Eternity RPC Board
09-16-2016, 03:02 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-15-2018, 10:44 PM by Seperallis.)
Ethiopian Campaign: The Battles of Negele and Arba Minch
part of
The Japanese-Spanish War of Egyptian Liberation
A Victoria 2 Japanese continuation game from Europa Universalis III
>> Click Here for the "European Expedition!" <<
>> Click Here for the "Sino-Japanese War!" (Part 1) <<
>> Click Here for the "Sino-Japanese War!" (Part 2) <<
>> Click Here for "For Liberty!" (Part 1) <<
>> Click Here for "For Liberty!" (Part 2) <<
![[Image: 7DBktIWm.png]](http://i.imgur.com/7DBktIWm.png)
Click for a larger image, because the original is too large to use here on its own.
I wasn't taking screenshots yet, so this is all you get. Sorry.
A Brief Summation of History
Japan first rose to prominence as a great world power late in the 18th century. At the time, Japan had been making some use of western military techonologies to defend against the encroaching empires of the European powers, becoming the most powerful of the East Asian countries with an empire stretching from the Japanese homeland across Southeast Asia towards India. While many regarded the expansive and fairly modern Japanese Navy as a force to be reckoned with, having successfully defended Japanese hegemony over its several SE Asian client states from encroaching European imperialism, Japan itself wasn't considered much of a military threat until its convincing - if not hard-fought - victory in the Russo-Japanese War, cementing its borders in Mongolia and Manchuria against a force many figured to be their better.
Despite Japan's great strides in military and economic strength, Japan still maintained a largely agrarian and "backwards" society mostly untouched by western influences at the turn of the 19th century, and the vast majority of Japan's advances in technology and science were either imported, or "borrowed" from the western powers and adapted to meet the needs and resources of Japan...though often of an inferior quality to the original. Realizing this could not continue if Japan were to have any hope of continuing to challenge the European powers in the future, Emperor Reigen broadened westernization policies of his great-grandmother Empress Suiko, against his advisors' counsel, instituting mandatory westernization throughout all corners of Japanese society. As part of his, Reigen instituted laws breaking down the class barriers and, most importantly, laid the groundwork for an empire-wide, state-funded education program.
While the rapid westernization did wonders for making Japan a self-sufficient Great Power, the open flow of western ideas and information brought with them dangerous ideas of republican ism and the rights of the common man. By 1840, two massive uprisings to install a western-style government, funded largely by British coin and propaganda, ended in hundreds of thousands of deaths as they were mercilessly suppressed by Imperial forces. Reigen sought to avert future bloodshed by divesting some of the Court's lawmaking power into the country's first legislative body, the Diet. He enacted the country's first elections shortly before the end of his long reign, though the Emperor and his court still held supreme power and authority.
His legacy continued in his successors, however. By 1860, Japan was the leading industrial power in the world by a wide margin, and more than half of all the empire's vast and varied residents could both read and write in Japanese...no mean feat for a multicultural empire spanning more than half the globe, from Africa through to the mid-Pacific, though this would have its own consequences later.
A Prelude to War
Japan had a long history of conflicts during this era of its history, though it had never taken an active part in large-scale warfare outside of Asia, even as it held African colonies at Somalia. For much of the last two hundred years, Japanese foreign policy had been primarily concerned with checking European colonial power in Asia, limiting its spread and diminishing its influence wherever possible. In 1876, this outlook would change, creating a new era of Japanese involvement in global European affairs, for two reasons: the continued march of technological advancement, and the meteoric rise of Chinese military and industrial power.
Japan and China had once been close allies; starting in the mid-16th century, the two countries had seen the power and spread of strange foreign powers from a place called "Europe" into the region, and had concluded an unshakable alliance to defend their interests against these new powers. This alliance lasted more than 250 years, and fostered a great degree of friendship between the two. This peaceful compact had all but eroded by the turn of the 19th century, however, as Chinese ambitions for hegemony of the Asian mainland ran directly counter to Japan's presence in Mongolia, Manchuria, Bangladesh, and its Southeast Asian puppet states.
