*Something* big is set to happen during the early-to-mid 1950s, but for for now its still a mystery what that something actually is. My best guess based on context clues is a large-scale general war breaking out in East Asia (to mirror the Great American and Central European conflicts), but that could be a total misread.
Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
The French Orient
"...advantages that a centrally-located base of power in Hue provided in combating the French also created a strategic conundrum for the rebel forces - did it make more sense to thrust north, towards Hanoi, or south, towards Saigon, from their captured port at Da Nang? It was a fateful decision on which the history of Vietnam would revolve to go for the latter, as Tran Cao Van advocated and Emperor Duy Tan eventually acceded to, overruling the advice of Cuong De to press their advantage in Tonkin, which was less sympathetic to the French than increasingly Catholic Cochinchina and which the French were less emotionally attached to than Saigon, their beloved "Paris of the Orient." Cuong De was under no illusion that in one stroke the French could be entirely driven from Indochina, but his strategy was to link up with Chau's Quang Phuc revolutionary paramilitaries in the western hills of Tonkin and then hope that Chinese paramilitaries of the Kuomintang would cross the border as mercenaries or fellow travelers, thus making a retaking of the whole of Vietnam a hugely arduous undertaking.
Tran Cao Van opposed this as he did not trust Chau, the Quang Phuc, or indeed a great many of the Tonkinese, viewing them as too favorable towards the Chinese and too republican; he was a mandarin through and through. In fairness to Van, however, his position also did have a strategic component to it - Rollet's forces were rapidly advancing up the coast towards Quang Nam Province, a particularly restive province which the rebels had just secured (and, not coincidentally, Van's place of birth), and he argued that the rebels could depend on the Quang Phuc to keep French forces in Tonkin occupied long enough for Duy Tan's army to meet Rollet in the field and either via tactical draw or defeat in the field, force a strategic retreat by the Foreign Legion back towards Saigon. There was a certain sense to it - a two-front war would be difficult enough, and Rollet was the immediate threat.
Two major events occurred in June 1917 that crippled the rebel efforts. The first was a declaration by France of a total blockade of all Indochinese ports with the exception of French military vessels or French-flagged merchants, and the entirety of the French Oriental Fleet was deployed to the waters of the South China Sea to enforce it. Smuggling vessels from China or Japan had thus only a few weeks of window to bring supplies into Vietnam; rifles, bullets and bombs would now have to stream in overland, far from where Duy Tan's forces needed them, and contrary to what the French largely believed at the time, the Germans enforced a strict effort to prevent contraband from moving over the Cambodia borders as best they could, trying to avoid setting a precedent of one European power fomenting a colonial rebellion against another.
The second was the defeat by the Indochinese forces under French command of Quang Phuc battalions at Vinh Yen on June 10, 1917, northwest of Hanoi, which saw nearly ten thousand rebels killed in the battle itself and an additional four thousand captured who were executed shortly thereafter. While both Chau and Hien escaped the slaughter north towards the Chinese frontier, a second battle days later at Son Tay saw rebels pushed further back into the hills, ending the immediate threat to Hanoi. Had Cuong De's position won the day, there could have perhaps been enough pressure on French forces in Tonkin to watch their southern flank to avoid such routs, though modern historians have laid doubt on the idea that Duy Tan's faction could have marched sufficiently close to Tonkin to be a strategic consideration for the French.
As such, it all came down then to the faceoff with Rollet, with Tonkin for the time being pacified. Rollet's army was a motley mix of Foreign Legionnaires augmented by colonial troops almost exclusively drawn from Formosa and Hainan who had little to no reason to feel loyalty to Vietnam, as well as a division of Algerian zouaves known as some of the most ferocious fighters in the French Army. Van was a wily political operator but not particularly talented at tactics, and sought to maneuver his men through the Central Highlands as much as possible to enjoy good high ground, delaying his confrontation with Rollet repeatedly while the French commander camped his men in Quang Ngai and secured the mountains, and mountain passes, immediately to its west and southwest. Van eventually cracked and elected to attack Rollet, ceding the decision to fight on ground of his choosing and pushing ahead towards the enemy.
