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Chieftain
Local Time: 16:43
Local Date: October 31, 2010
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 74
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A Brief History of France (long)
In the early history of the French civilization, she expanded outward, founding the great cities that we know and love, and that today have become the very flowers of civilization: Paris, Besancon, every school child knows the names of these great metropolises. But in those tenuous centuries before the French culture came to dominate that of the entire planet, there were many years where it sat upon the knife-edge of oblivion.
The first, most obvious point where things could have gone very poorly was the first contact with the Egyptian civilization. While little known today, in the early years of the French development, it sat as a tough and nasty little brute on France’s southern border. The warmongering Egyptians started a brief war with our noble ancestors, leading to the capture of two of the Egyptians’ cities. At this point their despot, Cleopatra, sued for peace, and the benevolent French leader accepted it.
Joining in a friendly commerce trade with the Russians who were developing a thriving nation to the west, the French warily eyed their bloodthristy neighbour to the south. The scientist and artists of France worked diligently and new cities were founded, jungles cleared and the First Queen rose to take her place, leading the country. And as the peacable arts flourished within the French kingdom, so too did the arts of war. While it is unclear in the records which exist from the time where the technique was first worked out, our ancestors discovered the ability to work iron into usable implements. Though this might seem to us in the modern age as quaint, it was a quantum lead forward for the warriors of our great nation.
Unfortunately, there were no large deposits of iron ore within the bounds of the flourishing French empire, which limited the ability of the First Queen to order the raising of armies of swordmen. This lack of iron would lead to even more catastrophic events in the years ahead, for just within the border of the Egyptian despot’s squalid realm was large deposit of iron ore. The southern City Lords could actually see the fruits of this ore in the Egyptian armies which taunted them while on maneveurs just behind their border. While the First Queen was content to attempt to broker a trade deal to have iron delivered to our ports, there were many nobles in the southern cities who felt that the iron must be taken, taken quickly, and secured before the Egyptians were able to use that very compound against them.
This led to the deposing of the First Queen and the institution of the French Republic. While this deposing and the creation of the Republic can be summed up in a single sentence, the truth of the civil war which raged across the French nation during this time was a ghastly and costly affair. For while it raged, the Egyptians built their military forces and eyed the southern cities of France hungrily.
Perhaps the only positive result was the sending out of the expedition just before the civil war truly began and the establishment of the colony of New Paris on the distant small, hilly island off the south western coast. This small city had been the last hope of the First Queen to keep the monarchy in power, hoping that in fact there would be iron in the hills surrounding New Paris. Alas, this was not to be and the monarchy fell. It is a much debated question among modern French historians, whether or not the discovery of iron in those hills would have made a difference, but we will not dwell on counterfactuals here.
The French Republic was formed, with heads of all the cities in the nation forming a representative governement. But, rather than heralding in days of greater prosperity for France, the southern leaders hijacked the Council and forced a declaration of war on the Egyptians, even though they lacked the iron weapons they would surely need. The northern governors were able to secure a source of iron from the Germans, but the battles went very poorly. The southern governors, so convinced of their brilliance in war were fools, and hurled their poorly armed horsemen and archers against the fortified Egyptian towns, costing thousands of lives.
Needless to say, the people revolted. They could not sit by and watch as their countrymen died for little reason and they deposed the Republic in turn. Unfortunately, the timing could not have been worse. Instead of forming new units, especially of the knights the cities now had the capacity to build, the cities descended into their second civil war and unrest. Thousands more died, and temples which had risen above the cities of Paris and Strasbourg were burned to the ground. But out of this chaos rose a leader, a great leader who would turn the tides of war and strike back against the Egyptians.
With a steely fist, the Iron Queen grabbed control of France and the cities fell to producing the knights that were so earnestly required. A weaker leader would have sought peace with the Egyptians content to lose no more than had already been taken by the enemy. Not the Iron Queen. She held her forces back until an unconquerable army was ready and then she struck a mighty blow. Within a single campaign season, the iron mines of the Egyptians had fallen to the French and the city of Alexandria was razed. And then the wisdom of the Iron Queen could be seen as the Egyptians crawled to her to ask for peace and France stood atop the world of empires again.
In coming years, France blossomed again, as she had before the dark days of the Republic, and though some might describe the rule of the Iron Queen as a police state by our modern standards, the nation grew rapidly and with the discovery of gunpowder and mounted cavalry, none dared challenge France. However, the disdain with which France treated Egypt (rejection of the various trade agreements, and even pacts of mutual protection offered by Cleopatra) led to an attack on the French by Egypt, in a vain attempt to gain back some of their lost glory.
One must digress here to discuss the vagaries of history. The colony that the First Queen had founded in the early days of the revolution had not given her the iron for which she had hoped, but the hills of New Paris, which had seemed so worthless had turned out to be a treasure trove of the saltpeter required for gunpowder! And such does the fate of nations turn on the chances of the past.
