Pax's Alternate History Snippet repository.

[Imperator Pax]

October 1916​

The school building was two years old, four storeys high, and lit by electric lights. It needed them. Xian General Public School provided education to elementary students, all the way through to adults. It was open all hours of the day and never locked its doors. It was larger than any of the schools they had built previously, and it still wasn't big enough.

They had built the first school, of theirs, before the Qing had toppled. It was necessary. They needed men who could read, and operate a telegraph machine, and phones for that matter. It hadn't been considered seriously in 1909 to hire women for that sort of thing not until they were sure the north line would be up and running.

"Are these intake numbers accurate?"

"Yeah." Cole grunted as a bell rang. The tone suggested that something had worked its way into his craw, and that whatever was would probably come out sooner rather than later.

John Allen paused for a moment. China had at times it seemed hundreds of ethnic groups, which made the five races banner a bit hard to parse down but on the other hand five races probably made more sense to the Chinese down in Canton. "That would make a fifth of the incoming Hui," who admittedly alongside Manchu always been overrepresented by population, but never to that degree.

"its local recruiting. Xian has more Hui than it does Manchu," For reasons they weren't going to talk about, which coupled with Xian's larger population, and the shifts after Bai Lang's death did go a long way to explaining it. "That's, overall though, its even more pronounced in Class A recruits, even when factoring for education." He waved around, "This place has been slammed full since it opened." The reiteration wasn't necessary.

While Mandarin was dominant across north china it was not universal, and perhaps two in ten people could read in the country.... which somewhat undermined the benefit of the written word being the same regardless of spoken. Written Chinese Characters were a nightmare to learn, there had been reformers even in the Manchu court calling for a simplified version. The process of working out a simplified standard in 1909 on the recommendations that language should use vernacular characters... which in a purely technical learning sense had continued to today... but the Xinhai revolt, and even before that the running of business with complex bookkeeping and technical components had required english. "There is almost an entire generation of West Zhili kids who will be basically bilingual." Not here in Shensi, but Shijiazhuang where they had built the original headquarters of the development corporation. "Alright, then we start accepting accepting muslim chaplains. Or at least start looking for some, did the scouts-"

Cole cut him off with a bark of sharp, harsh, laughter, "Are you kidding? The yankees barely consider catholics to be christian, I had more than one boston brahmin tell me that we were in the 'Philippines as god's apostles, to bring christ to the papists'."

"I take your point, it still needs to be done." Cole gave him a look, "I can ask old man Ma, but you just admitted that somewhere," He paused, "An entire battalion worth of muslims will be coming into infantry training. That's not counting that they'll likely mustang officers, or that they'll certainly have NCOs in a few years, For that matter that doesn't touch specialist troops that graduate out from the infantry."

"I hear you Brother John, but that's not the only issue we've got."

Ah, here it came then, "What's that then?"

"Percy has been poking around. He's not sneaking, but," Cole gave an exasperated huff. "He looks like a goddamned fool. He wears that uniform everywhere, what does he even do in King George's army?"

There wasn't an answer for that, Percy shipping off for Switzerland in early 1915 had been ... odd, and his return hadn't brought any answers, other than his trips abroad had included stays in the states as well. "Well what's he been doing?"

"He's just skulking around. Had the temerity to complain that the men don't port arms, and sharply now on the parade deck, this and that."

"This and that?"

"He says we give 'em too much free time." He kicked the desk, "If I have to hear idle hands or the devil,"

Allen shrugged, "I get the picture, well he's English. There isn't any helping it."

"Its not at all that he's just english," Cole groused, apparently having decided to vent, "I know for a fact none of 'em roam around town, which is a sight better than the Royal Marines Scabs has to fish out of Shanghai's bordellos and bars."

There were a hundred cadre members fifteen hundred Class A, and two thousand Class B volunteers at the time of Bai Lang's death south of Taiyuan. Thirty five hundred Chinese Riflemen with largely modern weapons, then the red legs, the labor auxillary and some other support... but most of the numbers had been in the rifle weight. "Let me take a guess, he doesn't like the fact that for three years we've eaten with the men," The enlisted.

"Well... He blames that on us being American, but certainly it raises 'questions of station'." He tried imitating Percy's voice, and posh accent.
--
Percy flinched at the Company's fusillade of rifle fire from the line, "Are you expecting trouble, seems an awful lot of effort to go through this morning." He declared.

It was a fairly chilly day, dry, bright and windy. Not precisely the best shooting weather, but at least it wasn't raining. Cole scoffed, "I was going to take the company for a run up the hill, and back."

"Carry on," Allen responded, and Cole returned to barking orders to the Regulars. "To answer the question, with Tsai O having left Taiwan for Japan things are starting to come apart to the south, and there are other issues."

"Hsu Hsin-feng?" Percy asked, "Surely his bandits," Since the revolutionaries were currently out of favor they were bandits, "can't be as bad as Bai Lang."

"Its a similar problem though. Hsu has the same problem as everyone else, of bandits coming over from Honan so he doesn't see any issue with going over the border to bushwhack them back." Which of course just stirred up blood feuds... Frankly the Shansi boys weren't likely weren't going to be all that discerning about which Honan lot they shot up, or whose barn they torched. "Its just going to get worse."

"I see." He paused, "John Jordan wishes to lay blame on the Japanese. He's made that quite clear to London."

"John Jordan sees Japan at every turn, Percy. Szechwan, Shansi, the bandits out in Gansu, they don't have anything to do with Satsuma or Choshu. I'm not saying there aren't cases, up north or down south where Japan isn't stirring the pot, but there are plenty of little fights that are being fought here for wholly local grudges."

"Do you think they'll stay little fights then?"

"I don't think any of them will get as far flung as with Bai Lang, but when Yuan signed off on the railway administration in Zhengzhou that meant I needed to contend with what Honan locals think..." He stuffed his hands in his pockets, "I'll probably go to the office out there, its not nearly as big as our Xian holdings, but the city is run separate from the province."

"Siems-Carey. The dykes and the canal?"

"The dykes are at least going to have to be rebuilt, its a flood hazard. I won't build north of Zhili, but next year something will have to be done. If the French the Belgians don't like it," he trailed off, "Your European war is going to bankrupt all of you." Allen muttered. "The canal is inefficient compared to a good rail line, there is a reason we replaced the canals with railways, but the river is prone to breaching its banks." ... and of course as the wind blew there was winter as well to consider.

"1917 is going to be a busy year." Percy clicked his mouth shut as a line of men stampeded out in PT gear coming from the school, and then had to shut his mouth a second time as Cole's company came the opposite direction in uniform and with canteens for their ruck. "There, there is not so much was, been a revolt in Russia. You mentioned that we'd been buying wheat. The tartars facing the wheat shortage started a riot in Tashkent July ish, we're not sure if it started in June... but the harvest was bad. Not enough seed, not enough draft animals. His Majesty's government recognizes we have to keep the Russians in the war... and the Tsar's government is organizing offensives against the germans but they can't sustain them without food."

Allen nodded, even if he suspected that Percy was only telling him part of the story. There was probably more to it going on, but that would be something to ask elsewhere. It probably explained percy's sudden discomfort with the Mohamedens here... though Turkeys part in the war, and the Caliph's fatwa calling for a Jihad against England might well have done that. "I see."

"No its... quite worse, I'm afraid. Kuropatkin was sent out there from the German front." He sucked his lip into a thin line, "Did you see much of the Cossacks in 1904?" The Englishman shook his head, "Well Kuropatkin is bringing them in to quell the revolt... assuming that they haven't already arrived." Ivanov had in fact already arrived in Turkestan, and with Kuropatkin's tacit approval committed to a series of retaliatory actions, that would harshen over the winter months driving hundreds of thousands across the steppe into China... but that would be a problem for later months.
--
Notes: This the following Friday from the previous segment, or roughly a week before the Australian plebiscite on the Draft, which was non binding, and caused a lot of grief politically in Australia and the Empire, and to a lesser extent knock on effects.

 

[Imperator Pax]

November 1916​

He'd spent barely a day in Zhengzhou really before things had called him into Zhili... or at least the first telephone call had. One, had turned into a flurry. November was looking to be the sort of set of weeks were too much happened to keep on top of. John Jordan had departed leaving Alston to helm things. A job Mister Alston was far from prepared for in the best of circumstances never mind now. Percy had gone apoplectic at the vote return from Australia, and it was clear that the acting minister had no clue what he was supposed to be doing in the face of a dominion saying they didn't want the draft. It had proven best to avoid the whole legation, and truthfully there were more important things to do. Tsai O had made it to Japan. "So it is tuberculosis?" He already knew the answer but the Japanese officer, a skinny man with glasses, nodded.

"It will kill him. The doctors believe than can ease it, but he won't survive the year." Nakamichi Taro remarked somberly, reached for the warm tea and sipped, "Sun Yat-Sen departed Tokyo when he heard the news of Tsai's arrival and is making his way there," He stirred another spoonful of good cuban sugar into the darjeeling. "that is if he hasn't already arrived."

He nodded leaned back in the chair stretching his legs, "What does Akashi think about it?" It seemed a little odd.

"The general expects that Sun is ignorant of Tsai's prognosis, the visit, an attempt to 'please support' or even pledge loyalty to the revolutionaries." Which wouldn't mean much, Tsai's absence from Szechwan was enough for his hold in the province to start fracturing, there was no way to know if that was going to be true in Yunnan as well, or how long things would stick together. "That's the news."

He nodded and sipped his own tea as they sat in the private smoking room overlooking the street, "I had some other questions," He'd been a little surprised to find the invitation to tea.

"You should visit, come back to Fukuoka." Whenever he could hope to find the time, then a pause, and Nakamichi was clearly weighing whether to ask a question he didn't know the answer of, and processing his comment, "Your concerns were not about the doctor's travel?"

"No," He shook his head, "This was, I was going to ask Akashi regarding hydroelectric dam construction," And the Germans were on the wrong side of the damn war in Europe, well Akashi had always expressed an interest in water power, he loved the Swiss. "I needed a second set of eyes especially given unique secondary concerns."

The meeting continued until a little after two, and the outlined hydroelectric proposal documents were promised to be sent over with Nakamichi before he left to return to Japan. Bill pushed off the wall from where he was standing by the bar, "That went well I take it."

Allen blew out a breath, "The situation in turkestan is not good," He replied, "Percy's talent for understatement has reached new heights. Anyway, Sun may not know Tsai O is dying, Akashi thinks he's going to the hospital to try and get Tsai to pledge support for one more failed rebellion down south."

[IF] "Tsai O passes," Bill hedged as they filed out of the hotel to the waiting car, "What do we think?"

"He doesn't have a clear successor but Tang will get the lion's share of it," Tsai's army, weapons, so forth... whether he'd get the treasury well there was the real question, "he's been there the longest, and has ties to Sun." So the doctor... might... but it wasn't a sure thing.

"And?"

"And he may or may not have, had, ties to Bai Lang. He was in the school papers Akashi sent back in 1913, and frankly I was never comfortable with that wing that ran all the way south." Which admittedly that could still have been nothing. There had been nothing back then they could do, "We will just have to watch and see what happens," There was nothing else they could do until something happened, "In the mean time this business in Kirghiz is spilling over into Xinjiang, if the Ma clique hasn't said anything yet they will be soon. The line to urumqi needs the stock back ended, and see if we can't go from there."

"Says a lot about old Ma," Bill muttered as they puttered along down the street. "Him shipping the taxes in though."

Allen gave a low whistle of acknowledgement to the statement, "Jordan left a note saying that without Yuan Shikai that the peking government would be lucky to see so much as farthing from most provinces south of the river." The Yangtze.

"Which is like, a thousand to a pound."

"I think so," He replied with a shrug.
--
Shensi wasn't a particularly large province by Chinese standards. It had about the same population as New York State, and Xian had about the same number of people as New York City. About two million in the city and roughly ten million in the province over all. So by American standards it was a lot of people, he supposed, given that it was equivalent in population to ten percent of the States' total population.

As a general rule of thumb while southern part of the province could support rice agriculture, and they had purchased up farms that grew rice, their agriculture investments tended towards production of wheat, or millet, or grazing land for cattle. They had more experience, so it had been a fairly easy choice to make at the time... and there were iron resources to fuel xian's steel manufacturing ...then Yuan had started making Emperor noises.

Hu, and Chen's more recent tiff shouldn't have involved them... and it still might not, but the facts of geography justified this all the same, if not more so. Szechwan was right across the border, and it was among the most populous provinces in China... and the distinction of probably being most lawless. Szechwan had a population comparable to Austria Hungary, it was without strong central leadership... a world of bandits. A population that, John Jordan was probably right on, not going to be sending taxes to Peking for much longer. A thousand men strong the uniformed labor corp auxiliary worked alongside normal employees as the fortified rail depot took shape as the core of what would be of the Bashan Volunteers Regimental Garrison. It was to support enough barracks for nearly five thousand men and officers.

How well Hu would take that would probably depend on how long it took for the first real conflict in Szechwan to spill over the border... which wasn't likely to be long at all if Tsai O was dying in a hospital in Japan.

The truth was that the garrison here would more likely be two thousand Class B volunteers currently waiting to enter the Infantry school, but they'd be issued modern mausers at training... which was an improvement from two years ago. Up the rail and to the east ways at Zhengzhou in the neighboring province a permanent garrison for another two thousand Class B volunteers was being erected. Anchoring either end would be the Class A troops at Xian and at Shijziahuang. That left an eye towards southern Shansi, the province north of Shensi... but they were due to talk with Yan Xishan.... and truth be told it was quite obvious that there would be further recruitment next year. Whether that would follow this model add another 'class A and Class B' to the lists that would be tied up in discussion.... and some of it would depend on not just the situations in Szechwan, but also what happened in Europe.

More than John Allen realized... but 1917 was still more than a month away. Today was one of direction, and looking over the progress, but only because they were still quibbling back and forth whether a triangle division was truly the best course. That had been a last minute quibble from the parts of the cadre who supported going to a division but wanted to retain a brigade level each with two regiments underneath... the probable crisis in Szechwan was a fig leaf of an excuse.

He pulled his sleeve back to look at his wristwatch, "Call them in, that looks line rain, and its about time for lunch anyway." He ordered the major beside him. Twelve minutes minutes later he heard the mine whistle at Dashan in the distance signaling the lunch break for the iron mine, and a little before the half hour the drops of rain started. At least it was rain and not snow. "Where is Hu now?"

"In a village, just a couple miles down the road."

"The road?"

"Its not on the rail line." The major clarified.

That was interesting, "How far is it from the rail?"

"Not fifty miles." The major replied with a flat shark like expression.

Allen blew a breath out, and looked out at the mountains, the traditional Chinese wisdom suggested they were ideal place for bandit hideaways... the question whether they were Hu's, or forward positions for scouts from some band in Szechwan. "Right, and we're sure he's going over the border."

"We do not know for sure he is engaging in banditry," Was the grudging admission, "but he has crossed the border several times already." Which admittedly could have been entirely benign... but he could also be agitating for support against Chen. There was an old saying that a loser was a bandit, a winner a prince. "We have heard that he has met with Zhong Qing though."

Allen glanced sideways, "Yeah, that's news." He pointed at the development.

"Yes sir."

"What is green eyes up to?" Referring to Qing, "He's been down south," Since... this time of year 1913, he had never come back north having by most accounts been leading one of the Jia in Bai's southern force. "Did he throw in with Tsai O?"

"He has a band of followers, and they were handing out leaflets."

Allen looked back to the mountains, it wasn't surprising. Zhang Qing was as his nickname implied a half breed... no one was quite sure who his father had been but he was tall and white, green eyes, but he'd grown up in Henan and was loved there as much as Bai Lang was. They had joined up and defected together and it wasn't a surprise if he was handing out the same leaflets as Bai Lang had put out... given the havoc Bai Lang had wrecked in Shensi that probably wouldn't do him a lot of favors. It might even be enough to start a fight if he came over and tried to give some kind of rally in front of the wrong crowd.

"Get me one of the leaflets major. I want to know what he's saying," He paused, "And find out how close he is with Yang, if Tsai O dies I want to know who's in the succession." There were other errands he could have sent him on, but knowing who all might end up in a position for running off with a band of armed men was probably the most important.
--
Notes: There are actually a number of scenes sitting in the scrap folder, some of them are there because this story opens in August of 1916, and those scraps take place before that. There are some other slice of life stuff that just ends up on the cutting room floor, and some stuff just got pushed back. Much of the military industrial development of 1916 directly sets up for the events of 1917 and the eventual establish of central/northern Chinese state in the interior (within a decade Xian is the capital governing 10 provinces in the interior stretching all the way to Xinjiang and Tibet in the west) and part of the military development are the lessons of world war 1 and modernized warfare with higher degrees of specialization filtered through the British.

 

[Imperator Pax]

November 1916
[Late November]​

Shan would make a fine general officer one day, and certainly the quality of his writing the understanding of the necessity of modern logistics, and keeping machine guns fed was a credit to everything of the last few years. Shan's penchant for the military administrative work would hopefully bear out as they prepared to bring new troops into uniform, and expand the force generally.

China was not really a nation of roads. Each province ... sometimes even counties... had roads built solely for one particular purpose, often for a strictly local patron. In an age of strong central government who could have afforded the expense necessary to maintain the canal system then it would have meant less hassle... but no such government existed. The late Qing hadn't had those funds, never mind the funds to expand the canal.

An army on the march though needed to be able to move, and railways were a large investiture of capital. So the proposal that a battalion in the field should have a hundred horses was hardly an unreasonable suggestion if they were to go over land. Horses took time to raise though, and there were still limits to where they could go under pack... and horses were fragile stupid things.

"I appreciate he has the sense to allocate the dumb bastards," the horses, "To my artillery, but he missed the point that Griswold hadn't turned out enough heavy guns for this." Dawes commented, the older man paused to reach for his iced tea, an extravagance afforded to them by Xian's genteel character.

"And it ain't like horses grow on trees." Bill added. "but its a thinking exercise. Contemplative as Colonel Wood called it." All in all though, this was largely a formality, a precautionary one, but even as they moved on to Shang's essay. The fact was everyone was likely to see a raise in grade as the force expanded in size. Not that it'd be practical to raise everyone at once. No they'd start with half or even a third, promote them, and keep the others in so that there was no gap in institutional knowledge. The names were sorted alphabetically in English, and well there would be a couple of Zs to finish them out.

"We are generally agreed to remove the potato diggers next year?" He asked.

Dawes glanced up, and shrugged, "Remove might be a stretch." T'sai O's death was beginning to make the rounds. There had been doubts as to the number of rifles, and quality that Yunnan's 'warlord' had but no one denied that plenty of men had been flocking to him, and the prestige he had gained by standing up to Yuan Shikai... but with him dead there was going to bedlam. One hope was that it'd be a white Christmas and the snow would keep things quiet in the north, but that was doubtful serious snow was rare save perhaps after the first.

There had been talks off and on for years now. The increasing 'Americanized' Gewehr now that they were unlikely to secure a production of the proper german army version to Qing, or now Beiyang government looked to finally be finalizing. The Springfield service rifle had a twenty four inch barrel... and the brits new rifle was in many respects just that rifle, mated to features from the Lee Enfield with the mauser updates.... except still shooting the British dwarf. They were finally talking about drafting a shorter rifle, which would be good because enough of their own officers knew enough to have cottoned on that a shorter universal rifle would be better.

This was the Infantry Officer's Staff College, and this was what it did. IT served mostly as promotion board, and as a body to digest the lessons from the European war, as well as lessons learned closer to home. "There isn't time for it," The rest of the board looked up at Griswold, who had been largely quiet through the evaluation of infantry officers, "We have those Fulton Quads coming, we've got Fords too, we don't have time to do it before the states come jump 'in but the war is gonna end eventually. What if we set capital aside, pay Ford to set us up a factory you know how he feels about that."

"He'd be willing to hear us out." It was clear Bill was thinking about the price.
--
The latest complaints again Chen had appeared that morning with little fanfare to receive them. Unless the plan had been to upset Chen's civil administering deputy... in which case it had been very successful... but that was probably nothing more than a small consolation prize for Hu. Upsetting Li Genyuan, who was basically a benchwarmer... meant little. Insisting Chen was acting like Qing lap dog and wanted to spend more time in the capital than helping Shaanxi for whatever that nebulous phrase entailed meant little in the urban heartland of the province.

"We estimate we will need twelve thousand workers to finish the Gansu," Corridor, "Spur of rail line," Going out to Urumqi, "On the new time table."

"Its too damn big to call a spur now, hell it was too big to call a rail spur when we finished the 'spur' to the Ma capital" That was something of a stretch, Lanzhou to Xian was only three hundred miles of track, which had been less than a month's work to finish what with the autumn weather staying dry like it had, and just good conditions. That the Ma clique was still willing to do that, was grounded in what Hu probably would have called 'nostalgia for the old imperial order'. "Besides it still runs into the lack of rolling stock. We don't have the cars built, and we don't have the engines either." But even that was ultimately a matter of time to allow domestic construction either within Xian's walls, or in one of the factories in western Zhili to produce the stock... but that was prone to delay due to back order, and also repairing existing stock. Unlike Shensi's capital of Taiyuan, Urumqi or Lanzhou lacked in industry, there were no machine bureaus that could repair train engines. Thus if one broke down it would have to be towed a thousand miles east if it wasn't something easy, and that would tie up another locomotive.

Dawes's overall point though was true. There were bottlenecks, and labor was the easiest to overcome. The 'great western line' was designed to make export of goods come west to east. For Yuan Shikai of course he had really only been concerned with the taxes. His concerns there were also linked to geopolitical. At the time avoiding further repeats of embarrassment like the Ili crisis of the 1880s. It would take years to get over the bottleneck and finish the originally grandiose idea of the rail's western terminus at Kashgar... but Yuan had not been the only person or persons interested in the idea. Anglo-American interests from the Foreign office and State respectively saw different utility to, but the line through Xinjiang, and into Central Asia had potential even if the war's sucking of foreign capital made any substantive support difficult, and besides the Trans siberian already did what a rail line into central Asia would do so hardly the most practical solution.

That limited tax base though... well Western China had a population of fifty million.... about ... the Qing had never really gotten around to census that was accurate. There was the potential in the western provinces for so much more. Coal and Iron could very well potentially support significant growth... but if they could prove the viability of Shansi's oil reserves then that would open up the west. There were other opportunities...and if that investment paid off then the expense of the railway would be recouped much much faster.

He gave the older man a moment, "Are you suggesting we delay?"

"I think we should. We could hire the whole crew and the second the snows off the ground run the whole line, but its too damn cold to do it now. Winter is on top of us. We can afford to wait, the new time table isn't a good idea. We should stick with the old one, and try and aim for July, or August even." even on that one they'd still be short rolling stock, but not nearly to the extent of aiming for the line running in the first spring months. "We're already done for the year."

"And?"

"And, we'd have to probably fight bandits." Dawes declared, "Which, yes we probably have to do anyway. Ma Hongkui is going to be busy, because they've stuck him with a thankless fools errand, he don't have the numbers for it. Its like sending black jack down Mexico, its the same mistake. We can't go 'heres a parcel of fellas,' and expect them to get it done."

He hadn't realized Dawes had felt so strongly about it. Strictly speaking much of Dawes's agitation had been towards expansion on the military side to include production of new 150mm howitzers on the implicit basis of lessons learned from the European war. There was a need for quick firing heavy artillery. "Has something been said, has there been an indication?"

"I don't see the point in rushing the line west, not for what good it will do us if we have to contend with any kind of trouble in either Chunking or Wuchang. As happens, Szechwan and Hupeh are too prone to coming over the border to get rowdy and Hongkui could be useful there."

"You just said he didn't have the numbers," But he understood where the older man was going, "But then that would be for search and destroy missions against an enemy he doesn't know where they are."

"Exactly." He paused, "The reality is Hu isn't wrong," He waved towards one of the flyers tossed into the trashbin after it had been read, "Chen would rather spend his time in Peking wining and dining, and however much that might upset Li..." Chen's deputy "the reality is the Ma have just as much pull, got as much skin in local influence as Chen does... and they certainly have more than Hu does."

That was in no small part due to to the Ma clique's structure. Hu fancied himself a revolutionary, and while not incompetent per se, the truth was he was endemic of any of the would be revolutionaries who had tried to fight at the Wuchang forts or any of the other battles of the summer of 1913. Hu could make the speeches he wanted but his small band of loyal men lacked discipline, and most of the wider population didn't really care about matters beyond regional concerns. In much the situation pervasive to the southern rebels the best rifles in common usage were the mauser eighty eights using the old round noses. This was in stark contrast to the Ma cliques long experience much much more modern mausers and a much greater talent for their use in those veterans of the old Wu Wei Corp.

He reached for the glass, and asked if there was anything else.

"Has Cullen mentioned the bagpipes and the uniform yet?"

Allen coughed putting the drink down, "No Cole hasn't mentioned anything about the uniforms." He wasn't even going to touch the bagpipe issue, "Why are you bringing it up?"

"Because its an interesting twixt." Dawes replied, "He's ordered black uniforms, with the intention of updating the old gendarmes uniforms."
--
Notes: Ma Hongkui launched a series of 'anti banditry' raids through allegedly 1923 (So like seven years) across at least four provinces including modern day Gansu, and by raids I mean plundering rivals or retaliating against neighboring provinces for attacks in Shaanxi and Gansu, Ningxia by most accounts... this is really one of the examples of why the period from 1916-1928 are the 'high warlord years'.

As an aside, regarding John Jordan's statement regarding taxes, it would actually take until 1918 for the salt gabble (the government monopoly on Salt) to decline in terms of revenue brought in per year, this was the tax used to pay the interest on China's debts internationally. This coupled with the financial mess of the post war years (world war 1) and then the first major north clique conflict lead to China's default on its loans in 21-22

Speaking of events in the future, the main story... which I'm defining (at present) as basically White Wolf through we will the interwar years. So call it 1913-1928 or 1933... are relatively hard / low magic / pulp fiction. You can basically ignore or hand wave excuse any and all supernatural phenomenon for the most part barring a couple blatant statements of 'this is a thing'. BY WW2 we get into the side stories particularly for / in Destroyermen but after that move increasingly into a GURPS style parachronic timeline setting with side stories, which may necessitate me spinning that off into its own thread. Or not.

 

[Imperator Pax]

December 1916​

The mood in the Glory Hotel's bar was a bit odd, not in the usual night affair not for the middle of the week. The cordon of graybacks kept order, but most were officers, the enlisted men at the door all had rifles. "He's drunk." Bill remarked stating the obvious, "I mean its celebratory, but's since he made the phone call had to have at least three more."

There was a mix of sharp dressed figures in western clothes, and Allen caught Nakamichi in the back end of the throng clearly perplexed. "I'll go find find out. Hina said she put his documents behind the bar."

Bill stepped back to let one of the men pass him, "you want me to ring the embassy?"

"His or ours?" Allen asked.

"I mean, to call Colonel Forrest, but yeah, that too."

Allen shook his head, "Let me see what this is about, if its enough for Percy to start buying the whole bar drinks he probably already knows." He paused, "When do you get a minute tell Nakamichi over there I'll talk to him in a minute." It was near to tempting to pull him out entirely and stick him in one of the second storey rooms with a telephone and see if he couldn't dig something out, or-

"And if he asks?"

"Tell him, Old Man Yamagata probably knows," Whatever 'it' was was, "and if he doesn't, we'll tell him." Allen stepped towards the bar, caught a reproving look from his second wife, nodded, and kept walking snagging the bottle left on the counter. "Percy, how many have you had?" He asked taking a glass behind the counter and pouring himself two fingers of peat, salt, and smoke to sip.

"A couple," Percy proclaimed probably louder than intended, as he swayed like he was at sea, "Yes, sorry you must have been burning the midnight oil... though I suppose no one will use that," He swallowed, "anymore. All electric lighting." The Englishman straightened. "Its good news old chap. Asquith is out. Good news for your man Cole, I'd say, they're going to let Smuts into the war ministry." Percy's express and the way his eyes set clearly told what the drunk Englishman thought of that.

Percy's disapproval of letting the old Boer commando in must have seemed to let the wolf bed down with the sheep, or the fox with the hens to the old imperial guard who still believed a sneeze in Whitehall was a hurricane in Africa. "Asquith is Prime minister."

"Was Prime Minister," Percy laughed swaying, "New conductor for the orchestra, Lloyd George has the job now."

"Easy Perce," He grabbed the Englishman, before he could topple. "What else,"

"He's prime minister," He replied, "Change the whole direction of the war." Percy blanched. "The w.c.-"

Fifteen minutes later, "Well Hina is not happy, but at least he didn't give way all on the bar." John Allen put the scotch on table between them, and glanced at the man in the wireframes "So the Brits have a new Prime Minister, I'm sure Yamagata knows, but if you want ring Tokyo from here." He gestured towards the brass receiver.

"Ah yes, thank you very much." Nakamichi went to make his phone call.

If Yamagata didn't know then he would soon.

"Ring the embassy?"

"I'm sure he knows, but yes." They couldn't talk how this might effect business. The Cadre was scattered across north China, Tietsin, Peking, Taiyuan, a half dozen Zhili towns, Zhengzhou, Xian, and plenty in wider Shansi. THat was just how railway tended to shape things.
--
He'd eaten breakfast at the hotel, taken the car up to the arsenal's gallery floor, and then come back down for lunch. Lloyd George winning, becoming PM, and the Election Stateside held significantly in the forward. Opened a series of different notes, that ranged from the averaged prices of pig iron for the year for several countries, Sweden for example 157 kroner, and that was not the only failure to convert to either pounds or at least dollar value. More importantly perhaps than the cost were who was buying what from where, even though it couldn't understated that 'at what price' was important. The swedes continued sell to the French at roughly their pre war volume, but Russian demand for not just pig iron but all other steel products had increased well in excess of pre war trade... and so forth.

The answer for why? Was easy, it was the war of course. The war wasn't going to last forever though, and when it ended there would be a recession... that was just the lesson of history... Governments would want to tighten the belt. There would be no excess funding for naval building programs. The Cadre's hundred membership had contracted at the war onset, or really a bit before, consolidating voting shares, and capital into a much smaller group of the original membership, with new members brought in as a managerial and leadership roles. Where in 1914 there had been a particularly serious concern of distributing, or perhaps even being forced into a situation where the hundred might end up commanding individual platoons if something didn't end up being done with Bai Lang that hadn't played out.

There were enough people in both classes to recognize what was coming... the problem was what to do about it. The Europeans, with their near constant, and shrill insistence that once the war was over capital would return for investment had long since become stale... as had the insistence that their treaty rights be respected. The situation closer still, with the bandits in Honan, and Szechwan would spill over the borders as men were 'driven to the mountains' as the expression went. There were other still more local problems. The Ma clique had to worry about bandits in Gansu's counties as well stirring up trouble... and given the refugees from Kirghiz, and into the Ili river area there would be trouble there. For the 'managerial class' that was less of an issue, their positions in the cadre were not quite ephemeral but more likely to end in a few years, and some had even resigned to rejoin commissions under the preparedness movement back home when asked by General Wood, even as the Virginian in office insisted to keep the states out of the war.

Wilson's position was likely to change. He'd had to accept most of the preparedness suggestions, and with Lansing holding telegrams in reserve just in case. The US was approaching entry, even if it took another year the preparations had already begun. There was no way Wilson would be able to stop the deluge, he'd either go for it or get swept along.

He looked up, "How goes the planning for the festive season?" He inquired as Hina smoothly slid into the chair across from him. The end of another year, the third christmas with no sign that the European war was yet over, and far away from the sounds of the guns, for the Europeans still in China, that made Christmas, and New Years the loudest of parties. That was more an expansion of pre war trends rather than having emerged solely from the war though. "Do you have everything you need?" Even saying it, he knew that ran into the problem of the war. Beef, what couldn't be bought locally, could be sourced abroad particularly from Argentina even though that still meant competing with prices for Britain. The French had the northern fifth of the of their country occupied, but France had always been an agrarian country, and the agriculture sector continued to export goods but was doing so with a diminished work force and and the threat of german U-Boats that also served to drive the cost up.

That created something of an expected expense, and of course the reality was it increased demand for those goods. That was just how people were. "I won't even ask how you happen to know that, but counterfeits aren't anything new." He remarked taking the list from where it had been pushed into the middle of the table. "I assume you want something done?" Hina tilted her head, and he frowned, "Whose doing the counterfeiting."

"You just said you didn't want to know." She pointed out unnecessarily, "Wouldn't it be easier to deal with, after all it isn't as if the British Authorities," She emphasized the words, "Won't do much of the work in Shanghai."

She wasn't wrong. Alston had no sense to what the wider colonial apparatus had played in British positions. The man was terribly out of his depth. That meant that he'd never even considered understanding the situation and the ties and channels official, and behind the curtains, with the Municipal Police Commissioner and the whole international community. "The fakes are Japanese aren't they?"

She spread her hands.

"I'll make a couple calls..." There was some relief that Hina wasn't the sort to set up one of her rivals hotels by tricking them into buying a too good to be true batch of liquor, and spirits just to pull the rug out ahead of the most important season of the year... unless she had a really good reason.

... and the truth was he had been putting a call off about the green gang for a while anyway. Shanghai was only close by when you were in Peking, or Tietsin or other easy access to the coast, otherwise ... well China had few if any direct rail connections and the only one in the north that existed was the British line from Peking-Tietsin that did eventually reach Shanghai. The canals would have been another way to get there, but their increasing state of disrepair made them impractical.
--
The return to the arsenal after lunch was with the expectation someone was going to end up with a lot of egg on their face, and probably a great deal of money along side prestige lost. Percy looked better and apparently had been speaking with his people. Sam had been showing him the completed examples of the three inch mortars. Stokes's original design. The truth was that at some point point the other 'half' of the cadre leadership / owners class were going to have to make trips abroad, much like Cole and Bill had come back from.

Sam snapped the bipod clamps of and pushed Isaac's machine gun onto the display table in the middle so it was directly under the electric light. "This is the latest version of your dwarf," He replied throwing a look over Percy's shoulder at him.

The englishman nodded. They all together cut an odd group. Percy's khaki, and their grays, his Webley and their automatics. Allen scooped the machine gun up, "So how is this going to work Percy,"

"You mean proofing," He sighed, and then grudgingly took the Lewis, struggling against its weight but managing, "Well, as simple as it would be... to just let you proof your own guns, I suppose Smythe will have to just come back out."

"You won't bring an Australian, or South African out. They'll be using them."

"If one could be found I suppose." He happily let Griswold take the light machine gun, and straightened his jacket. "Matheson might be able to be freed up,"

It might have just been the war forcing expediency on the British... but Sam nodded, "If this will suffice, if the funding can be made available for the Ozzies-"

"The Prime Minister that regardless of that dreadful polling nonsense that the Anzacs are Imperial Troops and should be accordingly supplied."

"And the Indians?"

"Well, I'm sure at some point yes," Percy replied, "They're fighting the Turks, its not quite the same." He continued stumbling a bit to protest. Percy departed within the hour, and the two Americans glanced at one another.

"Well?"

"I showed him the Pattern 1914s."

