Yeah, it’s not looking so good.
Elizabeth's a widow now. What a clusterfrak, the HRE's done. That infantry square getting gutted by cavalry is the perfect metaphor of Germany's current state.
I'm now wondering if Elizabeth will kill Theodor first before killing herself.
She’s a twice-widow now. But she’s a tough one.
Clearly Henri has a very limited imagination. Wasn’t it obvious that the Romans would follow up Thessaloniki by burning all of south eastern Germany and destroy the only credible Army left in the Southwest?
I suppose the only hope the Germans have left is that the Romans continue cutting through them like butter until they somehow run into the Triune army. That or they wreck enough there isn’t no longer enough provisions left to sustain a Triune advance.
Henri was expecting some kind of push in southeast Germany, but the raid into southwest Germany was not something he would’ve predicted. And there’s no way he could’ve predicted the outcome at Wennenden.
RIP #TeamElizabeth, where can she run now? The Romans will probably take Stuttgart easily once word of the Reichsarmee’s complete destruction reaches them. And the only other direction is into the Triunes.
On the plus(?) side Ottokar has no choice now but to join the fight against the Triunes. His main two rivals for the throne are dead and at this rate the Triunes will take much more than the Rhine.....
Stuttgart is safe from the Romans. The remnants of the Reichsarmee congregated there and it’s far easier to smash an army in the field than storm a fortress.
As for Ottokar, his first priority is Ottokar.
Ah yes, the involuntary scorched earth policy. A true 3d chess move.
This is the world catching up on its bloodletting quota for the missed 30YW. I doubt the Germans will take kindly to heretics rampaging throughout their lands, military disparity be damned.
Oh, the Germans don’t. The Romans around Munich are getting to ‘enjoy’ the experience of being on the other end of enraged peasant guerrillas.
Thing is the Romans are at the end of their supply line, and need to head home. The Triunes are not and just had seen the main army and political force left in Germany smashed without them losing a soldier.
The funny thing is the end of their supply line should have been Vienna, or Munich at most, but here we are. The Romans keep advancing.
Yea thatstoo OP. Especially the casualty count so obviously the romans are lying and I cant wait to see how constantinople gets nukes in the future by someone german state
Agreed; the HRE should be allowed to go out with some dignity. As it is, if Germany revives at all, it'll be by handing the Triunes a defeat that, at this point, I can't see them mustering the resources or the leadership to pull off unless Elizabeth pulls a literal miracle out of her hat. I can buy Um falling, given the state of it's garrison, but I can't see a Roman army at the very end of it's supply chain and the tail-end of a very active campaign with all the attrition that implies managing to curb-stomp Germany's last best hope in such a one-sided fashion. At the very least the Battle of Wennenden should have been a Malplaquet rather than a Blenheim.
Regarding Roman supply lines, forget the outcome of the battle and take a look at the strategic picture a week earlier when the Romans are besieging Ulm. The Romans have 16000 men (actually a bit less at this stage) and are already suffering from some supply issues, hence the need to get at the stores in Ulm. Southwest Germany alone, without outside support, was able to muster an army more than twice that size against said Romans.
The Romans really had outrun their supply range, but managed to get away with it here because the small force they could send was comprised of high-quality veterans with excellent experienced officers and Strategos.
Munich marks the edge of the supply range of ‘major Roman armies’, but if one decreases the size of the army, one can support them further. But the Romans are definitely pushing it here as far as it will goes.
Finally one can pull some impressive tactical feats even with logistics being bad. Malplaquet was fought much closer to Marlborough’s original base than Blenheim was. But having said that, it is most certainly not a war-winning strategy. Wennenden is a brilliant flash, brilliant but also just a flash.
More on this, and Roman logistics, in the next update.
At this stage it'll definitely take a German Niketas to rise up, defeat at least 1 of the 3 main Triune armies to turn this into a battle of attrition in the lower Rhine. The longer it takes the more parties will be brought into the war, if the Triunes have to divert forces elsewhere it'll limit their gains.
Germany does need a hero, Team Elizabeth is in their darkness hour now, so perhaps it's time for the Raven King?
Guess who just made his debut in the update I’m currently writing?
OOoph, that's Southern Germany out of the leadership of the HRE for the near future. Time for the north to dominate.
Terrifying description, another great update
@Basileus444
Thank you,
Greifens Pomerania might have the potential to be an economic powerhouse, but I do not think they could dominate the HRE. Especially not without Brandenburg, which is in Wittelsbach hands.
...
