Guest Post - Viking Gunpowder

This post first appeared on Today in Alternate History.

25 September, 1066 - Supremacy of Vikings assured at Stamford Bridge


By the time that the incomparable Norseman Harald Hardrada was born it appeared that the age of the Vikings was drawing to a close. Their once-feared sea raiding parties were increasingly met with organised resistance and fortifications as Christianity spread and centralised authorities developed across the continent of Europe.

But their shock troops simply needed to find the right weapon in order to defeat organised troops led by a monarch. Necessity is the mother of invention, and a game-changing technology eventually arrived in the nick of time during the middle of the eleventh century. A priest of Loki had been experimenting with a flash powder effect, and his student conceived of using it for military purposes. The result would be a "grenade," an explosive weapon of gunpowder in a clay pot that could thrown by hand on a rope. The tight control exercised by the priesthood would ensure the Viking monopoly lasted for half a century.

This powerful weapon transformed the invasion of 1066, creating even more awe than the Viking destruction of the monastery on Lindesfarne. After the proud English king's boast of only giving Harald Hardrada land for a grave, he himself was buried six feet under at Stamford Bridge. Thereafter followed the Viking Conquest of Britain, including the use of grenades to defeat the invading Normans as they came ashore at Hastings. Fifty years later, Sigurd I Magnusson would carry the grenades back to Byzantium where Greek fire had been placed in stone and ceramic jars seven centuries earlier. This weapon would later be used to devastating effect in the First Crusade as Scandinavia stood at the helm of continental Europe.

Addendum by Allen W. McDonnell:

Roman Catholics had already learnt the secret of gunpowder by the time that Sigurd the Crusader entered Constantinople during 1107; however, they had to wait their chance until the arrival of the Bubonic plague. Armed with Arquebusies and light artillery, Papal forces reconquered the Viking lands in its wake. The pandemic triggered the start of a new era of enlightenment; not culturally inclined, the Viking had only accumulated knowledge about the limited subjects of nature and geography.

But the collapse of Viking authority was not to overshadow the sea-raiders' tremendous success in protecting Europe from the invasion of the Mongols. This achievement was due not only to the use of gunpowder, but the bold decision to train every man to fight the Mongols and not just the nobility.

Thus the Papal Forces were fortunate to be able to occupy a continent largely free of external invaders. From his Vatican in the city of Prague, the Pope was able to expand Roman Catholicism from Moscow to Montreal and Narvik to Sicily during the long period of expansion, 1350-1800. However, the continent of Europe entered the nineteenth century without steam technology, with engines still to be invented. Armies built and maintained a few dozen weapons each with no standardized designs. The continent stood on the edge of a new industrial revolution.

Certainly new advancement was needed by Papal Forces, for technology constraints had brought them to a pivotal moment much like their predecessors, the Vikings during the mid-eleventh century. Undefeated Islam still controlled Spain/Portugal and after taking the Byzantine Empire the border between Catholic and Islam lie in Greece. Prague's armies struggled to hold back Muslim armies from entering the Balkan states. Further east, Roman Catholic control ranged from the Ural mountains across northern Europe. But the real threat was from the Protestant reformation that was taking place across the Atlantic ocean in North America. This is where Prague's influence was greatly weakened by distance and events appeared to be moving in a totally new direction...

Author's Note: in OTL the Battle of Stamford Bridge was the end of the last major Viking incursion into Europe.

Guest Post: The Loyalist Easter Rising of 1915

This post originally appeared on Today in Alternate History.

What happens to Ireland if WW1 were delayed (or avoided)?

In a desperate attempt to prevent the full implementation of the Irish Home Rule Bill, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) occupied key buildings across the city of Belfast. 

Edward Carson's Barmy Army demanded an exclusion zone for Ulster, but their rebellion only triggered a violent crackdown by the forces of the British Empire. Despite widespread sympathy from officers in the British Army, this fierce reaction was considered justifiable because there was a whiff of Communism in the air. In fact, the Unionists had been encouraging protests from workers in Glasgow, Liverpool and London, and there was a risk of civil war. Ironically, the Home Rule bill had passed the House of Commons in 1912, but a defeat in the House of Lords placed a two-year hold until their veto timed-out. 

