The Bulldog and the Princess
In the aftermath of the Red-White Civil War breaking out in North Manchuria, as Russian refugees poured in and military units began appearing with increasing frequency, Zhang Zuolin—the warlord who had made Fengtian his stronghold and commanded the armies of the Northeast Three Provinces—deployed troops to the Russian border in North Manchuria. The Fengtian soldiers stationed there had recently taken to watching the Russian forces every single day. It wasn’t particularly strange; after all, these were White Army units that received supplies through Manchuria. Yet lately their movements had begun to feel less like transit and more like outright reconnaissance.
“Haven’t the Russian troops been showing up a lot recently?”
“They’re getting supplies from the Americans. Must be because of that.”
“Heh. Then maybe we should take a little cut for ourselves. Call it a transit fee.”
“Now that’s an idea.”
The Fengtian soldiers, unable to hide the predatory instincts they had carried over from their bandit days, were just beginning to entertain such thoughts when a column of mounted troops appeared in the distance, galloping straight toward them.
“What the hell are those? Some kind of cavalry division?”
“Whose unit are they with? Wait—why aren’t they stopping?”
This particular Russian force was strange. Among them were white men speaking languages the Chinese soldiers had never heard, but there were also yellow-skinned men speaking fluent Chinese and Manchu.
“Subjugate the Chinese bandit gangs and protect the Russians of North Manchuria!”
An army that spoke in a bewildering variety of tongues never heard in China. Their banners were unmistakably Russian, yet the Fengtian troops had never imagined the Russians would actually push south. In truth, Ungern’s army could hardly be called a regular unit of the White Army. What had crossed into North Manchuria was the Asiatic Cavalry Division he had personally raised.
“W-we have to send a messenger to the commander-in-chief—”
“S-stop them! Stop them now!”
“You bastards! How dare you rebel against Great Russia, heir to the Mongol Empire! Manchuria is Mongol territory and rightful Russian land!”
“What the hell is this gu—”
At the time, Zhang Zuolin’s Fengtian Army had participated in the Constitutional Protection War and was expanding its influence across Manchuria, but its limits were clear. These men had only ever fought bandits or small-scale skirmishes in the northeast; their combat effectiveness was lacking. Though Ungern’s cavalry division was not particularly large, it was a multi-ethnic force of Poles, Russians, Buryats, Tatars, Bashkirs, Mongols, some Chinese, Manchus, and various other peoples. Under Ungern’s command they wielded superb horsemanship and shattered the Fengtian Army in moments.
The Fengtian troops stationed along the Sino-Russian border were stripped clean, like a thief rifling through a victim’s wallet. Although Zhang Zuolin had not committed his main forces—busy watching rival warlords—the loss of tens of thousands of men killed or routed by Ungern’s few thousand was a crushing, humiliating defeat.
Ungern dismissed the entire affair as nothing more than a border dispute. Even though North Manchuria had fallen into his hands, Zhang Zuolin could not retake it. “Those sons of bitches!”
Ungern’s army was vastly outnumbered by the Fengtian forces, but the difference in fighting quality was so great that Zhang Zuolin dared not risk the troops that would be lost in any attempt to crush him. If he destroyed Ungern, the White Army—already gaining the upper hand in the civil war—might use it as a pretext to march south into Manchuria. Moreover, the great powers stood behind Russia. Zhang Zuolin had contacted Japan for support, but Tokyo, which had already mapped out a partition of Manchuria with Russia, had no intention of helping the Fengtian clique over a region the powers had tacitly accepted as Russian.
In the original timeline, Zhang Zuolin would have been plotting to expel Meng Enyuan, the Jilin warlord. That dream was now impossible. The territory Ungern had seized in his surprise attack was practically Zhang’s own backyard. Besides, he had not yet fully consolidated control over the Northeast Three Provinces, having not yet removed Meng Enyuan. Ungern’s southward thrust had dealt a severe blow to Zhang Zuolin, who had been riding high after the Constitutional Protection War.
“Serves Zhang Zuolin right!”