"And?"

"I-" He shrugged, "I could use new tooling."

"I'm going to speak to Duan, I know he's hard up for modern rifles. I think some capital and an offer of rifles we currently in inventory would probably suffice."

"That's an idea."

"Do you have something better?"

Griswold smirked, "He's a red leg, the three inchers we've been using are hydro spring guns, well almost all of our guns are."

"Almost?'

"Well since someone has only just now agreed to new 15cm guns, I've worked up a hydro pneumatic recoil for it."

"Is that what the tinkerers were shooting this morning?" It had sounded more rapid than the Xian based heavy battery, but he hadn't paid much heed to it.

"It was an experiment. Congress is a collection of misers back home, and well then you've got the chiefs-"

"I am not Crozier, and I do not appreciate the comparison to Ordinance."

Griswold raised his hands, "I didn't mean it like that."

"It sure sounded like it."

"I apologize."

Allen stifled the feeling, and exhaled. Then grudgingly apologized in return, "The advantage is that it lets you go faster."

"With a good crew, yes."

"Dawes knows?"

There was a pause, "He wants to stick with the proven hydrosprings, he's not opposed to the idea but he thinks that any serial production begin with the smaller guns."

"That wouldn't be his decision. He wanted the heavy guns, he got them. Have you asked Phillip?" a look in response, "Are you telling me you've had time to fabricate a gun, but you haven't been able to get ahold of Powell?" In 1914 Powell's mentor Adna Chaffee had passed away, and it was a wonder he hadn't cashed out then, "He's still in New York?"

"He's in Washington, at Root's War College."

"How long has he been there?"

Griswold shrugged, "I've no idea, I had thought he was at the Academy." He wondered who else had been laboring under that assumption. "Look I get it, I understand, Phillip wasn't around, and maybe Dawes overstepped, but Phil ain't here... and if you're daddy is right and the war comes, they're gonna promote Phil to lieutenant colonel at least. We certainly won't have him for a minimum of a couple years, assuming he doesn't get killed."

"We'll talk about it..." ... and realistically... there were going to have to be changes. They had been largely going about the war with ersatz measures in the cadre that hadn't reflected how things had been.

--
Notes: Obviously again some of this is clearly foreshadowing to the eventual transition to government, but also the move hydro pneumatic is drawn from lessons the British made, and even within British service going from hydro springs was controversial if not for failures at galliopi wouldn't have happened and even then members of the artillery corp (the historically most professional part of the British army's officer corp) still protested the adoption admittedly on the grounds that they hadn't tested it properly (because there was a war on, but the French had introduced this into a mass produced gun in 1897, and the British had experience with the Mle1897 so eventually the system became standard after the war, but there was surprising resistance to adopting it...).

This also is related to my above discussion with ATP over artillery, if we go back to White Wolf, due to how Krupp did business you could buy pretty much any modern gun they built even in small orders, or licenses to produce really up until July 1914. So In White Wolf the cadre has the technical data packages for the 77 Field cannon (also in British inventory), the 10.5cm (which was used very widely both pre war and even further post, this is the 105x155R cartridge which goes on to be the basis the parent for a number of other cartridges), and the 15cm before the outbreak of the Second Revolution the summer 1913. The 77 and 105 can use the same carriage and follows a rather clear technological progression.

 

[Imperator Pax]

December 1916​

Allen tucked his thumbs behind the thick leather of his gun belt, the right slightly higher on the edge in the perennial habit. It was true the Philippines had been a mess of trouble with too many people trying to settle old grudges, but they'd been wonderful years otherwise. Other trips abroad as ships became faster, and the posting to the hermit kingdom and duty in the Russo Japanese war to observe had all been different experiences... and all their own lessons to teach. The great adventure of world changing year to year before your eyes.

At Xian in 1914, months before the European war had begun, the tractors had pulled the fifteen centimeter guns into position. The tractors navigated mud better than the Fultons there was no contest there, but the concept was the same. Perhaps this was just Griswold's early Christmas present to himself.

Percy blanched beside him as the red legs attached to the technical section tossed shells into the sliding breech of both guns. The five nines roared, were reloaded and roared again, then twice repeated again before the split trails yoked to the quads and moved to a second firing station to fire.

If not for the range and rounds expended it would have been an exact duplication of 5th​ Artillery ready maneuver drills... well that and the lack of a horse team. Not that they could discuss Dawes's potential apprehension to changing recoil mechanism in front of the englishman. No that would have to be a conversation for another time, and in truth Allen admitted he should have kept his temper better in line.

"Obviously can't be maintained, you'd shoot the barrel out, sustained rounds per minute will probably be four, not six." Griswold declared, "I imagine might even with not having to move, and enough practice might get one more on occassion."

"Its fine work, Sam."

"Yes, yes quite right." Percy replied eye the pair of guns. "Just the two though?"

"Its experimental," Griswold replied, throwing an indiscrete look, "Recoil system works, sighting system needs to be evaluated to make sure our glass will hold up. Next year, experimental battery will evaluate two more and see how they hold up." He muttered off about the differences between having horses pull cannons and suspension systems and axles and the like.

What he didn't mention was the growing surety that Wilson was either going to bring the US into the war on his own accord or was going to be pressured into it. He'd made a silly stupid attempt to try and open white peace negotiations that had been rejected by France, and England. The US entering would mean that they'd have to husband motor vehicles, and the general consensus was that they'd have to give it two maybe even three or four years to work out how to approach Ford about setting up a factory locally, particularly with regard for Capital reserves. There was bound to be some kind of slump as the war ended and demobilization took place, but they would have to see.

Percy either din't notice or didn't make a sign he had. "Ah yes." He replied, "Well, yes." The englishman trailed off. The British had in October began yet another series of standarizations, reforms, to continue 'equalizing' as had been their term last year when this had started their field artillery in Europe.

"When we're done," Griswold commented, "We will move to testing the four pieces together. See how these two compare versus where on the next two, so on." Though not nearly as officer heavy as the British had been prior to the onset of the war in Europe had standardized on four each batteries placing command to a captain... largely on the basis of of the communication requirement, and the math for ranging.

"You really think the honanese warrant all that?"

"Strong medicine," Griswold replied sharpishly. "If Honan stayed to its side of the border, but the Qing had hundred of rebellions between the Boxer mess, and 1912." each province was entirely too willing to go raid the neighbors since they'd been getting away with it since probably before the thirteen colonies had thrown old king George out with the tea. By the time the cuttin' with Jeff Davis done the Qing's fight with the Taiping had killed millions by itself, and that hadn't eveen been the only rebellion going on at the time. Nian, and the Dungan rebellions out west had made the Indian wars look like bar room brawls in size.

That just brought them back to that China had managed its population with just feudal farming, no mechanical reapers, and not steam engines. They'd been growing potatoes introduced from the new world, and other crops, but it had all been plain feudal sharecropping or near enough. Xian was the size of New York City, and it wasn't anything special. "Its not just Honan, with Tsai O dead the ones down in his old stomping grounds will start probably sooner rather than later."

"I'd heard about that little border skirmish, get plenty of that in Africa of course. A couple thousand of the natives, they just don't understand what quality infantry can do in the clinch. Never the mind what happens when they're properly supported with artillery, or heaven forbid the Maxim."

"like I said, strong medicine." Griswold remarked. "Szechwan is near to sixty million," More people than jolly old England, "And that's going to make a mess when they start." And that was probably an understatement.

"It won't be that bad, they do this all the time. Summer rolls around, its done in a few weeks. Just show the rowdy ones off. No," Percy shook his head, "There were some other things we needed to talk about I think." And that ... and that eventually would lead to another twisting path, a talk about the Tsar and his new prime minister... and would set the stage for the conversations that followed in the following year... months down the road.

And later beyond that, a 'favor'.
--
The weather had continued to turn colder. There was no sign of snow, and while possibly after the first of the year a white Christmas seemed unlikely. That was just as well. It made little sense to really celebrate Christmas except as an excuse to throw a hell of a bash, and really new years made a better solution, even though there was usually little left to be done this late in the year.

Akashi's enclosed documents were all dated in the year of, or since Jimmu's ascension, 2577, to throne in the same way that some people wanted to date the Chinese year from the year of the Yellow Emperor's ascension... which would be 4628. The banking transactions were useful all the same, as were what it said about the flow of arms. Akashi went on about the declining condition a frequent topic to most people he talked to about China, and Russia and their decrepit finances and '
'superstitious ideologies'. He hadn't come out and lampooned Hayashi it was close to implication that there were arms going into the south's guomindang.

He folded the papers away, and decided these wouldn't be the sort of things to mention to Percy. The Russians had gotten knotted up over siems carrey, and even before that in 1914 had the war not broken they'd been trying to muscle in to gobble up Mongolia... in what if Allen were to be honest had smelled like a prelude to trying to stir something up over Manchuria... and between the two, then and now Allen would have bet on the Japanese.

Maybe things would have been better if that had happened... maybe not. He was still fairly sure that some of the twenty one demands had come out of Hayashi's office in Tietsin, and even if they hadn't it had come with the support of Kato's party in the diet. Whatever the case it had been done, and with nearly two years since, and Yuan six months dead the avalanche was probably due to start rolling down hill sooner rather than later.
--
Notes: This starts the end of the year for 1916, and more pointedly sets the events for 1917 and foreshadows some of what happens over the next five years, but the main is the spiral of events of 1917.

Sichuan and Henan turn into just massive bandit riven warrens over the course of the year, and then despite being a part of the Beiyang clique (Being chairman for almost a year after Yuan's death) Chang Hsun, the pony tail general, in July attempts to restore Puyi to the throne which results in Duan Qirui showing up fifty thousand troops to run him off from that.

Then of course more broadly there is the Japanese, and the British response the February revolution in Russia (which was not a favorable response to that), never mind the subsequent October revolution which figures in both countries were even more nervous about.

But also this foreshadows the future consequences of when Yamagata dies in '22 he leaves behind the Army's political apparatus without a clear successor that sets the stage if not wholly but to a significant extent the variety of problems that come about in the army without that leadership, because not only was there not a clear leader no one had any real skill sets beyond principally as Infantry officers at that point. [Yes, the Army had a foreign relations advisory council established in 1915 but that's a whole other can of worms not limited to advocating annexing (or trying to) all of the Russian Far East and fighting the nascent soviet union in the same year as Yamagata's death, which admittedly they had been agitating for that to an extent while he'd been alive, but without a clear leader to rally around they just fully lost their marbles at being told 'no' you can't do that, we don't have the money for that, especially given what all the Navy was asking for.]

 

[Imperator Pax]

December 1916​

The end of the year was principally... just as it almost always was... about the social aspect. The business side of things was administrative, clerical, managing plans for the coming year. They ran off the eight hour day, forty hour work week, and with enough space to run shifts seven days a week twenty four hours a day if the work load called for it. If there was anything to be said for Wilson as a president his free trade policies had been good especially with holdings stateside to put goods to market off in Texas, and Alabama or ashore at ports in Savannah or San Francisco. With more and more people buying clothes from general goods stores it was simply a market, and with Wilson having disposed of the Tariffs even before the European war that export had been surprisingly lucrative.

It had just been overshadowed by the European War. The new contract would be good though, it gave them the opportunity to modernize. That was not the magic word. In 1911Yin Chang had seemed receptive to finally modernizing to the Gewehr 98... but the money still hadn't been there. Of the six Beiyang divisions, just divisions not counting the independent brigades, four had been in Zhili, one in Manchuria, with fifth division posted to Shangdong. The less reliable 'new divisions' just as dependent on provincial funding but less well trained, had by that point become or perhaps had never been reliable to the Manchu, but only some of those had been loyal to Yuan Shikai. It was possible to blame that on the vagaries of the Manchu court, the old Buddha getting impatient but really like everything else it had probably been a hundred things on top of that.

So while the factory workers were preparing for the end of the year festivities, the shopping and all the rest of it they were here. That wasn't to say the company was completely shut down for the season, the trains still needed to run, telephones operated, the fire brigade was on stand by, and others but the factories were largely finished for the year, whether in later years that would hold as domestic consumption increased who could say. "There a problem?"

"No, its lighter than a Krag." Bill glanced sideways to Griswold.

Which brought him back to the question he'd just asked, since Allen hadn't gotten to hold the gun yet, "Is that going to be a problem?"

"Not Mechanically." He protested, "But it is a lighter gun, its a shorter barrel, it'll kick more." He nodded at the not quite answer, sort of an answer.

"I'll take 'em," Cole grunted taking the short rifle from Sam, "Give them to the class As."

"Proof of concept," Griswold replied, "The arsenal's first priority is getting Farnsworth, or whoever the Brits send to approve the Pattern 14 rifles, and I'll need six months to fill that order at least. Probably eight. Either way at minimum to April even with,"

The tooling, "I've spoken to Qirui," Allen replied with a shrug, now they just needed to see what the republic would want for the tooling, "But the time is going to come when we're going to have to be able to manufacture our own milling, and cutting machines." Even without the US in the war the tool supply was largely dug up... and Ford might have been opposed to the war but he had his own in house tool manufacturing so he wasn't nearly as inconvenienced as they were by the European conflict. "I know that we aren't going to manage that before the states go over there, but after the war." He paused, "What?"

"Zhang wants to get into planes." Cole replied not glancing down as he pulled the action out and then scoping the bore.... which one a new gun seemed a little pointless. "I don't know how he thinks he'll manage that but he says if Duan won't do it," and Duan wasn't interested in continuing Yuan Shikai's ambitions for an air force because the money wasn't there, and because there were no planes to buy on market at the moment, "He will."

Taxes paid to the imperial capital even at the very end of the Qing had been predominantly the salt gable, and similar medieval taxes and monopolies. The Qing had always been leery of new types of taxes ... or any taxes of any kind even as government revenues had been diminished, and thus provinces had to make up for shortfalls as well as to fund their own defense... and that decentralization continued into the Republic as 1912 had begun. The northern provinces dominated by Beiyang Dujun paid the traditional taxes that their provinces owed the Peking government but only because the Beiyang Congress had agreed to do so back in September. What they had not agreed on were more modern taxes that was deemed a provincial or even county matter now that Yuan Shikai wasn't around to ride herd. It wasn't unique to the north, down south in Canton, and Yunnan there was simply no stomach for financial reform.

As broken as the status quo was it was the most acceptable option to the most involved people. The provincial gentry in Canton, or the other southern provinces might have occasionally flittered with revolutionary sentiments when it came to pay the bill the support for change wasn't there... but something would inevitably give the system wasn't sustainable.

Feudal taxes could not sustain western armies.

--
There were certain institutions to which there was no point towards, and then there were institutions where... well maybe it did. The Japanese had turned their traditional religion into something akin... to the Church of England... sort of, and presumably Yuan Shikai had had something similar in mind when he'd brought back the rites as part of proclaiming himself emperor.. Siam, came to mind as well, and the French were doing their level best to shove Catholicism down the buddhists throats in IndoChina even when most Parisian elite were as quick to sneer at popism as any fine victorian dandy. The Russians had their patriarchs, and the pashas claimed to be the head of all right thinking mohamadens and so it went. It was a collection of elites, and station, and organization.

Whether or not your prime minister really believed it well who cared as long as the institutions were maintained... that was what it really boiled down to, because the institutions were supposed to do things for the society around them. IT was why despite the founding fathers not wanting their own church of England had still had Chaplains in the army. In a solidly English measure the Navy's first Chaplain had graduated from Harvard in colonial mirror of Oxford and the British's vicars, and bishops of note.

The consensus had been, even if not a priority while Bai Lang had been running around, that the army needed certain institutions. The Russians and Japanese both had had their chaplains show the flag during the 1905 fighting... and they'd had something of a fit in the door. 1914 had hardly been the first time Allen had patronized a Buddhist stupa, or temple, there was a benefit to being on good footing with your neighbors and not needlessly antagonizing your neighbors.

"The gardens are very beautiful."

Nakamichi seemed earnest in the praise as Allen passed his time under the veranda with the tea, "This," He gestured to the water course, "Was Yamagata's recommendation, well you've seen the house's garden." He had designed the house garden, and recommended the designer for this one, and a few of the others including the one in Xian... and of course it had Xian was ... very much going to be the most important one. They were increasingly moving westward into interior China, and would have done that without the European war.
A little under a year ago... just shy of eleven months when the Japanese Legation had extended to Yuan Shikai.... 21 Demands divided along five axes. Most nothing more than a belligerent demand to recognize the de facto state of affairs, Japanese troops had occupied Shantung, and the German Concession they and the brits had interred the Germans. The second series, roughly a third of the whole slew of the demands, were an expansion of Japanese rights in Manchuria an action obviously intended to take advantage of the Russians being distracted in Europe.

Japan wanted to call in the loans, finally in central china, for the iron mines and wanted it in writing again... this had been a long time coming and the Russians weren't exactly in a place to fight it. It was one thing to stamp and moan about spheres of influence and that they'd have the capital for other projects eventually just as soon as the war was over probably another when the debts had been on the books for ten fifteen years and the russians could barely manage the interest for some of the loans.


IF Japan had stopped with those that'd probably have been fine. Russia would have really been the only one get hosed out, even if the first series would upset some people it wouldn't really have changed much meaningfully. There would have been complaints about the open door, but Hioki would have made the argument that these were continuations of existing not wholly new agreements. The same way that the French and Russians had done time and again to Reinsch. It would have been predictable and hard to argue that it really broke the status quo.

No, that distinction went to the last third of the demands or more accurately the final eight demands entailed. It was in that Gonsuke Hayashi had overplayed his hand in It was easy to see his thinking though... Hayashi had probably been thinking that he could force the terms like they'd done on the hermit kindom no big deal. The difference was that England hadn't been involved in Joseon, and demanding that Japan be able to prohibit China from ceding any further coastal concessions was a bridge to far for the British Empire. Unlike a decade early in the Hermit Kingdom the States were much much less keen to allowing a repeat of their departure, and so Reinsch, Bryan and even lansing weren't happy either.

... and if the Foreign Office and the State Department didn't like item number 15 the next seven were absolutely ludicrous If only because of how expansive the overreach was. If it had just been the right to found, and fund schools, and temples then Japan would have been fine. The railway building would almost certainly have ran into objections from Britain, France, Russia at the least, but probably a couple of the smaller European countries... but Belgium was occupied by the Germans so they couldn't really do much now could they?

The demands had gone for the whole damn pie wanting to be able to take control of China's financial and police apparatus bypassing the banking consortium... and that was the start of the backlash for the last third. Fukien could have possibly been up for debate, but it and Manchurian together in right, to say that John Jordan had hit the wall had been an understatement.

Three months after, in that April, Yamagata had forced the last seven removed, and then after back channel secret negotiations Yuan Shikai had agreed to thirteen articles with some grumbling British ascent.

Hayashi was a sore loser. "We'll have to increase funding for the schools next year of course." He told Nakamichi, which had already been planned. Running compulsory education just to fourteen years of age they were over taxed, never mind what they really needed in terms of skilled labor.

... and of course donations to support Buddhist and confucian temples was just part of the way you kept a community going. It was just the accepted way according to Jun, after all weren't the Japanese doing that.
--
Notes:Zhang Tso'lin was very enthusiastic about all modern military contrivances, armored cars, tanks, airplanes as well as more mundane updates to his army including modernized mauser rifles submachine guns (Lots of sub machine guns, Italian, German, Swiss) After ww1 He was spening twice his actual tax base and most of it went to his military and buying things like Vickers Mediums in addition to aircraft from French, Italian, American, and British sources and later on others



As with the 21 demands Yamagata Aritomo's opposition to the demands was almost certainly one part clique politics, and secondly very very financially driven. Japan did not have the money in 1915 to build those three railways at the time for example Japan was still in shaky financial grounds from the Russo-Japanese war and post war military expenditures. Aritomo and his proteges did support taking steps to create a buffer state to protect Korea, expand influence in Manchuria, and provide for defense against a future war with Tsarist Russia. He actually expected that they'd be fighting Imperial Russia for Round 2 a decade after the Russo Japanese war ended and world war 1 preempted that, but until British capital from Japanese support in ww1 became available Japan was mostly taking on US and British loans at the time.

 

[Imperator Pax]

December 1916​

There was planning for a heavy dinner and then there was packing away two steaks, in addition to the soup and fish they'd started with. Then that was before Hina had ordered the strawberry and cream cake before heading off with the other ladies. "mm, thats good cake." Bill remarked stretching, before coming back to rest his forearms on the big table. "Alright what's this good news of yours."

"Well I thought it was funny, at least" The other englishman remarked easing back from the table. Percy glanced at his compatriot and eased back from the table, surreptiously loosing a button on his Imperial Service jacket, "You've been talking to Duan Qirui, haven't you?"

As he was Prime Minister of the Republic that went without saying, but it was certainly true, both directly with the red leg, as well as a couple lunches with Cao Kun, which wasn't unusual, "This and that," Allen replied. It wasn't being intentionally evasive, but anything he told Percy about railways was likely to get back to British concerns... not that they were likely to try anything , but Cao Kun or probably really the Ma family were hoping for finishing out the railways that would mean going into Tibet ... with Ma Anliang pushing for that he certainly wasn't going to mention it to Percy until he had to, "Bandits are on the rise, so."

"Exactly, the bandits," Percy reached for his brandy and sipped, nodding to them.


"Yes quite. Well I was wondering because well Duan talking about joining the Entete, the allies, where he could raise a war participation army." Percy snorted, "Has he talked to you about that, or this some new idea?"

"Not so new, back in September. Its been an off and on sort of thing."

That caught Percy's friend somewhat off foot. "Really, I honestly thought this might have been something the chinaman had conjured, what about about you Percival has mentioned anything to you?"

"Yes, I may remember something a few months ago, it would have been before John Jordan left, but I seem to recall something."

Percy previcating, there might be something there. It also told Allen enough that keeping his mouth shut mostly was probably a good idea, "Like I said its an off and on thing, what's he bringing it up for?"

"Oh you know, money of course. He'd need money for modern arms."

"Yes, yes the money," Percy agreed, "Well as John Jordan told the Chinese Prime Minister, the money just not there."

"He seems to think that might have changed."

"He may just be assuming that because Llyod George has the premiership." Percy replied.

"Perhaps so. From the sound of it, and not having heard of it, I thought it might have been some new scheme. If there were funds what could they do."

"There is the ANZAC contract, we could make one in 8mm the Beiyang already uses, if they actually go to Europe run them off whatever you've captured from the Germans I suppose." In addition to whatever was produced with the order. It was funny how the British had throughout the previous years not wanted British troops not to use foreign ammunition but the broader Imperial cohort the Anzac, Indians and Canadians and all could all use ammunition sourced elsewhere... but the war going on had abridged even that. American made ammunition had been reaching British infantry since October 1915 at the latest.

"What's this then?"

"First of the year, its a run of three hundred thousand... your paperwork calls it the Mark 1 star," He certainly wasn't going to tell the man the price per rifle, or plus ammunition. "There are other discussions."

"The ministry of munitions should have it back soon, nearly Christmas, but soon." Percy replied getting a shrewd look from the other khaki uniformed man. "What about the Lewis guns?"

"We've made the machining adjustments a test batch probably early in the new year, and then any final contracts. Well we can ink it once you have something, again sometime after the first of the year."

"Oh good, I knew you were erring on the side of caution John Allen. After all you've got a number of them in service."

"Lewis's action is probably the best thing I've seen to date." He replied reaching for the coffee, "and he says he's worked out the problems with 30 Government," 30 06, "Which is nice to hear." All that beefing with Crozier aside.
--
The British over for dinner had been interesting... it had turned into some dancing around the election state side. There was still a week till Christmas and all the Legation dinners and parties, and then the lead up into the new year bash. "What do you make of it?"

"Akashi's stuff." Bill snorted, "Hell Al. What do you think Cole?"

"Akashi's right Allen needs to pay a visit to Japan, 'specially since they've got a new Prime Minister as well."

"Terauchi, why," Not that he wasn't a swell enough fellow, and in the right cliques.

Instead of answering as if he'd been waiting to spring upon them the elder Forrest made an entrance into the office, "Because regarding your question this morning about why Qirui might think funding is available, it seems he's been in talks with the finance ministry." The old man had brought four typed copies and handed them out, "And Cullen is right, this has been going on since November, I'd reckon they're nearly to the point of concluding it."

He opened the manila folder, and looked over the papers throwing a sour look at Cole, who just shrugged half apologetically, "Have you been given copies of Akashi's posts?"

"I have not had that pleasure," The old man had conspicuously not moved for the center documents, "Would you care to share?" Bill reached over and handed them to the colonel, and they settled to stew over the reading.

"Britain takes loans from Japan, Japan turns around and loans it out, to Duan, with the strings attached and Britain potentially gets another nation to add to the allies."

"And that's the advantage it being a feather in their cap for the propaganda, tell the people back home. Some of it looks like what Yamagata cut out of Shigenobu's demands," Forrest the elder replied glancing over the top, "And of course he could very well have insisted those be removed on the grounds of fiscal responsibility, but just as likely he was preparing to run the Prime Minister out of politics all together." The timing of previous administrations finance members arrest had been... convenient but on the other hand it wasn't really a conspiracy. There had been some kind of row within the party, and it had been about money, but then it seemingly always was. "And as much as we would like to ascertain where they're going with this, what do you make about Akashi's comments about the marxists here?"

"Most of the revolutionaries in exile fled to Switzerland," He replied, "Sit around in Geneva, Lucern the lot of chateaus and coffee houses to complain. I know Akashi doesn't like the sudden shift," The change in prime minister, but Akashi didn't like the Tsarist government either. "Why?"

"Terauichi does not like the marxists, we have common cause there. In fact Lansing's people in speaking with Balfour's people think the Germans are up to something. We obviously haven't told the British we read the German's mail, but they probably know." The British had cut the German undersea cables early in the war, "There is enough of trouble with the IWW as it is, so Lansing doesn't want to start a riot, but Germany is moving a lot of silver dollars overseas."

"So if China enters the war its good for the states."

"Wilson won't like it. Too much secret diplomacy for him, its all too bloody European in his opinion, but yes Lansing wants Chinese participation." The whole thing was a tangled mess. "I'd say we should have a cause for war by Summer, which is good because we're not ready yet. The preparedness movement just isn't enough."

That had been a topic they'd had before. The inevitability of the draft for when the US entered the war... which the British didn't know that that was the way the state department was leaning. Wilson didn't want to get involved but the mood was already turning... and if the British didn't know letting the Japanese know that that was the way things were was probably not what the state department wanted.... Lansing was almost certainly angling for concessions. "The draft?"

"If you're going to bring people over you need to have it done."

Bill had spoken to his daddy,... and of course Colonel McCulloch was entirely too old that he'd be recalled, and it was doubtful that his youngest brothers would be effected, but Wilson had been a damned navy lawyer, "Of course he won't come. If he has to go he'll go, but his whole job it managing the family trust..."

"I can't see them reactivating his commission, not with your family tied up in oil, trains, and ranching all together. They won't do it. If he volunteers to return it'd be different, but too much money and," And political influence, "besides even if they called him up it'd be to run the organization."

"There have been some of the Gillespie folks who have signed up,"

"They're German stock?"

"Well, yeah, some of the Irish too, if Daddy can't secure exemptions for his oil engineers he'll send them over to us I think, but we'll see, won't we?"

"How long until you have rigs running full time?"

Bill threw a glance to him, and then back to the older Forrest, "In Shaanxi? Couple of months, summer" He clicked his tongue, "End of next year at the latest, for Gansu. We've done the exploring All the right conditions, and I'll need drill engineers."

"We're going to need engineers of every stripe and sort." Cole muttered, after the conversation ended and it was the three of them left in the office, "As to Texas, and Edenborns people, I think this will be a good trial run. The French and English have already divided up the Ottomans and the war aint close to done. I don't want to think what they'll plan for pillaging the other two morons. I think we need to prepare the corporation in Switzerland to start looking to recruit people to come over. Once the war ends, we can pay 'em in US dollars and they can work a couple years, or stay on long term if things are bad in the old country."

--
Notes: This is basically continuation of the general course for the 1916 parts of the timeline, on one hand its this stuff is happening in China, this stuff is happening in China in the context of wider international events, this stuff is happening in the world at large, and then in 1917 all the planning the long term great game stuff the great powers have been mustache twirling just falls out as the Bolshevik surprise comes out of the oven and everyone is like 'wtf is this shit', the US joins the war before that but doesn't really make significant contributions till after, China 'joins' the war before the Bolshevik seizure of power too, but that summer is when like a couple dozen small conflicts break out in China and the country really starts to disintegrate into provincial fiefdoms.

So yeah, going into 1917 we're preparing for the first bandit war, and then other stuff. With that out of the way I'm going to talk about some of the methodology that well in general effects not just this timeline but my AH stuff for the most part. SO for this story, as it relates to that, I treat 1917 as the end of the 'long 19th​ century' and if not that year between 1919 and 1914, I would pick the start of ww1 rather than the end of it. Which gets us into the systems of looking at history.

I consider the start of the Industrial revolution to be in the 1690s in Britain, basically with the foundation of the bank of England and this is because I define the Industrial revolution including the systems which lead to its developments which admittedly under that model you could say the precursor to the Industrial Revolution was the foundation of the East Indies companies in England and the Netherlands. I'm not defining the revolution on just the mass production of textiles but also the institutional social and economic shifts that made that mass production possible, and thus I place its start a few decades earlier than most because by that point things like stable banking capital, and national banking apparatus being available to England facilitated the financial wherewithal to create the British Imperial Market and be involved in far flung colonial adventures such that France despite have twice the population of England was roughly equal in economic productivity in the first half of the 18th​ century and then England just completely eclipses them by the Napoleonic war in terms of things like iron production.

This is also part of the system which is why when numbering off the states to Industrialize its England, and then America because I'm looking at the development of the institutions and the manufacture of the tools necessary to industrialize and colonial America despite some political pushback (particularly from people like Jefferson) already had a culture and the inclination to industrialize before independence and this was supported to an extent by the early republic even before the Napoleonic wars and Europe (continental Europe) doesn't industrialize until the 1830s despite for example Netherlands having a colonial empire and a banking apparatus though the dutch would go on to be a major proponent of industrialization.

Anyway to bring this back, this banking revolution and credit, and just in general access to financial institutions and capital as reliable institutions is important for basically future industrial ventures. The development of the LLC and such all play a part in this, and incorporation, trusts and subsequently the professionalization of management, which is slow to catch on in Europe, until really really quite late.

Anyway, in timeline terms this is arc one of the primary timeline, 1916 is sort of the prologue and runs into and through the summer of 1918. That will in a similar fashion serve as the basis for a timeskip forward to the break down of the beiyang army and subsequent major clique conflicts that occur among other political developments.

 

[Imperator Pax]

December 1916​

Christmas was fast approaching, and the news from Europe was of course that change was coming that the war was entering a new phase... that the 'concert of 1917' would be different. From their place in the distant orient there was some skepticism to it, and yet it was potentially true. The war in Europe had marked a change, not so much because they'd been dependent on European tool manufacturing.

They hadn't been. It was true Germany made good tooling for certain things. The dutch for others. The British. The problem wasn't that they were cut off from the supply because those countries were at war. It was that because the entente was at war they were buying up tooling from the states and as 1915's pace had increased the US supply had been devoured paid for by British buys on credit.

The British Merchant Marine was going wherever it could to pick up goods from all over the world... and it was the war effort was enough that it was driving up prices for those in demand goods across the whole world. They knew that pretty well, just for things like iron, never mind steel, or finished goods.

Iron and derivative goods sold well, textile prices were up to. The war was good for business because European demand was high. In short demand was high because the war had created excess demand in the Entente and because the war had cut Europe from trading with one another in their normal fashion, that couldn't be overlooked either.

To that extent he wasn't terribly surprised when Nakamichi referred to the cadre as a 'Zaibatsu', not because most of his fellow core leadership were blood related, or at least not closely, but the remaining share holders were all the product of the first cadre who had stayed in with longstanding ties. Beneath that core membership were the other experts and managers who administered subsidiaries largely on the professional day to day business.

He could draw the comparisons... and even if that wasn't the point Nakamichi was making the other similarities were pretty similar. The iron and coal mines were managed carefully and professionally, and with scientific rigor much like mines back in the states. Experts organized and clocks timed around overlapping eight hour shifts based on scientific theories.

Zaibatsu wasn't a horrible word. Clan was a perfectly serviceable description, and they needed to plan for a future after the war ended. Present incomes needed to be prepared to invest in what would make money in the future after the war was over... and that was why he'd been willing to pay Qirui for the Hartford tooling the Liu had been given the money by Yuan to buy from Pratt and Whitney. Not that Duan hadn't been easy to convince, he had plenty of personal reasons to distrust modernizing the Hanyang arsenal that the tooling had been purchased for. Not allowing them to get to Hanyang was in his interest.

The three cities were a hot bed of anti beiyang sentiment... and if the talk coming out of the Beiyang committee of the various dujun and other officers of rank was accurate it would be the first target for any Beiyang action against the south. Hanyang was close enough to the provinces loyal to the Beiyang clique and yet wasn't in one of those northern aligned provinces. There was no reason to give a city that had already struck imperial colors for the guomindang more than once new american made tooling.

"I appreciate the Christmas present, its even a couple days early.' Griswold remarked.

Allen grunted, "How are things on your end Cole?"

Cole put his drink on the table and sat back down, "We'll leave probably that Friday morning," The first Friday of the new year, "Go out west and see, Percy's all but confirmed Akashi's report that inflation of the Russian money. That's worsening the food shortages from the draft that Percy told us about. If I was going to put money on it, given the Brits, and Japan are telling us the same thing... its going to get a hell of a lot worse."

He nodded, "And readiness?"

"They're not ready. We need a couple more months. I get moving away from flying brigades, and to geographic centered regiments, but its still a change. We're not ready, and the incoming classes will need time, especially for telephones and artillery. Its a time and resource investment, we're talking human capital. If we promote every lieutenant to captain and every captain to colonel it'd be a right mess."

They knew they couldn't do that, and frankly everyone knew that. Reiterating that with just a handful of them here was pointless. "That's fine, the tooling?" He turned back to Griswold,

"Its on the train cars, as soon as its off in the city," Xian's old Manchu quarter, "I'll get the first shift settled into it, and see about doing the first runs." Shijiazhuang's Cedar Forrest could produce part of the British rifle Order after the start of the new year, while that tooling was spinning up, and then ideally the two together could finish the order quicker... assuming nothing else came up. The British wouldn't necessarily like it because it would mean inspecting two different factories' production, but that kind of old fashioned behavior had been dealt with before.

"The more I think about it, the less I like Percy's buddy nosing around."

"Its bad enough, have him snooping," Cole agreed, "And shit, you didn't see it, but Nakamichi had the stomach to say we should add two whole divisions in ear shot. That bastard looked like he was going to clear his skin at the thought. I didn't like that."

Allen threw a look to Bill, who shrugged "I wasn't there Al. I missed that."

"If that wasn't what rubbed you the wrong way then what was?"

