Una diferente ‘Plus Ultra’ - the Avís-Trastámara Kings of All Spain and the Indies (Updated 11/7)
- Thread starter Torbald
- Start date
Sorry about the total silence the last few weeks, I moved into a new apartment on the 30th and they were only able to set up my internet yesterday - which makes writing and posting a little difficult (I use Google docs), but I've still been writing during the interim and I should be able to start updating again very soon
Oh thank god your not dead or somethingSorry about the total silence the last few weeks, I moved into a new apartment on the 30th and they were only able to set up my internet yesterday - which makes writing and posting a little difficult (I use Google docs), but I've still been writing during the interim and I should be able to start updating again very soon
Hey remember when I said I would be able to start updating again very soon, almost three weeks ago? Yeah me neither
Anyway, updating tonight, for those of you still interested out there!
I wouldn't count that out yet, considering I work about 10 hours a day outside in the Texas heat...
Anyway, updating tonight, for those of you still interested out there!
Oh thank god your not dead or something
I wouldn't count that out yet, considering I work about 10 hours a day outside in the Texas heat...
23. "Stormclouds" - Parte II: Thunder
~ Stormclouds ~
Parte II: Thunder
- Das kleine keuchen -
Parte II: Thunder
- Das kleine keuchen -
Keizer Filip I en Johanna "de Getrouwe"
Philip I von Hapsburg was not inactive in addressing Protestantism, but he lacked the necessary respect of those involved in such a difficulty - a respect that was afforded more to his late father, Maximilian. Philip and his son Charles were natives of the Empire, certainly, but such a designation meant very little. The Protestant movement was capitalizing on a key moment in the development of German nationalism, and - while the Hapsburgs were certainly German by origin - following Maximilian's death, Philip and Charles’ Low Country upbringing had rendered the house of Hapsburg suddenly and distinctly Burgundian in character. Apart from the ill repute bred by Philip’s many, poorly-hidden extramarital affairs, this culture gap between Philip and his imperial subordinates subverted many of Philip’s earnest and well-intentioned endeavors to achieve peace and an end to theological strife in the Empire, such as the colloquy Philip organized at Fulda in 1525 - attended by such important figures as Martin Luther, Philip Schwartzerdt, Johann Eck, and Christoph Scheurl, but made somewhat blundering by Philip’s need for a German translator. Other such attempts were undone by mere shortsightedness and a lack of a sense of urgency, such as the follow-up Gotha colloquy in 1527, which Philip inexplicably failed to attend.
While the accession of Philip had been more or less accepted (possibly due to the immense respect held for his father, Maximilian), the candidacy of Philip’s son Charles led a group of imperial princes to attempt to prevent what was seen as a deliberate formation of a hereditary Hapsburg succession and thus a borderline subversion of the Golden Bull of 1356. These princes, led by the elector of Saxony, Johann Frederick, urged the imperial electors to vote with regards to the stability of the Empire - especially regarding the growing rift between the Protestant and Catholic camps. Nevertheless, Charles would be elected after his father’s death in 1531 as Charles V, and the Empire found itself once again under a Hapsburg who had spent nearly his entire life either in a foreign land or on the Empire’s fringe.
A formal protest would be raised later the same year in a letter signed by (among others) Johann III, duke of Kleves, Philip I, landgrave of Hesse, Ernest I, duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and, most controversially, Joachim I Nestor and Frederick II, the respective electors Palatine and of Brandenburg, all urging either a new, emergency vote or a change of course when the next election came around. These princes cited the Hapsburg’s connections to Genoese banks and the Fugger family as a concerning indication of bribery and other such corruption surely employed by the Hapsburgs and continuously engendered by them in the highest echelons of the Empire, all of which would be used to ensure an absolutist hereditary monarchy and a more hardline approach to Maximilian’s ambitions of imperial centralization - all at the cost of the imperial princes’ ancient liberties and privileges. Further, the Hapsburgs insistence on grasping outwards - accumulating the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary, incessantly warring with the French, and marrying into the royal families of England and Spain - were similarly declared troubling by these princes, who believed that it demonstrated a lack of concern on the Hapsburgs’ part for imperial affairs, especially considering the lack of action on the Protestant movement. A coalition thus began to form amongst the potentates of the Empire, comprised mostly of Protestants and intent on keeping the Empire German-centered and decentralized. The seriousness of this anti-Hapsburg opposition party was made even more manifest when it named Johann Frederick of Saxony its preferred imperial candidate (although he never outright accepted the honor). Such a choice was telling: Johann Frederick was exactly the kind of equilibrium the anti-Hapsburgs wanted - fully German, first and foremost, and a Catholic but with Protestant (Lutheran) leanings.
However, what was truly needed was not necessarily an Emperor that was of undiluted German stock and innately in tune with the cultural and political climate of Germany, nor one that had an expansive knowledge of all the intricate theological topics relevant to Protestantism and could thus actively and satisfactorily deliberate on them. What was needed was an Emperor that knew he was the Emperor. An Emperor both unafraid to let his authority be felt and savvy enough to know when to hold back. Luckily for the Hapsburgs, Charles would be such an Emperor - and at a time when he would be much needed.
Karl I, II, III, IV, und V von Habsburg, c. 1535
Charles, by the grace of God, Holy Roman Emperor, forever August, King of Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Croatia, Dalmatia, Slavonia, Rama, and Cumania, Archduke of Lower and Upper Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Lorraine, Limburg, Luxembourg, Gelderland, and the Upper and Lower Silesia, Count of Flanders, Habsburg, Artois, Burgundy Palatine, Hainaut, Holland, Zeeland, Namur, Zutphen, Margrave of the Holy Roman Empire, Moravia, and the Upper and Lower Lusatia, Lord of Frisia, the Wendish March, and Mechelen.
- Interlopers, Dissenters, and a Silent War -
The conclusion of the short, but bloody Third Italian War in 1528 gave Charles IX of France time to recover his wits and wait for the next opportunity to strike at the Hapsburgs. Spain remained France’s inevitable geopolitical foe, although the crowns of Spain would be assumed by Charles IX’s nephew Juan Pelayo in 1536. The uncle-nephew dynamic between the two kings would lead to unique occasions of familial courtesy amidst what was to be a tense relationship, such as when Charles IX and his courtesans accompanied Juan Pelayo and his bride, Elisabeth, across southern France in 1538 as the young couple were travelling to visit the French king’s nemesis - who just so happened to be Elizabeth's father - the emperor Charles von Hapsburg.
