An Age of Miracles Continues: The Empire of Rhomania
- Thread starter Basileus444
- Start date
Yeah, for all the talk about the Triunes the Romans have a much more prominent ethnic problem that could be handled through liberal application of the "Why don't we take X and put them in Place B" SpongeBob meme. On the other hand the same problem is likely to be resolved one way or another during the upcoming showdown with the Ottomans, as they are an extremely obvious 5th column in the making.
I don't think that those kinds of ethnic tensions can be resolved by simply dumping one ethnicity in Australia, because the logistics wouldn't make it worthwhile.
In total, the British only transported around 165,000 convicts to Australia across 80 years (1780s - 1868).
The population of Australia in 1861 (after around 75 years of convict transportation and free settlement, along with the Victoria gold rush) was 1.15 million.
In 1600 OTL, around a million people resided in Ottoman Iraq. I can see the TTL figures being higher, because Ottoman Mesopotamia suffered comparatively less war and destruction in TTL than in OTL.
Then, remember that if Rhomania chooses to dump convicts or troublesome ethnic minorities in Australia, it would either have to do so itself or offer really heavy subsidies to convince your average ship lord to drop the spices and start shipping people.
Finally, Australia is many thousands of miles away from the nearest currently Roman-heartland naval base, in Aqaba if I remember correctly, and it's far more likely that the path would be to collect the people in question in northern Mesopotamia, move them to Antioch or Tyre, ship them to Alexandria, shift them to barges, float them across the Canal of the Pharaohs, shift them again to Red Sea boats, then shift them again to proper ocean-going sailboats, before crossing another several thousand miles before getting to Australia.
In short, relocating even a significant minority of these people to Australia as a policy now, or even in the 1800s would, in my opinion, be so costly that the Roman exchequer would rather suggest just slaughtering the lot.
In total, the British only transported around 165,000 convicts to Australia across 80 years (1780s - 1868).
The population of Australia in 1861 (after around 75 years of convict transportation and free settlement, along with the Victoria gold rush) was 1.15 million.
In 1600 OTL, around a million people resided in Ottoman Iraq. I can see the TTL figures being higher, because Ottoman Mesopotamia suffered comparatively less war and destruction in TTL than in OTL.
Then, remember that if Rhomania chooses to dump convicts or troublesome ethnic minorities in Australia, it would either have to do so itself or offer really heavy subsidies to convince your average ship lord to drop the spices and start shipping people.
Finally, Australia is many thousands of miles away from the nearest currently Roman-heartland naval base, in Aqaba if I remember correctly, and it's far more likely that the path would be to collect the people in question in northern Mesopotamia, move them to Antioch or Tyre, ship them to Alexandria, shift them to barges, float them across the Canal of the Pharaohs, shift them again to Red Sea boats, then shift them again to proper ocean-going sailboats, before crossing another several thousand miles before getting to Australia.
In short, relocating even a significant minority of these people to Australia as a policy now, or even in the 1800s would, in my opinion, be so costly that the Roman exchequer would rather suggest just slaughtering the lot.
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Still alive, with bouts of sanity in between periods of insanity.
Vlachia: As usual, @JSC provides excellent analysis. Yes, there are issues with long-term viability, but in long-term we’re talking decades. The landlords themselves have a vested interest in maintaining stability. They want to squeeze the peasants for all they can, but they also don’t want a peasant revolt. They’ll push too far at some point, and that might be the catalyst for reform, but not while the system still works for those in power who benefit from the arrangement.
In fact, a Vlach King that pushed for reform would likely get smashed down quick because said push for reform could well be the spark that ignites the explosion. People get really angry if you get their hopes up and then don’t deliver the goods.
Rhomania should invest on improving its agriculture. But that’s easier said than done; it is the 1600s after all. Most of the Roman heartland is not good agricultural land; just look at a topographical map of Greece and Turkey. The fertilizer at this time is literally poop. The farms of Thrace are some of the most productive in the Empire in large part because they have access to the immense quantity of poop Constantinople produces daily. (I suspect this line of business is where the Bothros family comes from.)