The end result was dissolution of the alliance and two wars between the two former friends over a span of 15 years. While Japan won both conflicts, it managed to do so by only just barely avoiding disaster, having sorely underestimated the rapid pace at which their newfound rival grew stronger and more westernized, and the revelation shocked the Japanese elite establishment; if Japan remained as complacent as it had grown to become in the last half-century, then it would soon find itself replaced as the unquestioned dominant power of the Far East.
Speaking of technology, though, the march of technology continued onwards, and by the mid-1870's, most of the powerful navies - Japan's included - were making use of metal-armored, steam-powered warships, boasting much farther range and firepower than during the age of sail. This, however, was not of serious concern to the powerful, well-equipped and trained Imperial Japanese Navy. However, recent talk out of Spain hinting at the possibility of using newly-discovered construction and fabrication methods to construct a sort of "canal" through the Sinai, opening a new channel by which the imperialist Europeans might more easily access the Asian seas was of grave concern to the Japanese court.
You see, up until this point, Japanese naval doctrine followed a very basic plan: use the colonial fleets based in Jakarta and Mogadishu to patrol the Indian Ocean & destroy European fleets and transports trying to swing around the south of Africa, while the main fleet spreads out to blockade and bombard enemy ports unmolested. A second route into the Indian Ocean, especially one held by a rival colonial power, would jeopardize this strategy, forcing a split of the colonial fleets and making it more likely an enemy fleet would slip past and harass Japanese ports and shipping.
Something needed done about this, and so something was; Egypt, a neutral nation, longed for returned control of Palestine and the Sinai, and Japan desired friendly ports in the Middle East and Mediterranean. A compact was quickly drawn between the two, and before the ink had even dried upon the paper, Japan prepared itself for war.
The Battle of Negele - The Dawn of Modern Warfare
As far the war itself, the end result was more or less a foregone conclusion.
Spain had seen itself embroiled in a long and costly war with France in the last couple years, that had drained both its manpower and its finances, which had gone in favor of Japan's plans to end the war quickly. Before the compact between Japan and Egypt was even signed, the Imperial Fleet had been transferring ships and troops into the Red Sea, making use of friendly ports to stage the upcoming assault; what resulted was a swift occupation of Spanish Palestine and the Sinai, as the poorly supplied and undermanned local Spanish fortresses fell within days of the initial landings, and an easy sweep by Japanese forces through Spanish-occupied South Vietnam and South Africa.
With the first month of the war ending in resounding success for the Japanese military, and no Spanish troops reported nearby, the colonial army in Somalia was issued the order to press north and occupy Spanish-held Djibouti and Aden, before pressing the attack into a hostile Yemen, which Egyptian troops had invaded months earlier. General Ugaki Kageaki, commander of the Colonial Africa Army, took 1st Africa Corps with 27 thousand men north from Somalia into the Arabian Peninsula, leaving 2nd Africa Corps and 15 thousand men behind in Mogadishu under the command of Dewa Rokuro to assault Spanish holdings in southern Sudan.
Then, months later, came word of the Spanish Army's advance on Somalia.
Apparently unwilling and unable to force the Japanese blockade around the south of Africa, the Spanish armies had landed in Libya and marched through the deserts of northern Sudan before being discovered weeks from 2nd Africa Corps' position besieging the fortress at Kapoeta. Being completely out in the open, Rokuro ordered a withdraw deep into Japanese colonial territory, towards defensible, friendly positions in the rugged terrain north of Negele. There, being the only troops in the area with no hope relief and reinforcements more than a month away, he ordered his troops dig in, and waited, accidentally heralding the future of modern warfare.