Rollet had picked his place of battle carefully. He had arrived there from Cam Ranh aware that it was easily resupplied from Quy Nhon, and that by staying south of the Tra Kuc River he had an excellent defensive position despite the city's flat geography; the Tra Kuc was not nearly the same kind of marshy delta found at Da Nang, and during the dry season he had little to concern himself about vis a vis flooding. Mobile light artillery had been moved up into the mountains on his flank, and Rollet became the first Foreign Legionary to incorporate air support into his arsenal after reading reports on its effectiveness in the Great American War, with eight CASD two-seater strafing planes and three bomber-fighters based out of a makeshift airfield in a drained rice paddy to his south. Van's stalling had given Rollet time to prepare, and the result was a bloodbath. The Battle of Quang Ngai saw the bulk of Duy Tan's army defeated as it tried to cross the river, and while the limits of air superiority in colonial conflicts would become apparent in future European operations in places like Africa in the decades to come, in 1917 it was an almost decisive advantage over an army of Vietnamese peasants. Five thousand died, another ten thousand surrendered (and unlike commanders in the north, the famously brutal Rollet elected to throw them in prison camps rather than carry out mass executions, though considering the squalor of said camps it was perhaps a distinction without a difference), and thousands more were scattered into the hills. The May Rebellion did not end on July 1st, 1917, but it might well have.
Van was captured days later by Rollet's scouts and summarily executed as one of the chief leaders of the rebellion, essentially breaking the forces in the center of Vietnam, and Rollet steadily marched northwards towards Da Nang throughout July. Duy Tan here made one of the most difficult decisions of his life - seeing that the rebellion had, almost certainly, failed, he elected to instead call upon the Vietnamese to throw down their arms, and made arrangements to surrender to Rollet in Da Nang and with that formally end the conflict. Formally is the key word, here - Duy Tan fell on his sword in large part to give many of the rebellion's other leaders a chance to flee west, in this case into northern Cambodia and eventually to Phnom Penh or, in the case of Cuong De, to Bangkok, where he became the leader of a prominent exile community that continued to aggressively advocate the overthrow of the French.
Rollet and Sarraut together accepted Duy Tan's surrender on the deck of the aging battleship Charles Martel, a ship which would whisk him and several courtiers away immediately into exile with his father on Reunion. Not long thereafter, a cousin, Khai Dinh, was proclaimed the new Emperor of Vietnam, a choice that could not have been more obviously a unilateral decision by Paris to appoint a stooge to the throne had it been telegraphed as such in Vietnamese on every street corner. The Vietnamese intelligentsia was appalled, as were the average commoners, and Khai Dinh rapidly became among the most unpopular figures in Vietnamese history. He lived opulently in luxury financed by the French while most of his subjects lived in acute poverty and had their taxes raised repeatedly for his vanity projects; he was allegedly a homosexual, and he signed a raft of death warrants for nationalist leaders such as Chau, Tien and others that kept them in exile for years.
The May Rebellion's failures nonetheless proved ominous for the French; they had successfully put down a full-fledged colonial rebellion within the space of months, but they had done so in a fashion that left the polity embittered, and there were now sophisticated revolutionary and anti-colonial cells in Canton and Bangkok, respectively, who could organize and regroup, and a national hero in Duy Tan that Rollet had been keen enough to see would be a permanent martyr had he been killed. The battle was over, but for the cause of Vietnamese independence, the war was far from lost..."
- The French Orient
Tran Cao Van opposed this as he did not trust Chau, the Quang Phuc, or indeed a great many of the Tonkinese, viewing them as too favorable towards the Chinese and too republican; he was a mandarin through and through. In fairness to Van, however, his position also did have a strategic component to it - Rollet's forces were rapidly advancing up the coast towards Quang Nam Province, a particularly restive province which the rebels had just secured (and, not coincidentally, Van's place of birth), and he argued that the rebels could depend on the Quang Phuc to keep French forces in Tonkin occupied long enough for Duy Tan's army to meet Rollet in the field and either via tactical draw or defeat in the field, force a strategic retreat by the Foreign Legion back towards Saigon. There was a certain sense to it - a two-front war would be difficult enough, and Rollet was the immediate threat.
