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145 pages

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Walter Loepitsch, born into Prussian Junker Nobility in the 19th. Century, in Pommerania, Northern Prussia. Sent to Military Academy at the age of ten thence to join a regiment of lancers at the age of 18. Married to Luise, the sister of his best friend, but subsequently carries on an affaire with a beautiful gypsy girl. Sees action in both the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian Wars. A proud officer who becomes disillusioned with military life when he has to kill his best friend on the battlefield. Invalided out of the army he returns home to manage his family estate during which time he sees the unification of Germany and the seeds of future troubles. The book first traces the animosity between the French and German speaking peoples, going back 2,000 years to Roman times. And also the origins of ancient Prussia and its rise to power. This sets the backcloth to Walter.

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Publié par	Distributed by eBookpartnership
Date de parution	01 janvier 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781839785917
Langue	English

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Arise Black Eagle
BY ROY SNELLING
Dedication
To my dear friend Audrey Sinclair, without whose ability to search the Akashic Records part of this book might have been bereft of certain important detail. Also to my dear friend Frances Brown for her guidance on various aspects of the rules and pitfalls of preparing a book for publication.
Character Identity
Except for certain well-known historical characters, such as Otto Graf von Bismarck, General Sherringham and Helmut von Moltke, all other characters in this book are purely fictional and are not intended to represent anyone in real life. Any apparent real-life identification is purely accidental.
Copyright Roy Snelling 2023
The right of Roy Snelling to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988. All illustrations are the work of the Author.
Contents
Prologue The origins of Franco - German animosity
Chapter 1. The birth of Prussia.
Chapter 2. Grossvater Jakob
Chapter 3. Early years.
Chapter 4. Military Academy
Chapter 5. Glory of the Regiment
Chapter 6. Zigeunerliebe
Chapter 7. K niggr tz - first blood
Chapter 8. A false peace
Chapter 9 France - blood and tears
Chapter 10 Settled years during National change.
Chapter 11. Unintended consequences
Appendices
Other books by Roy Snelling
Illustrations
Leutnant L pitsch
Austria War - Theatre of operations
Franco-Prussian War - Disposition of opposing Armies
Leaders of the Prusso-German Expansion.
Prologue
THE ORIGINS OF FRANCO - GERMAN ANIMOSITY
In order to understand the cultural background of the land within which the subject of this book, Walter L pitsch, was raised it is first necessary to understand a little of the past history of Prussia - Germany, and what the causes were for frequent conflict between the German and French peoples.
How did this perpetual animosity between the French and Germans come about? How far back in history does it go? We have to go right back in history to the period between 4,000 to 5,000 years ago when there was a migration movement of Indo-European tribes from the Russian Steppes westwards into Europe. Latins followed by Greeks migrated into the Mediterranean lands of Southern Europe. Kelts, followed by Germans, followed by Slavs migrated into Northern Europe and down into the Balkans as far as Macedonia. The Kelts originally settled in Central and West Europe, but the westward movement of Germanic tribes pushed them across the River Rhine into what was to become Gaul. But the westward movement of the Slavs pushed the Germans to the West of the River Oder. Occupying most of Central Europe Germanic tribes then progressed northwards up the Jutland Peninsula, across the Danish islands and into Southern Sweden and Norway. Then about 1,000 BCE, with the onset of a wetter climate, the southern neck of the Jutland Peninsular became marshy, making further migration difficult. So this northern branch developed a distinctive Scandinavian sub-culture of the Germanic peoples.
Between 58 and 55 BCE Julius Caesar with a predominantly Latin Roman Army conquered the Keltic tribes west of the Rhine, which became the new Roman Province of Gaul. For many years the Romans tried to maintain the River Rhine as the natural boundary between the Kelts to the west and the Germanic tribes to the east. Despite punitive expeditions into German lands they were unable to stop large numbers of Germans crossing the Rhine and putting down settlements along the West Bank. An attempt was made to control them by setting up Roman administered Colonae for these folk, hence the origin of the German City of Cologne (K ln) today. By the time that the Romans left Gaul, with the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Romano-kelts of Gaul had, with the exception of Brittany to the north-west and Basques and Catalans to the south-west, become completely Latinsed in both language and culture. Despite the latter invasions of the Germanic Franks with the Merovingian and Carolingian Empires, the Latin language held out to become archaic French. Notwithstanding the absorbsion of a few Germanic loan-words. The collapse of the Empire of Karel (Charles the Great) after the death of his son Pepin II, France-Gaul fragmented into a number of self governing Duchies. However, the kings of the region centred on Paris styled themselves King of France , and there were concentrated efforts over the next few centuries to expand their territory until they controlled most of what was to become modern France. But for many centuries they saw the River Rhine, the old Roman frontier, as being the natural boundary between the French and Germans. This despite the fact that after the death of Pepin II, Alsace-Lorainne (Alsass-Loteringen) had become a self-governing Duchy up to the time of the French invasion in the late 18 th . Century. So it was this Duchy, with its mixed French-German population, that had become the boundary between France and Germany; not the River Rhine. However, right up to the time of Emperor Napoleon III that was not the way successive French kings saw it.