Now, throughout history, defenders had always had some form of advantage in rough terrain, especially under a competent commander. They could pick the best places to fight, sure, and other such tactical inventions, but never before had the simple spade played such a pivotal role in the outcome of a battle. Knowing that the enemy would have to come meet them on the field of battle before they could safely assault Negele itself, Rokuro ordered his troops to construct an earthwork embankment along the ridgeline. He then ordered that, instead of each solder digging his own shallow hole into which he could cover himself against enemy artillery, Rokuro ordered an entire line be dug, into which his solders could kneel and fire over the constructed embankment without risk of exposing themselves over the ridge.
The crude beginnings of trench warfare were born.
The beleaguered Spanish troops, expecting an honourable fight in the open, were taken by surprise by a sudden onslaught of guns and cannons from the ridge, and fell back to regroup. Under cover of their own big guns now, the cavalry-heavy Spanish army attempted to break the Japanese positions, charging the ridge again and again from multiple points, but the African regulars, defending home and empire, held firm, giving no weakness or opening to the attackers as they could move quickly and with relative safety to any point on the trench to repulse the Spanish advance. By the time the day was done, Spanish corpses littered the valley and hillside. The Somali, Kenyan, and Ethiopian casualties among the 2nd Africa Corps totaled no more than 1,800; their enemy suffered more than ten times worse, with more than 24,000 Spanish dead and dying strewn across the field of battle, as well as several hundred artillery abandoned in the Spanish retreat.
The war only lasted a few weeks after that crushing victory. The 3rd Home Guards Corps, which had landed in Mogadishu and was only now a few days from the site of the battle with orders to reinforce, were surprised at the Africans' not only holding the line, but that they had won the day. Making a snap decision to abandon the reinforcement order, the extra 30 thousand men circled around the Spanish forces unnoticed. After trapping 36,000 Spanish reinforcements at Arba Minch, Japanese forces fully routed the invading armies. It was only a matter of time before the Spanish army was surrounded, defeated, and surrendered in Kapoeta.
Unable to endure more embarrassment and losses or men, Spain agreed to Japanese demands a week after its losses in the field at Negele and Arba Minch, surrendering all its middle eastern holdings to Egypt.
part of
The Japanese-Spanish War of Egyptian Liberation
A Victoria 2 Japanese continuation game from Europa Universalis III
>> Click Here for the "European Expedition!" <<
>> Click Here for the "Sino-Japanese War!" (Part 1) <<
>> Click Here for the "Sino-Japanese War!" (Part 2) <<
>> Click Here for "For Liberty!" (Part 1) <<
>> Click Here for "For Liberty!" (Part 2) <<
![[Image: 7DBktIWm.png]](http://i.imgur.com/7DBktIW.png)
Click for a larger image, because the original is too large to use here on its own.
I wasn't taking screenshots yet, so this is all you get. Sorry.
A Brief Summation of History
Japan first rose to prominence as a great world power late in the 18th century. At the time, Japan had been making some use of western military techonologies to defend against the encroaching empires of the European powers, becoming the most powerful of the East Asian countries with an empire stretching from the Japanese homeland across Southeast Asia towards India. While many regarded the expansive and fairly modern Japanese Navy as a force to be reckoned with, having successfully defended Japanese hegemony over its several SE Asian client states from encroaching European imperialism, Japan itself wasn't considered much of a military threat until its convincing - if not hard-fought - victory in the Russo-Japanese War, cementing its borders in Mongolia and Manchuria against a force many figured to be their better.
Despite Japan's great strides in military and economic strength, Japan still maintained a largely agrarian and "backwards" society mostly untouched by western influences at the turn of the 19th century, and the vast majority of Japan's advances in technology and science were either imported, or "borrowed" from the western powers and adapted to meet the needs and resources of Japan...though often of an inferior quality to the original. Realizing this could not continue if Japan were to have any hope of continuing to challenge the European powers in the future, Emperor Reigen broadened westernization policies of his great-grandmother Empress Suiko, against his advisors' counsel, instituting mandatory westernization throughout all corners of Japanese society. As part of his, Reigen instituted laws breaking down the class barriers and, most importantly, laid the groundwork for an empire-wide, state-funded education program.
