Kaiserlich und Koeniglich Zeitung - 1910 and 1911 and 1912 too

[Borys]

January

The Marineamt has issued a warning to maritime interests and travelers of piracy in the Carribean.

The Head of the Fleet, Gorssadmiaral Rudolf von Montecuccoli und zu Pastrani was questioned in Parliament on the situation in the West Indies. And why have KKK forces not been dispatched there. The senior naval officer replied:
- Neither Colombia nor the Confederacy are Boratistans, and both have fleets twice the size of ours. If not larger. So sending our warships there is not likely to have much of an impact on the situation. If you want a winter tan, go to Austria's latest acquisition - Sandessptz - its High Summer down there you know ...
At this point a commotion interrupted the questioning, with a few members of the Diet shouting "we are not idiots!", others - more numerous - giving voice to "Yay! Patagonia wellcome to!" and "Bajo a la playa!" sentiments.

[Borys]

Summer 1910
Diplomatic Note to Mesoamerican Republic, leaked to press

The Habsburg Monarchy is worried and angered by the evidence - gathered by the Gra Colombian Government - of the leniency of Mesoamerican authorities towards Satanist worshipping pirates. The Habsburg Gov't considers cooperation with the Anuhuac Satantists to make a country a Banditenstat, no longer protected by International Custom. Vienna will closely monitor the situation.

[The Rock Doctor]

The Hapsburg ambassador in Cartagena will be quietly thanked for his government's message to Mesoamerica.

[Borys]

Early 1911
In various ports of the Empire, the flag was lowered on warships which had served the Navy in the last wars - the Peace Fleet, the Spanish Civil War intervention, Brasilian Crusade, Despoiling of the Azores, Third Pacific War*.
Some small fry were scraped in Euope. The largest ships, two schlachtschiffen, 2 panzerkreuzer, and one kuestenpanzerschiffe, with surprisingly large skeleton crews sailed for North America. There the purpose of the crews became aparent - they manned the 36 Torpedobooten built by CA shipyards. And the old warships were payment for these new vessels.
Meanwhile, in European ports, shiney new, powerful vessels were comissioned into the Imperial and Royal navy - two batleships, the SMS Juan de Austria and SMS Tegetthoff, and three "ladies" class of small cruisers - the SMS Kaisering und Koenigin Maria Theresie, SMS Koeniging Heldwig and SMS Herzogin Bathory. These joined the stream of GTBs and Mineseekers coming from the yards on the Adriatic.



* over seven years, 1901-08, hence Neoswiss jokes of "Habsburgs Fighting for Peace. Soon on a battlefield near you."

Borys

[Borys]

January 1911, La Valetta, office of Guiseppe Maria Mahmud Yard

The Auslaender Minsterium official watched the scene with some amusement and trepidation, fully aware of the intricate diplomatic issues involved. Upon reception of each subsequent telegram the yard owner sweated heavily, even though it was the middle of winter. He read the telegrams, rolled eyes, moaned "Madonna" and conferred with his staff in a language which made German and Hungarian rolled into one sound like the sweet singing of Angelic Choirs.
And he cast Bambi like glances at the diplomat and the naval officer assigned to him to provide counsel on ordnance and diplomatic matter. And to provide moral support and guidance, although that was more the domain of the Saint John of the Cross Ta' Xbiex Parish Church.

[Borys]

These were quiet times in the Habsburg realms.

Yet another Imperial&Royal pregancy ended in a miscarriage, and apparent estrangment of the KuK couple.

In early 1912 the extraordinary ship - SMS Siligia - (what the f**** kind of name is that? The Seven Cardinal Sins? Are we going Iberian or Russian in our ship naming? What next? - SMS Heiligendreieinigkeit?* ) arrived from Japan, where it had been built to Habsburg order.
It's extraordinary features include:
- seven Main Gun turrets
- Main Gun battery with fourtneen guns
- too large for any Habsburg drydock

The light forces kept on growing.

Also in early 1912 the non-Militia part of the Army completed it's rearming up to the latest standard.

Construction of stategic RR - with an eye at economic viability in the future - continued in the South American possessions. Parana was said to be "half done". An interesting line was beeing built in Patagonia - a Bosnian gauge 2'6"/30 inches/762mm railroad constructed in a maner as to carry heavy loads. Long term plans called for settling some 50,000 people along the route. Some  profit was expected from the hauling of coal to the UNSA naval base at Rio Gallegos.

