Les Guerres Extraordinaires

Air Power Key To Shih-ch'iu-ling Battery Capture

2011-05-03T22:04:00.000+01:00

During the Sino-French War 1884-85 the Shih-ch'iu-ling battery at Keelung on Taiwan held out against French forces for most of the war, but during the Japanese invasion of 1895 the battery fell in a day due to the effective use of aerial power by the Japanese.

Japan's invasion of the newly independent Republic of Formosa followed the end of the Sino-Japanese War, when the Chinese ceded the island to Japan. Before the Japanese could take control the Formosans declared independence and prepared to resist the Japanese.

Unfortunately for the Formosans their resistance was to be severely impacted by the Japanese control of the air, with Japanese aerostat bombing the Shih-ch'iu-ling battery into submission after initial infantry assaults had been repulsed.

The Imperial Japanese Army employed its aerial forces considerably thereafter, notably at the pivotal Battle of Baguashan and to hunting down guerilla bands that continued to resist the Japanese for several years after the war officially ceased.

Japanese Develop 'War Tubas'

2011-01-16T00:19:00.000Z

The Seinan Sensō (Southwestern War) was the last major revolt by a feudal Japanese domain against the Meiji Empire. Whilst the war only lasted nine months in 1877 it was the first time that aerostat where employed for military purposes on the Japanese mainland.

The key Battle of Tabaruzaka saw the Satsuma Domain rebels suffer terrible losses to a surprise bombing attack by the small Meiji fleet (commanded by French officers from Lieutenant-Colonel Antoine's military mission) and the impact of this attack led the Japanese to lead the way in the development of acoustic location devices which would perform a vital role in the Great War 1890-91 and subsequent European conflicts.

Unlike the fixed concrete mirrors that became popular in Britain and the Continent, the Japanese focussed their efforts on a mobile resource (derisively dubbed 'war tubas' by European observers), using them to great effect against the Chinese at the Battle of Jiuliancheng.

Following this success most European powers looked to develop their own mobile 'war tuba' units including the Russian Empire who positioned them on top of buildings in Port Arthur and Vladivostok during the Russo-Japanese War.

1e Escadrille De Cyclistes Lead Charge At Sedan

2010-12-30T17:33:00.012Z

The French army's embracing of new technologies saw a number of units equipped with experimental weaponry and equipment during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Pierre Michaux's development of the pedal powered velocipede in 1868 led to a craze that swept France and the military found the idea of the vélocipède à pédales as a low cost, low maintenace replacement for the horse quite attractive (velocipedes not needing feeding for a start!). The 2eme Regiment de Lanciers provided a squadron for evaluation trials and this unit was still equipped with velocipedes when war broke out with Prussia in July 1870.

Attached to the Army of Châlons, the 1e Escadrille de Cyclistes undertook scouting work for the high command before seeing action at the Battle of Sedan, when, attached to General Margueritte's cavalry, they took part in the three failed charges on the Prussian XI Corps at the village of Floing.

Whilst the French defeat at Sedan and the surrender of the Emperor marked the end of the Second Empire, the vélocipède à pédales were regarded as having proven successful and the new Third Republic raised both cavalry and mounted infantry units equipped with velocipedes, a move replicated by other powers in the last decades of the nineteenth century.

Beiyang Air Fleet Defeated At Jiuliancheng

2010-12-26T18:09:00.006Z

China's Beiyang Air Fleet was formed by the Qing dynasty near the end of the 19th century along western lines to help ensure China had the necessary modern forces to resist the Western powers and Japan.

The Sino-French War of 1884-5 had demonstrated to the Chinese the need for air power and they embarked on a rapid programme of raising air fleets following the war, relying on aeronef and aerostat of British and Russian construction to equip their fleets. Unfortunately many of the vessels were not maintained properly and indiscipline was rife in the fleet due to poor leadership, low pay and opium usage.

The Beiyang Air Fleet saw much action in the Sino-Japanese War 1894-5, supporting the Chinese army at the Battles of Seongwhan and Pyongyang and the navy at the Battle of the Yalu River, however it was badly mauled losing over half the fleet in a major air battle above the Yalu River at Jiuliancheng as the Japanese seized control of the skies to launch their invasion of Manchuria.

