A bit of a mouthful

I began work on my FUNNY LITTLE WARS/PORTABLE WARGAME project just over a year ago, and since then I have created four armies. I am now beginning to put together some naval forces to go with them, and I have decided that my current working title for this project is just too long. I have therefore decided to change it to LA BELLE ÉPOQUE.

La Belle Époque can best be defined as the ten years before and after the beginning of the twentieth century (i.e.,1890 to 1910). It was a time of great change and saw economic prosperity, colonial expansion, and technological and scientific innovation. The latter included the development of the motor vehicle, the telephone, early aircraft, and medical advances in the fields of germ theory of disease, bacteriology, and X-ray photography.

It was also a period of military change. Magazine rifles with smokeless powder cartridges were introduced, growing use was made of effective recoil systems for artillery pieces, heavy, long-range artillery became more mobile, new, and more effective high explosives and propellent powders were developed, and automatic machine guns were produced and gradually adopted by most armies.

This is project has some way to go before it will even approach completion. In fact, I suspect that it has the potential to last me a very long time ... the longer, the better!