I have meanwhile learned we should be entering into a massive continent - if not world - wide cholera outbreak at this time.

Russia should be the first afflicted Location if it traveled the same way before it spreads west to Europe and south into the Levant and Persia

<Snipped quote by Dinh AaronMk>

So, order of the outbreak would be Russia > Rest of Europe > Levant and Persia?

<Snipped quote by Letter Bee>

No the Levant-Persia and Europe gets it more or less the same time.

It's all good, I got busy.

All right. Got a burst of inspiration. I'm gonna be overrunning the Hedjaz soon.

@Dinh AaronMk, would asking for a Hashemite in marriage to my dynasty be impolitic as well as unrealistic?

<Snipped quote by Letter Bee>

The Muhammad Ali dynasty was more aligned with that of the Turks who positioned themselves closer to Europe than to the Arabs. From what I can tell many of the wives of Muhammad Ali were themselves either Turkish, Albanian, Bulgarian, or Muslim-Caucasian and not strictly Egyptian or Arab. It's possible an opportunistic marriage could be pursued as an option, but the first thing Muhammad Ali and his heirs seem to go to was a military expedition. The long term for the Hashemites would be eventually their traditional holdings being absorbed by the Egyptian state. This also interferes with the Arab territories of the Ottoman Empire, and affecting the imbalance of the area would make the Ottomans mad.

The Egyptian-Saudi Wars were not carried out as an independent act of the Egypt of Muhammad Pasha, but by order of the Ottoman court to their fellow Turkish court in Egypt to put down what they considered was an Arab rebellion.

@Letter Bee

The Saudis have a historical trait making them comparable to cockroaches and they never disappear. And the Ottomans and Egyptians ways of handling the House of Saud has always been to swap them around, only for another branch of the Saud family to come back and take revenge for their father/brother being killed.

The basis of the Saudi family, Wahhabism isn't really even unique to them and based primarily on the popular jealousy of the Hedjazi Bedouin of many of all the other Muslim nobles who go on Hajj, their pilgrimage marked by then playing boastful music to flex their power and wealth over the Arabs. The House of Saud is just one of the most powerful cliques in Central Arabia.

They're not strictly a heresy bent on exploiting pilgrims. Robbing and exploiting pilgrims has been a time honored tradition since the middle ages. Their iconoclastic movement is just being mad at Egyptians, Syrians, and Turks coming in with their drip and massive entourages and playing music which was considered bad at the time for many of those Bedouin tribes.

@Letter Bee

Saudi grievances aren't really grievances anyone else is willing to address because also the Caliphate is the Ottoman Empire and part of the flex is part of the show of piety. And a class thing everyone from Muhammad Ali to the Sultan to every Emir in Syria and Mesopotamia would believe is their right to show flash and bling. They are the only ones who can afford to make Hajj.

Also you do realize Ethiopians have beaten armies at home with a much wider technology gap and you're going to go stomping off into Ethiopia with muzzle loading muskets, and not even much later European breach loading rifles and expect this to be anything but a punitive expedition on the people doing it? Because really: they're not going to do anything or get anywhere. The Ethiopian highlands are notoriously brutal and for the most parts roads will not exist to allow a massive army to adeptly navigate. Never mind Ethiopian coffee at this stage is notoriously low quality and in some cases lethal, because the primitive way dry processing works anywhere in the 19th century can make a cup of coffee poison. The Dutch have the market cornered on real high quality, modern wet processed coffee from Indonesia way, and theirs absolutely will not kill the drinker because wet processing coffee was a 100 fold safer than dry processing at this time (even if more bitter)

@Letter Bee

Yes it's OK to send 6,000 men to die for nothing because it should be very much expected that this is what Muhammad Ali Pasha does. He responded to a mutiny of his own soldiers by sending them on a suicide mission to Libya to pursue rumors of gold. If they die, so what; if they find gold, great!

Though why the fuck does Egypt have trains they're only just starting out. Let alone why would they send a train to Ethiopia there are no railroads to Ethiopia. Never mind the engineering to strap a fuck off huge gun to a train is a few decades away still

<Snipped quote by Dinh AaronMk>

'Siege Train' is a term for supplies and baggage meant specifically for siege equipment; cannons and gunpowder and ammo.

Same also for 'Baggage Train' being used to describe wagons.

<Snipped quote by Letter Bee>

Well, misreading aside I think much of the same or similar logistical challenges would be raised. Though now Muhammad Ali could absolutely send canon down if they wanted to. But at a very early point the siege guns would slow the force down enough they can be engaged in attrition warfare, or the guns are stolen. Or abandoned so the main army could establish some position somewhere and then the guns are stolen. There's a reason Napoleon himself didn't drag his artillery run in the Egyptian and Levantine campaigns, because they're too heavy for (necessarily) under-developed terrain, and he had to move to a position first to exert control and the large guns shipped there on boats for delivery.

But if this is also to be doomed to be a Lions Led By Donkeys ass military expedition then this is and should be expected.