"Well Akashi wants us to talk to Giichi, I mean you know how he feels about the Marxists,"

"Him, and my pops are about two peas in a pod," Allen replied reaching for his coffee, "Is he coming to visit, cause I don't know if I have enough liquor for both of them to drink," Laughter chortled round the table, "I'm serious. Christmas and News Year, putting on and what not."

"No, no. Not this year, but if you're going over there you should pay him a visit."

--

Cole's notion of not ready lay in the complexities of basically inculcating literacy into enlisted men... hell they were talking about English as well for men weren't, largely, even literate in their native language. Allen blew a breath out, and watched the rank file past the flag pole and the red dragon on the blue field.

They had had the conversation months earlier about the incoming new recruits. The southern revolutionary flag evoked, called for a union of five races.... Whites, Yellows, Reds, Blacks and Blues. Five colors on a flag.

That was too many damned colors to have on a nation flag. Yuan Shikai had adopted a somewhat more inventive take on it, but even that was a gaudy eyesore. Jun placed a hand on his arm as she took a seat under the pavilion.

The dragon banner had been her idea. There was nothing they could do to get around it either. They'd won a battle and rallied troops around it.. and worse Yuan had gone and encouraged it for evoking martial vigor. "I thought you would enjoy the prospect returning to visit Japan?" She half stated half asked.

"I would, if it wasn't work."

"You're unhappy with your father's request?" It was not a damn request. She sniffed from behind her fan, "Or the fact that the minister wishes to establish the Japanese position before they admit that they're preparing to join the conflict?"

"Lansing has read enough of the German mail to know something is going on," the germans had been having to use American cables since the Brits had cut theirs, and the Germans had even agreed to decrypt their own messages, but that hadn't stopped state from letting the army crack the german ciphers... so even if the Germans had changed machines after 1915 it wouldn't have mattered. "They've got a lot of Mexican silver dollars tied up, the germans, and I don't have a problem passing that to Akashi," There was a burst from one team on the Madsen from a berm firing at a series of mannequins, "but this about trying to find out where the Japanese sit ahead of lansing sitting down with whoever their prime minister sends." But there was movement on that front closer to here as well, and that was part of it.

... and the Brits were lurking in the background insistent that when the war was over everything was just going to magically turn back to how it had been in 1914 before the boche started the war, and the French legation seemed to be huffing the same opium.

"What do you believe?"

"Given the situation, I'd expect the Japanese plan to advance a railway loan to qirui, in Shandong probably, but cutting the Russians out of Mongolia isn't an unreasonable guess." They probably wouldn't try for anything further south, but given the war being perceived as pushing the Russians too hard might cause them to go running to England... "I expect that Japan is hedging on wanting to see what the English do," They'd elected Lloyd in after Terauchi had been in, "Wilson being reelected probably is not as big of a deal to them. They like Wilson." Mostly. "They'll most likely want confirmation of Bryan's," Gentleman's, "Agreement from last year, but other than its watching what England does."
--
Notes: Ok so when we transition to 1917 I'm going to do a separate threadmark, index / extra to deal with some historical notes that would otherwise just be unwieldy in their length.
Anyway, One more December segment to go, and that will close out 1916, but in the following notes among other things I'm going to cover both the 1916 troops strengths OTL for the provincial military and the national military in an abridged format because it will help elucidate I think the sheer massive troop expansion across China in and then after 1917. This is not unique to the Beiyang army forces... which is something I'll talk about in that transitional notes post. I have to stop myself there, but we still need to get through December 1916's scenes.

 

[Imperator Pax]

December 1916 Conclusion​

As he'd expected there was no sign of a white Christmas being likely.

The Christmas festivities had begun the 22nd​, a Friday, and looked like they were going to run into when the clamoring leading into New Years eve started that last Friday of the year, the 29th​. Why? Because it was an excuse to show off wealth, and prestige. ... case in point how everyone was getting steak tonight from the lowliest private up to full colonels. That was plural because two brigades of artillery were present at the dinner.

Sparing a look at men who fell to the Light Artillery brigade, and Powell's continued absence from their ranks, Allen stepped to the podium of the university's great hall and the microphones placed in front. Now began the dance around Yuan Shikai's failed bid to restore monarchy to the ancient country, now to dance around the old general's death in july, while still having to admit that without him to rally around, either around him in support, or for the south to rally against him as an excuse now the cuttin' was sure to start. "... in Europe the greatest bloodletting in human history is underway, but we shall ourselves be faced with our own fights. So 1917 will bring with it further changes, further advancements." Scientific principles of management, of excellence, of study, and experimentation. All the sort of things Reinsch felt in their conversation the day previous were too mechanical, "We will adopt new structures, adopt new rifles, acquire new models of artillery." He almost considered singling out Nakamichi, to break from his prepared speech, and highlight suggestions to create two more divisions... but didn't he'd written out a planned ten thousand word he'd damned well use it. Percy and his acquaintance from Merry Old England's foreign office were in attendance, and there was no benefit to tweaking the new man's nose. So he continued on, comparing in allegory the process of making an army like making steel.

... and roughly forty five minutes later he returned to his seat, somewhat wishing the high table had required seating certain guests nearer.

"Not exactly the Christmas message." Percy remarked. "A bit lacking on peace and goodwill among men, don't you think."

Bill snorted, "I was hoping you'd cut it down."

"Realistically, they need to know Szechwan is going to turn into a charnel house." He replied, and that belied the point. Szechwan was 55 million people. It was the whole population of the dual monarchy shoved into one Chinese province. One province about to be divided by the ravenous power hungry local leaders and that they would make desperate men, and that would cause the chaos of one province to domino across the others.

.. and of course it was more than that.

"Yes well," Percy started to reply.

"That and I had to say something to distinguish every unit here." Infantry, artillery, the engineers so forth. Percy reached for his port, and for a moment he thought the other Englishman looked prepared to question their lack of cavalry in representation. "and that includes our visiting guests."

Beef was halal after all... even though he was pretty sure Ma wasn't especially picky about the scriptural restrictions given he ate sausage and downed baiju but that wasn't why they'd served steaks it just was convenient for all involved.

"Ah yes, them." He looked at the Gansu 'anti banditry' delegation who were visiting. "No, really I was wondering you're planning to make a trip to Japan aren't you?"

"I am," Not that it was any of Percy's damned business.

Percy glanced to his compatriot. Who cleared his throat, "I was wondering, I'd heard from reliable men," The other man grunted, "That Prince Yamagata had invited you to stay."

"Kyoto is a lovely town, its too pretty to call a city." He replied, to which the Englishmen agreed in using the description that it was 'quaint'. "Its not business, I'm a friend of the family." It was going to sideline into business, but they didn't know that for sure. Advertising that there were other objectives was unwise.

"Iseburo is absolutely fascinated by the matters of the locomotive." Percy declared to his compatriot interjecting. "Prince Yamagata's heir that is."

"I understand the prince doesn't speak English." Percy's co worker remarked clearly disapproving.

"Of course he speaks English," Allen grunted, probably more harshly than he meant, he reached for his scotch and sipped. "He speaks English." What more likely the Brit had been misinformed was that the old man's grasp of written English was a particular embarrassment to the general.

"I read your article regarding the Japanese leadership, during the war with the Russians."

1906, or seven he couldn't remember now when it had been published. "Did you now?" He sipped, "Anything in particular?"

"That the prince believed war with Russia, that Russian irredentism would be inevitable."

"His prediction seems to have been overshadowed by the Tsar fighting his cousin," Kaiser Bill, "But yes, I did report that at the time, and that of Japan's venerable statesmen Aritomo had acquitted himself quite impressively, and," That he among that number, "had the breath of experience to prepare them for any attempts at avenging their defeat in the recent war." Yamagata had made clear that he expected the Russians to try and try again, that war was inevitable in the following decade.

"Well, I suppose it must be darkly comedic then, all of us on the same side against the Germans."

"I don't think war is funny." Bill muttered, "But its politics, and sometimes you get along with fellows cause there isn't any other choice."
--
Hina's Christmas day luncheon had 'lacked' a crowd of a crowd of ten thousand, but then again it wasn't as if the Glory could handle having an infantry brigade's worth of men along. "Did it work like you wanted it?"

She smiled catlike against the banister, "Well charlatans, and fraudulent products being revealed to be fakes could only be a positive thing."

"Yeah," He sipped the coffee, "And there was nothing cathartic at all about watching the municipal police smash all those fake bottles." He moved to stand beside her, "Is the turn out for this like you expected?"

"We would be number 1," She replied in emphasized English. "Everyone important has made at least polite appearances." This wasn't New York and it was hard to organize the hundreds' grand parties for the holidays and thus it fell usually to a knife fight between hotels. Shanghai's international had enough mansions and 'palaces' that it, and Hong Kong for that matter had persons of sufficient importance and grand enough homes to host.

"Then you have my congratulations." The truth was they were dancing around other subjects, but he was glad this had gone well for her.. and not just because this was a 'social victory' and a feather in the cap for social relations and how it impacted the international community of the city.
--
They just needed to get through this last evening, and they'd be done. Nineteen sixteen would be over, and they could see what 1917 was going to spring upon them. "are you packed?" Forrest the elder questioned.

"Yes," He shook his head, "Has there been anything else?"

His father sullenly reached for his liquor. "Lansing wants you to talk to Goto."

"..." He made no immediate reply.

"What, don't give me that look, you were gonna go drink with the doctor anyway. Go see Inanzo while you're at it. Test the waters find out where they stand, and if you can see if you can't get Japan to confirm that bit about chopping the Ottomans all to bits."

"Why, we know that they know? What could they possibly gain us?"

"Because if Japan tells us, if Japan's liberals tell us we don't have any issue with the Brits wondering how we know that they and the French are chop up the Sultanate. That will give Lansing leverage on Britain."

He could admittedly see that. "How familiar is Lansing with my itenerary."

"Not very, he's leaving it to your discretion, but the suggestion to talk to the home minister warranted direct telling. We don't want to advertise to the Brits how close we are to joining their crusade, but the Germans are up to something."

"More chatter?"

"Through the last couple weeks. The kaiserliche marine is preparing for something."

"What about down south? You said you were following agents, what happened there?"

"They put in, into Canton, a not significant amount of Mexican silver dollars in their possession." He shrugged, "The British have insisted that the Germans are trying to stir up the Irish again, and that they're trying in India, and they could be right. Maybe its an attempt to stir up trouble in Cochin, or Tonkin or somewhere with the French."

John Allen considered denying that was his problem. "I can understand with Ireland,"

"I know its a backwater piss pot but the British consider it their prize possession." He meant India, "If they face a revolt there it'll distract them. It has no heavy industry, but it is

"I wasn't going to say that, India's got millions of muslims, if the Sultan has declared for a jihad the Brits could be facing some of their best troops revolting. The French Colonies though,"
"They just put down that one down south, and its still simmering."

"The germans would need to ship arms, I can't imagine it'd be as effective as stirring up India."

"We are talking about the same Kaiser who fired Bismarck, and thought to start a naval arms race with the Royal Navy." The colonel shook his head, "I will get you a list of critical positions, but it'll be short. If it has to be done, suggest that the United States is approaching making a decision in the summer. Lansing believes we can hash most of it out informally and then get it all in writing, and have it all said and done before the Brits or the French need to be told."

... thereby with the assumption of making them fait accompli. "And Russia?"

"The state department would prefer to hold as a trump card, but we are prepared to fully recognize Japan primacy of any special zone in Manchuria up to the exclusion of the Russians... if it comes to that. Lansing doesn't want to jump straight to telling Japan we're fine kicking the Russians out of the game, but if you have to tell him that's where we're at it, its fine."

"Because of the situation with the parliament?"

"No, Lansing is fully prepared to toss the Russians before this, Bryan might not have been ready to go that far, but Manchuria is much closer to Japan than it is to Russia... and its just realpolitik anyway. The Russian army is in shambles."

It was a short list.. shorter than he expected. "1917 is gonna be a disaster?"

"Given the last two years? Yes."

Wilson might have campaigned about how he had kept the country out of the war, but that it had been as close as it had underscored how much the country had changed. The united states of 1899 had stood looking across both oceans, and prepared to look beyond them. The war with Spain had provided it the first steps, but Perry had opened Japan's gates before the war between the states so even as far back as then... the US's destiny and steps into the wider world had been foreshadowed.

Allen blew out a breath, "What about the Draft?"

"I've a copy of the current version," There was a pause, "it will be necessary, you can guess that. The Europeans are throwing themselves into a meat grinder."

Millions on Millions.

--
Notes: This ends 1916 effectively serving as an epilogue to the year admittedly with some material only covered in an abridged format and 1917 will open with basically its own prologue in late January where the shit has hit the fan with the Zimmerman telegraph, admittedly among other things, and the US now having a most excellent cassus belli into the war... and it will still take three months to get the declaration of war after the sinking of several US merchant vessels.

So sometime in this next week most likely I need to put up an index note of various topics, of things that just bear dealing with, but again in 1916 China's army was half a million men, (and part of that was that Yuan Shikai was frequently demobilizing unreliable units and disarming them when he could, both for security, and also financial reasons. This had been his policy as early as 1890s during the Qing era reforms) and in 1917 alone the provinces would add 200k men to that number in an explosion of impressment and conscription as fighting broke out. (See in this conclusion, Szechwan's population).

 

[Imperator Pax]

Prologue
1917
​

'What we see is the composite of the heartland and of a Bismarck without a Kaiser.'
- attributed Commissioner of British Mission to South Russia 1921

--

The trip to Japan, or at least its Kyoto leg, had come to an end, of sorts, with being abruptly grabbed to deal with a new crisis, or rather an opportunity to be seized. The Germans had presented the states as the near to perfect cassus belli as could be said to exist, the excuse to enter the war in Europe. To that end as he sat in the chair looking north at the moats of the Imperial palace, he was surprised that Lansing's intervention hadn't entailed twisting the war department to toss him a letter to report back... but the directive amounted to the same goal.

The terms were the same, preparing for the actual conflict to come. Lansing now had a sufficiently powerful excuse to override any umbrage over the entente duo's means to divide up the ottomans as spoils. He had the telegrams and better still didn't need to admit to reading the german's mail, the British had brought their own copies to him which would make for an even better argument to congress, and to brow beat Wilson into agreement if it came to that.

Teruachi had been told, by the old man, to look forward to the end of the war even before the German telegrams had hit the papers. "I must admit this short visit has turned into quite a stay."

"If only it hadn't turned into work." He replied, "truthfully I'd have preferred to stay in Kyoto longer." He deflected, but the telegrams were no longer the only thing on the table.

Akashi sat down at the window seat overlooking the imperial grounds. "The situation is truly worrisome in our neighboring country." He remarked. "It will only get worse."

"Yeah, I'm regretting not sending Cole to Switzerland." Process of incorporation of a 'Swiss office' to plan for after the war with funds pulled from reserves of money the British had paid for war time supply contracts, in both British Pounds, and American dollars had been deposited and the hiring started... but it pulled experts from other needs. The Cadre numbered only just half, "Sounds like the Germans are stirring up the revolutionaries in exile."

"I remember doing such when I was a younger man," The general replied, "If they can give them money and put them into place, they will cause a great deal of trouble." The simple laid back delivery of the words downplayed how prophetic their prediction would be. The success far outstripping Akashi's own funding of revolutionaries during, and after the Russo-Japanese war, and his stirring the soup as he had called it once. He had called the different groups after ingredients after all, cabbage, carrots, potato... etc.

"Its worrying the old man to be sure." Yamagata was downright morose about the developing, or as he preferred 'deteriorating' situation. "I admit I had expected him to celebrate the Russian's misfortune."

"He believes it will make the House of Representatives too complacent, that they'll let their guard down. That they will let the same anarchists, and marxists stir up trouble in our country." In a little more than a year, in 1918, Yamagata would turn eighty... but there was a clear difference in his health and that of Bill's daddy. Aritomo's health was declining... and he'd attended the coronation of the now deposed Tsar... he had to be feeling his age.

... and of course, with Akashi's comment in mind, Aritomo had always distrusted the parties that had emerged in the lower house, and not just because Hirobumi had willfully pursued political apparatus, "Lansing is not thrilled with a revolutionary government coming to power," Even if the noise from others were delusions of optimism about a new democratic Russia, "and ths not counting radical socialists being included, have you spoken with the English?"

"Not personally."

"But you've heard something?"

"Somewhat, I don't know. The foreign office is quite confused right now."

He bit down a comment about how being king of the hill had to suck. The British were so used to planning to always be on top, always fighting complacency, especially in business... and to have just seemed to have lucked into finally getting the states in the war the Russians shit the bed... he shook his head, "Well, its the game."

A shared smirk, "That it is. Admittedly I'd have preferred to engage with the dam project."

"Yamagata thinks the government should be looking at what's going to happen when the war ends," Economically especially. Inflation. "These noveau riche,"

The older man nodded, "the Narrikin, he's worried they'll spread bad behavior because they have become lucky, not because they were good." There in lay the basis that people should have faith in the ability of their higher authority rather than be in fear of their ability according to Yamagata. "If these people who came into their wealth just on luck can squander it while the commoner goes hungry it will cause unrest." They were talking about the explosion in demand for Japan's exports that had created the so called new Zaibatsu.

"Even if their excesses can be pointed to as frivolous or contemptible, the best refutation of Marx remains that his core thesis is unfounded. The poor are not in fact getting poorer. The peasant labor's lot had increased as society advanced, the advent of electricity or even before it gas lighting provides a better life than simply being dependent on the natural world. Free Trade means that goods can be purchased at their cheapest allowing even the lowest rungs of society the benefits of modern life. Are they then poorer than their grandfathers, or are they bettered by it?"

"They are made better of course. A man who has never not known electricity cannot possibly claim to understand what it is to know hardship. We should undertake everything possible to step into modernity. Electrification is itself absolutely necessary in this, as is the eradication of diseases from that have plagued us since feudal times."

Time was not however on there side. For all that Akashi looked to build a better word, to invest, and to convince others to invest in what later generations would call green energy, and harnessing the natural world... the colonel simply didn't have the time left... some of his work would be done, more still left undone.

--
Whilst he had still been in Kyoto at the time the Virginian had been still trying to leverage France and England to make peace... that must have been grating for Lansing... and probably the old lion and Lloyd George as well. It was entirely possible the Foreign Office had released the telegram at the time because Wilson had started talking about whether or not a neutral nation should be 'prolonging the conflict' by loaning the belligerent powers money... but that could have been Wilson trying to play hardball.
"We're not entering the war?"

"We are." Allen glanced at the man to clarify, "the British want us to join the entente. The president is not prepared to enter into an alliance but rather will ask congress for a declaration as cobelligerents."

"I hate fucking lawyers." He muttered in response, "fine what does that mean?" ... and that was the more complicated issue. Wilson, was as much the naïve sort, prone to flights of fancy the same as Reinsch was. The notion that the revolution in Russia should be some reason for the US to enter the war, and that it was in the US interests to save the Russians from Germany. Wilson was Wilson though, he honestly seemed to believe the tripe he spewed and there was little doubt that this might well have had nothing to do with the loans Russia had taken out... even though that probably did enter the calculus of others.

... and in the political arithmetic of what was coming it didn't matter why Wilson wanted the declaration just so long as he asked the Congress for it. "That's not the worst of it." If the profanity entailed had bothered the others it wasn't detailed. Forrest senior hadn't even looked up before passing over the documents, "Lansing has been talking to Francis, and he, and worse, the British, are talking about the railway."

... that made sense as to why he was here then. The papers were dated from petrograd from the start of the month and had been dispatched to Lansing from whose office had made them subsequently available to them. Francis wanted to cut the British out, and go directly to loaning the Russians money rather than through British intercession... and ... and it wasn't just the sum, "What are the British saying about the railway?"

"Just don't fall over." The old man replied.

He didn't like that comment, "What are they proposing?"

"They want to modernize the railway."

"Which railways?"

"No, the railway. The Trans Siberian one."

Allen stared at him. In June of 1916 while China had been embroiled in the mess that had sputtered out when Yuan Shikai had unfortunately passed away there had been a conference. A US loan for railway material had been provided, over three hundred thousand tons of material paid for through the loan.

It was almost six thousand miles long though. "How do they propose that?'

"They want us to do it, the president has short listed to Stevens, but he's not going to be the only commission. The British and French are putting together their own and want to send them across Russia for the war effort." This was almost going to turn into a fight over the Chinese Eastern Railway, and the South Manchurian.

There would be a time after, after the war, but before the economics had set in if the railway idea hadn't been an attempt at a bribe... or if it had been thrown to them as bait. As spring of 1917 began though there were too many other matters... either way the need to turn the line west further still. There was now more reason to extend their line into Xinjiang, and would eventually have reason to extend into Kirghiz ironically enough with tacit British approval.
--
Notes: This is in slightly different tone as its the year opening. 1917 Chapter 1 will return to China and mark the beginning of the turn there, and the lead up to the Manchu restoration and events further.

I would have posted my notes 1916 but that ran afoul of the computer gremlins, and I'm going to have rewrite a lot of that material from scratch and just gradually update it over time, but this officially opens 1917 in this timeline

 

[Imperator Pax]

April 1917​

He had planned to be gone six weeks not ... basically double that, but it didn't matter, there had been things to take care of, that could have been taken care, but he'd made sure to be in Tietsin by the first and in Peking by the time Wilson asked congress for the declaration of war against Germany. 'To make the world safe for democracy'.

Congress hadn't yet returned the request, but it was inevitable... and there were other problems to contend with. "We don't have the manpower for it."

His thoughts were a decade in the past, "No, we don't, and we will need two years, or more." His thoughts to 1907 occupied the matter. Of a statutory force the US Army had sixty four thousand of its authorized eighty eight thousand strength of that number it had thirty regiment of foot. It wasn't a question of population. Xian very easily could have supplied eighty thousand men it was a city of millions that wasn't even one percent of its population.

.. and with violence across the border to the south in Szechwan now increasingly spilling over into the south of the province something had to be done. "So what, an anti bandit campaign of our own?"

"That's about the only choice we have."

"God damn it, you said it yourself," Bill grunted.

That outburst was accompanied by a thud.

Morning was something that came too quickly in all honesty, too much to do. That was probably doubly true for McCulloch given he'd been gone for longer. The Texan had plenty of work of his own to do, but Allen was ultimately the person in charge. It was funny how all the Beiyang big shots... ok not all, the Pig Tail general didn't... but the majority of them went to a lot of effort to wear fancy European style uniforms.

He had thought about it more than once... the stone wash grey of the uniforms... maybe go to green or something. He'd thought about it before, and nothing came of it. It was the predominant color of uniforms. Justifying big expense for uniforms on color alone was hard. There uniforms were already more American than anyone elses, they even used American style belts, and boots. It was footwear he was more likely to approve of an expenditure for.

"I'm aware we don't have the manpower." They had at some point stopped talking about Black Jack's jaunt, and gone to their own problems. It didn't change the fact they'd started with how Pershing was chasing the Villistas around northern Mexico... and the Federal government had only given him ten thousand men. That was too few for the area they were asking him to cover.

... and many of the 'warlords' as they'd been coined in the papers to the south were nothing more than bandits... and while they'd been compared to ol pancho they had significantly more bandits total than Pancho Villa did. "I said Pershing hadn't been given adequate troops for what he's been asked to do. What he's doing is jumping the border and chasing Pancho through the latter's backyard... all I want for now," He hedged, cognizant that there was probably an array of officers on the other side of the office door, "Is to secure our side of the fence." The world had really started to flip upside down back in February...

Bill took a long pull from his jostled bourbon. "You won't go over the border, you can promise, I ain't one of the others, I've seen you when your blood is up Al."

"I know when not to pursue." He replied.
--
He grunted, and tossed his head back into the pillow. Allen blinked looking from his side to the curtains where the sun was starting to peak through, then back up. He let his hand trail down a bare thigh. She ran a finger down the discoloration of scar tissue near his collar bone.

"The Catholics call it making a prince of the church."

He looked up at her, sweat matting her dark hair lady godiva style. He grunted as he sat up. Hina's ideas of what constituted pillow talk were quirky to say the least.

He withheld asking if she actually wanted a child. His eyes falling to the scars marring an otherwise beautiful figure. They both ended up shuffling around, and then getting out of the four poster bed to their respective wash basins.

It was hard to tell the actual time, but it was starting to brighten on the horizon. Still it was time to start the day, and there was always coffee. He dropped the rag into the basin, and reached for his undershirt, beginning the process of getting dressed for the day. The wardrobe he kept in the Hotel suite for nights where he just didn't make it across town to home needed updating, and he pulled a pair of slacks from the rack inside the imported cedar.

Hina clucked slightly having already begun buttoning the bodice and made her way over. "This one." She remarked, gesturing to one of the tattersall check shirts."

He held up the green and wine check, but it matched the dark gray slacks.

Shirt and tie followed and she finished up as he looped his shoulder rig under his other arm. The jacket was tailored to accommodate the browning automatic, and most people were unlikely to notice the one at his hip unless they were looking there... people didn't tend to notice. "Breakfast?" He asked.

She was sorting through her collection of hats, and glanced out of the closet, "We'll see." That meant no, "Maybe a cafe," She settled and rang the bell for one of her maids. He ended up having to wait for the papers to be delivered... which was fine the kitchen had sent him up a couple of poached eggs, and that would probably tied him over till lunch.

The wait for the papers ended up being a bust. There was nothing in the Times or the Post though about the states going to war yet. Congress hadn't finished horse trading he supposed... he wondered what slices of the pie were still being fought over.

There was a grumbling from what sounded like Major Chang. The door opened, the old Japanese 'businessman' was... younger than Yamagata ... in his late fifties now "Sir, Minister-"

"Hayashi." He remarked glancing to the older man who had a decade, more now, had been there in Korea. The last couple years had bleached the man's hair from black to white. The mustache he'd grown presumably while in Italy was heavily waxed as had become his style.

He got a side eye from the older man looking him up and down, and Hayashi lightly toyed with his cane, "Should it be General Forrest now?"

"You can call me just Forrest, I don't mind." He sat back down in the chair. Then making a decision jerked his head towards a chair, that the man could sit. Hayashi didn't immediately move. Deciding to continue the emphatic casual tone since Hayashi was using English he continued with an informal brush reaching for his second cup of coffee. "You here to complain about my steel exports, my railways, or just complain about the way things used to be?"

"I would come to complain about the British, and their attempts to play your country against mine."

Allen suppressed a groan at the gall of the man, even as he waved again at him to take his pick of available seating, "I don't doubt, but they also want America's help," and money, "to put paid to the Kaiser, how is Qingdao?"

"Much more orderly now," Hayashi replied smoothly, because that was where he spent much of his time.... which was fine. "but yes, they do wish everyone would unite against the Germans, under their leadership of course."

He shrugged, "Of course, its the Brits. Everyone wants to be in charge." He leaned forward, "I don't speak for Washington. If you want the Germans out of China, that's fine with me. The huns out, sure, I'd be willing to bet the Brits, and Washington are fine with that. So what's the particular problem?"

"We fielded the most troops in the alliance of eight nations."

"Your heartland is the closest Hayashi, I'd hope you be able to put together two divisions on short division." It had been only one division, the 5th and they had gotten a bloody nose in the fighting, but he wasn't going to mention that. "But its not just the Brits you're going to have to horse trade with, their Entente has a bunch of other assholes in it too. Which is none of my business, so what do you want?"

"You've been told about the railway strike in Tangshan."

"Yeah," It had been in the paper, and it wasn't like it was the first one either. The prime minister wasn't likely happy about it. "Offloading coal is hard labor," and it wasn't probably just the coolies either, Fengtian maybe, or just someone small time, or even just bandits.

"The Hui," who were Muslims like the Moros, which Hayashi felt some apparent need to emphasize for his own reasons "and the Manchu are restive." He warned, "As if that were not enough there are other railway disturbances in the South Manchuria railway we have concerns of Marxist agitation that could undermine security."

After the minister left he glanced at the Major, "I'm going to bet the Japanese have their own gangsters stirring the pot on the docks. They're definitely providing weapons to everyone involved." There were too many Arisakas floating around as it was. Tangshang was on the other side of Peking. The eastern half of Zhili was, well his 'sphere of influence' if you wanted to use Minister Hayashi's fancy term ended in Jehol... which was probably next when it came to riling up the Manchus.

Chang nodded seriously at this.

Allen wondered how much longer the war in Europe would go on for. The US entry to be... the talks about the French on economic controls last year, that was going to effect the exports that went to the British... and then there was the whole Russian fiasco.

"The marxists though?"

Hayashi had blamed them by name, which was unusual for him. "I'll make some inquiries," It'd be annoying to have Hayashi be proven to have been telling the truth, but he doubted it. ... unless someone in the legation assumed it was the marxists had gone running to Hayashi, and Hayashi had to take those claims or concerns serious... "I'll see who besides the minister is at the legation," Since of course, Tietsin had played host to Hayashi barely any since Japan had seized the German lease and he'd shoved most of his responsibilities off on the likes of Hioki, or in his absence Obata.

He tapped his fingers on his desk.

"Sir?"

He glanced at Chang. "Major, did you notice Hayashi didn't correct me when I said two divisions?"

"Sir?"

"The Japanese only deployed the fifth." He shrugged. Yamagata would have admitted that they had only deployed one division even in response to the reply that it was most troops in the alliance... "It might be nothing. "I'll call on the legation," and the American one, and the British one... because Hayashi also had not mentioned the Russians... and it would be interesting to know if anyone had told the Japanese what the Franco-British entente had in mind for the entente cordiale third member.

Hayashi was up to something, but that was like saying water was wet.

Chang was still standing there, "Yes major?"

"He mentioned the northerners?"

"Yes he did." He agreed. "I expect he'll try and stir trouble up with them." Allen wasn't ignorant that even with just the 1914 raising they'd had plenty of Manchu and Hui... which Hayashi might have noticed if he spent more time in Tietsin or Peking... but Hayashi hadn't.... or he had and he was playing stupid about the number of Hui in gray jackets. "He mentioned the Moros." He muttered, "Do you know much of how the Philippine fighting was done?" It was a rhetorical question, "Hayashi isn't a soldier he gets much of what he knows from the papers, and from assholes who get paid to stir up trouble. Some New Yorker gets it in his head we ran around with pig fat, and pig blood and buried people with pigs."

Chang wasn't Hui, wasn't a mohammedan, and shook his head. "I don't understand."

"Some muslims believe that pigs are so unclean they'll keep you from going to heaven when you die. Some don't. Its a personal sort of thing." He shrugged from behind his desk. "Everyone has their own quibbles," And it was the sort of thing he tried to avoid dealing with. "But this New York fellow who probably never even set foot in Manilla never mind in Sulu land or wherever made it out like we were intentionally going out of our way to-," He paused... "Like we were reenacting our own version of the British cleaning house in the Bengal in 1858. Its poppycock, most of the fighting were muslims fighting each other, and certainly while I was under Black Jack the only pigs around were the ones our people ate. There was no pig blotter, or use of any of that, it was all cooked up by some journalist getting his rocks off."

"You think he'll do this?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if he thinks splashing hui merchants with pig lard may or may not spark a riot, and if it doesn't for religious reasons it sure will for pride." They really didn't need the prospect of one more problem. "I'll go to the legation," He said turning back to the other issue, "See what I can't find out, and then we will see about making sure Szechwan's charnel house stays on its side of the border." The problems in Szechwan were getting worse, but there Hunan too. It wasn't even just the south, Shensi wasn't entirely placid either. "See if you can find what Chen's first mixed brigade is doing in the interim."
--
EDIT: As a note it appears that in Pershing's biography that there may have been burials in camp waste pits of enemy dead at least during his second term (this would have been after the Russo Japanese war), notably this is well after the first reports of using pig plotter which show up allegedly first in 1899 but certainly by the spring of 1901. [And indeed the idea that this is yellow journalism may be a case of journalists taking stories from the sepoy mutiny in Bengal decades earlier verbatim and then adopting those stories for 1899 and the subsequent phillipine insurection]

 

[Imperator Pax]

April 1917
He needed it seemed to sit down with Hioki at the legation, but that meant ... dealing with other issues. and it mean finding the time that they could agree on. ... and speaking of time, "How quickly can you finish the order?"

Griswold scowled, "We'll finish when we finish Allen." He replied tersely. "I've always found it fucking queer the Brits never let the Australians have their own arsenal, and I'd guess they regret letting the Canadians have one, but that doesn't change the situation."

"And?" He asked, hoping Griswold would get on with it.

"The States have two short of fourteen hundred machine guns in inventory. That is One thousand Three Hundred, and Ninety Eight." Almost half of which were Hotchkiss 1909. The Benet Mercie. "and that includes a number of 303 Lewis's that they somehow got past Crozier."

and into Black Jack's hands. "Yeah, I can't imagine he's happy about that." He said referring to the ordinance chief, "Can you take the Australians and show them the dwarves." He said referring to the rimmed 303 cartridge.

"Sure." Griswold replied. It was a sullen response. "I can do that."

He waved the paper. It pronounced the US declaration of war on the German Empire. He didn't mention that Kimble had voted against it, something he was scarcely able to believe. Sam had done his stint in Peurto Rico when that peckerwood had been there... a life time ago. "We're out of time. The US is in the European's war. The single largest industrial power the world has ever seen has officially decided to wade into the old world's blood feud."

Griswold waved him off, "Alright, alright don't be theatrical. Its just us." He took the paper, and whistled, "Fifty votes against." He meant the house of representatives, the upper house of the congress had voted 82 to 6. "Guess the money wasn't good enough." He muttered darkly. "What are we due for?"

Allen didn't immediately respond. "The French were angling for price controls on international goods even before the states entered the war. Wilson is putting together a commission. We will find out what it means by the summer, getting everything in writing and locked down is the priority. I think we can expect Wilson to start acting European towards Industry, and if they think the states are coming in and that Washington can pressure firms to sell at a reduced prince they'll be less contracts at the market rate." That presented a problem for production for export to the British Empire , and also for paying a growing expatriate community looking to sit the war out now that it was here. "Since Stevens is coming we're going to move assets towards rail, and such."

"I thought you said Hayashi was stirring up that mess in Harbin. Isn't that going to make trouble for Stevens coming in?"

"It looks like it at least, but I don't know for sure if..." He paused, still not sure that Hayashi even knew, it didn't seem like he'd been officially informed, "I've been told that the Brits and the frogs haven't even told Japan about the Tran Siberian tender." Not that it mattered at this point, because Japan did most certainly know now even if it wasn't official. Still it was no wonder that the founding fathers, and now most recently Wilson kept banging on about secret diplomacy being bad... it was hard to keep straight who was supposed to know of what plot.

"That's going to have to be talked about." Griswold observed wryly referring to the entire cadre, or at least as much of it as could be put together. Before the European war he had never found it especially difficult to sit a hundred men in a room to talk out and debate the issue... but things had changed. "That's another thing I don't understand, Britain backs up the Russians and the French on Siems Carrey last year," And really the year before, "Now they turn around and do this."

Allen shrugged. "As you said Sam, we're going to have to talk about it. Its not the only thing either," He remarked, "The British mission officially reported there to be an estimated half million men under arms last year in China." and part of that of course was that Yuan Shikai's entire tenure had been a constant program of trying to downsize the military, disperse and disband ossified Qing hereditary soldieries and save money, but then having to turn around hire and fire new soldiers to pad his numbers whenever the south threw a fit. "Duan, and Li are fighting, Duan is insistent, I'd even go ahead and use the word strident there, that they," China, "declare war on Germany."

