Montenegro, Autumn 1871
By the time autumn's chill swept across the Black Mountains, the Russo-Ottoman War had fully engulfed the Balkans — and, quietly, the world beyond.
The Danube had run red, the Carpathians echoed with cannon fire, and Europe's chancelleries trembled with the echoes of a war they had all feared, yet secretly desired.
In his headquarters, Elias stood in the war room, staring down at a map that stretched across the entire continent.
Pins and markers—some red, some black—shifted daily under the hands of his analysts.
Cables hummed through the communications chamber beyond, delivering constant streams of intercepted orders, news dispatches, and coded telegrams.
The world was at war in a small scale.
And he—Montenegro's unseen emperor—was at the center of its information web.
Russia's early momentum had faltered.
Plevna, once expected to fall within weeks, had become a slaughterhouse.
Ottoman redoubts, manned by hardened Anatolian veterans and armed with new British-made rifles, turned the northern front into a charnel ground.
But that suited Elias just fine.
He wanted the great powers distracted.
He wanted them bleeding.
Russia was a big brute trying to win its wars with just brute force alone, damned the expense of livess in they had millions to draw upon in replacement.
Meanwhile the dying ottoman empire was fighting will all it had using whatever support was sent their way to maintain as much of the empire as they could.
Each report from the north was cross-referenced, confirmed by agents planted among Russian officers and foreign correspondents.
Elias knew when the Tsar's generals lied to their emperor, when Ottoman pashas inflated their victories, when the London papers twisted the truth to stir public outrage.
He didn't simply observe the war.
He was shaping it
In London, anonymous letters reached the editors of the Times and the Illustrated London News.
They warned that Russian success in the Balkans would give the Tsar access to the warm waters of the Mediterranean—a direct threat to British trade and the Suez.
Maps "leaked" to journalists showed exaggerated Russian positions along the Danube, and alleged plans for a naval base at Varna.
Every line, every figure, was false—but believable.
In Paris, pamphlets circulated in the cafés of the Left Bank, describing the Ottoman Empire as a crumbling relic—an opportunity for France to regain influence after her humiliation by Prussia.
"Better to defend the Crescent," they declared, "than let the Bear drink from the Sea."
The language was clever, the sentiment patriotic.
Elias's agents had written every word.
By September, both Britain and France were debating intervention—publicly posturing as the defenders of "European balance," privately terrified of each other's ambitions.
Only to be stopped since this wasnt just another Ottoman v. Russia war.
The Russians this time had proper support.
All of the balkans had erupted in a move of independance, supporting the invading Russians to beat back the Ottomans.
Simple material support, and the sending of a single army or navy would not suffice this time.
Full support would need to be given, but was it worth it?
what if instead of denying russia, they simply supported the breakaway nations, gaining new influence in the region beyond greece, and once they were free they could advocate their ending of the war, leaving Russia once more on their own, at which point a repeat of the crimean war could be performed.
Elias smiled when the reports reached him.
He had learned from history: wars were not only won with bullets, but with beliefs.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire was restless, too.
In Vienna, Emperor Franz Joseph's advisors pored over maps of Bosnia and Herzegovina, whispering about "temporary occupations" and "protectorates" to safeguard the empire's borders.
The aging monarch hesitated—fearing Prussian wrath more than Ottoman collapse—but his generals hungered for land to expand the glory of the Empire.
Elias had men in that council, too.
Through them, rumors spread that Russian influence in the Balkans would soon engulf the entire region as the reported russian troops commited to the fight were greatly exagerated.
The news shocked the Austrian leadership enough to call up the army to protect the borders, but entering the war itself became an afterthought.
If Russia was throwing their all into this war, Austria wanted nothing to do with it.
Even if the Austrian arms, and soldiers were of a better quality, the might of numbers behind the larger vast russian empire was not something they could compete with openly.
~
Italy was another matter.
In Rome, King Victor Emmanuel II's government was divided.
The young nation had dreams of empire but lacked the confidence to act.
North Africa glittered like a mirage across the sea—Tripoli, Tunisia, the old Roman provinces waiting to be reclaimed.
They knew themselves to be the weakest of the european great powers and looked to change that.
And what better way than to get themselves some colonies to boost the homelands economy, and with colonies just across the mediterranian rather than halfway around the world, the cost to manage them would be greatly lessened.
Within no time Italian newspapers were calling openly for intervention "to protect the faith and restore Rome's legacy."
In private, the Italian admiralty began preparing expeditionary plans, getting the navy ready to combat the last remnants of the Barbary pirate and states that lingered on in the central north africa.
With the ottoman focus so tightly locked on the Russian and Balkan fronts, these distant provinces would fall by the wayside never seeing reinforcements or counter attacks.
~
Inside his mountain stronghold, Elias paced before the massive map now alight with colored markers and coded symbols.
The board had been moving now for months.
Russia's advance once more got bogged down as winter was fast approaching.
The ottomans were fighting desperatly all over the place unable to call upon reinforcements to any front, deciding to abandon some regions to greater strife just to send the garrisons on to meet the Russians.
For Montenegro, the Prince had some initial success going north, but most recently had suffered a series of defeats.
His few thousand men had failed to properly coordinate with the Serbian rebels, resulting in his forces meeting the Ottoman garrison without support.
This of course was not the princes fault, but Elias's men within the Prince's army.
Elias intended the prince to fall in this war, but not by assassination.
He intended the prince to fall gloriously on the field of battle.
But how can you pull this off when the prince remains in the rear just watching over things with his generals?
Simple, put him in situations where the enemy vastly outnumbers his own forces, have spies within the ottoman ranks leak information about the montenegro army movements, and set the scene for a crushing defeat one that will prevent any escape and the annihilation of the prince and his army.
This will be the spark that will ignite Elias's own entrance into the war, using the princes death as a form of national unity to call upon a grand army to avenge the prince.
Marching out against the vile ottomans who cannot even adhere to the recognized rights of nobility especialy for royalty upon the field of battle.