Charles IX, just like his father, could not decide just what to do about Spain. The Iberian union had created - practically out of thin air - a truly powerful state (or at least the semblance of the beginning of one) on one of France's longest and most contentious borders, yet there had been practically no aggressive activity from this southerly neighbor since 1504. However, the ever-tightening bond between the Avís-Trastámaras and the perfidious Hapsburgs smacked strongly of an anti-French conspiracy of slow encirclement, especially with the English Tudors thrown in the mix and with the Papal States becoming less beholden to the French crown. The monopoly Spain enjoyed over the coasts of Africa and the Americas - with predominance in Asia increasing daily - and over the waters of the further Atlantic also greatly concerned the French court, not to mention left them outraged at the seemingly ludicrous terms of Inter Caetera and jealous for a similar expression of French glory. It was implicitly decided by Charles IX and his advisors that the approach to Spain should be, for the moment, focused on the harassment and gradual undermining of Spain’s weakest points and extremities - with a similar strategy employed against the Hapsburgs and Tudors, focused on the English Channel and the North Sea. Thus, from roughly 1530 to 1542, there was waged what would be known to the French as the “Silent War” - “La Guerre Silencieuse.”
The first illegal and hostile entry of a party of Europeans into the Spanish Americas occurred in late 1530, when a French captain by the name of Gaspard de La Roche and his predominantly French crew were captured by a Castilian patrol off the coast of Jamaica after having spent the previous three months harassing shipping between La Española and Cuba virtually unchecked. Unsure of just what to do with so many intrusive subjects of a foreign king with whom Spain had very tenuous relations, the Castilians jailed them indefinitely and nearly all of the prisoners were wiped out over the course of a few weeks by the conditions of the jail (in tandem with the usual tropical diseases). Gaspard de La Roche was a mere anomaly to his immediate captors, and across the Atlantic - with royal concerns focused on the war in the Mediterranean - such a development passed into the archives relatively unnoticed. However, La Roche was by no means the last of his kind, and the high seas intruders that followed in his wake would be much more numerous, and much more destructive.
Radical Protestantism of the kind espoused by Karlstadter Brethren churches trickled into French ports and cities very gradually since its resurgence in the late 1520s. However, French Protestantism is considered to have truly began with the arrival of Guillaume Farel, who returned to France in 1532 after spending several years in the Holy Roman Empire (Primarily Alsace). Farel had primarily been a follower of Karlstadt until he was won over by many aspects of Meyeran Protestantism following an extensive correspondence with Martin Bucer, although he eventually split with the sect over its strong proto-nationalist German angle. Farel’s sect would become hugely popular amongst marginal communities in the south of France, with high concentrations of followers in Landes (helped in large part by the earlier influx of religious dissidents from Spain) and the Massif Central. The difficulty of the terrain in which they lived had made these plucky and impoverished “Farelards” extremely difficult for their Catholic foes to eradicate or even dislodge, and the indifference of Charles IX practically ensured their survival.
Statue of Guillaume Farel in Mont-de-Marsan
Farel himself spent the majority of his time in Champagne, French Burgundy, and along the Rhône, accompanied by his favored acolyte Antoine Froment and often eluding French religious authorities by crossing over into the Swiss Cantons (where his message was quite popular). However, Farel’s lack of attention to the majority of his followers (the number of converts in the regions most traversed by Farel were minimal) and his gradual shift to a more Meyeran-tinged theology with concessions made for a possible state church in France (and thus a possible compromise with the Catholic establishment) alienated the more hardline Karlstadters amongst his flock - led by the Burgundian Théodore de Bèze - leading to a split in 1535 between the original “Église Réformée,” still known as “les Farelards,” and the new “Confrérie de l'Évangile,” known as “les Dissidents.” De Bèze stood at odds with Farel on the issues of infant baptism (something Farel supported in many cases) and of close alignment with the state - De Bèze being one of the seminal founders of the “monarchomaque” movement, which upheld the necessity of tyrannicide. This early division greatly harmed Protestantism’s heretofore successful growth in France, and would allow the political and social position of French Protestants to be easily undermined in the coming years.
The emergence of Protestantism had quickly led to a parallel emergence of anti-Catholic privateers. Being fed with and embellishing in turn countless tales of the Papist cruelties of the Spaniards both across the sea against the indigenous Americans and in Europe in the form of the mysterious (and quite misunderstood) Inquisition, the Protestant pirates known in Castilian as “lobos de mar” targeted the treasure-laden convoys of the Spanish maritime empire in the name of Christ and true and right religion. Primarily Radical Protestants of the Karlstadter stripe, the lobos de mar were based in Atlantic coastal communities and enforced a rigorous naval discipline as inspired by their similarly rigorous and austere piety. One such privateer was the notorious Gaétan de Sarbazan, a Farelard Protestant from the region of Landes (and one of the first converts recorded from the area) who boasted of having once had all 11 of the island of La Gomera’s Dominican priests hurled off a cliff and into the ocean in 1542, declaring at his trial in 1548 that he had no qualms nor guilt in having done so, as they were all “the Pope’s brood” who were “tyrants dripping with Indio blood.” Many of the authorities in England, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia responsible for these populations turned a blind to such unlawful activities, but by no one were they encouraged more than by Charles IX.
Gaétan de Sarbazan
At first, Charles IX simply did not know what to make of Protestantism. He had allegedly intervened in their persecution on multiple occasions before one of his chief ministers presented him with a Farelard flier denouncing the Eucharist, after which he ordered them to be driven out of Paris and imprisoned elsewhere in France if they continued to speak ill of the sacraments. This determined defense of the Church would not be followed up, however, as Charles IX soon thereafter found the Radical Protestants - and their lack of religious qualms in tormenting the Catholics of Spain - very useful. With the raw potential of a Protestant society presented so appealingly, and with a Papacy continuously cozying up to Spain and the Hapsburgs, Charles IX may have toyed with the idea of fully severing the French Church from Rome in a manner akin to Christian III of Denmark, and, while he ultimately thought better of a full split, he would eventually lay the foundations for a comparable system.