A federal structure was require to unify the thirty-two counties and make a single home rule territory governable. This imperative would require a separation of Church from State and a variation of the Westminster System that would empower the four provinces. Devolution brought a level of autonomy to areas of Protestant Plurality and, despite the tremendously high cost, created a new dominion within the British Empire. For Prime Minister H.H. Asquith, it was a triumph of Liberal Statesmanship, although in truth, he had been forced to accommodate the Irish Parliamentary Party as a result of the Tory gains in the 1910 General Election.

The Irish Republic would finally come into existence in 1948 as the British Government was forced to withdraw from Empire, cutting her overseas security and defence costs as a result of the bankrupting costs of the Great European War. Giving up her Empire was never going to be enough, since the Imperial markets had now been lost and, as a result, economic activity continued to rapidly decline during the next twenty-five years. 

Both Great Britain (GB) and also the Republic of Ireland (RoI) were essential forced to join the European Economic Community in an effort to gain access to the expanding market on the continent. This development eventually led to freedom of movement across the European Union (EU) which had the effect of re-integrating GB and RoI. While the Irish became enthusiastic Europeans (even moving to the common Euro currency), not so much for the British, who were still struggling with internal questions of identity. By the middle of the second decade of the twentieth century, GB held a referendum and voted to leave the EU and build a "global Britain."

This restart affected trading between GB and RoI and Dublin required significant injections of funds from the European Union in order to weather the storm. GB however was unable to ratify a withdrawal agreement and entered a "hard Brexit" on 29th March, 2019 that was the long-standing desire of many Tories. At the current time of writing, this has thrown the whole country into a cyclone of economic problems. But in the long run perhaps Tory statesmanship will demonstrate that the high initial were worth the price, much as Liberal Statesmanship claimed for Ireland over a century earlier. And surely there is a great irony in the Conservative Party resisting Home Rule and later taking Britain into Europe, only to regret both movements later on as they were correctly shown to be on the right side of history.

Guest Post: "Empire Reborn"

This article originally appeared as a mash-up on Today in Alternate History based upon two timelines conceived by Vincent Longobardi, Italy 1936 - An alternate Italian history of World War II and An Empire Reborn, which are under development at Long Vin's Writing Den on Tapatalk  "It is humiliating to remain with our hands folded while others write history. It matters little who wins. To make a people great it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the pants. That is what I shall do" ~ Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini, (29 July, 1883 - 16 January, 1965)28th October, 2022 - The New Roman Empire Celebrates a Century of Fascism As the one-hundredth year of Fascist era dawned, twenty-first century liberal historians continued to argue that the New Roman Empire (N.R.E.) was an accident of history, even the misbegotten child of random political violence. Surely, they argued, the 1815 Congress of Vienna was the real turning point, if not then surely the wars of independence that formed the Kingdom of Italy in 1871. Or perhaps then the defeat of Austria-Hungary and the resulting 1918 Armistice of Villa Giusti.

Whereas the N.R.E. itself marked the pivotal decision after the March on Rome, which led to King Victor Emmanuel III appointing a Fascist Government. This was formed on 28 October, 1922, by Benito Mussolini, the youngest Prime Minister in Italy's history. Hoping to unite the country, and quite simply forced to make a choice between Fascism and martial law, the conservative establishment had little choice but to place their trust in Mussolini when he was not yet forty. He certainly enjoyed strong support from the industrial and agrarian elites, but the truth was that the king had acted out of a mixture of fear and delusion.

And yet only the protagonists really knew that the actual turning point had occurred on 5 May, 1936, at a historic meeting between Il Duce, the Monarch, and Grand Council of Fascists where Latin emotion once played an unspoken part in events. For all his many flaws, Mussolini had legitimised Fascism, although he lacked the unguarded, maniacal obsession of Adolf Hitler. After his treatment of his fellow countrymen during the Austrian Civil War, the Fuhrer could self-evidently not be trusted. Both dictators had megalomaniac visions of the future, but Il Duce was a much smarter, shrewder politician in the realm of international relations. A dangerous course was therefore chosen by the Council: Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law, was ordered to forge closer relations with Britain, France, and Germany secretly to see which side would offer Italy the best deal.