But it was not only France that fragmented after the collapse of the Carolingian Empire. The rise of the protestant faiths in Europe after the declarations of Martin Luther, and the Reformation, saw the old German-based Holy Roman Empire fragment into Protestant North and Catholic South. And in both areas fragmentation into self-governing kingdoms and free-cities. The two largest of these were Bavaria to the South and Prussia to the North. The princes and kings of these areas still styled themselves as Kurfusten (Elector) of a Holy Roman Emperor, but this had become a sham.
So now we have a predominantly Protestant Prussia. But where did Prussia itself come from?
Chapter 1
THE BIRTH OF PRUSSIA
In Germany the Franks were the first tribe to be converted to Christianity at about the same time as the English Saxons. The Continental Saxons and Frisians were still pagans, as were the Bavarians to the South. The Franks first attempted the conquest of the remains of the old Roman Gaul under the Merovingians. And later, under their King, Pepin I, the Franks invaded Saxon and Bavarian lands and forcibly converted them from their pagan beliefs, often at the point of a sword. Pepin was the father of Karel, known to us as Charles the Great or Charles-le-magne. Pepin was to lead a combined army of Germans across the Rhine into the old Roman Gaul, the emergent France. A conquest completed by Karel to form the Carolingian Empire. Later, leading an army across the Alps into Italy to protect Rome from the Byzantines he was later appointed as Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope, a title that the rulers of the German states were to hold up to the time of the Reformation. Karel was actually known to Alfred, King of Wessex.
By the end of the Ninth Century most of Europe was Christian, Including far-flung Iceland, But Moslem armies, after the death of Mohammed, had made war on the Byzantines, and thrown them out of the Holy Land, the birthplace of the founder of Christianity. In 1094 Pope Urban II declared the First Crusade against the Muslims to clear them out of the Holy Land. During the next hundred years three religious-military orders were created to help in such. All were to be under the direct supervision of the Pope, over the heads of the rulers of individual states. The first was the Knights Templar, followed by the Knights Hospitallers, then by the Teutonic Knights, the latter in 1198. The rules for the Templers was laid down by Abbott Bernard of Clairvoux. The rules for the others were variations of such. The surplices worn over their chain-mail armour were as follows: Templers - red cross on white; Hospitallers - white Maltese cross on black; Teutonic Knights - black cross on white. The latter detail is important as it carries right through Prussian and German history. The full title of the Order was The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem . Whereas the sons of the aristocracy were recruited from across most of Europe for the first two orders, although seventy-five percent were from France, those for the Teutonic Knights were recruited almost entirely from the North German states, which meant that ethnically they were predominantly Frisian and Saxon, although it is known that a few Englishmen joined them. With all the orders it has to be remembered that the lingua-franca was Latin, the language of the Church.
In 1291 the Christian armies were finally driven from the Holy Land by the Muslims. The Pope at the time gave new crusades to the three Orders. The Teutonic Knights were to cross the River Elbe into Slav territory and convert those people from their pagan beliefs. The seeds of a Prussian kingdom were thence sown. Over the next hundred years or so the Knights invaded the Slav lands along the Baltic coast and, where necessary, converted the people at the point of the sword. They over-ran the Old Prussia , then a disparate group of Baltic Slav warring Barons, and made war on Lithuania. At this time a Christian Kingdom was emerging in Poland and it was inevitable that the two sides would clash sooner or later. Eventually a common boundary was recognised between the two sides. Although the original springboard for the Knights was the area that was to become the Kingdom of Brandenburg, the capital of which was Berlin, The Order built a new capital at K nigsberg, where a strong castle was constructed. So the Knights had carved out a territory for themselves that they would control. They carried out a program of Germanisation of the territory by inviting German speaking migrants to relocate there so as turn the Christianised Slav-speakers into a minority. Their idea of what constituted German was fairly broad and many came from the Netherlands and Flanders, with a few from England and the Lowlands of Scotland. Parallel to the above merch