I know it's a bit of a stretch especially since basque whalers in newf so earlx are just a hypothesis.I deduced the meaning of the word, it's similar to "Bacalhau" (Cod), but wanted to be sure.
What do you think, plausible or not? If the former,
A Different Chalice - A Hussite Timeline
- Thread starter Salvador79
- Start date
What do you think, plausible or not? If the former,
I think it's plausible, they could have accidentally got there through whaling expeditions.
Endgame: The Latter Half of the Great War (1435-1448)
As the Great War wore on, its scarring effects on most of the European continent and its populations worsened. As destroyed infrastructure was left unrepaired and untouched structures began to dilapidate, too, as large armies plundered the lands, as fewer investments in productive enterprises were undertaken, trade volumes plummeted and famine ravaged town and countryside alike, as plagues struck and killed more than one in five Europeans, despair befell many, disaffection with political and religious elites grew in many quarters, and even those who were still wildly determined to fight for their causes, their faith, or their hidden agenda saw clearly that the war would, in the near future, collapse on itself. It would take more than another decade for the continental conflagration to truly end, though, as it burned its way into ever new, hitherto unaffected regions.
If there is one common factor which explains all the different and divergent outcomes of the war, it is that this gruesome carnage could only be won by forces which commanded over a certain degree of depth: territorial depth, as was Lithuania`s case, population depth, as was Castile`s case, and most importantly the depth of political support which a conflict party still enjoyed in spite of all the horrors of warfare. This depth of support had been a key factor in the survival of the Hussites in the 1420s already, and it would also turn the tide in favour of the Swiss, or of the Catholic hermandades and cofradías of Iberia.
In the West, 1435 and 1436 saw the last major campaign of the Hundred Years War. While Castilian troops made good progress in the South-West and took Auch without great losses until they were called back to Iberia, where the Guerra de las Hermandades was escalating in earnest now, in the North-West, Royal French and Bündische obtained decisive victories over the Catholic alliance of the English and Burgundians. With Charles VII´s compagnies focusing mostly on his experienced cavalry and the Bündische providing a uniquely shielded infantry which was able to defend itself in any kind of territory, the French-and-Bünde alliance proved much more mobile than their opponents, who had to rely on well-defensible positions from which their longbowmen and their heavy artillery could wreak havoc on the enemy. At several occasions, the army under the command of the ingenious Swiss leader Italo Reding managed to surprise its enemy before they had been able to group themselves in secure positions, and pushed the English or Burgundians together, slaughtering them mercilessly. After serious defeats at Courtenay (1435) and Laval (1436), the remaining English and Burgundian forces retreated into their heavily fortified strongholds, giving up the control over much of the Champagne, Nemours, Perche and Maine. Another French-and-Bündische victory at Brienne (1436) caused Burgundy`s resistance on its Southern front to collapse.
While Charles VII. had regained control over a lot of territory, the support he had received from the Bund der Bünde came at a high price. Like pre-negotiated, he not only condoned their annexation of the Free County of Burgundy (which was nominally a part of the Holy Roman Empire and none of his business anyway), but he also ceded much of the Duchy of Burgundy, with the exception of the Charolais and the Westernmost regions bordering on Nevers, to the Bund der Bünde, which would hold these territories as Gemeine Herrschaften from 1437 onwards. Also, holding the new territories in the North or even launching an attack on Paris was still extremely difficult for Charles VII, who had only been able to finance his war effort through massive loans from the Genoese Bank of San Giorgio, and who had to service these loans now instead of taking out new ones.
English positions in Normandy and the Seine valley, in Brittany, and in Aquitaine were militarily safe, and so were Burgundian positions in Artois, Guise and Rethel. The defeats and losses had brought about a change in opinion regarding either side`s engagement in the Hundred Years` War, though.
To be continued.
As the Great War wore on, its scarring effects on most of the European continent and its populations worsened. As destroyed infrastructure was left unrepaired and untouched structures began to dilapidate, too, as large armies plundered the lands, as fewer investments in productive enterprises were undertaken, trade volumes plummeted and famine ravaged town and countryside alike, as plagues struck and killed more than one in five Europeans, despair befell many, disaffection with political and religious elites grew in many quarters, and even those who were still wildly determined to fight for their causes, their faith, or their hidden agenda saw clearly that the war would, in the near future, collapse on itself. It would take more than another decade for the continental conflagration to truly end, though, as it burned its way into ever new, hitherto unaffected regions.
If there is one common factor which explains all the different and divergent outcomes of the war, it is that this gruesome carnage could only be won by forces which commanded over a certain degree of depth: territorial depth, as was Lithuania`s case, population depth, as was Castile`s case, and most importantly the depth of political support which a conflict party still enjoyed in spite of all the horrors of warfare. This depth of support had been a key factor in the survival of the Hussites in the 1420s already, and it would also turn the tide in favour of the Swiss, or of the Catholic hermandades and cofradías of Iberia.
In the West, 1435 and 1436 saw the last major campaign of the Hundred Years War. While Castilian troops made good progress in the South-West and took Auch without great losses until they were called back to Iberia, where the Guerra de las Hermandades was escalating in earnest now, in the North-West, Royal French and Bündische obtained decisive victories over the Catholic alliance of the English and Burgundians. With Charles VII´s compagnies focusing mostly on his experienced cavalry and the Bündische providing a uniquely shielded infantry which was able to defend itself in any kind of territory, the French-and-Bünde alliance proved much more mobile than their opponents, who had to rely on well-defensible positions from which their longbowmen and their heavy artillery could wreak havoc on the enemy. At several occasions, the army under the command of the ingenious Swiss leader Italo Reding managed to surprise its enemy before they had been able to group themselves in secure positions, and pushed the English or Burgundians together, slaughtering them mercilessly. After serious defeats at Courtenay (1435) and Laval (1436), the remaining English and Burgundian forces retreated into their heavily fortified strongholds, giving up the control over much of the Champagne, Nemours, Perche and Maine. Another French-and-Bündische victory at Brienne (1436) caused Burgundy`s resistance on its Southern front to collapse.
While Charles VII. had regained control over a lot of territory, the support he had received from the Bund der Bünde came at a high price. Like pre-negotiated, he not only condoned their annexation of the Free County of Burgundy (which was nominally a part of the Holy Roman Empire and none of his business anyway), but he also ceded much of the Duchy of Burgundy, with the exception of the Charolais and the Westernmost regions bordering on Nevers, to the Bund der Bünde, which would hold these territories as Gemeine Herrschaften from 1437 onwards. Also, holding the new territories in the North or even launching an attack on Paris was still extremely difficult for Charles VII, who had only been able to finance his war effort through massive loans from the Genoese Bank of San Giorgio, and who had to service these loans now instead of taking out new ones.
English positions in Normandy and the Seine valley, in Brittany, and in Aquitaine were militarily safe, and so were Burgundian positions in Artois, Guise and Rethel. The defeats and losses had brought about a change in opinion regarding either side`s engagement in the Hundred Years` War, though.
To be continued.
Cont.:
In England, King Henry VI`s majority was declared in 1437. Internal conflicts, which had already divided the Minority government, now broke out with a vengeance since the option of Henry`s renunciation of his title as King of France was now on the table.