Griswold shook his head, "They want a seat at the table, Yuan thought the same thing." That was probably the Beiyang position... at least to some degree or another. "So the problem is what?" ... when one got right own to it... it was because the current parliament had been given their seats in 1913 and no one wanted to hold new elections and they were all a collection of little cliques looking to get bought off, and no one hadnt handed over any bags of silver dollars yet. "Oh, before I forget, Powell should be getting in from Hawaii, monday probably. Well to Tietsin he can take the train up here then." There was a pause as they settled into a standoffish air, "There is a rail job in the banana republic. I think he thinks, that the Swiss office opening up means we're looking for other investment options."

"Edenborn."

"Yeah I figured that too. One thing to talk about. If you can live in south texas you can live in Honduras I suppose." The number of people who didn't want to be drafted was bound to increase now that the US in the war , but China was an ocean away. They'd had a few thousand come in since the previous October, and more total since the preparedness movement had really started back in 1915 but the organization stateside was probably going to see a surge as people clamored for safe overseas jobs to avoid fighting in Europe's trenches for a war they didn't see the states having any business being in.
--
It was a nice day, but his thoughts were elsewhere as he and Bill McCulloch prepared to watch the spring evaluation of one of the experimental mechanized machine gun platoons. It wasn't really a copy of the system the British were using, but they wanted to make sure their idea worked nearer to home before they sent it to the regiments.

It was a platoon though, and he was thinking of other details the British had commented on.

Half a million men.

He'd missed having Powell around, but there were as too much to do to just drink and catch up with Phillip and his misadventures stateside. They'd talked about his proposed 'mexican adventure' as Bill had dubbed it, only in the broadest of senses... Phillip had been unaware that the Trans Siberian was a thing... or that that there were emergency 'other' priorities.

Cuba and Panama had made the Post, declaring war on Germany citing their respective alliances to the United States... which of course had meant Duan had used Monday to bang on further about joining the growing wave sure to envelop Germany, but President Li wasn't having it. It was unavoidable that that was going to come to a head at some point.

Xian was a city of millions, and though not the only reason the fact that the Dujun Chen Shufan would rather stay in Peking meant they had near uncontested local civil administration... because Chen had shit canned Li Genyuan at the end of February while Allen had been abroad. That just meant that Chen was only doing his ministerial job and leaving both governorships to lapse. He wasn't managing the province, and he certainly wasn't managing the city. More importantly than that he wasn't keeping an eye on the south, towards Szechwan and Hunan.

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

"What do you mean?"

"Extending compulsory education to sixteen, and requiring it to enlist is going to be a tall order."

That wasn't exactly accurate, but they were for all intensive purposes in charge of the city, ... and a couple towns for that matter, and had been just because the way the railways worked. "I'm sure." They weren't instituting conscription. Besides the real point wasn't to require education for military service it was to make sure they had blue and white collar workers for their own factories... the English language and mathematics had military application, but that was a bonus. "I don't know if I'd have tagged it compulsory education."

"You wanna slap some other label on it, but workers send their kids to school because its required."

He was pretty sure it was also because they were fed at school, and also that it didn't cost them anything out of pocket, but he waved the comment to the side, "We have other problems to deal with, and I want to look at phasing this in."

There was a detachment from Gansu's mixed brigade in town, there was trouble down south... and there was trouble to the north. That meant Shensi had about five directions worth of possible trouble the compass be damned.

"Even so Al," Bill leaned back, "That could back fire. "

"Speaking of backfire," He replied, "Powell in another example of initiative has been talking to Ford's people."

"Yeah, how'd that go?"

"Its all contingent on the war ending." He replied, "They want us to buy cars,"

"No, well obviously, but how much."

"Two point one million a year for a decade in goods and services, they'll send their own engineers show us how to set up a line, show us all of it."

A Nash rolled forward of the line, heavy steel plates covering the makeshift armored car as the clock struck the hour. "Ten years." Bill had shifted his weight which was enough to make the bannister creak under the pressure.

"Its a nice even number." Even if it was a lot of money, even across that time, "I've been thinking that we need to get back on a planning schedule, ever since the war started we've been running from one fire to the next. Powell looking south of Mexico, and with Switzerland, and of course the fact we're going to have bandit raids across the border starting if not this month then surely next then we have to get back on a schedule."

"I don't think banking on ten years is the best idea... we didn't try that under the Qing, and they collapsed half way through."

He nodded, and from the observation post watched as men got in the back of the truck and it lumbered from one soggy hill to the next, and thankfully didn't get stuck. "Are they going to be ready?"

"They'll be fine, we won't cause too much trouble," Bill replied, the garrison in the south was nearly done, "I figure really we can let Ma the younger go over the border near the Bashan, let him see if he can flush those dens you thought might be on the other side."

"No expeditionary actions Bill, stay on our side of the fence." The Texan waved him off as the second of the three squads in the platoon began its maneuver with its truck.

"You think that's going to be a problem. Got to have two guys in the truck." He clarified, "You've got the two machine gunners in the squad, and their support."

"I think that having a driver and a mechanic in each squad is fine. The truck running and moving is more important than two guys with rifles." Bill didn't seem sure of that. "Its experimental, we won't really know until we know."

"That's true." The larger man drawled, "Feel better when we can give 'em more than pistols to drive with." They'd been over that too. The 98 pattern were full rifles, they were too large to effectively have a vehicle driver or mechanic to use. Model 8 and 1905s would have worked but they didn't have enough of those so it came down to pistols.

"The Broomhandles take stocks."

"European come up with queer things to put on pistols," The Texan muttered. "And I don't need reminding Colt thought it was a good idea. They also thought putting bayonets on wheel guns was a good idea." He watched the third squad deploy from the backs of the truck the sergeant barking orders, "Trading that third gun for trucks, makes them faster."

"Makes the ammo last longer too."

--
Notes: This has holdovers from a separate prompt, though it does tie in to a much later part of the timeline, where the source CYOA for this 'Chinese Warlord' I remarked that I'm surprised or disappointed that the Author hasn't done a comparable Mexican Revolution / Banana Wars one set in the same time period.

Spoiler: Spoiler

Spoiler, but this is foreshadowing the 'Federal Republic of Central America', the union of Honduras and Nicraruaga, and other trans American trade into south America in the twenties and thirties, and then after WW2 in the late forties and early fifties, but for the most part its just a separate part of the timeline. But mostly this is cold war era stuff that wont show up all that frequently.

But mostly this is set up for where the central government and the accelerated social disintegration picks up in May.

Spoiler: Spoiler 2

Pre Xian Experimental Machine Gun Platoon (Mechanized)
Vehicles: 1 Armored Car with Machine gun, 1 Supply Truck, 3 Fulton Nash Quads
Headquarters Squad
Comprising: Platoon Commander, 1 Machine Gunner (Vehicle Gunner), 2 Driver, 2 Mechanics, 2 aid men, 5 rifle men / runners

3x Motorized Rifle Squads

1 Sergeant [Commanding]​

1 Corporal​

1 Driver​

1 Mechanic​

2 Machine Gunners​

2 Machine Gun Assistant Gunners​

5 Riflemen​

So this is an organic step in unit evolution from the white wolf era units. A 13 man squad is the standard and that's being applied here, also is the fact that there is still the expectation that not only do officers still fight but that the headquarter section is a part of the unit as a fighting entity in these sort of formations. (This will change in later organizations of larger units, [that is to say even battalion commanders (as occurs in White Wolf) could still be expected to see combat in the offensive] but this is the beginning of greater specialization).

The HQ is two vehicles (as opposed to each other squad being one truck) an armored car with a mounted machine gun, as well as a supply truck (each with their own driver and mechanic dedicated). The aidmen, what will later become combat medics, are not organic but are attached from on high and are make shift ambulance personnel. The platoon commander has a rifle section under his command but these also double as runners or also realistically reinforcement / replacements to losses in the field to the platoon.

As it is the Machine gun squad in its mechanized formation drops a machine gun in exchange for having a dedicated truck driver and a mechanic who are full time specialists (i.e. Not carrying rifles, they're no longer leg infantry.). The Squads ride in the back of a truck on the move limited protection, that is some protection from small arms from the side, there are two machine gun teams and then a riflemen section who also double as ammunition bearers. In modern terminology the sergeant would be squad leader, and the corporal would be ASL and would each command a fire or maneuver section comprising half the squad, and if the sergeant goes down the corporal can take his place.

Anyway actual fighitng, and indeed seizing territory and administering it basically as a quasi independent state of a business with tax collectors and an army added on coming to the fore in the summer months.

 

[Imperator Pax]

April 1917
[Conclusion]​

The first railway they had built had been the wide track line running through north Zhili down to Peking... built for the Qing, and a line that they had then basically abandoned in favor of turning to look south away from the squabbling of the Russians and the Japanese. A line to the new office in Shijiazhuang had been run taking them from the old Tietsin office and and had carved them a place in Western Zhili province. That line had then been run Zhengzhou, and then run out west to Xian... and now that Xian line ran its way west through Lanzhou, and was expanding from Urumqi now that the construction season was in full swing. The plan was to go through all the old caravan cities.... especially now.

A decade of work governed for most of the planning by a scientific regimen of pre planning, and of course regimented construction and organization. The railway was in a nation of dilapidated canals, and dusty provincial roads the lifeblood of modern economic travel.

Scientific, professional... Militarist. The last was the word Reinsch used when he wanted to be uncharitable. The professor, the mid west doctor, and the US chief diplomat to the Republic of China found the particular lack of democratic institutions and the emphasis on 'cold logic' and efficiency to be 'heartless'. That flew in the exact opposite of the British legation's aristocrats complaining about the eight hour work days, among other factors in the corporate environment. The French just complained about prices, the cheapskates.

Wilson's free trade had been the sort of thing that he'd thought would prove excellent for business, an unexpected boon. In 1913 they hadn't known what to expect. If they hadn't known what to expect in 1913 the international impacts on market and goods had been completely unprecedented by the European war.

Augustus would be three in a few months.

In the few months since Tsai O's death Szechwan had begun to fragment, which warranted going so far as to start positioning units that on paper were facets of modern war. The motorized experimental Machine Gun Platoon had already left. The dozen vehicles, which included a few spares Bill was taking along with his headquarters, had been loaded onto flat bed cars with elements of 2/2 in expectation of what had been called the 'summer festivals'... because that had proven increasingly the norm. The summer months approach brought pocket wars, bandit raids, and quarrels within and between the provinces.

Nothing like Bai's uprising... the now heavily mythologized White Wolf Rebellion. No single bandit chief or prince had been able to put together a horde like Bai's, had expressed the breath of ambition like the dead man, and certainly hadn't made an attempt to actually act on it.

Jun reclined on the couch the picture of a tigeress. "The peasants in their villages, may as well be their own distant worlds from one another," She commented, discarding the paper that slid softly onto the low table in front of her. It wasn't the first time she'd made a comment, and as the neighboring province promised to soon turn into a world of bandits divorced from all civilized behavior there were problems with that insularity that dwarfed on preconceptions. The tenant farmers and the coolies in Zhili at least had in 1909 had some understanding of the situations in practical terms.

The Old Buddha had fled to Xian as the relief of Peking had neared. When Bai Lang had pillaged his way through the province some of the villages hadn't even known that the old woman had died... and what was a republic anyway. The Xian of their grandfather's was already transforming to a more modern city, and now several years since that boat tail had evacuated Bai's brain from his head the factories labored.

"Does that make us or szechwan the martians?"

"You think of the martians fighting machines?" She asked and idly folded the fan resting it against her thigh, "Perhaps then instead the bandits are Grendel."

"Lovely I had a great dane as a boy." He lifted the tea cup infront of him, and sipped.

She looked at him, and the shelved the question she'd been about to ask, in favor of steering the conversation back the direction she wanted it to go, "You control the ancient capital, hold the prized city of the noble Tang dynasty, and the basin's farmland. It behooves you to drive away southern barbarians with force."

"I thought you had been all for letting the Gansu braves do their thing?"

"The Ma boy has a slow horse."

The Gansu brigade did actually have cavalry. Actually using large numbers of horses ... to a degree Allen had been shocked at times that they didn't still field bows like some of the tibetans were said to do. Not that a bow wasn't dangerous, some of Bai Lang's bandits had been ambushed by tibetan tribesmen who had caught them unaware because the bows hadn't produced the report of a gunshot, and really who in 1914 would have expected a horse mounted archer.

"What I am saying is his responses are desultory. He can only move to pursue and retaliate after a blow has been struck and his replies only occasionally hit his intended foe."

Ma was in short too slow to get over the border and hit before the bandits realized retaliation was coming. "Bill is already deploying to Hanzhong, and the trucks are experimental," They weren't even sure how well they'd do in the terrain of the Ba foothills.

The Bashan were not exactly a place renowned for their good roads... and really it was likely an area where Ma's horses would have an easier time navigating. As much as he believed in the future potential of mechanization, the Fultons had been selected over their Model T's because of their greater beds. The better able to transport ten men and as it had been initially considered two Maxim guns, but those heavier maxim guns had been replaced by Lewis's... so maybe they could have gotten away with a shorter bed... maybe... but that didn't really solve the issue.

The roads, or lack there of, in rural China outside the main thoroughfares, and passes, and medieval fortresses that had guarded the way for centuries in some cases long before the Ming Dynasty, were not the only way to get from one county to the next.
--
The clang of the factory floor even from outside was still audible a reverberating clang as the large stamping thirty ton presses came down to beat metal into shape. He wasn't here though for the factory tour, to make sure management was collecting the surveys expected or to see if they couldn't make things run more efficiently.

Even with the noise he could here Griswold and Phillips talking with the British ordinance lot about the mortars. Despite the three inch tubes being for the Australians, there was only one of them present, and he might as well have been English by looks and bearing. There were two englishmen alongside Percy and thankfully missing was Percy's most recent associate partner from the legation.

Lloyd George had had to force the adoption of the mortar. The welshman and his office having to fight uphill through people who had argued themselves blue that they wouldn't need the new weapon because the war would be over... and that delay had pushed the full service of the weapon in Europe and there were still persons who obstinately resisted boy George's best efforts to put the three inch stokes mortar into wider scale. Allen half suspected that was why the munitions ministry had turned to overseas production, and why George might well want imperial troops that weren't from the British Army to have them.

Having caught sight of him, Percival stepped away from the conversation, and made a beeline as he came across the paved interior of the factory yard. "Percy."

"John Allen." The brit returned. He paused to watch a tractor steam by towing a fifteen centimeter howitzer, "I swear I saw the same trails being used on your field guns as the smaller howitzers."

"Yes," He replied, and pointed back to the factory he'd passed where the clanging still rumbled. "The Krupps will all take the same trails now, it gives the smaller guns better elevation." The emphasis was on mobility the new carriages were designed to hook to tow behind trucks, and had wide steel wheels not dissimilar to those on the 'Five-nines' like that which had just rolled by. "What's that argument about, over there."

"Ah well, just a disagreement about how useful manuever warfare is, with things bogged down over there." Percy deferred, "Theres no trouble, the mortars are all fine, but some people don't see the point of them."

Ordinance was what Ordinance was. It didn't matter he supposed if they were American, English or French the old men were conservatives protecting what they knew to work, and guarding the purse like old women. "But he doesn't have any problem proofing them?"

"No, certainly not." Percy had half turned to glance at the senior of the two British ordinance men who was carrying on with Phillips. "You missed it earlier but I know that some of the other fellows were around," He glanced around and shuffled a little closer, "I wanted you to hear it from me, before it becomes public."

"You said something about wanting to talk about the Russians."

Percy's face blinked, "Oh, yes, a different thing, but yes that's related to this in a way." The englishman schooled his features, "Alston doesn't know it yet... but John Jordan is coming back. The Prime Minister himself asked it, and has talked him into it." Alston who had seen himself as in line to replace John Jordan was going to be apoplectic when that came out in public. Whether or not Alston was or wasn't one of Ed Gray's lackeys had been less important than his swaggering into the office, and if Jordan was coming back there was sure to be a row over who was entitled to what. "Well, yes I did want to talk about the Russians as well. Its imperative we keep them in the war."

There was that we again. Even before Wilson had gone to congress Percy had insisted on using the we, we, we. "You shouldn't have let let them go on the offensive. The Germans have to be to running out of material without international trade, but that doesn't mean they can't defend." The same reason France's offensives had been stupid repeats of everything proven not to work. Percy started to protest that there had been joint agreements between the entire entente, and that all four, including Italy had agreed to the offensive...

"Besides it succeeded in pulling the Germans back from Verdun."

He had to wonder if that really mattered. So he shrugged, "Lansing has, great confidence in the new government." Which might well have just been the smoke he was blowing up Wilson's ass, especially given Percy's scrunching of his face. "SO what's the matter with Russia?"

"Well, with John Jordan coming back we know that there is a great deal of expectation of railway investment. Japan is going to invest Kaichow," Kiaochow, "and Shangdong more broadly, they've already begun needling for more of that." There had been rumors now of Duan and some banker talking on top of that of course, but he didn't mention that. Nor did he correct the man's slip, just as Percy didn't correct him if he slipped somewhere, "We need to know how far you plan to run the line west."

"Pretty damn far." He replied. The plan now that the main line west was done was to loop the basin cities, put a ring of steel tracks Kashgar and Urumqi in the north to the cities south. "The plan now that the rolling stock is ready to move to open the Kashgar spur in the summer, work our way down."

Percy nodded, "You know about John Jordan's peculiarities with the Japanese. We need a second route."

"Excuse me?"

"Mr Churchill has been rehabilitated," He threw a glance to the lone Australian thirty feet away, "And as a result there is a measure inside the cabinet that maybe it would be good if there was a direct line that didn't have to go through Manchuria."

He placed a hand on the smaller man's shoulder, "Percy, have you been told your government wants Wilson to take over the Trans Siberian, and overhaul it?"

"What if we don't have time for that?" Percy replied, "Mr Churchill has convinced Lloyd George that we need to be able to keep the Russians in the war until overwhelming force can be brought against the Germans... and Kerensky just does not inspire confidence in his majesty's government."

"Who's Kerensky?"

"Oh, yes he's the new Russian minister of war." Allen nodded, and he asked when that had happened, and that just lead into a long spiral of European secret diplomacy and backroom deals that boiled down to it the French had told the British, and the Foreign Office had then by way of someone in the Tokyo office had then told Percy over the telephone. The basic jist was that Kerensky had the job but hadn't been officially given the job yet... which sounded lovely. "In any event the rail?"

He shook his head, "No Percy, that is not feasible, you're asking me to run," He shook his head, "No thats, "Stevens is going to come in and overhaul the line that is already there, and that's going to take time."

"We don't have time John Allen, thats what I'm telling you. The russians are on the backfoot." It should have been clear from Percy's alarm at the time that he wasn't prepared to let things go, but it was equally possible the eastern terminus of the Russian's trans-caspian line documents had already probably been compiled to send out from the British legation in Tietsin before he'd made the phone call earlier in the week... never mind before news of John Jordan made it back, or the French sharing the news of changes in the Russian cabinet were forthcoming.
--
Notes: Churchill gets his first name drop here, and much of the focus remains on the broader war rather than well, the president and the premier arguing about what China should do, which will eventually exasperate the fractures within the northern cliques and set the stage for July. At this particular stage despite heterodox military provincialism the beiyang were still coherent enough to keep everyone largely in line with shows of force, and well, Duan Qirui gets put into a position where that isn't enough any more, and where the provincial military factors the floodwaters can't be held back by that point.

and also the french mutinies are happening so there is that... and the British were aware of these.

 

[Imperator Pax]

May 1917​

Tao Jun looked for the spark in the avaricious boy s eyes, and then seeing the toddler waved imperiously for the jade seal his already large hands swinging impatiently.


It was not hard to shape the perceptions of her husband with evocations of the three teachings. Could the army s hierarchy or eccentric as factories might have seemed at first be seen as Confucian. Did he not patronize Buddhist sanctuaries and temples. For Daosim was hunting not an escape into nature for a time to get away from the urban civilization and of course who could deny the great feasts and drinking of men of near equal social status.


So it took shape not as a refutation of ancient tradition but simply a more martial iteration of it. Three teachings in a new form to soothe most of the gentry who might have complained there were always going to stubborn grumblers for their own reasons but their chronic short sightedness could be navigated around.


And of course the fact was as the old dynasty had declined new armies had grown stronger and now that the former Governor General of zhili Yuan Shikai who had failed to install a new dynasty was dead the provinces teetered towards war and that made an army all the more important

"When is the gathering?"

"This afternoon, last train should be the four ten." Allen slid behind the desk with a map folio already partially opened of the lands to the west. "Reinforcements met Bill this morning, and he's going over what we know."

"There there is further trouble?"

"Just what Percy mentioned last week." He responded, pushing the map flat. Augustus flailed for the jade piece as it was moved to anchor a map corner, "I don't know what's going on with the Russians, " If that was the only thing bothering the Englishman, "But I've got to grade these as well." He gestured towards the answer books.

The Confucian Classics exams were a thing of the past. Ended hastily before the Qing had fallen. The wealthy south east, cursed jiangnan amongst, had no purchase in the ongoing procedure, and none of their number were to be among the newly minted graduates.

"I see," She unfolded the fan and waved it lightly.

"We promised Cole he'd get first pick of the graduates."

She continued to wave the fan, "I have seen his black uniforms."

Her husband looked down at the map, and traced a line of what was, she knew, his southern border..... the line and the lands under heaven he was loath, and circumspect of moving beyond. The lands north including even Shensi that he would defend with deadly force if someone stirred the dragon. "Griswold has been busy with the browings," He paused, "Its a nice graduation gift, an entire class receiving their first garrison guns with their postings."

"Of course," She agreed from behind her fan. "And the banquet." It was a gentle reminder. One that had been carefully set aside. The graduation were not the successful passage of the exams. It must have seemed alien and strange to have a son go to six months of training, and be fed three times a day. It was easy to associate the shaving of one's head on initial intake as buddhist. One was stepping into a new career and was shorn of hair to join in a 'same year' with ones fellow intake.


--
He looked at the canal rather than at the men busy drilling. A thousand years old. The water works had been their even longer really. The canal had been what had allowed the creation of unity in a country the size of the united states it had been the railway before railways. It had allowed goods, and power to spread across China... and now it was a dilapidated, neglected relic of the past just like the old Confucian scholar officials.

... and yet, here at the eastern terminus of the ancient silk road was the point from which a rail line stretched through the gansu corridor and to the basin cities along that ancient caravan trade route... and he suspected that wasn't an accident.

If Bai Lang had been able to take the city he probably would have been impossible to dislodge with the forces the white wolf had had available. It was just too far from the capital, and too many people... it would have been beyond the financial resources that Yuan Shikai had... and not worth the expense.

... but those men were both dead now. Yuan shikai, always cognizant of his line's short life, hadn't been particularly old at all... and Bai Lang had not been even middle aged.

... And the actual governor of the province was content to live in the modern capital and not here, in the ancient city that had been capital to the Tang dynasty of old. Even in that bygone era it had been a city of a million strong living within the city's walls... and now it was more. Chen didn't care about the city, and everyone knew it, and that meant other regional figures felt the ability to do what they wanted... and that was creating the modern problem.

Bill had been right to ask if Hu was feeling randy enough to start something... and he might.. and even if he didn't Chen's absence was enough to provoke a perception that Gansu, and Szechwan could traverse the border to deal with their own problems. That was why Bill sat in the south west with a bunch of fighting men, and why little Ma was going over the border to go settle disputes. Jun was right this couldn't last... and she wasn't the only thinking it. Duan Qirui wanted to put a northern coalition together and pound Szechwan... which sounded good when you were banging away from a pulpit, but it ran into the problem Ma was already having.

How did you catch a bunch of itinerant farmers who were playing at being bandits and local strongmen if you had little idea of who they were or where they were from, or when they were going to be somewhere.

"They look good out there."

He glanced away from the canal to Percy. Nakamichi hadn't been able to join them today, and Percy seemed to prefer that... he had been jittery all day... all week since the conversation at the arsenal and those damned papers. "Yep." He replied. First Regiment had split her companies up divided them among Class B recruits nearing the end of their time at the Infantry school to show them field maneuvers. Little Ma had even loaned them a squadron of horse cavalry to participate in the field maneuvers.

1/1 Followed their normal pattern for Class A battalions. A paper strength of seven hundred fifty riflemen. Three Company, four platoons strong. The attachment of the cavalry squadron was a specialist matter and they'd done things like this but usually by attaching battalion artillery from either Dawes or Phillips respective weights. At basic a rifle squad was 13 men regardless of recruit classification. To that extent the Class B volunteers were the same, same rifle, same uniform, just a notation on their intake paper work, and a indication of which units they'd be posted to.

"What are they doing?" He squinted as teams of men moved to within a hundred yards of the concrete facades, barbed wire and fox holes.

"Everyman has been issued two hundred rounds."

"What for?"

Allen shrugged, "For the exercise." He replied, "The machine gunners have more, but those recruits are nearing the end of their schooling." The matter of demography reared up on them, as the Hui were brought up, and Percy mentioned the labor strike up north, "That's right,"

"Going to stand up a Gansu Scouts are you?"

He wanted to refute the idea, but the truth was, Cole had already thought about it, he saluted Percy with a raised fist, "To be outnumbered? Always, to be outfought? Never." He lowered the hand, "We'll see. I think Cole is too busy with the Gendarmes," With their first officers commissioned in from the first graduates, but we could always put it on paper now, and fill the numbers out."

A whistle sounded and the men bounded for the fighting positions. "When will they finish training?"

"The end of the month." He replied, "The truth is we've moved the Infantry school here full time." The name was inaccurate everyone went through it, but that was likely to change. They'd start a pipeline for red legs most likely... and then other specialists, Engineering Corp, Medical... he watched, changing his focus to the now galloping horsemen with the carbine version Gewehr 88s. That was something they were unlikely to move towards... draft animals being one thing, but feeding a horse at war in the Philippines and in Cuba had absurdly expensive, and that was basically already refuted. Cavalry, like the bayonet had been largely declared obsolescent by the crucible of military science. "There are your bayonets." He pointed.

Obsolescent did not after all mean the same thing as Obsolete. Tipping each of the Mauser pattern rifles were sword bayonets in the pattern of the 1907 Enfield... or the Arisaka bayonets which had provided the inspiration to the brits.

"Thought you didn't like bayonet fighting?"

"I'll leave it to Scabs when given the choice," He replied looking at the long sword bayonets of the running rifle squad, "But it does help stop cavalry charges, and we still do that sort of thing in this country." He thought back to 1913 and the following in the months before Europe's war had begun.

"You're going to adopt a new rifle."

It wasn't a question. "Eventually, yes." He expected there would be a handful of intermediary designs. 'Iteratives' as Sam called them. There were concerns of economics to factor. They weren't going to go the british dwarf, but the SMLE's eponymous magazine and shortness was a definitive desirable factor in a future rifle, but it had draw backs besides caliber.

Percy prepared to continue but a collection of men from First Regiment's mortars opened up lobbing three inch stokes down the range, and he shut his mouth with the audible clack like a steel trap.

"John Allen have you considered things, with the rail to Russia."

... because well as Percy was loath to admit... the Russians weren't the only ones having problems... now it was the French too. News he hadn't considered, or just how upset that it might make the British, given that the French had been playing the game with now indication of how bad things were becoming.

--
Notes: This notably lacks the Graduation and commissioning sequence for new officers, and the banquet, while also touching on the incoming enlisted men passing through the final wrung of their own training. .

Again Before World war 1, British and American armies ran on five and six month basic training for enlisted men. (and in war time subsequently, well to use Vietnam as an example Infantry School be shortened to as little as eight weeks) The US army will only move to its 16 week course in about this time frame now that war has been declared, and that is in part due to having to implement the draft and the massive expansion of Fort Jackson and other military installations through the South particularly which exploded in size to forty and five thousand men installations requiring much greater infrastructures..

 

[Imperator Pax]

May 1917
The Glory Hotel had a coffee bar specifically set aside on the second floor... it was very Italian with its milanese wood fixtures, and Pavoni steamers frothing milk. It made an excellent meeting place in town both for the officers and for business. It was the whole point, and the war hadn't really changed that.

As it was he was the second officer to make it in this morning to the somewhat more informal office to handle paperwork just as industry had set the precedent, so to had the RPF followed in... as often those had had to take into account railway concerns, and then brigade, and now the much larger force.

Lieutenant Guan was too young to even shave but was one of the most promising young officers available. He wasn't an orphan per se, but he had started schooling in the 1913 school year when they had started offering schooling to everyone old enough to start. The proclamation of the Chinese Republic the year before had entailed further education reforms, but that had been more on paper. There were questions about Guan's paternal lineage. He might have had an American, or Frenchman somewhere up there. It wasn't known, and Allen didn't particularly care. The young First Lieutenant had taken a position with the equally young Gendarme. They had been established with only four hundred men, though with more planned. More promised from the next graduating class once it was all said and done.

Not that their uniform was all that different than 'regular army'. He did however have one of the nine inch daggers that had gotten popular with his branch, and a Browning automatic, the 1911, in a mid height holster of water buffalo on his right side. "The report on Hu Chin-yi," He said without preamble, referring to one of the lesser warlords of Shensi who had started causing trouble particularly for Chen back in January the previous year, but who was now considered something of a more pressing threat given the deterioration of the situation in Szechwan.

Fresh coffee appeared before he could unbind the documents and start reading. Careful detail had been considered about Shensi's situation. Back in the fall of 1911 a splinter arm of what would become the first of Bai Lang's rebels had attacked one of their railways. It had only been coincidence that they, and a few dozen men had been riding the train. The bandits, based in Shansi, had had American guns, but so to had his men. It had been that fight which had convinced him to switch over to the 1911 pistols he had bought the year before, and carry those over his New Service. That, and convinced him of the merits of his Model 8... but that attempted raid had solidified the RPF that had been nascent... and now its descendant was a division that would total over fifteen thousand men when the training was done.

More importantly it was what had convinced him now, in this growing chaos, that you couldn't just leave those more inland provinces alone. With regards to Shansi, and Shensi, "How is the civilian situation?' Sheng Mingchan had gotten the appointment as 'civilian head' the 'Shengzhang' a few scant weeks before he'd started talking with Yan Xishan. He had lasted barely three months. His supposed replacement had no real authority, and hadn't even shown up in favor of trying to send a representative. Allen wasn't concerned about Sun Shiwei and mainly stayed in the capital where he was constantly being sent on errands for other members of the government.

"Chen Shu-Fan and his retainers are coming at the invitation of the Premier." The latest development in the spat between the House of Representatives in addition to the President involved the Prime Minister getting increasingly brazen in his threats. Most recently it had meant sending invitations to all of the military governors to come to the capital to express their opinions to parliament. General Chen must have felt pretty secure about the situation at home if he was coming himself.

Colonel Shan arrived with much the same news, though with additional details. "He is bringing brigade of men with him," He, Shan, was a little older than Allen, probably closer to forty, and preferred to a carry a nine millimeter Mauser semi automatic. There were a number of pushes internally to produce more of them, and in different configurations. Part of that had been the war cutting off new shipments from Germany. The outbreak of which had also slowed aquisition of modern arms for the Beiyang, especially given their precarious finances. It some spoiled other ambitions like General Liu who had been busy playing with the action for rifle designs. That was the sort of thing which greatly interested both Sam, and Bill. It was also of interest to their neighbor to the north. Yan Xishan who was also spending a lot of time in western Zhili of late. Yan Xishan would presumably be attending the military governor conference at the invitation of the Prime Minister... in the hopes that his reputation for being reasonable would mediate the dispute that was on going between President and Prime Minister.

How that was going to go was anyone's guest. All of that was without even touching the surrealist condition of Mongolia and parts further north, never mind the immediate south or far south.

Then there was the picture. "Then there is this," He pushed the other image, from another train station, this one in Tietsin.

"Tell me about him." He said tapping the picture.

"Mr Nishihara has been meeting very much," That was frequently, "with the Premier." Colonel Shan replied. "The crux appears to be the railways in Shangtung." It could be something, or nothing really. The Japs were fucking obsessed about the German Concession, and yeah with much of China's exports. Well a lot of it went to Japan... it was entirely possibl that Japan was afraid Germany's concessions might go to the French.

It made more sense, to want more of Manchuria, where most of China's industry was. A lot of that was because it was where the Japanese themselves were investing money. It did mean a bigger control of parts south, greater access towards the north. They could maybe even project force into south China, along with controlling access to Peking. "The Germans are going to lose, I'd guess the French have already sharpened their knives." He muttered, darkly thinking of the division of the Ottoman empire they had planned the year before with the English. The 'agreement' was something they'd played close even as the Foreign office sent men to stir the arabs up with promises of independence, and for that matter what they intended for Russia their nominal ally. Though whether the useless chicken shits would try and demand all of Germany's overseas possessions for themselves was debatable. IF the reports about French troops mutinying though was accurate, probably not, they wouldn't have the manpower. Of course Britain would probably just as happy to take the German possessions in China for themselves, which might explain Japan's behavior. If the goal was possession, well the Brits might object less if the Japs were already set up and had things in the peninsula running sound.

For Allen, he had no intention of mentioning it, he'd already gotten word of the stupendously large number of loans the big banks back east had extended. The volume of those loans to the Entente powers was ... absurd, ridiculous, an amount of money that boggled the mind. It had started with England but JP Morgan had underwrote loans to all of them by this point. He was pretty sure that they were long past the point of throwing away good money after bad... but... as wealthy as wall street was... well they could burn greenbacks for lighting.

The Virginian, President Wilson, who had never liked bankers had of course tried to intervene as those had picked up. He hadn't thought it 'appropriate', whatever that was supposed to mean. He hadn't been very successful.

The word was the president was playing games with the financial sector, but he was probably out of his depth. That he had been for probably the last year given the scope of those loans. A more assertive president could very well have had the great powers of the old world by the balls at least financially once the war ended, but he doubted Wilson would capitalize on the amount of money that the French and British and the Russians now owed both the New York banks, or the loans the state department had underwrote.

"Sir?"

He glanced at Shan, and then to the young lieutenant as he laid out the next quiz question. "What does Duan Qirui keep fighting with the president over?"

He paused to form a complete answer. "Money for the war participation army."

"Nishihara has a lot money, and more if he can convince Duan to buy Japanese goods." The Yokohama Specie bank had provided loans before. That was actually part of the problem... he was sure the war had been good to the YSB but ... he doubted it had been that good, and someone had to be backing their extension of credit. "The Russians have purchased a number of Japanese arms themselves," And the English as well. "Good finances, that is a strong financial base are vital to health."

