Surrounded by powerful forces that had tried to dominate them for thousands of years, the Germanies finally decided it was high time to come together. Hundreds of different states cooperated to win their independence from the Austrian Empire, only to be attacked by a French Empire that thought them easy pickings. But the new German Empire proved itself when it shattered the French armies and captured Paris herself. It was the beginning of a new era.
An interesting thing about animals is that we can make them intelligent but we can’t make them human. An uplifted dog is a smart dog, not a human that walks on all fours. And they’ve become more a part of our world than any other. Then there’s Cats. They’re far more alien to us than the Alien races who made Contact with us. Sometimes I wonder if we’ve gone exploring in the right direction.
The Outer Colonial militaries have always had more experience than the soldiers back home. The men and women on the frontiers live and die by learning, and sometimes get rotated back to teach the homeguard a thing or two. Not that most parade-ready homeguard soldiers appreciate the rough around the edges, combat-ready frontier bumpkins much. And as always, the thoughts are usually mutual. I rather prefer the rough ones myself. I guess that makes me lucky.
The warships that provided the Wolfenheim Project’s backbone were all old ships. Retired decades before The War started, they came from the first generation of gravtech construction. We found them in museums or drifting in boneyards, and gave them a new lease on life. The Peloran did the hard work, full refits from stem to stern, and replaced every major system and most of the minor ones. They gave us some surprising capabilities and we used them.
After the fall of Napoleon, France reeled from being the preeminent power on Continental Europe to what could effectively be called a third rate power. The French monarchy collapsed into the Second Republic, and then Napoleon III reclaimed the throne. He allied with the still powerful Austrian Empire, but when the Germanies defeated it in open war, the writing was on the wall. Soon another French government fell, and France continued to stumble into the future.