This option – renouncing the French throne in favour of peace and a consolidation of the remaining territorial gains in Northern France – was pursued by a so-called “peace party” forming around the Duke of York, Richard Plantagenet, who had become entrusted with coordinating the administration of Lancastrian France after John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford, had died in the Battle of Courtenay, and Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. Especially the latter enjoyed a certain degree of influence on King Henry – although it did not match the influence exerted on the young and politically inexperienced monarch by his uncle Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and his great-uncle Cardinal Henry Beaufort, who led the party which insisted on continuing the war and stomping out the Reformist menace on the continent as it had been in England.
Henry VI. abstained from taking an initiative in either direction – neither obtaining new grants from Parliament for continuing let alone stepping up English engagement in France, nor leading negotiations with Charles of France for the conclusion of a peace treaty. Perhaps under greater influence of his uncles, he declared his claims on the throne of France as legitimate and non-negotiable, but he also refrained from improving the position of the troops in France commanded by the Duke of York, while at the same time refusing to replace the somewhat popular duke with someone else, either.
Instead, he condoned a futile expedition against Scotland, led by John Beaufort, the Duke of Somerset, who had personal motivations to prioritise the fight against the Reformist King Archibald of Scotland, who had killed Beaufort`s sister Joan in his fight for the throne against Joan Beaufort`s husband, King James. In the Battle of Piperdean [1}, a half-hearted English expedition corps was massacred by the Scots.
This was, perhaps, the last straw, for 1437 saw the beginning of Times of Troubles in England, in which various factions took to fighting against each other. Without a peace or even a truce being negotiated between England and France, any English effort in France had become out of the question while the island sunk into a decade of bloody feuds and power struggles, which its weak and passive monarch proved unable to stop.
[1] Just like OTL.
To be continued.
In England, King Henry VI`s majority was declared in 1437. Internal conflicts, which had already divided the Minority government, now broke out with a vengeance since the option of Henry`s renunciation of his title as King of France was now on the table.
This option – renouncing the French throne in favour of peace and a consolidation of the remaining territorial gains in Northern France – was pursued by a so-called “peace party” forming around the Duke of York, Richard Plantagenet, who had become entrusted with coordinating the administration of Lancastrian France after John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford, had died in the Battle of Courtenay, and Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. Especially the latter enjoyed a certain degree of influence on King Henry – although it did not match the influence exerted on the young and politically inexperienced monarch by his uncle Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and his great-uncle Cardinal Henry Beaufort, who led the party which insisted on continuing the war and stomping out the Reformist menace on the continent as it had been in England.
Henry VI. abstained from taking an initiative in either direction – neither obtaining new grants from Parliament for continuing let alone stepping up English engagement in France, nor leading negotiations with Charles of France for the conclusion of a peace treaty. Perhaps under greater influence of his uncles, he declared his claims on the throne of France as legitimate and non-negotiable, but he also refrained from improving the position of the troops in France commanded by the Duke of York, while at the same time refusing to replace the somewhat popular duke with someone else, either.
Instead, he condoned a futile expedition against Scotland, led by John Beaufort, the Duke of Somerset, who had personal motivations to prioritise the fight against the Reformist King Archibald of Scotland, who had killed Beaufort`s sister Joan in his fight for the throne against Joan Beaufort`s husband, King James. In the Battle of Piperdean [1}, a half-hearted English expedition corps was massacred by the Scots.
This was, perhaps, the last straw, for 1437 saw the beginning of Times of Troubles in England, in which various factions took to fighting against each other. Without a peace or even a truce being negotiated between England and France, any English effort in France had become out of the question while the island sunk into a decade of bloody feuds and power struggles, which its weak and passive monarch proved unable to stop.
[1] Just like OTL.
To be continued.
Cont.:
While England fell into aristocratic strife, Charles VII´s other main enemy in the North, Philipp of Burgundy, faced very serious problems, too. He had not been able to deploy as many men as he had wished in the campaign against Charles in 1436/37 because along the Rhine and throughout the Low Countries, a couple of new fronts had opened.
Philipp`s combined inquisitorial and military offensive in Holland, begun in 1434 with the aims of reducing and, if possible, eliminating the powerbase of Countess Jacoba and of the militant Reformist groups who frequently committed acts of sabotage in Brabant and Breda and whom Jacoba sheltered, had come to a halt after less than a year. In 1435, Jacoba`s search for new allies had finally been successful, and a fresh party entered the great conflagration: the Western Frisians.
Frisia`s militant yeomanry had been wary of infringements upon their ancient rights and liberties by the Prince-Bishop of Utrecht, and recent Burgundian support for the prince-bishopric had stirred considerable anxiety among the Frisians. Traditionally, the Frisians kept out of feuds in other parts of the Empire just as they wanted others to stay out of their affairs, too. Thus, considerable reluctance and inertia had to be overcome – but Jacoba proved a convincing negotiator.
Her work was helped greatly by one of the most legendary figures in West Frisian history: Pier Sybrens, also called “Zwarte Pier” (black Pier) and, to radical Frisian Bomers, even “Saint Pier”. He was an elected office-holder in the Ommelande, and at once a popular figure of the resistance of Free Frisians against increasing encroachments by clerical authorities and a zealous Christian layman, who accused the Bishop of Utrecht not only for his political arrogations, but also for his lack of spiritual leadership and virtue.
Throughout the early 1430s, Pier Sybrens, whose family only held a modest plot of land so that he was almost the only Frisian leader of his time who did not come from a large landowning background, had also voiced a growing West Frisian unease against a quasi-feudal concentration of power which appeared to install itself ever tigther after each rebellion which occurred in neighbouring Eastern Frisia. Throughout the 1420s, first Ocko Ukema, then Focko tom Brok had claimed unelected leadership over all of East Frisia, and subsequently been swept away by popular revolt. In the early 1430s, the same pattern appeared to repeat itself now with Edzard Syarsena. In West Frisia, these developments were seen with great unease, and Pier Sybrens articulated these concerns most eloquently, at the same time formulating a political alternative. His pledge for a return to a more decentralized military organization and land ownership became the creed of a group which called itself Opstalbomers, or short: Bomers, for they sought to restore yeomen political participation in the form of the traditional gathering of the Opstalboom. As the conflict with the Prince-Bishop of Utrecht increased, and Reformist refugees from Flanders and the Prince-Bishopric arrived in Frisia, Pier Sybrens` public speeches and the political movement which he led took on a religious Reformist dimension, too.
Naturally, he was Jacoba`s ally in her fight against Philipp the Butcher. She promised that, should Pier be able to mobilise a sufficiently large militia which could fight back Philipp`s offensive, she would support the Bomers` aims both politically and militarily, including an intervention in East Frisia and a restoration of the Opstalboom.
There were enough men around to deal the Burgundians a surprise defeat in the Battle of Haarlem in 1436, it turned out.
To make matters worse for Philipp, a Common Lifer revolt broke out in Bruge only a few weeks later, too. When he returned from his unsuccessful campaign against Charles VII in 1437, Philipp of Burgundy stood with his back against the wall. In this desperate situation, he groped for a desperate measure: On the 1st of October 1437, Philipp had the bishop read out a papal bull in the Sunday mass at Brussels, which called upon all faithful for yet another crusade – against their own neighbors, against Philipp`s very own subjects.
