The Official Game Status Update Thread

[Seperallis]

European Expedition: The Battle of Kirikkale
part of
The Franco-Japanese War for New South Wales

A Victoria 2 Japanese continuation game from Europa Universalis III

>> Click Here for the "Ethiopian Campaign!" <<
>> 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) <<


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 Respite
Even though Japan has just concluded a peace, there would be no rest for the troops.

With the war against Spain over so quickly, Japanese military attentions immediately turned towards the French presence in the east as the next threat to eliminate. While the vast majority of French colonial holdings were in the Americas, including vast swaths of the North American west, France still held territory in Vietnam, Siam, and Australia; given Japanese fears of an alliance between France and China, Japanese military leaders urged the imperial court to remove France's military presence in the region by swiftly declaring war on the European power, which was still busy with a war against Great Britain. Of particular interest was France's garrison and fleet stationed in Sydney, which would provide an annoyance in Japan's rear, should a war with China come to pass.

The war was not without its opponents, especially in the now Liberal-controlled Diet, who argued that a war with France was wholly unnecessary; Japan and France did not enjoy good relations, it was true, but there was no proof of a Sino-French alliance in the making, and France had long acceded dominance of Asia to Japan decades earlier when Japan annexed Queensland. What purpose was there to waste honorable Japanese lives and resources on an inconsequential enemy?

Though the Liberals had the power in the legislature, conservative elements still had a firm grip on power in the Imperial Court. With his generals on his right, and war-profiteering advisors on his left, the Emperor signed the declaration approving a buildup of forces to sweep French military presence from Asia.


Early War, & the Trouble with Turkey
With forces in position, a formal declaration of war was sent to Paris; by the time anyone in Paris would receive the information, however, Japanese navies had already stormed French colonial beaches in Asia and bombarded French-controlled ports. In Australia, a swift attack by Australian Colonial Corps easily swept aside French resistance, and Sydney capitulated to Japanese occupiers just a couple weeks after the start of the conflict. Indeed, with Japanese fleets blocking reinforcement from Europe and France busy contending with a war at home, all French colonies in Asia were occupied within three months.

Japan was now prepared to sit and wait for the course of time and uncontested occupation force the French ambassadors to the negotiating table...until the Ottomans happened.

Several decades back, Japan had offered protection and alliance to the flagging Ottoman state, which had seen itself slowly and systematically torn apart by a zealous Spain insistent on purging Islam from Europe and the Mediterranean. Now, however, this move to block Spanish ambitions in the Middle East was haunting the Japanese war effort; after joining the war to assist Japan, Turkish armies were defeated at home by an Austrian-Bohemian-Italian coalition in defense of France, with Papal armies now running rampant through the mountainous countryside. With Japan in firm control of the Asian war and the Coalition with unquestioned gains in Anatolia, the French saw the war as a stalemate - or indeed, that the war was going rather well for them - and refused to negotiate any other peace than to see Japan humiliated.

Something needed done about the Ottoman-induced stalemate.

Japanese military command initially took several weeks to draw up a potential invasion of French colonial holdings in the Americas, using the country's unparalleled navy and expansive Pacific naval infrastructure to strike where the enemy was weakest. However, such a strategy would unnecessarily drag out the war, with some estimates putting the time to victory at upwards of four years under the best scenario, well beyond the easy one-year campaign originally expected. A second, much more daring plan was conceived and received wide support: Japan would create its first "Expeditionary Army" and use its naval superiority to land them in Europe.

For the first time in history, Japanese warships would see action in European waters.

The Japanese armada was massive: more than 100 warships, sailing ships, steam ships, mean ships of the line and lean frigates, a massive display of the last 80+ years of Japanese naval power and history setting forth from the allied port of Sofala for European waters, escorting another 40 transports carrying the entirety of the newly-organized Expeditionary Army, over 100 thousand men strong. Soon after setting off, while passing by Cape Town, the Grand Fleet encountered an Austrian transport fleet headed for the Indian Ocean, which was swiftly destroyed with no losses. Truly, an impressive force.

That said, the fleet did have two major problems, that would nearly jeopardize the entire mission.

First, the fleet had to move at the speed of the slowest ship, and with such a massive force and many of the ships being old sailing designs from the turn of the century, the pace was very quite slow. To lessen this problem, the order was given for the newer, faster steam ships to break off on their own and sail ahead of the larger, slower sailing ships. This certainly sped up the rate at which the Japanese would reach Europe, but it only exacerbated the second problem.

With so many transports carrying so many men, the fleet could not risk moving through hostile waters while enemy fleets still roamed free, highlighted when a small French raiding fleet near Gibraltar managed to avoid the escorting warships and dash between the transports, blocking half the ships of the advance fleet from continuing on and nearly inflicting a disaster as they attempted to inflict as much damage as possible. While driven off with no losses by the escorts, the damage was done, as the order was given by the fleet admiral that the Japanese transports must dock in Gibraltar until the accompanying warships could clear the Mediterranean of the harassing enemy ships.


