Re: [BOP 1884] Main Thread: ORDERS ARE LOCKED, TURN 3 PROCESSING BEGUN

Scores:

Tl;dr - ranking is by prestige (self-explanatory), Industry (# of factories), and Military (# of units)

Government Type:

Tl;dr - how your country runs, and who runs it. Don’t make decisions that radically oppose it unless you want trouble.

Suffrage:

Tl;dr - who can vote, i.e. who you have to appease to not get riots.

Economic Policy:

Tl;dr - how you get money and whether it’s focused on active control or passive growth.

Government:

Stability/Unrest:

Tl;dr - Stability. Duh. If you ****ed up, this is where you find out.

War Weariness:

Tl;dr - A measure of how much propaganda you need to create to keep things going.

Social Movements and Rebels:

Tl;dr - this is where you find out how you ****ed up.

Economics:

Army Upkeep:

Naval Upkeep:

Welfare Costs:

Endowment for the Arts:

Tl;dr - spend money, get famous.

Debt:

Diplomacy:

Crises:

Tl;dr - big events between major powers. If a world war starts, one of these will be the reason. Can be made by hosts, but also by 2+ players if they ask the hosts first.

Competitions:

Tl;dr - similar to the above, but of a less apocalyptic nature.

Industry:


Strategic Goods:

Tl;dr - more IC = more available/affordable units (see tier list, above), more money. Building stuff above your current tier costs 50% extra per tier. No resource system as such, just coal and iron needed to build anything. More railways = higher % of money from IC.

Metropole:

Colonies:

Tl;dr - colony development. Pay attention, manage your ****, get more money from them. Watch for riots.

Precious Metals:

Tl;dr - #worth. If you can find these, it’ll be worth your while.

Military:

Manpower and Mobilization:

Tl;dr - how many soldiers you can send to the slaughter. More conscripts available (provided your country has a conscription policy - which you can set up, but which isn’t always liked by the people), less volunteers, during peacetime, only volunteers are recruitable, conscripts can reinforce. Number rises and falls with victory, defeat, unrest, propaganda, etc. You can mobilise volunteers, which is free, but generally has lower quality units, and you can mobilise conscripts, where you can choose what units you get and get more of them, but have to pay for them. You also have to have a conscription policy.

Recruitment:

Army Recruitment:

Tl;dr - Manpower is drawn from volunteers unless you are mobilising. You can split units into smaller “subunits” if needed for certain tasks - this does not change upkeep or overall organisation.



Naval Production:

Tl,dr - Unique ship classes can be created. You can contract out shipbuilding from other countries if they have better tech than you.

Across the Atlantic, a crisis over the institution of slavery is boiling over at last in America. The debate of slavery, deferred again and again through compromises and half measures, has at last reached its reckoning. The defeat of Lincoln in the contentious 1860 election, and the Second Compromise, reestablishing rights to import slaves at the cost of a moratorium on expansion of slave states further West, but delayed the inevitable, and outraged voters in the California territory rioted, winning greater autonomy by the point of the gun from the far distant administration in Washington. The territory of Utah, also known as Deseret, followed its example and imposed the principles of their Mormon faith upon the administration, creating a local and isolationist theocratic-republic in its image.
 
The Union, strained to the breaking point in the face of the autonomy movements, had nonetheless maintained the peace: until now. Abolitionists have been pushing bills relentlessly in Congress to implement measures towards the end of Slavery, which have been stubbornly shot down time and time again by the pro-slavery proponents. Demonstrations have yielded nothing, and so both parties have turned to riots, targeting the businesses and public meetings of their rivals, culminating in the already infamous November 12th Massacre in the streets of Washington D.C. Both elements had staged marches through the capital, with both claiming the support of God in their endeavors, before they encountered each other: and charged. Shots were fired, bones were broken, and fifteen people from both sides lay dead, but that day, it is said, is the day the Union died. Infuriated by the deadlock in the Congress, and outraged by the blood being spilled on the streets of the capital, Senators and Congressmen from both sides returned to their home districts, the foul mood before November 13th now turned mutinous. And in the South, with politicians and landowners paranoid over their rights to their slaves and plantations, secession, long discussed behind closed doors, now became a foregone conclusion.

Telegraphs buzzed day and night, as railcars raced the representatives of the United States back to their home states to meet with their constituents. Alabama was the first to propose it, and the first to approve it: they would no longer be beholden to the federal government in Washington. From the State Capitol in Birmingham, the cries for secession spread like wildfire throughout the South. The last states, Virginia, North Carolina, and Louisiana committed on Christmas Day in the waning days of 1883, and, in congress with the other seceding states, organized the Confederate States of America, with its capital in the stately city of Richmond, their proud state capital. Official calls for the formation of an army on both sides were issued immediately, but were beaten to the punch by crowds of enthusiastic, indignant people heeding the calls of private militias weeks before the CSA was formed. From official state militias to Northerner Tycoon Legions and Southern plantation lords’ personal regiments, and armed militias of all backgrounds, stripes, and organization, all are answering the call for a provisional army to restore the Union or preserve Southern independence.

The time for talk had ended between the Confederacy and the United States of America, or the Free States, as they are popularly known. On New Years Day of 1884, however, none know where the loyalties of the Western states of Deseret and California lie, and representatives from both governments are rushing West to sway their allegiances to their side. And as Europe gathers to divide up Africa and the remaining free and sovereign nations of the Earth, it must also lend an ear to the pleas of the Free and Confederate states in what they assure are just and righteous causes. Either way, this is not a crisis that can be mediated through words and speeches: only through blood and iron can the Union be reforged, or the Confederacy win its independence.


Since the rise of the great Muhammed Ali Pasha and the Oriental Crisis of the 1830s, Egypt had exercised considerable autonomy from the affairs of the Ottoman Sultan in Constantinople, and for a time its star appeared to ascend over the waning fortunes of the Turks to become on par with the powers of Europe. Those days, however, have long passed, and by the decadence and corruption of the Khedives, the descendents of the Pasha, the Land of the Pharaohs has fallen into decay, while Europeans increasingly inserted themselves into the affairs of the country. One last chance at reversing the decline in power and finances presented itself with the construction of the Suez Canal to link the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, with the Khedive sharing a controlling share of the project with the French. But it came to naught as the money was frittered away on palaces, extravagant lifestyles, and gambling, and the share of the greatest infrastructural project of the 19th century passed into the hands of the British, who increasingly shared a Condominium of control over the Egyptian government with the French.