The Crusade against the Beghards, Common Lifers and other Heretics in the Low Countries began with an unorganized assault on Bruges, which claimed many lives on both sides in the combat already. Many more would follow in the witch-hunts which terrorized the rebellious town in the weeks and months to come.
Drunk on their victory (and the looted beer) in Bruges, the crusading hordes – composed of the same peasants which, elsewhere, fought for their freedom in these very same days – turned Northwards, led by Philipp against Jacoba and her new Frisian allies.
To be continued.
While England fell into aristocratic strife, Charles VII´s other main enemy in the North, Philipp of Burgundy, faced very serious problems, too. He had not been able to deploy as many men as he had wished in the campaign against Charles in 1436/37 because along the Rhine and throughout the Low Countries, a couple of new fronts had opened.
Philipp`s combined inquisitorial and military offensive in Holland, begun in 1434 with the aims of reducing and, if possible, eliminating the powerbase of Countess Jacoba and of the militant Reformist groups who frequently committed acts of sabotage in Brabant and Breda and whom Jacoba sheltered, had come to a halt after less than a year. In 1435, Jacoba`s search for new allies had finally been successful, and a fresh party entered the great conflagration: the Western Frisians.
Frisia`s militant yeomanry had been wary of infringements upon their ancient rights and liberties by the Prince-Bishop of Utrecht, and recent Burgundian support for the prince-bishopric had stirred considerable anxiety among the Frisians. Traditionally, the Frisians kept out of feuds in other parts of the Empire just as they wanted others to stay out of their affairs, too. Thus, considerable reluctance and inertia had to be overcome – but Jacoba proved a convincing negotiator.
Her work was helped greatly by one of the most legendary figures in West Frisian history: Pier Sybrens, also called “Zwarte Pier” (black Pier) and, to radical Frisian Bomers, even “Saint Pier”. He was an elected office-holder in the Ommelande, and at once a popular figure of the resistance of Free Frisians against increasing encroachments by clerical authorities and a zealous Christian layman, who accused the Bishop of Utrecht not only for his political arrogations, but also for his lack of spiritual leadership and virtue.
Throughout the early 1430s, Pier Sybrens, whose family only held a modest plot of land so that he was almost the only Frisian leader of his time who did not come from a large landowning background, had also voiced a growing West Frisian unease against a quasi-feudal concentration of power which appeared to install itself ever tigther after each rebellion which occurred in neighbouring Eastern Frisia. Throughout the 1420s, first Ocko Ukema, then Focko tom Brok had claimed unelected leadership over all of East Frisia, and subsequently been swept away by popular revolt. In the early 1430s, the same pattern appeared to repeat itself now with Edzard Syarsena. In West Frisia, these developments were seen with great unease, and Pier Sybrens articulated these concerns most eloquently, at the same time formulating a political alternative. His pledge for a return to a more decentralized military organization and land ownership became the creed of a group which called itself Opstalbomers, or short: Bomers, for they sought to restore yeomen political participation in the form of the traditional gathering of the Opstalboom. As the conflict with the Prince-Bishop of Utrecht increased, and Reformist refugees from Flanders and the Prince-Bishopric arrived in Frisia, Pier Sybrens` public speeches and the political movement which he led took on a religious Reformist dimension, too.
Naturally, he was Jacoba`s ally in her fight against Philipp the Butcher. She promised that, should Pier be able to mobilise a sufficiently large militia which could fight back Philipp`s offensive, she would support the Bomers` aims both politically and militarily, including an intervention in East Frisia and a restoration of the Opstalboom.
There were enough men around to deal the Burgundians a surprise defeat in the Battle of Haarlem in 1436, it turned out.
To make matters worse for Philipp, a Common Lifer revolt broke out in Bruge only a few weeks later, too. When he returned from his unsuccessful campaign against Charles VII in 1437, Philipp of Burgundy stood with his back against the wall. In this desperate situation, he groped for a desperate measure: On the 1st of October 1437, Philipp had the bishop read out a papal bull in the Sunday mass at Brussels, which called upon all faithful for yet another crusade – against their own neighbors, against Philipp`s very own subjects.
The Crusade against the Beghards, Common Lifers and other Heretics in the Low Countries began with an unorganized assault on Bruges, which claimed many lives on both sides in the combat already. Many more would follow in the witch-hunts which terrorized the rebellious town in the weeks and months to come.
Drunk on their victory (and the looted beer) in Bruges, the crusading hordes – composed of the same peasants which, elsewhere, fought for their freedom in these very same days – turned Northwards, led by Philipp against Jacoba and her new Frisian allies.
To be continued.
Cont.:
Philipp`s crusade would not become a repetition of Haarlem. With many thousands of peasant crusaders as cannon-fodder thrown against them, Jacoba and her Frisian allies shifted to guerilla tactics, avoiding open battle, and harassing the crusading swarm of locusts only where conditions were favourable enough.
On the downside, this strategy exposed large territories to plunder, terror, and willful destruction. While this weakened the Frisians greatly, it also uprooted them and made radical approaches look more acceptable. Zwarte Pier, for example, led a growing flotilla of uprooted countryfolk-turned-pirates (the so-called Zwarte Hoop, or black heap) into successful plunderings of Antwerp.
1438 went by as an annus horribilis for both Frisians and Philipp`s possessions in the Low Countries. It convinced the merciless but intelligent duke to turn his attention away from the North and focus on the Middle Rhine instead. On February 14th, 1439, Philipp and Jacoba concluded the “Saint Valentine`s Treaty”, whose very unromantic content stipulated nothing but the territorial status quo ante bellum, with a mutual assurance to desist from destabilizing one another and keep the peace of the Lord and the Emperor (whoever that may be, for neither Sigismund nor Johann lived by that point, and nobody took the initiative to install a successor).
While Jacoba and Pier Sybrens now turned to the East to remove Edzard Syarsena from his arrogated position of chief of all East Frisia and restore the Opstalboom, Philipp and what was left of his unravelling crusading army united with mercenaries hired by the Prince-Bishop of Cologne and launched an attack against the unruly namesake Free City.
Köln withstood the siege for three whole weeks. When it was ultimately subdued, the tragedy and the horror of Bruges were replicated, on an even larger scale, for the city was full of Reformist refugees. The town councillors, who had refused to submit to Philipp`s orders to cooperate with the Inquisition and provide troops for the Crusade, were publicly tortured to death, and more pyres were lit. Yet another great city was plundered and wrecked.
A week after its fall, relief troops from the Reformist Bishopric of Trier arrived, only to be slaughtered, too, causing the near-defenseless bishopric to become the next target of the Crusade, beginning a pattern which would continue through the early 1440s and leaving the once thriving lands along the Middle Rhine in ruins, before an ultimate confrontation between the Bund der Bünde and Philipp`s army ended the Crusade and warfare in these quarters in 1443 – but more on that later.
