Does Ody get his own epithet? I remember 'the Magnificent' affixed to his name somewhere but I think he isn't too far off 'o Megas'. On that note, is Andreas' 'Niketas' or other rulers' 'Megas' more prestigious in the eyes of the people?
OTL vs ATL
An Age of Miracles Continues: The Empire of Rhomania
- Thread starter Basileus444
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OTL vs ATL
Cryostorm
Monthly Donor
Ouch for the Spanish, and Aragonese, of all the great powers they are the ones that really seemed to fail on the diplomatic side these last few decades and managed to either piss off or get themselves isolated from everyone else besides a couple middling duchies in northern Italy.
They should not have made war Rome, and alienate them. Now they have contend with a possible super France alone. As for Rome, well I think they expected that no amount of diplomacy will change the minds of the west. Only power and armies will change their minds.
Andreas “niketas” is probably the most prestigious “megas” after all you don’t need to mention his name to know who people talk about went they mention “the good emperor “
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I guess a Habsburg ruling over the HRE is simply inevitable no matter the timeline 
though i cant say that i'm not a fan
though i cant say that i'm not a fan
A UK consisting of France, England and Ireland that starts looking at Iberia is powerful to the point where the rest of the GPs might start talking amongst themselves about containment.
Cryostorm
Monthly Donor
Considering France alone was enough for that, and this "France" probably has between a quarter and a third of the continent's population under it, that is an understatement.
A union of all these would be enormously unstable. It would be 4 separate crowns ITTL; France, Arles, England, and Ireland; with Arles being Catholic, France being relaxed Bohamist with large Catholic and German minorities in former Lotharingian and HRE lands, and England and Ireland being more puritan Bohamist.
Ireland and England would almost certainly rebel the second a monarch directs a single ounce of gold to build up Arles over either of them.
To say nothing of the enormous strategic difficulties of this union. 4 separate field armies would be need to guard the Spanish, Italian, HRE/Lotharingian, and Scottish border with each of them being unable to functionally support the other. A whole new fleet would also need to be maintained in the Mediterranean; a fleet that would be overwhelmingly Catholic unless crews are brought in from outside Arles.
If somehow this monstrosity was able to come into being and endure it would more closely resemble the late Timurid empire of OTL focusing all its energies on simply enduring rather than seeking to expand its reach/influence. Containment would barely be necessary because the internal negotiations to conduct an offensive war in this hyper-state would take so long and be so complex that any adversary would have years to prepare to meet the blows.
Cryostorm
Monthly Donor
The other points are certainly valid if Louis and his descendants screw up, but this one is missing a key point. Those forces already exist in the Triunes and Arles current setup but they exist on top of an additional two field armies pointed at each other, two field armies that now can be used elsewhere without a single extra bit of a exchequer spent. That is what makes unions of two, or more, neighboring nations so powerful even if they are run as separate states.
Basically, without getting any extra revenue or cost, this union would effectively give the Triunes an extra field army and less strain on their logistics and navy.
Puritans do ruin everything.
Why should I learn to speak that wretched tongue? All the English notables worth anything can speak French. And most of my subjects are French anyway. But I suppose you're right. It doesn't seem right to speak to God and my horse in the same tongue. I can use English for the latter part.
That was the reason for that little bit. He sees himself not as a Triune, but as a Frenchmen. We are Frenchmen.
Ody got the Magnificent, and also 'the Comet', which seemed an appropriate moniker for something brilliant but short-lived.
That's a case of the devil being the details. Sympathies of the various colonial populations, the balance of power after said breakup, and their size and ability to go their own way.
I find it fun to sometimes get an OTL-similar outcome even though following a wildly different ATL path. It's possible to overdo it, but I enjoy the occasional effort.I guess a Habsburg ruling over the HRE is simply inevitable no matter the timeline
though i cant say that i'm not a fan
Won't comment on the geopolitical stuff because of potential spoilers, and while I have general trends planned, don't want to pin myself down.
I do have a couple of random questions though.
First, suggestions for the ATL name for Catalhoyuk. It means 'fork tumulus' in Turkish. My first thought was maybe Protopolis, which hopefully is correct for 'First City' in Greek. But the drama queen in me wants something more grandiose, like 'Place of the Ancients'. And the pedant in me isn't certain that Catalhoyuk counts as a city.