Meanwhile Rhomania has access to cheap and plentiful foodstuffs from Vlachia, Egypt, and Scythia. So it’s much easier to just go with those options rather than innovations that have no guarantee of success.
A further point on agricultural innovation to consider. Imagine yourself as a peasant farmer. If you try a new innovation, the opportunity cost is that you won’t be able to do the old way, which is at least working to the extent that you’re still here. However, if you try this new-fangled innovation and it fails, you’re left with nothing (because of that opportunity cost) and you and your family starve. (I find this explains neatly why peasants are often very conservative when it comes to agricultural changes. If it fails, they’re gambling with their children’s lives. So few are inclined to take the gamble.)
Wouldn’t do anything. Vlachia would retain all internal administration; the only change is that their monarch is also personally the Emperor of the Romans. And the Emperor of the Romans is going to be completely fixated on the Roman aspect and perspective and interests. King of Vlachia is very unimpressive compared to that.
The situation has hardly changed from the 1580s. Chocolate is the only widespread one, although tomatoes are getting more common because pizza is good, pizza is life. But maize and potatoes are still extremely rare.
Triune Monarchs have so far been alternating between Arthur and Henri. So this Henri II is the son of Arthur II, who was the son of Henri I, who was the son of Arthur I.
Bavaria/Ravens: Not going to talk about this because it’ll be covered in upcoming updates.
@Frame: Lovely map. Thank you.
Australia: Yeah, nobody’s going to be interested in Australia for at least a century, if not more. There’s nothing to pull people there. And if people asked the Wu who settled in Singapore about the place, they’d give a ‘here are all the reasons why I left’ response.
The Wu first set up shop at Nan (OTL Darwin) but relocated to Xi Wang (OTL Sydney); I didn’t think a location in northern Australia was at all viable. Nan remained as the Wu’s window to the outside world until the collapse. The Wu that remain are in the Xi Wang area.
This is all me thinking out loud here, but here is how I see Australia proceeding. The aborigines would still have been absolutely hammered by epidemics. It might not have been as bad as OTL because they then didn’t face takeover and loss of their land afterward, but I suspect it’d be like instead of 90% dead, it’s 70% dead. Still an utter disaster.
The Wu meanwhile are in agricultural villages with at least Iron Age technology.
However I don’t see the aborigines adopting Wu-style agriculture. Firstly those epidemics mean there’s no demographic pressure to intensify food production. Secondly, the spread of early agriculture seems to have been based primarily on the spread of agriculturists, not hunter-gather groups copying it. Which makes sense as the skeletons of early farmers show that while agriculture allowed a massive increase in the quantity of human life, it was bought at a decrease in the quality of human life. Farmers were shorter and showed more signs of nutrition deficiency and skeletal problems. Farming is literally back-breaking work. The human body evolved for a hunter-gathering lifestyle, not farming. So why would aboriginal hunter-gathers want to trade their system for back-breaking drudgery?
There would be trade, with aboriginal hunters trading for Wu products. Iron implements would be the most obvious draw. I see some aboriginals becoming pastoralists, herding horses and sheep that are descended from escaped Wu livestock, trading animal products for Wu wares. But aborigines wouldn’t be copying the Wu lifestyle willingly.
Agriculture would spread, but it would be because the agriculturists, the Wu, are spreading it. The Wu who remain will have a substantial demographic advantage over the aborigines, both from greater immunity from disease and from the agriculture. As Wu numbers grow, they would spread out because they need more land, gradually displacing the outnumbered aborigines who end up either dying out or being forced, because they have no option, of adopting Wu lifeways. In that case maybe they get the numbers to stay distinct, or they end up getting absorbed. The process would likely play out similar to the arrival of the First Farmers in Europe, with the aborigines being the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.