It's gonna be Bohemia which is gonna rally everyone, isn't it ?
Pomerania doesn’t have the population to dominate the HRE. Bohemia’s the only option at this stage.
Maybe, but does that mean Bohemia is able to retain its power post-war? At least Pomerania is relatively secure and focused on providing ships, less of a strain on its manpower. If we see the Bohemians leading the fight, they may not win the peace.
Pomerania might become influential economically, but it just doesn’t have the numbers. At most it might be like Venice vis-à-vis Renaissance Italy, undoubtedly rich, influential, and a major player, but no one would say Venice dominated Italy.
She isn't going anywhere, she doesn't earn the moniker "The Unbowed" for giving up at this point or really at all. Hell to even get a positive nickname like that tells us she may just pull something out of a hat.
Underestimating Elizabeth is a good way to get one killed.
Fellow members of #TeamElizabeth do not despair! The day may come when the courage of (German) men fails, but it is not this day!
No guarantees on tomorrow though.
“End of Civilization scheduled for Friday at 4:30 PM.”
So ends the Holy Roman Empire.
It’s not looking good.
We now see the consequences of Germans underestimating Rhomaion yet again. In hopes of preserving both army and estates they lost both and potentially more to come.
Is the battle of Wennenden significant enough an achievement to be taught in the academies in the years to come?
Rhomaion's supply situation may not be as bad as it seems. The supply lines have been shortened with the rich and fertile Pannonian fields untouched and more than capable of supplying the allied campaign in southern Germany, particularly one that is more oriented towards quality than quantity. Add to that newly reacquired Austria, Rhomaion's Absolute Foraging policy and opportunistic grain merchants from friendly and neutral nations like Arles and Saluzzo, Stuttgart is more than feasible. I never would have imagined Rhomania capable of standing on the banks of the Rhine so soon (albeit from the opposite side and 1200 years after the fall of the Domain of Soissons). Maybe Manuel Philanthropenos awakens his inner Belisarius/Andreas Niketas and realizes his true destiny to press onwards to Lutetia, King's Harbor and heck, even Brittania with his rag-tag 20k. Jokes aside, Elizabeth should come to her senses and set aside all of her remaining pride to both appease Rhomania and secure her survival.
I'm just gonna throw out a fresh one here no one has mentioned yet - Elizabeth fills her husband vacancy with Henri and they begin planning world domination MWAHAHAHA.
In their defense, at this point the Germans were coming with a 2+ to 1 advantage in numbers. If you think you can’t beat an opposing army with those odds, you should just throw in the towel.
Wennenden will be one for the military manuals.
Regarding logistics, you can see my comments a bit further up. Basically, Roman logistics are crap right now but they’re getting away with it, temporarily, thanks to excellent tactics. It’s not a sustainable situation though.
The equivalent of Napoleon's guard in terms of troops quality, under the equivalent of one of his best marshals was taken on by what amounted to a green army under mostly mediocre commanders. Entirely plausible I'd say, I was half expecting something along these lines from the moment the Germans went on the move against Philanthropenos given the quality of the troops he was commanding and that they were all veterans on top of that.
Supply wise let's note the Vienna went to the Hungarians intact, at the moment it is the Hungarian /Greek base of supply not the end point of their supply lines. And of course Manuel has just a tenth of what attacked Vienna in 1683...
Unfortunate that the victory helps the Triunes more than anyone else, but then no one forced Theodor to invade either. I only hope that this continuing slipping towards brutality causes a backlash within the empire and is contained...
There will be a pushback against the growing brutality. It is a phase rather than the new modus operandi, but the pushback will be some years in coming.
Romans can achieve great success when said success will cause more problems than help them you see.
Somebody’s been paying attention.
I would not count Germany out that fast. OK it is more likely than not that Alsace Lorraine is taken by the Triunes. But post that... Just thinking out loud.
1. We know suspiciously nothing of the succession situation in the Triple Monarchy. And unless I am mistaken Henri is starting to get pretty old...
2. That German POW in a Greek monastery several chapters ago that was in bad company... what are his whereabouts? Can you spell popular uprising, levee en masse, already invented by the good people of Antioch TTL one notes, new model army and similar funny things, maybe?
3. Lotharingia is of course massively fortified. How many sieges the Triunes army needs to win? How long each siege and how many can be fought simultaneously. In the meantime a goodly chunk of the Triune army is stuck at the wrong end of attritional warfare.
Yeah, Friedrich Zimmermann is going to be a very important character in just a few updates. And even with Vauban, the Lotharingian Lower Rhine has a lot of hard nuts to crack.