Meanwhile, Meng Enyuan of Jilin Province—who had been declining under Zhang Zuolin’s pressure—took great interest in the White Army after this incident. Unlike in the original history where he was eventually ousted, he now threw his lot in with the Whites instead.
North Manchuria had fallen into our hands.
Why is this working? How is this even possible?
According to Ungern, he had crushed the bandit hordes of Zhang Zuolin, the Manchurian bandit chief, and planted the imperial tricolor in North Manchuria. He was currently busy beating the reds in Harbin. Zhang Zuolin had retreated to South Manchuria to rebuild his strength, but there was good news as well: Meng Enyuan had declared he would side with us. Somehow we had gained influence in Jilin Province as well.
Time passed. Using the excuse of rebuilding the Russian economy, I introduced a planned economy that gave our system a faint socialist flavor—just enough to make Lenin have a seizure. Of course, calling it a planned economy was a stretch. It was merely a controlled economic policy that strengthened government intervention within a market framework. The various measures I pushed through even before the civil war had fully ended carried a slight socialist tint, but the important thing was that we had attempted them before the Soviets.
Things the Soviets would later do—policies that would come to be seen as signature Bolshevik moves—were being reborn at Anastasia’s hands. This might even minimize the damage during the Great Depression. What could Lenin do then? He would have to find something new that didn’t overlap with me. Whatever he came up with would likely be based on his ideology: the prohibition of private property. The Soviets, meanwhile, were failing at everything. All that remained for them was the conquest of White Russia. If they focused solely on expanding military power to achieve that, they would only earn the resentment of their own people. Eventually the cry would rise—“Life was better under the Tsar!”—and more and more people would defect to our side. They were doomed to repeat the same vicious cycle.
Of course, we were hardly in perfect condition during the civil war either, so our policies could not be implemented perfectly. Still, wasn’t it better to at least try rather than remain completely silent? The reaction among Russians in the White camp—whether they supported a united republic or a constitutional monarchy—was not bad at all.
“Doesn’t this policy taste a little red?”
“Nonsense! How could any policy enacted by Her Highness the Princess possibly be red? Are the Bolsheviks carrying out the same policies as our princess? They’re merely copying her, and doing it poorly at that.”
“Well… when you put it that way.”
“Exactly! Why would we ever listen to those incompetent Bolsheviks?”
The Bolsheviks were Satan’s brood and utterly incompetent. They were filthy cockroaches who did nothing but spew honeyed words to agitate the masses. That had become their clear reputation lately. Bolsheviks were unconditionally evil—dirty vermin that must never be tolerated. All they could do was conscript soldiers. That was it. Even though Trotsky was rebuilding an army whose ranks had been shattered and was gathering soldiers in the millions, here they would have to watch the people’s mood. They did nothing useful yet dragged men off to the front. Eventually the sentiment would emerge that life had been better under the Tsar. The Bolsheviks had fallen into a vegetative state.
On the other side was a lone princess who ran about desperately, trying to win the hearts of her subjects. Of course, given our circumstances, not every reform was implemented effectively. But at this moment—when the civil war had drawn a clear line between factions and the old vested interests who might have opposed us had been swept away—my Russia, though slowly, was beginning to reap the benefits of reform. And naturally, that meant people would eventually have no choice but to come to White Russia, where the last princess of the Tsar resided.
I didn’t think the Whites would lose this Red-White Civil War. No matter what those people did, they couldn’t surpass me. Or they might simply collapse on their own.
Anyway. I quietly looked up at the hateful British bulldog standing before me. The man had been growing visibly irritated for some time because I was ignoring him and reading reports instead. Winston Churchill. The very man who had thrown countless young men of the British Commonwealth into the meat grinder at Gallipoli and earned the nickname “Mr. Gallipoli.” A fellow who had swallowed so much criticism that he looked destined for obscurity, yet here he was in person as a special envoy. He had been visiting quite frequently since the recapture of South Russia.
“So, what do you intend to do about North Manchuria?”
“Before that, may I ask a question, Your Highness?”
“Go ahead.”
“Are you truly unwilling to consider exile elsewhere? If you wish to maintain your status, we could tear apart the Ottomans and establish a grand duchy for you in Constantinople. The Grand Duchy of Rome, the Grand Duchy of Constantinople. How does that sound?”