Also, is there a list of Byzantine Orthodox church sees, preferably listed in precedence? The initial impetus for this inquiry was me wondering what the order in seniority was of the various Metropolitans under the Patriarch of Constantinople. I have a scenario in mind where the Patriarch is unavailable for reasons, and so the senior-most Metropolitan is needed.
Finally, I have decided I'm going to engage in a couple of ret-cons. I don't like to do it, but this seems the easiest path for me. The first is I made a reference a while back to a future 'War of the Capes'. While that conflict is going to still happen, its planned nature has changed significantly and so that name is no longer appropriate. It will be called something else.
The second is the 'War of Wrath'. Originally it was intended to be used to describe Odysseus' war against Persia, but that also changed a lot in between the introduction of the term and when I got to the actual conflict. The name doesn't quite work for me now. However, I think it does work quite well for another upcoming conflict. So, the ret-con here is that the War of Wrath will now refer to this future war, and any connections with that term to the War of Odysseus are now non-canon.
IIRC, the Greek archaelogists have named tells/mounds 'Magoúla' (optional) followed by the toponym (maybe a nearby settlement) boring, I know. It definitely should have a cool nickname though.
You'll have to refer to the Notitiae Episcopatuum for that. The order was mostly stable throughout the Middle Ages but was thrown into a state of flux by the Muslim invasions. Off the top of my head, the Patriarch of Constantinople is followed by the Metropolitanate of Caesarea and then Ephesus.
The Lands of Germany (and neighbors): The Arrival of Peace, Part 2
Thank you.
The lands of Germany (and neighbors)-The Arrival of Peace, part 2:
The Treaty of Cologne of 1658 is often presented as a pivotal moment in European diplomatic and political history, and the treaty and the war that led to it profoundly shaped much of Europe, albeit in diverse and regional ways.
The new unified Russian state came out quite well, brimming with prestige. The war had not been as short as expected, but it had been victorious and, for them, rather cheap. The conflict, both in Germany and in the Baltic, brought Russians from across all the principalities and engaged them in a common project. The humiliation of the Great Northern War had been largely erased and Russia now stood proud as a major influential power. The Russian presence at Cologne, combined with the Roman absence, also marks a shift whereby the Russians start to take precedence in Latin Europe as the premier Orthodox power instead of the Romans.
The Romans are still politically significant in Europe, but their absence at Cologne does mark a marginalization. However, as they loom less large politically, their cultural cachet grows. Greek had been one of the international languages of diplomacy at the negotiations and the second half of the 1600s sees increased interest in Greek culture, not just ancient but also ‘Byzantine’.
In the 1680s, there will be a popular trilogy of plays on Leo III the Isaurian. The first two, on his life as a frontier general and accession to the throne, and then on his defense of Constantinople in 717-18, likely would’ve gone over well with Roman audiences. The third, which presents him as an enlightened religious reformer dealing with closed-minded and corrupt priests who use fraudulent miracles and pretty icons to gull gullible laity, probably would not. It wouldn’t be the first or last time that someone had used foreign history to critique their contemporary scene, but it is still noteworthy that this instance was borrowing from medieval Roman history.
It must be stressed that the Treaty of Cologne marks the beginning of these shifts and would not become truly noticeable until the end of the century. At the Treaty, Rhomania still loomed quite large and menacing, as evidenced by the clause guaranteeing the Holy Roman Empire’s frontier at Austria. Furthermore, the interest in Byzantine history was mostly a French, Spanish, and Scandinavian phenomenon and was noticeably absent in most of the Holy Roman Empire.
Scandinavia came out battered and bruised. The defeats exacerbated the underlying issue of the Empire of All the North, the tension between the Danish-Swedish center and the Scottish-Norwegian-Finnish periphery. The attempted Russian wooing of the Finns had been a serious threat and could’ve borne significant fruit had it been given more time.