Frisia´s “liberation” by the Bomers did not go quite as smoothly as Pier Sybrens and Jacoba of Bavaria, Holland, Zeeland and Hainault had hoped. The Syarsenas were able to rally a sufficiently large army to prevent a breakthrough, and then they allied with the pro-Roman Catholic Bishop of Bremen, who needed good fighters in his defensive war against the Brunswick Concordate, too, but who still had a few resources left to bolster Syarsena`s defense against the Bomers. And thus, the Frisian Civil War dragged on into the 1440s, too, preventing a recovery of these regions now also hard-hit by the conflict. Both Frisian war parties had, by now, become important providers of manpower in the war between Catholics and Reformers in Northern Germany, and the North Sea piracy they had to rely on to support their livelihood brought maritime trade down to an absolute minimum, causing the Zwarte Hoop and his Syarsena equivalents to haunt coastal towns of the enemy`s side, bringing destruction even to regions which had previously been spared of warfare.
Philipp`s crusade would not become a repetition of Haarlem. With many thousands of peasant crusaders as cannon-fodder thrown against them, Jacoba and her Frisian allies shifted to guerilla tactics, avoiding open battle, and harassing the crusading swarm of locusts only where conditions were favourable enough.
On the downside, this strategy exposed large territories to plunder, terror, and willful destruction. While this weakened the Frisians greatly, it also uprooted them and made radical approaches look more acceptable. Zwarte Pier, for example, led a growing flotilla of uprooted countryfolk-turned-pirates (the so-called Zwarte Hoop, or black heap) into successful plunderings of Antwerp.
1438 went by as an annus horribilis for both Frisians and Philipp`s possessions in the Low Countries. It convinced the merciless but intelligent duke to turn his attention away from the North and focus on the Middle Rhine instead. On February 14th, 1439, Philipp and Jacoba concluded the “Saint Valentine`s Treaty”, whose very unromantic content stipulated nothing but the territorial status quo ante bellum, with a mutual assurance to desist from destabilizing one another and keep the peace of the Lord and the Emperor (whoever that may be, for neither Sigismund nor Johann lived by that point, and nobody took the initiative to install a successor).
While Jacoba and Pier Sybrens now turned to the East to remove Edzard Syarsena from his arrogated position of chief of all East Frisia and restore the Opstalboom, Philipp and what was left of his unravelling crusading army united with mercenaries hired by the Prince-Bishop of Cologne and launched an attack against the unruly namesake Free City.
Köln withstood the siege for three whole weeks. When it was ultimately subdued, the tragedy and the horror of Bruges were replicated, on an even larger scale, for the city was full of Reformist refugees. The town councillors, who had refused to submit to Philipp`s orders to cooperate with the Inquisition and provide troops for the Crusade, were publicly tortured to death, and more pyres were lit. Yet another great city was plundered and wrecked.
A week after its fall, relief troops from the Reformist Bishopric of Trier arrived, only to be slaughtered, too, causing the near-defenseless bishopric to become the next target of the Crusade, beginning a pattern which would continue through the early 1440s and leaving the once thriving lands along the Middle Rhine in ruins, before an ultimate confrontation between the Bund der Bünde and Philipp`s army ended the Crusade and warfare in these quarters in 1443 – but more on that later.
Frisia´s “liberation” by the Bomers did not go quite as smoothly as Pier Sybrens and Jacoba of Bavaria, Holland, Zeeland and Hainault had hoped. The Syarsenas were able to rally a sufficiently large army to prevent a breakthrough, and then they allied with the pro-Roman Catholic Bishop of Bremen, who needed good fighters in his defensive war against the Brunswick Concordate, too, but who still had a few resources left to bolster Syarsena`s defense against the Bomers. And thus, the Frisian Civil War dragged on into the 1440s, too, preventing a recovery of these regions now also hard-hit by the conflict. Both Frisian war parties had, by now, become important providers of manpower in the war between Catholics and Reformers in Northern Germany, and the North Sea piracy they had to rely on to support their livelihood brought maritime trade down to an absolute minimum, causing the Zwarte Hoop and his Syarsena equivalents to haunt coastal towns of the enemy`s side, bringing destruction even to regions which had previously been spared of warfare.
Thanks! Actually, I´ll be off on holidays for two weeks, so unfortunately no updates in the next two weeks. I hope I´ll be able to squeeze in a short one later today, though. When I´m back from my holidays in Canada, I´ll finish off the war with longer updates on the Iberian Peninsula, the English Civil War, the rest of Germany, and of course Eastern Europe, where things are going to become really confusing and messed up.
Other areas suffer major population losses in this war, too: much of Germany, but also the Eastenr parts of the Iberian peninsula, and a lot of Eastern Europe will join this sad group, too. France and Northern Italy have been suffering a lot IOTL and ITTL already.
Population will rebounce after the war, much like it did after the much worse Black Death epidemics a century earlier. But land left fallow, specialists missing etc., all of that are good conditions for people who have to rely on their own labour for their livelihood, which is at least one positive aspect in all this sombre mess that any long and protracted war is.
And this war is a very early one, compared to OTL`s Europe, where a lot of the population is actually involved, not just knightly armies. A bit like an earlier Thirty Years War.
A very short update - will be back with more at around March 21st!
Cont.:
After both contenders to the Roman German throne, Johann and Sigismund, were dead, provisional constructions like the Brunswick Concordance, the Bund der Bünde or the Archstewardship of Friedrich of Habsburg became more permanent – if only practically and never explicitly, for each of them officially derived their authority from the idea of restoring the peace and order in the Empire and rebuilding it.
After its failed offensive against Meißen, the principalities of the Brunswick Concordance shifted their focus to the West. With Jacoba and the Frisian Opstalbomers, they had just gained new members farther West than they had ever extended before. Now, they practically encircled the prince-bishoprics of Bremen, Osnabrück and Münster and a number of pro-Roman Catholic principalities like the County of Oldenburg. Eliminating them would not only render all of Northern Germany a solidly Reformist block controlled by the Brunswick Concordance. The secularisations would also provide the exhausted fighters with ample rewards for their pains.
The political limbo in which the Holy Roman Empire found itself was the official pretext for this new round of hostilities in Northern Germany. The members of the Brunswick Concordance insisted that a new Reichstag be called together in accordance with a formula they had come up with, and that this Reichstag lay down the ground rules for a reconstructed Empire, and on the basis of these rules elect a new Emperor or have another electoral body do this job.
The pro-Roman Catholic prince-bishoprics, principalities and free cities of the North as well as Syarsena`s Frisians did not agree with this proposal at all, and not only because the Concordance`s formula was unfavourable for them. They also insisted that the Brunswickers first acknowledged the Archstewardship of Friedrich of Habsburg and the century-old Golden Bull as the ground rules; only then would a Reichstag be legitimate to discuss far-reaching matters of imperial constitution.
Hostilities between the Brunswick Concordance and the (Catholic) Bremen Alliance commenced in 1438 and continued for seven years, even when the war had already ended in the West.
Cont.:
After both contenders to the Roman German throne, Johann and Sigismund, were dead, provisional constructions like the Brunswick Concordance, the Bund der Bünde or the Archstewardship of Friedrich of Habsburg became more permanent – if only practically and never explicitly, for each of them officially derived their authority from the idea of restoring the peace and order in the Empire and rebuilding it.
