Kaspar Sansinger

Born: April 24, 1773

The history of 19th-century Cabralia was shaped by many great names, but rising above them all are a triumvirate that have gone down in history as the Three Wise Men. First among them, in both chronological and conventional order, is Kaspar Sansinger - military leader in the Cabralian War of Independency, statesman, and ultimately architect of the Grand Principality's descent into monarchism. This is his story.

The Sodalite Revolt of 1830

France managed to ride out the Burning Thirties more or less unscathed. They had better things to do, like catching their breath. The House of Burgundy just finished toppling the House of Guise, driven Spain out of the Côte d'Or (with a bit of help), and hounded the Most Christian King [who?] into Roman exile. There was work to do: standardizing measures, rebuilding polders, renegotiating treaties, restoring normalcy in France.

In 1830, it had a chance to come undone - and didn't.

The I.C.&Cie. Modeste AR

The world's most famous tierseur is also its least respected. In the market ecology of tierseurs, the Modeste's niche is to be the pariah, the untouchable, the one that all other customers sniff their noses at. The Modeste exists as a designated inferior for all others in the industry to be better than in every way. It also exists because a valid market niche exists for such a device.

Before 1895, the tierseureries coexisted in peace. Oh, there was drama between the tierseureurs - what artistic medium isn't without its petty feuds and legendary rivalries? - but the industry, such as it was, was governed by a rigid unspoken code of honor. Each tierseurerie was distinct, and they made a point of not stepping on each other's toes.

In 1895, Innocent Cauvigne et Cie. introduced their own interpretation of the tierseur. No sooner had the first order been shipped than the Calais firm was buried under a dozen lawsuits from outraged tierseureries, each and all striving to destroy the upstart.

The Shimoga man-eaters

The events described in this post are nothing historical. No lines on maps were redrawn because of it, no wars fought, no great men created and only a few notable ones [who?] destroyed. If I had never thought of it, if it had never been written, Andalusada would look no different. In no way does this significantly change the overall flow of history.

This post is parerga. And yet it is legendary parerga. This post is a symptom of imperial France in its decline, a post of a story that's become etched in the French consciousness as surely as Jaws is in ours.

Background to the Shimoga man-eaters

Since it hasn't been mentioned in awhile, southern India is a French colony. L'affaire de Chimogue was entirely a colonial affair, taking place in French Malenadu - specifically in the vicinity of Shimoga, home to a fairly large and young coffee latifonde.

• The War of the French Succession left the Empire perilously close to fiscal collapse; the next generation had been spent trying to rebuild it. Fortunately for them, the Iberian coffee monopoly had cracked with the collapse of Umayyad Seville thirty years earlier; since the price of New World coffee stayed high (between limited Mexican production and Cabralia's war-shaken economy), the French colonies were able to make it a lucrative cash crop, leading to the Oriental Company's latifundism.
• From the 1880s, the spread of coffee rust blight from Africa started seriously impacting the global coffee market. French India, which had thus far managed to avoid the coffee blight, was thus even more profitable than it had ever been before.
• About a generation later [when?], tiger-hunting become the sport of choice for a certain type of cosmopolitan noble twit. Guns in hand (many totally inadequate for the task; many Frenchmen gave their lives before the black-powder cat-gun was sorted out), they managed to devastate the Malabar tiger population, which led to some interesting side effects, such as...
• ...the collapse of tiger-hunting, and with it preparation for dealing with tigers.
• ...the collapse of a lot of former tiger habitats, as growing populations along the Malabar Coast began expanding outward, pushing back the tree coverage that the tigers needed to move and progressively driving them north.
• ...a period of about a decade in which so few tiger hunts were successful that the tables began to turn: every year during this period [when?], Malabar tigers killed more humans than humans could find tigers to kill. (This was chalked up to the tigers being more aggressive rather than any environmental changes.)

French colonial policy had thoughtlessly prepared a perfect storm. Early in the 20th century [when?], that storm hit.