Yet such fence sitting only made matters worse for the French monarch. It earned him neither the full cooperation of French Protestants nor any great deal of respect from French Catholics. Matters were made worse for Charles IX by the fact that he only had three legitimate children to his name from his two marriages - all daughters - and was growing too old to sire a son.
A considerable amount of coin was drained from the royal coffers to fill the pockets of imperial electors and add weight to Charles IX’s candidacy for Emperor, all of which was for naught when Charles von Hapsburg took the throne anyway despite mounting opposition. One feels as though Charles IX should have known when to quit, yet he continued to have “Duc de Milan” announced with his other titles (in blatant disregard of his treaty with the Hapsburgs) and often referred to himself in letters to foreign dignitaries as the “Defender of all Christendom.” Charles IX was an able administrator and fearless on the battlefield, but he failed to ever register the harmful extent of his pride or to attend to a few extremely important issues that were deemed too mundane or too complicated, such as the rise of French Protestantism or the still unsure succession. Charles IX would be know to more dissenting elements of French posterity as “Charles le Fier” - Charles the Proud (“Charles le Cordial” to many French Protestants), and his rule would be considered a truly unfortunate way for the main branch of the Valois dynasty to have ended.
Charles IX, le Fier et le Cordial
- Impostato per fallimento-
The death in 1535 of Charles “the Good,” who had been the duke of Savoy since 1504, greatly upset the shaky equilibrium in Northern Italy. Charles was a committed (if a bit strong-armed) French ally and his adherence to this alliance provided a substantial counterweight to the Sforzas in Milan and their Hapsburg supporters (who were now also their in-laws), and the impending accession of his Charles’ 21 year old son, Ludovico, was fraught with difficulties. Apart from his youthful inexperience, Ludovico was also a vocal supporter of Protestant reformers, hosting many of them after they had fled Hapsburg persecution in Switzerland. Although distasteful of the Radical Protestantism of Karlstadt and Farel, Ludovico was an avid reader of Johann Meyer (having “On the Sacramental Order of a Christian Nation” in his personal library) and was known to receive communion in the “Lutheran” manner - that is, in both species, wine and bread. Ludovico was also determined to strengthen relations with the French, possibly hoping to receive a share of the spoils when Charles IX invaded Milan just as his forebears had, but such an invasion was never to occur. It is possible that Ludovico’s decision to re-initiate French involvement in Northern Italy was due to his growing unpopularity amongst his almost universally Catholic subjects and the consequent need for the consistent, friendly presence of French military might. Like so many other young rulers, Ludovico had not quite accumulated the tact that might have put his neighbors more at ease, or at least kept them in the dark as to his intentions.
Despite advice from both the late emperor Maximilian and his grandson, Charles V, to act not so much like a condottiere and more like the imperial prince that he was, Massimiliano, the duke of Milan, began almost immediately to conspire as to how this situation could be manipulated in his favor - with bloodshed if necessary. Ludovico’s younger brother Adriano, promisingly enough, was at the time receiving instruction in a seminary of the Canons Regular, and a decent bribe from the Fuggers and the promise of the Savoyard throne were quite enough to convince him to re-secularize and join the plot against his brother. With a competent pretender in his camp and the powerful Hapsburgs on friendly terms, Massimiliano began imposing enormous tolls along the two duchies’ border and sent occasional harassing parties of soldiers into the Savoyard domain. While these parties more often than not came to blows with Savoyard patrols, it wasn’t until late 1536 that Ludovico ordered his troops to begin pursuing these violent Milanese troublemakers to either capture or kill them. Naturally, such an order resulted in Savoyard companies crossing into Milanese territory and killing Milanese subjects, and once Massimiliano believed enough of said encounters had occurred to grant him an acceptable casus belli, he quickly came trumpeting forth with allegations of Ludovico being the illegitimate progeny of Charles the Good’s wife and the late duke’s brother-in-law, as well as of being a crypto-Protestant who was plotting to assassinate the Spanish Pope Ignatius I on behalf of his puppet master, the king of France, and thus re-establish French dominance in the peninsula. Presenting Adriano as the rightful heir to Charles the Good, Massimiliano commenced his invasion of Savoy and called upon the emperor, Charles V von Hapsburg, to assist in pacifying Savoy and to revoke Ludovico’s ducal title. With the Church entering preparations for a major ecumenical council, there could only be minimal attempts at mediation or at pronouncements concerning the validity of the rumored adulterous and consanguineous union of Ludovico’s suspected parents (which most already treated as a ridiculous and baseless accusation).
Unwilling to tangle with France as of yet due to the continuing difficulties with Protestantism in the Empire and his Hungarian possessions and also keenly mindful of the seriousness of his imperial authority, Charles V made no overtures of direct support to Massimiliano nor of hostility to Ludovico. Hoping to dissuade Venice - another longtime French ally in Italy - from coming to Savoy’s aid and thus adding further chaos, Charles V positioned a sizeable army on the republic’s borders, complete with an outsized contingent of Hungary’s feared mounted troops. In another detente-oriented move, Charles V began buying up huge numbers of the contracts of Swiss mercenaries in order to deprive France of its most reliable source of well-trained heavy infantry in the region. Strangely enough, the much more overt signal given to Venice did not prevent the republic’s invasion of the duchy of Milan in 1539, while the modest attempt to pull the rug out from beneath the feet of the belligerent French seems to have worked, as Charles IX, in a somewhat rare moment of prudence, opted to limit French involvement in Savoy to its existing garrisons and a defense of Ludovico’s claim - possibly out of a hesitancy to throw his full weight into Northern Italy so soon after having agreed to remit his claim to Milan. In this fourth Italian War (often deemed the “Savoyard War”), explicit hostilities were never opened between the French and the Hapsburgs, with most of the diplomatic wrestling and much of the bleeding done by the Italian princes involved. Before 1539, the war was mostly indecisive - more resembling the earlier condottiere free-for-alls than the more direct struggles of the past four Italian Wars - with Florence (ruled now by Ercole, the eldest son of Cesare Borgia and Beatrice d’Este) joined the war on the side of Milan from 1537 to 1539 as a sign of goodwill, and again briefly in 1541. It was in August of 1539 that Charles V, feeling secure knowing that a Church council was fully in session and conscious of France’s reluctance to more fully enter a war when such a council was in session, declared that the Ewiger Landfriede would be upheld and Imperial troops would enter Northern Italy to restore order. Despite the lack of a formal declaration of war, French and Hapsburg troops would encounter one another on the the battlefield on multiple occasions - the bloodiest of which was the battle of Tanaro in 1541, fought almost entirely by French and Hapsburg troops and costing France the life of its Grand Master, Anne de Montmorency.