After its failed offensive against Meißen, the principalities of the Brunswick Concordance shifted their focus to the West. With Jacoba and the Frisian Opstalbomers, they had just gained new members farther West than they had ever extended before. Now, they practically encircled the prince-bishoprics of Bremen, Osnabrück and Münster and a number of pro-Roman Catholic principalities like the County of Oldenburg. Eliminating them would not only render all of Northern Germany a solidly Reformist block controlled by the Brunswick Concordance. The secularisations would also provide the exhausted fighters with ample rewards for their pains.
The political limbo in which the Holy Roman Empire found itself was the official pretext for this new round of hostilities in Northern Germany. The members of the Brunswick Concordance insisted that a new Reichstag be called together in accordance with a formula they had come up with, and that this Reichstag lay down the ground rules for a reconstructed Empire, and on the basis of these rules elect a new Emperor or have another electoral body do this job.
The pro-Roman Catholic prince-bishoprics, principalities and free cities of the North as well as Syarsena`s Frisians did not agree with this proposal at all, and not only because the Concordance`s formula was unfavourable for them. They also insisted that the Brunswickers first acknowledged the Archstewardship of Friedrich of Habsburg and the century-old Golden Bull as the ground rules; only then would a Reichstag be legitimate to discuss far-reaching matters of imperial constitution.
Hostilities between the Brunswick Concordance and the (Catholic) Bremen Alliance commenced in 1438 and continued for seven years, even when the war had already ended in the West.
Cont.:
The relative peace, to which Germany returned around the middle of the 1440s, was not one signed by the principal warring parties. By that time, the war had simply consumed all available resources. It being one of the earliest wars which would later come to be called “general wars” or “popular wars”, i.e. wars not (primarily) fought between professional (“knightly”) forces but, in many cases, between militias, crusading hordes, levies and the like, with a few mercenaries – often from previous aforementioned background – thrown in, this meant that most of Germany was thoroughly exhausted. For the last major powers standing – the Bund der Bünde, which thrived on its huge gains in the West, the Archduke of Austria, the Brunswick Concordance and Philip of Burgundy – this exhaustion was a financial and economic one and an exhaustion of support for further warfare among the politically relevant segments of the populace.
For many other regions, though, it meant true and bottomless exhaustion of, well, everything. The Frisian North-West, Lower Saxony and the lands along the Rhine, where Catholic forces of the Bremen Alliance and Burgundy fought against Reformist Brunswickers, who increasingly depended on foreign aid from King Erik of the Scandinavian Kalmar kingdoms, but also Eastern Swabia and the lands along the River Main, where Bündische fought against Habsburg forces, as well as the rolling forested hills of central Germany, where all parties were involved in one way or other had been severely reduced in population and infrastructure. Villages and hamlets burned, harvests repeatedly scorched, towns reduced to ruins – it was plainly impossible for the large popular armies which faced each other in this greatest continental war of the century to live off the land any longer which they had turned into one huge battlefield, by the middle of the 1440s.
As the war petered out in Germany, every principality and every bishopric, every town and every imperial knight had aligned with one of the four remaining power blocs and thus, implicitly, with either Reformism or Roman Catholicism. It left the German-speaking population of the (former) Holy Roman Empire split into two almost equally large confessional blocs – but the Reformist bloc, which was slightly larger, would splinter over the next centuries into various factions and sects anyway.
While warfare was ending, this did not mean that the four power blocs had somehow agreed on a new formula for the Empire, for living together, or anything at all. According to rumours, the armistice in the North was preceded by secret negotiations between Philip of Burgundy and Wilhelm of Braunschweig – the latter, whom the Confessional War revealed as the undoubtedly superior military leader as compared to Johann of Brandenburg, the other major princely leader of the Brunswick Concordance who had advanced plans for building up a centralized bureaucracy in his large but marginal principality, but whose bad luck on the battlefield had become a bane for the Reformers in the North, [long syntactic bracket closing:] had become an inofficial spokesperson for the Concordance –, while the armistice in the South may have followed similar talks between Friedrich of Habsburg and the mayor of Zürich, Rudolf Stüssi. Whether this be true or not, there was certainly nothing amounting to a peace treaty, or an agreement on how to reconstitute the Holy Roman Empire. No unified Reichstag would meet again – for a very long time.
There were simply too many divergencies for an agreement. This was not only true for the chasm between Reformers and Roman Catholics. If confession had been the only problem at stake, then the Brunswick Concordance and the Bund der Bünde on the one hand, and the Habsburg-dominated South-East and the Burgundian-dominated North-West (for the fifth player, the Bremen Alliance, fell apart after a decisive defeat in 1444, with some of its member territories being overrun by Concordance and Opstalbomer forces and others fleeing under the protective umbrella of a resurgent Greater Duke Philip of Burgundy) should have formed into two blocs at least.
But not even Reformers and Roman Catholics could agree on a common foundation, apart from their shared obedience to either the pope in Rome, or the pope in Avignon and its Councils. Fundamental socio-political background differences, diverging views on the essence of a future Empire, and last but not least personal ambitions prevented the formation of merely two Germanies, and caused the creation of the four (predominantly) German polities which would enter the threshold into modernity.
Among the Reformers, even before theological disagreements became more virulent towards the end of the 15th century, the Brunswick Concordance and the Bund der Bünde did not share a common vision of the future Holy Roman Empire. While almost all members of the Brunswick Concordance – most of them being secular territorial principalities – envisioned a construction not too different from the old Empire, only with an institutionalized Reichsgericht [superior court] and based on the Reformed faith, i.e. without powerful Rome-controlled prince-bishoprics, the majority of the members of the Bund der Bünde wanted political structures shaped from the bottom upwards, following the principles of voluntary confederal association and, at least in some cases, also emphasizing the importance of communal assemblies in determining policy. (The Bund der Bünde was not a uniform bloc in this respect, either, and some of its members and sub-federations would have welcomed an agreement with the Brunswickers, but in the 1440s, they saw it as their immediate priority and necessity to pursue a common Bündische policy.) From about 1440 onwards, the relatively greater internal strength of the Bund der Bünde compared to the Brunswick Concordance, which they saw as overly influenced by Scandinavia, added to the problems, for proud princes like Johann and Wilhelm would never simply join the Bund der Bünde as simple members, while the Bündische, on the other hand, refused to even think about a multi-layered corporative constitution in the typical medieval make-up, in which weaker, foreign-influenced princes would see themselves as the first estate and relegate the defiant townsmen, peasants and petty knights of the South-West to the second and third ranks. Permanent peace between both Reformed blocs was agreed upon and kept for many decades, but negotiations between delegations from the Bund and the Concordance over convening a Reformed Reichstag repeatedly broke down in 1445, 1446 and 1448. After that, both sides simply stuck with insisting on their own view of things and benignly ignoring the differences of opinion among their allies, practically treating each other like allied foreign countries, but never openly admitting to this state of affairs.
Discord within the Roman Catholic camp was no smaller, and it had a lot to do with the two major leaders, who were both unwilling, unable and uncompelled to either submit and accept the other as Emperor, or even agree on a procedure through which a third person could be elevated to that position. Friedrich of Habsburg would have liked to become Roman German King and Holy Roman Emperor [1], but as long as not even the Burgundy-influenced Low Countries and Rhineland would elect him or even assemble in a Reichstag with that purpose, he was content with the new position of arch-steward for which he could point to the legitimacy provided by the deceased Sigismund of Luxemburg, and the title of arch-duke which he had created for himself to match that role.