So while any TTL First Fleet would face much greater resistance than TTL, it won’t be from the aborigines. It would be from a reviving and expanding Wu agricultural society armed with the horse and iron weapons with numbers greater than any aboriginal people could muster.
Was called the "Great South" in a few past updates. Have no idea what the native translation of that is however.
I don't expect Theodor to survive for much longer, especially if Ottokar finds out about his existence and needs him killed to secure further legitimacy as the Emperor. Alternatively, it would be interesting if Henri or even D3 discovers him. Even an insane vegetable can potentially be a dangerous tool at the hands of these men or at least a sick form of entertainment (Theodor being found by D3 would be a pretty bad ending for him, as I'm sure that he'll end up being a Crassus or a Valerian).
It's also possible that he just keels over and dies, which is probably the likeliest outcome. An undignified death for the man that desired the entire world.
The fact that the Wu are mostly located in New South Wales / Victoria is practically the worst case scenario for every European colonist that's trying to set up shop in Australia. It's the region that has the most agricultural value on the continent for growing cities (And the climate is good for the cultivation of both rice and wheat) and it's populated by hordes of people that mostly resistant/immune to Old World diseases and capable of running cavalry or even gunpowder due to trade with Nusantara or by utilizing stolen European weapons.
When the British made landfall in NSW/Victoria, disease had practically made the region barren and empty since it killed most of the native population. Here, resistance would be fierce and brutal once hostilities between the Wu/Aboriginals and the Europeans begin. It'd sour any imperialist ambitions on the continent pretty quick once they find out a Wu warlord or confederacy massacred entire settlements within a short time frame.
It probably lends more credence to an independent native Australia at least until the Industrial Revolution comes around, which could tip the balance towards the Europeans, although political reasons or perceptions towards Australia being a hellhole might still prevent the Europeans from making the first step towards outright settlement.
Also, I thought that the Wu had merged with the native Aboriginals already (at least around Northern Australia and NSW/Victoria), which is why I assumed that the Aboriginals would mostly be a farming society with the exception of the desert tribes. Seems like they remain mostly separated (although some interbreeding might still occur), and the trends are reversed, as a Wu dominated Australia is likely within a century or two with the majority of Aboriginals being absorbed into this new ethnic group, which is kinda sad.
Regardless, the Wu's negative impact on Australia thanks to the spread of Old World agriculture is as destructive as I expected. The result of this is how Australia will look to Europeans once they reach further inland. In OTL, the British colonists saw pristine plains and forests thanks to the work of the Aboriginals that carefully modified the entire continent for their use. With the Wu, I could expect the Australian wilderness to be a lot more wild and overgrown with the decline of the Aboriginal population, perhaps even more dangerous than OTL. Not a good sight for any European colonist.
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Look to the West: The Ravens' Rebellion Part 1
Everyone knows Theodor is alive. That’s why Ottokar’s legitimacy as HRE is shaky. A lawyer could make a really good case that his accession is illegal. Nobody has chosen to make an issue of it, yet, because Henri is scary, but the possibility is very much there.
There was some interbreeding between the Wu and aborigines, particularly at the beginning and with the groups around the Xi Wang area. That said, I’m extremely skeptical that the Chinese Wu would’ve been less discriminatory against the aborigines than the British were. On a civilization-ist mindset, the aborigines score very low.
Don’t know what’s in store for Australia, but right now I am interested in the Wu expansion. The Wu are an island of agricultural villages in a sea of hunter-gatherers, so their expansion is a possible mirror of the prehistoric growth of agricultural communities, but taking place in a time when the process might be recorded in writing. Anthropologists interested in the period of time between the development of agriculture and the invention of writing would be extremely interested in this case study.