The Battle of Kirikkale
Not all ships, obeyed. The group of transports carrying the 1^st Home Guards Corps had made it through the combat unscathed, having managed to completely avoid and steam through the straits before the incoming French ships had blocked the passage; General Uehara Gentaro ignored continuous orders to port in neutral Spanish harbors, stating bluntly, "I will not besmirch the honor of myself or my men by sailing half way around the world only to cower on the doorstep of my enemy," and urged the captains of his convoy to continue onwards.

Continue they did and, by a divine miracle, manage to avoid the veritable minefield of enemy raiding fleets looking for their very ships to port in Izmit, in Spanish-occupied Turkey. No other transports made it past Gibraltar, but lack of reinforcements and only 24,000 men to the Papal army's 38,000 did not stop the General from ordering his men march eastward and begin the liberation of Ottoman lands. After sweeping along the coast to liberate Zonguldak and Karabuk without resistance, the 1^st Home Guards Corps swung south to free Ankara, before a planned march to relieve the remnants of the Turkish army in Adana.

Things rarely go as planned in war. As much as the Spanish despised the French coalition, they equally hated the Japanese who they allowed access through their lands, and so Spain brokered a deal with Bohemia to allow their armies access across the Bosporus in the hope that the two sides would wipe each other out. Warned of the incoming enemy army of more than four times his number by the fleet in harbor as Izmit, General Uehara Gentaro, having freshly liberated Ankara from Papal hands and still with no word from the fleet stuck at Gibraltar retreated across the Kizilirmak to dig into defensive positions south of the city of Kirikkale, destroying the bridges as he went to stall for time.

Twelve days later, the Bohemian colors were finally sighted marching towards the opposite shore; Gentaro's men opened fire with a barrage of guns and artillery as the Czech men attempted to ford the river, repulsing them back towards the opposite bank. The Bohemians attempted to bring their own big guns forward to attack, but the jagged, rocky hilsides and narrow roads presented a small front for assault, and made it difficult to maneuver their sizable army in such tight quarters. Day after day, night after night, the Czechs attempted to use their superior numbers to force a crossing at Kirikkale, but time and again the veteran Japanese guards threw them back, the general himself reportedly taking up arms on the front line to encourage them in their inspired defense, constantly reminding them of the reinforcements that would surely be on their way any day now.

Days dragged into weeks. By the end of the second week, Gintaro had lost just 8,000 men, compared with nearly 30,000 Bohemian killed or wounded, but he couldn't afford to keep with this stalemate. Even though he had inflicted heavy casualties, the Bohemian troops could be resupplied, where the Japanese weren't; furthermore, the Bohemian troops had the luxury of reserves and were able to rotate their troops in and out on the relatively small front line, whereas the smaller Japanese force were growing weary, having to keep constant vigilance with no one to relieve them. What's more, with news of the fall of Adana and the now-free Papal forces marching north towards them, morale was wavering, as the troops began to fear this would be their final battle.

A couple days later, however, saw the ridges north of the Bohemian position crowded with 55,000 Japanese troops from the 4^th and 6^th Home Guards Corps pouring cannon and gun fire into the exposed Bohemian flank, decimating the Czech lines and, after half a day's battle, sending the Bohemian army on a shattered retreat south towards Konya. Unbeknownst to Gentaro, who was without contact with the fleet for the length of the battle, the Japanese Grand Fleet, after a week of hunting enemy raiding ships, had finally either sunk or driven the vast majority of enemy ships back into port, where the heavy warships blockaded and bombarded them while the transports raced across the Mediterranean towards their objective of saving the last scraps of the Turkish Army.

The battle, while costly, had prevented the sizable Bohemian army from overrunning the few vestiges of free Ottoman holdings that remained. Bohemian losses were catastrophic: out of a force of 98,000 men, only 21,000 lived through the retreat to Konya. Japanese losses totaled roughly 15,000 men, with Gentaro's own stalwart defenders losing 14,200 of that number. With the Bohemian army routed at Kirikkale and surrendered at Konya, and the Papal forces intercepted and destroyed at Keyseri, the French agreed to Japanese demands, surrendering their holdings in New South Wales and returning all Vietnamese lands to Vietnam.

News papers called the campaign a "resounding success."

What of General Uehara Gentaro, who disobeyed orders to rush to the defense of the Ottomans? There wasn't much the court could do to punish him, with papers back home declaring him a "hero of the modern age," whose peerless leadership and stalwart defense won the day for Imperial Japanese forces at Kirikkale and saved the fortunes and honor of the Turks, and the pinnacle of Japanese exceptionalism. The Imperial Court had little choice but to cede to public opinion and morale, and in a grand ceremony Uehara Gentaro was given the mostly ceremonial rank of "Gensui" (Gensui-Rikugun-Taishō), or "Field Marshal."

His peers had little time to mull over the injustice. With Suez now in friendly hands, and France driven from Asia, the time to reign-in Japan's arch-nemesis was at hand. The pieces were in place, and experience had taught valuable lessons to the Japanese military establishment. With newly developed tactics and powerful weaponry in the form of the newly-invented "machine gun," the next gambit in Japan's four-year-long plan to reclaim unquestioned dominance of Asia was ready to be played.

War in China was now at hand.


A bonus! Imperial Japan circa 1878-1879