Two major events occurred in June 1917 that crippled the rebel efforts. The first was a declaration by France of a total blockade of all Indochinese ports with the exception of French military vessels or French-flagged merchants, and the entirety of the French Oriental Fleet was deployed to the waters of the South China Sea to enforce it. Smuggling vessels from China or Japan had thus only a few weeks of window to bring supplies into Vietnam; rifles, bullets and bombs would now have to stream in overland, far from where Duy Tan's forces needed them, and contrary to what the French largely believed at the time, the Germans enforced a strict effort to prevent contraband from moving over the Cambodia borders as best they could, trying to avoid setting a precedent of one European power fomenting a colonial rebellion against another.
The second was the defeat by the Indochinese forces under French command of Quang Phuc battalions at Vinh Yen on June 10, 1917, northwest of Hanoi, which saw nearly ten thousand rebels killed in the battle itself and an additional four thousand captured who were executed shortly thereafter. While both Chau and Hien escaped the slaughter north towards the Chinese frontier, a second battle days later at Son Tay saw rebels pushed further back into the hills, ending the immediate threat to Hanoi. Had Cuong De's position won the day, there could have perhaps been enough pressure on French forces in Tonkin to watch their southern flank to avoid such routs, though modern historians have laid doubt on the idea that Duy Tan's faction could have marched sufficiently close to Tonkin to be a strategic consideration for the French.
As such, it all came down then to the faceoff with Rollet, with Tonkin for the time being pacified. Rollet's army was a motley mix of Foreign Legionnaires augmented by colonial troops almost exclusively drawn from Formosa and Hainan who had little to no reason to feel loyalty to Vietnam, as well as a division of Algerian zouaves known as some of the most ferocious fighters in the French Army. Van was a wily political operator but not particularly talented at tactics, and sought to maneuver his men through the Central Highlands as much as possible to enjoy good high ground, delaying his confrontation with Rollet repeatedly while the French commander camped his men in Quang Ngai and secured the mountains, and mountain passes, immediately to its west and southwest. Van eventually cracked and elected to attack Rollet, ceding the decision to fight on ground of his choosing and pushing ahead towards the enemy.
Rollet had picked his place of battle carefully. He had arrived there from Cam Ranh aware that it was easily resupplied from Quy Nhon, and that by staying south of the Tra Kuc River he had an excellent defensive position despite the city's flat geography; the Tra Kuc was not nearly the same kind of marshy delta found at Da Nang, and during the dry season he had little to concern himself about vis a vis flooding. Mobile light artillery had been moved up into the mountains on his flank, and Rollet became the first Foreign Legionary to incorporate air support into his arsenal after reading reports on its effectiveness in the Great American War, with eight CASD two-seater strafing planes and three bomber-fighters based out of a makeshift airfield in a drained rice paddy to his south. Van's stalling had given Rollet time to prepare, and the result was a bloodbath. The Battle of Quang Ngai saw the bulk of Duy Tan's army defeated as it tried to cross the river, and while the limits of air superiority in colonial conflicts would become apparent in future European operations in places like Africa in the decades to come, in 1917 it was an almost decisive advantage over an army of Vietnamese peasants. Five thousand died, another ten thousand surrendered (and unlike commanders in the north, the famously brutal Rollet elected to throw them in prison camps rather than carry out mass executions, though considering the squalor of said camps it was perhaps a distinction without a difference), and thousands more were scattered into the hills. The May Rebellion did not end on July 1st, 1917, but it might well have.
Van was captured days later by Rollet's scouts and summarily executed as one of the chief leaders of the rebellion, essentially breaking the forces in the center of Vietnam, and Rollet steadily marched northwards towards Da Nang throughout July. Duy Tan here made one of the most difficult decisions of his life - seeing that the rebellion had, almost certainly, failed, he elected to instead call upon the Vietnamese to throw down their arms, and made arrangements to surrender to Rollet in Da Nang and with that formally end the conflict. Formally is the key word, here - Duy Tan fell on his sword in large part to give many of the rebellion's other leaders a chance to flee west, in this case into northern Cambodia and eventually to Phnom Penh or, in the case of Cuong De, to Bangkok, where he became the leader of a prominent exile community that continued to aggressively advocate the overthrow of the French.