Frustrated by the growing European control over his country, as well as the crushing burden of ever more taxes enacted by the preceding Khedive Ismail “the Magnificent”, Colonel Urabi, an officer in the Egyptian Army, incited a revolt capitalizing on the growing nationalist sentiment. A new Khedive, Tewfik, was powerless to oppose, and so from 1879 until 1881 Urabi held effective control over the land of Egypt, until his overt seizure of power provoked the alarm of the European powers. An anti-foreign riot in the international concession city of Alexandria, which killed 50 Europeans and wounded many more while burning many businesses and homes, would provide the cause for intervention. And yet, despite the anti-imperialist policies of the Gladstone Administration, alarmed by the potential seizure of the Suez Canal, Britain alone took up the banner against the Urabi revolt, despite requests made to the French and Italians.

The subsequent Bombardment of Alexandria was a brilliant example of British seamanship, as well as the power of the technologically advanced Royal Navy ironclad fleet. Defended by a thick array of a dozen forts manned with artillery, Admiral Seymour engaged the fortresses in a furious bombardment between ironclad ships of the proud Mediterranean Fleet and the shore batteries. The ironclad HMS Condor distinguished itself in the fight, steaming directly into the teeth of the Egyptian defenses whilst firing all guns to relieve the flagship Invincible when it came under range of the shore defenses. Ten and a half hour exchange of gunfire eventually saw the citadels reduced to rubble and a white flag flying above the smoke of the devastated city the next morning.

The fight on the ground to end Colonel Urabi’s revolt would follow, as an initial expedition overland from pacified Alexandria was stopped in its tracks by strong field defenses erected at Kafr el Dawwar. General Garnet Wolseley, taking over the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, would instead exercise a bold maneuver and take the entire army by sea around the Egyptian defenses between Alexandria and Cairo, and instead land them to the East by the Suez Canal. Forced to hastily withdraw and set up new positions at Tell El Kebir, where, desperately in fortifications among the ruins of the ancient city of Heliopolis, he made his stand against the oncoming British Army. General Wolseley, making use of the moonless desert night, advanced his troops under the cover of darkness, where using the light of the breaking dawn to blind the sentries, they achieved total surprise over the enemy and swarmed over the trenches and fieldworks in a heroic charge. Smoke thrown up from the front lines covered the continued advance as Egyptian and Sudanese troops broke and ran. Within an hour, it was over, with 57 British dead to over two thousand Egyptians left to rot under the merciless Sun, and by the time it set in the West, British cavalry in pursuit of the routing enemy was marching in parade through the streets of Cairo. The Khedive was restored, in name, but the reality was that in 1882 Queen Victoria had joined the ranks of esteemed rulers of the Lands of the Nile stretching back 5,000 years to the Egyptian Pharaohs and Roman Emperors. The French, for their part, in declining to intervene in Egypt lost their influence in its affairs, a mistake they would come to bitterly regret as beyond the niceties of Ottoman sovereignty or Egyptian autonomy, Egypt was a British colony now, one that they have added in satisfaction to their sparkling array upon their Imperial crown.


From the remote deserts of the Sudan, in the upper reaches of the Nile where the tributaries of the Blue Nile meets the White, a new revolt is coming, like a sandstorm vast and terrible rising from the depths of the Sahara to fall upon civilization. Railing against the coming of the European overlords, this is nonetheless no nationalist revolt, no tribal uprising, but something older and more terrifying. This revolution is led by none other than the Mahdi: the Messiah of the Islamic faith, the redeemer of the Muslim world. The title has been claimed by a simple man of obscure origins, but he bears the physical marks prophesied for his arrival: and most importantly, this preacher from the desert bears a captivating ability to inspire religious devotion and selfless bravery on the battlefield. After his declaration of the Mahdiyya in 1881, he launched a nigh unstoppable campaign of resistance against the Turco-Egyptian government and their European masters, and gathering recruits and allegiances of local tribes from the Sudanese desert, beginning with a force of a mere few hundred “Ansar” or dervish followers, and growing to a force of tens of thousands of fanatically loyal horsemen and foot soldiers.

Every attempt to put down the rebellion has met with worse than failure, as opposition to the Mahdi is punished with merciless massacre. Time and time again, from his very beginnings, the Egyptian government has sent forces of ever increasing size and armament to stop him, and all have been massacred to the man. After a symbolic retreat to Kordofan, recalling the Hijra of the Prophet Mohammed, he rallied the support of the tribes and raised an army of some forty thousand. Since then he has been unstoppable, his force consuming expeditions numbering in the thousands with the ferocity and appetite of a lion, taking crucial modern weapons and artillery from his defeated foes along the way, making him ever stronger. A final expedition sent out by the increasingly desperate, and fearful, Egyptian government was led by Colonel William Hicks of the British Army, under the direct control of British officers. Well furnished with every weapon a modern army could want, and although the quality of the troops themselves were suspect, under the direction of European officers hopes were high that the threat of this “Mahdi” would at last be put down, and so eleven thousand Egyptian troops and their British officers marched into the desert to confront the Messiah.

The Hicks Expedition, as it has become known, was an utter disaster. The force, drawn out into the desert to relieve a city that had already fallen, were led into a trap by their guides late last year in November, and the Dervish army that surrounded them had been well trained in preparation for their arrival, while armed themselves with considerable war materiel plundered from the corpses of previous expeditions and fallen towns. The Expedition was annihilated, with all those who did not surrender massacred, with Colonel Hicks and his staff among the slaughtered. This destroyed almost the entire field force available in Sudan, and all that remains is scattered garrisons, the largest centered in the regional capital of Khartoum. The situation is now extremely dire, and buoyed by the decisive victory at El Obeid over the European led army, the Mahdi’s army has been swelled with fresh volunteers and allied tribes, including the fearsome Hadendoa, to a force possibly in the hundreds of thousands. The European and Egyptian communities in the Sudan have begun a total evacuation, and are crowding into steamships along the Nile to take them to the First Cataract and safety in Egypt or back home to Europe. Nonetheless, with the acquisition of Egypt as a British colony, the Sudan is now a responsibility of the British Empire, and abandoning the colony would be more than a blow to British prestige, it risks inflaming this Mahdi business into something more than serious: into something real, something that could threaten the European colonial project across the Muslim world, and into the Indian realm as well.