Philip of Burgundy never appeared to strive for the supreme position within the empire himself. On the other hand, he began to test the waters for an elevation of one of his duchies to a kingdom in the early 1440s, and this ambition, which would further cement the de facto segregation of the Burgundian and Burgundy-influenced North-West from the Holy Roman Empire, annoyed Friedrich of Habsburg to no end. Until 1447, Pope Eugene IV. was the only hurdle on the path to Philip`s goal. When Eugene died and Philip of Burgundy played a crucial role in installing the Castilian Alonso de Borja [2] as his successor, against the ambitions of Eugene`s mentee, the Venetian Ludovico Trevisan, the new Pope Pius II. [3] returned the favour by sending Philip the newly forged Crown of the Kingdom of Brabant in 1448. From that point onwards, any agreement between Philip and Friedrich was ultimately ruled out. Philip consolidated the control over his new kingdom, and corroborated his position as de facto overlord over much of North-Western Germany after the collapse of the Bremen Alliance by having members of his family installed as prince-bishops in Cologne, Münster, and Trier.
Militarily, Philip and Friedrich were also very much occupied on entirely different fronts. While Friedrich had been busy with the succession wars in Hungary from the late 1430s to the early 1440s and remained engaged in hostilities with Hussites, Poles, Lithuanians, and Ottomans, Philip continued to fight against the French King Charles, who did not tire to attempt to wrestle at least Paris and the Seine Basin from Philip and the French dukes and other powerholders either aligned with Philip or with one of the parties in the English Troubles, either way acknowledging the distant Henry VI. and not Charles VII. as their king. Neither Charles, nor his successors should manage this. This failure sealed the shift of the French capital and court from Paris to Tours, which had also become the seat of the now permanently convening États Généraux by 1448. To this end, Philip tried everything which stood in his powers to bring England back into the war – while Friedrich`s foreign policies were focused elsewhere, on Italy and the Balkans.
While Philip`s powers were certainly insufficient to bring about his desired political outcome in England, they undoubtedly contributed to the prolonging of the English Times of Troubles. When the duke of York and the Percys were close to obtaining a decisive victory over Beaufort and the dukes of Somerset and Gloucester in 1442, for example, he was defeated by the combined forces of the War Party, a city militia of Londoners, and a mercenary band sent by Philip. The war party was far from able to restore “King Henry`s peace” throughout the kingdom, though. For two years, Richard Plantagenet was forced to coordinate his operations from a base in Ireland, before he returned with full force in 1444 – even though he, too, never managed to impose his agenda completely on the weak King Henry VI. or advance his associates thoroughly enough, thus allowing his opponents to regain their strength, too, rendering the kingdom ungovernable again.
Philip`s focus on the West was as evident and perhaps inevitable as was Friedrich`s focus on the East - after all, he was not only Archsteward of the Holy Roman Empire (a claim recognised outside Austria only by the Bavarian and Franconian lands he immediately controlled, by the Margraves of Meißen and a few minor nobles in Thuringia as well as, until 1461, by the Hanseatic towns), but also King of Hungary and Croatia. Even though this other realm was also diminished as a result of his wars against multiple enemies, the rump-Hungary and rump-Croatia he was left with formed, together with his Austrian Erblande and his overlordship over Bavaria and Franconia, a solid territorial block and a bulwark against anti-Catholic/Christian forces, which beset it from all sides.
[1] Which he did IOTL, beginning a long Habsburg domination of the HRE.
[2] IOTL, he would become Pope Callixtus III. in 1455.
[3] Not to be confused with OTL´s Pius II., who acceded IOTL in 1458. IOTL in 1447, Pope Nicholas was elected – the guy who allowed Portugal to enslave any and all non-Christians in Africa, thus creating a monopoly on early Atlantic slave trade for the Portuguese for more than half a century.
I´ll try to post a confessional map of Germany around 1450 soon, and then we`re going to shift our focus Eastwards again.
The relative peace, to which Germany returned around the middle of the 1440s, was not one signed by the principal warring parties. By that time, the war had simply consumed all available resources. It being one of the earliest wars which would later come to be called “general wars” or “popular wars”, i.e. wars not (primarily) fought between professional (“knightly”) forces but, in many cases, between militias, crusading hordes, levies and the like, with a few mercenaries – often from previous aforementioned background – thrown in, this meant that most of Germany was thoroughly exhausted. For the last major powers standing – the Bund der Bünde, which thrived on its huge gains in the West, the Archduke of Austria, the Brunswick Concordance and Philip of Burgundy – this exhaustion was a financial and economic one and an exhaustion of support for further warfare among the politically relevant segments of the populace.
For many other regions, though, it meant true and bottomless exhaustion of, well, everything. The Frisian North-West, Lower Saxony and the lands along the Rhine, where Catholic forces of the Bremen Alliance and Burgundy fought against Reformist Brunswickers, who increasingly depended on foreign aid from King Erik of the Scandinavian Kalmar kingdoms, but also Eastern Swabia and the lands along the River Main, where Bündische fought against Habsburg forces, as well as the rolling forested hills of central Germany, where all parties were involved in one way or other had been severely reduced in population and infrastructure. Villages and hamlets burned, harvests repeatedly scorched, towns reduced to ruins – it was plainly impossible for the large popular armies which faced each other in this greatest continental war of the century to live off the land any longer which they had turned into one huge battlefield, by the middle of the 1440s.
As the war petered out in Germany, every principality and every bishopric, every town and every imperial knight had aligned with one of the four remaining power blocs and thus, implicitly, with either Reformism or Roman Catholicism. It left the German-speaking population of the (former) Holy Roman Empire split into two almost equally large confessional blocs – but the Reformist bloc, which was slightly larger, would splinter over the next centuries into various factions and sects anyway.
While warfare was ending, this did not mean that the four power blocs had somehow agreed on a new formula for the Empire, for living together, or anything at all. According to rumours, the armistice in the North was preceded by secret negotiations between Philip of Burgundy and Wilhelm of Braunschweig – the latter, whom the Confessional War revealed as the undoubtedly superior military leader as compared to Johann of Brandenburg, the other major princely leader of the Brunswick Concordance who had advanced plans for building up a centralized bureaucracy in his large but marginal principality, but whose bad luck on the battlefield had become a bane for the Reformers in the North, [long syntactic bracket closing:] had become an inofficial spokesperson for the Concordance –, while the armistice in the South may have followed similar talks between Friedrich of Habsburg and the mayor of Zürich, Rudolf Stüssi. Whether this be true or not, there was certainly nothing amounting to a peace treaty, or an agreement on how to reconstitute the Holy Roman Empire. No unified Reichstag would meet again – for a very long time.
There were simply too many divergencies for an agreement. This was not only true for the chasm between Reformers and Roman Catholics. If confession had been the only problem at stake, then the Brunswick Concordance and the Bund der Bünde on the one hand, and the Habsburg-dominated South-East and the Burgundian-dominated North-West (for the fifth player, the Bremen Alliance, fell apart after a decisive defeat in 1444, with some of its member territories being overrun by Concordance and Opstalbomer forces and others fleeing under the protective umbrella of a resurgent Greater Duke Philip of Burgundy) should have formed into two blocs at least.