The newly created Paranisches Eisenhutten Gmbh is reported to be investing in in the Minas Gerais Province of Brasil. The geological reports as to the presence of iron ore had been positive, thus the interest in the creation of a smelting industry in Sankt Katarina.



* Heiligendreieinigkeit = Holy Three-Oneness = Holy Trinity

[Borys]

In late June 1912 two ceremonies took place. Thousands of miles apart, but timed as to happen simulataneously.

At Aden the distraught Baumundziege brought down the Schwarz-Gelb of the Habsburgs and watched the Schwarz-Weiss of the Hohenzollerns go up as handed over the town he had build over to the Brandenburgers. 
Meanwhile at Porto Alegre the beaming Schmydtke watched the same colours in reversed roles.

This made Schmydtke the Vice-Roy of the newly created Koenigreich Parana. With some 570,000 kilometres it was close to the size of France or Austro-Hungary.

[Borys]

Viceroy Schmydtke pondered the information supplied by the Habsburg Green Cross. At least a dozen thousand of refugees from Mezoamerica and from Bharat would arrive soon. His gut reaction reaction was to send them all to Feuerland, or Tierra del Fuego, to use its Castiian name. However, that area was not ready to accept more settlers than were currently assigned. Even more importantly, the climate would probably kill most of the Indians and ... the OTHER sort of Indians.
Not to mention that it was the middle of the Winter down there.
So much better to spread then around expanded Parana, well mixed with the latest wave of settlers from the Home Country. That should make them learn German quicker, too.

[Borys]

The addition of Rio Grande was at the same time a boon and an Arschschmertz of truely Imperial and Royal proportions.


The Bad:
1 - Language;
the never mentioned, but undesirable increase of the Portuguese speaking community. In Parana the original Brasilians had been submerged by inflow of setlers from the Homelands, and down to some one fourth of the population. In the south some three quarters were Brasilians, with most of the rest bi-lingual, making Portuguese the working language there. While in the north that role had already been taken over by German. So, with the total number of Portuguese speakers - as primary or secondary language - growing to some 1,5M out of the almost 3M total population, some steps had to be taken to regain the status of German as the lingua franca between Paraner of disparte origin. Hopefully, ten years of directing all - or most - newcommers to the south should suffice.

2 - Railroads;
the acquisition of the south doubled the size of the country, to 576,000 sq/km. At present economic ties between Parana/Sankt Katerina and Rio Grande were marginal, as both areas prodced pretty much the same commodities, coal exempting. The main export of the north to the south was coal, carried by the Tubarao-Porto-Allegre line. With the North expanding out of Desterro into the coastal mountains, and from Curitiba into the plateau, and the South fanning outwards of Porto-Allegre, there was no direct communciation them, apart from that coastal RR and shipping. Thus an interior RR link was an urgent necessity. However, the question of gauge-break appeared. The DKB used the 3'3" gauge it inherited from the French, simply using or repairing they had found on the spot. Meanwhile the Habsburgs put some money into regauging existing lines, and poured lots into building new 3'6" lines. Running two gauges in a country minimaly smaller than metropolitan A-H did not make sense. Three rail lines were not practical, due to proximity of gauges. While four rail lines to carry traffic of both gauges were too expensive for the province's current level of economic development. So which to choose? The decider here was Brasil.
Sao Paulo businesses were happy to use Paranagua as the port for their trading.
And Habsburg owned iron ore mines were being sunk in Minas Gerais, their produce intended for processing in Sankt Katarina. The expanding transit traffic from Brasil, plus bilateral trade, was already putting pressure on uniformity of gauge.  And the part of Brasil accessible by rail was more than half larger than the new Parana - 576 vs. 923K sq/km of the provinces making up the southern network (Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeriro, Minas Gerais, Espirito Santo). Thus a switch to 3'3" was practically inevitable.

3 - Administration;
At present Rio Grande had its strong sense of identity, something which had been already strongly eroded in the north. The Habsburgs pushed down the importance of provinces of "Parana" and "Santa Katarina", retaining both as second levels of government, under the common goverment of
"Viceroy of Parana". With the mass of incoming settlers outnumbering the original, Brasilian, inhabitants, the old provincial identities were quickly losing any relevance. The south was different. To help break that down, the old provicial governments were to be abolished, substituted by 8 newly created bodies. Each of roughly 80-90K sq/km, these would facilitate adminstration, and finally destroy old regional identies, giving old names new meaning. Three new districts would be carved entirely out of Rio Grande, one from sparsely inhabitated Parana-Rio Grande border areas, two from the rest of Parana, and one from Sankt Katarina. The coastal areas would retain the original names - in part due to the fact that that's where they mattered most - the littoral holding the majority of "old Brasilians", and partly out of convenience. To the newest settlers in the interior the name of their new Heimat was irrelevant - it was somewhere "in the wilds of Parana".