While the rapid westernization did wonders for making Japan a self-sufficient Great Power, the open flow of western ideas and information brought with them dangerous ideas of republican ism and the rights of the common man. By 1840, two massive uprisings to install a western-style government, funded largely by British coin and propaganda, ended in hundreds of thousands of deaths as they were mercilessly suppressed by Imperial forces. Reigen sought to avert future bloodshed by divesting some of the Court's lawmaking power into the country's first legislative body, the Diet. He enacted the country's first elections shortly before the end of his long reign, though the Emperor and his court still held supreme power and authority.
His legacy continued in his successors, however. By 1860, Japan was the leading industrial power in the world by a wide margin, and more than half of all the empire's vast and varied residents could both read and write in Japanese...no mean feat for a multicultural empire spanning more than half the globe, from Africa through to the mid-Pacific, though this would have its own consequences later.
A Prelude to War
Japan had a long history of conflicts during this era of its history, though it had never taken an active part in large-scale warfare outside of Asia, even as it held African colonies at Somalia. For much of the last two hundred years, Japanese foreign policy had been primarily concerned with checking European colonial power in Asia, limiting its spread and diminishing its influence wherever possible. In 1876, this outlook would change, creating a new era of Japanese involvement in global European affairs, for two reasons: the continued march of technological advancement, and the meteoric rise of Chinese military and industrial power.
Japan and China had once been close allies; starting in the mid-16th century, the two countries had seen the power and spread of strange foreign powers from a place called "Europe" into the region, and had concluded an unshakable alliance to defend their interests against these new powers. This alliance lasted more than 250 years, and fostered a great degree of friendship between the two. This peaceful compact had all but eroded by the turn of the 19th century, however, as Chinese ambitions for hegemony of the Asian mainland ran directly counter to Japan's presence in Mongolia, Manchuria, Bangladesh, and its Southeast Asian puppet states.
The end result was dissolution of the alliance and two wars between the two former friends over a span of 15 years. While Japan won both conflicts, it managed to do so by only just barely avoiding disaster, having sorely underestimated the rapid pace at which their newfound rival grew stronger and more westernized, and the revelation shocked the Japanese elite establishment; if Japan remained as complacent as it had grown to become in the last half-century, then it would soon find itself replaced as the unquestioned dominant power of the Far East.
Speaking of technology, though, the march of technology continued onwards, and by the mid-1870's, most of the powerful navies - Japan's included - were making use of metal-armored, steam-powered warships, boasting much farther range and firepower than during the age of sail. This, however, was not of serious concern to the powerful, well-equipped and trained Imperial Japanese Navy. However, recent talk out of Spain hinting at the possibility of using newly-discovered construction and fabrication methods to construct a sort of "canal" through the Sinai, opening a new channel by which the imperialist Europeans might more easily access the Asian seas was of grave concern to the Japanese court.
You see, up until this point, Japanese naval doctrine followed a very basic plan: use the colonial fleets based in Jakarta and Mogadishu to patrol the Indian Ocean & destroy European fleets and transports trying to swing around the south of Africa, while the main fleet spreads out to blockade and bombard enemy ports unmolested. A second route into the Indian Ocean, especially one held by a rival colonial power, would jeopardize this strategy, forcing a split of the colonial fleets and making it more likely an enemy fleet would slip past and harass Japanese ports and shipping.
Something needed done about this, and so something was; Egypt, a neutral nation, longed for returned control of Palestine and the Sinai, and Japan desired friendly ports in the Middle East and Mediterranean. A compact was quickly drawn between the two, and before the ink had even dried upon the paper, Japan prepared itself for war.
The Battle of Negele - The Dawn of Modern Warfare
As far the war itself, the end result was more or less a foregone conclusion.