Eugen Karl Orff

By the end of the Great Realignment, the Electorate and Archduchy of Saxony had become a notable player in the Mediterranean, mostly through their control of Malta [details?] and, more lastingly, through majority ownership of the half-completed, half-assed Egyptian Canal. Saxon money and Saxon engineers saw that crumbling vanity project to its conclusion, cementing Saxon importance not only in the Mediterranean but the Levant as well.

Nearly a century after its completion, however, most of the names of that great work have passed into history. Only historians know the original builders of the Canal before it was abandoned. Only economists know the names of the diplomats who acquired the rights to the site, or the engineers who redesigned it. Even the Egyptians have forgotten the names of their own who toiled and died bringing that national folly to fruition.

One name, remains common knowledge, and is given far more credit for the completion of the Canal than even he was willing to accept. Even if they know nothing about what he did to earn that name, everybody knows "Eugen of Egypt": gunfighter, financial wizard, the man involved (somehow) with the Canal, and infamous apostate.

Eugen of Egypt was baptized Eugen Karl Orff. This is his story.

The Ryalkirk rifle

Late in the second round of the Northern Wars [when?], the armed forces of New Britain - which had heretofore struggled against those of the Anglo-Scottish north, New Andalusia, and assorted aboriginal nations [details?] - fielded something fairly commonplace by our standards, but unheard of at the time: a repeating bolt-action rifle. It was named Ryalkirk, after the armory it was first built in [where?], and it changed military history forever.

The Crown of All Spains (and France)

Writing about Mahdism this last week or so leaves me kinda bothered that I haven't written about Spain yet. I have my reasons; given that it's ground zero for the point of divergence, all I can honestly say is that I know the Crown of All Spains exists (for plot reasons), and that it's ruled by the pre-Wars of Religion French ruling house (whence the inevitable "and France" in the name.)

But I've posted articles about things I knew less than that about, so here goes nothing.

The Crown of All Spains 101

Why? Because it's been here from the beginning. Admittedly in the beginning it was Napoleon driving the Moors out of Spain, but a united Spain is still there.

• Who? Not the Galicians (Galicia having been part of Galicia or Portugal or Portugal-Galicia for most of its history since 1090, when Garcia II sets up shop in A Corunha), but other than that you'd recognize most of the territories. There's Asturias and Cantabria, and the Catalans and the Aragonese, the Léonese and the Castillans, the Toletans... and, south of the Tagus, the Andalusis, many of whom still speak Arabic at home.
• What? The Crown of All Spains is one of the complex dynastic unions that Andalusada seems to love - a confederal monarchy that on its good days is exactly the sum of its parts, and on its bad days much less as those parts cancel each other out.
• Where? Most of Iberia, predictably. The Crown of All Spains also controls a number of North African city-states, which it occupied during the destruction of Barbary Coast piracy, and a fair bit of Morocco through very unreliable Andalusi landlords.
• When? The Crown of All Spains dates from the late 1780s, although I'm not sure exactly what year it was.

And now for the expanded answer to "why?" The answer: drama and melodrama.

The Second Mahdist War

Timeframe: Early to mid-1820s, contemporary with the War of the French Succession
Belligerents: The Crown of All Spains vs. al-Mahdi and his supporters
Consequences: The death of al-Mahdi; collapse of Mahdism as a unified force; Legitimist withdrawal from France; rise of Saxon-aligned Malta as a Mediterranean force

In 1786, Umayyad Seville knew its last year of peace and sovereignty. Seven years later, the Civil War had run its course, and the newly-united Spanish Crown was busily annexing what was left of Moorish Spain. Hisham V [who?], the last Caliph of Seville, was dead. The caliphate was contested by three squabbling, doomed brothers, and his four-year-old son had been smuggled into safety and irrelevance across the Straits of Gibraltar.

During those dark days, his supporters gave him a regnal name of his own: al-Mahdi. And in 1821, with the House of Guise crumbling and a civil war in France, al-Mahdi made his move and crossed the Straits of Gibraltar again.

Don Ibrahim

Dates: 1860-1980. (Yes, he dies fifty years after the canonical present day. This is important.)
Position: Secretary of the Caliphal Household.
Preceded by: His father, Don Musa Cordovero

The least democratic institution in the UCNA is the Caliphal Household. Founded under Yusuf I, it has survived chart reforms, two regencies, three succession crises and Populism almost unscathed. Holding an ambiguous position, both private employees of the caliph and public servants of the caliphate, the Caliphal Household is barely accountable to either.