The President ... and the predominantly southern parliamentarians kept stymying attempts towards the budget, and it wasn't as if they were doing it to just be petulant. The country's finances needed reform, and with Europe on fire China's usual creditors were too busy to really tender any loans, and that was only part of the issue. The 1913 electors unwillingness to budge on the issue was creating a problem. Founded within days of Yuan's death, and chaired by the pony tail general the 'Association of Provincial Governors' was a gathering of twelve northern provinces and representing a slew of Beiyang officers in it who wanted ... bluntly Bismarkian style parliamentian procedures. That was to say they wanted Parliament to pass a military budget to address the current crisis, and then parliament to shut up and let the army handle their own job without any interference. They had gathered in Tietsin to hold another conference to presumably reiterate restrictions on parliament.

"There is also the matter of the western commanderies also." In Shan's use of the archaic it took a minute to parse, but he assumed that the Colonel meant Gansu, or the Ma Clique, "There is the matter of the Goluk tribesmen, and the chaos in the south." Meaning thereby spillover from Szechwan, which was probably the real problem lay given the southern province's great population.


He bit down a snide comment about the railway situation, "We have a conference of our own coming up, get something in writing and run it up the chain to Cole when he gets back," from his own trip to Tietsin, "And we'll see what can be done about the south." The truth was going to make all of that more complex and troublesome than what would have been simple. What should have been plans to redeploy troops back along the southern frontier to deter bandits from Szechwan was forced to contend with problems in the east as of course in an astounding turn of bad luck and timing the government in Peking dissolved and in short order a rapid number of poor political choices made everything in China that much worse.
--
Notes: the Tibetans, as already mentioned with the whole bow anecdote had been enduring 'significant' bandit raids from the east out of Sichuan province from 1914 at the latest during Bai Lang's pivot west (or from associated other bandits) and by that point Chinese central authority in the provinces was negligible. Infighting inside of Tibet had also already begun by this poitn (again see disintegration of central authority), but by 1917 you had groups coming west from Sichuan, as well as Ma troops (culminating OTL in the conflicts in the 30s) getting involved ostensibly to fight said Sichuan bandits but also pretty much everyone else.

This might have been more important to a Ma aligned or friendly faction (pre-xian) if not for Li and Duan and the Zhang Xun completely upending the Zhili order of the day by well, Li convinces Duan to resign, realizes too late that all of the beiyang governors are already in Tietsin when Duan leaves capital, and invits Zhang to 'mediate'. Well, then cue Manchu Restoration of 1917, which results in Li giving Duan his job back before Li himself quits the presidency and runs to Tietsin.

 

[Imperator Pax]

May 1917
--
The weekend had passed without much incident, at least locally, but faced with ... well the official entry of the United States to the war the Cadre had had to turn to ties back home. Though they had talked about it off and on since the very moment it had dawned on them that there would be no swift victory in the European conflict the prospect of US entry had taken second seat as time and again Wilson had managed to avoid entry into of back home. The writing had been on the wall, and even as the limestone barracks like Fort Wayne, had continued to take shape in Xian in 1914, the four storey buildings growing up in the old Manchu town, there had been other discussions.


There was a, perhaps expatriate was not the correct term, but pool of skilled American labor that had been organized and dispatched specifically because the old Prussian Rail and Steel magnate opposed conscription... and with the war now at the states there were other matters. Edenborn was right in so far as mathematically the US was so much more economically productive than Grmany that the US really had nothing to fear... on the other... the German Navy were getting too big for their britches... and on top of that there was the whole telegram business. Sometimes you did just need to lay the other guy out, and whether or not Edenborn wanted to hear that Allen had come to the conclusion that complaining about the war wasn't going to do anything. They needed to look at what could be done with what they had available.

... and of course there wasn't much reason to complain about the war. In terms of economic impact their nascent heavy industies had done well as British consumption had increased, and English, and French, and that was part of the problem they needed to look forward to when the war was over rather than banking on everything continuing the way they were. They had already had the discussion, hell they'd had to discussion a ways back now.

... what they hadn't banked on was the bureaucracy of it all. Allen glanced up from his pen and papers that were effectively the government for fifty miles on either side wherever his rails stretched. He licked his fingers and separated a second sheet from the page on top of it. Colonel Shang was still sitting there. The problem with bureacracy was when someone made a mistake it needed to b e caught early... they were going to have to make changes.

It only happened in English paper work. The Character 'Shang' and the Character 'Shan' were different, but somebody had added a 'G' at some point and them kept making the mistake confusing the two colonels. Hell, with the situation the way it was they were going to have more of this problem. It was a wonder they didn't have two or three colonels who didn't have the same surname by this point. They were lucky here because Colonel Shan was an older, than Allen, Manchu, where as Colonel Shang, who was younger, and that both were Zhili natives.

The younger man decided to break the silence, probably had been stewing on it for a while. "Sir?"

"I need to post you with some of Dawes's artillery, probably elements of the second Battalion of his brigade, if not the whole thing." He remarked, the whole battalion of 15cm Krupps. "They're new guns, fresh recruits. The situation in Szechwan is deteriorating. I need you to replace Bill's command post," Since McCulloch was in town right now, "and the temporary men there." They were going to have do something about the paperwork. Last name by itself wasn't going to cut it. Adding Chinese Characters wouldn't do it. They'd need to list Surname yes, but then what... proably have to include given name. "There is a not insubstantial chance you will see combat, but you are not to be provoked into going over the border. The last thing we can afford is trying to trundle through Szechwan and be lead around by our collective noses." Like Black Jack had had done to him with chasing ole Pancho around Mexico. In truth the Krupps were intended more as a deterrent against the bandits coming over the border.

The camp was already there, and there had been more than one struggle and skirmish since last year, which had been what merited Bill going in the first place. "I was under the impression that a battalion to battalion linkage was infeasible."

"It is, or it will be once our infantry finishes training." And infantry was the easiest thing to train to any degree. "For now you can take second battalion and whatever Dawes has ready, and start staging them at the rail." Shan, and Shang both would make general. It was the no pun intended general consensus. There would be differing specialties and as the army grew those specialties could be used, but they needed the experience, even if it meant sending a colonel to command a battalion on the frontier... well if that was what it took. "As important as coordinating with the red legs is, there is one other matter. The Bashan Operations Area, you'll be responsible for the new Radio transmitter" The Radio Telegraphy system probably not ready, it would have been one thing if they'd been at sea, but that hundred fifty distance might be pushing it. "The tower is a priority." Even though given the phone lines were probably more practical and useful.

--
Ma Anliang's problems were going to have to wait Percy had ambushed them at morning coffee as the Friday shift of the mill had started.

As it was, now that it was ten o'clock, Dawes looked like he was having trouble processing what he'd been told, and he wasn't the only one, but all the same the older man asked for clarification, "The French are having what?" He finally managed still sounding flabbergasted.

"Apparently Nievelle ordered an attack, and the order was refused." He shook his head at it, and there were round of looks and breaks among the cadre, "We don't know much more than that," The French were probably terrified that if it spread they'd end up with a coup on their hands, "But that isn't the issue."

"Does your daddy know?" Dawes grunted in reply, and shook his head, "How the hell are the states gonna take the french mutinying?"

There was some grumbling in agreement at the prospect.. "I assume the French are attempting to censor it from getting out," Which fat lot of good if it had already hit the diplomatic cables and was coming in through London as well as Geneva... so Lansing probably knew, "I'd guess, the states will follow suit, the British having a noose around the press's neck and all."

"The Legation has been instructed," He paused, "The British Foreign Office has been instructed to investigate any and all possibilities, however remote to keep the war effort moving forward. That seems to include this business Duan is doing with Nishihara related to funding the WPA." Or at least it was looking like Alston was turning a blind eye to the loans and whistling dixie so that Duan could furnish a new more modern force to fight bosche.

There was a snort at that from two rows back, "Shit, Stevens is good for an old man. He knows the trade, but they're expecting god's own damned work if they expect the Trans-siberian to be overhauled that fast."

"The line should be enough to get troops from Vladivostok to the Russian heartland." There was a pause, "The bigger problem is that it'd be like trying to move troops the opposite direction of during the Russians throwing down with the Japs." Another engineer remarked. "It'll be slow but I reckon thats engines and bridges as much as anything."

But without surveying the T-S they couldn't be sure. Any kind of line work would be the sort of thing a competent engineer would want months to go over before he started on, and Stevens was hidebound by tradition, and the policy that had let him build the Transcontinental back home. "There ain't no way," Another drawled propping one boot forward and leaned to stand, "Stevens won't get anything done this year, he'll need to survey, and that'll take all summer even if he gets in this month." And that wasn't even dealing with the Trans Siberian was a lot more prone to ice and snow than the transcontinental. "Has he even left?" [The States.]

"He boarded a ship in San Francisco, the cable says he means to start by the end of the month after he lands in Vladivostok." He replied answering the older man's question. This was turning into herding cats, "and there is no telling what condition the rail is in," But the general consensus out of the British was probably abysmal given all the delays in the rail. Especially if they wanted to open a 'southern route'.

It was a harebrained scheme. It smacked of desperation. "The only reason this is even a possibility is because the Xian Line runs through the corridor."

"And probably because it means the Ma are actually able to deliver their taxes to Peking regularly." That couldn't be discounted either, because it showed the Great Western was safe, and it was reliable for transport. If you could ferry taxes that were then accounted for by the British commission to transfer to the government in Peking to run the government... then British were probably confident that it was safe enough to use it to transport vital war materiel if it could be connected to Russian holdings in Central Asia.

That was the problem because the limiting factor wasn't the rails. It was rolling stock, it was engines, and so on. There was a pipeline of supply issues that simply couldn't be addressed just by running to the Transcaspian line at Taskhent. Putting down a line through Fergana from Kashgar was probably possible it was something like five hundred miles, unless they had to make a major detour, but it would exasperate the existing western line's material deficiency that they hadn't expected to be fixed for another year on the main thoroughfare.

It wasn't a simple vote either, "If the British are willing to toss the Siberian to Wilson, then they'll damn sure want Washington to exert pressure."

"Maybe they can talk Washington into loaning them the money to pay for the line then." At least that got a couple of laughs, but that was likely to cause more problems than it might fix, and it left things hanging there. Kato hadn't even managed to make it through 1915 given all the shake ups but that the Doshikai would balk was pretty much a given.
--
Notes: The next segment will get us through May 1917, again in part due to technical issues where this chapter (May 1917) got the gremlins and I had to piece together and reshuffle things and I've got several sets of notes I need to go through. Notably for this there is a missing scene here that would have taken place in between these two, and those fragments which didn't get turned into weird characters, and the notes may be reused in June '17, but its largely slice of life, day to day, rather than the political big picture stuff of people watching the war and assuming things that are closer to home are fine, or in this case watching the expected trouble spot, and as we will see in the conclusion how frayed the situation in Peking had deteriorated.

This is roughly the week, in addition to Nieville getting the boot, the British call of their offensive on the hindenburg line in Arras, and thats relevant to other concerns of the FSO.

 

[Imperator Pax]

May 1917
Conclusion​

The Friday paper on events down south in a way heralded a sign of what was to come but it was largely missed too. Never mind Shang bringing up Ma's problems further west. The headlines from Chunking though had almost been missed. Units of the Yunnan and Szechwan armies had gotten into it at the end of the previous month. That by itself wouldn't have surprising. After Tsai O's death, and of course the precarious situation of finances, there had been an increasing number of border skirmishes since the new year and if not for the escalation to artillery it would have not even merited a by line.

Instead six hundred homes were gone... three thousand townsfolk were dead from the shelling or the fire... and that warranted making it to the papers. It was an omen of what was coming, but it was just a paper headline that happened to make it out on the wire from Chunking. In fact the only reason he was even rereading the paper was because of the British mission in the treaty port had insured that word had gotten out, and back to Tietsin.

"Hewlett's a level headed fella, so I reckon he counted." Bill remarked. The Texan dwarfed Percy who looked even worse than he had yesterday.

"Quite right." The Englishman replied, looking briefly the picture of the debris plastered across the front, "He was right there in the thick of it of course." Hewlett was the British consul attached to the Treaty Port of Chunking and it had fallen to him to organize the red cross and other relief works. In Szechwan, and the region being the only fellow who wasn't likely to be shot at meant you got that kind of responsibility. "I wish we could spare him the men he's asked for."

There were conflicting reports about Hewlett's request for a detachment of Royal Marines, but realistically the consul should have known any more troops would be out of the question. The consensus was Szechwan was going to get worse, the only thing that made this sand out was the use of artillery in the fighting... or maybe its indiscriminate use in the shelling.

It wasn't the real point of the meeting. "What about Peking?"

"We didn't tell him to stir up a riot." Percy's sheer defensiveness suggested that as it happened they might have at least nudged Duan to be a bit more aggressive... aggressive enough that this might have been the logical outcome. Not that Yuan hadn't done the same thing when he'd been alive, and Yuan's success in getting parliament to agree to things with a mob of supporters outside had probably contributed.

... and now Peking seemed like a tinderbox... and of course this was just the beginning of what was to come. "What about the situation there?"

"The Prime minister's supporters are still in the streets, the police are refusing to disband the gathering," And likely because the Zhili Guards weren't going to help them, even assuming the Peking Police Force even wanted to disband the rally, "President Li, and the Parliament were able to leave and go home but if they're still there Monday there is no telling how things will go from there."

Bill shook his head, and the big man crossed his arms tapping his boot, impatiently as he pondered loudly for a minute before deciding to ask a question, "Percy ain't want you to take this wrong way," He twanged, "but if you're sure you need troops, why don't you ask the Japanese?"

Allen could guess, but he was not going to take the question away. Percy could give his own answer, especially as the Englishman started to bristle. "Well you don't think we didn't try? In 1914, and 1915. The Japanese are quick to tell us they're our allies, and that they'll send ships, even sell arms, but troops in Europe? They won't hear of it, they're still sore over the war with the Russians," And probably the Triple Intervention, but Allen kept mum, "They simply won't hear of sending their troops to France, and the French asked," Demanded was a better word from the conversations of 1914. Whatever the case though Percy continued, "If we could have Japanese troop that would help, but they're unwilling, Duan Qirui is willing," His face scrunched and he shook, "And with the Russians now, our latest problems with the war." There was desperation in his voice.
--
Even if on Monday you had asked he had doubted Li would go through with... and it was admittedly a little surprising that Duan was going along with it. He'd resigned as Prime Minister and stated he would leave the capital... and in the end that was the signal.

The telegrams started to circulate in public not long after that. The circulars were really nothing new though. It wasn't as if Sun's boys hadn't done the same trick to express their displeasure... the difference was when brigade and division commanders started advocating for the lot, and then them having their regimental commanders start talking about 'bandit suppression' and 'punishing the southern criminals' or whatever it was this week. It was all for internal consumption of course, we don't like those people from that province sort of rhetoric... the problem was it was now exploding.

Percy's initial riot comment had been hyperbole... but now it really wasn't. Duan leaving looked like someone had doused the whole stack with kerosene and was playing with matches. "I don't like this."

Allen stopped massaging his temples and glanced at Bert who was reaching for another pastry, "I don't think anyone likes this." He replied.

The man shrugged and took another lemon tart. "Just saying." He replied after a bite. He swallowed, "And isn't Ma Hongkui going into Tibet too now... that's a disaster." Disaster was probably overstating things, but they weren't sure how much word had gotten back to Young Ma, the Old Ma certainly knew but they hadn't been able to get a message to Hongkui, or at least confirm that he'd gotten it.

It was bad, but the needed to focus on the issue to the east.

Out of a population of about eighteen million some twelve percent had been enjoined to fight under old glory. Over two million men. The bloodiest war the United States had ever fault. The Taiping Rebellion had left enough people dead that it would have swallowed the whole country in the bodies... but on the size of the armies the ancient kingdom hadn't been anywhere near proportional to the states... and the Taipings had fielded almost as many men as the Union.

Li had stumbled into a situation that looked likely to turn into a fight he wasn't ready for. ... and that would be a disaster for everyone. There were seven hundred thousand men estimated to be under arms across provincial and the national ministries, mostly due to a swelling in recruitment o fill out existing on paper formations, Allen suspected, but it didn't matter.

Bert pressed his hands on the table straightening, which given who all was sitting around him did little but emphasize how much shorter he was. "Are they going to fight?"

John Paul snorted, "Who does Li even have in his corner?" He muttered derisively. Someone pointed out he probably had the Navy, the so called 'Fukien clique', which was promptly ignored of course by the bulk of Army veterans among the Cadre. "And what's to stop Yunnan from declaring its independence again," There were some other rumbles, of speculation over which formations in the south might side with Li over just doing that.

He was looking at the rail map, the real one. Not what had been proposed but hadn't been completed. It didn't matter that the Hankow line from Beijing had supposed to have run all the way south to Canton, but only the northern half was real. It really ran from Peking to Wuchang, but the Brits had barely managed any progress with the war one.

Someone caught his look at the 'three cities' nestled on the Yangtze.

When the time had come to put Bai lang down First Regiment had deployed as a square. Four battalions supplemented with artillery, and machine guns. "Schedule pistol practice for the men."

"The railway?"

"You think?"

"If the south has any chance of anything they had to have figured that's what the lifeblood of the country flows on." Dawes snapped. "You can't move artillery with the canals in their condition," His parochialism showing, "Leg infantry is possible but not practical, not modern infantry."

Zhengzhou.

The city, and rail hub that most of their industrial products produced here, and in Shensi more broadly flowed up into Zhili to meet their other production goods before the ports of the north for export overseas. It was simply a matter of geography.

"They can't cut the rails."

The response from down the table seemed optimistic.

There were some agreements.

"This isn't the eighteen nineties there are telegraph, and telephone lines staffed at all hours." Someone concurred, "Even if you took one station you couldn't stop them or one of the others from broadcasting a warning."

True. The Qing had constantly quibbled over the telegraph. A never ending waffling over use or don't use or use it sometimes and not others. Their failures often to their detriment... but the Wu Wei corp during the Boxer rebellion had known to take the telegrams and cut them, and Yuan Shikai had known to take the offices in his province and declare his opposition to the boxers. Not that Yuan hadn't always considered the boxers to be little more than bandits in the first place.

The rail guards already had shotguns of course, but a railway station wasn't built for rifles. There just wasn't space for a 98, never mind putting a sword on the end of it. They needed something else... there just weren't enough Remingtons and Winchesters to go around. Buying more from the states hadn't been an option, and production off of their FN license for the prior hadn't been a priority.

"That's gonna be a headache." Referring to the cartridges matter. Moving the conservation from one matter to kicking it down the road, but it was true. Every officer was required a pistol... and though they did not field horse cavalry most NCOs owned pistols and a handful of various enlisted were issued them. That made a gamut of cartridges. The mausers, and forty five government predominated, but they hadn't had the time prioritize that either, just as they hadn't focused on a universal short service rifle despite it being old hat now.

Ice could have rimed on Cole's gaze, "I have a solution to that. We don't know for sure Li will do anything, he could balk at any minute. Let me take 1st​ Battalion. They need a good ruck besides, and set them into the garrison. Gendarmes in place if something happens you can come relieve us. Not saying you shouldn't practice, but its 1912 anymore, and there are ways more men under the colors now."

The battalion had been the most basic unit by which the Qing had organized units of men. They weren't copying that, but as an organizational formation it was the right size. The realization in the Philippines had been maneuver and engagement... though crediting the philipines may have missed the lessons on the high plains. Still Squads built platoons, built companies. You engaged the enemy, and you maneuvered. You held choice ground and broke the attacker from strong defenses. You broke defenses by specialization. Head on frontal assaults could work but they cost lives. He'd seen that enough in 04 and 05.

So of course things shifted. Pieces were moved, and a company continued to turn more from a business into a government. Expansions drafted, equipment talked about, men considered, and even though the initial impetus was the matter of keeping lines to ports open and goods flowing... what was coming was a conflict that would change things in completely different ways than expected. Li turned out to just be the inciting factor, not a principle player in the issue at hand. Duan stood on one side, so their expectations had been half right. Another small summer war was right around the corner, but it was another crack in the dike, one more compromise to the structural integrity of the whole system.

 

[Imperator Pax]

June 1917
In response to the circulars sent out by the Beiyang Clique generals, or maybe they would have done it anyway Allen wasn't sure he could be certain, the newspapers had clambered up on their own soap boxes. Talking about the 1912 constitution... that had existed for basically no time at all, but the parliamentarians who'd been elected under it and due to be seated in 1913 and were still in parliament now, for the most part, were waving around as their legitimacy. Allen had no interest in wading into that.

They weren't trying to convince anyone, because the messages were aimed at assuming anyone nodding along had already decided on their side. Yunnan needed to be thought of as functionally independent. Szechwan was in anarchy. The south ... no the provinces were effectively independent.

Shansi was an uncertainty the north. The Ma Clique in the west would agree with the Beiyang clique. The Beiyang could militarily dominate the Yangtze river provinces as they had done previously... but south of the river lay the problem. North china would not write off the south, and it seemed likely they'd fight to assert military control hoping that the southerners would back down again, as they'd done repeatedly... but that didn't solve the problem. Similarly the south's unwillingness to stay down meant they'd keep coming back to cause trouble.

... and they had the money to do it, at least to rebel time and again. Lack of provincial tax revenue flowing to Peking meant money in provincial coffers, which money to buy arms and train troops. Could Yunnan sustain that though? Could they sustain the 19th​ division, or even Tsai O's old 37th​ brigade on their own? Allen was skeptical that they had the resources to do that. Yan Xishan to the north wanted to institute provincial reforms modelled on Prussia, or modelled on Japan modelled on Prussia of the 1880s. Would that work? He wasn't sure. Shansi was perhaps the poorest and least developed of all the northern provinces, and Yan wasn't without challengers. He thought back to the Shansi Revolutionary Corp who had largely been destroyed during Bai Lang's final battle.

The anniversary of that battle drew nearer. Time he was cognizant of. Tsai O being from Hunan had let him rally support in his home province. His military success had won him the support of his Yunanese junior officers, and that success had also allowed him to exercise power through Szechwan. All that together had created a coalition of sorts in the south west of China to resist the Beiyang... at least locally where the north was far from their center of power, and where they were facing closest to Tsai O's.

But Tsai O was dead now, and any ties he had had to Bai Lang likely meant nothing given they were both dead. Tsai's O's death had in turn fractured his coalition. That was why he was comfortable deploying Shang to the border with a much smaller force than the nominally several divisions that were supposed to exist in Szechwan.... because without Tsai O those in reality many battalions were really divided among many regional leaders... the recent artillery spate from Chunking came to mind. Shang was in place in a geographical sweet spot, where the enemy could only mount an attack through a mountain pass and that meant a battle favored the prepared defense.

... if the enemy came as an army.

"In theory," He summarized looking at the others, "That makes our rear guard secure." A threat from the Bashan marching into southern Shensi seemed unlikely. "But I would feel better if we could sit down with Yan Xishan and secure things to the north as well."

A couple of the others nodded. Without any objections then they had a quorum. The entire cadre didn't need to be present, just enough that they could reach out.
--

There was a ruffling as she picked out a few choice columns, or their headlines. "Eliminate confusion, promote stability"... as their own publications had started to circulate. Tangibility. "Tangible facts. Had Bai Lang not professed his allegiance to the southern doctor," Tao Jun clicked her fan closed to punctuate the rhetorical, "We merely remind them of what is."

He'd noted the reminders highlighted that Tsai O had sat out the second revolution. He didn't say anything, June didn't put her name officially on any of the publications. She probably only edited some of them before allowing them to go out... but it was soft power. Bai Lang's aggressions had resonated most strongly with the Hui, but he hadn't ingratiated himself with the province more broadly as a whole either. Associating Bai Lang's own publications with Sun helped under mine the Guomindang to the south. Associating him with Tsai O through the later offering haven to Bai Lang's southern front force that had been cut off did the same.

What it didn't necessarily do was endorse the Beiyang as a whole. Tsao Kun didn't seem to have noticed taking it implicitly at face value as a condemnation of the southern rebels and their association with bandits. The Ma clique, predominantly ethnic Hui, and now with brigades of troops engaged across the border in Szechwan, and apparently also other parts of the western provinces had little in the way of public mouthpieces, and seemed content to rely on distributions of papers, broadsheets sometimes read by town criers even to distribute news. The emphasis of the bandit participation, or collaboration justified their own cross border raids into Szechwan, and the prospect of the broader beiyang provincial association under the pig tail general seemed to be welcomed by the Ma Clique as it would mean going into hunan.

"Have you determined who revealed the loans to Duan Qirui?" The extensions of money to the Beiyang clique Nishihara had made.

He leaned back at the question, resisting the urge to reach for the cup, buy time, "I would guessed Reinsch, but" While the midwesterner was outraged, his surprise seemed authentic. It didn't seem likely he would have leaked that to the papers. "He's flat foot with all of this." It had been two weeks since the paper had broke... and the loan details, in an english language paper, it should have been nothing. The Japanese, and the British didn't make sense. They would have had no reason to publicize the details. "I suppose its possible since," Basically everyone of importance in Tietsin had known, "everyone in the diplomatic circles knew someone went... but the choice of distribution was odd."

"The southern doctor opposes war against Germany."

He tapped his foot. He wasn't sure if that was just Sun being contradictory or ... "There is the matter of the silver dollars," He replied. The parliament had supported a declaration of war initially, but something had changed between march and may... Li had torpedoed the declaration of war for some reason... but having not been in Tietsin or in the capital he hadn't been around to sus out what the devil had happened between the two. Then there was the Vice President to consider for that matter.

The British, Percy didn't seem to know, and that seemed to have been the point when the British had pressured Duan to be more assertive about the matter. Had Li known about the loans? "Everybody knew, so Li could have found out about the loans," The paper, not the least of which being in English, had been swept up in everything... and a week later Duan had resigned.... and now they were in this mess.

That had been a week ago Wednesday, and in the distance the Friday shift end bell whistled through the summer air. "Do you believe so?"

"Its probable." He hedged again working back through things. He hadn't been in Peking there were currents in the capital that were hard to track without being there. Blaming Sun was too easy.... Sun was a money man... and he had ties to the papers, the KMT was media savvy they knew how to use them like that... but... "Sun wouldn't have gone to just one paper, and it wouldn't have been a Peking paper. Shanghai maybe, but certainly Canton, or Nanking would be talking about if they'd been told."

"There are many liberals in the capital." She replied.

That was true. The university, but again, "I don't think he'd have gone to just one paper, it'd be too easy." Yuan had demonstrated, just as the Qing before, that raiding one paper before a publication ran, was easily doable with the apparatus of state. Li should have known that too, he'd been on the side doing the raids. "This feels like it came out of the legation, Jun." It felt American...

"Or someone wishes you to believe that."

He shrugged, and decided to change subject, "You've barely touched your food." Allen considered the conversation... the news back in May. Hina wasn't showing yet, and it seemed ridiculous that they'd both carry at the same time, after all the trouble they'd had conceiving before the war.

"I am not hungry right now." She replied turning away. It wasn't particularly hot outside, Jun was prone to losing her appetite in high summer heat, but today was relatively mild out in the sun, never mind inside as the machines worked to press air, and fans turned high overhead. "The planting is done?" She made her own change of subject without any of her usual preamble or word games, not trying to realign the conversation.


The Portuguese, and then the Spanish, had introduced new world crops. The sweet potato, the pepper, peanut, and others. Centuries later those crops had had sustained a population growth that had no peer near as he could tell anywhere in the world... he thought about the demon called famine... the planting season, there were probably some people still running behind but the farms managed scientifically were all done, "We were finished two weeks ago," He thought about the mechanization, the tractors, and reapers waiting and how it tamed a hundred thousand acre farm. "We put food back every year." He had thought of it in the Roman sense, but Jun thought of it in terms of grain stockpiles in this country's ancient history, but it didn't really matter. There were modern reasons to do it. Stockpiling food kept food prices stable, while still having grain in the silos for feed, either for men or beast if they needed to march, or if they needed to address another crisis.

"Summer is here, the itinerant, and listless will swarm like locusts for things to do with their idle hands." Swarms of bandits from the south, Szechwan's population, Hunan. "Given the political turmoil I wouldn't be surprised if they are recruited for easy manpower."

There were only so many ways into the north china plain of course. The traditional passes allowed access in certain directions. Shang sitting on the Bashan frontier land was one, and the one he considered the biggest issue, but there were others... and of course time had moved on from the middle ages so they couldn't ignore how railways defeated ancient geographic boundaries.

--
The swell in troop numbers made other requirements necessary. The RPF had been a militia, a gather of avaialable men capable of martial service called upon in a time of crisis. He recalled shotguns, and revolvers. Of the gun cabinets of cadre members being pulled open to distribute hunting rifles in 1911. As the sun rose, and noon approached on Saturday men worked out. Some ran, some in loose fitting clothes, others in grey uniforms.

It was the change though of the years. The RPF men had of course been northern Chinese, prone to higher average height than southerns. It was a known fact, the minimum height under the qing for soldiers had been five six, but had been lowered to permit five two for recruits of southern provinces. Despite that older RPF veterans tended to be leaner rangy men compared to young men who had reached adulthood in the last five years. Parents who had three square meals a day, and children who got the same seemed to just grow better.

He grunted and racked the farmer's weights.

Dawes snorted , the red leg leaning crooked, and glanced to one of his fellow artillery men, "What's eating you, John Allen."

"Just have the feeling," That Cole was right, "We're about to bowl into a bigger fight." He thought about the province's population, and versus those provinces wholly south of the Yangtze. He rolled his left shoulder against the tension. "I was considering increasing the frequency of drill to be honest." He thought about how incongruous Percy had considered it, and thought about how little live fire training had been done at garrison in the Army. Issuing two hundred rounds a man nowadays just seemed ... so normal. There was a certain economy of scale to producing bullets. "What about you?"

"That winds always blowing for me," The older man threw his head back to the truck. A ford in quintessential black. "Sam and I have been working on the mortar question. Eight hundred yards, is fine for leg infantry, you can hit a man at that distance, if he jumps in a hole, and you can't see him you lob one of stokes bombs at him." And the rifleman would clearly see it... not a new conversation at all.

He nodded. It was how they fought. How they had been fighting. If the bandits weren't attacking a defended position, they were generally maneuvering either through farmland or bounding from hill to hill chasing after them. There were occasional skirmishes where one side or another caught the opposite in a town street... but this was the new west. No central authority to reign the brigands in, and too many problems beside... especially as provincial revenues continued to decline.

At the notion to continue, Dawes nodded towards the truck. "At the company level we throw some of 'em in with the Vicker" , "guns as part of heavier detachment. Leave my red legs to handle heavier still weapons."

Ah, that was what this was about. For all intents and purposes you had six months of training, turning any recruit into a rifleman, be damned whatever their actual job was going to be because especially before Yuan had died their numbers had been smaller. Recruiting and training though as the division put on weight that wasn't going to work. He smirked, "Ok, so what then?"

"I figure we can work on rifling the mortars, or boring them out to fire something heavier, more propellant, but the experimenting should still sit with the artillery."
--
Notes: This is more or less an abridged explanation of why Xian adopts mortars first, and more heavily than it does, grenades. In terms of fighting this similar to open prairie fighting where as mentioned you don't have a lot of urban or fighting in between buildings. To go back to white wolf there was the fall 1913 mission siege where the mission was built on a hill, had clear lines of fire and they had artillery. Similarly in the 1916 segment its less fighting over a town and more contact in the hills and farmlands outside of towns or in proximity to railway lines.

Hand grenades, or even rifle grenades are less important, especially up until the point where previously you had ranges of letting the enemy attack. Cup launchers will work for attacks from Ambush, but without built up trench warfare there is less impetus to mass issue grenades versus mortars, especially for open field engagements. Its also the impetus for mechanization. Horses take a lot of fodder, and without the inertia of having an established cavalry there is more pressure to adopt 'new scientific / mechanical methods of war' rather than many of the arguments for retaining the horse. Yes trucks and tractors break down but you need one of those to tow a howitzer versus an entire team. Coupled with most of your movement is occurring over rail lines, get off the rail, hitch and move overland from there, and that rail lien the train handles most of your baggage. (You see this particularly in the western front where your rail networks are what are responsible for keeping units in the trenches supplied by going straight up into the network of defenses.) This makes feeding troops relatively easy among other things. Also good for evacuating your injured.



As an aside, the reason I generally describe the Shliefen... or more specifically the Shliefen Moltke plan that Germany went with as impossible... is because I'm making that judgement on two separate factors, the first is the internal factor where the Tirpitz/Admiralty League lobbied and got funding for the Kaiserliche Marine that deprived the army of the funds needed for the army corp that would have made the numbers (and also not approving those naval bills may well have kept England from going to war in the first place, but that again Edward Gray is the primary reason the cabinet was convinced to go to war) and the second Shliefen-Moltke was written on the basis of we are going to be fighting on two fronts and the General Staff papers that said we're going to have to fight the russians sooner rather than later. S-M was by 1914 emblematic of War Optimism. Now had the admiralty bills not diverted money to the army Germany would have had more army corps and might have been able to reach Paris in the allotted timeframe. [and in Freiherr von Zemo this is what Helmuth talks about after he finishes destroying the 5th Armee, effectively that the momentum is gone we didn't have the reserves available to make the plan work because the money went to the navy.]

 

[Imperator Pax]

June 1917
Rifle fire cracked as the present units of 1st​ Regiment worked through their drills. The course of fire was an evaluation designed to simulate at least the noise of battle. Men were supposed to discharge a requisite number of rounds on targets at known and unknown, to them, distances. At the same time at adjoining ranges, artillery were firing colored shells at a fewer number of targets, in both a direct fire, and indirect engagement.

The history of a regiment, and her shared traditions were critical to the espirt de corps. He supposed that should apply to brigade and division , but at a certain point you could hardly claim a whole unit's history applied to the whole damn army.

They were now in a position of having multiple 'native', to use Percy's term, colonels, and a host of other field officers. The englishman's scandalized tone at the comment had been absurd. Percy had fallen back away from the thunder of the 105s that were testing their new carriages.

"He looks like he's going to piss himself." Dawes declared. "What do you reckon?" The older man drawled.

That was the question. Li had succeeded in getting Duan to quit... and was now reaping the consequences of it... it would have been funny, if the ironic turnabout was fair play wasn't otherwise so serious. Li didn't have any troops of his own. Now the various Beiyang tujun were circulating in public plans to declare their independence from peking. The circular telegrams were a blatant emulation of how the south's provinces had done and that was probably intentional.

Li was not Yuan Shikai, and was scrambling for some way to talk them out of it... but all reports, and the rumors, Duan Qirui was hanging out in the international settlement with friends at the hotel, just enjoying 'retirement'. He was ignoring anyone Li sent to talk to him, and most weren't even getting there before being stopped or turned away. John Paul said it had been funny the first time, but it started getting pretty pathetic after a couple of days.

Allen broached the subject, and the older man shrugged. The truth was Allen had pointedly been avoiding a train ride to Zhili, especially now with Cole ensconced at Zhengzhou's railway depot. The legation knew the gendarmes were there of course... that wasn't the problem. It was their railway, and legally speaking they had a right to it, and they'd been exercising that right regularly with the regular troops. Maybe it was because of the European war, and the fact there hadn't been French troops, maybe it was the recent unpleasantness in Szechwan... in Chunking but the journal du peking was a known to them front of the French foreign service and its published article was enough to rankle.