Spain had seen itself embroiled in a long and costly war with France in the last couple years, that had drained both its manpower and its finances, which had gone in favor of Japan's plans to end the war quickly. Before the compact between Japan and Egypt was even signed, the Imperial Fleet had been transferring ships and troops into the Red Sea, making use of friendly ports to stage the upcoming assault; what resulted was a swift occupation of Spanish Palestine and the Sinai, as the poorly supplied and undermanned local Spanish fortresses fell within days of the initial landings, and an easy sweep by Japanese forces through Spanish-occupied South Vietnam and South Africa.
With the first month of the war ending in resounding success for the Japanese military, and no Spanish troops reported nearby, the colonial army in Somalia was issued the order to press north and occupy Spanish-held Djibouti and Aden, before pressing the attack into a hostile Yemen, which Egyptian troops had invaded months earlier. General Ugaki Kageaki, commander of the Colonial Africa Army, took 1st Africa Corps with 27 thousand men north from Somalia into the Arabian Peninsula, leaving 2nd Africa Corps and 15 thousand men behind in Mogadishu under the command of Dewa Rokuro to assault Spanish holdings in southern Sudan.
Then, months later, came word of the Spanish Army's advance on Somalia.
Apparently unwilling and unable to force the Japanese blockade around the south of Africa, the Spanish armies had landed in Libya and marched through the deserts of northern Sudan before being discovered weeks from 2nd Africa Corps' position besieging the fortress at Kapoeta. Being completely out in the open, Rokuro ordered a withdraw deep into Japanese colonial territory, towards defensible, friendly positions in the rugged terrain north of Negele. There, being the only troops in the area with no hope relief and reinforcements more than a month away, he ordered his troops dig in, and waited, accidentally heralding the future of modern warfare.
Now, throughout history, defenders had always had some form of advantage in rough terrain, especially under a competent commander. They could pick the best places to fight, sure, and other such tactical inventions, but never before had the simple spade played such a pivotal role in the outcome of a battle. Knowing that the enemy would have to come meet them on the field of battle before they could safely assault Negele itself, Rokuro ordered his troops to construct an earthwork embankment along the ridgeline. He then ordered that, instead of each solder digging his own shallow hole into which he could cover himself against enemy artillery, Rokuro ordered an entire line be dug, into which his solders could kneel and fire over the constructed embankment without risk of exposing themselves over the ridge.
The crude beginnings of trench warfare were born.
The beleaguered Spanish troops, expecting an honourable fight in the open, were taken by surprise by a sudden onslaught of guns and cannons from the ridge, and fell back to regroup. Under cover of their own big guns now, the cavalry-heavy Spanish army attempted to break the Japanese positions, charging the ridge again and again from multiple points, but the African regulars, defending home and empire, held firm, giving no weakness or opening to the attackers as they could move quickly and with relative safety to any point on the trench to repulse the Spanish advance. By the time the day was done, Spanish corpses littered the valley and hillside. The Somali, Kenyan, and Ethiopian casualties among the 2nd Africa Corps totaled no more than 1,800; their enemy suffered more than ten times worse, with more than 24,000 Spanish dead and dying strewn across the field of battle, as well as several hundred artillery abandoned in the Spanish retreat.
The war only lasted a few weeks after that crushing victory. The 3rd Home Guards Corps, which had landed in Mogadishu and was only now a few days from the site of the battle with orders to reinforce, were surprised at the Africans' not only holding the line, but that they had won the day. Making a snap decision to abandon the reinforcement order, the extra 30 thousand men circled around the Spanish forces unnoticed. After trapping 36,000 Spanish reinforcements at Arba Minch, Japanese forces fully routed the invading armies. It was only a matter of time before the Spanish army was surrounded, defeated, and surrendered in Kapoeta.
Unable to endure more embarrassment and losses or men, Spain agreed to Japanese demands a week after its losses in the field at Negele and Arba Minch, surrendering all its middle eastern holdings to Egypt.