The most dangerous rivalry of our time is playing out in the arid deserts, blowing steppes, and cragged mountains of Central Asia between the competing Empires of Britain and Russia. This is their Great Game, a duel for territory and influence in Turkestan, Afghanistan, Persia, and beyond building for the past fifty years as borders and puppeted territories creep ever closer. The Russian Empire has been pushing south from the expanse of Siberia to claim the ancient cities of the Silk Road, taking Khiva, Samarkand, and Bukhara in succession, and has for more than a century been an active player in the affairs of Persia. The British Empire, rising from their Crown Jewel of India, has pushed in the opposite direction, taking Sindh and Baluchistan, and risking two invasions in the past fifty years into Afghanistan, the Graveyard of Empires. The land has always had a fearsome reputation for invaders, being one of the only lands to stymie the advance of Alexander the Great in antiquity, and their warrior spirit has not faded in the slightest in the past two thousand years, for they have had their chance to test their mettle innumerable times since.

Nonetheless, it is also one of the three corners of the crossroads of Asia, and furthermore, it bears stewardship over the gates to India: the Passes of Khyber and the Hindu Kush, which has led invaders from Eurasia onto the rich Gangetic Plains since the primordial days of the Aryans. British obsessive paranoia for their Crown Jewel is the only reason they would ascend to these barren heights, and they would pay for their intrusion in blood. The First Anglo-Afghan War of 1839-1842, triggered by the first major advances into Central Asia by the Russians, was an unparalleled catastrophe, leading to the utter annihilation of Lord Elphinstone’s Army, with only a single survivor returning to India: the subsequent second expedition restored British honor of arms, but little else in practicality. A second war was triggered but five years ago and concluded in 1880, this time in response to open overtures to the Emir of Afghanistan by Russia in the wake of its disappointments in the Congress of Berlin. The deposed Emir fled to Russia, but this was not the end to Britain’s troubles. The consul left in place in Kabul by the British column would be massacred along with his staff shortly afterwards, necessitating a second ascent into the mountains of Afghanistan in a punitive expedition. The force almost suffered a repeat of the massacre of Elphinstone’s army at the disastrous Battle of Maiwand, kicking off a chaotic rout to Kandahar, pursued by the merciless Pashtun ghazis. The Battle of Kandahar would end the rebellion of the heroic Emir Ayub Khan, but once more the subsequent peace would bring little substantive assurance of the security British interests in Afghanistan beyond assurances of control over its foreign affairs, and after the withdrawal of British troops, Afghani loyalties remain uncertain and unreliable.

Meanwhile, to the West the Great Game carries on in the Courts of the Shah of Persia. Both powers have gone to war in the past with this once mighty and ancient state to pursue their interests in the Caucasus, Baluchistan, and Afghanistan, but the battle is now played out between diplomats and businessmen for influence and concessions in the lands of Cyrus, Shapur, and Abbas. Shah Naser al-Din for his part has proven an adroit diplomat, balancing the competing interests of Britain and Russia and playing them off against each other to preserve his independence, but affairs are beginning to slip from his hands. Economically, the finances of the Empire are in utter shambles and the treasury is heavily in debt. Politically the only militarily effective unit, the Persian Cossack Brigade, has begun to use its power to influence the policy of the state, having attempted to provoke war with their weakened and dismembered old rivals, the Ottomans in a cross border raid into Armenia earlier this year in hopes of reversing the failing fortunes of the Persian Empire. The growing instability and financial insolvency of the state, while the Great Game reaches its height, means winning a controlling interest in the Persian state, or pursuing an alternate solution to securing this weakened country on India’s flank, is becoming an imperial imperative. What is at stake is more than even the security or leverage over the British Raj in India: it is the seizure of the initiative in the colonization of Asia, from the frontiers in Central Asia to the great centers of civilization in the Far East. Indeed, what is at stake in this contest between Britain and Russia, between Queen and Tsar, is the very Mastery of Asia, the last and greatest colonial frontier.


On March 13th, 1881 Tsar Alexander II “the Liberator”, Emperor of Russia, was assassinated in a bomb attack on his carriage convoy in St. Petersburg. Despite his liberalism and strong championship of reform, culminating in his seminal 1861 Emancipation of the Serfs after centuries of dismal conditions for much of the Russian people in near slavery, he had been the target of numerous assassination plots throughout his reign. Plotted by a kaleidoscope of various revolutionary groups, united in purpose only by their radical desire to utterly change Russia through social revolution, previous attempts had thus far failed. The Tsar often only by a hair, from attempted shootings to elaborate bomb schemes, culminating in the detonation of a massive timebomb under the dining room of the Winter Palace in 1880, the seat and symbol of Russian autocracy, that was avoided only by the late arrival of the Tsar’s nephew, the Prince of Bulgaria.

It seems as if the Tsar’s nine lives were running out, and as he rode out in carriage that fateful morning, the first bomb thrown by an agent of the Narodnaya Volya anarchists, the “People’s Will”, passed underneath his carriage, but the Tsar was miraculously saved, as the bulletproof carriage, a gift from Napoleon III, was only damaged while killing a Cossack and injuring the driver and passerbys. The Tsar, ever in concern for his servants and people, disembarked from the carriage to aid the injured: but the danger was not over yet. A second assassin, crying as he held another bomb aloft “It is too early to thank God!”, tossed the object at the monarch’s feet, before erupting in a thunderous explosion. The His Majesty’s legs were blown apart and his stomach disemboweled, staining the snow with his royal blood along with twenty other victims from the crowd. He was immediately rushed by sleigh to the Winter Palace, where the members of the Romanov family gathered in a panicked rush to the gruesome scene as the last minutes of his life played out: in attendance were the next in line, the now Alexander III, and his son, Nicholas.

It is in tragic irony that at the time, Tsar Alexander II was preparing the announcement for the next major reform of his reign, to guide Russia into a constitutional monarchy. His death and burial marked the end of Russia’s path to constitution, and the Empire has turned to the ancient path of autocracy that had guided and protected the Romanov dynasty and Russia for centuries, one all the colder and darker as it leads in descent through the modern age, the wolves of radicalism plaguing its road and nipping at the heels of autocrats and administrators. Alexander II’s dream of a modern and liberal Russia is now dead, and with his death, revolutionaries have a grisly inspiration for the principle of “propaganda by the deed” and political terrorism in their quest to incite social revolution.