4 - Capital;
the partly enforced and partly gently guided process of integration of the three old Brasilian provinces made a new capital desirable. Old Santa Caterina was appeased for the insult of being ruled from Paranese Curitiba by prolonged stays of the Viceroy in Desterro, thus obfuscating the loss of "independence". But this would not work in Rio Grande. So either a move of the Principality's capital to some Rio Grande  city, or simply to Porto Allegre would be necessary. Desterro, as it was NOT  in Parana, was also a possibility. But the best solution would be a newly built city, in the north of "old" Rio Grande, more or less in the geographical centre of the new entity. This would have the added benefit of boosting the setlement of the desolate interior. The author of the suggestion to name it Stefonopolis was already on the way to his new post in Uschaia, which prided itself on being the "Southernmost City in the World, averge yearly temperature of 8 degrees, 700 inches of rainfall and 30 days of sunshine". Neustadt/Neopolis, Medweg and Cidade Real/Koenigsburg were the shortlist of contemplated names.

[Borys]

STOP CRISTIAN MAIDENS BEING OUTRAGED BY THE INFIDEL TURK!
was the main type of headline carried by newspapers in the Dual Monarchy, regardless whether serious - like the KuK Zeitung, or popular - Der Abend Ekspress

[Borys]

Churches, regardless of denomination, are holding services for oppressed Christians. Some are also holding services for the supression of Muslims.

"Balkanhilfe" charities are attracting a  flood of donations.

Street demonstrations demand the Gov't "to do something" - the mood of the mob being to kill all Muslims.

Internal tensions and a bloody-minded public makes the Gov't mobilise the Landwehr and bring up the Heimwehr to High Alert - one notch below mobilisation.

In Sarajevo and other towns in Bosnia the muzzeins have been asked to refrain from calling out for Prayers - the cause being an incident of rock throwing at gathering faithful. Violence was prevented by the police firing into the hostile crowd, killing several demonstrators. A full scale riot was averted when an army patrol rushed to the scene revealed a "tatschanka" with a ready to fire machine gun, and the garrison started patrolling the streets. Dusk to dawn curfew was imposed on the province.

The Reichswehr Korps from Parana was recalled to Europe, the expanded South America province being let to the 2nd Korps of the AFL and the local Landwehr Korps. The fate of self defence militias in ex-Rio Grande is not yet know - probably will serve as kernel of a Heimwehr Korps.

Warships are undergoing hurried visits to ports, for bottom cleaning and for the taking of provisions.

The staff at the KuK Telegraf are joking that the Wien-Madrid traffic will melt the cables.

Imre Lengyel was seen taking a train to Bucaresti.

The Ottoman frontier is open for anybody wishing to enter from the South. Troops troops on Reichgrenzenshutzenundordnungs duty have been instructed to assist those wishing to cross the border, in any manner necessary.

Due to flood of requests, Recruitment Offices are registering candidates declaring readiness of "for the duration" enlistment in case of war with the Turk.

[Borys]

The Ottoman threats towards humanitarian Iberian and Habsburg shipping have been decried by Vienna. Ottoman registered vessels, if not crewed by by Christians, have been ordered to leave Habsburg Territorial Waters within 12 hours. Non-compliance equals confiscation.

Work on expansion of naval facilities at La Valetta has intensified.

[Borys]

All Habsburg funded or co-funded institutions in the Levant were instructed to keep their head low and avoid provoking the Authorities. The chief concern was avoiding any repressions directed at the Syrian Christians.
And this list of institutions was long - there was an overt or covert or muddled Habsburg finger in almost all Christian education establishments, and most of secular as well. Plus orphanges, hospitals, small food processing plants.
Habsburg agents in Serbia and Macedonia were instructed to continue intelligence gathering and to prepare for sabotage of railways. The latter in a manner least likely to provoke massacres of civilians, i.e. in remote, uninhabited areas.

[Borys]

In Bucarest the Personal Special Envoy of the Emperor-King presented a politely ultimatum. But an ultimatum nonetheless, in classical bullying SPQR style - "with us or against us".

[Borys]

Ettapenkommendanten the world over approached shipping interests with lavish offers of chartering mercants and passangers in the second half of 1912. Wartime insurance premiums to be covered by the Habsburg Gov't.