But not even Reformers and Roman Catholics could agree on a common foundation, apart from their shared obedience to either the pope in Rome, or the pope in Avignon and its Councils. Fundamental socio-political background differences, diverging views on the essence of a future Empire, and last but not least personal ambitions prevented the formation of merely two Germanies, and caused the creation of the four (predominantly) German polities which would enter the threshold into modernity.
Among the Reformers, even before theological disagreements became more virulent towards the end of the 15th century, the Brunswick Concordance and the Bund der Bünde did not share a common vision of the future Holy Roman Empire. While almost all members of the Brunswick Concordance – most of them being secular territorial principalities – envisioned a construction not too different from the old Empire, only with an institutionalized Reichsgericht [superior court] and based on the Reformed faith, i.e. without powerful Rome-controlled prince-bishoprics, the majority of the members of the Bund der Bünde wanted political structures shaped from the bottom upwards, following the principles of voluntary confederal association and, at least in some cases, also emphasizing the importance of communal assemblies in determining policy. (The Bund der Bünde was not a uniform bloc in this respect, either, and some of its members and sub-federations would have welcomed an agreement with the Brunswickers, but in the 1440s, they saw it as their immediate priority and necessity to pursue a common Bündische policy.) From about 1440 onwards, the relatively greater internal strength of the Bund der Bünde compared to the Brunswick Concordance, which they saw as overly influenced by Scandinavia, added to the problems, for proud princes like Johann and Wilhelm would never simply join the Bund der Bünde as simple members, while the Bündische, on the other hand, refused to even think about a multi-layered corporative constitution in the typical medieval make-up, in which weaker, foreign-influenced princes would see themselves as the first estate and relegate the defiant townsmen, peasants and petty knights of the South-West to the second and third ranks. Permanent peace between both Reformed blocs was agreed upon and kept for many decades, but negotiations between delegations from the Bund and the Concordance over convening a Reformed Reichstag repeatedly broke down in 1445, 1446 and 1448. After that, both sides simply stuck with insisting on their own view of things and benignly ignoring the differences of opinion among their allies, practically treating each other like allied foreign countries, but never openly admitting to this state of affairs.
Discord within the Roman Catholic camp was no smaller, and it had a lot to do with the two major leaders, who were both unwilling, unable and uncompelled to either submit and accept the other as Emperor, or even agree on a procedure through which a third person could be elevated to that position. Friedrich of Habsburg would have liked to become Roman German King and Holy Roman Emperor [1], but as long as not even the Burgundy-influenced Low Countries and Rhineland would elect him or even assemble in a Reichstag with that purpose, he was content with the new position of arch-steward for which he could point to the legitimacy provided by the deceased Sigismund of Luxemburg, and the title of arch-duke which he had created for himself to match that role.
Philip of Burgundy never appeared to strive for the supreme position within the empire himself. On the other hand, he began to test the waters for an elevation of one of his duchies to a kingdom in the early 1440s, and this ambition, which would further cement the de facto segregation of the Burgundian and Burgundy-influenced North-West from the Holy Roman Empire, annoyed Friedrich of Habsburg to no end. Until 1447, Pope Eugene IV. was the only hurdle on the path to Philip`s goal. When Eugene died and Philip of Burgundy played a crucial role in installing the Castilian Alonso de Borja [2] as his successor, against the ambitions of Eugene`s mentee, the Venetian Ludovico Trevisan, the new Pope Pius II. [3] returned the favour by sending Philip the newly forged Crown of the Kingdom of Brabant in 1448. From that point onwards, any agreement between Philip and Friedrich was ultimately ruled out. Philip consolidated the control over his new kingdom, and corroborated his position as de facto overlord over much of North-Western Germany after the collapse of the Bremen Alliance by having members of his family installed as prince-bishops in Cologne, Münster, and Trier.
Militarily, Philip and Friedrich were also very much occupied on entirely different fronts. While Friedrich had been busy with the succession wars in Hungary from the late 1430s to the early 1440s and remained engaged in hostilities with Hussites, Poles, Lithuanians, and Ottomans, Philip continued to fight against the French King Charles, who did not tire to attempt to wrestle at least Paris and the Seine Basin from Philip and the French dukes and other powerholders either aligned with Philip or with one of the parties in the English Troubles, either way acknowledging the distant Henry VI. and not Charles VII. as their king. Neither Charles, nor his successors should manage this. This failure sealed the shift of the French capital and court from Paris to Tours, which had also become the seat of the now permanently convening États Généraux by 1448. To this end, Philip tried everything which stood in his powers to bring England back into the war – while Friedrich`s foreign policies were focused elsewhere, on Italy and the Balkans.
While Philip`s powers were certainly insufficient to bring about his desired political outcome in England, they undoubtedly contributed to the prolonging of the English Times of Troubles. When the duke of York and the Percys were close to obtaining a decisive victory over Beaufort and the dukes of Somerset and Gloucester in 1442, for example, he was defeated by the combined forces of the War Party, a city militia of Londoners, and a mercenary band sent by Philip. The war party was far from able to restore “King Henry`s peace” throughout the kingdom, though. For two years, Richard Plantagenet was forced to coordinate his operations from a base in Ireland, before he returned with full force in 1444 – even though he, too, never managed to impose his agenda completely on the weak King Henry VI. or advance his associates thoroughly enough, thus allowing his opponents to regain their strength, too, rendering the kingdom ungovernable again.
Philip`s focus on the West was as evident and perhaps inevitable as was Friedrich`s focus on the East - after all, he was not only Archsteward of the Holy Roman Empire (a claim recognised outside Austria only by the Bavarian and Franconian lands he immediately controlled, by the Margraves of Meißen and a few minor nobles in Thuringia as well as, until 1461, by the Hanseatic towns), but also King of Hungary and Croatia. Even though this other realm was also diminished as a result of his wars against multiple enemies, the rump-Hungary and rump-Croatia he was left with formed, together with his Austrian Erblande and his overlordship over Bavaria and Franconia, a solid territorial block and a bulwark against anti-Catholic/Christian forces, which beset it from all sides.
[1] Which he did IOTL, beginning a long Habsburg domination of the HRE.
[2] IOTL, he would become Pope Callixtus III. in 1455.
[3] Not to be confused with OTL´s Pius II., who acceded IOTL in 1458. IOTL in 1447, Pope Nicholas was elected – the guy who allowed Portugal to enslave any and all non-Christians in Africa, thus creating a monopoly on early Atlantic slave trade for the Portuguese for more than half a century.
I´ll try to post a confessional map of Germany around 1450 soon, and then we`re going to shift our focus Eastwards again.
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Confessional map of central Europe around 1450.
Forget the agenda in the upper left corner, here is the real agenda:
- blue is for Conciliarist Reformed, obeying the Pope in Avignon
- yellow is for Catholic, obeying the Pope in Rome
- purple is for Hussite (with a spoiler)
Forget the agenda in the upper left corner, here is the real agenda:
- blue is for Conciliarist Reformed, obeying the Pope in Avignon
- yellow is for Catholic, obeying the Pope in Rome
- purple is for Hussite (with a spoiler)
It´s going to be both more and less than that. I´ll just hint at two clues from earlier posts:
1) what happened as a result of the cantonalization and
2) there`s a Budai Nagy Antal revolt ITTL, too...
