RECAP: HISTORICON 2001 LE GRAND CIRQUE RACE, "Once around the Wabash"

GAME RECAP: HISTORICON 2001 LE GRAND CIRQUE: ONCE AROUND THE WABASH, OLD CHAP

NEW!!! The MORRIS FILE ADDITIONAL PICTURES OF THE LE GRAND CIRQUE DU WABASH RACE AT HISTORICON 2001.

The World Stage: Tensions in the Far East, as the Great Powers seek to enforce their treaty concessions with the Empress. At the English port of Hong Kong, a minor shooting war starts over the treatment of Chinese native labor force in English cantonments. In the North American Confederation, the Industrialized Tribes are uniting behind a charismatic chieftain, Pantagruel of the Arapaho Mechanist Union. North American fishing boats have been shelled by German in the Bay of Newfoundland, under the pretext of "interrupting delicate military maneuvers". In Africa, the French, English and Italians are coming to blows over control over the Nile Headwaters. On the Continent, the peaceful lands of Bavaria hear the tromp of marching boots and hiss and clank of steam landships as Prussia and Austria maneuver to determine the fate of Central Europe for the next generation.

Clearly, the world is on the brink of cataclysm... there's only one solution: Staging another Grand Cirque race.

In 1870, the extended conflict in Mexico was settled honorably and peacefully (and at the spur of the moment) by a young British military observer, CAPT Hiram Oliphaunt, when he suggested the finer points of the French withdrawal strategy could be settled by staging an impromptu bicycle race between the Juaristas and the French Foreign Legion. Since then, the Grand Circuit race has grown in popularity and utility, growing from a biannual event to a yearly event in short order. "La Grand Cirque", as the French diplomats refer to the Circuit race (in a somewhat condescending tone, to be sure) has settled three minor territorial disputes, mediated the aftereffects of the assassination of the Tsar in 1881, and solved, for good or ill, the Schleswig-Holstein question (for the Danes, by three bicycle lengths, 1875).

This year, the venue of the Kaiser's Grand Tour of the North American Industrialized Tribes is chosen for the racing venue. The somewhat sleepy college town of Wabash, Indiana, becomes, for 1 short week, the nexus of much fierce diplomatic and political activity as representatives of the Great Powers, the World press, and every splinter group, faction, or organized lunatic heads to America's heartland to either participate in, or in some cases FOIL, Le Grand Cirque du Wabash.

NOTE: THIS IS A RECAP FOR THE SATURDAY NIGHT EVENT ONLY!

On to the race!