Memoirs of Tsarina Anna: The First World War, 1731-1737
My one goal as Tsarina was to finish my father's works, and to bestow upon him the true honors as a general and Empire-maker that he deserved.
Thus, all effort was placed into rebuilding our armies following the last border war. We raised what we could north of China- four armies of 20,000 men each; we strengthened our armies along the western border; and we built up a strong army to defend our holdings along the eastern American seaboard.
In 1731, I felt we had achieved what we needed, and prayed to God for his benevolence as we moved to crush our enemies. War was declared upon China, and our armies in the north moved south, while our colonial army in Da Nang moved up to attack the southern provinces. One of our two Indian armies was loaded upon a fleet and sent to take the Chinese island holdings, whereupon the plan was to join with the southern force.
As we expected, the world would not simply stand by and let us have our way. On April 17th, England declared war upon us, bringing their allies of the Iriquois, the Netherlands, Prussia, Venice, Hessen, and Navarra. Ten days later Genoa declared war, bringing in Portugal as well. After that came a slew of single declarations- the Hanseatic League, Brandenburg, Turkey, Tuscany, Bohemia, and Spain. Through all of it, Austria stayed by our side and happily joined in our fights; which was good, for there was but a half-dozen countries in the world *not* at war with us.
In the west, our armies moved forward to seige our enemies. The exception was Prussia; apparently, we had caught Brandenburg and Prussia during a war of their own, and Brandenburg had a large force seiging Prussia. We decided to wait and let them take Prussia before snatching it for ourselves. But otherwise, we marched forward, seiging Posen, Silesia, and Danzig. Likewise, our southern armies pushed into Turkey and began to lay waste to their forts.
Our experiences in the east and west were complete opposites. In the west, we saw few armies- 50,000 men of Brandenburg were on our border when the war started, but they stayed to seige Prussia and soon dwindled to ten thousand; 50,000 men of the Hanse attacked Copenhagen, but were obliterated by our own forces under Krementov. But the forts in Central Europe- forbidding structures that took years of heavy gunnery to break.
In the east, the forts fell like houses of cards, even to our small 20,000 man armies. But then came the report of a 50,000 strong Chinese army heading to the northern border. Expecting that this would be the most of the resistance we faced, we banded two of our armies together for a rough parity and marched to meet them. It was a long fought battle, with the edge wavering between each side, before finally the last of their infantry melted away and their horsemen were scattered by our troops and our artillery. Their losses were nearly total- but our losses were heavy as well, losing nearly 25,000 in the battle.
And then came the reinforcements. A Chinese army of over a hundred thousand men came northwards from the capital, and we were sorely vexed. Even all of our northern forces combined would be hard pressed to defeat it, and with our troops spread apart... my advisors begged and pleased with me to call for a peace with China, to take what we could and rebuild for another war. But rebuilding would take too long, and the glory of conquest would then be another's, not my own.
Besides, I was my father's daughter, and I knew something about war. Our troops were spread out so as to attack as much land as possible as quickly as possible; the Chinese were centered so as to inflict a great force wherever it hit. But we were spread for another reason- to avoid over-taxing the land we marched upon, and therefore keep from running out of forage. Even knowing the land and having a supply line, the huge Chinese army would be quickly plagued with desertions, disease, and starvation.
Thus, the order was given for our armies to engage in a tactic of delay and manuever. We would avoid the Chinese army as much as possible, swinging around it and behind it to conquer the lands to the south; any contact would be broken off by retreat immediately, and we would let the Chinese try to march upon the lands we conquered.
As insurance, however, we sent our fleet back to Madras to pick up our other Indian defense army, and began recruiting a third.
The first to fall was Turkey. The seiges against her went easy enough, and we had enough time and little enough trouble that we made an attack upon Constantinople itself with the hopes of forcing them to the table and giving us three provinces. But still they relented; they were simply too large for even the loss of their capital to cause concern. Even our small raiders burning their trading posts up and down the African coasts seemed no trouble to them. Finally, in November of '32, we agreed to take 81 ducats, Nuyssaybin, and Syria in exchange for peace, and set our hopes for Jerusalem on the back burner.