"The question is why?"

"They could be needling Reinsch."

Allen shrugged as another burst of red dye smoke rose up a trench. That was true. It wouldn't have been the first time the paper had been used to heckle or pester the American Legation, and Reinsch in particular. The journal at the direction of the French minister had angrily tiraded against Standard Oil several years earlier, which had as a result caused the delay of their own oil explorations... or at least had contributed to the delay.

It couldn't have been oil at this point. Standard Oil, and well the situation with Bai Lang had changed. The dynamic was different now. He thought of the Texas Germans who were scooped up and shepherded for Bill's oil work. He thought about the Cadre shift since the war had begun.

"You got that look on your face again."

He shook his head, "We've changed so much." Never mind that even in just the last six months there was starting to be a current that agreed the Nakamichi's suggestion should have been heeded, should they really have started moving towards three divisions last year instead of putting it off.

"Introduction of scientific management you mean? I mean if it stops a famine." Dawes hawked and spat, "These folks have had potatoes, since what the Ming right? Portuguese brought all of Americas fixings from the new world when Queen Elizabeth was around."

Centuries... and the population showed it. Complex agricultural organization with new advantageous crops, you get a population boom... then three hundred years to cook "I wasn't actually talking about farming." There were farmers who much like some people who distrusted or feared telegraphs disliked tractors. The mechanization process outcompeted the old ways, and it wasn't as if tennant farmers had been doing well anyway. "I was thinking about the original cadre. That's scientific management too."

Dawes mmhmmed in response nodding, "Yep, Management, and special projects. Trunk and line still needs work. Will need somebody or a couple somebodies if we're serious about the ford thing, and thinking about the office in Switzerland. Its a lot of work."

He was interrupted by a whispy haired lieutenant colonel on staff duty. The news wasn't really a surprise. "You think Percy knew?" He had to have suspected.

"That the Fukien bastards were going to make this move. Probably, hell we were expecting them to do it." The two of them tossed a look backwards from the observation deck to Percival Graves bawking, fidgeting under a sun shade and clearly fretting up a storm. "You better go see what he wants, he's a spring waiting to fly."

With a grimace they did that leaving the exercise yard behind by a ford, and to one of the offices where a bevy of company fellows sat at their teak escritoires busily. The names on the wall map were pressing. Pins in Chunking, and other parts of the west. Towns in Gansu, and Tibet. Young Ma ... well Allen was starting to suspect that the brigade commander was enjoying himself, and ignoring his uncles and the order to return... because he wasn't coming back yet. He wasn't sure what Hongkui thought he was doing, but it sure seemed like he had no idea what was going on in the capital... or it was possible he just didn't care.

Allen wasn't sure which of those two possibilities was worse. It was not hte sort of thing he wanted to discuss with Percy especially not given the mess Szechwan and Yunnan were without Little Ma trying to whack moles. China was a country as large as the states, and the mountains were high... and apparently not just Peking was far away. Percy spared the Journal du Peking copy a look, and settled into a chair leaving the staff sergeant to close the door, and look menacing to anyone outside, with surprising levity for as wound as he was Percy shrugged, "Oh come now John Allen the game is the game. Really." The englishman shook his head

Though it was called the Beiyang Fleet it really had nothing to do with the Beiyang army in a political affiliation sort of way. It wasn't just interservice rivalry. The Beiyang fleet, the modern chinese navy, had been humiliated as a result of its own corruption and ineptitude during the war with Japan... it didn't matter that ten years later Japan would trounce the Russians. It didn't excuse the Beiyang Fleet's own failings. So official name be damned Fukien clique was more accurate.

And the situation was a mess.

They weren't backing Li, per se. The admirals wanted a return to the 1912 constitution... the one that had never really been in effect, and even at the best had lasted months before reality had set in. It was a contrast though between what the Navy clique wanted, and... for example the pony tail general wanted. He was demanding parliament be dissolved and that Li resign. Duan was still staying quiet, so maybe the Tujun Association of Beiyang generals had talked all this out. Let the monarchist get loud and bang on, for some compromise

"That would be reassuring, the royalist party in parliament wants a constitutional monarchy."

He shrugged shaking his head, that wasn't news at all, "They've wanted that for years."

"They've asked Zhang Xun to ask Duan Qirui to support it."

... there was only one question to that, "Has he?" He paused, "Asked Duan?"

"We assume so." Percy accepted a brandy and sipped. "Hsu," Shih'chang, "is refusing to get involved." Allen wasn't surprised. Despite holding the rank of general, and having been a long time friend and confident of Yuan, in the Beiyang army he had no troops to his name.

... it made sense... then... the royalists ask pony tail, Zhang asks Duan... and by that point Zhang's had to have done the math... Li has no troops the southern provinces are fractured, threaten independence demand Li and the southern parliamentarians quit... the bigger question was really why now? Chunking? Probably not. ... he supposed it really could have been everyone was fed up with it. "So what's England going to do?"

"Goodness John Allen." Percy replied, "What are we supposed to do, this is a disaster. We can't just let them disolve into civil war." He wondered what Percy had been doing when Tsai O had declared independence, and Yuan Shikai had tried to make himself emperor and all of that... but he supposed in 1915 most of the trouble had been concentrated in the southwest with the Yunnan clique and it hadn't effected the international outlook. Taking a breath, and then a steadying sip, he shook his head, "Feng is being quiet... we don't know whats going on in Kiangsu."

Feng was unlikely to support a southern revival.... but... the possibility of Nanking, the largest city in the province revolting was another matter entirely. Feng might have been hesitant to give the firebrands an excuse unless he was sure he could handle it... Nanking was a powder keg for tongs and triads even after the manchu had been thrown out, and it wasn't just the cantonese revolutionaries that were a problem.

With little else to possibly calm the Englishman there was one card left to play, and he reached down to the leather file, and the documents in. "Here is your Buhkharan problem." He unfolded a map of the Trans Caspian railway, as it had been, when they had opened the company in Peking... but he doubted it was much out of date given the sluggish capital flows of the Russians, and of course the war that was now nearly three years on. "These are the Russian Railways. This is the Tian mountains between, and this is the now furthest extent of our building." He indicated, "We can dynamite and grade through the mountain, but I am not authorizing building on Russian soil without something in writing,"

Percy was salivating over the railway map, "Perfectly understandable John Allen... this is more than sufficient to start." The reality was things were disintegrating faster in Russia's large western cities now that the summer months had arrived. Inflation, and the stripping of workers and beasts to work the farms for years had meant a steadily declining rate of productivity of farms making the Russian Empire dependent on foreign stocks , which of course only increased prices. The unpopularity of the Tsarina, the disgrace of the Tsar, and the influx of revolutionaries backed by foreign capital only had worsened things over the months of 1917.

 

[Imperator Pax]

June 1917
The 'soviet congress' on that Saturday had been inconsequential... fully prepared to dismiss English handwringing as the same sort that somehow marx had been responsible for the paris commune. So obsessed with the situation that somehow somewhat it was a must that the Germans be responsible for the gathering of socialists. It was such that the telegraph made it possible to know that such was happening that the embassy could send the message abroad that was the greater fact.

... the details though were lacking. Allen regarded the cable with concern. The British were sure that German money was supporting the socialists in Russia. The French mutinies were supposedly also the work of german spies... the old lion's government had hastily arranged show trials to try and prove it but really the French army was just tired.... that they had lasted so long was more impressive... but French were obviously at their breaking point. All of their plans for war had been to draw up and invade Germany. For thirty years the French had planned, and revised, planned and revised... and when war had finally come the French Grand Offensive, their Elan Vitale had been ground out, put through a sausage maker and expelled... and for what, what was the price of a mile?

He supposed when one got right down to it... after having been pushed into the war by Edward Gray strong arming the cabinet... the Briti... the Empire' War strategy could be thought of as the same grand strategy as against napoleon. Keep France and Russia in the fight and grind Germany down try and bring in as many other allies as possible. The broad moves were the same, especially in terms of the economics. Cut the enemy off as much as possible from support from abroad... from foreign capital.

The war couldn't last forever but it sure seemed like it could.

He did the only thing he could imagine appropriate in this situation and groaned. In solidarity one of the cavalry veterans raised his glass of beer. Cole himself was absent so the veteran of the 7th​ cavalry wielded his proxy vote in the cadre as his friend garrisoned Zhengzhou's railway depot. "Cullen reckons a fight is now inevitable." The Virginian drawled. He was dressed Allen noted in the gray uniform, and with pins signifying a command staff placement with 3rd​ Regiment, and not a place with the Gendarmes. "Intercepted telegrams hold that Duan wants to secure the Hankow rail line... from the sound of it otherwise, he means to mass the divisions from Peking and invade hunan directly through the rails."

"So it was a farce?"

It being the discussions between Li, and ole pony tail. The President had agreed to dismiss parliament. The Fukien clique had rebelled in protest demanding the reinstatement of the original constitution... and now this. "It might, or just as likely Duan is upping his ante."

Hunan was the gateway to the south. Holding that rail line meant he could push 8th​ and 30th​ divisions of the Peking army all the way to Canton. And roll troops to reinforce the Kiangsi, as well as move troops into Szechwan. The only limitation really was that of Yunnan. Even though its leader was dead, the Yunnan clique could still follow the same strategy and withdraw into the province's foothills beyond the reach of the railway and fight the larger, better equipped Peking divisions on their own terms.

... but that would be all that the Yunnan army could hope to do... but of course that would bleed an already perilously short of funds northern military of money, and material. Losses that had been enough to get Yuan to back off his whole imperial ascendancy plan.
--
The report had snuck up on him. He hadn't been thinking about summer, or the evaluations or any of that... not summer in that way. They were a monopoly in so many ways. He'd been expecting next month's steel and oil reports. Vertical and horizontal integration of goods and services put their hands in so many pies. He was expecting reports from what he still occasionally caught himself thinking of as the 'new arsenals' Watie, and Simmons were both due to report in on the machine tooling situation, and their adoption of the Pattern 1913 rifles to their 200gr 7.92... but he had forgotten was due to cross his desk were the school board reports.

Chinese written with vernacular characters. Chinese romanized. English.

Pidgin English, and Vernacular English were not the same thing. The British be damned... but there was an existing habit of clipping words, dropping unnecessary ones and relaying commands such that ... he had expected that there was a borrowing of phrases both back and forth that lended to some confusion.

Then of course if not that then there was the perennial problem of busybodies sticking their noses where they didn't belong.

Allen was glad to be interrupted from civil administration... even if it was to confront the increasing acceleration towards conflict. The horse trading was getting irritating. Li said dissolving parliament was unconstitutional. Three days later, all of sudden Zhang's demand was reasonable. The Fukien clique wanted the original provisional constitution reinstated Duan agrees. Duan then starts maneuvering troops to the railway hub to as they presumed invest Hunan.

Since 1911 the Japanese had just started tallying everything as 'the Chinese incident' and numbered off as the years went by as it happened year in year out. He could understand why Japan's General staff had taken to just assigning all of this a number and writing out what they knew even as Nakamichi finished bringing him up to speed. Duan agreeing to the original proposed constitution flew straight in the face of ... not just his apparent agreement with constitutional monarchy with Zhang Xun, but also the former premier's own political ambitions. Duan wasn't going to honor that agreement, and the navy boys had to be sun baked to think he would.

Not that a constitution was a terrible idea, but ... well

Nakamichi adjusted his spectacles in contemplation.

Allen blew a breath out, and glanced at the man who'd taken the seat across the table. "How many troops is Zhang bringing into the city?"

"Officially it is a regiment." Five thousand of the roughly twenty thousand division that was the Wu Wei Corp as it existed in the here and now.

"Does Zhang know?"

"About the motion to reinstate the Provisional Constitution?"

"To the best of our knowledge no." The answer only redoubled the necessity of getting a hold of Percy... and probably the US Legation as well.

He sucked in a breath, and thought back to Yuan sending old pony tail to Nanking during the 'second revolution' 1913. If he got to Peking thinking everyone was on the same page, that parliament had been dissolved, and that they were getting a constitutional monarchy only to find that there was talk of the provisional constitution there was going to be blood.

Nakamichi nodded in agreement, "Of course that could be the objective. Zhang may be investing the capital while troops prepare to move to quash the rebels."

Underhanded, but sure. A ruse du geurre. "Yunnan is still de facto independent." Even though they had 'cancelled' their 'declaration of independence' it wasn't as if they were sending taxes to Peking... and they weren't the only ones. There had also been at least one semi successful mutiny, in so far as they managed to seize the ship for a time, in Shanghai in that year. Kiangnan Arsenal was at Shanghai in full view of the international settlement, which was going to bring in the French, and British and very likely both Japan and the States.

There would be unrest though potentially dangerous amounts of it... and even though it had been overshadowed by the war in Europe, Bai Lang wasn't forgotten, and nor had the Boxers been erased from the memory. Nakamichi's mission separate from the internal feuds of the Legation, and disagreements between differing cliques, was security. The same sort of protection and extension of protection of foreign nationals, namely foreign missionaries as during 1913 and 14.

"We have no presence in Shanghai, or Shantung," Admittedly the army's 15th​ division and the leathernecks had a small mixed force in the bay area, but he couldn't make promises of US forces, given the situation... especially as Japan had seized the German concession there two years earlier.

Perhaps though, the biggest news, the pivot was the foreign ministry under Terauchi's government from Okuma. Terauchi wanted Duan, China to join the war against Germany... for whatever a Chinese declaration of war on Germany would mean... and well Hayashi seemed to be in agreement now advocating for a complete severing of relations with the south, including the vital supply of japanese arms to the KMT.

... which was a hell of a change of direction for the minister. Allen was sure something must have happened, that they had missed, beyond just the new government coming into power in October.
--
Notes: Among other things this is part of the reason Xian will go on to promulgate a written constitution in 1919/1920... besides that a lot of provinces were doing that, and that even though the Peking government was still recognized (such that it was represented at the 21-22 Washington Conference) it no longer ruled even the northern provinces. And of course in that same time frame, Japan, France, America, the UK etc etc made a host of differing aggreements and then broke them as governments changes, and conditions changed. June 1917 ends in the next update, and in July we begin the actual shooting phase.

 

[Imperator Pax]

June 1917 Conclusion​

What would come over the course of the next few days proved to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. The only rationalization that was made after was political struggle, the struggle over who was going to actually be in charge. Zhang Xun, or Duan Qirui, and then Feng through his hat into the ring of the Beiyang officers, and that was enough. So instead of fighting the south a fracas emerged between northern troops. It wouldn't turn into a free for all... but all of sudden it was Beiyang troops on both sides. One supporting a silly Manchu restoration under an alleged constitutional monarchy, according to the Royalist party that the pony tail general was a friend of, and the other ironically beiyang troops supporting the provisional national constitution in name only under Duan Qirui. Then there were all the people caught in between. Feng chose to sitting the fight out among them in Nanking.

It was to be what one journalist accurately described as a completely farcical affair where no one was quite sure who was on which side, and entirely prototypical of many future struggles. The backroom deals and everything were only part of it.

"Pony tail commands the largest number of any single Beiyang officer." A full modern, an overstrength really, Division. "The Wu Wei corp is twenty thousand men. Cao Kun had the 3rd Division which is understrength, but near enough to put him in the running of largest forces after Feng and Duan." The average Beiyang division was no where near their paper allotment of men or machine guns... realistically that was just a matter of money, but a secondary factor had been political reliability. The Qing had opened the army to attempt to modernize and then the uprising had occurred, and the northern divisions had turned to support Yuan Shikai. Yuan had moved to downsize and disarm the southern divisions that had joined the rebels and to an extent cut them from funds , keeping or attempting to keep about half a million men under arms...

Allen nodded running his tongue over his teeth and picking up a long brass case. 200 grains, slightly heavier than the original match loads they had used, but the same spitzer boat tail shape, just mild changes in production. The original load had been without any sort of assumptions to machine gun usage... what would they have shot it out of, at the time... then later that became a realistic need, and they had had more and better machines so a little heavier bullet, fifty grains of powder. A first place finisher to be sure.

He put the bullet down and picked up the silver dollar... "Cao needs ammo again I take it?"

"Yeah." The affirmative was grunted out.

Which meant he was afraid a fight was going to break out. This wasn't the first time, and probably wouldn't be the last. The offer of silver mexican coinage wasn't unusual. It was good currency and was Cao's normal fare. It shouldn't have been bothering him. "And Cole, anything?"

"Situation seems tense."

Zhengzhou was a special city. The Qing had started directly administering it as the railway network had come through, Yuan Shikai had kept that up... but things had already been complicated by that point... and the status quo had just sort of been shambling along for the last year.

Zhengzhou was not technically within the confines of Zhili province. It was in Honan, and its direct administration by the capital, as a result of the mass of rail hubs, and mills caused the province to chafe a bit at it. There were gentry who complained... who had agitated in the railway scuffle in 1910 and then the year after and there were still some doing it. From Zhili, to Zhengzhou, and then about ninety degrees heading west that was how their line went, and the property rights that went with the line... because the line got built, and because of the expansion. Coal. Steel. He thought of the oil explorations that had had to be sidelined and were only now really coming underway.

Zhao Ti had declared independence of Honan from Peking a month ago. That meant he was confident he could hold the province against any revolutionary sentiment, but they'd have to see if that was born out in truth.

"He hasn't been able to keep the southern bandits quiet."

Or stop Hsu, the one in the south of the province, not the one in Tietsin, from coming over the border either. They were both kind of sort of trouble in their own rights, but as June had dragged on all sorts of people had started to walk on eggshells.

They had been attempting to do the later... but manpower was short... and the truth was shooting Hu wasn't... wouldn't have been neighborly. Hu was at least so far as Shaanxi's public was concerned fighting bandits, ... "Hu?"

"Has surprisingly stayed off the telegraph for the last couple of weeks. I think he's waiting to see what's going to happen." The last that they had heard was that he supported returning to the provisional constitution, and then at the end of may had condemned the dissolution of parliament... so him being quiet was a potential concern.

They ran through the list. Peking was distracted, and if a fought broke out it would be all too clear that there wasn't going to be anybody to stop them from settling scores.
--
Chen was in Tietsin of course. So was Cao. The consensus was Zhao didn't have the troops to hold the province on his own in the face of any significant uprising. Not when he had to share military power with the Hongwei army and with other older green banner types.

He knew the Hongwei had a couple of old... he wondered when he had started thinking of 1903 Krupps as old... mountain guns. 75 mm, but not enough of them. Similarly there was Yunnan, whose officers complained about their lack of modern guns, loudly and often about their distaste for their dated french artillery. Guns that were the same vintage as those used in the Chunking incident that had made the paper last month.

Allen tossed a look to the 'parking lot'.... which was more accurate he supposed than motor pool or garage since it was just a big interior square with not maintenance bays.

"Still thinking about the car?"

The cherry red mitsubishi Hayashi had was a lovely vehicle. All of the interior hardwood and upholstrey was handmade specific for each order ... which would mean it wouldn't exactly be a surprise. "Just trying to find the time."

"So Yan?"

He drummed his fingers on the paper. The prospectus was uncertain because of the war in Europe, not so much because of a fight here.. but Zhengzhou needed to remain open and running west and northword.

"Yes."

In contrast to plenty of others, the dujun of Shensi had accepted more or less from the outset Yuan's monarchial proclamations... it had been an odd development... and Yuan had awarded the governor who just the year earlier he'd been accusing of sedition a title of nobility within his new dynastic system. It hadn't come to anything, not really the fighting down south had cost too much money to sustain for too little gain, and Yuan had abdicated returning to merely being president, and then had passed away a year ago this month.

"How is the staff taking it?"

"I haven't had the chance to talk to Shan, but Major Deng," who was currently in his staff rotation as adjutant in place of the older Manchu colonel, "is skeptical."

"Why's that?"

"Says they're too poor." He paused, and shook his head, "Deng thinks they're too poor to help, but I think thats looking at it wrong. Yan has done a lot of good for his province for what little capital he has access to." He looked at Griswold . "Why?"

"Chen is barely in the province at all Allen. His running off to Tietsin looks bad when there are already bandit issues, and having Gansu brigades here fighting bandits coming from Szechwan, makes it all the worse. It might be one thing if it was Cao Kun as Dujun," but they weren't talking about Zhili so Cao's marital relations didn't count. The fact was that that was even a point of consideration in army movements was ridiculous. "we have to do something."

"We're approaching a situation where capital divide is going to be an issue," he rejoindered. "The swiss office is up, and have funds in the bank, and the word from Europe is concerning." Leaving aside the Russian matter the franc was near to worthless now. The pound was doing better , but the franc had cratered from its pre war value... the french had been printing money like crazy of course, and the US had been taking on gold reserves until the french had suspended exchange. "Powell-"

"Has talked to Edenborn about the office." Griswold replied, "and I'm gonna be honest, he's been talking to others as well. That rail job is tempting, and I think its about time we start adding local hands to the cadre. Some of us are going to move on anyway, but we take that job in the banana republic, and we can ship stock to them via the pacific, and that will let us ease down production."

"We'd be losing Powell to the job."

"Probably so," It would have other effects than that, but 1917's problems were looking more immediate... the real end to the war still seemed far off. The war still seemed like it was never going to end. The prospect of constitution at the provincial level would be discussed but would take time, and by the time they started drafting there were other reforms. Shansi as a province started to move to a municipal, and revised county structure before the constitution that was to be was drafted... made possible simply because of Xian's population relative to the rest of the province. It was NYC to New York, more or less, while also being Albany... but the coming violence justified the reforms at the 'state' level, and justified changes that would be rapidly in place by August.

... and of course when the cutting was done this summer those changes would spiral into even more changes. "Anything else I should know about?"

"Percy is up to something."

Not a surprise, "What makes you say that?"

"He's talking about some Russian German Count something or other." He raised an eyebrow, the Georgian shrugged, "Its whats been said. "I've heard his name before... paper, distinctions," He scrunched up, and then reeached into the broad breast pocket of his gray uniform, "Keller." Griswold muttered looking at the telegram copy.

"What about him?"

"The British think the Russians are going to exit the war under this new government, especially with what's going on." The implication of course was that the British might well have been wanting to stage a counter revolution, a coup to keep the Russians in the war... and of course possibly put someone they trusted in the top slot over the French's man there currently, or some unknown later.
--
Notes: June is basically the political set up chapter, both locally, internally, externally, nationally, internationally... etc WW1 related fuckery is still going on, there is the matter of other things in the timeline that strictly speaking are municipal politics, but there are also the old china hands (as they would be come to known) after the war in the diplomatic corp, and of course in the broader timeline sense, the Cadre as a China based trading house/firm/corporate entity is about to start preparing to subdivide into other firms that will continue to play a role into the timeline into the cold war.

In the next chapter (July) we go back to active shooting phase and small battles focused on the sub units, because that is basically all July is up until its conclusion. It is roughly a twelve days of small skirmishes and who controls what chokepoint, and what resources.
--
As to update schedule in general, thus far August's planned schedule has currently derailed. I will probably figure a new schedule next week sometime.

 

[Imperator Pax]

1 July 1917

It was a madhouse this morning. There was no two ways about, and they were lucky that they'd been here and not in Xian, but it was July and well... there had been plans for finances, and looking at steel numbers coupled with a long over due conversation as they prepared to deliver to Tietsin the Australian's order.

A warning telegram had gone out before midnight. Something had been going on in Peking for the last couple of days, but it hadn't seemed like anything more than the backroom deals that had been going back and forth since march.

Then over a period of about eight hours the pieces started to fall into place. The President of the Republic had signed his name to a piece of paper that endorsed a new constitutional order... the restoration of the last Qing Emperor, the pipsqueak who lived in the forbiden city. At four am the Wu Wei corp troops secured the city, and with the help of the capital police began the process of informing by placard and criers the announcements of Imperial Restoration.

The five thousand Wu Wei Corp Troops in the capital had little trouble taking control of the city apparatus. No, the problem wasn't Peking. It wasn't even the south. It was trying to assert and ascertain authority. Who was in charge, who had the ability to exert power.

That was where the shooting started, at least so far as the shooting that made the news. Percy had managed to get in the door somehow, but he was late. "John Allen."

"Not now Percy." He shouldered past the smaller man with the rifle slung over his back, and another in his hand along with one of the tin boxes. Men all around them were girding for war. Cartridge belts slung over chests in a way that evoked another conflict.

"John Allen." The englishman protested.

"Move," Another American voice grunted and Waite shoulder checked Percival Graves out of his way without a pause. The engineer had a Lewis gun in both hands. "We got fighting to do." He snarled. Percy straightened his uniform, and seemed to slow down enough to look around at the seventy or so men in the office were busy with guns of their own.


"What are you doing?" Percy asked before realizing he was being left behind followed them back to the elevator he had presumably come up, "John Allen, Zhang Xun has positively lost his mind." The englishman's hands shook.

"Yep." Allen agreed shifting the Browning rifle he was carrying in his other hand to avoid having it smack another man with a Lewis.

"What do you mean Yep. Thats not a response." A couple of grayback ncos and officers alike turned slighted. "That's not a response John Allen. He's gone crazy."

"Pretty much." He agreed. Percy shook in growing display of ... was he losing his nerve.

"The ... the capital."

"Peking isn't our problem, Percy. Zhu is my problem."

Percy's face was starting to discolor, but he slowly processed the words, and maybe that was enough of a line for him to reel himself back in, "Well what did he do?"

"He," Or admittedly more likely someone under his command really, "Made the mistake of shooting at Cole, and the lads over there." There was a thud as the elevator came to rest on the ground floor and opened back into the foyer of the big build. "Sounds like they had an argument, we've got a couple of wounded already. I mean to make him regret that." Allen moved out with the rest following he took a right and followed that side of the building all the way to the waiting Quads with their large beds, and then looked up the color sergeant supervising the loading. "Wang how are we on time?"

"Another hour." The NCO looked apologetic. "Still gassing some of the fords, and loading ammunition."

"Get it done."

"Sir." A salute, and then the NCO commenced to yelling at the enlisted.

He moved on. Percy followed until they hit the raised platform. "What are you going to do?"

"Near as we can figure Zhang wants to control the railways to the capital, the Capital Guards look like they mustered to try and seize the northern line." that seemed like the most obvious situation. "We're going to cut the line going south before those troops get here, or they can get down to reinforce Zhu's boys in Zhengzhou, then we're going to swing and relieve Cole."

He nodded, "You're going to swing, and relieve Cullen-" He trailed off as a tractor lumbered up the ramp onto a flat car, "Oh heavens what are those."

Percy's surprise was a little absurd the transition from hydro spring recoil to hydro pneumatic shouldn't have been that much of a shock, "150 mm howitzer improved model." There were four of the monstrous guns. Descendants of the guns that had broken Bai Lang's attack on Xian three years earlier fitted with modern recoil, and new trails. Each of them had a tractor to pull them and two more tractors just for carrying wagons of ammo waiting for their turn to mount flatbeds and be tied in.

"That's them." The artillery man swung up, the red leg looked happy as he'd been. "We're gonna put some work in." Dawes slapped the englishman heartily on the shoulder. "Cao Kun is furious at Zhu Jiabao, you should hear that boy swear."

"And third division?"

"Mostly in and around Tietsin," Dawes shrugged. "he swears Duan's trying to get more people, but so long as Zhang has the eastern rail..." Then there was little way Cao Kun's main force could cross the province to the west... for any of a number of reasons.

Had Zhang known he was going to have to do that... they had really misread this whole mess. "Get this engine finished loading," He barked, "I want a phone line to the southern garrison to fill Colonel Shan in at the Bashan base area." Then there would getting ahold of the rest of his staff. "I want a meeting of the staff officers comprised on the car as soon as we are underway." Runners went to run, someone would have to phone the southern command... and then have to wait for the duty officer there to fetch... "Percy if you're coming, go find a seat on the train. I have things to do." There was too much to do, the excitement around the yard reminded him of when they had shipped from New York heading for the west, or even when they had departed San Francisco bay for the Philippines the first time... or when he'd stood on the train with the Japanese to observe their war with the Russians... he'd been here before.
--
They had stowed Percy off, two cars down, it had been almost tempting to ship with the second train, but the risked a bigger hullaballoo. "I'm taking a battalion from second," Waite stated and using a pointer to move along the map, "Cover this frontage here, if we don't make contact immediately, I'll drag up breastworks along this eight hundred yards, we'll dig in and throw along barbed wire and that should stop a charge."

"You're thinking cavalry?"

"Most likely. Still with the Wu Wei corp included if the capital troops have swapped over there must be close to eleven thousand troops going along with this 'Restoration'." He replied, and that was just the troops they knew were involved "I don't know what Zhu thinks he's doing."

The report of lancers was, borderline absurd in this day and age, but there was the chance Zhu intent was to show the flag and not actually commit to some fool expression of gallantry on north china's plains. The cherry wood table in the dining car had had one of the survey maps thrown over it, which had the advantage of up to date, and modern scaled topographic coverage of Zhili and the surrounding countryside.

"I've the question whether Zhu is slow, or if just doesn't know what he's doing?"

Allen turned to glance to Dawes, "How do you figure?"

"What I'm saying is the shooting in Zhengzhou started, what two hours ago. Zhang started throwing banners up at four am this morning, and he put his Wu Wei corp on the eastern rail line that stops anyone from coming in from tietsin." There were nods of acknowledgement, which seemed to have been the general disposition of troops that they knew for sure were under Zhang's direct command command. The old Qing style battalions though, who had admittedly been quick to side with Zhang's manchu restoration had started acting a couple hours later... but they hadn't been as fast to move anywhere, at least not until after daylight.

As nominal civilian head of the province Zhu had battalions under his command, and had attempted according to the wire to seize the rail line. "It looks like they're trying to secure the approaches to the capital."

"Right, which is what it probably is." Dawes agreed, "I think Zhu is aping what he thinks Zhang is doing without understanding why Zhang does it." The artilleryman swept a couple wood figures around the map, "He has moved his maxim guns and tried to cut the rail line, now Cole doesn't think he was after the mortars or other stuff we're shipping to the Australians, but Zhengzhou's way south of anywhere else that Zhu can order troops."

... and if he had tried it then he would have probably started a row with either Cao Kun ordinarily... or since Cao was in Tietsin, one of his subordinates in 3rd​ division. ... but of course Cao had taken his division with him to Tietsin. "I suppose the real question really boils down to the disposition of the penny packets Zhu has spread out." There were infantry battalions, really more like large companies at Zhengzhou, there were the reported cavalry at Baoding. "What about your redlegs?"

Dawes pointed to a hill to the northwest about four miles behind Waite's proposed breastworks, "I"ll encamp my people there, and we'll run lines, and dig the howitzers in, the battery will have elevation to cover the approaches and we can swing to."

That, that was the beginning. Four company sized formations comprising a battalion to deploy in the north, and the battle lines had been drawn.
--
Notes I take the position that it was more likely that Li was coerced by Zhang Xun to signing his name to the restoration than that it was a forgery, particularly because Zhang allowed Li to resign and leave for tietsin the morning of. I expect Li claimed Zhang forged it to try and save his already damaged reputation from further harm. That is the interpretation presented here in regards to the legal fiction surrounding the restoration of Puyi. Historically on the 1st​ of July there were some minor skirmishes but for the most part no serious battles between troops in Zhili province as most units within the area of the capital somewhat danced around one another in apparent confusion over what was going on.

Indeed here that confusion is what actually causes the fighting to break out. Zhu Jiabao attempting to emulate Zhang's seizing of the railroad instigates a brief exchange escalating to the conflict here rather than both sides backing off and not getting into a protracted firefight with each calling for reinforcements from their respective sides.

For reference a Qing Territorial Defense Battalion (infantry) was nominally 504 men on paper, but were often either a result of graft or just problems with retention were single company formations under the command of local literati or gentry. This became pointedly worse in the republic as local elites were given honorary command of groups of men, that they would then enhance by declaring their unit to be a size larger for the prestige, without actually increasing men under arms. And again to refer back for comparison to pre-xian rifle battalions, they're roughly equivalent in manpower to Qing Regiments in strength (as by the end of the White Wolf Rebellion they're equivalent in size to a British Rifle Battalion's number of men)

 

[Imperator Pax]

1 July 1917
There were no sign of the capital guard's horses, either as a formation a horse, as scouts or even as messengers. They had most likely dismounted if they were still present, but it was equally possible that they had ridden for elsewhere.

It was possible they were fighting as dismounted infantry. There had been sporadic reports from the left flank of rifle fire from a hill that seemed to be equipped Mausers instead of the pattern 88 rifles, but at the same time some of the territorial defense battalion had Schonausers instead of those.

It was clear that these were Qing holdover units that Zhu had kept on the payroll from the civilian governorship's purse... without being units that Yuan had wanted to spend money to receive newer more modern arms, thus Zhu had probably bought what he could get. Zhili had no shortage of such outdated infantry, and it was clear that these weren't Yuan's last attempt at forming modern battalions... but most likely those troops were with Cao Kun as military governor of the province, which meant they were stuck on the wrong side of the province as Zhang sat on the eastern approach to the capital.

... which was another problem, but not theirs.

The troops in front of them represented almost forty years of attempts to modernize the green standard bearers of teh Qing. Rong Lu, long before Yuan Shikai, had tried like those who had succeeded him to time and again downsize and demobilize the outdated troops and provide a replacement with modern guns. Forty odd years of stop start hemmed in by conservative sinecures, and near feudal hereditary entitlements to paid positions had stymied the provincial troops, and thus even last year the official number of battalions still on the books had numbered more than eighty.

Not that it was likely even a fraction of those were close to their paper allotment. The financial limits of the province, the myriad of tax exemptions, carve outs, and of course other expenses, never mind questions of political reliability, had meant the battalions were provided for by different provincial officials including magistrates who received commands of their own, but without real expectation of seeing a battle. That must have been a sure shock when the Boxer rebellion had broken out almost twenty years ago. Only the modern Gansu braves under the Wu Wei corp had really proven their mettle finally departing the field when faced with a superior force as the arrival of a full strength Japanese Division had arrived and demonstrated the intention to mount a reckless bayonet charge through their ranks.

That was the irony of course the Wu Wei corp had survived the boxer rebellion. Leaving aside that the corp had fractured and fought on both sides depending on geographic location, the Gansu troops under Ma had quit the field withdrawn eventually to Xian before ultimately returning to their home provinces after the protocol was signed... but for the territorial defense battalions most had largely scattered in the face of the advancing alliance forces after the forts had been taken.

Rifle fire echoed in packets, but that was normal. The new sound were sounds that hadn't been heard before, the shriek and whine of mortar bombs descending as noon day approached. "Any chances they'll crawl out of those dykes before we get the three inches in them?"

There was a pause as another stokes battery lobbed towards the irrigation works that had been appropriated for fighting positions. "Can't say."

Allen glanced at the line, pulled his sleeve back to look at the watch. "We're not getting anywhere with this." They were burning day light as it was, and they needed to push the battalions back north in order for Griswold to stretch his breastworks to either side of the railway, "Those dykes are on the map, I'm going to see if Dawes can lay them out."

Which was really more the question of had Dawes gotten his battery dug in. "You think Dawes is serious about making fifteen miles?"