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Look to the West: The Ravens' Rebellion, Part 1
Look to the West: The Ravens' Rebellion, Part 1
[1] “The glory of the noble is built upon the sweat and blood of the peasant” is one of the many famous quotes attributed to Johann Eck. The great and powerful hosts that had marshalled forth out of the Holy Roman Empire in the early 1630s had not come cheap. While they might not have had to provide much money (because they didn’t have much), the peasants had had to support those hosts with mass requisitions of foodstuffs, animals, and levies of their menfolk. The price had been high.
That peasants pay for the luxuries and vanities of the nobility is hardly new in the 1630s. Peasant uprisings, or at least discontent in the form of ‘rebellions of the weak’ (feigned ignorance, work slowdowns, ‘accidental’ breakings of equipment, etc.), are commonplace. The Ravens’ Rebellion started out as just another of these peasant uprisings, of which medieval history records many. The peasants rose up against what they considered to be intolerable and unsupportable demands, harkening back to a perceived better age in the past, in this case to the legend of the King under the Mountain, reportedly either Frederick I or Frederick II Hohenstaufen, depending on the version.
There are a couple of key reasons why the Ravens’ Rebellion stands out from the crowd. The most obvious one is that for size and duration it has few equals. Most uprisings are localized and quickly ended, either through repression or compromise (the latter is more common than might be expected; oftentimes magistrates find the peasants’ grievances to be justifiable). Neither description applies to the Ravens’ Rebellion. The other key reason is that it occurs during an era of print, which rapidly spreads both news about and the message of the Ravens’ Rebellion, spurred by Johann Eck, who is very skilled at utilizing the medium to spread the word.
The Ravens’ Rebellion begins in northern Bavaria with its official start noted in early 1636. In 1635 Friedrich Zimmermann had organized the defense of the region against Roman raiders using peasant recruits he trained and drilled, equipping them mostly with captured Roman kit. He had been extremely successful in that. As is the case whenever any soldier is captured by vengeful peasants, the lucky ones are killed on the spot. The unlucky ones are tortured to death.
Even if the Roman soldiers refrained from raping and killing (which was not the case), just by taking or burning the grain they are sentencing the peasants’ children to death, for it is the little ones who will starve in the winter when food runs short. The adult workers have to be fed enough to keep up their strength so that more food can be grown when planting comes, lest all starve. So in times of shortage, those least capable of working the fields are the ones that must be sacrificed if the whole are to endure. It is a hard and terrible thing, made all the worse by the fact that while the sacrifice is necessary, the parents still must choose to deprive their youngest children of food in order to save the rest of the family. Why in the world would those same parents show any mercy whatsoever on those soldiers who forced such a tragedy upon them?
This has nothing to do with a cultural or racial hatred. This is the hatred of long-suffering peasants suffering yet another calamity at the hand of rapacious soldiers, and unlike most disasters hurled upon them this is one the peasants can avenge. If the soldiers were Hungarians or Triunes or Bohemians or even other German-speakers, even other Bavarians, the fates of the captured would be the same. There is no place for mercy here.
Northern Bavaria had thus defended itself rather well over the course of 1635, notably without any support from Munich despite the taxes and supplies and conscripts sent there over the years. In early 1636 Elizabeth, alarmed at the breakdown of her authority there, demands the resumption of what is owed, as well as arrears. Furthermore to raise more funds for the crisis, taxes are raised. The hikes are across all Wittelsbach lands still answering to her and get blowback from all quarters, but given recent events the backlash is fiercest in northern Bavaria.
Elizabeth is aware of the danger but feels she has little choice. She needs money and has to get it somewhere, but she is prepared to enforce her will. When Friedrich Zimmermann refuses to stand down and disband his peasant force after blocking tax collectors from entering territory under his protection, she sends a column of 1200 cavalry and 3200 infantry at him. In May 1636 he ambushes and crushes the column.