The remnants of the air fleet continued to provide as much support as was practical for the army notably at Lüshunkou but the fate of the fleet was sealed when they attempted to prevent the Japanese bombing of Tianzhuangtai but were overwhelmed by the superior numbers and vessels of Japanese aerial fleet.

HMS Ptarmigan Discovers 'Atlantis'

2010-09-02T14:44:00.006+01:00

On February 1st 1896, Professor Elstead on HMS Ptarmigan discovered an underwater civilisation in the South Atlantic off the coast of Brazil. Elstead described the underwater beings to the officers of the Ptarmigan as being "a strange vertebrated animal. Its dark purple head was dimly suggestive of a chameleon,but it had such a high forehead and such a braincase as no reptile ever displayed before; the vertical pitch of its face gave it a most extraordinary resemblance to a human beings. Two large and protruding eyes projected from sockets in chameleon fashion, and it had a broad reptilian mouth with horny lips beneath its little nostrils. In the position of the ears were two huge gill-covers, and out of these floated a branching tree of coralline filaments, almost like the tree-like gills that very young rays and sharks possess."

He added: "the face was not the most extraordinary thing about the creature. It was a biped; its almost globular body was poised on a tripod of two frog-like legs and a long thick tail, and its fore limbs, which grotesquely caricatured the human hand, much as a frog’s do, carried a long shaft of bone, tipped with copper. The colour of the creature was variegated; its head, hands, and legs were purple; but its skin, which hung loosely upon it, even as clothes might do, was a phosphorescent grey".

Before returning to the surface Elstead came across an underwater city on the submarine plane which he described as "a luminous arrangement of streets and houses grouped about a vast roofless erection that was grotesquely suggestive of a ruined abbey. The houses were all roofless enclosures of walls, and their substance being of phosphorescent bones".

Professor Elstead perished on his second descent at the hands of the Atlanteans (as they soon became to be known) and man found that he was not the only sentient race on Earth.

Gladstone 'Atlantis' Expedition Launched

2010-06-12T18:15:00.005+01:00

In 1882 US politician Ignatius Donnelly's wrote Atlantis, The Antediluvian World, the first serious study about the lost continent of Atlantis. Prime Minister Gladstone was so excited by the text that he instructed the Royal Navy to launch an expedition to find the lost continent which Donnelly claimed was under the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

Despite the hostilities that had broken out in Egypt, the Royal Navy sent HMS Neptune on an exploration mission to ascertain the veracity of Donnelly's claims of the undersea world he claimed lay under the Atlantic Ocean.

Escadrille Sous-Terre

2010-05-31T16:53:00.005+01:00

Thwarted by La Manche and the superiority of the Royal Navy, the French armed forces invested much effort into developing ways of circumventing this problem to landing troops on British soil. The obvious solution was through the use of aeronef and aerostat, although the Great War of 1890-91 demonstrated that this was only viable if the French (and their allies) could achieve aerial superiority, which they proved unable to do.

French scientists looked at other options and inspired by the machinery being used in the creation of 'Le Tunnel Sous La Manche' soon developed contraptions capable of burrowing underground. At first these machines were quite small, capable of only transporting a section of men, but once the concept was proven as sound, larger machines were created capable of carry whole companies and squadrons.

Unfortunately for the French, an enemy spy, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, stole plans of these designs and soon all the major powers embarked on the development of their own terranef (as they have generally become known as).

Utilised widely in the Slavo-French invasion of Britain in 1899, most notably in the seizing of Dover Castle and the over-running British defences to the Channel Tunnel before it could be flooded, terranef are a formidable weapon and have most recently been used by Great Power forces in the battles on Mars at Auorae Sinus.