The Fourth Italian War would end predictably in early 1542 when the sonless Ludovico died of a fever he acquired after meeting with a French embassy in the higher Alpine piedmont to discuss possible full engagement from France and the possible annexation of Savoy as a protectorate. The French had lost their last foothold in Italy and the Hapsburgs had returned territorial integrity to the borders of the Empire. However, matters would continue to grow even more confused for the French with three developments over the course of several months following the close of the last Italian war: in February, Arnaud de Sarre, councillor to Ludovico of Savoy and open Protestant, fled across the French Alps and was granted asylum by the count of Velay, Claude d’Annebault; in March, Guillaume Farel was drowned under mysterious circumstances on the banks of the river Durance near his native city of Gap; and in June, Charles IX’s second wife, Isabel d’Albret, died in childbirth delivering his third and last child, a daughter. The minor victory gained by the Hapsburgs and their allies in Northern Italy would likewise be eclipsed by developments further north, and the powers of Europe could hardly afford to blink before war returned - and this time with much greater intensity.
- Yeni Roma -
The entry of the Portuguese into the Indian Ocean had seriously disrupted numerous ancient trade routes. While the Portuguese only stood to profit from their arrival, the overall transit of goods in the intricate mercantile system of the region dropped dramatically during the first half of the 16th century. This was obviously an unacceptable development for the Mamluks and Safavids, who gathered the majority of their riches from their special position at the crossroads of two formerly severed worlds. Both states funded expensive naval campaigns against the Portuguese in an effort to drive them out, but it would prove rather quickly that both states had underestimated their opponent and overestimated themselves. With its perpetually militarized state and the indomitable skill of the truly unique Afonso de Albuquerque, the Portuguese Estado da Índia achieved several Herculean victories against all comers in a string of naval engagements from the Malabar Coast to the Gulf of Kutch. The Portuguese succeeded in battering their enemies so badly and so repeatedly, in fact, that within a few years of the battle of Chaul, they had not only bottled up the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, but had also cowed the Yemenis and seized the port of Muscat from the Omanis. The very heart of the Muslim world suddenly found itself put to siege.
A batalha de Chaul
For the Safavids, their endlessly ambitious Shah, Ismail I, was biting off more than he could chew, with his antagonization of the Portuguese earning him only the destruction of his paltry fleets and the hostile occupation of Ormus, which cut off the Persian gulf and strangled its trade. Secondly, for the Mamluks, their attempt at grand maneuvering in the Indian Ocean and its consequent failure would constitute a death blow. By 1512, when Afonso de Albuquerque had discovered the remnants of the Mamluk fleet at Suways, what he found was pitiful - “hardly a few dhows, and less than a score of smaller vessels.” The Safavids - like the Ottomans - were a young empire and thus were possessed of a similar restless energy and could more easily bounce back, but the Mamluks were not so lucky. Their restricted caste of Circassian elites had exacerbated their alienation from their subjects through generations of corruption and inaction, with the lion’s share of their trade harvested by the entrenched communities of Venetian merchants. Held afloat by the highly developed ports of Syria and the riches of the Nile, the Mamluks had become imposing only in size and longevity, and the rot eating away at their core was now especially visible to the Ottoman sultan Musa, who now began to seriously entertain the idea of completing his late father’s plans. This precipitous decline in the dominance of Islamic merchants in the Indian Ocean and the rebuffed efforts to reclaim it would tip the scales against the Persians and Mamluks in their already tenuous struggle with the Ottoman Turks.
The Portuguese cornering of the Indian Ocean and their circumvention of long-established trade networks did not mesh well with other interested parties as well. The Republic of Venice - its very pilasters of commerce sunk into the continued transmission of eastern luxury goods through the eastern Mediterranean - stood to lose virtually everything, and contributed significantly to the Mamluk and Safavid war effort against the Portuguese In a singular moment of cooperation, Mamluk, Persian, and Italian ships even fought together against a smaller Portuguese fleet off the coast of the city of Chaul in 1509. This conflict of interests between these two Christian powers forced the Ottomans and Spain into an unwitting, ersatz alliance for much of the early 1500s, unconsciously working to undermine one another’s enemies.
O grande e terrível Afonso de Albuquerque
The transfer of Rhodes from the Knights of St John to the Venetians made an Ottoman invasion of the island less likely for the moment, but also weakened Christendom’s forward position against the Turk. The Knights were the inheritors of generations of practical knowledge concerning fortification and frontier defense, and when they handed over Rhodes it was perhaps the most well-defended location on earth. The Venetians maintained the intricate fortifications left behind, but their commercial pursuits made them more interested in a policy of detente towards the Ottomans, which led to Rhodes being undermanned and thus more of a chink in the armor than the redoubtable bastion of crusading privateering it had once been. This worked against the Venetians in the long run, as, despite the many benefits it brought in terms of trade, the Ottomans still considered the Venetian possession of Crete, Cyprus, most of the Aegean and Ionian islands, and now of Rhodes to be a particularly claustrophobic arrangement for them - one which Sultan Musa would refer to as a “silk glove laid softly, yet fixedly, on our throat.” In addition to this, the Venetians had a tendency to tax their Greek subjects mercilessly, and administered their larger Mediterranean possessions in a manner more akin to the plantations of the Americas. On the other hand, the Knights - while they had enforced a semi-feudal system and proselytized their Orthodox subjects more aggressively than the Venetians - were at least respected by the Greeks under their rule, so much so that by the time of the Knights’ departure there were some 1,500 Rhodian Greeks willing to leave their ancestral home to follow them. After all, the Knights were devout, chaste, and singularly dedicated to undermining the Turk - the same Turk that had plundered Constantinople and had laid the pride of the Greeks so low.