She has but D3 has made it clear, against the advice of several Roman diplomats, he wants to see Germany burn.
Definitely. The war is continuing because the Romans wish it to continue.
Not to mention I have a feeling that the Triune merchant class is not going to come out of this one is all that great a shape, nor the Triune's eastern colonies.
Ever heard of the Dunkirkers? Think that.
What's the Empire of All North up these days? Could be an opportunity for them here.
I think this campaign has gone on more than long enough. Rome still has to deal with Ottomans holding interior Syria, Muslim Egypt acting up, the Berber-Maghreb Megagblob continuing to threaten shipping in the Western Med, and possibly shenanigans in the Eastern colonies as well. It's time to go home.
That sentiment is growing rapidly in Constantinople, and will be becoming a major plot point going forward very soon.
Yeah, it really has gone 30 Years War for Germany but unless it is somehow worse that OTL then this is far from the end for Germany. For one thing there is no sectarian split and second Germany has been far more united and centralized the past few centuries like France OTL.
This means that when, and it will be when, Germany recovers the EAN, the Triunes, and possibly Hungary, should all be wary of the revanchist mood there.
Yeah, Germany and the HRE survived the OTL 30 Years War, so they’re tough. Germany certainly isn’t going to go away.
For a really smart guy D3 is pretty dumb here.
Triune ascendancy is still only a distant threat to the empire, especially its heartland. D3 might not be thinking too clearly about it, but it's not like it'll have any consequences even remotely comparable to the damage the Germans have caused.
This is definitely one of Demetrios III’s dumbest moments, but it happens to everyone. Plus as has been pointed out, the Triunes are far enough away than even an ascendant Triple Monarchy is limited in the amount of damage even it could do to Rhomania. Henri II would have to get to a Napoleon 1811 power level for that to change.
Ah I would say no. Germany is in the process of being destroyed, it is looking to be a battleground between the Triunes and the Romans perhaps the North.
The idea of Germany isn’t going to die. I don’t think that would be possible without wiping out the Germans.
The reality is that Germany will more than certainly be able to bounce back, I mean, look at the Roman Empire. It'll have some long-term scars that will take a long time to heal, but it'll still be fine, we're only looking at the SE. The Rhine is going to hurt because of the Triune War, which leaves IMO a future where
1) Elizabeth brokers co-operation between the rest of Germany, effectively a figurehead
2) On land, Bohemia is king during the war, and leads that fight against the Triunes
3) On sea, Pommerania leads the fight.
4) Post-War, it is Pommerania and the NORTH that will be the wealthiest areas. Bohemia doesn't really have any lands it can grab, short of marrying into the Wittlesbachs to take their territories (not a bad idea though). Those, and Bohemias manpower, will need to recover. Pommerania on the other than is as far from the Triunes as possible. They instead have the Empire of All the North. If they can use this war to push control over the Oresund, then they've effectively taken ownership of the Baltic, and can use it as a basis to flood the seas from an unstoppable harbour.
Germany as we knew it, is likely dead. Whether it is Bohemia, or Pomerania depends on how the Northern War goes.
Germany will be looking quite different when the dust settles.
Perhaps you're all being too negative regarding Roman policy. TriUK that takes Rhineland paints an automatic target on its back from everyone (Lotharingia, Spain, HRE, EAN) and will have to deal with a highly revanchist Germany/HRE.
Romans are looting and killing a bit (not that unusual in this age, and Germans did the same to them just before), but Triunes will have Germans under their boot. Therefore, angry revanchist Germany might be a perfect pawn to occupy Triunes on land while Rome takes to spoils on the seas (paralles to UK-Austrian/Prussian alliances against France).
Yeah, there’s a difference between what the Triunes can seize now during this window of opportunity and what they can hold on a generational scale.
To be clear, I don't feel as if this is the end of Germany so much as it is the end of the HRE. There is simply too much Germany to be completely partitioned in one war, and unless the Triunes are stupidly greedy, they'll probably bite off the Rhineland at most. The North, fundamentally a balancing act as-is, probably can't afford any overly huge occupations of German land. With Hungary's western ambitions sated with the reclamation of Austria and Rhomania's only geopolitical interest in Germany checked off (that being revenge), the Wittelsbachs (or perhaps a ruling dynasty with a more Czech name) will be free to look westward for the foreseeable future.
And when the time comes for revenge against the Triunes, a ton of commercial interests across all of Europe will only be too happy to help...
Pretty much this.