Astro-Transports

2010-04-07T20:11:00.008+01:00

Whilst The Astronef proved more than capable of extra-terrestrial flight as demonstrated by Earl Redgrave's tour of the Solar System in 1895, the quantity of R-Gravitons needed for such travel restricted the numbers of astronef employed by the Great Powers in the ether at the turn of the century. Indeed, it was an older technology based on that employed by the Baltimore Gun Club with its Columbiad cannon after the American Civil War which was to prove the low cost answer to the Great Powers need to get troops to Mars following the Olympian invasion and subsequent Martian Rebellion of 1903.

All the Great Powers constructed huge cannon to fire shell like troop transports, first to Mars and subsequently the Moon, Venus and Ganymede. These transports have extremely strong hulls to withstand the pressure of firing and landing, but the crew have limited control of the craft in flight and a reasonably fixed course must be maintained to ensure the landing zone on the target planet is hit.

The transports, whilst escorted by astronef, do sport limited weaponry and indeed it was an astro-transport that engaged in the first space battle in humanities history when a convoy carrying troops to the Red Planet as part of the retaliatory invasion against the Olympians was attacked by Martian craft.

The Tyrell Water Ray

2010-04-01T16:17:00.001+01:00

The Royal Navy was extremely concerned at the philosophy of the 'Jeune Ecole' and the French Navy's increased investment in aquanef as a means of reducing the odds against Britain's mighty surface fleet, fortunately British inventor Wilfred Wallace Tyrell invented a ray that allowed surface viewers to see underwater as clearly as a searchlight cuts through the air.

Tyrell's father, Sir Wilfred Tyrell, was one of the Junior Lords of the Admiralty and arranged for a prototype to be fitted to H.M.S. Scorcher for a series of trials on the Solent. Fortunately the Scorcher was on station when the French aquanef Le Vengeur attacked H.M.S. Phyliss in an unprovoked terror attack in 1889 and managed to hunt down and force the rogue French attacker to the surface, capturing the piratical crew and aquanef (which was subsequently fitted with an underwater version of the ray and served in the Royal Navy against the French in the Great War of 1890-91).

The Hollow Earth

2010-01-30T20:23:00.001Z

Despite Professor Lidenbrock's discovery of an unknown world beneath the Earth's crust in 1863, it was not until the later Peterson and Challenger expeditions, in the 1890's, that scientists began to understand the riches of the unique prehistoric ecosystem beneath their very feet.

With access to the interior world being possible from locations in the Mountains of the Moon and Maple White Land, as well as Iceland, it soon became apparent that the virgin world held many exploitable riches including deposits of R-Matter and Apergion.

The difficulty of access, as well as the hostile fauna and flora, did initially restrict the ability of the Great Powers to colonise the new lands, but where the prize is big enough, man's avarice knows no bounds and soon the Powers began to carve up the newly discovered territories, domesticising some of the wild pre-historic beasts to use as transportation and conquering the indigenous sub-human races that populated the wild lands below.

Wrath Of The Syren

2010-01-25T17:07:00.001Z

Following the death of his family during an Ottoman aerostat raid, Hungarian noble Baron Lantoz launched a campaign of revenge and terror on those responsible. Utilising the ingenuity of Professor Vanvlak to upgrade his flagship, the Syren, a series of raids where launched across the Aegean targeting the 3rd Akinjli Squadron and its commander Carpik Pasha.

In an effort to bring his nemesis to battle, Lantoz and his crew bombed the Turkish city of Ayvacik, causing many civilian casualties and earning Lantoz, amongst the Turks, the nickname The Bloody Baron. Carpik, whose family died in the attack, managed to intercept the Syren with his aerial squadron. Lantoz's desire for revenge led him to launch a reckless headlong attack on the Pasha's flagship which retreated engulfed in flame into the clouds.

Badly wounded and with the Syren almost torn apart under his feet, Lantoz returned to Austria to be greeted by Emperor Franz Joseph who secretly rewarded him for his endeavours against the Turk with more vessels to continue the undeclared war against the Ottoman heathen...