Between the death of Yusuf I and the rise of Yusuf II, the most powerful man in the UCNA was a Sephardi Jew whose friends and enemies alike styled him simply "Don Musa." The son is more formidable than the father; as of 1930 he is the longest-serving man in the government of New Andalusia at around 45 years. His name is Don Ibrahim - and if Cardinal Richelieu was hale as an ox, and could kill you with the power of his Kabbalah, he would start coming close to the fearful awe commanded by the UCNA's bespectacled court Jew.

Yusuf II

Dates: 18??-1908.

Yusuf I leaves impossibly large shoes to fill on his death. For the next fifty years, those shoes aren't filled - at least not by anybody of the Umayyad line; the best claimant to that position would be Yusuf's former right-hand man, Don Musa Cordovero, who (along with his son, Don Ibrahim) oversees a succession of what's commonly called "the six weak caliphs" and steers the UCNA into being a more presidential monarchy.

After Don Musa's death, and the rise of Don Ibrahim, the UCNA encounters something it hasn't known since Yusuf I. For the first time in half a century, the Umayyad and the Cordovero at the top of the pecking order had a rapport - and ambition.

That Umayyad, not coincidentally, was named Yusuf II. This is his blog post.

The Chergui

Timeframe: October 1895-April 1896.
Belligerents: The Crown of All Spains vs. Mahdist insurgents.
Outcome: Pyrrhic Spanish victory

In 1893, Yusuf II was faced with a small nightmare: a military standards war. It took the better part of a year to sort it out, and no small investment of money and man-hours, before the Caliphal Army was uniformly issued matching rifles and ammunition that wouldn't explode. The Port-Royal musketoon had prevailed, and the army now faced a problem: what to do with all the noncompliant hardware?

Refitting it was too much trouble; they already had their hands full retooling sights, adjusting barrel lengths, and making similar conversions on thousands of already-assembled guns. Issuing them down the totem pole would force the very logistical nightmare they'd just spent 15 months sorting out. Issuing them to the navy might work, but would still be a logistical headache. (More importantly, the Army Secretary thought the Navy's adoption of .49-94 a decade prior a smashing political victory, one he had no desire to undo.) This being the UCNA, they'd already rechambered a number of obsolete guns for the rejected H11 cartridge - proofs of concept, substitute standards, all sorts of stuff.

The fateful solution was to sell the useless crap abroad.

The H11 controversy

The UCNA always struggled to standardize. Decimalization was still underway at the time, and it was surrounded by several distinct, and mutually incompatible, customary measuring systems: Anglo-Scottish to its north, an Ibero-Baltic blend down south, and French scatterings in the Caribbean (and its own borders.)

Matters came to a head, however, in 1893, when the UCNA finally phased out its long-serving .49-94 for something altogether new. It's still causing headaches in several continents today, where it's commonly known as the H11 Controversy.

Modern Pomerania

In the end, there was the Reductions, and Pomerania was erased forever. "Forever," as it turned out, was less than a century; by 1840, the Germanized Baltic littoral had won its independence in a ferocious revolt, which was recognized by Saxony in the Treaty of Meissen. Pomerania was back.

Modern Pomerania 101

Skipping the why a bit, here we go:

• Who? Modern Pomerania's still as Güntherite as its forebears, but it's much less ethnically diverse; it's overwhelmingly either German or Germanized. Modern Pomerania, colored by its own private Counter-Reformation during the Polish generations, is a much less diverse state than it was the first time around.
• What? In state dogma, modern Pomerania is a continuation of sansinger Pomerania: a revolt with a state. In practice, the two look almost nothing alike. Modern Pomerania's usually described as "Spartan," and the description works: it's a corvée democracy, organized on very military lines and built on a foundation of compulsory state service.
• Where? Modern Pomerania's rather reduced from its former territory, but it still stretches from the Oder River east a fair ways.
• When? After the UCNA (which started on April 5), modern Pomerania has the most specific date of founding I can think of: the signing of the Treaty of Meissen in 1836.