"I don't know, but this should only be twelve, the old guns will do that." They had the advantage of known ranges. This may as well have been the backyard... and it seemed as if they were the only ones who had brought artillery. "Either way I want those infantry backed up, if you can bottle them back," the fifteen miles back up the line to Baoding then that would be plenty. The battalion only needed to dig in and hold here while the rest of the regiment prepared to deploy along the western Zhili salient once the rest of second was dismounted Shijiazhuang would be safe from approach from the northern rail, and then the first could take the rail line down to Zhengzhou leaving the second to anchor the division's northern most positions in the west of the province.

Once the regiments were settled into place and their center battalions dug in that would be it. The actual travel time by the railway would mean less, because the troops would be committed. That was the hurdle the paper thin margins of spare troops.

As if reading his mind Waite shrugged, "I can hold. I don't fancy trying to take the town," But then that wasn't the objective. Baoding didn't matter. Keeping Zhu from turning this into a fight over Shijiazhuang behind them was the goal, keeping the rail line open and running from their town to its southern, and western terminus stations was their objective. "Not with the numbers being what they are, but with the rest of the regiment," a total of about thirty seven hundred men, "I can probably stretch our frontage to watch about five miles, and there are some rivers to the east which should make an advance from the east trouble."

Zhu wasn't likely to try that. It was a little too adventurous for the mandarin. They were banking that he'd try and hold Baoding over trying to break through, but just in case there was artillery. "I'm still not comfortable with them that close to our line."

"We could ask them to leave."

It hadn't escaped him that that was a potential option. Parley, and see if they were willing to fall back to their main lines nearer to the city to the north? It might work. Allen checked his wristwatch again, and looked up at the sky, "Do what you think his best, its your command, I'm going to get on the train and see about the loading for the first, and then see about getting to Zhengzhou and dug in before five o'clock."
--
In historical terms though there was very real fighting the reports that made the circulars, and reached western newspapers were penned in almost dulcet tones and with verbiage that evoked a long bygone age. Europe had been at war for nearly three years now, and yet on the first of July 1917 the attempted restoration evoke the same clamoring discussions of foreign conflicts by observers present for previous conflicts.

For all the silly flowery language it is to be irrevocably modern conflict. Zhang Xun's Wu Wei corp within Peking are armed with modern rifles, and equipped with modern german style cartridge belts and uniforms. The five thousand troops of his division sized force are even to be reported wearing the standard gray of the regular beiyang army, though some of his supporters still wear older black uniforms of the Qing Gendarmes and old wu wei corp. Nearly all of Zhang's men have the manchu queue despite being overwhelmingly ethnically han in composition.

Duan Qirui who will eventually command fifty thousand troops in the eastern Zhili plains is also a modern general. An artillery officer, whose infantry where the same gray uniforms of northern china's first modern army. It will ultimately be Duan's political maneuvering which secure together the beiyang troops to swell his field army to its peak, and secures the nominal support of at least three times that which will ensure that this little summer war lasts only half the month... but even in its first day Tietsin's would be poet laureates of the conflict are quick with pen and paper.

Percival Graves sitting in the train car makes no distinction between provincial, never mind the municipal rivalries of troops. He occasionally quips about some rivalry between one division in the beiyang army having with another, which is generally expressed by separate clubs or social institutions determined by their commanding officers. For years the beiyang army has been the firmament that has kept China together, and ultimately this will be the beginning of the end of that as this conflict between the modern army will send splits into the organization, and turn those different officer clubs into defined basically territorial kingdoms.

... but that isn't apparent on the first of July. Zhang Xun, the pony tail general, still seems convinced that his fellow Beiyang generals are just playing their parts, and surely that they'll come around. At lunch he sends out circulars denouncing the southern parliamentarians and espousing the usual royalist party talking points. The goal of this is on its face a constitutional monarchy, and that Zhang Xun wants heavily derived from Prussia.

... and of course that certain german styling and the sudden seizure of power is enough to make certain western observers nervous... but those accusations will rear their head later, after the fighting has largely petered out, and when its convenient to make them.

The wide tracks are varying the first regiment south at breakneck speeds. With good steel tracks, and well built carriages its a comfortable ride, and Percy's gold embossed pen is one of several hastily busy scrawling away.

Percy isn't the only one writing, and nor is he the only one not in field gray. The difference is his English khakis are overshadowed among that sea of gray. Of a lounge compartment repurposed to hold the regimental staff he's further distinguished by the Webley... he's the only man in the room still carrying a revolver in this day and age.. Nakamichi, always busily writing, has a pearl gripped colt automatic, though in a thirty caliber compared to the larger models of 1911 that are the predominantly represented browning artifice. Like Percy though Nakamichi isn't travelling with a long gun, Percy doesn't mind, he's an officer of the King of England... and what not, and he's just here to observe... and help where he can. Both of them and a few others in a neighboring, and somewhat less martial car, ready purposed as an expansion to the doctor's surgery, are here to help take stock of wounded, and foreigners caught in the middle of all of this 'unpleasantness' as Percy's termed it already. The two men were present for other reasons. They were a link to their respective governments, and in turn to the other end of telegraph lines that could tell them what was going on in the neighboring northern provinces like Anhui.

--
Notes little bit of a varied transition as we move into the evening of the 1st.

 

[Imperator Pax]

1st​ July 1917
The summer meant there was still daylight in the sky, but as a precaution large arc lights had been pulled out and set to a dynamo in order to dismount. If they needed them to keep digging in and grading the fighting positions then they were there, and then after wards they'd mount them in the direction of the enemy to sweep through the night, but that would mostly be looking for scouts that might not even come in the dark. It was a quarter to five now, they had a couple more hours of daylight.

The three odd hour train ride had been made possible by the wider gauge tracks supporting higher speeds from the powerful locomotives... and the fact that when they'd built the line running the length they'd carved, graded, and dynamited the whole course way flat and straight... a feet of engineering that had taken most of 1911. That had been six years... and the RPF to protect the railways against bandits, against Bai Lang.

Zhengzhou was at the heart of it all. It was why 1st​ regiment's artillery batteries were all drawn from the light artillery brigade while 2nd​ had Dawes's heavy guns. The truth was he didn't want to have to be put in a position where they had to bring the 3 inchers up, but they'd be less destructive, and easier to maneuver in a direct fire role if it came to that being what needed to be done.

A ford angrily honked as parts of a motorized scout section dismounted narrowly avoiding one of its siblings. Its steel bolted on upper carriage forming a sloping gun shield similar to the Krupp's, to provide some measure of protection to the men manning the Vickers gun. The armored cars weren't intended to to dismount the heavy machine guns, it was possible to do so but not 'field expedient' the way the larger quads had been set up... but then different purposes, and they didn't have the provisional mechanized rifles.

These were not bandits. Zhu's militia looked good on the parade, and now Allen supposed they'd find out how well Zhili's territorial defense battalions fared in actual fighting. Zhengzhou had another potential problem, that could turn this into a three sided sort of fiesta. Percy and Nakamichi were both standing in the forward of the depot, near the large posted map of the city that had been centrally administered since the Qing. The Qing had hoped in some of their early reforms to be able to run centrally administered railways, and they had failed miserably ... there had been other problems that had hampered that 40 years ago, beyond just not understanding the engineering, and not having the capital. The next turns which had knotted everything up had been the schizophrenia the manchu court had been prone to in its waning years, especially after Japan had kicked the Qing into the dirt. The dynasty had survived the humiliation, but at a cost the Old Buddha seemed to have finally plunged off the deep end enough to side with the boxers.

... And that had divided China into three geographic distinctions of sentiment. The North. The Center, meaning the Yangtze provinces. The south... like Canton. "What about the western station John Allen?"

"2nd​ Battalion from Xian rolled off ahead of us to reinforce the company already at the yard." He replied, but the station in question, the rail yard where they normally stored products from Xian's factories before they were loaded up and shipped on to Tientsin or weihaiwei or wherever were cut off by the larger problem.

That put them loosely on a map at right angles. 1st​ Battalion 1St was currently north of the city proper dismounting in the yard. The rail line had been built offset of things and north of the old city even though all the rail lines passed through the city proper. The central junction in the city proper was a tangled mess where the Belgian line, the attempt provincial line, and the British line all sort of jumbled on running around. Their own line went south, and then veered to the west. The Belgian line went east towards the coast. The British line kept south. The provincial which really had never gone anywhere, nominally also went south but didn't leave the province of Honan. Its course took through a couple of other towns. "What about your calls?" Cole and his gendarmes were stuck in the middle of the city that the Qing had insisted, at the time, the stations be built... which had made a certain sort of sense.

The two men looked between each other, "Anhui." Nakamichi beat the Englishman to it. "The old Qing armies have declared for Zhang Xun's restoration."

"Yes, well, they say that, of course but at the same time they're not actively firing on Duan Qirui's garrison troops, on the other hand they are blocking the rail south," Along the coast.

Probably to stop any attempts to exploit the crisis from the south, but if the Anwu army did decide to move in force that might shift the balance of power against Duan... or not. It could make a mess of things in the province if they all moved as one, but that wasn't a sure thing. Anhwei was also far enough away as to not be their problem. "What about the coastal linkage?"

Percy grimaced at Nakamichi for a moment. "There are Japanese troops garrisoning the line in Shandong, but everything north of the Yangtze is probably in rebel hands." There wasn't really a good way to get over the river going south in the east. There were no bridges to speak of.

"Nothing to be done then." They'd have to find out more if there was any chance of the Anwu army coming west via the Belgian route, or if Honan's gentry and the Hongwei Army that was a hold over to what their forbearers had originally organized to resist the Taiping decided to make a move. There was a thunk as a campaign table was set down, and the ruffling as large wall map of the city and its environs was stretched out over it. It was relatively recently printed, a few years old with all the primary features, but Zhu's battalions had scurried into the old city and were not stuck between the center and the northern part of town.

As things were, he wasn't sure if Zhu, or whatever battalion commander was on site in town, was prepared to commit. Cole's staff had reported that the territorial militia had maneuvered, coming to right order line in ranks. The successive formation deployment from column had prompted their opening up of the Gendarmes madsen guns, but without Artillery the actual damage from short bursts had probably been minimal.

He stuck a pin in where the Battalion had originally attempted to form their point du appoi, and then measured back to where they'd been pushed. The lack of any sort of bombardment, preparatory or otherwise suggested that neither initial formation had access to artillery. Either way the fighting had cleared most of the streets, with the affluent having withdrawn to their walled compounds. That would keep them out of the fighting of anything short of artillery unless someone deliberately forced a gate. The concentric city walls that the local gentry had argued so heavily to keep even after the Boxer rebellion had been breached in several places by various modern construction, but there were still parts where long stretches of old ramparts remained. They were militarily useless though and the gates that still had horse and coolie drawn litters come through would be little impediment to either side trying to go through.

"Do you expect to do much fighting today John Allen?"

Truthfully no. Percy had not been especially thrilled when 2-2's mortars had opened up to suppress enemy infantry in the farms close to their lines of departure... and likely would have been even less thrilled to have the heavy batteries put into action from the western hillside. "We're going to dig in fighting positions," They had the Yellow river to their backs, to the north of them, and a good rail bridge across the bastard, that meant their supply lines could run to western Zhili. They wouldn't be able to link east without securing the town center, "We'll start probing against the Zhilu in the morning," The little arched bridges that had been built for a thousand years going back to the song criss crossed the smaller river south of the Yellow. "Push through the suburbs, and into the town proper," See what resistance appeared. He was curious to see what Zhengzhou's populace thought... it have been five years since the Qing and plenty of queues were common among northern chinese... but that didn't mean they would support Zhu...
--
Nakamichi adjusted his glasses as he loomed over the teletype printout copy "The lack of manpower creates a problem." It was as close as he got to saying I told you so. The mildness of the statement was still accurate. They had the manpower to recruit from, the income arriving, and of course the truth was Bai Lang had caused them to buywhat arms they had been able to source at market... before the Europeans had gone to war at the end of that summer.

"Yes." He agreed.

He wondered what the Germans would have done if Mauser had still had the guns that the Qing had originally ordered, only to then have the dynasty toppled and the money to pay for the order not be there. He had never broached the topic with Percy. Like as not the money which had gone to Mauser for the 1907 guns had been spent towards the war against France, maybe, but it was ten thousand some guns fewer that the Germans had not had in inventory to use at the onset of European hostilities.

Zhengzhou as a junction of railway hubs was decently sized, made important by history, agriculture, and now the rail, it was about a half million souls. Percy was right, typically the Chinese peasants did usually stay out of the way while armies ... handled martial affairs... which meant they normally came out to watch, and picnic, which might be a bit more dangerous with fighting in the city. He spared a look to the glare cast in the distance thrown towards the sprawl of the north end of the town.

Zhengzhou had gas lighting, and even a small trolley car system the belgians had installed that had run regularly since 1910. That was unlikely to be useful, but the line was there and electric lights were not magic, but those lights harsh and unnatural in their brightness were likely to be useful in disorienting any potential night skirmishers... and to highlight them before they hit the barbed wire.

Percy cleared the office threshold of the depot having returned from the battery of telephones.

This office was no suited for staff work, and thus the company commanders had been briefed outside and he had retired her after dinner to consider the map.

Nakamichi pushed the teletype, and sat back. "The good news is that their battalions are roughly a third of our own."

"A third. How do you figure we should be outnumbering them two to one I think."

The Japanese electrical engineer adjusted his glasses owlishly, "Nothing shows that their battalions at strength. Regimental forces are at paper strength, or more with added units." He paused clucked his tongue like a schoolmaster, "It is not to say we are not potentially outnumbered if they were concentrated, but each of their battalions are," he searched for the word, "Detachments."

That might well have been true, and and seemed to have been similar to Cole's report this morning, and what he'd seen with Waite at lunch. "Do we know anything about Zhu's officers?"

"Your usual collection of gentlemen." Percy replied, "Most of them are Chinese scholars," He paused unnecessarily to clarify what the three of them all knew he had meant, "landowners who passed the exams," Before the exams had stopped. "Scarcely suspect any of them have serious experience, unless they were involved in the Boxer rebellion." That had been the last real conflict to touch this far north, to involve standing units. The northern territorial guards had been loyal to the ancient regiment.

It was doubtful Zhu had anyone who could command all the battalions never mind use the small units aggressively enough to attack, but they were in the city, and the water ways while narrow were still enough to potential hamper movement around them.

He had hoped that Percy with so long in Peking might know something about the now enemy officers, but nothing that could be used. They would have to see in the morning what news came out of Peking, and what was going on
--
Notes: We move into July 2 next time, but yes Zhengzhou like most of eastern China really really took a beating in the second sino Japanese war and early communist rule, its population dropped to something like 150 thousand people by the end of the Chinese Civil War. Obviously in this timeline the rail hub at Zhengzhou is a lot more built up than it was historically, by this point the dutch were already exploiting what was described here as the Belgian line because... well Belgium didn't have the capital being under German occupation but that will crop up laterr.

Next time we get into some mild urban combat, and the beginning of mechanized, or at least armored car warfare and such.

 

[Imperator Pax]

2nd​ July 1917
Allen sipped his coffee with the company officers deployed around the map. The trench lines they'd dug in yesterday had not been particularly deep, but they didn't necessarily need to be, two feet down, and barbed wire affront that formed into a rough v. He'd gotten up before dawn... if Percy was right he doubted Zhu's gentlemen had stirred yet. The depot needed to be held, and they were going to have to following the northern line down the city, because the objective was to secure the rail station in the town center.

The idea of an armored train wasn't so ridiculous in a situation such as this, but as the Monday began he could pick up the cracks of rifle fire in the city. "The 2nd​ Battalion relays that they have not been engaged."

He put the tin field cup down on the edge of the map, almost squarely on Anyang to the north. It was possible Zhu's commander didn't know about 2nd's deployment. It was possible he simply didn't care because they were a few miles beyond the city center and it possible he didn't think they could do anything to him.

There were a lot of possibilities. "What's Cole doing?"

"The company commander reports that they've sandbagged across this street here, there have been emplacements of their heavy machine guns," Vickers in 7mm that had been in Cole's inventory since they'd been received from the British during Bai Lang's raid, "deployment of cars here, and here." He indicated intersections with small flags, and then a pair of brass figures, "Madsen guns holding the junction."

The ultimate result was the Gendarmes had a narrow salient projection abutting the city market. And that his main lain were arrayed along the railway going north. Pickets, and skirmishers fanned along the east and western approached with of course the western approach being the stretch of rail that cut through the city and reached the western depot.

So far it didn't seem as if the machine guns on either side had engaged. There was the possibility that in an unfortunate measure found to the aristocracy, and educated gentry the world over whoever was in charge over their might see the digging and the works and order a fool charge because 'digging was peasant work' or whatever. On the other hand penny packets charging machine guns, or hell the dug in light guns would make today go so much faster.

They had graded all of this five years ago, so there was no high ground to speak of, and while they could dig in for elevation, or swivel to traverse using the carriages it was unlikely to come to that unless the enemy were precisely known. Repeating Chunking was not on his list of things to do.

"I want the cars readied to cross the river, bring abel company up in behind them to recointer in force, and secure the bridge in particular." He meant the rail bridge. They were going to keep the battalions third rifle company behind for the moment. The current intention sat to have the rail line held with the platoons of Charlie maintaining pickets, and insuring that their field telephones remained open. The battalion's artillery would remain in the depot, but the battery were connected to tractors and could be redeployed relatively quickly, if it came to that.

The scout cars were as close to cavalry as they had. The fords were never really used to go much beyond the boundaries, even though their suspension would let them handle what passed for roads in the countryside, really they never went more than ten fifteen miles at the most of the city boundaries, or the nearest railway. The rail was the link of communication, and maneuver. Rail lines were run parallel to telegraph and phone and field lines could be linked in. As a result and in conjunction as engine production for tractors had up ticked particularly over the last few months for their limited needs, the pack horse had diminished reducing the need for fodder.

Had they followed Nakamichi's advice the previous year they'd have been dependent on the age old beast of burden... but maybe that would have been alright. Allen contemplated the broad map, "Abel will follow the cars," He reiterated to the company commander, "Be prepared to deploy your Lewis guns, " Baker had Madsens, having not yet received the newer guns, but Charlie had older potato diggers, another reason to keep them slow rolling and in reserve to guard their flank. He picked up the icon for the battalion headquarters, the small brass rook represented forty five men. The Regimental Headquarters was the same size, but comprised the colonel who held ordinary command. Then there was his somewhat smaller general staff... "And act aggressively to contact with the enemy." He turned to major Hao, who was a young man in his late twenties but prematurely balding, the brass rook represented him and his staff. "Forward line of communication, redundancies, and preparations for the artillery."
--
Unlike the heavy steel bridge that had been sunk to cross the yellow river north, there was little need of that for the smaller river that flowed north of the town, between it and the big bastard of north China. The railway crossing though had not been their first choice, not yet, they had caught sight of one of the enemy columns first.

The Ford threw itself forward hopping a little as its suspension sprang under the added weight to clear the last lip of the little stone bridge. The Vickers gun was erratic under the motion skipping high, and then low as the man up top overcompensated. "They're in double columns."

It certainly appeared that way, Allen admitted looking on at the company. In the history books Zhengzhou would be scarcely remembered and not in particular as much. Not in comparison to the fifty thousand Duan marched on Peking, or more flashily his use of aircraft Yuan Shikai had bought for China's Air Force to drop leaflets, and also sticks of dynamite nearish to Royalist positions.

The lumbering of ground traversing war machines was not wholly novel any longer. There had been armored cars used by the Beiyang defenders at Shanghai, several years earlier during the so called second revolution.

Allen cleared his throat at the ding as the machine gun in the scout car murdered a helpless street lamp... but it was keeping the enemy's head down. They were disorganized and had been moving and now didn't seem to be able to get organized to return fire at the steel beasts. The battalion commander two hundred yards, and half way to the bridge started ordering Abel's commander to push the brightly painted arches over the water. Captain Wu must have had his first sergeant appropriately close at hand as a figure moved towards the platoon officers and their ranks and within a few moments the infantry's machine guns opened from one side of the river pouring hot lead in the general direction of the left column. The north market was empty of people the coolies had fled and the merchants locked up behind their shops, and walls as both gray clad formations had stirred this morning. He had seen the occasional peeking out from heavy doors, and looks from over the walls, but people were waiting to see what would happen.

Platoons started coming on line, and braced against the stone fixtures. Within a minute or two Mausers started to bring accurate fire from their base zeros. Infantry in columns didn't take well to precision fire at close range in the open, never mind when you were in the middle of a town's plaza with no where to go.

Hao signaled for another of his runners, and another platoon diverted towards the railway bridge. The rifle squads of the unit leap frogging past one another one across the spans of the small bridge until they were spread across their bridge. Their gewehrs opened up neatly in an elevated enfilade as the bridge had been built to allow river boats to pass under. That was enough to support the sharpshooters, who moved to prone, and kneeling positions.

The machine guns started to chatter again. The rattlers snapped raking into the mid section of the column at angle, more accurately this time. He turned away, and towards the arriving officer. "2nd​?"

"Informed, we have made contact, but we have a message from the center that Manchu," AN irony since Lang was himself Manchu, but the RPF officer didn't seem to consider that, "seem to moving on the Preparatory school." Lang decided to volunteer either his own speculation, or someone elses who he might have concurred with, "They may be looking for southern collaborators."

... it was a monday morning after... admittedly... of course there had been no reports that the farming college had been molested... and of the two schools if you were looking Guomindang sympathizers... yeah it made a certain sort of sense... on the other... was now really the time for that? Allen nodded, "Put it on the map." He ordered one of the staff lieutenants. Calling it on the map was a bit inaccurate they had notes but this close to the front there was no actual field table and map.

The companies were deploying, and the battalion commander needed to be allowed to direct the troops, and correct any mistakes without too much mother henning. It would be different once they had the city center, and had linked with the second. Then it would be regimental directing. That could potentially tomorrow, or on the fourth.

The scout cars lumbered, and bounced forward the right column backpedalled harder.

As the two cars evened out into the north end of the market the vickers stabilized to come across the front of the column's numbers. The company was now hardening into a formation that was firing across the river, and into the side to cover platoons looping across the trestle bridges leading to the market. The division of labor and materiel being what it was... it was a pity they didn't have Stokes, the battalion commander could have used them from back here to plaster the market's plaza ahead.. a facet of modern war.

The Lewis guns would suffice... for today anyway. This was fire and maneuver as US doctrine intended... but more machine guns to spare at this unit scale... in part due to Bai Lang, the European war... and of course just the fact it was the singular division to which equip. Abel Company's assets initiated a second line suppressive fire, and the backpedalling continued towards the column's baggage. From where he was standing 2nd Platoon looked to have fixed bayonets as they crossed the bridge advancing towards the cars.

There would be papers written, and lessons learned when this was done. "The market will accommodate the battalion's artillery." Said battalion's commander remarked. "The enemy has likely entrenched themselves behind walls, that we'll need to bring down."

Probably so. "Make it so, Colonel. Once your pickets are in place you may deploy the battery as you like." He responded... the artillery had to be moved forward, but he wasn't comfortable using them indiscriminately.

--
Notes: Freaking august, this about the only thing I'm still ahead on. Anyway so like I mentioned above a lot of this timeline had been outlined, there are / is scenes, and content which have been written through the cold war, and of course butterlies to some extent but for the most part its broadly similar in terms of war course, and succession, and political leadership.

Spoiler: Spoilers, misc thread content

So the conclusion to this ['portion' of the timeline, whatever one wishes to call it] is the Romanov Rescue and the end of the European war, and we pick up (most likely) with the consequences of Versailles, and John Jordan springing the Arms Embargo of May 1919 on China with no warning.

The Romanov Rescue of July 1918 results as the name implies the rescue of the Tsar and his family, and as mentioned in the timeline notes in the misc thread results in a botched shooting in london (in the prescence of then heir to the Japanese throne Hirohito) in 1921 of KGV which while not fatal does cause the king injury and exasperates his existing health conditions. The actual intended target of this was the king's cousin Nicholas, regardless this will eventually result in George the Fifth dying a little earlier and causing the edwardian crisis to happen a little earlier and installing George the Sixth a little sooner.

And well all of this is related to the broader relations in terms of, including or especially the attempt aimed at Nicholas, with the relations the British Empire has. That however is a ways in the future.

 

[Imperator Pax]

2nd​ July 1917
Their boys had proven their starch. An aggressive advance to had put second platoon of the first right and forward where they could see the whites of the enemy still in a frayed column. Fifty men and five rounds rapid at close order was a shock action that rippled through the ranks, and was enough make Percy resemble his namesake, and seemed to impress Nakmichi. The two men had arrived on scene. "Cold steel now," He remarked, "My grandfather would be impressed."

A still stricken looking Englishman nodded absently, and after a breath resumed what he'd been preparing to address, "There was some talk, they said something about black shirts, do you think it could be some of Zhang's troops?"

Allen suppressed a curse. He hadn't heard that, but Percy and the other 'advisers' had been in the back end... and black uniforms didn't mean shit because that had been what Cole had thought would be clever to put their gendarmes in.

Ignorant of his inner turmoil Percy continued, "They'll be better armed than this lot for sure." He declared as the rifle squads of another platoon joined the second, as the last of the platoons of the company fired into other column from the railway bridge. There was a pile of bodies beginning to develop as the Lewis, and Vickers, and the Mausers did their work.

He was already considering how this might have played had they approached the bridges with the enemy already in place... the guns. Most likely the Battalion's battery in direct fire, coupled with placed machine guns... and that was assuming that they didn't have to storm the railway bridge or have the engineers check it. The bridge certainly didn't appear to have been messed with, and he wasn't sure that would have occurred to the civilian governor.

Whatever might of been, wasn't. They had caught the enemy at maneuver, and they'd been faster to move to engage. The cars first, and then the company deploying. If the enemy was moving, and expanding their position then they needed to be faster still, and capitalize on the situation. To that end there wasn't time to unfold the railway map and set the campaign table out. The company needed to be across the river. The railway bridge crossed and provided road access to the market square, and since it was empty would make a sufficient park for the artillery.

Allen turned to his right, "Colonel, signal the battalion, we're about seven miles north Cole's position, I want the artillery limbered." The lighter guns wouldn't be able to reach that whole span, but there were no tall buildings here except those built with foreign capital, and the sales of stocks and bonds on European and American markets the previous decade before the Qing had fallen. They could rotate and present for elevation with the current trails would give just under, about six and a half miles. That would have to be enough.

"Should I direct additional forces over the bridge?"

He shook his head, "No, let the major learn the trade." Putting the artillery on cars would take an hour and bringing them down here and offload, by then the fighting would be done, given what was going on across the river.

"Oh, oh they've broken, they're running for it." Percy remarked leaning slightly forward.

Loath as Allen was to admit it, it was the bayonets really that had started the route, something visceral there of contending with their enemy up close like that. The enemy morale had been shaky as it was, but once the second platoon had started to yell that had been the start.

Running was too late now. The difference between an infantry machine gun squad, and a truck with a protected machine nest in a turret was that the latter could carry ammunition and a water cooled gun further, and faster. Lewis's magazine fed snake was a charm, but the heavy machine gun had a different tactical niche.

The problem was the size of the city, and its surrounding environs. They were going to stretch their line far, and even then it might not be enough. There were going to be gaps. The older manchu officer was already getting the regimental engineering company on the horn. A few minutes later the regimental communications had simply called Cole's command post at town center train station to find out what was going on... which struck Allen as surrel in the midst of two presumable regiments fighting over the city... but that the phones still worked.

"And that is their report." The staff officer concluded. "Mortars abeing used to suppress what are believed to be the enemy's maxim positions." Which suggested that Zhu's machine gun brigade, or however he had arranged them were very close. "It does appear that , yes an effort to take the preparatory school."

"Details?"

Nothing solid, really could be ascertained. There was no explanation as to why Zhu considered that a priority enough to redirect troops. The most generous interpretation was of course the civilian governor of the province as so terrified of revolutionary sentiment, or foreign aligned sentiment he viewed the school as a primary point... but that was insane on the face of hard contacts, and facing resistance in the city center.

The advance over the river was the priority, and a second forward staging position though, that was the immediate priority.
--
The day wearing on allowed them tom pack and move machines, and men... which of course brought other issues, "John Allen you can't do that." Percy protested.

Apparently the moving up of the surgery cars connected to the train engine should have been done separately of the flatbeds redeploying the battalion's artillery. Thus instead of having time to break for lunch Percy was giving him the nth degree for some faux pas against European sensibilities that Allen hadn't even realized he must have made. Percy had been increasingly prone to fits since coming, back... he hadn't been like this before he'd shipped off to Switzerland after the war had begun. "And what by god, am I not supposed to be doing?"

There was a long shuddering sigh, and Allen ignored the melodrama to look at Nakamichi equally perplexed... thankfully they were spared any of the other 'observers' most of the scandinavian ministers and the handful of midwestern Americans had remained at North Station. "John Allen it violates the treaties governing war to transport hospital and weapons of war together."

"Percy the damn cars all came down together."

"Yes, but we're actually engaged in combat now, you can't move medical personnel alongside, they're protected by the laws of war where as the artillery are a combat arm."

... and thus were fair game "Nakamichi?"

"I believe Graves-san is referring to the Geneva convention."

Allen nodded, glad that he'd asked rather than just smarted off that the states hadn't agreed to turn war into a sporting competition by not signing the St Petersburg convention. Some dickering back and forth followed, and the jist of it became apparent that Percy was holding the matter out as if England's unique interpretation of the treaty conventions were the definitive understanding. "Whats your take?"

"I do not disagree that between treaty powers that would be a conservative, and cautious reading of the agreement. I do not think that the treaty applies to police actions." Nakamichi sipped from the field cup, "This is an internal matter in contending with an attempted coup d'etat, not one between signatories, thus Zhu Zhibao's troops can't really be considered -"

"That's not the point at all." Percy declared loudly, "That!" He pointed back to the train car, "Clearly has signage on both sides, saying hospital. It is clearly marked with a red cross. You can't use them the same as deploying artillery, or other troops the front."

He didn't need this headache. Oh he understood the sentiment behind it just fine. In 1913 the British army had had been half a million men split in half between their reserves equivalent, and the regulars. It was all fine for King George to talk about having trains for this and that, and never the twine should meet. "Well what would you suggest Percy. I suppose we could take the crosses down, would that satisfy you?"

The Englishman's mouth clapped shut like a steel trap, "Well, that would be legally sufficient, but really you could just keep them separate." He said that as if that were an easy thing. There were limits to the number of engines in the fleet, and track space. Zhengzhou was a medieval city which had had the modern world grafted on to it. There simply wasn't room.

He was spared further discussions on the finer parts with the arrival of additional dispatches ahead of the hour turning. That let him retire into the radio car of the train with a couple of staff officers, and enlisted men manning the telegraphs, and telephones. In normal days, when people weren't shooting at them, these cars were used to coordinate the engineers usually as they strung lines parallel to the tracks, or while they conducted repairs to existing railway bridges in the spring. The radio in the car was new, the actual train car had been designed to run the wiring into boxes that you could then connect in field lines.

He looked at the measurements that the radio broadcast had been used to calculate their position. Three known points in town from each of their stations gave them an answer of unknown location. A pin had been placed to signal where the market was, and the distances written out on the black board. They would have to offset that to accommodate that the market was to the eastern side of the rail line. A second pin, lacking numbers, indicated the equivalent train car attached to the battalion headquarters of 2nd Btn of the first regiment, though it was just as likely the lieutenant colonel commanding the battalion could have directed from the western station. The river they had crossed had a long bend in it, if you went west, the course was flowing northward to the point that the rail bridge in the west spanned the same river before the line made it to the central station. The difference were the 3 inch guns on the western side could stay on the other side of the river.

They wouldn't need to be relocated over the river, once deployed their battery could reach easily to town center, while the infantry defended the river approaches, and advanced. If this had been Sun's lot then they would have probably had the option to withdraw south all the way to Hankou... cutting Zhu off from north and west though raised questions about how he might try and disengage. Further into the province seemed unlikely, especially with the disposition of the gentry still an unknown, even so there was the possibility they would fall back east to Kaifeng, but proceeding down the rail to Shandong... seemed unlikely ... but if they then that would been them well afield. Only railway made that sort of retreat possible, but Zhu's forces hadn't withdrawn last night, and he doubted they'd yield tonight and retire. That would no excuse not to post pickets as they closed the linkage as the two battalions converged with Cole's nominal one. In force terms, on paper there was a single Infantry Division, there were two brigades of artillery, and the gendarmes was in organizational name a brigade but truthfully even with first pick of graduates were a single battalion force of companies.


--
Notes: This is a fairly expansive timeline, and I mentioned last time various people die over hte course of it, and those deaths are often inopportune, for example historically, in the first half of the 20th​ century, lots of influential people die as a result of car accidents (I've made the crack that if I'm travel back to kill hitler, I 'll just use a car, no foul play will be suspected, whoops failed austrian artist get smacked by a porsche friends mourn, world goes on... and presumably we still have a big fight anyway), or who die of natural causes.

The timeline is modelled broadly out into the cold war, but as an example had Yamagata Aritomo, and Akashi Motojiro survived in this timeline, perhaps even with Akashi making prime minister what we might potentially have seen is in the mid twenties a north China-Anglosphere-Japanese anti communist alliance against the soviets. Now that would be potentially a result of other factors, that are a result of events between 1917-1921 that haven't yet been posted. The loss of certain people results in different steps in some cases. Yamagata, and Akashi weren't identical in political views but were in a position to better control things than Hayashi Gonsuke, or Terauchi or Inanzo Nitobe (and Nitobe in between apologies in the thirties was still supporting an anti-communist alliance, but by that point he was something a joke since by thirties you had a certain colonel running roughshod over Tokyo's orders in Manchuria, but that's down the road).

The other thing is that, it is a myth, even if its a key tenant of marxist propaganda, that China (or for that matter Imperial Russia) were regressing or stagnant. Modern research basically confirms that Imperial Russia was nicely recovering, and growing economically... before ww1, and China had a large volume of foreign investment, and that resulted in real income actually increasing up to the period of 1937... when Japanese attack and Mao's government and associated corruption and inefficiency basically ruined a lot of the foreign built heavy industry and resources. Deng when he comes to power in the late 70s does dumb things to, but he's really the reason China is the industrial power it is because Mao really devastated China beyond just the mess that Japanese invasion of the coastal sectors had done. This is best demonstrated in the twenty year period of the 'warlord era' 1912-1932 (right before Manchuria was annexed) per capita increases by ten percent (which in economic terms is pretty huge).

 

[Imperator Pax]

3rd​ July 1917
He had come back in to take a seat at hte railcar's map table after observing the situation that lay between them and the end of their line going south. He had seen plenty of the time being.

Cullen in what was probably either brazen arrogance, or intentionally done so as to shake enemy morale had his nominal 'brigade's' pipes committed to his forward line of contact. The bagpiper wasn't actually in the line of fire, but the noise was distinct from the rattle of Lewis guns, or the mix of 351 and 35 caliber Winchesters, Remington along with the occasional close in delivery of Browning shotguns defending the low wall which surrounded the far end of the square.