Escadrille de Goubets

2010-01-07T20:26:00.000Z

The French Empire were constantly looking at ways to tip the balance of power when it came to the old enemy England and influenced by the doctrines of the 'Jeune Ecole' embraced innovative ideas for indirect attacks. Claude Goubet's two man aquanef was one such innovation and the French Navy built Escardilles (squadrons) of these small craft to invest enemy harbours, mine them and sink enemy vessels.

Highly successful during the Great War of 1890-1, the Goubets (named after their designer) wreaked havoc in the Channel ports although the Royal Navy's use of the Tyrrell Ray to seek out the underwater menace did allow destroyers and torpedo boats some success in combating the Goubet squadrons.

Corps Medical Offensif

2010-01-05T14:46:00.000Z

The French development of La Guerre Miasmatique has had a major impact on warfare on Earth and the other colonised planets. Batteries firing chemical and bacteriological agents across the battlefield cause thousands of casualties whilst typhoid snipers target individual soldiers for disease and death.

Whilst despised by many, if not for the French introduction of this new and virulent form of warfare it may have been that Earth would have fallen to the Martian invader in 1901. It was the French Empire's Corps Medical Offensif and the diseases they fired at the tripod encased invaders which caused the Martians destruction.

All major powers now have developed their own units of chemical warfare troops, but the French still lead the way in their development and use.

Life On Mars: Olympian Martians

2010-01-04T18:59:00.000Z

It may seem surprising to some that neither the Redgrave expedition of 1895 nor the Peterson expedition of 1897 discovered the race of Martians that were to bring so much calamity to Earth in 1901 but these expeditions and the initial colonies founded by Britain and France were well away from the Nix Olympias in the Nordus Gordii region. Indeed the snow covered aspect of this region led initial observers to believe that this was one of the most inhospitable areas of the Red Planet and long abandoned by the Martian races initially discovered. With hindsight it is now understood that the other races feared the inhabitants of this region and kept as much distance as was possible.

The Olympian Martians are now believed to be one of the Elder Races of Mars and due to the ecological changes ravaging the planet, a race in decline at the time of the first human landings. Technologically advanced, the Olympians made much use of their perverted science to eke out the meagre resources of Mars and launch their failed invasion of Earth. Their susceptibility to the chemical weapons, initially used by the French, is well reported but the impact of la guerre miasmatique on the Red Planet has been less dramatic. Whether this is due to atmospheric peculiarities of the Martian atmosphere or the a new development in Olympian technology has not been ascertained.

Life On The Moon: Selenites

2009-12-31T16:38:00.000Z

Earl Redgrave's claim that the Moon was devoid of sentient life following his discovering of the ruins of a surface based civilization (pictured left) was soon discovered to be onerous following the Bedford-Cavour expedition in 1900 which uncovered a subterranean race named the Selenites.

The insect-like race had created a relatively advanced underground society following an ancient apocalyptic war on the surface of their world (the ruins of which Redgrave discovered).

The Selenites soon found themselves at war with the interlopers from Earth as deposits of R-Matter were discovered on the lunar surface. Whilst their military technology is not as advanced as that from Earth, their innovative use of large underground creatures gives them a decided advantage in battles against the colonial powers.

The human bases on the Moon (similar in construction to the Undersea Forts on Earth) find themselves under near constant siege and mining convoys on the Moon's surface are regularly ambushed by Selenite forces.

Life On Mars: Aurorean Martians

2009-12-30T12:58:00.001Z

The first sentient beings discovered on Mars by Earl Redgrave at Xanthe near Auorae Sinus, the Auroreans (as humans have called them) are a highly intelligent race, approximately seven foot tall, living in sprawling cities which are connected by the canal network.

Their scientific-totalitarian system of government has enabled the Auroreans to focus their development to scientific ends and in many respects their technology is on a par or better than that of the nations of earth.

However, their development has for many centuries been confined to dealing with the ecological problems of their dying planet and their military technology is of varied quality against the human colonists who have landed on the red planet. Some weapons such as the Martian electro-rifle are extremely deadly, whereas the Aurorean aeronef are generally of an inferior design. That said what they lack in quality, the Aurorean air-fleet makes up for in quantity.

picture: The Astronef rams and destroys an Aurorean aeronef