The news sends shockwaves throughout all of Germany. Up to now, Zimmermann had not been a big item. Yes, he had beaten off Roman raiders, but those contingents had been measured in dozens, or at most the low hundreds. Here Zimmermann has bested a force an order-of-magnitude bigger than anything he has faced before, and it was a proper combined-arms army too. And he did it with peasant recruits he trained himself with captured weapons.
The victory emboldens the Three, as they are known, Friedrich Zimmermann, Johann Eck, and Alexios Asanes (who, given the anti-Greek animus in Germany, identifies himself as a Vlach; he has substantial Vlach ancestry). Prior to this they’d done little to change the political or economic landscape under their control save for organizing local resources for defense and ensuring that any surplus stays in the region.
The framework they seek to create has been described as peasant communalism, although the term well postdates the Three, the goal to create an idealized peasant society. The first step is to seize the land belonging to the rich and redistribute it to the poor landless workers. The argument is that anyone who is willing to work should have enough land to have a reasonable expectation to support himself and his family. (As a peasant, Zimmermann knows there can be no guarantee of such a thing. Early modern farming yields can vary wildly from year to year. But they should have enough whereby an average year can sustain the people in question.)
This doesn’t spark backlash from the richer peasants because they are not the ones targeted. The landholdings owned directly by the nobility and gentry are what are carved up and redistributed. Also a key factor that must not be ignored is that there is no insistence on land equality. Once everyone has that basic level of landholding guaranteed, surplus ownership is fine. The concerns are that everyone at least has that basic level and that the discrepancy between the smallest and biggest landowners are not too high to ensure that the big landowners do not end up becoming a new nobility and oppressing the smallholders.
This is wildly popular in the countryside, even with the rich peasants. Enough noble land is sequestered and redistributed so that their holdings are not touched and most of them even gain a little too for their troubles. Furthermore with the destruction of the local notables, the ‘big peasants’ are now the top dogs in their local area. They too have felt the annoyance of being forced to use the noble’s mill or being insulted and degraded by the estate’s bailiff. The main issue from their perspective is the elimination of the poor landless laborer, an important source of labor during peak-labor demand times like the harvests. However the base land allotments are small enough that to bolster their income the smallholders still look to the richer peasant holdings for supplementary work.
Much more pushback comes from the towns, particularly when Zimmermann starts implementing his new changes regarding bankruptcy. In bad times, peasants have been forced to get loans from the merchants and moneylenders in the towns, and since the times have been bad many loans have been made. And since the times have remained bad, those loans have not been repaid. Those peasant soldiers Zimmermann recruited couldn’t work their farms when they were killing Roman raiders after all.
With loans coming due, the moneylenders want their money, and if that’s not available then they’ll take the land instead. In early 1636 Zimmermann hasn’t done anything particularly radical other than keep law and order using local resources, so the moneylenders think business is usual. They send agents to collect the money, or the land as the case may be. Zimmermann’s opinion of the matter is made quite clear when his soldiers thrash the agents and send them packing, then declaring a general debt wipeout.
There is more behind this than just a frustration at these particular debts. It is an expression of general peasant hatred for the growing market economy which is undermining the well-being of all but the richest and most successful peasant farmers. Peasant agriculture is overwhelmingly subsistence agriculture; the concern is producing enough food to feed the peasant and his family, not for producing for the market. Sometimes surpluses are produced, but those often don’t go to the market either but remain in the village to provide feasts and gifts and connections with other local peasant farmers.
Many outsiders, both then and now, characterize this as peasant wastefulness and short-sightedness, gorging on their surplus rather than selling it. It is not. The peasant’s most reliable social safety net is his fellow peasants. While universal disasters that smash everyone do happen, most hammer blows hit randomly. Some peasants are hit hard, while their neighbors are spared. A sudden frost kills Peasant A’s crops, but Peasant B’s field in an adjacent but different microclimate comes through fine. Peasants survive by supporting each other. In the above case, B supports A with his surplus, with the understanding that when the shoe is on the other foot, A will come and bail him out. That is how peasants operate and survive. The coin made from selling the surplus grain may not be worth it if the opportunity cost is maintaining those bonds of camaraderie and reciprocity with the neighbors.