Selim and a few of his predecessors had considered seizing the isle of Rhodes from time to time, but disinterest in naval expeditions had ended up convincing them otherwise, and with the Knights of St. John evacuated from the island and replaced by the more tactful Venetians, anti-Turkish piracy in the region had declined greatly. The only active stymie to Ottoman expansion in the Mediterranean came from the Spanish in the Strait of Sicily, end even then it was a conflict by proxy, with the Knights of St. John exchanging blows with Turkish-funded corsairs. Musa I was thus more or less content to let matters in Europe and to the West of his empire sit for the time being, hoping to consolidate his very shaky eastern frontier against the Safavid Persians and the Mamluk Egyptians. Yet the careful neutrality of the Venetians - the result of centuries of tactful bargaining - was rapidly becoming a predicament for them in an arena gearing up for full-fledged holy war.
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I'm glad to see that this is back and in a really big way if I might add.
It looks like France is going to have a worse Wars of Religion this time around in addition to their poor showing in the Italian Wars.
I'm guessing that the relations between the Hapsburgs and the Protestant/ Anti Hapsburg Princes will come to a head sooner rather than later as well.
Finally, Portugal is wrecking shop in the Indian Ocean like OTL, if not more so it would seem.
Anyways great update Torbald.
It looks like France is going to have a worse Wars of Religion this time around in addition to their poor showing in the Italian Wars.
I'm guessing that the relations between the Hapsburgs and the Protestant/ Anti Hapsburg Princes will come to a head sooner rather than later as well.
Finally, Portugal is wrecking shop in the Indian Ocean like OTL, if not more so it would seem.
Anyways great update Torbald.
Indeed, that was a very interesting (It really was worth the wait) and suggesting, update..
Seems that despite the Habsburgh had obtained the full control of Italia (direct and by proxies) guess that will probably that they must to fight in a two front war (Mediterranean and in the HRE/ Baltic?
Perhaps, also with France? of course, for two had mention only from the hypothetical Europeans, war theater and not forgot the probably colonial and/or the Middle East (Mesopotamian war theater) other would be in the Indian Ocean, within Otomans and Portuguese (allied with Safavids?... for the enemy of my enemy stuff) perhaps.
Seems that despite the Habsburgh had obtained the full control of Italia (direct and by proxies) guess that will probably that they must to fight in a two front war (Mediterranean and in the HRE/ Baltic?
Perhaps, also with France? of course, for two had mention only from the hypothetical Europeans, war theater and not forgot the probably colonial and/or the Middle East (Mesopotamian war theater) other would be in the Indian Ocean, within Otomans and Portuguese (allied with Safavids?... for the enemy of my enemy stuff) perhaps.
Portuguese - pure Portuguese - is going to diminish in Europe and definitely will not be the dominant language in Spain. That is not to say, however, that it will be totally subsumed by Castilian Spanish, which will in turn also be affected by the Iberian union greatly.
As for the Comunero revolt, no counterpart to it has happened as of yet given the unique circumstances that brought it about IOTL (Charles V's Flemish advisors selling government offices was a big one) that have not happened ITTL. But people always find something to complain about and leaders always do something worthy of complaint, so you'll have to wait and see!
Ah, mistake of mine - I'm aware of the modern Teutonic Order's existence, what I really meant was that the Ordensstaat ceased to exist. That's fascinating about it being open to Protestants though!
Thank you! As for Ignatius, well, sometimes one feels that a TL needs something memorable here and there, even if it seems a bit unlikely.
The Gregorians will cover the education aspect, yes, although more specifically education regarding the documentation of foreign cultures and the means by which Western Christianity can be introduced into such cultures. The Oratorians are going to have the Jesuits' omnipresence in society - by dividing the two aspects of the Jesuits between two orders, neither order can dominate Catholic society as the Jesuits did in the 16th-17th century, and thus neither order will become too big for their britches, as it were.
It's indeed a shame for Ricci's work to mostly go to waste due to some inconvenient demographics and geopolitics. Similar figures are going to come around ITTL and their efforts will be a little more rewarded, but the European-ness of Christianity is still going to be a very difficult hurdle.
Thank you!
The French are going downhill fast, but their coming decades might not be as violent as they were IOTL if only because they are so desperate that more compromises will be needed. They will be re-formed in the crucible, if you will
That anticipated throw down in the HRE is well on the way, and it's not going to be the last conflict of its kind either.
The Portuguese are indeed letting their presence be known in the Indian Ocean, although it's hard for them not to with a man like Afonso de Albuquerque on their side. What's really going to help Portuguese Asia and India in the long run, however, is learning how to not wreck shop quite so much. It'll be difficult, but they'll learn.
There's still a lot of ill will in Northern Italy - the Venetians are still French sympathizers and committed rivals of the Hapsburgs, there are still elements of French-leaning, expansion minded individuals in the Papal States, Cesare Borgia (deceased now) is still considered a rogue condottiere whose hold on Florence is not yet consolidated, many are outraged at Massimiliano Sforza's boldness, and many consider Adriano di Savoia a puppet ruler at best and a usurper at worst. The coming war will not mostly involve the Italian states, however.
The French are ready for another war. Sure, they've been bloodying themselves almost nonstop, but the conflicts they've involved themselves in have been too spaced out and not quite bloody enough to convince them (much less convince the hardheaded Charles IX) that they couldn't take down the Hapsburgs if they just threw their full weight at them.
Things with the Ottomans and Safavids are going to get interesting soon as well...
Yeah it is! Hopefully for good this time...
24. Der Schwarzkrieg
~ Der Schwarzkrieg ~
- Karl der Eisern -
Upon his election to the Imperial throne in 1531, Charles V was no longer the gangly, awkward youth that took the two crowns of Hungary and Bohemia years prior, but had been molded by both age and experience into a capable - if still a bit unprepossessing - leader possessed of both grace and severity, full-bearded and hair cropped in the fashion of a true Roman emperor. Charles V's innate talents had also been revealed in his grasp of languages; a polyglot both by nature and by circumstance, Charles V had mastery of the German language in addition to the French and Dutch of his youth, and was competent in the difficult and alien languages of his Czech and Hungarian subjects (though assemblies with them were often mediated by local Germans fluent in either Czech or Hungarian).
