The Chronicles of the Kings of Britain, Part III
The war against the Byzantine Empire continues. Having conquered Madagascar, we are mobilizing troops for the conquest of the Holy Lands. Madagascar was handed off to the French, in an attempt to mollify their rage, strengthen them in Africa and rebalance that continent in our favor, and to relieve ourselves of the upkeep of the colony. Troops are being landed on the Arabian peninsula, but the catapults are taking longer to ship. As a result, our forces are idling in the environs of Aden, resting up for the attack on Mecca.
The Kievan Rus are having no such difficulties. They have conquered the Byzantine fortress city of Phasis in 740 AD, and driven them from the eastern Black Sea. They have established their own city nearby, Rostov, and they progress towards the Byzantine citadels of Tyras and Astrakhan next.
The siege of Mecca began in 765 AD, and concluded after five years. We installed Marwan II on the throne of Mecca and he signed a protectorate agreement with us, and we proclaimed Jiddah a colony of Britain, and began raising a force of Muslims by which we could effectively defend Mecca without breaking the religious proclamations banning non-Muslims from the city. Our troops then marched on towards Jerusalem, being harried by Byzantine cataphracts along the way, but we arrived and beseiged the city. The Byzantines, by holding the coast, managed to hold the siege out until 800 AD, after we won the Battle of Caesarea, broke their supply lines and the city capitulated.
When we entered the city, we revoked the Roman decree banning the Jews from the city. The same year that we conquered it, we settled a final peace with the chastened Byzantines. Having lost a good portion of their empire, I suspect they will refrain from attacking us any further.
The Triple Alliance of the Mexica, led by the Huetlatoani of Tenochtitlan, has been on the march lately. Conquering the Pueblo peoples to their north and the coastal tribes of the West Coast, they have declared war on two fronts - against the Mississippians, and ourselves.
This will require the full redeployment of our soldiers. They will have to sail out of Jiddah for two continents on the other side of the world, and march to war against the strongest empire on the continent of North America.
Furthermore, it will require the reinforcement of our only allies in this conflict. The Mississippians are a backward culture, recently heavily ravaged by disease - probably the true reason for the Triple Alliance going to war against them - and will crumble before them without our help. This help is worth providing, because the more they can fight the Mexica, the less we'll have to.
But first, we'll have to hold off an invasion force that landed near Caracas. The 1st Regiment of Horse is in the city, fortunately, as well as the 3rd Amazonian Infantry. Upon their landing, we immediately challenged them, and the Battle of Lake Maracaibo ended with one-fourth of their army destroyed and only light casualties to the 1st Horse. We believe their soldiers have never seen horses before, as they quivered in terror at the beasts' whinnyings and stampedings across the plains of Venezuela.
Their forces are planning on a long siege, and began reducing Caracas' defenses in earnest. However, the meagreness of their infantry leaves them open to regular attack, as their weapons are made of stone and their armor is woven from cotton. So the 1st Horse will make regular sallies beyond Caracas' walls, harrying them with cavalry raids and then rushing back inside. The 3rd Amazonian Infantry even marched after a particularly devastating cavalry raid, following up their confusion with hit-and-run archery. Their ground forces all gave up or died, freeing us to go on the offensive.
We conquered the Isthmus of Panama in 855 AD. However, given its distance from our core colonies in British Amazonia, and the impassability of the terrain, we handed it over to our Castilian allies. The King of Spain is to offer it, in turn, to the Queen of Portugal as a dowry, in hopes to unite their crowns. If this will establish a counterweight to the French in Europe, and give them too a colonial empire to strengthen their global position, then it will be well worth it.
Some at court have decried this gift, on several accounts. First, they believe the Isthmus could see a canal, uniting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. While we agree with this, we believe a canal can be constructed further south, at a site closer to British Amazonia dubbed New Caledonia. Spain may replicate our canal efforts, but that is of little importance to us. What is more important to us is the news that Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors have conquered the rest of the barbarian tribes down the Brazilian coast. In the short term, Iberian control of Brazil will only benefit us, as Native tribes stop attacking our settlements in Amazonia. In the long term, British cooperation with Spain will ensure that this scramble for colonies in the New World doesn't turn our Spanish allies against us.