With the expansions of the market and monetary networks, more peasants do get into the market and produce for surplus to sell. But that comes with a danger. Many earlier peasant holdings are scattered across the landscape, to access different microclimates and produce different crops. The produce of each holding is small, but it avoids the risk of putting all of one’s eggs in one basket. Yet while it reduces the risk of a total failure, it is inefficient from a labor standard and makes it hard to produce a surplus, so those producing for the market focus on concentrated holdings and 1-2 crops. What they no longer produce for themselves, they’ll purchase with the money from the surplus.
However when (and it is a question of when, not if) there is a crop failure, these ‘market peasants’ have little to fall back upon. They don’t have extra holdings that didn’t fail because they concentrated all their eggs into a profitable but fragile basket. Their reciprocal connections with other peasants are weakened because they’ve neglected those for the sake of the market sales. So they have to turn to the moneylender, who is happy to oblige. However in the event of a failure to repay, the moneylender takes the land and leaves the peasant with nothing. This is in stark contrast to the reciprocal relationship of the peasants where when A has a bad year B backs him, while in the reverse A helps B, and both in the end still have their land. The moneylenders’ system in contrast is viewed as callous, cruel, uncompassionate, and unchristian.
Zimmermann is the one implementing the ban against debt collection, but Johann Eck lets fly against the hateful mentality of the moneylenders. “You forge chamber pots out of silver, while defrauding the poor. While you shit on seats of gold, a fellow child of God starves to death outside your door. You place more value on your excrement than on the lives of those without money. Hateful wretched creatures, who bring so much suffering into the world, and so little joy. If it were within your power, you would take others’ shares of sunshine and fresh air, for there is no satisfying your endless greed.”
The goal seems to be to create in northern Bavaria a type of idealized peasant society, one with the strengths and benefits of a peasant society, but without the great nobles and merchants looming over it, squeezing the peasants for all their worth. Along with the land distribution local administration goes back to the villages. The villages run their own law courts, operated by the peasants rather than the local lord. Local leadership is determined by the village assemblies, without interference from the no-longer-around local lord or his bailiff. Decisions regarding common land are decided by village assemblies. Order is kept not by the lord’s retainers but by peasant recruits from Zimmermann’s army.
The army is funded by contributions from the villages, but the villagers understand the need and provide what is required. While they don’t like paying taxes, the peasants understand the point of some of them. The key differences here are twofold. First is that the taxes to Zimmermann actually provide security and order, something the peasants desperately want as chaos is tough on harvests. The lords didn’t keep the Romans out; Zimmermann did. Secondly, the taxes are lighter. The taxes are providing essential services but not funding the luxurious lifestyles of their overlords. The three Chief Ravens eat and dress no better than any of the other birds.
Despite the attacks on predatory merchants and moneylenders, the three aren’t against all economic activity that isn’t farming. No one is. The village blacksmith is needed to produce nails, for example, for the farmers. But if he is making nails, he isn’t growing his own food. So the nails he produces need to be exchanged for food, and coinage can be used as a standard means of exchange. The key here is to keep the system from being abusive.
This is where Alexios Asanes gets involved. He is familiar with Roman literature on this concept, and there is discussion on this going back literally centuries. The Romans, even when they became Christian, never abolished usury as the Catholic Church in the west tried to do. Usury was allowed, within limits. More risky loans, such as maritime loans, had higher limits as compensation for the higher risks. Merchants could make profits on their transactions as compensation for their labors, just so long as they didn’t engage in loansharking or price gouging. Asanes works to implement a similar system in northern Bavaria. For example, moneylending is allowed again after the debt cancellation, but no one can lose their land for failure to pay back a debt.