Contrary to their howls of protest of new imperialism, the so-called Liberal Democracies were not interested in freeing their colonies; they were just unhappy Italy was joining the ranks of Empires. Given the wrong move, they might retaliate in the same way that they reacted the same way to Japanese expansion into Manchuria and China. Italy's Ethiopian situation had soured relations with the West but even so the common front that the former Great War Allies had declared at Stresa in 1935 had serious flaws. The appeasers were also secretly negotiating with Nazi Germany. Italy offered up trading concessions that were sufficient to nurture the necessary goodwill for the signing of a treaty of Italian Neutrality after the Fall of France.

These moves were very much in Italy's national interests, but in that moment the future was highly uncertain as Hitler's Germany was rapidly gaining power. The successful invasion of Ethiopia, and the formation of Italian East Africa, had left the Fascists isolated diplomatically. Weaker men would have felt compelled to make a choice, but in a larger sense, the recent history of the Kingdom had taught politicians the power of calculation in Council. Ultimately, it was getting right that fine judgement that had really led to the rise of the N.R.E. and an Empire Reborn.

Key lessons were learnt by the Italian military during the Spanish Civil War. During the late 1930s, Italy abandoned the binary division system and returned to a trinary system, such that the Army had less divisions but they were more capable. It is not completely impossible to imagine that a well-timed threat of invasion might have prevented Anschluss and actually stopped Hitler in his tracks. But that outcome would have been counter-productive to Italy's national interests; instead, Il Duce steadily maintained his gaze on expansion to the south and the east. Neutrality meant freedom of action in a sphere of little interest to the Germans and, for the time being at least, abandoned by the Western Allies. Mussolini carefully reaped the seeds of his neutrality with a strong thrust led by the highly capable General Giovanni Messe in Southern Europe that would yield Albania and Yugoslavia and a slow coup that forced Greece more and more into its camp over many years. Italians managed even a toe-hold in the former British Protectorate of Palestine, which included the city and surrounding area of Jerusalem following a border conflict with Lebanon, a lira-block member. Jerusalem became a Free City under nominal Italian oversight following the Easter War,which forced the fledgling state to give up control of territory as part of the peace deal.

Meanwhile, the rebalancing of relations with Britain had occurred at the Fall of France when any prime minister other than Churchill would have sued for peace. Instead, Britain agreed that Italy could expand in the eastern Mediterranean as the price of continued neutrality. Because, after all, the unfair Treaty of Versailles had taught an important lesson to Italy that Britain and France just could not be trusted to make territorial concessions. Aside from that lack of trust, had the animosity been less pronounced, then Italy might well have declared war on Nazi Germany at the death. This could perhaps have yielded Malta or Djbouti at the peace conference, maybe even a veto seat at the United Nations (U.N.). Meanwhile, with Italy independently pursuing military operations to establish their Empire in the south and east, Nazi Germany narrowed their focus on domination of northern and central Europe. And even though he managed to seize Moscow, Hitler's quest for world domination eventually came to naught, whereas Il Duce's strategies to restore the glory of ancient Rome actually brought his vision to fruition. His former antagonists Britain and France were exhausted and bankrupted by victory. They embarked upon a long retreat from Empire, affording only to retain overseas forced only in Colonies that bordered Italian territory. Fascism had also survived in neutral Spain; nevertheless, it was clear that the N.R.E. was the true beneficiary, if the not the victor, of World War Two. In the end German hubris and Hitler's megalomania led to Germany's downfall and Hitler's suicide. This outcome cemented in Mussolini's mind the deeply held conviction that his destiny was to be the true "man of the 20th century."At the Yalta Conference, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt met to discuss the post-war world. Stalin wanted to invade Italy immediately following the end of hostilities with Germany. Roosevelt, however, believed that diplomacy and sanctions would be able to win the day. Churchill, while privately wanting a war, realized that Britain could not stay at war much longer since they were already disbanding a division a month to keep their front line forces at full strength. Churchill also worried that Stalin would try to gobble up the Balkans. They all agreed that Italy would not be allowed into the U.N. Nevertheless, the Soviets secretly provided Yugoslav rebels with arms and support for a low-level partisan war occurring in the Balkans up until the early 1950s. A strong Italian Empire became increasingly vulnerable to attacks by "communist insurgents" backed by the USSR, but there were effective strategies for dealing with this: for example , encouraging fascist insurgents in bordering Warsaw Pact countries that led to an understanding between the U.S.S.R. and N.R.E.

Following the War, France and Britain initially kept their strong ties and common goals, but French revanchism over the years has put strain on between the two nations, though when Italian aggression reared its ugly head, the two nations had been known to set their differences aside and present a common front.