He'd been here in the spring, and Cole's troopers had turned it into a killing field. In what was not really a surprise the other black clad troops had a fancy banner emblazoned with characters. In this particular case the catchy branding they had declared them the 'pacification army' if he had read it right through the spotter's optic. This had become in a way Fredickburg assault against the heights in miniature. Not a comparison he liked making since while they held the heights in that analogy Zhu had the numbers to weather a situation of comparable losses, especially against Cole's force.

The Gendarmes were specialist light infantry in a combat role. Cole had reorganized parts of the anti-bai lang force that had been under his command, and been able to reallocate their 7mm Mauser rifles in inventory following the same reasoning that they'd given those weapons to his command in the first place. Logistical reasons, not having at the time enough reserves to be comfortable with in the standard larger 7.92 caliber... especially given the war. That would have changed in the coming year simply because they had more tooling ... would have changed, but hadn't yet.

That might end up being a good thing in this case. This wasn't the southern mountainous divide between Shensi and Szechwan. There had been skirmishes with some of Bai Lang's bandits who had fought as well bandits, though irregulars would be accurate, and that had taken place in the flagstone streets of old towns and cities similar to Zhengzhou, but not on this scale. Zhengzhou was positively ancient compared to Hanzhong in southern Shensi... there were other components. So far as the men were concerned this was different than fighting 'southern ruffians' and other 'poor troublemakers', the cultural expectation sat they were fighting other professional soldiers... and well so far as Allen could see professional might have been stretching the old Qing era and styled formations.

It had taken him time to figure out, but part of the reason the enemy were floundering was they were fighting like this was the 1870s. There were no squads, he wasn't even sure there were platoons as anything other than ad hoc groups of men. Zhu had come into this with men who might have been prepared to fight the war between the states, but not the fight they had actually found... a fight they probably hand't even been looking for.

Even if that was the case it didn't change the situation they were in. "They're pinned in," He commented not looking up at the other men, "Or at least these ones are." The black uniforms presented a problem. The 'Pacification army' had similar uniforms in cut to their own, but were black, because they were ultimately based on German jackets, and trousers... there were hold overs that the 'PA' had that theirs didn't ... but expecting to look for epaulets or at another fellas shoes was a stretch... and going by a lack of breast pockets might end up with their own men shooting each other for missing them.

It was already nearly eleven in the morning. The slow clearing advance of city streets given their manpower had forced them to move slowly, and the further south they moved the more spread out their rear guard became, field telephone be damned.

"The burning building we saw is a newspaper office." A staff officer reported. The major tentatively voiced the news.

That was a waste, it was nice modern building with good sightlines a couple men with mausers up there could have slowed them coming down the street never mind if you could have put a maxim or a lewis up on the cast iron railed balcony. "IS the fire at risk of spreading?" He inquired neglecting to voice the criticism even as he reached for the pen to note down the burning building's details.

"Not immediately, so far as we can tell."

Allen nodded, acknowledging the hedge of the statement. They didn't have time to organize a fire brigade... and whatever he might have thought of muckrakers taking a torching their workplace when you were in actual battle seemed... down right ridiculous. Even accounting the possibility that the Pacification Army had some reason to believe that the office was some anti-qing / restoration resistance which wasn't impossible they clearly had more important things to worry about facing a north south converging line. "So," he paused to consult the map and the pins stuck in it. There were a lot of them with two days of fighting to process, "They've invested the school, and the south market, but they didn't make it to the Hankow line transit station." The Belgian line was also clear, "We think their here?" He reached down to inside the overlap of two silk circles.

"Yes, general." An artillery captain replied stepping forward sharply. The red stripes on his trousers notable, pressed and clean.

"Color charges and ranging from both batteries?" He asked.

"Ranged," They lacked third battalion, and her battery, "Red smoke is ours, and Green for second. Standing by for the fire mission." Neither lieutenant colonel had issued his batteries to fire, and clearly the colonel of the regiment hadn't.

"Double check your math, see what fear you put in them with the ranging... and then given two minutes of continuous fire when you're sure." Allen replied. Hoping he wasn't about to flatten a bunch of the wrong people by accident.

The captain saluted, but didn't immediately step back as if he was weighing speaking up, but before he could be queried, gave a crisp acknowledgement right turned and marched from the staff room.

Allen glanced to the others, then flipped through his notes. Dawes's office had noted that the rate of fire for the regiment's three inch guns was ten rounds round sustained. Two hundred rounds of your choice in five minutes. They were going to call thunder down... in a city that had probably never heard modern artillery. He looked at the clock, and expected he'd have to ask for someone to give them something to work on.

The red legs must have been waiting for something to do as the batteries both north and west opened up nearly simultaneously. It would have been nice to have been able to actually see the colored smoke for the batteries. The red legs, probably after dickering over it, then executed their batteries tasking as the clocks gave the hour, impossible to hear as eight guns drummed.

"I want Baker to swing facing west, signal 2nd​ Battalion to come inward and into contact with any remaining enemy infantry." Infantry seemed to be what the enemy had besides a small detachment of maxims. "The objective to have second form on our western flank. Then we'll concentrate on removing the enemy remains to the east."

The second Battalion had crossed the river wholly uncontested and while the battery was over the river the colonel of the battalion had brought over his infantry companies, as well as his pioneer section so they were basically fresh, and the pioneers had already confirmed the rail line so the battalion supply could be brought over by engine. If he was going to make those sorts of aggressive deployments then he could come east in force.

Baker would have to screen the battalion flank until the 2nd's companies joined them. They wouldn't be able to effectively close the encirclement... and well since Belgium didn't seem likely to get out from German occupation any time soon pushing them east towards the Belgian financed rail line seemed effectively the best solution. He wanted them out of the city more than he wanted the Zhu destroyed after all.

Zhu had after been a pretty solid neighbor in various posts he'd occupied over the years. "There is another matter."

Finally, Allen mused, and glanced to the Regimental Staff Officer, "Chiang, I assume." Chaotsung had actually carried out the dissolution of the Chinese Parliament and most likely was commanding the Beiyang garrison, his normal position, and the command to which nominally speaking the Capital's Horse Guards belonged to. Paper attribution didn't necessarily mean anything for sure in a network of patronage that made spider webs look simple... but Chiang had put himself front and center in the political arena... and worse... "He has friends at the legation." The American one.... he probably had friends at the British one, but the American ties were the larger problem

... and on the third day of fighting if Reinsch didn't figure something out to do then someone was going to cable Washington. Then for certain there would be a whole other headache to contend with.
--

 

[Imperator Pax]

3rd​ July 1917
It was late in the afternoon as the five companies of infantry formed what was on paper a right angle, but on paper that missed the nuance town buildings made of of the field.. Their left side shored up with specialist units of the regimental level, but he would have been lying if the presence of more leg infantry wouldn't have been a reassuring thing. The red legs were bored now, they hadn't gotten much action, and there wasn't as much maneuver they were used to in pursuit of more mobile foes... that had been part of the whole reason for the combination of investing in tractors for the lighter guns as well as the universal cannon mounts... though economics played a role in both.

He looked over the top of the ten foot wall he was standing on to survey the front. All the while suspecting this was why some men smoked tobacco. "The red legs are chomping at the bit." He declared.

"Yes sir." The colonel responded, "Should I direct the sweep to begin?"

"That's your call, are the men ready?"

The colonel straightened, rod like, and saluted... and that was it. The objectives had been laid out. There were a few thousand yards between Abel and Cole's Van Force, which was how he had designated his forward most company in contact with the enemy. There were probably about three or four hundred men in between them. Part of this 'Pacification Army' black shirts protecting a Chinese fortune's worth of machine guns in what the eastern portion of the city.

He had half a mind to orient 1st​ battalion's artillery and have them clear out the park they were nested in with canister. Canister because high explosive risked damaging the canal and dykes even if the risk was slim. Making up his mind, and cognizant of the social repercussions he signaled to the artillery officer. "Range it. Make sure to use a lot of smoke." He paused, and glanced to the the regimental signals officer, "Have Abel ready to repulse them if they brindle."

"You're thinking they'll break, then?" The major questioned a little wide eyed, and crazy looking at the prospect of it coming to a shock action at the company level. As insane as it sounded sometimes when men broke under artillery fire, particularly fires they couldn't see, they moved forward into enemy contact and that was disorienting.... and disorienting was dangerous and had propensity towards the men injuring one another.

He shrugged, "Its possible." Allen replied and looked at the markings in his notes of where his left flank was positioned adjacent to Abel. The park wasn't flat ground, but there were a couple buildings north of it, and he was pretty sure that the 'PA' had emplaced in some of the other buildings south. He looked at the scratched out map. The offensive plan was to concentrate in the west and come across massing to turn concentrating their rifles to push the enemy east so they could bring Cole's gendarmes into close order.

Second Battalion's battery would, if it wasn't already moving, likely go ahead and limber to cross the river by train and come up... but it was possible their tractors would just drive down the street to support in close order direct fire. That would be the colonel's decision based on how he read the orders outlining the objective to link with their center force.

That was the question. As tightly packed as the rows of building were the... situation in Chunking in a real fight made sense. Plenty of these houses were fragile to fire as it was, it was why the Qing penalty for arson was what it had been before the judicial reforms had just made it a hanging offense. Artillery turning lose would have been enough to flatten entire neighborhoods and clear sightlines at a cost to the civilian body... he'd never understood Elliot's restraint in 1840, the prohibition on canister and shot still seemed ridiculous, but he was willing to make allowances for some of the man's other tactically foolish decisions at the moment.

The red smoke was visible in the distance, from the ground, never mind once it started drifting up. There wasn't much wind at the moment. The canals were a tactical impediment to movement giving the defenders in the park good protection. If they were going to attack they'd almost certainly have to come west and then attack north. The new gun mounts could traverse relatively quickly if it came to that, but they'd have a narrow margin to do anything. At least if they wanted to avoid the housing.

There was the possibility of bringing the regimental scouts in and hem them in place so that they'd either have to abandon the park and fall back to the south as the rifle infantry companies came. Like the gendarmes the 'wolf hunters' were specialist light infantry. The regimental unit recruited from experienced class A veterans with two or more years of service and excellent marksmanship scores to fill out a company element with scoped mausers much as Cole had organized his specialists, and corporals during the quintessential wolf hunt of 1914.

The problem was the railway, if they broke out of the park it was a mile at best to the rail line... because well that was just how they had laid the tracks and in those years ago he hadn't expected to consider the military ramifications in favor of stretching wide rails that would support a fast travelling steam locomotive carrying goods.

The reality was they were probably going to have to mount an assault to force those black shirts from the park. He didn't see any other way to make sure they weren't in the rear when Abel advanced to press the other forces south, to link with Van... and there was the fact Cole was deployed probably almost four miles deep in places if you counted scattered skirmishers in multistory buildings... which he was sure he would get the nth degree for from Reinsch of military expediency... and possibly the Belgian consul, and the French... and whatever others....

The dispatch arrived informing him that second battalion was in four thousand yards of Cole's western most pickets. Two miles and change. The infantry was swinging to advance to them and form on the western line to the station. The question now stood whether there was enough daylight left to push them or if on the fourth of July if this would continue. He wondered if defending a largely static defensive line if Waite and the Second, regiment, were having nearly as much trouble with manpower.

He frankly doubted it with batteries pulled from first brigade Waite had ... frankly probably more men than they'd Xian with against Bai Lang's substantively larger force than what they had presently seen from Zhu... which raised the question of of whether Chiang would be coming down with more men. There had interestingly enough b een no comment from Peking. Zhu Zhibao had not made any official overtures, and they hadn't heard from Duan Qirui in a direct capacity... though Cao Kun had made some mouth noises about 'good works' and stuff.

Percy was suspicious that Duan Qirui was more worried about losing Anwei to Zhang Xun's allies to the south of his position and what that might mean both for his supporters and resources, and in particular what and how Britain might respond.... of course it was also Percy talking so his emphasis on the British position was to be expected. Anwei wasn't the only concern. Zhejiang, and Jiangsu were also of course. Hangzhou, and Nanking, as well as the international settlement of Shanghai were potential seats of unrest that would likely be hostile to either Beiyang faction regardless of who was winning.

... but all that was two hundred miles east, and not their problem... and that distance was greater in real terms of travel than the ease to which they could ride a train to Tietsin. Anything south of the Yangtze might as well have been another planet, but he had promised to Nakamichi an attempt to keep the line Qingdao open if they could ... admittedly not entirely altruistic since with Zhang Xun's Wu Wei parked on the rail lines east of Peking Qingdao was access to the sea.... and of course access to Shandong meant Weihaiwei which of course was of interest to Percy. Nakamichi had assured them that just holding the rail line to the border would be enough, Percy would have preferred they went the whole distance till they were in sight of Royal Marines... Percy was gonna have to make do.

He turned to glance at Shang heading up his staff officers contingent. The Manchu colonel had collected the other dispatches, and had leafed through them. The time tables were the best they could manage. "Can we set the roadblocks?"

"2nd​ Battalion has spare trucks," Allen nodded at the statement, knowing that was a mix of Quads, and Fords bought about this time a year ago, "we can emplace the remaining regimental machine guns, and armored cars." He answered, and flipped a page showing a different sketched map, indicating the lines goings over the rail, and the main thoroughfare in the 'modern' city center where the southern most company would come abreast of Cole's fords, a few hundred yards north of the rail line. "The machine guns are having to break charges in close distances, but the streets are only so wide." Bayonet charges didn't work against drilled and dug in defenders, especially ones with machine guns. "We can pour spotlights into the night forward, but I do not see how we could move on the school."

Allen didn't either. He wasn't about to issue a night time raid... no they'd probably have to talk Zhu's troops out rather than carry an assault on the school. "I'll tell Percy he can talk to whoever Zhu has put in charge over there, and bottle them up." He tapped the map, where a hash mark indicated a known enemy machine position, "Are you sure this machine gun here is isolated."

"Yes, sir." It had some supporting infantry but somehow or another the suspected maxim gun had been left in a salient that was in the north facing 1st​ battalion, it was basically in the middle between where Abel and Baker had advanced to. "There is no way it can be reinforced by the enemy." Which wasn't necessarily true, a force could have relieved it with sufficient numbers... and there was the chance that...

"If its still there in the morning Its going to need to be silenced."

"Mortars?"

"That'll do it." The older manchu colonel saluted.

--
Notes: One thing to note here versus for example with draft two of this story is the much more obvious manpower difference. In the second draft of this story, when the Manchu Restoration happens is that Shang as senior most colonel is commanding an entire infantry brigade (six battalions) in the Western Zhili Action. In that version cadre forces are significantly larger to reflect a scenario where they did actually vote to move to three divisions (at the time of two brigades each, and then later moved to brigades as independent specialist 'Regimental Combat Team' esque structures, like we will see here, with divisions being three regiments, and historically the US had been using these kinds of organizations since the Mexican American war, in the Civil War the regimental level combined arms unit is called a legion).


Here, Xian has less men under arms in 1917 but has made the doctrine change over earlier and is preparing for an expansion, they just didn't expect 'surprise the monarchy is back on!' to happen in the following summer. In both versions Regiments remain as the principle Xian unit of large organization. Brigades and later divisions are organizational units by and large, up until really 1927... which ironically is provoked by a battle over Zhengzhou as a city, and who's strategy is dictated by previous lessons.

Xian's units in 27 move to deploy south of the city to stop an advance so that they don't have to be in urban combat. Here its very slow moving, because neither side has that kind of large volume of manpower, you have lots of roads and streets, you have lots of river crossings. The city of the period had lots of small bridges, lots of parks, lots of temples, old buildings, walled compounds, big open air markets a built up suburban area , and also a big 'modern area' with the railways and telegraphs, shopping centers and coffee shops being scrunched into the old city... and Henan gentry were not one hundred percent on board with that. (Neither were a lot of gentry, you had lots of protest about home rule, again in Zhengzhou particular case the central government had come in basically grafted the city into Zhili under direct administration due to national interests, its actually kind of surprising that Yuan Shikai chose to build the Kung Sian arsenal near Kaifeng and not in Zhengzhou the only explanation that I can think of is that probably it was a measure of reusing existing Qing military apparatus but that is a guess on my part.

 

[Imperator Pax]

4th​ July 1917
The trains had issued resupply of ammunition to the battalions... and that did seem to be one of their advantages was that they had access to ammunition. The supply train also served as expanded bivouac and maintenance. It was hospital, chow hall, chapel, and the like, necessary for men who were getting their first taste of committed battle..

Stokes' three inch might not have had the legs for distance work but they were useful for suppressing machine guns dialed. The black shirts manning the maxim though were tenaciously holding on. He frankly doubted that these were the civilian governor's troops... more likely this was a detachment of Chiang men, or more likely still Zhang Xun sending wuwei corp troops.

The Maxim's gunners had attempted to open back up as 1st​ battalion had started to advance that morning. It was independence day 1917. There tenacity was to be commended even if they should have fallen back... and so the mortars went thump thump thump as the tubes launched.

With the attack underway there was nothing to do but to step back and let the platoon commanders, and company commanders, and their senior enlisted do their job. The two battalion commanders should have adequately laid out for their men the mission objectives expected for the morning. There were other issues to contend with. "Our next objective will be to secure the city." He commented, perhaps unnecessarily to the assembled officers as they began to the process of the motions needed to be undertaken to do that.

There were two distinct personalities foremost among the potential problems. They were Honan's military and provincial governors. The first, Zhao Ti, had declared independence at the end of march, publishing a declaration to the effect from Peking... but he hadn't acted on the city. There was no indication he was going to, but he also hadn't moved against Zhu either. The civilian governor had held the other job previous. Tian had troops at Kaifeng, and was by all reports garrisoning the provincial arsenal... though there had been similar reports that Zhao was as well... so it wasn't cler if they were working together or if the one or possibly both reports were wrong... but the Kung Xian had been only operational for a little over a year now. Yuan had set aside funds for it to supply Beiyang army units... and while it probably didn't have any rifle production is housed... an estimated two million rounds of rifle ammunition.

Enough ammunition to have whichever of Honan's local troops well supplied with bullets... which was the problem, because there was no clear third person on the roster. The hongwei battalions were lead by local gentry from a tradition going back to the taiping fighting and while they were doubtless any closer to full strength than Zhu was that wasn't a fight he looked towards getting into.

"Zhang Xun's troops?"

"That is what it seems like." He replied after the pins had been put in. Allen spared a glance to the car window, the train was stationary of course. The surgery was in use, and the expanded cars occupied with wounded. He couldn't garner the losses Zhu's forces must have taken from the artillery. They were behind the lines. Artillery in indirect had wiped out whole city blocks, termed whole buildings into splinters as high explosive charges ripped through. "I suppose Zhang must have assumed he needed someone with some spine." A spine they needed to snap... any realization that queue wearing black shirts were holding would make Zhu's troops more stalwart even in the face of artillery fires reigning. "We'll sweep them from the side was the second brings its south flank inward."
--
The Regimental scout company that took their name from the 1914 bandit hunt were quite literally proned out on top of the train cars sitting on the line, that the park was itself in something of a sloping depression gave them a little extra height as they overlooked the enemy.

During the war against Spain the official directive from the war department had been that a division should be three brigades of three regiments... lack of readiness and available manpower, and lack of sufficent modern arms had stymied that organization. At one point there had been an entire army corp that had barely eight thousand men in the detail. Allen exhaled the breath and took up slack on the two stage trigger until he felt resistance.

... that was he supposed why they had graduated his class early.

There was a clean break, and the gun boomed, recoiling into his shoulder. The Federal Army back home would have considered it unthinkable in peace time to have command level officers engaged in such things... and most likely Washington had detailed some lickspittle to keep Pershing from from the front and from participating in the fighting. Black Jack would not be allowed a place on the front no matter how much he brindled... and that would probably make him more aggressive than less when he landed in France.

It was unlikely that Wilson had consciously considered that, but Lansing probably knew damn well what it would do.

John Pershing and the Secretary may as well have been a world away.

There was a grunt, "A little left." The RPF man in sergeant stripes observed. "Not enough to miss," He added adjusting the glass.

Allen affirmed the wind call as he looked over the park's low wall. The four magnification of the german glass was clear enough at this distance he could just make the hazy shape of a hand in the grass near the long shadow of what probably the man's rifle.

In the war between the states sharpsshooters, snipers, jaeger, and a whole slew of other terms had been employed to refer to formations of men on both sides across the entire war equipped and engaged to fight as specialist riflemen. These had ranged from independent companies, small units of men, all the way to nominal brigade strength formations. The organization of all varied from one another, and in the subsequent Federal Army such marksmanship training was a matter of regimental discretion.

The enemy were looking this way now though. The other rifles started to open along their salient projected south following along the rail line. The regiment was designed to operate as a self contained unit, and the nucleus for sub operational units... serving as headquarters and direction, logistics, to the battalions.

The division had existed in the war with Spain though had basically after simply existed on paper. The War Department had directed the army to promulgate tables for the army. Tables dated from may had reached the 15th​ infantry division in Tietsin. There were similarities of course, but the new American Line Division for the American Expeditionary Force was a massive beast, comparable in size to its Japanese equivalent. And rather than size down, they were talking about adding a few more men to it.... to the tune of twenty eight thousand men.

If the European theater divisions reached that allotment they would be double the paper strength of their division. It would be a ponderous giant comprised of a teeming mass of rifles... but Black Jack could probably wrangle it.

He racked the bolt home and moved towards one of the manicured trees that was now painted blue from the signaling charge of a ranging shell. The man behind the branches took the round into his side and tumbled over.

They had discarded the brigade as part of the division, but the regiment was roughly the same manpower as a US one. As soon as they got home they were going to have to start new classes, fresh recruiting cycles. Every flea bitten mongrel in south china could smell blood, and another fight would be on the horizon.

"Sir?"

He felt more than saw the sudden flank, but he also heard the pipers play. Cullen's Van Force was committing its Madsens as they leapfrogged up to the south western garden wall of the park. "Tell Abel." He ordered.

They needed to wipe out this pocket, and quickly. There was the preparatory school as well, as if Percy hadn't reminded him enough about that. That would be negotiated out though, they just needed Zhu out of the city and away from the rail lines. Whether or not Percy could talk them into departing remained to be seen but leaving a garrison here to bottle up and besiege a position, regardless of how poor he suspected the Royalist supply was, ws already a subject that had been discarded from discussion. The priority was to secure Zhengzhou and stabilize the division in the event something else went wrong... which was a problem since they were presently sitting on a shipment of weapons Lloyd George had ordered for the Australians that would need to be delivered to a port and put on a British ship... Allen suspected that the Legation in Tietsin knew that the shipment was in Zhengzhou's central station, and were alarmed at the prospect of the royalists potentially getting their hands on them.

... especially given Percy's outlandish notion Zhang Xun was pro Germany in his foreign sympathies.
--
Notes: this is somewhat shorter, but directly leads towards the August recruitment initiative and the forthcoming meeting in the coming week with Yan Xishan over political arrangements, both of which impact the creation of 2nd​ Division and the broader National Guard as institutional body.

Regarding snipers, US sniper doctrine varies between the USMC and USA (and then the Navy, and to a lesser extent the Coast Guard, and Air Force are weird) and for most of US history US marksmanship/sniper/sharpshooter programs were unit local (ussually the regiment), the US has a history of these programs, but probably due to the emphasis of rifle marksmanship and the impact that had in service rifle development the modern US Army program is a late cold war program. The previous programs were cancelled for various reasons usually after the completion of hostilities (i.e. Whoever were fighting with at the time, Germany, Germany, Korea, Vietnam). So institutionally in the US its historically a regimental association, 'get me the best riflemen in the regiment', which generally meant you were pulling hunters, or other specialists from all over the formation and throwing them together with their own rifles and this lasted from 1820ish at least to into Vietnam instances, were your regiment basically decides to shove a scoped rifle, now by the time 1960s the army has learned some of the lessons of Korea and the fifties so there more professionalization. Its a really weird part of army history compared to what we're used to modern day, where its a standardized army school rather than having each regiment do their own thing.

 

[Imperator Pax]

5 July 1917
Gun fire had echoed long into the night. Not that it had been exceptionally effective. The firecrackers Cole had sent up, presumably that had been in storage for the Fourth of July had been sent up as well had potentially hd just as much of an effect on the enemy as any occasional burst of machine gun fire sent into their general direction.

Percy certainly hadn't appreciated it... but morning had come and the pickets relieved. The englishman rubbed his eyes, and reached for the black coffee without complaining. "The city is effectively ours." Which was true barring small pockets of resistance in the city center. Zhu's territorial defense battalions simply weren't equipped to stand up to a slugging match with modern infantry, never mind the combination of infantry supported with rapid firing cannon. He had lasted longer than he had any right to do.... "He can't last much longer."

"Its the city around us. If this was open field we'd have been done two days ago," If not sooner, "the city slows down movement, the buildings restrict how and where are artillery can move. Its worse than fighting in a fog." What was worse as that Zhu might have in total another one or two battalions of cavalry, and possibly two to as many as ten battalions of infantry even if they were understrength... and so this needed to end today. "With our positions in contact though this ends today."

Nakamichi nodded with poise and solidarity at the statement, but said nothing. They still weren't going to have the manpower to deploy units into the neighboring province, and Tietsin was still blocked because Zhang Xun was sitting on the Zhili network that ran everything through Peking.

The smart move was to wait. Wait until something happened. Wait until the rail line to the ports reopened and hand over the weapons to a British flagged ship... but it would have to be at Weihaiwei or at Tietsin... that much weaponry, modern weaponry sending it to Shanghai was out of the question.

There was a pause before Percy assured them that the Legation, the British Legation, was sure that their numbers on Zhu's forces were accurate at least in terms of nominal organization. "They're undisciplined in an open fight they fail against proper soldiers." Nakamichi replied, highlighting how frail their forces were even with superior numbers to facing a bayonet charge. He left them to their disagreements stepping outside of the train car.

They were starting to see the town citizenry come out again. Either they had some sense that the battle was largely concluded, or that after the past couple days they were willing to risk peeking outside and chancing a visit to their neighbors to see how things were across town. It was a complication to the mess that they didn't need.

Cullen eased off the side of the car pushing his Stetson up, and offering his customary greeting, "They at it again?"

"Is that surprising?" Percy, and Nakamichi both looked at the world through different lenses and both came up with different conclusions.

"I guess not. Waite phoned in, the regiment has the northern rail line locked down."

"Was there a serious attempt to push this morning?"

Cole shook his head, "I don't think so, he fended off a handful of probes but I think whoever is in Baoding seems to have stopped... Waitie suspects that's because Duan is claiming to have mustered fifty thousand men to," He chuckled, "pardon me, to protect the republic."

"Where is word of that circulating?"

"The papers, Tietsin, Shanghai hit the wires two hours ago. Duan is meaning it for the international quarters obviously," The division between north, central, and southern china were such that there were various degrees of involvement. "On the other hand, I gather from the rumbling he must feel the need to talk to the other Beiyang leaders... the ones who haven't picked sides yet."

Anhui was still up in the air as the situation remained unclear in the province. "Duan also has to do something before Zhang can concentrate his forces. If the rest of the Wu Wei corp makes it to Peking it'll be a disaster."

Cole frowned, "He'd need Japanese trains for that," To bring them in from the north eastern provinces of Manchuria," and I don't think that will happen. Especially if there is German involvement on Zhang's behalf." They didn't know enough to disprove it, but the insinuation alone might be enough to delay trains for maintenance or some such, or to cite some other sudden issue that would cause a disruption of service. "Think Percy can talk them out of there?"

"You that eager to send them in?" Allen nodded towards a squad of men in black uniforms with winchester rifles who looked like they were chomping at the bit for the next round of action. "I'm certainly against trying to mount an assault." He added.

"I don't think they'd be expecting us to come in, I think we could take them in the night."

"You're going in there?"

"Yeah, I think I am." Cullen rested a hand on the sheathed pistol. "Go in quick, hit them short rifles, and shotguns, pistols on the door. We've busted the grain union," The green gang, "dens open like before,"

"This is different."

Cullen shrugged, "Yeah, yeah I guess it is. Percy doesn't get them out of there, we're going to have to go in Brother John they set the newspaper office on fire, you don't think they might get desperate and do the same."
--
It had been a while since he had done something like this... and in the Philippines he'd have preferred to take the cover of night. "I could give another try." Percy remarked as the mag slid into the water buffalo hide scabbard, even as the generators hummed. They powered the arc lighting glaring balefully at the windows of the finishing school as spotlights, which given it was cloudy made them somewhat more effective.

It was about two in the afternoon, and even with the clouds the mercury claimed it was about ninety degrees.

Percy assuming that they hadn't heard his offer started again, but Allen shook his head. "Cole's right, we need to go in. You said you only saw ten of them."

"There could be more." There probably were but that was alright. "They do have guns you know."

"But they were in uniform?"

"Well yes." The englishman remarked.

He looked at the building, and its wrought iron Victorian construction.... it was ridiculous he decided that they referred to any single architecture style as Victorian the woman had reigned for sixty odd years she'd seen the states invade mexico, the war between the states, France invade Mexico, the states fight spain, the british fight the boers not once but twice, and never mind however many fights that the British had had in China during that period... and that was just the army never mind what all else had changed as armies had made the leap from smoothbore to rifle, to black to smokeless from paper to brass.

Allen rubbed his thumb over the two hundred grain hollow point. He pushed it into one of the magazines for his Remington, as Cole smacked Percy giddily on the shoulder, "The Jaegers not going in will cover the windows, their gewehrs will thump anybody with funny ideas." Cullen was intentionally using German... albeit with a west texan accent to needle Percy in the moment. They decided not to tell him that the wolf hunters who were in place across the way had already counted more than ten or even fifteen in the upstairs. The men upstairs didn't seem very attentive... they seemed to have, as Percy had noted, found the staff's liquor stash.

"Come on Cole leave 'em be." Cullen followed his glance to the two storey structure. "Which wing do you want to take?"

Breaching occurred as with any sort of building, they tried being quiet at first. A hui corporal with a shotgun jimmied the west lock, and that got them in. He swept his browning across the hall, allowing two men with Remingtons to then push inside letting allen form his first firing section in the school hallway. The second half the nominal rifle squad included a pair of aid men and the mongol charged with making sure they didn't need to use their pistols if it could be avoided.

It was a lovely white washed building from the outside, but the prepatory school was a sight better apportioned than the confines of West Point where he had graduated, even if the academy had transitioned from gas to electric lighting by then. It was very clean, and bright that was marred by broken glass and a handful of broken doors. He flashed the Lakota hand signs that had been used in the Philippines and since adopted here signaling the point man to wait as the gray clad soldier lit his cigarette. He'd been half way to turning, probably to check the door when the gunshot rang from the other end.

Rather than fire one of their own the Manchu on point grabbed the smoker by his queue yanked him backwards and bashed down with his Remington's stock breaking the man's nose. It proved to be unnecessary there were no further shots, and they froze in place. Another wait hand sign, and he ran through what might have happened.

The gunshot had been inside... but just the one... it had been a pistol. There had been no way that had come from even a comparatively mild rifle report like the Winchesters... probably not forty five. A mauser or an FN most likely... but that still could have been one of Cullen's troopers.

Waiting wasn't going to work and inside the lecture hall one of the soldiers inside was getting impatient, presumably shouting for his friend to figure out what was wrong.

Stay low... which would be harder for him than anyone, but the smallest man in the element was still five seven with biceps more akin to tree trunks. The rifle team divided with the second half remaining as they transitioned into the hall.

Bolt action rifles, a mauser pistol, what looked like a spanish number 3 smith tucked in a cavalry sash. Allen breathed bringing the thirty five around and putting the barley corn on the officer's neck from where he was angrily shouting at the doorway demanding to know what was going on.
The queued officer, a cavalry captain from his rank markings and the backing it was on squinted and then there were a handful of rifle reports from the other end.


Allen pulled his off hand off the forend and make the plains directive to attack, and rose in the same motion.

Browning's thirty five tore out most of the man's neck and jaw as it sped through and into the blackboard. The two other remingtons in the lead did similar damage in the thirty or forty feet distance to head, and shoulders.

The six men with rifles dropped the officer slumped back behind the lectern as a third of the half squad pushed forward down the lecture hall's steps leaving the last two men in rear guard. He made a counting gesture and directed towards the probably seventy or so students who were too busy looking at the gray uniforms and wondering what the devil was going on to realize they were dressed similar. He pushed back up the steps and peaked through to the hall before rejoining the second half of the squad. There was boom and he craned up, as he figured Cullen had been right about needing to cover the windows.

--

--
Notes: As a note to something mentioned previous, but Kung Xian is referring to the county. Its near... the arsenal was near Kaifeng, it was built in an old Manchu fort / military headquarters complex, but its name refers to the county its in not Xian (Xi'an, Sian) as in the city. So basically its the County Arsenal


So what has come up recently in discussion is Japan's pursuit of a cartridge to replace their 6.5SR cartridge the 'arisaka'. Now the Japanese also used the Carcano Cartridge, and 303, and obviously later would develop effectively a rimless 303 (performance wise) as well as use the 7.92 IS (8mm Mauser) and its the last one that has sparked the discussion in particular.

So Japan, like basically everyone (nation wise) was driven towards cartridge adoption for the purposes of running machine guns. There was even as early as the Russo-Japanese war complaints about the 6.5 Arisaka not having enough oomph (which is bullshit, thats shot place, more likely its less you hit the Russian soldier and he didn't die, versus, you missed). Anyway, the US is one of the few countries which made the decision to select rifle load not designed around machine gun needs and that is specifically because they had enough 3006 production where that was even an option. The Springfield and Browning 30 cals shoot the same full power 3006 loads but those will beat a garand to death eventually, the Garand was designed for a reduced power load, but thats more an exception as its as the tail end of this early 20th​ century phenmenon regarding rifle calibers.

So Japan's primary focus was on having a cartridge that would run machine guns, and this eventually resulted in 7.7x58 which is effectively rimless 303. People I know have asked why didn't the british do that, logistics, and scale. The british were looking at updating cartridges (in this story in particular you'll note that the American characters as that British dwarf when talking about the cartridge), people have also wondered why the British didn't go to 3006, against logistics and scale. This is also why it took so long for Japan to introduce 7.7 because the post war (ww1) economic slump, and the earthquake basically meant they couldn't. The money for the army wasn't there.

So the conversation eventually meandered to things that will happen in the early twenties. Specifically that Japan historically used the Lewis gun in 303, Xian manufactures the Lewis Gun in 8mm Mauser and as a result of this during the Russian Civil War Japanese troops who historically had Lewis guns are issued Lewis guns in 8mm. To make a short answer to a question, why would Japan not go ahead and adopt 8 Mauser?

The answer is the navy. In OTL the IJN was very anglophile in the early 20th​ century, you would have probably in 1910 probably had a better chance of them (specifically the IJN) adopting 3006 than 7.92, and by 1920 they had basically decided they weren't going to go that route. The army adopts 8mm Mauser specifically as a machine gun cartridge. Its a budget thing they weren't going to tool up to produce entirely new rifles especially by that point because the money was not there and because of navy interference.