This new peasant society will not be allowed to develop unchallenged. Elizabeth cannot accept close to one-sixth of Bavaria at its height to remain out of her control, particularly if the control is instead in the hands of a peasant, friar, and heretic priest all with delusions of grandeur of upsetting the natural order of society. Still she must swallow her pride and ask Ottokar for help. As the new Holy Roman Emperor, he has the responsibility of maintaining order in the land, and given the proximity of northern Bavaria to Bohemia, he has a vested interest in his own peasants not getting any ideas.
In early 1637 the ‘Raven State’, for lack of a better or official term, is attacked from both north and south by Bohemian and Bavarian forces respectively. The peasant troops of Zimmermann fight extremely well, inflicting a level of casualties on their attackers that appall both Elizabeth and Ottokar who cannot afford the losses in manpower, but under the pincer attack they are forced to give way. By May it would seem the Ravens’ Rebellion is about to be done, yet another footnote in the history of failed peasant uprisings.
Certainly not all, or even the majority of the peasants, are willing to continue the fight, seeing a hard road ahead and gambling that perhaps they can return to the old order (those less connected to the rebellion have some chance of clemency). But there are those not willing to make that surrender, whether because they will not or because they see no hope of mercy.
People who have been given a taste of a new world, of a better world, where they are people who matter as people instead of just being the pack mules and food procurers of their social ‘betters’, are not keen to give that up just yet. As rebels they can expect no mercy from their attackers, so they do what they must, what peasants have always managed to do despite the abuse and horror and hatred inflicted upon them by their ‘betters’, they survive. If they cannot survive here, perhaps somewhere else. If this is not to be the new Jerusalem, perhaps somewhere else will be.
The Ravens gather around the three, with their families, herds, and the possessions they can carry, determined to continue the fight for a world that has a place for them, wherever it may lead. For death is better than surrender, and there are no masters where the faithful find rest. The Bavarians and Bohemians try to halt this massing migration but Zimmermann halts them in a bloody battle that leaves a fifth of the attackers dead or wounded on the field.
“And so,” says Demetrios Sideros, “begins their Anabasis.”
“Are we attempting the impossible? Perhaps. Probably. The noble, if he could, would take even the sunshine and fresh air of the peasant. The malice of those arrayed against us is great, and so is their power. Perhaps we are fools. And yet, perhaps not. Men die. Women die. But so long as people endure, ideas will not. They may sleep for a thousand years, but burst awake again after a silence of centuries. Perhaps we will fail. But that does not mean that would be the end. Our cause, our struggle, can be an inspiration for generations yet to come, who will take up the banner where we have fallen. What we fail to achieve in our weakness, they will accomplish in their strength. That is why we must do what we do, even if it is certain we ourselves will fail.
God did not call us to feed all the hungry, or cure all the sick, or comfort all the poor. But he called us to do what we can, what is within our power to accomplish. If this task be beyond our strength, we will have at least tried. And God is merciful; he will understand.”-Johann Eck
[1] Much of the information I use for peasant society and agriculture comes from ‘A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry’. Here is the link for the beginning of the most pertinent essay series. I’m certain anyone here reading this TL for fun will enjoy this blog. I highly recommend it.
The Raven's Rebellion finally arrives. An outstanding update and I can't wait for the speculation on where this forced migration might take them. Removing other peasants from their land would seem to go against their principles, so it would need to be somewhere with an abundance of underused land or an excess of large estates that can be redistributed. I can't recall whether the Bernese league covers all of OTL Switzerland. I wonder if they could carve out and maintain their own little canton given that their diplomatic stance will be inherently non-aggressive. They'd just be those weird people in the mountains that fortify the hell out of the passes and leave everyone else alone.
The Raven's Rebellion is going to end up being extremely ugly. Imagine a three way war between the HRE, the Ravens, and the Triunes around the Rhineland happening after years of carnage at the hands of the Romans and the Triunes (The war with the Triunes is still happening so this just brings even more chaos into the mix). I can't help but think central Europe is just going to end up being an impoverished wasteland in a similar vein to the 30 Years' War if it is not already.