Surely then Il Duce had been wildly exaggerating when he predicted that "the twentieth century would be known in history as the century of Fascism." Yet contrary to global expectations, the decades after his passing in 1965 saw the N.R.E. surge ahead on all fronts. During 1970, the Imperial Space Agency put an Italian on the moon and the Grand Council could certainly take some credit for selecting the hardliner Salvador Medici over Ciano for the role of First Consul. Perhaps even more significantly, King Solomon's Mines had been discovered on N.R.E. territory just outside Jerusalem. This significant discovery was followed ten years later by the Ethiopian Motherlode.In March of 1980, Alfonso Scordato, an Italian farmer in the Ethiopian Highlands, found himself suddenly wealthy when he discovered gold nuggets in his farm's runoff water. By July of that year the local surveying and mining company brought in realized that what they thought was only a small vein of gold was much larger than anything they have ever encountered before, larger than anything anyone has ever accounted by.

By February of 1981, surveyors sent from Rome announced that the Ethiopian Motherlode held more gold than even King Solomon's Mines. Conservative estimates put the amount of gold contained in the Motherlode as doubling the global supply. Following this Consul Medici of the New Roman Empire quickly moved to have the mines nationalized and exploited. Scordato initially attempted to resist the nationalization plans but quickly acquiesced after being offered a small percentage of all future profits. That deal would make Scordato and his descendants some of the richest people in the world.

Silvio Berlusconi, the then Minister of Industry and a man who held controlling interest in a media enterprise, smelled the profit to be held in those mines. Unfortunately, even though the contracts for the excavation of those minds were being reviewed by his Ministry the final decision would be that of the Consul. Ever the bold businessman, Berlusconi sold all of his interest in the media companies which made him a wealthy man and reinvested his entire fortune in the three companies most likely to obtain the Motherlode contract. Berlusconi's gamble would pay off in the summer of 1982 when one of those companies was chosen as the lead company to oversee operations.

Initial excavations begin in February of 1983 but poor infrastructure in the region kept the output small at the start. This would not do for Medici and Berlusconi and they quickly declared the "East African Initiative Fund." The EAIF would see tens of thousands of Italians and Eastern Europeans moved into Ethiopia and thousands of miles of roads, tracks, electric lines and other utilities laid down for the express purpose of exploiting the Motherlode. The EAIF would pay off and by 1987 the Motherlode mines were operating at peak efficiency. These finds gave Italy control of two huge gold reserves that transformed the economic fortunes of the entire lira bloc with a doubling of the world's supply.In response to this massive influx of gold into the market the vast majority of developed countries peg the price of gold at fixed rates in order to keep some stability within the gold market and keep the value of gold up and at acceptable rates. Even with these measures in place the N.R.E. is able to bring in billions of dollars on the gold market.

The Consul's office and the Berlusconi uses these billions heavily investing in the Empire's infrastructure system throughout Italy and its territories in South-eastern Europe.

Other initiatives are given to countries in the Lira Block in order to keep those regimes stable. The N.R.E. also focuses heavily on education and technology seeking to close the "Technology Gap" that exists between it and the United States.The N.R.E. single-handedly dominated the gold market and the Italian Lira backed by vast reserves of gold that quickly come to rival and surpass those at Fort Knox is generally regarded as the world's strongest currency. Many of the nations outside of Europe choose to use the Lira the primary currency of trade and some nations even back their own currency with the Lira. Clearly, history was on the side of the N.R.E., and these events led to diplomatic relations being restored with America. A famous state visit from US ("only Nixon could deal with Rome") occurred over the protests of England and France.

Many economists and historians believe that the discovery of the Solomon Mines and the Motherlode allowed the N.R.E. to weather the storm that was the late 1980s. While that decade and the 1990s saw the fall of the iron curtain and the dissolution of the Soviet Union the N.R.E. managed to stay strong and united. By 2000, the technology gap between the US and the N.R.E. has largely been closed and even Western Europe has begun to begrudgingly accept the Lira's dominance in Foreign Markets.

Author's Note: In this article we have merged Robbie Taylor's scenario and Vincent Longobardi two timelines Italy 1936 - An alternate Italian history of World War II and the sequel An Empire Reborn. As Scott Palter has noted, OTL Mussolini was more of a failed Franco than a Hitler, Jr, as imagined in the West.