My fellow Frenchmen across our great empire the natives that we have uplifted have arisen in revolt these traitors represent the pinnacle of the Dark Continent. They claim descent from ten-thousand empires, but those empires are nothing before us. Through our veins flows the blood of Vercingetorix, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Saint Louis, the Sun king, and Emperor Napoléon I. None can stand against the weight of the French people for we have the will of god on our side. Those African traitors may claim descent from ten-thousand empires, but we broke those empires before us we threw them from their parapets and rose the tricolour high above them. We are the sons of Rome and none can stand against us. The French people will emerge triumphant over the broken ruins of the traitors for it is our god given duty to bear the light of French civilization to the depths of Africa. We shall punish the traitors with our full force, but we must bring mercy as well for these traitors are merely misguided as they try and cling to the last scattered remanent of their pathetic cultures. Vive La France! Vive Le Roi! Vive L'Empereur! Vive La Revolution! March on soldiers of France crush the traitors with full force.
-Transcript of President Alain Poher's speech as the first French troops were dispatched to the rapidly escalating African situation.
The Great African Revolt was one of the most well-planned operations in history as on the 1st of February 1959 across the French colonial Empire the many resistance organizations emerged from the shadows with their full force. In every colony the French reeled allowing the Africans to establish themselves, but the level of success varied from colony to colony. In the French held Sahara south of the Atlas Mountains the rebels captured all land between the Atlas Mountains and north of St. Louis. The loss of the Sahara was more detrimental to the French morale then the actual war effort since the region had not been heavily developed save for railways connecting Algeria to the rest of the French colonial holdings. In Madagascar, the French made a slightly better showing managing to hold onto the majority of the coast abandoning the central highlands and the north to the reborn Kingdom of Madagascar. The rest of the colonies followed a pattern with the rural regions being lost to the French while the urban centres holding after a brutal battle. Then there was Djibouti the small size of the colony and the large military presence and meant that the revolt there would be brutal, but no one knew how brutal.
Across the entire colony of Djibouti there was no peace wherever a native could roam they fought against the French and the French fought back. The French were outnumbered and isolated and fought back hard with every Frenchmen taking ten natives with them. The natives fought just as hard either wielding ancient guns or knives and axes they showed no mercy often hanging Frenchmen if they managed to capture them. The battle slowly swung in the French favour with naval support and better weapons they were able to establish a thin perimeter along the coast within an hour of the revolt beginning. They began to push at around 6 AM local time on the 2nd of February the day after the revolt began aiming to reach the Ethiopian border. The battle swiftly turned into a slog with trees becoming spots of fearsome resistance. The city of Djibouti was secured after three days of fighting and the French released an orgy of violence when taking it back. Every native they could find was dragged in front of a firing squad in massive groups and shot dead in several cases Landcrawlers were used to crush resistance members captured during the advance. The military police managed to get the French troops back in order after three hours but by that time the majority of the city lay in ruins with it's population either brutally murdered or fleeing for the Ethiopian border. The Djibouti massacre was hidden so deep and dark it took until 2019 for the French government to admit to the slaughter. There was no mercy and any hope of a free Djibouti died that day despite the wishes of the provisional government in Addis Ababa.
-Extract from Nathaniel 1st Duke of Mornington's book The Flames of Freedom: The Great African Revolt.
The first sign that the allies had that the Alterans might not be entirely gone was when IIET-1 found a long-forgotten world covered in Alteran ruins they immediately called on the greatest expert on the Alterans in humanity Sir John Ronald Reuel Tolkien 1st Duke of Bloemfontein. When he arrived he immediately got to work despite Sigurður Steelfangs wanting to hug him. As he worked alongside his team of archaeologists and translators he began to work out what had been written down in the ruins. From what he learned on that planet the Alterans had once dominated the Milky Way and a devasting plague had nearly wiped them out. Then the records ended with no clue about what happened next. Tolkien immediately returned to Earth where he introduced his proposal that the main task of IIET-1 would be to find any more traces of the Alteran civilization. Imperial Stargate Command agreed to a point making it the secondary objective with Tolkien attached on call whenever they found anything a duty he would continue until his death in 2043. With the planting of the seed of suspicion that the Alterans had not gone quietly the road to the colonization of Atlantis by the United Empire was paved. Of course, at the time it was viewed as an archaeological curiosity which is why neither the Asgard or the Nox were informed of the human discovery well that and the French withdrawing from the Goa'uld War to deal with the Great African Revolt. This buried the paperwork regarding Tolkien's work under waves of new Imperial Interstellar Exploratory Teams.
-Extract from Christopher Bowes's book The Bloody Wolves of the Stars: A history of Imperial Stargate Command.