The new Tsar, though guided by a paternalistic warmth towards the Russian people and their Slavic heritage, wears an iron glove of uncompromising autocracy, and is currently in the process of throttling the dissident and revolutionary elements in the Russian Empire, beginning with the assassins of his father, the Narodnaya Volya. There would be no mercy or clemency for them, nor commutation of death sentence. The five responsible were hung within the month, and the Tsar’s secret police, the Okhrana, is in the process of hunting down the rest of their organization. Tsarist Russia’s crackdown on revolutionaries faces an immense challenge ahead, however, as radical thought has proliferated throughout society in a kaleidoscope of separate organizations and ideologies, from anarchists and communists to nationalist movements, and as one is liquidated another pops up in its place. With so many organizations, stinging at the great Russian bear opportunistically where it is weak, strong as it is, will it survive the social discord in the years ahead?


A crisis is building in the Red River Valley of Tonkin in northern Vietnam, like a typhoon rising over the jungles and rice fields. This is the heartland and grain basket of the Empire of Vietnam, a land that has stubbornly resisted invaders and would-be conquerors from the mightiest Chinese dynasties to the Empire of Kublai Khan and the Tuangoo Empire of Burma. But its spirit of indomitable resistance has faded, from years of peace marked only by increasingly internal squabbles and wasteful civil wars whilst keeping the peace with China under a loose tributary state arrangement, at a time when a new power begun its ascent in the East. France, in pursuit of a new colonial empire after the loss of its American possessions in its rivalrous competition with Britain in the Bourbon and Napoleonic Wars, were brought to the shores of this exotic land in the early 19th century, bringing first merchants and missionaries.
But France would not be placated by commerce and proselytization alone, and their agents spoke of the weakness and division reigning in the Land of the Southern Dragon, and using technology far beyond the capabilities of the languid Imperial Army, France seized the southern provinces at the Mekong River Delta under the colony of Cochinchina. Since they gained this foothold in Southeast Asia they have been nigh insatiable in their expansion, beginning with the establishment of a protectorate over the ancient lands of the fallen Khmer Empire in Cambodia, and continuing with intermittent raids to coerce ever more concessions from the Emperor in Hue, the capital city located in the central coasts of Annam province. The charting of the Red River by European cartographers, however, presented a new opportunity to use the river to bypass the mandated Treaty Ports into the Chinese Empire and thus tap massive new markets in inland China: an opportunity France could simply not pass up.

But establishing a colony over Tonkin, on the borders with China proper, provokes stepping on the toes of the Chinese Empire itself, which was content with ignoring affairs far to the South, especially while grappling with its own issues of massive internal warfare and unrest in the epic Taiping Rebellion, and direct confrontation with the Western Imperial powers in the Arrow War. But the great rebellions of the 1860s have since been put down, and China has been energetically modernizing its military and industrial capacity, and in either case, intervention in Tonkin represents a challenge to its ancient suzerainty over Tonkin. Nonetheless, operating on his own initiative, Commandant Henri Riviere embarked on a colonial adventure to conquer the Red River, seizing Hanoi in heroic exploits while the French and Chinese governments attempted to mediate an answer to the Tonkin Question.

He would find his nemesis, however, in the general Liu Yongfu, commander of the Black Flag Army, a force of rebels without a cause who fled from China after the collapse of the Taiping Rebellion, and set themselves up as warlords of the Red River Valley. Experienced veterans with more than 20 years of fighting notched in their belts, unlike the ramshackle Vietnamese Imperial Army, had put up a ferocious fight against the French advance in defense of various citadels and strongholds across the country, but had been unable to hold them off. Eventually, Liu Yongfu goaded Riviere to battle, hanging taunting placards on the walls of Hanoi, sending the French officer personally at the head of a force to engage them. The catastrophic Battle of Paper Bridge saw the small French detachment run into heavy Black Flag field fortifications, before being surrounded and nearly destroyed before extricating itself, with Commandant Riviere and many of his senior officers slain in the battle.

His adventures made him a national hero in France, but his death made him a martyr. The French people and government clamored for vengeance, and so his mission to take Tonkin that he began under his own initiative became that of the nation. A French ironclad fleet steamed to the mouth of the Perfume River and bombarded the defenses leading to Hue, to force an audience with the Emperor to extract a protectorate over Tonkin. The force then steamed through the scenic karst monoliths of Ha Long Bay to Hanoi, where the Expedition was significantly reinforced, and under the leadership of Admiral Courbet, the Son Tay Campaign handed the Black Flag Army a decisive defeat after fearsome fighting, though it is not destroyed. The Siege of Son Tay, however, revealed a much more troubling development: among the defenders, along with the Black Flag and Vietnamese troops were Imperial Chinese soldiers. In response to the heavy French intervention into Tonkin, the Chinese government sent some tens of thousands of troops from the provincial Guangxi and Yunnan Armies to the Red River to dissuade further advances, and is extremely alarmed by the escalation against their tributary state. Previous attempts to establish spheres of influence peacefully, under the diplomacy of Chinese chancellor Li Hongzhang, failed or were sabotaged, and the Imperial Court in Peking cannot back down and abandon their ancient suzerainty over Vietnam without considerable embarrassment, nonetheless the opportunity to showcase their growing military strength and modernity against the European Imperialist powers. As both empires maneuver for influence and the title of suzerain over the land of Vietnam, unless careful diplomacy can save the day, and quickly, the great powers of the East and West might once again find themselves at war, this time in the monsoon jungles, lofty mountains, and muddy rivers of Vietnam. Nonetheless, the potential to expand into a much wider and more costly conflict in the Middle Kingdom itself, one much changed since the days of the Taiping and the Opium Wars.


The 1860s brought the issue of the German nation to a head, as nationalist fervor reached its peak despite the diplomatic deadlock between the German Triarchs of Prussia, Bavaria, and Austria over how best to solve the German question. Chancellor von Bismarck, the pilot of Prussia’s strategy and destiny, knew that this was not a question to be solved through speeches and majority decisions, but by blood and iron. Years, if not decades, of careful preparation and industrial development in Northern Germany meanwhile shifted the balance of power decisively towards the energetic and militarily spartan Prussia, while Austria wrangled with its subject ethnic nations, and Bavaria committed itself to an inactive role in mediating the German question. If it was to be solved, it was clear it would be answered by Prussian leadership, and so on June 14th, 1866, Prussia declared war on Austria, triggering their respective alliances in Northern and Southern Germany.