The regions most affected by the conflict were, of course, the Triple Monarchy and the Holy Roman Empire. When Henri II departed Cologne, he had accomplished practically all he had desired when he formed his cynical alliance with Theodor nearly thirty years earlier. He had avenged the humiliation of the Second Rhine War, when his father’s armies had been crushed by Wittelsbach forces which included a much younger Blucher. He had extended the frontiers of France to the great Rhine itself, conquering some of the richest and most developed territories in all of Christendom. And these conquests were mostly buffered by client states on the other side of the river. Any Imperial counterattack would find it tough going.
Yet the cost had been high, much higher than Henri had expected. Whether he would’ve made the decisions he had if he’d known the true cost is unknown, but he had made them. The French in particular had been squeezed in comparison to the English to pay and feed the war, because Le Havre du Roi found it easier to squeeze the French. The one silver lining was that except for coastal raids from Lotharingian ships early in the conflict, the war had not been fought on pre-war Triune soil.
The key issue affecting the Triple Monarchy, like that of the Empire of All the North, had not been created by the war. This was the constant tension between the English and French components. At the beginning of the war, there were signs that it might be lessening, with the use of French becoming more common at least in the upper and middle classes of southern England, and some glimmerings of a shared Anglo-French culture.
By the end of the war, that was not the case. There was a growing religious divergence with the increase in Puritanism in English Bohmanism, and even while many Englishmen were not fully Puritan themselves, in general English religiosity was more distinct from French and Irish practices which were closer to Catholicism. (Despite this, Puritan claims that Frenchmen were crypto-Catholics were almost all false.)
The religious divergence paralleled a cultural one, as this period also saw the beginning of the English Renaissance. The increase in French cultural influence as well as French cultural chauvinism, as evidenced by Louis’ tutors, sparked an English backlash. English poets and playwrights and artists celebrated what they viewed as a unique English heritage, in deliberate contrast to the French. A common theme was the Ninety Years War, when doughty Englishmen had humbled and conquered the might of France, with French vanity and decadence and numbers no match for English valor.
These elements were independent of the war; they were already stirring when Vauban marched with Theodor down the Danube. However, the war exacerbated and encouraged those trends as the war effort put increased strain on both English and French society. The English resented the demands placed on them, seeing no benefit to them. The benefit was supposed to be Bengal, but that had been lost and Henri had done nothing as he was too busy in the Rhineland. Meanwhile, the French were resentful because they viewed the English as largely responsible for the German rebellions that had cost so much French blood, and shirking their burden in the war effort. The war had not created the fire, but it certainly fed the flames.
Henri had not helped the situation either. As the war continued and became more expensive, he had leaned more and more on France. This was understandable by itself. France could supply more resources; there were seven Frenchmen for every two Englishmen, and it was easier to get conscripts and taxes and supplies out of them. But while Henri made more demands on the French, he also paid more attention to their interests and concerns. Military commissions, trade concession, tax farming contracts, government positions, and the like became more and more the purview of Frenchmen, even in areas that were not exclusively French such as overseas trade and colonialism. Henri might have married Louis to an English noblewoman, which might’ve helped win over English grandees who were being attracted by the English Renaissance, but instead he made the match with Arles.
An uglier aspect of the English Renaissance was a renewed denigration of the Irish, which the English had a centuries-old tradition of despising as savages. A common strain in nationalist thought the world over is to praise one’s own group by tearing down others designated as the Other. Much English rhetoric against the Irish was extremely similar to that used against Terranovan natives, of primitive savages who didn’t use their land properly and so could be justly dispossessed of said land. English emigration to Ireland at this time was literally an order of magnitude higher than to the New World at the time, but the hunger for land and contempt for the claims of the locals was the same.
Many Irish naturally protested at the loss of land, often through legal or financial chicanery. This was the Little Ice Age and a bad time for on-the-margin agriculturists, which gave the better-capitalized English many opportunities to take advantage of Irish bad luck. And the English-dominated law courts in Dublin could be reliably counted upon to favor English claims, even if the law itself didn’t.
So, the Irish appealed to Henri, those that could anyway. And here they got a sympathetic response. From Henri’s point-of-view, the Irish had not nearly been as difficult as the English and had provided many good soldiers for the war who had, importantly, not been in the habit of enraging the locals by desecrating their holy sites. This infuriated many of the English involved in this practice, who felt that if they couldn’t have Bengal, they should at least have Ireland. This was ‘tyrannical interference in the rights of private property and of contract’.