Der Eiserne Kaiser, c. 1542
Charles V was utterly resolved to combat both Protestantism as well as any challenges to his centralized Imperial authority. While he may have at one seriously considered adopting Meyeran Protestantism when his opposition seemed to be gaining the upper hand, ultimately Charles V felt the enormous weight of his impressive pedigree (and possibly the religious zeal embedded in his Spanish blood) and made it clear to all that the Holy Roman Emperor would never renounce his ancient Catholic creed:
“I am born of the most Christian Emperors of the German Nation, of the Catholic Kings of Spain, the Archdukes of Austria, the Dukes of Burgundy, who were all to the death true sons of the Roman Church, defenders of the Catholic Faith, of the sacred customs, decrees and uses of its worship, who have bequeathed all this to me as my heritage.”
Likewise, with the rocky start that was the war with the rebellious League of Olomouc, Charles V had grown used to dealing with intransigent vassals, especially in the face of Hungary’s notoriously strong-willed nobility. What had truly hardened Charles V to the notion of Protestant revolt was a rebellion amongst the “Horali” - communities of Karlstadter Protestants embedded in montane Slovak towns. When Charles V attempted to address the issue of blasphemous regard for the sacraments and the unlawful seizure of Church property amongst the Horali, his emissaries were put through painful and embarrassing ordeals before being sent back. When two of Charles V’s representatives were killed while being chased out of the town of Čerín, Charles V took a more hardline position and subdued the Horali militarily in a brutal 2-year campaign. Afterwards, Protestantism became a calling card for sedition and subversion to Charles V, who gave the same treatment in 1528 to the “Slavonska Cerkev” (Slavonian Church) led by the Slovenian reformer Primož Trubar, extinguishing a robust and largely peaceful Protestant assembly. Charles V would thankfully have his impulsivity tempered by his Grand Chancellor, the level-headed, humanist Mercurino Gattinara, and his sense of rulership would begin to reflect a more universal model of a benevolent, yet just, Christian emperor.
- Groll und Spannung -
Religious affiliation c. 1540
(Yellow - Catholic; Light blue - Lutheran Protestant; Blue - Mainline/Meyeran Protestant; Dark blue - Radical/Karlstadter Protestant; Lavender - Nordic/Vinteran Protestant)
Charles V had intended to take the issue of Protestantism by the horns more directly than his father had, and had plans for another Colloquy between Catholic and Protestant leaders at Darmstadt by 1533, but the difficulty in organizing such a debate when the Protestant sects within the Empire were growing fault lines at an incredible rate, especially following Johann Albrecht Meyer's emergence as a reformer in the late 1520s to early 1530s. Likewise, Charles V had only been emperor for five years before his attention was diverted to Italy once Massimiliano Sforza had provoked a war of succession over the duchy of Savoy. Clamor on all sides for a general Diet to be called and to settle the portentous difficulties facing the Holy Roman Empire was reaching such a din that Charles V had no other choice than to set a secure date for a Diet at Erfurt (chosen for its location in the religious middle ground of Thuringia), which would begin on October 27th of 1541.
However, if Charles V or the imperial princes had hoped that a simple Diet would save the Empire from being riven once again by inter-confessional violence, there were a litany of factors at play in the Empire which had been long been sowing tensions that would render such hopes for peace futile. For one, trouble had been brewing close to the old Hapsburg stomping grounds in Swabia for some time: the southerly duchy of Württemberg had been a source of a few headaches for the Hapsburgs during its time under Ulrich, its former duke. Ulrich had a notoriously off putting personality - prone to outbursts of rage and a general lack of self control - but worst of all were his spending sprees. Ulrich’s loose purse strings had put his duchy’s treasury in a serious bind, thus necessitating more and more excise taxes on staple goods. Two bad harvests in 1511 and 1514 brought the peasant class to its breaking point, leading to open rebellion in the latter year. Ulrich inspired little confidence in his retinue and vassals, and this “Poor Conrad” rebellion (named after a derogatory term used for a down on his luck peasant in Germany) went virtually unopposed, forcing Ulrich to make large concessions to the rebels in exchange for a return to order.
Following this episode of ineptitude, Ulrich suffered another embarrassment with nearly disastrous consequences when his marital infidelity had been exposed after he had killed his mistress’ husband, a respected knight, in a duel. Ulrich’s wife was Sabina, who was both the daughter of the duke of Bavaria, Albrecht IV, and the niece of the emperor Maximilian. As he had become by far the most problematic member of the Swabian League, Maximilian had no difficulty bestowing on Ulrich a distinction rarely received by placing him under an Imperial ban twice - the latter of which resulted in the duke’s exile. Ulrich would take up mercenary work beyond the reach of the Hapsburgs, leading a band of Swiss pikemen in Northern Italy and ending up in the employ of the king of France. Ulrich’s duchy, now technically vacant, passed into the care of the other member states of the Swabian League. It would be auctioned off to the emperor Maximilian, who offered the largest bid for the sake of maintaining imperial stability.
Herzog Ulrich
What resurrected Ulrich’s claim to the duchy of Württemberg were his religious inclinations. Ulrich had been intensely interested in the theology of Martin Luther and Andreas Karlstadt, and was known to have received communion in the utraquist manner. Ulrich’s exile had freed him of the need to maintain his quasi-Lutheran Catholicism in the interest of legitimacy, and he committed himself fully to mainline Meyeran Protestantism during his days as a condottiere. Practically overnight, the opinion of Ulrich amongst many Germans had shifted from that of a widely unpopular profligate to a hero of the Protestant cause wrongfully deprived of his throne. Philipp, the landgrave of Hesse, was the first to raise the cry for Ulrich’s return to his duchy, and was shortly after joined by William of Jülich-Cleves-Berg. Charles IX suddenly found himself in possession of a highly valuable tool with which he could greatly complicate matters for the Hapsburgs.