Yeah if Germany can hold together as a political entity they stand a chance. I'm assuming worst case the Triunes are on the Rhine + Belgium, Hungary takes Austria and the EAN takes Schleswig-Holstein (Honestly I don't know where the EAN ends and the HRE begins). Give them a generation to reform and rebuild they are going to be itching to hit back. Since
@Basileus444 has already foreshadowed the Triunes are headed for a rough patch I can see Germany pushing them back to France in that scenario.
The exact timeline and details aren’t set, although the general scope is, and the Triunes will not enjoy the 1650-1670 period as they’re enjoying the 1630-1650 period.
I think in this case, rather than just a huge serving of steaming-hot revenge (it's not always served cold) D III wants to make the HRE an object lesson.
He first showed what their army can amount to if they really want to, to get rid of the view that the ERE soldiers are weak compared to their western counterparts, and now wants to show the consequences of hubris to any would-be Odoacer by ravaging their own country, even when it might not be politically expedient to do so.
Aside from straight revenge I think this might be Rhomania’s way of saying “we are back”. This is the farthest west a Roman army has been since at least Justinian if not the fall of Rome. The times when they have been hired as mercenaries don’t count.
The eastern half of the Roman Empire at this point has more or less completely recovered from the last 1000 years. They or their despotates control the entire Mediterranean east of Tunis; the Anatolian peninsula and Egypt are both more secure than they have been since the rise of Islam; and with this latest war Rome has come to completely dominate South-Eastern Europe up to Vienna!!! With garrisons established in major cities of their allies of Serbia and Hungary it is not a position they will be knocked easily from.
All that is left is to deal with the Ottomans and at this point it isn’t a question of if Rome will win decisively but whether the Ottomans will survive as a coherent polity or go through a TOT of their own that will leave them permanently as the subordinate power to Rome.
That is the most logical aspect behind Roman actions in Germany, aside from the revenge aspects. It is a way of showcasing their power and reach. Although it would’ve been nice if they’d done that without torpedoing a coherent anti-Triune response currently being mustered.
With the latest update we see what happens when a battle hardened, elite army with an excellent commander meets up with a larger green army with middling leadership. In a way it is almost the opposite of what happened in Bulgaria and Macedonia at the start of the war. The biggest difference is that Rome has transitioned from feudal armies to fully professional armies and officer corps that allow an army to “bounce back” from defeats in a way that feudal states cannot.
We saw the same dynamic as early against Iskander. When Roman armies are defeated they are able to retreat and reform even if their cohesion has been broken while the victors get tied up looting a battlefield. When Roman armies win they are able to pursue until destroy the opposing army and enemy units are not able to reform and march again even amongst though who escape the battlefield.
It allows the Romans to avoid “strategic defeats” even while losing every battle but gives them are far larger chance of “strategic victories”.
Looking at the European theatre n this war the Romans have lost more than they won. The difference is when they won; Ruse, Thessaloniki, Ulm; they have shattered the army facing them while when they have lost it has been a grinding victory for The alliance that is a victory mostly because they hold the field.
Edit: fixing autocorrects
As always, excellent observation and analyses. Thanks.
I made a more detailed world map, lemme know if there’s anything I goofed up on!
Looks good. One point is that China is much too big. It should look comparable to late Ming borders. Also real Vijayanagar control doesn’t extend north of the Vindhyas (anything beyond that is mere lip service). The Gangetic plain is divided between Triune Bengal, a Sikh blob around Delhi and Agra, and Awadh which controls everything in between.
I’ll be focusing in more detail in the future on India and Southeast Asia so there’ll be changes once those are established, but again it looks good. Thank you.
@Basileus444 what are the Romans thoughts on North America at the moment. It seems pretty much safe territory for the Triunes, but the interior seems largely untouched because of Mexico being a thing. With the Roman alliances in Mexico, are they going to continue that policy in North America? Perhaps establishing themselves near OTL New Orleans at the heart of an anti-Triune North American network of alliances? It seems the most cost-effective way to hem in the Triunes in North America, and remind Saturn that Jupiter is 2.5 times the mass (read: might) the rest of the Solar System bar the sun. I'm not saying the Romans could build a strong industrial export capacity of D3 rifles in North America, but wait, no - that is EXACTLY what I'm saying. Hehehe.
North America is pretty much Rhomania’s radars. They have a lot of other balls to juggle. If the Romans seriously started to pressure the Triunes in North America, King’s Harbor would be able to shut that down quite quickly. Already the Roman fleet sent to the Caribbean was greeted the next year by a significantly stronger Triune fleet that bottled it up in Jamaica
Huh. I thought Mexico was Spanish America minus Argentina and Patagonia?