Rollet and Sarraut together accepted Duy Tan's surrender on the deck of the aging battleship Charles Martel, a ship which would whisk him and several courtiers away immediately into exile with his father on Reunion. Not long thereafter, a cousin, Khai Dinh, was proclaimed the new Emperor of Vietnam, a choice that could not have been more obviously a unilateral decision by Paris to appoint a stooge to the throne had it been telegraphed as such in Vietnamese on every street corner. The Vietnamese intelligentsia was appalled, as were the average commoners, and Khai Dinh rapidly became among the most unpopular figures in Vietnamese history. He lived opulently in luxury financed by the French while most of his subjects lived in acute poverty and had their taxes raised repeatedly for his vanity projects; he was allegedly a homosexual, and he signed a raft of death warrants for nationalist leaders such as Chau, Tien and others that kept them in exile for years.
The May Rebellion's failures nonetheless proved ominous for the French; they had successfully put down a full-fledged colonial rebellion within the space of months, but they had done so in a fashion that left the polity embittered, and there were now sophisticated revolutionary and anti-colonial cells in Canton and Bangkok, respectively, who could organize and regroup, and a national hero in Duy Tan that Rollet had been keen enough to see would be a permanent martyr had he been killed. The battle was over, but for the cause of Vietnamese independence, the war was far from lost..."
- The French Orient
Nah
Definitely the first two, less likely the third
To be honest, I haven’t given this much thought. Open to ideas.
I do know that they use “Prince” rather than “Archduke”
I wouldn’t say it’s a misread, though it’s more complicated than that
I guess after the CEW, Vietnam is: Independent or Protectorate of Germany
Italian general election, 1917
Italian general election, 1917
508 seats in the Italian Parliament; 255 seats required for majority
Liberal Union (UL) 223 (-52)
Italian Socialist Party (PSI) 98 (+48)
Italian Radical Party (PRI) 66 (+4)
Constitutional Democratic Party (PDCI) 21 (-5)
Catholic Electoral Union (UEC) 61 (+31)
Italian Reformist Socialist Party (PSRI) 5 (-12)
Democratic Party (PD) 10 (-3)
Italian Republican Party (PRI) 4 (-4)
Conservative Catholics (CC) 8 (-)
Dissident Republics (-) 0 (-8)
Independent Socialists (-) 2 (-6)
Dissident Radicals (-) 3 (-10)
"...epochal first death knell of the Unione Liberale, even if it would limp on some more years until after the Central European War. The UL, as a figment of the establishment with entirely 19th-century politics and motivations meant to control Parliament and make the Italian people "malleable," had little to no genuine popular support, and it had been dependent on machinations to maintain its absolute majority. Minor parties were also walloped, but the UL shedding over a fifth of its parliamentary group and losing its absolute majority - and unable, with its numbers, to depend exclusively on one other party, such as perhaps the Constitutional Democrats, to maintain control - was the story of 1917.
This happened despite "the old man" in Giolitti resigning eight months earlier to prove to the expanded electorate that his party was more than just a personalist machine, and despite a remarkable period of strong economic growth in Italy that had seen parts of the North - especially Milan and Genoa - achieve standards of living not far off of some middle-class parts of Germany and France, contrary to the prevailing stereotypes of Italians elsewhere. The elections of 1917 were thus not a backlash over economic decline, or scandal, but simply the emergence of a more sophisticated electorate, one which was increasingly polarized into camps of socialism, radicalism, and populist Catholicism, and which the UL, even as the largest party, could not entirely control.
The elections proved to be the mortal wound for UL, but an absolute fatality for Salandra, for whom the knives were out within hours of the results becoming clear, especially the surge of the PSI and the sharp decline of more moderate and independent social democratic and progressive groups. The Patto Gentiloni was utterly dead, Giolittism was in terminal decline, and a new paradigm was needed. Boselli was still too old, Facta too obscure; it was Vittorio Orlando who emerged from the bloodletting to be appointed Prime Minister by the King, who personally dismissed Salandra two days after the election results and charged Orlando with forming a government. This stamp of approval of the King was enough to give Orlando room to work, and he quickly moved to form a coalition government with the Democrats, Reformist Socialists, and Constitutional Democrats, a grouping nonetheless with an extremely narrow and fractious majority that would likely require external support on a number of key votes.