The German Brothers War was a conflict at the cutting edge of technology and modernity, with Prussia utilizing all the latest advances in rifles, railway infrastructure, and military theory to mobilize and concentrate its forces with lightning speed and mechanical efficiency, catching the Austrian army totally on the backfoot. Meanwhile, orchestrating an alliance with Italy, King Vittorio Emanuele II marshaled his forces against Austria opportunistically in the Third Italian War of Unification, in hopes of seizing Venezia from the Habsburgs at long last. Fighting a war on two fronts against a more nimble and concentrated enemy now, Austria managed to fend off Italian advances in the Battle of Custoza and the decisive naval Battle of Lissa, it faced now the greater strength of the Prussian Army on the Fields of Königgrätz, and against the brilliance of Prussia’s finest military geniuses and consummate Prussian martial spirit, it met catastrophe. Forty thousand Austrians, Saxons, Hungarians, and Slavs fell on the in the forests and fields of Sadowa in a single day, despite the heroism and superior guns of the Austrian army, and the way to Vienna was laid open. It seemed as if the German question was about to find its answer.

Until at last, after watching keenly from the sidelines the progress of the wars in Italy and Germany, France made its move. Threatened by the rapid shift in the balance of power represented by a decisive Prussian victory and the Austrian collapse, it leveraged concessions from the Habsburg court to cede Venezia to French-friendly Italy to end the conflict between them, in return for their aid in beating back the relentless Prussian advance on Vienna, and rushed veteran troops tied down in Mexico back to France. The Imperial French Army thus crossed the Rhine into Germany in mid-July, the French people rallying behind them with cries of “Revanche pour Sadova!”. To Chancellor von Bismarck, this represented a stab in the back from their prior talks and agreements in secret. The bold Northern German offensive into Austria was forced to turn back at practically the very gates of Vienna as the French Army, using the same railways they used to mobilize with such speed, raced through the largely undefended borders across Prussia towards Berlin.

A single corps raced ahead, exploiting the element of surprise to commandeer and ride an unchecked offensive by rail towards Berlin and end the war before the main body of the Prussian Army could turn to face the French in battle. Unfortunately, a force of some 80,000 raced back to the homeland with just as much reckless speed, with a whole trainload of troops losing the tracks and crashing with great loss of life as it sped over a turn, such was the haste to head off the French before the capital. Blocked in their advance, and with the wings of the Prussian First Army deploying around it, the French Eighth Corps was in risk of being encircled and destroyed. Bloody and desperate fighting at the railhead at Magdeburg almost saw the destruction of the French Eighth, until the timely arrival of the allied Southern German and Bavarian Army arrived at last. By turning the Southern advance of the Prussians, and although badly mauled, the French were saved from the enveloping cauldron, where Bavarian arms proved themselves against the Prussian. Though delayed, the combined French and South German Army were able to continue their advance on Berlin, and with the reprieve given by the French intervention, the Austrians were able to begin to regroup, placing the main Prussian Army between the armies of two Great Powers, whilst their erstwhile Italian allies dropped out, satisfied with their prize.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, Chancellor von Bismarck’s gambit had failed, and all that could be done now was to negotiate. Negotiations were swift, and peace signed in Paris, mandating a withdrawal from all occupied territories, and the annulment of alliances with all Northern German states to prevent another attempt at German unification. Foiled in his plans but not defeated, Chancellor von Bismarck would quickly bounce back, and circumvent the terms of the Treaty of Paris by calling together a gathering of the Northern German states, united now in universal disgust of the opportunistic French intervention, who voluntarily formed the proposed Northern German Federation. Though the German question remains unresolved, the Prussian position has become all the stronger, and France, through its intervention, has now tied their fate and hegemony inextricably with the balance of power in Germany.


Napoleon III’s 1870 Constitutional Referendum was approved decisively by the people, but revealed the growing opposition underneath the success, with support for the opposition tripling, and losing Paris and many of the great cities of France, with support for the regime buoyed by the rural and small towns alone. The Legislature, given new powers by the Emperor, used them to create uproar in the Senate and Parliament, but despite its success, the spirit went out of the mainstream opposition in the face of the total victory in the Emperor’s referendum, and the torch of resistance would pass to the radicals in Paris. The capital has been the center and source for every revolution in France since the First as the Mother of Revolution, but all had been dominated by the Jacobin ideals of republicanism, one defeated again and again. In its failures, a new ideology would come to take its place, one born to correct the excesses of industrialization, not pursue the idealism of the Enlightenment: the creed of Communism, as expounded by its prophet, Karl Marx.

Revolutionary to its core, the ideology of underground resistance tapped the growing discontent of the Parisian lower class as they suffered under the rapid expansion of industry under the Liberal Empire, and the disruptions of a city being torn up and renovated from the ground up. Meanwhile, resistance leaders would infiltrate the military and the Paris city guard and disseminate their ideology like a disease through the ranks, while stockpiling arms, ammunition, and bombs at key points in the new city. The spark would lit the powderkeg in March 18th, 1871, and so the world’s first Communist Revolution began.

A cache of explosives, piled with hundreds of pounds of dynamite, detonated beneath the center of the Tuileries Palace in the early morning, practically demolishing the residence and killing some two hundred guards and servants in an instant. The Imperial Family only barely escaped the devastation, as the Emperor was departing with the Empress and Prince Imperiale to a visit to Saint-Cloud. The Imperial convoy departed from the city under heavy fire from the streets and rooftops as Paris erupted into insurrection, bombs going off in other major civic buildings throughout the metropolis, while telegraphs sent out messages to begin sister revolutions in a handful of other major cities in France. The coordination of the uprising was unlike anything seen in the spontaneous buildup of riots and barricades of its predecessors, and the loyal elements of the city guard and garrisoned army units were overwhelmed within two days, and so, the City of Lights fell under the pall of the Communards.