The next to fall was the Hanseatic League; Krementov had, as I said earlier, quickly knocked aside the Hanse army and subsequently made quick work of the forts in Jylland and Holstein. We were moving upon the Hanse capital when they offered Jylland and Hosltein to us; we decided that it was a strategic enough position to accept. Once the western land border had gotten closer to our Danish outposts, we would focus upon obliterating the Hanse, but for now, they were a usefull buffer.
Then fell the Iriquois. Many in the court had been concerned about the sanity of raising large armies in North America to attack small bands of natives; but my reasons soon proved true when the Iriquois gathered an army of 25,000 together and attempted to fight us with European tactics. The fools did not realize that we were the masters of European tactics, and quickly began driving them from their lands. After two years of this, we offered citizenship to the surviving Iriquois, but they refused. We could not understand their refusal- we had taken all of their lands, destroyed all of their towns- how could they continue to fight? But refuse they continued to do, and so we agreed to settle for taking full control of the lands closest to our colonies- Shenandoah, Tuscarora, and Oswego.
Fighting continued in Central Europe, then; most of our armies were seiging enemy lands, but we were pestered by constant uprisings in the Prussian and Polish lands we had taken in the last war. Still, the rebels were easily defeated, even by our newly recruited armies. The only area of any worry was in Modina, where we were constantly pestered by nuisance attacks from our enemies. When in August Tuscany offered a white peace, I quickly agreed, just to give Modina that much more peace.
Our victories continued unabated. In China, the enemy armies were growing smaller and weaker, while ours continued to conquer huge swaths of territory. In North America, we burned every Trading Post we could find, and ran rampant through the Spanish colonies, finally gaining a peace from them in which we took Sacramento, Atlixco, and 123 ducats. In India, the Portugese were burned out of Burma, and the entirety of the Indian and Indochinan lands were ours.
The most of 1734 was spent with small gains, but no large news, but we capped it off with the annexation of Prussia. No longer would we fear their armies and generals, and revenge was taken for the years of gifts given with no real return.
1735 saw a general shift in the war, for as one side went out, a new front opened. Bohemia surrendered, giving us Silesia and Krakow, followed by Poland declaring war upon us and dragging France into the fight. September saw Scotland declare war upon us, and drag Spain back into the war.
But November saw the greatest gains of all- the Emperor of China petitioned us and requested peace, offering his servitude and vassalage to Russia. Thus were our two empires combined, and Russia controlled all of Asia. My advisors cried with joy as the news was announced, and I called for a week of celebration in Moscow, declaring this the triumph of my father's plans.
Of course, we were not entirely finished. Before France and Spain had entered (or, in Spain's case, re-entered) the war, our garrison in Modina had felt safe enough to sally forth and seige Genoa; when it fell in mid '36, we took Danzig and Mombasa as our due from their ally Portugal and called it even. Our Northern fleet took Krementov's troops on a quick ride into the English Channel, and barely had Krementov landed in Kent when the English begged for peace, offering us their only remaining Northern American colony- Mobile. Which was the main center of trade for North America. We quickly agreed to such a settlement. A few weeks later, Poland finally fell to seige, and we took 27 ducats. Not much, but it forced France out of the war as well.
Only Spain and Scotland remained as adversaries, at least until October when the Papacy declared war upon us. With no allies of their own, it was little trouble for the Modina garrison to wrest Emilia from them for their impudence. Our North American armies had pounded the Spanish colonies again, and Spain gave up 93 ducats and Tuxpan in exchange for peace. That left Scotland, and we handed them all 86 ducats of our treasury in February of '37 simply to have done with the war. After all, they had no provinces we really wanted, and doing serious damage to them would have cost us more in rebuilding our armies than 86 ducats- why, losing just 1000 cavalry and 10 guns would have cost more to replace.
Thus, was the war- which many people were calling the "Great War" or the "World War"- ended. So many of our dreams had been achieved- we now controlled the entirety of mainland Asia, leaving only the small islands for others. North America was firmly in our hands, and we were in a good position to take the gold-rich Mexican provinces from Spain. Our western border was well to the west of lands we even considered Russian, and our holdings in Italy had actually grown. Our armies and navies had once again proven themselves the equal of none.
But the question that weighed heavily upon us all- where to go from there?
Establishing New Russia on the East Coast of America... we'll see, but it's a juicy thought.