The obvious candidate for that support would be the Catholics, with their agreeable and pragmatic leader in Sturzo, who was increasingly out of favor with the conservative curia in Rome but enormously popular with the Italian laity. It helped that Orlando had been perhaps the most Church-friendly figure in Giolitti's government and had often interacted ably with Church officials in a variety of roles, making him the perfect figure to bridge that gap. An outright alliance with the UEC was, still, a bridge too far for the classical liberals and anti-clericalists who made up the backbone of the UL and their constellation of support parties, but the results of 1917 were clear; the UL could either partner with the UEC informally to head off the surge of support for a PSI that had nearly double its representation, or it could continue to pretend that it was still the 1880s, when classical liberalism was the cutting edge of progressive politics, rather than a force for the status quo as it increasingly appeared to be..."
- In Rome's Image: Italy and the 20th Century
(I want to thank @lukedalton for his thoughts and assistance on Italian political dynamics in this time period)
508 seats in the Italian Parliament; 255 seats required for majority
Liberal Union (UL) 223 (-52)
Italian Socialist Party (PSI) 98 (+48)
Italian Radical Party (PRI) 66 (+4)
Constitutional Democratic Party (PDCI) 21 (-5)
Catholic Electoral Union (UEC) 61 (+31)
Italian Reformist Socialist Party (PSRI) 5 (-12)
Democratic Party (PD) 10 (-3)
Italian Republican Party (PRI) 4 (-4)
Conservative Catholics (CC) 8 (-)
Dissident Republics (-) 0 (-8)
Independent Socialists (-) 2 (-6)
Dissident Radicals (-) 3 (-10)
"...epochal first death knell of the Unione Liberale, even if it would limp on some more years until after the Central European War. The UL, as a figment of the establishment with entirely 19th-century politics and motivations meant to control Parliament and make the Italian people "malleable," had little to no genuine popular support, and it had been dependent on machinations to maintain its absolute majority. Minor parties were also walloped, but the UL shedding over a fifth of its parliamentary group and losing its absolute majority - and unable, with its numbers, to depend exclusively on one other party, such as perhaps the Constitutional Democrats, to maintain control - was the story of 1917.
This happened despite "the old man" in Giolitti resigning eight months earlier to prove to the expanded electorate that his party was more than just a personalist machine, and despite a remarkable period of strong economic growth in Italy that had seen parts of the North - especially Milan and Genoa - achieve standards of living not far off of some middle-class parts of Germany and France, contrary to the prevailing stereotypes of Italians elsewhere. The elections of 1917 were thus not a backlash over economic decline, or scandal, but simply the emergence of a more sophisticated electorate, one which was increasingly polarized into camps of socialism, radicalism, and populist Catholicism, and which the UL, even as the largest party, could not entirely control.
The elections proved to be the mortal wound for UL, but an absolute fatality for Salandra, for whom the knives were out within hours of the results becoming clear, especially the surge of the PSI and the sharp decline of more moderate and independent social democratic and progressive groups. The Patto Gentiloni was utterly dead, Giolittism was in terminal decline, and a new paradigm was needed. Boselli was still too old, Facta too obscure; it was Vittorio Orlando who emerged from the bloodletting to be appointed Prime Minister by the King, who personally dismissed Salandra two days after the election results and charged Orlando with forming a government. This stamp of approval of the King was enough to give Orlando room to work, and he quickly moved to form a coalition government with the Democrats, Reformist Socialists, and Constitutional Democrats, a grouping nonetheless with an extremely narrow and fractious majority that would likely require external support on a number of key votes.