When considering his ability to corner his enemies diplomatically, there is reason to believe that Charles IX would have been a highly successful ruler had he only been more conservative in picking his battles. The chain of marital alliances Charles IX established throughout his troubled reign began with his own betrothal to Isabel d’Albret - the sister of the king of Navarra, Henry II - which he arranged for himself, successfully outmaneuvering his young Spanish rival Juan Pelayo and strengthening France’s grip on the one state on the Iberian peninsula not held by the Avís-Trastámaras. Ginevra de Medici (Guinièvre to her French subjects), Charles IX’s second wife, also allowed the French king significant influence with the still powerful Medici family (now relocated to Naples) and threw a lifeline to French interests in Italy. The most important of Charles IX’s strategic marriages, however, came through his second daughter, Marie. William, the duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, had inherited a trio of duchies that had been spared much of the destruction of the Bauernkrieg and had grown prodigiously wealthy through the robust trade networks of the Rhineland. Charles IX demonstrated his eye for foreign policy in singling out this seemingly unimportant young ruler and marrying Marie to him in 1540, thus creating a strong link between the Valois and an influential, Protestant member of the Holy Roman Empire. Marie brought to Jülich-Cleves-Berg an impressive dowry comprised primarily (and significantly) of horses, artillery, and armament, and French merchants soon enjoyed extensive privileges along the Rhine.
- Bicephalen Adler -
In an emotional public ceremony in Nidda on the night of October 13th of 1541, Johann Albrecht Meyer, flanked by a number of Protestant bishops from numerous German sees, read out the final draft of his “Confessio Reformatorum Germanica” - the Reformed German Confession, later known colloquially as the Hessian Confession. This confession was the fruit borne by the earlier Synod of Marburg, the second Meyeran-formulated interconfessional council amongst Protestant groups in the Empire following the unsuccessful Synod of Halberstadt in 1536. Reformers, bishops, clerics, and the delegates and observers of Protestant princes had met in Marburg for four and a half months in late 1539, representing the interests and viewpoints of Mainline, Radical, and High Church Protestantism, with the followers of Meyer, Karlstadt, Luther, Hunter, and myriad others all represented. The extreme variety in opinion such a gathering offered was smoothed out by the more middle-of-the-road followers of Meyer, who possessed superior numbers. Meyer and his cohort essentially bossed the Synod, with many Lutherans and Karlstadters leaving disappointed in the results - but Meyer had succeeded in getting a general theological manifesto agreed upon and was able to see his longed-for “Evangelical Assembly” of Protestant German bishops formed. The Hessian Confession was this manifesto, and it's intended purpose - beyond being a summation of the beliefs of Mainline German Protestants - was to be read aloud once again, but this time in front of a complete assembly of Imperial princes at the imminent Diet in Erfurt - for which Meyer and the Protestant princes had waited to present this statement at faith until the 13th, exactly two weeks before the Diet was set to convene. The proclamation of the Hessian Confession at Erfurt would thus be the culmination of many years of strenuous effort, all spent uniting many of the disparate elements of German Protestantism and orchestrating the timing to be just right for the optimal dramatic effect - leaving a historic event to bear witness to all ages.
Text of the Hessian Confession, printed c. 1567
But such an event never came to pass. As the train of Protestant leaders ambled eastward out of Hesse into Franconia, each surely fantasizing about Charles V’s impending comeuppance, Charles V had been maneuvering on his own. The Protestant synods of Halberstadt and Marburg had garnered all of Charles V’s ever suspicious attention, and a steady payroll was set aside for anyone who could provide him with information as to just what those pesky heretics were planning in the long scheme of things. Charles V knew long beforehand of their plan to seize the floor at the upcoming Diet and expose their captive audience to a powerfully written exhortation to take ecclesiastical and imperial reform into their own hands. Charles V was also aware that matters were growing increasingly irreconcilable between his imperial office and the anti-Hapsburg and pro-Protestant polities of the Empire, and would come to a violent head sooner rather than later. What was needed to undermine his opposition was to wait for the Church council at Basel to produce a reform suitable to assuage many of the Protestants’ concerns (and possibly bring more Lutherans back into full communion with the Church) while depriving the rebellious German camp of their anticipated platform and cast them as what he believed they were: seditionists, rather than concerned Imperial citizens. Two days after the proclamation at Nidda, two of Charles V’s couriers had reached him with the news in Regensburg. Charles V pondered the situation for two days before ordering his emissaries to inform all the Diet's attendees that, due to the devolving state of affairs in Northern Italy, the heightened risk of hostilities with France, and the ongoing Church council, the Diet would have to be convened at Würzburg on the 18th as a mere hearing session for the sake of redressing any immediate grievances. Charles V told the messenger intended for the princes that had gathered at Nidda to wait a week before beginning his journey. Obviously, the majority of the malcontent party was unable to arrive in time to attend the bulk of the Diet, which lasted only a week. The only Protestants of any considerable secular authority present were the elector Palatine, Frederick II, and the Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, George - neither of whom felt that they would be able to represent their anti-Hapsburg and pro-Protestant inclinations before so many Catholic, Hapsburg-affiliated princes.
Die Schurkengalerie
(From top left to bottom right: Johann Frederick, Frederick II, Philipp I, Ernest I, William I, Joachim II Hector)
The outraged Protestant princes that had been absent from Würzburg met up in Fulda in late November, where they accused the emperor of having acted in bad faith and insisted on the Diet being re-convened to allow them the opportunity to voice their opinions. Charles V obviously declined their request, again citing his need to attend to matters with France and Northern Italy. After three weeks of deliberation and debate, those assembled at Fulda had written up a formal protestations, declaring their intent to form a league in opposition to the emperor, against whom they would pursue force of arms until their demands were met and the adherents of the creed detailed in the Hessian Confession were granted imperial protection from violence and other forms of persecution. This League of Fulda required Meyeran Protestantism as the precondition for membership, and had as its principal leaders Johann Frederick, the elector of Saxony, Joachim II Hector, the elector of Brandenburg, Ernest I, the duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, William, the duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, Philipp I, the landgrave of Hesse, and Frederick II, the elector Palatine - amongst all of whom it was agreed that preventative action was necessary while Charles V’s armies were still tied up in Northern Italy. However, the need for such action became much more urgent when Ludovico, the duke of Savoy, died in January of 1542, forcing the League of Fulda to immediately make their intentions publicly known. While coordinating the limited means of their numerous disjointed polities remained an immense difficulty, William of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, Charles IX of France, and Christian III of Denmark were all prepared to ease this preparation and bankroll the movement any way that they could. The movements needed were clear: William and Frederick II would capture the Rhineland and harass the Netherlands; Joachim II Hector, Ernest I, and Johann Frederick would ensure either the neutrality or subjugation of the Catholic states and bishoprics in their proximity and push southward into Franconia towards Augsburg; and Charles IX would meanwhile lead a general assault on Hapsburg possessions along the French border.