TTL Mexico didn’t get all the Spanish conquistadors and expeditions, so it’s smaller than OTL Spanish America. No Florida, no Caribbean, no Central America. Incans were only conquered a couple of decades ago ITTL.
Germany's darkest hour is here, I wonder if they will have their own age of miracles in an attempt to hold back the Triunes. Rome and Ethiopia had their age of miracles, perhaps it is time for Lady Fortuna to grant such a blessing to the Germans too.
But what if this is the Triunes’ age of miracles?
Alrighty! Updated version plus I got a bit artsy in the corners lol. What’s the pink country gobbling up the Anazza btw?
That would the Howeitat tribal confederacy, allied with the Ottomans (think modern Lakhmids).
But Germanicus was a Roman General. He was Augustus’s grandnephew. He avenged Rome and restored its honor after the massive loss at Teutoberg. Germanicus utterly ravaged Germany. His skill saw him capture Arminus’s family and put such fear into the other German chieftains that they killed Arminus and made peace with the Romans. Germanicus became massively popular in Rome after this. He led three campaigns in Germania and recovered 2/3 lost eagles. Tacitus even states that had it not been for Tiberius’s stubbornness, Germanicus likely could have conquered all of Magna Germania for the Empire.
If anything these victories would bring back classical nostalgia to the Romans. Titles like Germanicus meant victor in Germany in Latin. The Greek version for Germanicus is Germanos, so Demitrios could call himself Germanos as an honorific.
Fully agreed. Even after the Cold War where Germany was reduced to rubble and then divided and occupied for decades, it still was able to claim a leading position in Europe by virtue of its geographical position alone.
Demetrios isn’t the type to take honorifics like that. He’s not a flashy individual.
Are there any settlements in otl cape of good hope?
I'm almost positive there are none. I think I read a while ago that all that's down there is either a Triune or Lotharingian way station to help provision passing ships but nothing remotely close to a settlement or colony. I'm on mobile with spotty service so I can't easily search the archives however so I could be wrong.
The Triunes have a just-established colony there. This is the first I’ve mentioned it, but it’ll be official once I get to the regional update(s) covering Africa. Ships have been stopping off at the Cape to provision and trade with the natives for a century, but this is the start of colonization.
This is far from the end for the Germans but might be the end of the HRE. Looking at other major powers this is no worse a time than the Triunes suffered when all of France was lost and England was under imminent threat of invasion; when Rome literally lost all of Europe including Constantinople; when Russia sundered and Polish troops were raiding into Kiev; or when the Ottomans were beaten to almost nothing by Shah Rukh.
All of the powers have come back from it. They have reformed and become different and I expect Germany to be no different. As for the Triunes it is one thing to take the Rhineland and Lotharingia it is another to hold it for more than a generation. I still think the Triunes are in for a long period of instability and near civil war once they have anything less than an administrative genius leading them. Adding chunks of Lotharingia is just going to add to the inequities between the 3 kingdoms.
To be clear, on land Lotharingia is mostly spent now with the loss of the Reichsarmee and the Triunes armies; which are mostly French; have a time consuming but straightforward task of seizing down the various fortresses. On sea however the Lotharingians still have a fully intact navy that is used to working in the relatively shallow waters off shore and is likely going to give the Triune navy; which is mostly English; a badly bloody nose. At the end not only will the rich lands be added to the French kingdom; despite the English blood that has been lost; but the English parliament will lose out on the tariffs that until now they received from the formerly Foreign port of Antwerp at minimum and possibly even Rotterdam.
Winning the war is ripe for opening a large rift between England and France which are still very much separate entities. It won’t even be the nobility necessarily. It will be the merchants and traders that will feel the damage to the navy most acutely and will resent the expanding French trading that will come from adding Lotharingian lands to the French kingdom.
And what happens when that civil war kicks off when the navy ends up English but the army ends up French...it’s the classic whale and bear scenario. And which side does the King pick, his English roots or his French demographic centre. Gonna be a huge low level mess that could keep them occupied on internal matters for a generation during which Germany, Spain, and Rome can all take bites out of the Triunes Kingdom and overseas empire.
Again, excellent analysis. This is a good time to be a Triune, but I am laying seeds for later in the century when it is decidedly less fun. I’m planning on a series of regional updates coming up and the first will be the Triple Monarchy, which will help show the challenges that Henri II’s successors will face.