The obvious candidate for that support would be the Catholics, with their agreeable and pragmatic leader in Sturzo, who was increasingly out of favor with the conservative curia in Rome but enormously popular with the Italian laity. It helped that Orlando had been perhaps the most Church-friendly figure in Giolitti's government and had often interacted ably with Church officials in a variety of roles, making him the perfect figure to bridge that gap. An outright alliance with the UEC was, still, a bridge too far for the classical liberals and anti-clericalists who made up the backbone of the UL and their constellation of support parties, but the results of 1917 were clear; the UL could either partner with the UEC informally to head off the surge of support for a PSI that had nearly double its representation, or it could continue to pretend that it was still the 1880s, when classical liberalism was the cutting edge of progressive politics, rather than a force for the status quo as it increasingly appeared to be..."
- In Rome's Image: Italy and the 20th Century
(I want to thank @lukedalton for his thoughts and assistance on Italian political dynamics in this time period)
Well, based on earlier chapters (and on the power of Wikipedia), here’s some ideas…..
[Monarch]
Emperor of Mexico
Defender of the Catholic Faith in the Americas
(Based on a chapter of yours)
[Consort/Spouse]
Empress(-consort) of Mexico
[issue]
Prince Imperial of Mexico
(For the heir)
Prince/Princess of Mexico
I'm sure that won't be a problem at all in the next few years as the war clouds gather and the storm finally breaks.
I’d say that’s broadly accurate and let’s call it canon. Lesser princes like have a Prince ___, Prince Royal of Veracruz/Guadalajara/whatever
Good catch! Important difference in France’s favor is not contesting the battle deep in rebel territory where they can only be supplied by air (!!) and the Vietnamese not having a Giap, arguably one of the best (certainly most underrated) generals of the 20th century
It's quite obvious that the Liberal Union is probably in decline but it's also not clear if anything or anyone can reasonably replace it. The PSI has not been able to unify the forces of the Left behind it; especially with the persistence of the Radicals and other smaller reformist parties. One could see the CEU becoming more powerful but while it will be an important player I don't think it's in a position to consolidate the opposition to the Left; especially if the Liberals are still an option for people. Then again it is also possible that the CEW might have something to do with the further decline of the UL and the rise of the CEU mainly because they could pose as an alternative to the UL and present themselves as more representative at least of the non-Socialist element compared to the UL. I don't expect the economic troubles of the postwar period to be any less severe in Italy than elsewhere so it's still possible the Socialists could emerge in a stronger position going forward. Then again the author has said the CEU won't become the DCs so I suspect that the fragmentation between reformist parties of the Center plus what's left of the discredited UL may hang around despite having shed much support.
Italy is definitely going to have some… interesting times domestically with the political scene as it’s shaping up.
One advantage the Radicals have here of course is that they’re a viable external opposition to the UL *and* they could, reasonably, absorb much of the left flank of their monarchist-but-progressive contingent, especially with the party having recently indulged the conservative Salandra-Sonnino government. So you may indeed see Nitti be a more dominant figure of postwar Italy - which of course has some knock on effects for the Mezzogiorno.
The CEU (which won’t retain that name) won’t be the DC in terms of its dominance, but it will before long be essentially Italy’s strong, traditional center-right, monarchist, Catholic party.
What's the Vatican's attitude towards the CEU and other Catholic political parties? In OTL, they were bound and determined that no Catholic should take part in the government of "Liberal Italy" (as they viewed it as an illegitimate state) and so never developed close relations with Catholic parties, a fact which undermined the position of both the party and he Vatican within Italy.
This is basically what happened to OTL UK Liberals after WW1. The war destroyed their credibility with the British left and Labor filled the vaccum.
(Kind of amazed they lasted until 1988, considering they were basically dead by 1925)
In OTL by eatly 10's things were changing and there were a more relaxed attitude towards the catholic involvement in politics, even because the current clerical leadership wanted patch things with Italy and so a lot of italian politics. There will be a certain hostility? Sure as there was in OTL between the Vatican and the just founded Partito Popolare Italiano but it will be more the hostility of a certain part of the clerical enstablishment than a total and compact refuse of it
I wonder how somebody like Serafini or De Lai taking over as Pope would effect that thaw, though
Probably a round of exomunications and political u turn, they don't look like the type that will approve or even tollerate what Sturzo is doing