Der Fuldischer Bund und die Habsburger
(Pink - Electorate of Brandenburg; Blue - Electorate of Saxony; Green - Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg; Brown - Landgraviate of Hesse; Maroon - United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg; Purple - Electorate of the Palatinate; Cream - Hapsburgs)
Just as Charles V was struggling to mobilize a sufficient force to march north and confront some of his most powerful subjects, an enormous revolt had materialized on his ancestral doorstep. At that moment, the most immediate threat to the Hapsburgs - indeed to German Catholicism - was the percolation of Protestantism into southern Germany (which had heretofore only had minimal exposure), with many cities - some of them prominent Imperial Free Cities - in the south gaining a Protestant majority practically overnight. Inspired by the resistance of the League of Fulda, the cities of Lindau, Ingolstadt, Ravensburg, Memmingen, Konstanz, Strassburg, Nördlingen, and Ulm had all voiced their disapproval to the actions of Charles V in April of 1543. All of them save for Strassburg had elected to form a “Heptapolitan League” shortly after, which held the Hessian Confession as its central ethos. The declaration of the Heptapolis in defiance to the Emperor heightened the general feeling of rebellion and a vacuum of Imperial authority in the troubled region of Swabia, which prompted armed rebellion in the countryside as well. Here - just as in elsewhere in the Empire - throngs of commoners beat their plowshares into swords under a Protestant banner despite most of them being either not Protestant or having little to no understanding or investment in the complex theological disputes that caused Protestantism to emerge in the first place - most were simply interested in lashing out at the authority of the Church, the nobility, or the Hapsburgs themselves, with raw, elemental discontent and anxiety being their only motivation.
Peasants and burghers alike slaughtering clerics
Charles IX joined the war against the Hapsburgs with neither the inexperience of the Third Italian War nor the indecisiveness of the Fourth. Within two and a half months, there were two French armies organized and marching eastward - one into the Netherlands under the marshal of France, Claude d’Annebault, numbering 21,000, and another heading for Lorraine led by Charles IX himself and with Ulrich of Württemberg in tow, numbering 23,000. Also in Charles IX’s retinue were Claude de Guise and his son Francis, noblemen from a cadet branch of the ducal house of Lorraine, who used their familial ties to induce the Lorrainer cities of Bar-le-Duc, Verdun, Metz, and Épinal to surrender without a siege by mid 1543. Believing Lorraine to be secure for the moment, Charles IX left the de Guises behind to maintain the French hold on the region before turning south towards his old objective: Besançon and the Franche-Comte, which he had failed to take almost 20 years earlier.
As before, Charles IX had little trouble in taking most of the principal cities of the Franche-Comte - namely Montbéliard, Belfort, and Dole - but Besançon held out until the end of the campaigning season. Neither Philip I nor Charles V had neglected to maintain the Imperial garrisons and fortifications on their western front, and it was beginning to grind away at the French. Impatient for matters to speed up and confident that the Heptapolitan revolt would not immediately wither under Hapsburg pressure, Charles IX decided that early 1544 was the opportune time to throw his Württemberger wrench into the Hapsburgs’ plans, and had Ulrich escorted into Swabia by 1,200 Swiss pikemen and 200 horsemen over the Jura mountains by way of Montbéliard. Ulrich had hardly reached Colmar before Protestant peasants (conveniently forgetful of their old duke’s misconduct) had taken up arms en masse as far away as Tübingen, where Johann Brenz, the rector of the university, urged all elements of society - regardless of doctrinal alignment - to rise up and throw off their Hapsburg oppressors. The Swabian rebellion - comprised of German peasantry, the Heptapolis, and their French benefactors - were able to hold the line against the Hapsburgs quite well, with the Imperial forces under Charles V’s brother Ferdinand caught in a stalemate between Alberschwende and along the Bodensee near Bregenz for months.
Die Front, c. 1546
More bad news reached Charles V in June: the Archbishop of Cologne, having withstood growing unrest and riots for nearly two years, was finally forced to flee the city when William of Jülich-Cleves-Berg appeared outside its walls, having just returned from taking Maastricht. With massive peasant revolts having forced out the bishops of Osnabrück and Münster months before (as they had during the Bauernkrieg), all of the Prince-Bishops of the northern Rhineland and Lower Saxony were now either living in exile or were in serious danger of having to (Hildesheim, protected by the sympathetic Ernest I, duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg). Yet the winds began to shift in early 1547, when formations thousands-strong were sighted in the Lower Rhine Valley near Dornbirn, marching under Spanish flags.
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Take Navarre! Beat those dirty, opportunist, effeminate, frog-eating Frenchys silly. For the glory of Hapsburg Germany, for the honor Avis-Trastamara Iberia!!!
Interesting update and very informative, but beyond the nice ending cliffhanger... I cannot avoid asking... if and/or when the HRE situation will turn still more 'Tupsy-turvyness' situation and one that would 'evolve' into a three (at least) sided war!
Down with the Papists, An end to those who would deny the faithful.
Habsburgs be gone!
Habsburgs be gone!
Well that escalated quickly. Things are looking pretty bleak for the Hapsburgs, but hopefully Spain can give France the comeuppance it rightfully deserves.
Come at us HERETIC! Our swords are ready, all true loyalists of the one true Holy Hapsburg Roman Emperors unite! Keep the Empire Holy!!!
Well, does this mean a Thirty Years' War a century early? Or will this just be another Schmalkaldic League?