Still, while the Egyptians were weakened, they had discovered gunpowder as well (or actually, as it is believed, were given the secrets of it by the evil Russian leader), and so had musketmen who defended their cities with great strength. The original plan of the Iron Queen had been to sweep into Egypt and cut off their supply of saltpeter, or if they were trading for it, to force trade embargoes upon the Egyptians. Sadly, the Egyptian source of salt peter was located at the very southern tip of their empire, and only a full defeat would wrest that valuable resource from their hands.
And so, the Final Fraco-Egyptian War began, and raged for many years. It was only late in the war that the Queen realised that entire divisions of her knights, veterans of the Iron War were sitting on the border with Russia impotently held there by cowardly generals. After the execution of these generals, the knights were rapidly retrained in the use of the carbine and sent into battle against the stumbling Egyptian hordes. And so the Egyptians fell, stomped out by the might of the French armies, their source of saltpeter secured by the French scientists and peace fell again upon the continent.
As a further historical aside, one must once again discuss the fortunes of New Paris. In the later years of the Final Fraco-Egyptian War, an Egyptian galley made its way to New Paris and was able to overcome the defenders. By this time, the Egyptians had been reduced to but a narrow foothold on the edge of the empire they had once ruled and the saltpeter from New Paris was not critical to the war effort. And so the Iron Queen drove the Egyptians from the continent and prepared an expedition to retake New Paris. Before the expedition could even set sail however, the distant civilization of the Americans declared war upon the defeated Egyptians, sailed to New Paris and took the city. Once again showing her diplomatic brilliance, the Iron Queen decided that such was life, the saltpeter in the southern Egyptian deserts would serve equally well, and it was more defensible than the distant city of New Paris.
While the scientists worked on new discoveries in this time of peace, the Iron Queen watched her western border with concern. The Russians had slowly but surely been expending from the west toward the French industrial heartland, especially during the distraction with the Egyptian matter. Realising the problems that could result if Russia decided to attack at this time, with troops still being reorganised after the war, she ordered the construction of a mighty line of fortifications across the western border, under the command of the might French general Maginot.
This ‘Maginot Line’ as it came to be called consisted of fifteen mighty fortresses, with many smaller fortifications between them and each fortress held two divisions of infantry armed with the newly discovered rapid-fire machine guns and with artillery capable of firing many miles. This line of fortresses would give the French time to rebuild their military to hold off an attack.
And indeed things seemed to be progressing well, not only were new cavalry units being equipped, but the French scientist discovered the secret of powered flight, able to loft might craft into the air and drop tons of explosives on opposing forces. But before even a single flight of bombers could be constructed, the Russians attacked without warning.
The mighty Maginot Line proved to be too little, and in May of 1820, the Russian forces cracked one of the fortresses and spilled into the fields surrouding Tours. The Russo-Franco War was the greatest conflict that the world had ever seen, and by the time it ended, every country in the world had joined in the conflict.
As soon as a flight of bombers was available, they began to bomb the rail lines which led through the area of the destroyed fortress, slowing down the breakthrough of the Russian forces. At the same time, the brave Cavalry units of the Egyptian War hurled themselves against the Cossack spearheads of the Russians, managing to hold them just on the outskirts of Tours.
Behind the border, more Cossasks could be seen massing to spill through into the French heartland, and the papers of this period indicate for the first time that the Iron Queen felt despair for the existence of France. But then came a gift that only be described as miraculous. The scientista of France had discovered the ability to make engines which could drive powerful, armoured vehicles which could run circles around even cavalry, and destroy the invaders.
In a bold stroke, the Iron Queen declared that for as long as this war lasted, there would be no construction of luxury goods, of things that made people soft. All effort must be directed to making weapons of war, to drive the Russians from France and then to smash the Russians once and for all.
The pictures of the thousand bomber raids and the lighting attacks of the tanks of the French are of course legendary and fill many chapters of our history books, and indeed as the Russo-Franco war is a required field of study in Primary School, there is little reason to discuss the specifics here, in this largely political text. Suffice it to say that the Russians were driven back across the line, the fortress was reconstructed and the bombs fell across Russia. And once the Iron Queen decided that enough of her new tanks had been built, they swept across the Russian jungles and devoured every city in their way.
Once it became clear that the Russians would fall, all the nations of the world joined with the French, all attempted to gobble up their little pieces of the Russian empire. Within but a few years, the tattered remnants of the once mighty Russian army were surrounded and destroyed and the English occupied the western half of what had been Russia, the French, the eastern half and the Americans and Aztecs and Germans had their little scraps.
In the councils of peace after the war, as the nations of the world decided how to divide the spoils (where it was truly little more than the weaker nations of the Earth beggin France for technology and land and money) a new world government was discussed, where one of the leaders of the nations would sit as head of the government, and the others would join to form a lasting age of peace and prosperity.
And so it was that the United Nations came to exist and the Iron Queen was unanimously elected to lead this great world government. And so it is now that the civilization which had once been a single city of Paris grew to encompass the entire globe.
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