority of the population had grown up in Fusang and treated it as their homeland. They simply didn't want to give up what they had for a homeland they never knew. However, they saw the Reich as an opportunity to defeat the Alliance once and for all and to confirm the Jin Empire's hegemony over the continent.
Meanwhile, on the mainland, the Ming inflicted a crushing defeat on the Onggirats, seizing the Mongol capital of Karakorum in a huge blow for the Borjigins and the Mongol khanates. As soon as Karakorum fell, Onggirat power began to decline as rival clans seized power from the khagan, leaving him defenseless against Yavdi and Ming incursions.
Mutapa completed its westernization program in 1547, with the king hoping it would be enough to hold off the Indian offensive into Zimbabwe. It wasn't.
The Imperial University of Konigsberg was established in 1547 to further education in Poland.
Mutapa's reforms weren't enough, and the victorious Indians forced the Africans to agree to humiliating concessions. Rudrani's domains in Africa expanded even more, and with some development of the region the Indian African colonies would rival Provincia Sudafrika.
Wilhelmina passed the Benevolence Act to show that the Reich was an enlightened nation to her neighbors, hoping to use it to better improve relations with her allies.
Map of Oceania in 1547, courtesy of Mercator.
In order to expand Roman influence in Asia, Wilhelmina offered an alliance with the Tran. The Vietnamese accepted.
In Scandinavia, the legions made progress against the Norse, defeating the berserkers in battle after battle.
Word arrived in Berlin that there was a fourth power besides the Mexica, Quechua, and Malians colonizing South Eimerica. They called themselves the "Cherokee" and were quite friendly with the Reich, though this may change in the future when Wihelmina sent colonists to the continent.
Wilhelmina approved the idea of appointing lay members to Church positions, mainly because it gave her more power over the rich and influential Church.
In a surprising move, the Tawatinsuyuans managed to pull off a victory against the Mexica, isolating the Nahua colonies and retaking what lands had been lost in the previous war.
The legions achieved more victories over the Norse, which worried Wilhelmina. If too many armies were defeated, the Russians could get the necessary military advantage needed to enforce a peace on the Fylkirate.
With so many nations taking large chunks of South Eimerica, Wilhelmina decided that it was time to act. On 3 June 1548, the first Roman colonists were sent to Marajo, the island in the Amazon river delta where Eimerich landed almost eighty years ago. The city was renamed New Brandenburg.
Ethiopia's Pacific colonies And in Asia, Christianity spread again. The domains of Takeda-han became the first officially Christian ones in Japan with the baptism of Lord Nobutaka Fushimi. Nobutaka was the first daimyo who was also a
kirishitan, and vowed to bring the Gospel to the rest of Japan and to liberate the Christians suffering under Manchu operation.