Henri was a strong monarch, the strongest of his age in Europe. He set his own stamp on his age to a decree no other Christian sovereign could. During his lifetime these tensions would be kept somewhat in check, because no one wanted to take things too far, for to cross Henri and live was not a likely outcome. But he would bequeath them to his son Louis, who because of his staunchly French upbringing and outlook, would be poorly equipped to handle them.
Meanwhile, the Holy Roman Empire had been sharply changed. On the one hand, it was more consolidated and concentrated, with three-fourths of its constituent members gone, absorbed by various neighbors. The victims were overwhelmingly the various microstates, although there were some larger exceptions. The former lords might have been compensated with property elsewhere to maintain them in fine lifestyle, but mostly they forfeited their sovereignty.
But it was less united. The Wittelsbachs at their height had dominated the Holy Roman Empire, in part because of their massive landholdings that put them far above any prospective peers. Theodor at his accession possessed Bavaria, Austria, Saxony, Brandenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, and various smaller packets scattered across the Empire. Ottokar of Bohemia was the only other Imperial prince who came even relatively close, and even he was not that close. Theodor could thus fairly easily direct the Holy Roman Empire to a common cause, even if said cause was one that was to Wittelsbach, not Imperial, benefit.
Leopold came nowhere close to such dominance. He just had Saxony. As peers and near-peers he had Stephen with Austria and Bohemia, Karl von Hohenzollern with Brandenburg, and Elizabeth/Karl Manfred with Bavaria and Wurttemberg. He was a First Among Equals in reality, for all of his fancier title. Furthermore, while Elizabeth hadn’t contested the Imperial crown now, the House of Wittelsbach was unlikely to be quiescent on that matter. Foreign involvement in the Holy Roman Empire was now easier too. Aside from the Hungarian-Austrian connection, which was old news, there were now the Scandinavians in Schleswig-Holstein, the Triune buffer states on the Rhine, and also the Russians had a finger in the pie as well. The Holy Roman Empire would, when unified in a common cause, still prove to be extremely formidable, but that unity would be substantially harder to create than had been the case when Theodor took the Imperial crown.
The many Germans who had risen up in hope of betterment of their condition were overall to be disappointed. Many of them had died in the fighting or in connected conditions, which cynically was to the benefit of the princes. Those who survived and returned to their homes might benefit by taking the vacant properties and goods of the dead, which dampened down some of their social discontent.
Yet there were areas that were an exception to this, and the Russians played a key role here. Russian soldiers were mostly peasants and were sympathetic to the plight of German counterparts. Russian officers were overwhelmingly from the middle and upper classes, but were also more sympathetic to the idea of a stronger German peasantry as they were used to that back at home in Russia. That the princes had been so slow to come down on the coalition side meant many Russian officers were not so sympathetic to princely concerns.
In many of the smaller states in southern Germany where the Russian expedition had been active, the Russians had armed and trained peasant levies. Rulers who had been found lax in war contributions had been forced to engage in land redistribution ‘to facilitate the war effort’, and others had been bullied into making political reforms to avoid ‘accidents’. These reforms included the abolition of various dues and duties, primarily corvee, removing landlord-controlled courts, and broadening the franchise to ensure peasant representation in local councils, assemblies, and estates.
None of these were drastic or extreme; the Russian goal here was to make the German states look more like what the Russians were used to back home, where there was still a strong social and economic hierarchy, but where the lower orders had more protection and power. Some of the princes went along with the reforms, recognizing that some of them could be used to strengthen their authority vis-à-vis aristocratic landowners. Others didn’t think so and wanted to push back once the Russians left.
Those who felt that way soon ran into problems. The peasants were armed and knew how to use said arms and were not inclined to return to old ways. Documentary evidence of said old ways was also scarce as the Russians and the German peasants had made sure to burn said documents. These minor princes, because of the small size of their states, didn’t have much in the way of military force and so appealed for outside help.