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I think it's an inevitability that the Wu would reunited again into either a unified state centered in Xi Wang or as a collection of tribes set in a confederacy if the paths mentioned above are universal and set in stone, but it could require decades or even centuries before we see that come to fruition. Luckily the Wu have all of the time in the world to see that kind of thing become a reality.
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I could see that as a possibility, with anthropologists seeing Australia as a model for how agriculture developed in Europe and the Middle East (Agriculture spreads throughout the continent, displacing and assimilating vulnerable hunter-gatherer societies, with the end result being a highly structured central state as villages or towns are united by a stronger state). Roman historians would also notice the Wu being fairly similar to the Japonic Yayoi peoples and their migration to Japan, with the displacement of the "primitve" Jomon/Emishi/Ainu, leading up to the creation of the Yamato kingdom and the foundation of Japan.
I think it's an inevitability that the Wu would reunited again into either a unified state centered in Xi Wang or as a collection of tribes set in a confederacy if the paths mentioned above are universal and set in stone, but it could require decades or even centuries before we see that come to fruition. Luckily the Wu have all of the time in the world to see that kind of thing become a reality.
Mix in the ongoing climatological disaster of the Little Ice Age to everything you described here and you have a recipe for complete ruin that may take decades to recover from.
Almost everyone will be affected by this little ice age isn't it?
Yes, it affected everyone during the 17th century. As for Central Europe, The 30 Years' War was pretty horrible and the Little Ice Age pretty much exacerbated all of the misery and suffering that happened during the war thanks to poor harvests and bad living conditions, contributing to the chaos.
Can't expect things to be better ITTL when the Romans practically sacked parts of the HRE while the Triunes continue to ravage the German countryside during the Lotharingian War and their invasion into the Rhineland. The Raven's Rebellion only adds more to the proverbial dumpster fire if they're migrating towards the Rhineland (likely in my opinion since they're trying to move away from Bohemia and Bavaria, with the chaos allowing them to set up their own peasant commune there). Who knows how long this situation will last (10-20 years seems likely)?
I wouldn't be surprised if much of the Rhineland became severely depopulated thanks to the series of wars that happened between Romania, the HRE, and the Triunes alongside the Raven's Rebellion. Decades, or even centuries could pass before they could rebuild the destroyed infrastructure and the population rebounds back from this low point.
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Would be low-key hilarious if after decades of planning Henri finally takes the Rhineland only for it to be worth a fraction of what he thought due to the war and depopulation as you described. Of course, the English (and to a lesser extent Irish) would still be pissed off that he added the Rhineland to the Kingdom of France. So Henri would get all the aggravation from his English grandees/nationals without anywhere near the projected massive tax/trade revenue from the Rhineland to help offset said aggravation. Which...damn.
This certainly looks interesting, and I'm double-intrigued. One for the rise of what is effectively class-focused ideology in the setting but in a meaningful way, and the other for where these peasants may go.
I won't speculate on where they are going (mainly as I have no clue - maybe Ditmarchen?), but I'm interested in the consequences of this sort of ideology being successful in Germany, especially since it has a Vlach*cough*Roman*cough* in the mix. With the recent updates there is a bit of me that thinks it COULD branch out to Vlachia, which if I recall rightly might be open to such ideas - but I'd be interested in seeing a Super-Ditmarchen scenario as well.
I won't speculate on where they are going (mainly as I have no clue - maybe Ditmarchen?), but I'm interested in the consequences of this sort of ideology being successful in Germany, especially since it has a Vlach*cough*Roman*cough* in the mix. With the recent updates there is a bit of me that thinks it COULD branch out to Vlachia, which if I recall rightly might be open to such ideas - but I'd be interested in seeing a Super-Ditmarchen scenario as well.