Hadn’t the Great War ended in a draw? Ah, so the Ottomans were to be the sacrificial lamb. Austria had been forced to take responsibility and become “what had once been a dual empire,” yet the main culprit, Germany, remained relatively intact. Among the nations that had joined the Entente, France had probably suffered the worst. Britain had likely made the Kaiser grovel and handed over colonies and everything else, though not all of it would have gone entirely into French hands. So they were carving up the Ottomans instead? “We won. Look.” Was that the message? Just how badly did they want to dismember the Ottomans? This went beyond mere dismantling.
And Constantinople? Were they suggesting I become the ruler of a Grand Duchy of Constantinople in place of the Ottoman Kostantiniye? Given that Anastasia’s title was Grand Duchess, a grand duchy would technically fit. But was it really acceptable for me to take even a bite of that? In the first place, I had no intention of going. Of course, for Russia—which called itself the Third Rome—Constantinople was land we ought to claim. But this might simply be a probe. I had to offer the appropriate lip service.
“If I were to hold Constantinople as my fief, the late Tsar would surely rejoice, saying the glory of the Eastern Roman Empire had been restored.”
Losing the Russian mainland and gaining only Constantinople—what was I supposed to do with that? And was it even feasible? If they simply tossed it to me and I ignored it, the grand duchy would be meaningless. It would end up as pitiful as Luxembourg. This was practically mockery. That damned Gallipoli bastard. With his bald head that had been thinning since his youth, was he really treating me like some ignorant child?
“Are you mocking me right now?”
“Pardon?”
“You cannot even tolerate giving us that insignificant North Manchuria. Isn’t that what you’re saying? Your loyal dog Japan sank the entire Russian fleet. Are you still worried we might advance into the Pacific? Or are you simply looking down on us because of our current wretched state?”
This Gallipoli bastard. He should be grateful I wasn’t calling him “Mr. Gallipoli” to his face. He really had a smooth tongue. At my words the bald bulldog finally flinched and waved both hands.
“That was absolutely not my intention. Please do not misunderstand. It seems I have misspoken and caused Your Highness displeasure. North Manchuria is not difficult to arrange. The Grand Duchy of Rome was merely a contingency plan prepared for a truly hypothetical scenario.”
“Then?”
“If, after the civil war, you guarantee the independence of Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic states, Belarus, Finland, and the others that became independent under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, then the Caucasus, Mongolia, and North Manchuria can all become jewels in Your Highness’s crown.”
The Caucasus? So that was still on the table. In the original history, after Germany’s collapse the region had been occupied by British troops. That too had changed. No matter how powerful Britain was, stationing troops in lands Germany had already relinquished would be difficult. They wouldn’t be able to settle in the Caucasus. Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan. These fellows were acting as if they were generously offering their own land. In any case, they had to give us what they were supposed to give. To safely crush the reds, we needed to gather every scrap of strength we could. The same applied to the Caucasus.
“I see.”
They had taken all the sweet territory seized from Germany for themselves. Poland, the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine. Of those, Ukraine was land that should be responsible for Russia’s grain supply, but later we could expand free trade or increase domestic production. Still, within the White Army there were those who hated the idea of losing Ukraine. Even Pyotr Wrangel, who was present, wore a clearly displeased expression. Obtaining Ukraine was something I wanted but realistically could not achieve. These people also lacked the capacity to administer those regions directly, so it seemed they planned to establish pro-British governments there and extract a guarantee of independence from Russia.
Well, fine. I didn’t know how long I would even remain here. Support was urgently needed right now. If I refused and the touchy British grew offended and halted aid, it would become troublesome. Yes. There was no helping it.
“I like how quickly this conversation is moving. In that case, the great powers must recognize our White Russia as the legitimate government of Russia.”
“Naturally. How could we possibly recognize those satanic creatures as a government and engage with them? The reds must be crushed. His Majesty the King of the British Empire has already given his permission.”
Seeing how smoothly things were proceeding, it appeared these people were quite terrified of the red plague after all.