Their first call was Elizabeth of Bavaria. She was similarly inclined but had been strong enough to keep the Russians from making any adjustments in Wittelsbach lands. However, that had cost her points with the Russians, and even with the marriage alliance of her son to a Russian princess, she did not want to do anything more to endanger the Russian connection. Said Russian connection had proven far too valuable to Wittelsbach fortunes in the past and if the family was to rise again, possibly back to the Imperial crown, they would likely need it.
So, Elizabeth would not help. The next choice would be Emperor Leopold, but Elizabeth blocked that too. The princes asking for assistance were in southern Germany in what could be considered the Wittelsbach sphere-of-influence. She did not want the Habsburgs messing around in the Bavarian backyard and bolstering their authority and prestige at her expense. Thus, Leopold couldn’t intervene either. The adjustments would stand.
It is impossible to say with precision how many died in the course of the war. The area of the Holy Roman Empire in 1630 is estimated to have lost between 10 to 15 percent of its population by 1660 [1], between 2.5 and 4 million. Three million two hundred thousand is the most commonly cited figure, which includes an estimated quarter-million for Triune losses, with half of those dying during the 1650s when the fighting was most intense, and added to the eight hundred thousand estimated dead from the first phase makes for an even four million, over 3% of Europe’s population at the time. [2]
These are big numbers, and the human brain tends to not register such things fully. Instead of tragedies, they become statistics. Let us put it another way. There is a monument in Nuremberg commemorating the rising against the Triunes. One historian calculated that if the dead, all the dead, were mustered in a column four abreast and marched by the monument, it would take fifteen days for the column to pass.
At least the years after Cologne would be easier on the people of the Holy Roman Empire. They were still in the Little Ice Age, but the heavy loss of life reduced population pressure on the land which provided some silver lining. After the Raven Rebellion, the Glorious Uprising, and the war there was little energy for social upheaval and military adventures, so despite some flare ups here and there overall the years after Cologne were socially stable ones for the Holy Roman Empire.
It was a very different story elsewhere.
[1] This is still better than the OTL 30 Years War. The high-end TTL estimates are comparable to the low-end estimates for OTL. The variance is due firstly to the slightly shorter duration of the war and, more significantly, to the varying intensity. Much of the 1630s and 1650s saw high-intensity fighting and destruction, but the 1640s were much less intense. In that respect, think of it as a hybrid between the OTL 30 Years War and 100 Years War.
[2] Comparable proportionally to French losses in WW1.
Good. God knows those poor people deserve a break for a couple decades.
Excellent update, glad some of the Russian "reajustments" are sticking around post-war.
Interesting question, assuming the English get sufficiently annoyed with their position in the Triunes and try to break away, will the French try to keep them or will they say good riddance? Assuming they try to keep them, can they really try it if the English have most of the navy? I believe that if they can invade, they will win because the French portion has a bigger economy, population, and army.
Assuming that the English become independent, can they stay that way since they will be surrounded by two larger empires, the French Triunes and the EAN? I wonder if they can exploit the EAN problems by trying to link up with Scotland? A united Britain would presumably have a better chance of staying independent of both Triunes and the EAN. Losing Scotland would refocus the EAN on Scandinavia and might help resolve their issues.
Vince
Monthly Donor
Rome isn't exactly in a stable state with the Emperor refusing to rule and Athena trying to hold everything down. I believe B444 said Rome will have some issues short term in the mid-1600s but doing much better by 1700.
I assume that the French have relatively better relations with the Romans because of this?
Well well well, Russians spreading democracy and freedom. They've come so far.
What is the new population ranking of the European Great Powers?
I imagine it's Russia, Triunes, Rhomaion (+ despotates), Hungary, Leopold's HRE then Spain?
I was rereading the thread earlier and I came across a post where Basileus said that an issue with the Roman army is no rank in between Strategos and Domestikos. I wonder if a solution would be a "sort of" revival of the old rank of Magister Militum you can have for example a Magister Militum of the eastern Aegean which the Strategoi of the Ospikian, Optimatic and Thrakaseian themes are subordinate to (like how the old Magister Militii would have multiple legions under in a prefecture under their command) but who himself is subordinate to the domestikos of the east. Not sure what the Greek name would be though a quick Google search tells me Stratatales. (You could take this further in a civilian sense by bringing back the office of Pretorian Prefect, even less work for the Megas Logothe now)