Moving on a bit...

Go-guns

With all of modern history retconned, Andalusada faces an enormous number of problems. One of the smaller but more nagging ones was first mentioned here: the verse has (almost) no gun brands, and a universe of generic products wrecks verisimilitude.

And so, in the interest of verisimilitude, I introduce to you the official infantry small arm of the Imperial Union. It comes in more varieties than Heinz ketchup, and in all of them it's called the Go-gun.

The Burning Thirties

In 1825, the world enjoyed something it hadn't known in quite some time: five years of peace. Nobody knew it then (such is the way of historiography), but the Great Realignment was over. It was a changed world.

In France, the succession war was finished, with the Bourguignons victorious; the new family in Paris was making overtures to ouverture, and the Guisards reduced to honoring a pretender in Rome and eulogizing their bygone Catholic dystopia. Across the Channel, England-Scotland was binding its wounds and making itself presentable as "the Union of the English and Scottish Empires." The Low Countries were draining their shattered polders with the power of the first general-purpose steam engines. South of the Pyrenees, the Crown of All Spains was dusting itself off, living in a world where Seville - great Seville, eternal Seville, Seville the glorious, Najm al-Umma - was gone, as dead as Pomerania. It was a changed world.

In the New World, Cabralia was rebuilding and recovering, slowly but surely, from the trauma of Baltazar's mutiny, calling their elder statesman Kaspar back to its Principal Palace. Mexico was très-mignon, as they say: a mestiza was styling herself "Grand Princess" in her own right, and the Pope was telling the crowns of Europe to greet their sister in Christ as an equal, and wasn't it adorable? And she even had her pet Moor, who was doing everything he could to give her plebeian husband no reason to annex his mainland claims and spank him back to Cuba. It was a changed world.

Plebeian Cabralia

When the Grand Principality of Cabralia established itself in the 1790s, it was a very different place from what it would be fifty years later. It stretched across every climate zone between the equator and Tierra del Fuego. In every possible sense, it was the greatest of the 18th-century republics. Its future was unbounded, its possibilities endless. In its capital [where?], the government could dream with starry eyes of maximismo, when all of Cabralia might be a part of it.

It didn't work out, obviously. But this is the story of what came before - and what might have been.

Republican Cabralia 101

Why? Best practices. If Guisard France deserves to be distinct from other Frances, the early Grand Principality deserves to be distinct from its imperial form.

• Who? Everyone. It had Anglo-Dutch settlers from the north, Moros from the Andes, and everything in between. The early G.P. was more cosmopolitan than the contemporary UCNA, and had every potential to stay so if it could've held together.
• What? Very turbulent early on, but it eventually consolidated into a very aristocratic republic of sorts. The major problem was that it got more aristocratic as time went on...
• Where? In the beginning, about 70% of the entire continent - all of Brazil, Argentina, bits of Chile (with a few isolated Moorish holdouts), Paraguay, Uruguay, etc.
• When? From the 1790s to 1834. After 1834, Kaspar Sansinger's marriage is a done deal, and the slide into modern Cabralia is all but foreordained.

Sufyan

Born: 1790s. [details?]
Died: 1850s. [details?]

Long ago, before I started this blog, I was writing Andalusada mostly on paper. At some point, I realized that I'd need to know something about the succession of the UCNA. So I drew up a very tenuous outline of the dynasty.

There are a few names that I haven't mentioned yet (Yusuf II and Yusuf III, and some others), but all the key names of the succession survive only in the four-word tag of the UCNA's brief history: "the six weak caliphs." All the names but one: Sufyan.

A few nights ago, after I got out my GURPS book again, I started writing him up, based on what I knew about backbiting and so forth.

Disadvantages: Lecherous [-15]; Sense of Duty (his father) [-2]; Sense of Duty (his children) [-5].
Quirks: Bad with names; Wears his heart on his sleeve; Prudish in public.

Quite a character, no? And this is his story.

