Winter 1916

WAR IS OVER
LONDON BRIDGES FALL DOWN

Exactly eight hundred and fifty years after the Normans successfully deposed King Harold, the Italian fleet sailed triumphantly up the Thames as the British surrendered all weapons of war. Sailors from Naples, Venice and Genoa ransacked the halls of Parliament, tearing four hundred year old souvenirs off the walls and ceilings to take back home. As the Prime Minister was arrested and led away to the Italian admiral's ship, those members of the British Houses of Lords and Commons who were unable to flee north or to America were being held in a prisoner-of-war camp in Greenwich. The king and royal family remained missing and were presumed to have fled the country or have died in the process.

Meanwhile, the scene in London looked positively inviting compared to the hell that emerged in St. Petersburg as the last remnants of the Russian defense fell. The smoldering ruins that were once the Winter Palace spoke of the boiled-over rage of Austria-Hungary for the assassination of the archduke and Russia's insistence on supporting Serbia.

In occupied France, the end of the war was hardly noticed outside Paris as life went on as dreary and defeated as before. In the capital city, the resident German army drank into the early morning hours, singing songs to the Fatherland. The Parisians huddled in darkened corners and awaited the terms of what they cannot hope to be a just peace.