The Emperor’s own health had been failing for years now, and practically paralyzed with illness, the initial response was scattered and ineffectual, and the resistance in the legislature tentatively aligned themselves to the Commune, ideologically opposed but drawn to their success and their antipathy to the Bonapartist regime. Only after the Duke of Magenta, Patrice de MacMahon, intervened with the Army of the Rhine was the Commune contained, but with the Emperor incapacitated and the remaining legislature still uncertain in their loyalties, compromise with the Parliament was necessary to unite the government. Under duress, Empress Eugenie, on behalf of her husband the Emperor, signed a Concordat reducing the powers of the Emperor to a true, constitutionally bound monarch, and granting greater powers to the Parliament to win over the remaining cities on the fence in the Revolution to their side. The measure was a success, and Lyon and Marseilles, previously in back-and-forth street by street fighting between Communards and loyalists, finally turned decisively in favor of the government, followed by Brest and finally Orleans. Until at last, Paris stood alone, defiant but roiling internally under the upheaval and stresses of the revolution, as the leadership bickered on how to implement a yet untested ideology under the duress of siege and starvation. The hard secular line and the anti-clerical measures, as well as punitive excesses against the supporters of the regime, eventually doomed the Commune from the inside. Block by block, the Communards were pushed back, while their defenses along the new, open boulevards designed by Haussman were blasted to pieces by government artillery.

The Commune fell, four months after it rose, in July 18th 1871, and in its wake it left ruins of the great monuments of Paris, from the great medieval cathedral of Notre Dame to the gate of the Arc de Triomphe, and of the prestige of France that had been carefully cultivated by Napoleon III over twenty years. The blow to his legitimacy was dire, and what remained of his reign was spent hunting down the last holdouts and orchestrators of the Revolution over the course of his last two years until his death in 1873. Recovery would fall to his wife, the Dowager Empress, who returned from refuge in England with their son to preside over the French Regency era until Napoleon IV assumed the crown of the new constitutional monarchy of France in 1877. The scars remain but the wounds have healed, and France is now ready to step forward into a new era, under a new regime, and a new Emperor, to assert itself once more on the world stage, seeking to recover its lost pride and its place as the center of Europe.

On the afternoon of August 26th, 1883, the island of Krakatoa in the midst of the busy Sunda Straits of Indonesia began reporting a volcanic eruption from the dramatic conical heights of its namesake peak. By late morning the next day, the island was practically gone. The subsequent eruption of Krakatoa was the one of the largest volcanic eruption in modern history, and the destructive power of nature, even in the face of all the technological progress of man before or since, has humbled humanity. Beginning innocuously in the months prior, in on and off venting of ash and gas in response to intense seismic activity. By August, however, these ash columns increased in regularity and number, beginning with one, then two, then three, then a final fourth vent opening just off the coast, that stripped the island bare of plant life, with the previous inhabitants long gone. But evacuation from the island itself would not save them from the fury in store, building within the heart of the volcano of Krakatoa.

The beginning of the climactic eruption of Krakatoa began at 1pm on August 26th, with almost continuous eruptions sending up a column of ash 17 miles high, and throwing baseball sized chunks of hot pumice on the decks of ships 12 miles away. The climax would begin on the morning of the 27th, in a series of four, super-massive explosions: each, triggering tsunamis in various directions, each larger than the last. The third explosion would trigger the loudest sound in human history: the island of Mauritius, an ocean away reported the sound of cannon-fire, 3,000 miles away from the blast. The violence of the eruption was almost unimaginable, and the blasts sending inescapable pyroclastic flows of super-heated ash flowing across the waters of the Sunda Strait at hundreds of miles per hour, annihilating whatever was left standing after the tsunamis, wiping out whole populations of islands in the process and even reaching the coast of Sumatra 30 miles away. The tsunamis that preceded their coming were nigh apocalyptic in height, averaging almost a hundred feet tall, and the largest towering over a 150 feet high, washing over ships, towns, and villages like the Deluge of God’s fury.

The colossal fourth and final explosion sent shockwaves racing across the entire globe no less than three times, and ash sent 50 miles into the sky. In its wake, the island of Krakatoa was obliterated, disappeared beneath the waves or launched skyward by the detonations. Less than a third remains today, and chunks of volcanic rock and coral the size of buildings scattered over Indonesia. Floating bodies, pulled out to sea after the receding of the tsunamis, are still being found by merchant vessels passing through Indonesian waters, and rafts of pumice bearing human skeletons have been found washing up on the Eastern shores of Africa. Even after the subsiding of the eruption and the ultimate destruction of the island, Krakatoa has not finished with us yet, however. The volume of ash and dust shot into the atmosphere has enveloped the world’s atmosphere, and global temperatures have dropped an estimated two degrees fahrenheit. Meanwhile, as a consequence California has been experiencing extremely heavy torrential rain and flooding along its Southern Coast, leading residents to call this the “Water Year”, with significant damage to property and businesses. And everywhere, the ejecta into the atmosphere has darkened the sky, and created unusually vivid sunsets, capturing the imagination of artists and the panic of the people, calling the alarm to fire departments at the apparent glow of fire on the city horizon.


Meanwhile, on the South American Pacific Coast, the greatest war in the young history of its Pacific States has finally come to a close. Pitting the alliance of Peru and Bolivia against the rising power of Chile, the conflict began in 1879 and lasted four long years of vicious fighting, across some of the hardest and most inhospitable terrain on earth, from the baking hot sands of the lifeless Atacama Desert, the driest desert on Earth, to the dizzying vertical heights of the Andes Mountains. Soldiers marched and fought from burning heat to bone-chilling cold, as well as thundering storms and howling blizzards on the exposed and treacherous slopes of the Andes. The prize to be won was rich deposits of guano and nitrates in the Atacama Desert of the Antofagasta Region, under the erstwhile control of Bolivia as their sole connection to the sea, but also at stake was the efforts of Peru and Bolivia to head off the rising power of Chile, and their own political and economic decline after the glory days of the Guano Boom and the colonial silver mines. What began over a dispute over a ten cent taxation on bird **** in the world’s driest desert expanded into the fate of who would hold hegemony in South America’s Pacific coastline, and who would fall into obscurity and decline.

With the frontlines falling on either the desert moonscapes or the high Bolivian mountains and altiplano, regions with few roads, and with all nations involved largely unprepared for war, the first stages of the war would play out at sea, as the Peruvian and Chilean navies dueled for supremacy. Despite a few early victories, after the loss of her capital ironclad ships, the first due to accident, and the stalwart Huascar to capture due to an arduous exchange of gunfire in the Battle of Angamos lasting hours, after nearly six months of skillfully terrorising the Chilean sealanes on its own, the Peruvian navy was effectively bottled up behind the impervious defences of the port of Callao, and Chile ruled the seas. Using steamships, the well-armed and modern Chilean army leapfrogged from port to port along the coast in the Tarapaca and the Tacna-Arica campaigns, neutralizing shore defenses through naval bombardment, before staging amphibious landings with dedicated landing boats to overwhelm and clear out the invaders. The ports would then be used as bases of operations and logistics depots from which the Chileans could march out and clear the remaining bodies of allied armies from the region, before proceeding to the next.