In 885 AD, the siege of the town called New Orleans began. It is a Mississippian town with a French mission, hence the name, but it has been held by the Triple Alliance for hundreds of years. New Orleans, being conquered by the 1st Regiment of Horse in 890 AD, served as a port for the disembarkation of our African soldiers, by which we intend to conquer the whole of the Mexican possessions north of the Rio Grande. We have agreed, with our Mississippian allies, to grant them everything south of the 49th parallel, and reserve for ourselves everything north of it. (The riches of the land called "Canada" by the Natives intrigue us, especially her furs and minerals, and given its sparse settling, we could probably claim it as our own.)
However, we've noticed that the Mississippian Empire is collapsing. Their capital Cahokia, located at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, where the French have a mission called St. Louis, is dying of what our scholars believe is the Plague of Justinian. The symptoms are the same, and like that plague, it kills roughly half of the lands it comes in contact with. It is a source of amazement why God would choose to smite the Mississippi with the same plague He used two hundred years ago as a scourge against Byzantium, but it nonetheless is the case.
To respond to this outbreak, the Mississippians have invited more general immigration from Europe to their shores. Cities are springing up in the New World with names like "New York" and "Philadelphia." New France, on the St. Lawrence River, has been settled with dissenting Cathars fleeing the Burgundian Crusade. Other dissenters from the One True And Holy Catholic Faith have also settled on the shores of America. The Mississippians have little choice: they require the tax revenue to continue the fight against the Triple Alliance, and the decline of their own numbers has led them to support immigration.
All will not be well in the Mississippian realms of America though, not for some while to come. Word has reached us that, in 895 AD, the Lakota declared independence from the Mississippians, and swore to carve out of Mexican territory an empire of their own. The Cherokee, who dwell near British-occupied New Orleans, then followed suit, as did the Five Tribes of the Great Lakes, who organized themselves as the Haudenosaunee. That left the European-settled areas of the East Coast, as well as the Mississippi River itself north of New Orleans, as the last major area under Mississippian control, even as the Mississippian Army, drawn from all over these seceded domains continues to fight the Mexica. However, the European settlements are discussing seceding as well, and forming a "United States of America."
As they are somehow miraculously not succumbing to the Plague of Justinian, it seems like they will be the most important player upon the American continent. To that end, we have organized a unity conference between all of these factions, to try to hold together what's left of our allies until the end of the Mexican War. Given that the United States is the strongest faction, we were able to get the Haudenosaunee admitted to their Union as the "states" of Michigan and Wisconsin, while the Cherokee, Lakota and Cahokians (increasingly dominated at court by the Osage) remain independent allies of this new, Native-European United States. However, we hold out little hope that this alliance will continue past the war, and expect to have to take sides in a Mississippian civil war.
Essentially, this is what happened. In 940 AD, at the beginning of the reign of King Eadred, we reached both of our objectives at the far ends of the Mexican domains. We established a city called Calgary after seizing a nearby Mexican citadel in Canada, and we sacked Tenochtitlan. The Lakota had conquered a vast swath across the Rockies and Hudson's Bay, and the Cherokee had seized the Anasazi domains and upper California from the Mexica. We signed a treaty with them, and their power broken, we now had greater worries to attend to.
The United States, deprived of any territorial gains, declared an end to the alliance out of frustration. Cherokee, Lakota and Osage macemen, still a part of the loosely-knit Mississippian Confederacy we held together during the war, decided then to expand their holdings east, and war was declared. The United States appealed for aid, and we extended our hand, declaring war on the Lakota in 980 AD. By 985, Edmonton and Churchill were founded upon the ruins of burned-out Lakota fortresses, and we moved on to Winnipeg.
With that accomplished, we marched, and the conquest of the dominion of Canada was a relatively swift one. Not only did we reach Nova Scotia by 1038 AD, we also mounted a raid deep into Lakota territory, retaking the towns of Bismarck and Omaha until the peace treaty came. Havana fell to us in 1046 AD. We gifted the island of Cuba to the Spanish, to give them a stronger foothold in the Caribbean to act as a bulwark against the Mexicans and the United States.
The Falkland Islands, an overseas possession of the Cherokee, fell to us in 1050 AD. We kept it, as a base from which to control the passage of ships through the Straits of Magellan. We then handed over our conquered territories on the North American mainland below the 49th Parallel to the United States, as promised, and with the war over we planned for the peaceful development of British Canada.
It is now the year of our Lord 1066 AD. The Empire has just about doubled in size with the acquisition of Canada, and the recent parliamentary reforms have permitted the rapid development of our new territories. Universal suffrage is directing funds where they're needed most, and our empire is a model of efficiency. We have a fleet enroute for New Zealand, thence to drive the Japanese from the island and establish our rule there, and then on to Australia. The Empire's prospects are bright.
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