The Greater Japanese Empire

At the start of Andalusada was GURPS Infinite Worlds, p. 118:

Other Muslim timelines include:

Andalus (Q4, current year 1930), in which the Muslims of Spain threw back the Reconquista and went on to discover America in 1484, achieving TL6 in rivalry with Japan...

Well, there you have it.

The Greater Japanese Empire 101

Why? should be obvious with an opening quote like that: because it's canon. Japan needs to be something that's genuinely

• Who? "The Japanese," for an eclectic definition of "Japanese" based on spurious ethnography to include as many peoples as is feasible. This includes, but is not limited to, Ryukyuans, the Okinawans, Takasagonese, Takasagonese aborigines, "Japonic diaspora isolates" scattered around the Pacific Rim, the Ezochi, the "Ezoic diaspora ethnicities" around the northern Pacific Rim as far as the Aleuts, and possibly (though with no guarantees) the Aleuts themselves. And the Cossacks.
• What? The world's first notable experiment with pan-nationalism, set up as a constitutional federal monarchy, and having a bit more trouble with the whole thing than is strictly necessary.
• Where? Oyashima, of necessity. But it also includes the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Takasago, Ezo, Karafuto, the Kuriles, a few claims on Yakutsk, and so forth. And the territory formerly claimed by Meammosirsk.
• When? The Greater Japanese Empire dates itself back to the day after Tanabata, 1870, and is still going as of the present day.

Why? is a chance for me to go on a tangent about my design philosophy, and in this case I had my concise answer written four months ago: "I want a distinctive Japan. A Japan that isn't obviously the only one it could only ever possibly evolve into being. And one that has cet certain je ne sais quoi that we associate with all things Japanese."

Reclamation

The Moorish New World was, first and foremost, Christian. During the Age of Exploration, the Five Families actively encouraged Isidoran missionary efforts, for entirely cynical reasons: it gave the Christians something to do besides revolt, and New World dhimmitude made it much easier to systematically exploit its staggering wealth. Islamization only came during the colonial era, when it was profitable to be above Christians.

Relations didn't significantly sour until the Liturgical War, which Umayyad Seville handled with an infamously heavy hand, but once they were soured they stayed soured. Come the Mexican Revolt, there was (of necessity) a staggering amount of anti-Muslim violence - and when the dust settled, the Moorish Empire was gone. And in its place, in the New World, was the G.P. of Mexico: a Christian government with a significant, and very diverse, Muslim minority.

Reclamation in theory and ideology

By the time Teresa Maria ascended to the throne, Mexico was suffering serious battle fatigue. Its economy was a mess, and an entire generation had never known peace. And (given that the First Mahdist War had only just died down in the Old World, and Cuba was still strong in the Caribbean), "peace" would be nothing but a chance to reload unless something serious was done to either placate the Muslims or permanently dispose of them.

That "something serious" turned out to be the policy now known as "Reclamation."

Don Musa

Dates: 1796-1883.
Position: Secretary of the Caliphal Household.
Preceded by: None (office created by Yusuf I)
Succeeded by: His son, Don Ibrahim

Hegel had his roommates at the Tübinger Stift. Martin Luther had Melanchthon, Calvin had Farel and Bullinger (and they both had Bucer), the prophet Muhammad had the Sahaba... behind every Great Man of History there's a bunch of lesser names who are nonetheless key players in the story.

But who are those companions in Andalusada? Most of them, to be honest, I either don't know or haven't blogged about. Günther has his generals [who?], Oliver Farrell has his fellows from a dozen walks of life and eras [again, who?], the first Guise King of France [who?] has Simon the Apostate, who I know about but have only hinted about once (introducing the Montagnards.) Only in one case have I actually answered that question of [who?], and that was last night, when I gave Oskar Sansinger's wife a name: Teresa Maria, the Grand Princess. (Oskar Sansinger is himself one of the names to the first Grand Prince, also known as [who?] as of 9/26.)

Caliph Yusuf I is another one of the Great Men of History, and I already know that he's got a number of great names (and some lesser ones, like his son Sufyan.) One of them the UCNA's first great court Jew, an Andalusi expat and patriarch of the Cordovero dynasty: Don Musa. This is his story.