By the Battle of Tacna, where the Chilean Army engaged the combined forces of Peru and Bolivia, it had the level of experience, artillery support, and modern armament to decisively crush the disorganized, discordant, and inconsistently armed Allies. The Bolivian army marched to war with only the elite Colorados regiment, the personal guards of the reigning president, armed with modern weapons, with the rest armed with a hodge podge including old flintlocks. The Peruvian army had more modern rifles, but were similarly of varying makes and models, and both militaries were more involved in domestic power plays before the war than in preparedness for external conflict. The result was that after the disaster at Tacna, both armies effectively ceased to exist, and Bolivia practically knocked out of the war, and Peru having to raise a new army from scratch for the coming defense of the capital of Lima, while Chile continued to build upon the base of their victorious and experienced force.

After intense preparation and planning by both sides, the Chilean force landed an army of 41,000 south of Lima, before marching across river valleys and coastal desert towards the Peruvian capital to begin the Lima Campaign. The Peruvian Army, reformed after Tacna, had meanwhile dug elaborate fortifications in parallel defensive lines before the resort town of Chorillos, and the second behind it in Miraflores. Consisting of redoubts, forts, trenches, and minefields, covered by Gatling guns and heavy artillery and some 10,000 newly raised soldiers, it was a formidable defense. Unable to outflank the position, the Chilean Army stepped off in the early morning on a full frontal assault with 30,000 men, beginning the largest and bloodiest battle in South America to date. Despite the murderous waves of rifle and artillery fire and the obstacles thrown up against them, the Chilean veterans managed to breach the hill line, and chased the Peruvians into town, and under the light of artillery fire fought from house to house in urban combat until the defending army was practically annihilated and the beautiful town burned to the ground. The Battle of Miraflores days later saw the last defensive line breached, and the Chilean Army marched into the Peruvian capital in 1881, as the government evacuated to the mountains and the navy scuttled its ships in adjacent Callao. The war would not end for another two years. What followed was savage fighting in the Peruvian sierra between Chilean expeditions and remnants of the Peruvian army and guerillas, in hopes of wearing down Chile to drop their territorial demands. This was unsuccessful, and their fight only brought further suffering and devastation to Peru for two long years, until at last, war-weary and the country collapsing into instability, Peru signed the Treaty of Ancon, ceding the Bolivian Litoral and the Peruvian provinces of Tarapaca, Tacna, and Arica to Chile.

The conclusion of the war would leave Bolivia without connection to the sea, and Peru in total disarray and near anarchy. The Chilean government is engaged in a fierce campaign to suppress an uprising of the Mapuche, their treasury have improved markedly and they have won a fortune from guano and nitrates mining, and they are at the height of their prestige. Meanwhile, at the end of the war, Peru was devastated through battle and two years of brutal guerilla warfare, the government was in shambles, what remains of the army scattered and divided in loyalties, and society was undermined by the guerilla war and allegations of collaboration. Social stability has been completely undermined, and is now dominated by all out conflict between various racial groups: Chinese coolies revolted against the government while mestizo Peruvians murdered Chinese shopkeepers in Lima, black slaves rose up against the criollo masters of the haciendas, Polynesians captured by Blackbirding slave raiders to work the guano mines ran off or joined anti-government bands. Most importantly, however, is the balance of power maintaining the criollo and mestizo dominance in society and governance over the large population of indigenous Quechua, Aymara, and other groups has been badly shaken, and the Central Sierra of Peru has been functionally taken over by the descendents of the lost Inca Empire. They recall well the rising of Tupac Amaru II, but a century ago, and the ancient lines of the Inca Imperial family carry on today. If the rebels in their mountain fortresses found a leader, this could become more than a simple indigenous insurrection, but a native revolution against the old colonial social order.



The Completion of the Orient Express:
1883 heralded the completion at long last of the anticipated “Orient Express”, a luxury rail-line connecting the great capitals of Western Europe to the East at its destination in Constantinople, capital of the Ottoman Empire. Beginning in Paris, it travels East through Strasbourg, linking with the Bavarian capital of Munich, then onwards through the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the royal capitals of Vienna and Budapest, until crossing through Transylvania and the Carpathian mountains into the Romanian capital of Bucharest and its terminus at Varna, where it meets the Black Sea in Bulgaria. The Express then carries on by boat to the City of the World’s Desire, while plans to connect Bucharest and Istanbul directly by rail are in the works. Passengers are already lauding its luxurious accommodations, cuisine, and its alluring Oriental destinations as the first direct rail connection to the East, and the Express is already proving an economic boon to the erstwhile financially struggling Ottoman Empire.

The Last Quagga:
The last known Quagga, the southermost breed of Zebra in the world, died this year on August 12th in captivity at the Natura Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam. The Quagga, once plentiful on the Veldt of South Africa, declined rapidly in population within the last century, and the last wild herds in the Boer Orange Free State were extirpated by the 1870s. With the death of this captive individual, despite the hopes of the Amsterdam zoo to acquire another specimen, it is believed that the species is now totally extinct.

Death of Marx:
The socialist troublemaker Karl Marx has passed away on the 14th of March 1883, after a long period of Ill health. Although some will surely miss him, others will surely not - especially the French elite. With their prophet gone, will there ever be another communist uprising?

First Social Welfare Law:
In the North German Confederation, the internal struggle between the workers’ movement and the elite has been ongoing for several years, with many anti-Socialist laws passed under Bismarck. Now, however, it seems that some attempt at reconciliation (sincere or otherwise) is being made, with the Health Insurance Bill finally having passed this year. Several other Bills are being discussed, and the proposed Accident Insurance Bill seems likely to pass within the next year. Where could this development lead?

Californian-Mexican Border Tension & Crisis:
A Years-old land dispute along California’s South-Eastern border with Mexico has erupted into International Violence, as the United States becomes even further removed from Californian affairs with the Secession of the CSA. Ranches and Townships in the Jacumba Mountains and Cabazon Valley regions, kept afloat by the Salt Creek Rail Station, had been growing steadily until their pasturing lands began crossing the Border into the Mexicali Region. Almost as if in response, cattle rustling by alleged Mexican ranchers became a significant burden and threat to the American homesteaders.

Recently Five Mexican Citizens, Two of whom were young men no older than Fourteen Years of age, were captured by the owners of the chattel they were caught red handed making off with, transported to Salton Station and ultimately lynched in the town square - despite the protestation of local lawmen who were unable to control or contain the mob.It is believed that nearly exactly a Fortnight later, a Raiding Party of unknown size and origin shot down the Ranchers who had originally captured the Rustlers and razed the property, and its chattel in a gory spectacle, before retreating back over the Mexican Border.

However, this is not the end of the story. Well-known California Ranger Captain Marcus Stoker resigned from the Rangers and formed, with the Funding of Wealthy and Anonymous backers, the Cabazon Valley Fraternal Welfare Society, although it is often simply referred to as the Cabazon Valley Militia. Stoker’s Society took up the responsibility of Patrolling the Border but as the Raids continued, Stoker led his own Mission into the Mexican Territory only to find that the Mexican Army had constructed numerous Fortified Outposts and was subjected to Artillery fire from them.
Local Politicians from every District along the Border are pressuring Military Governor Rembrandt Spooner to demand that Mexico capture and turn over the Banditos and dismantle the Outposts, under threat of military reprisal should the Mexican Government fail to cooperate.

Poudre V Demonstration in Paris:
French Chemists of the Laboratoire Central des Poudres et Salpêtres used the New Year’s Anniversary as an opportunity to demonstrate a new Explosive Compound, simply being called Poudre V, to Napoleon IV and the Generals of the Grand Armee. The new Compound was used in a combined Fireworks and Artillery Battery Firing before the Court, where the improvements over Conventional Powder were immediately apparent in the sharper report, the lack of ensuing smoke clouds and the speed with which the Guns and Fireworks hit their marks.
Normally such a Demonstration would be a private affair, but the French military opted to show the World that her Military Technology remains unrivaled. This Demonstration is surely only the beginning of such Bombastic Shows of Force.

The Opening of the Brooklyn Bridge:
After nearly Fourteen Years, the New York & Brooklyn Bridge has completed and opened, allowing for significant Traffic and Commerce between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Boroughs. Designed by German Immigrant John Augustus Roebling the Bridge spans over Fifteen Hundred Feet and will allow for Thousands to travel between the Boroughs every day.

At the Opening Celebration, President Peers Smith Rye and the Mayor of New York crossed the Bridge along with Roebling’s wife where they met with the Mayor of Brooklyn. After the event, Two Thousand Vehicles and many more Thousands of Pedestrians crossed the bridge between the Boroughs.

You may now post. Country Cards will be released in the next few days, we simply have to catch up on some province/colony descriptions and review the details for the final release. Thank you for your patience thus far, and I cordially invite you to begin posting your introductions here and begin your plots. Behind closed doors, of course.

Kind Regards,
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*EDIT*

Turn Reports:
Turn 1: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,367465.msg8853765.html#msg8853765
Turn 2: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,367465.msg9023531.html#msg9023531

Enjoy!

Alma
Monty
Pixel
Shatari
Moose!
Ev
Marowit/Eternal
Teo
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Remember to include us hosts in your diplo!

Almalexia said:

Either way, this is not a crisis that can be mediated through words and speeches: only through blood and iron can the Union be reforged, or the Confederacy win its independence.

Click to expand...

Let the record show that I intend to make at least one solid effort to challenge this assertion. I feel that there is still a path for peace, and I hope that the Union will honor me with an attempt at finding it.

Cheers for providing my vacation novel.

Cool.

Map is posted! Check the OP, and make sure to open in a new tab. And make sure to say kind things for my wife, who volunteered her time through her busy schedule to make it.  I'll also add labels for countries and capitals/major cities a little later on. In the meantime, enjoy!

I also made a quick reference map just 'cause I like to have one, maybe useful to you guys too.

America should begin with Alaska, having purchased it in 1867.

Not in my house it hasn't. 

Almalexia said:

debt accrues a 6% interest annually

Click to expand...

Get ****ed mate that's daylight robbery.

Otherwise looks pretty good, will read the news whenever I get a spare half an hour. How long do these things usually take? I'm very available all summer but from early September I'll be more or less completely unavailable.

I hope to get at least two good turns in over the summer. Processing should be a lot quicker than setup so we'll see how that goes and play that estimate by ear, but with a two week order period for players that seems the most likely way it'll go. A lot can happen in two in-game years tho, so go all in and have fun!

It is with great regret that I inform you that the Union will not be swayed in their intent for hostile actions. I had hoped that the plans I had laid before them showing a path of peaceful economic reform and eventual reunification would avoid the inevitable ruin of war, but I fear they feel the matter can only be settled through force of might. I pray our children will forgive us for the blood old men will spill.

Denmark laments the division and strife that blights the American people, and can only hope that if diplomacy cannot forestall the violence then a peaceful conclusion can and will be reached posthaste.

In any case, Denmark looks forwards to continuing two decades of peaceful relations with all the nations of the world. We are confident that a strict and unbiased neutrality to affairs that have no repercussions on the Danish people or Scandinavia, a policy which will be followed without hesitation, will be much appreciated by everyone. The streets shall be filled with cries of 'Ægte er den Danskes Aand'.

_{^{(And give your wife a kiss of gratitude from me, Alma. For the map.)}}

It has been 70 years since, as a result of the coalition wars, Norway was put into personal union under Charles XIII, king of Sweden.

The world has changed and continues to do so. Sweden was once a power to be reckoned with, but has seen itself on the decline. In the Riksdag, some point towards the military, whispers cite reforms and all know change is coming.

Alliances will be forged and tried, borders broken and mended, as the world braces for the century to set.

The Hawaiian people condemn the Union of the Northern states for their arrogance and unwillingness to negotiate a truce with their southern kin who have rightfully seceded from a federation that no longer served their common good. We hope that they will soon realise that diplomacy is preferable to bloodshed,  before too many American youths lie bled and broken  upon their soil.

Please stop fighting and come have some coconut cocktails by the pool instead!

Dirty colonials wouldn't have this problem if they hadn't decided to move out of pa's house too early.

It would not have been a problem if the South had been given the opportunity to modernize either, but the original colonies and the western reaches connectable by railroad we the favored children. All that was required for peace was a chance to actually develop our infrastructure. I still see nothing that can be gained by this needless war.