Sure, but I will have to describe Eastern European and Iberian developments first, otherwise it would be too full of spoilers.Can you post an European confessional map too?
Endgame (II): The Eastern Theatre
Friedrich of Habsburg`s start as King Frigyes I. of Hungary was no less threatened and overshadowed by turmoil than his German enterprises as archsteward of the Empire. By 1438, he no longer only had to deal with Hussite Bratrici in the North, a rebellious nobility in Hungary Proper, an even more rebellious peasantry in Transilvania, and Ottoman border raids. Now there were also two leaders of powerful foreign countries, invading Hungary with the aim of claiming his throne, both stating that they merely answered “the call of the Hungarian estates”.
The first of these was, evidently, Wladislaw III., the young Polish king. The regency government led by Zbigniew Olesnicky had prevented him from answering the call of the Diet of Szekesfehervar and the old Hungarian nobility united by Akos Lajos for over a year – a year in which Frigyes had slowly but steadily pushed back the rebels to a few last holdouts in the North-Eastern periphery of the Kingdom. When Švitrigaila`s Lithuanians besieged Krakow and the young monarch made his grand appearance on the political stage, he announced that this would immediately change. In the autumn of 1438, he rode at the head of a Polish army into Hungarian territory from the North.
He was not alone, though. The rebellious Vlachian and Hungarian peasantry of Transilvania / Erdely and the burghers of Kolosvar had invited, in their Union of Babolna, an experienced Lithuanian military leader and one of Švitrigaila`s nephews, Žygimantas Kaributaitis (in Hungarian: Zsigmond Karibut) to rule over them. And Žygimantas had followed this call much more immediately than Wladimir, crossing the Northern Carpathians with over 10,000 Lithuanian infantry and cavalry already in the summer of 1438, just in time to save the large but poorly organized cohorts of Babolna rebels from a certain defeat at the hands of the Ban of Transilvania, Uljáki Mihály. In the Battle of Szamosújvár, Uljáki`s troops were soundly defeated and the ban himself killed.
The rebels organized another large popular gathering, near Kolosvár, in celebration of this triumph, where Žygimantas Kaributaitis was urged to march on to Buda, where Frigyes “hid”, as it was put. Budai Nagy Antal, who had been the leader of the revolt one year earlier, was elected as the new Count of Transilvania and left in charge of coordinating local defense, while
Wladislaw III. and his somewhat smaller Polish invasion army had successfully crossed the mountains by that moment, too, brushing away Hungarian border defenses much thinner than they used to be under the Gyepü system before Sigismund`s military reforms. The Polish attack, after the long waiting, coming as a bit of a surprise, it took Frigyes a bit of time to react. When he did, he threw substantial parts of the army he had destined for a head-on confrontation with Žygimantas to the North, now leaving the Southern Pannonian Plain with weaker defenses.
This division of forces proved a fatal mistake, leading to Hungarian defeats on both fronts. Žygimantas defeated the Eastern army at Szolnok on October 28th, 1438, while Wladislaw III. chased the Hungarians off the battlefield at Gyöngyös on November 10th. Žygimantas and the rebel army he was leading were also the first to reach Buda on November 5th. They received a mixed, but overall not quite negative reception from the population in the town of Pest, on the Eastern bank of the Danube, from where the royal castle on Buda`s hills were stormed four days later with fresh forces. Frigyes and his court had already fled to Vienna at that point, where they would stay for the winter, gathering forces for a campaign of reconquest.
Frigyes` 1439 campaign of reconquest was facilitated by how his opponents would react to the fall of Buda. Žygimantas Kaributaitis was hailed as the new King Zsigmond by a popular gathering of Buda and Pest inhabitants. Supporters of Frigyes and the Dragoners abounded within the twin cities, too, of course, but they kept a low profile at first. What was more problematic to the new monarch of Lithuanian descent was that the members of the old nobility who had called Wladimir III. for aid would, to a great extent, not declare their loyalty to him and acknowledge him, either. Instead, they upheld that they had elected Wladimir (Ulászlo) at the Diet of Szekesfehervar.
The reasons for Žygimantas` lack of popularity among the traditional aristocracy were the same reasons for which he was hailed by the simple commoners in the twin cities and elsewhere: he had not been elected by those who perceived themselves as the rightful, wise, educated, legitime leaders of the land, but by insurgent hordes of unwashed peasants and petty crafters. While Žygimantas had not yet been clear on the agenda he would pursue as a monarch, the old establishment was not expecting much good to come from his reign. Neither did they see any chance for Žygimantas to be supported by the Croatian estates, which would be a prerequisite in order to avoid a protracted civil war and beat back Frigyes and the hegemony of his Dragoners successfully.
Thus, the Polish invasion army led by their boisterious young monarch marched to Buda, too, where they arrived less than two weeks after Žygimantas.
To be continued.
Friedrich of Habsburg`s start as King Frigyes I. of Hungary was no less threatened and overshadowed by turmoil than his German enterprises as archsteward of the Empire. By 1438, he no longer only had to deal with Hussite Bratrici in the North, a rebellious nobility in Hungary Proper, an even more rebellious peasantry in Transilvania, and Ottoman border raids. Now there were also two leaders of powerful foreign countries, invading Hungary with the aim of claiming his throne, both stating that they merely answered “the call of the Hungarian estates”.
The first of these was, evidently, Wladislaw III., the young Polish king. The regency government led by Zbigniew Olesnicky had prevented him from answering the call of the Diet of Szekesfehervar and the old Hungarian nobility united by Akos Lajos for over a year – a year in which Frigyes had slowly but steadily pushed back the rebels to a few last holdouts in the North-Eastern periphery of the Kingdom. When Švitrigaila`s Lithuanians besieged Krakow and the young monarch made his grand appearance on the political stage, he announced that this would immediately change. In the autumn of 1438, he rode at the head of a Polish army into Hungarian territory from the North.
He was not alone, though. The rebellious Vlachian and Hungarian peasantry of Transilvania / Erdely and the burghers of Kolosvar had invited, in their Union of Babolna, an experienced Lithuanian military leader and one of Švitrigaila`s nephews, Žygimantas Kaributaitis (in Hungarian: Zsigmond Karibut) to rule over them. And Žygimantas had followed this call much more immediately than Wladimir, crossing the Northern Carpathians with over 10,000 Lithuanian infantry and cavalry already in the summer of 1438, just in time to save the large but poorly organized cohorts of Babolna rebels from a certain defeat at the hands of the Ban of Transilvania, Uljáki Mihály. In the Battle of Szamosújvár, Uljáki`s troops were soundly defeated and the ban himself killed.
The rebels organized another large popular gathering, near Kolosvár, in celebration of this triumph, where Žygimantas Kaributaitis was urged to march on to Buda, where Frigyes “hid”, as it was put. Budai Nagy Antal, who had been the leader of the revolt one year earlier, was elected as the new Count of Transilvania and left in charge of coordinating local defense, while
Wladislaw III. and his somewhat smaller Polish invasion army had successfully crossed the mountains by that moment, too, brushing away Hungarian border defenses much thinner than they used to be under the Gyepü system before Sigismund`s military reforms. The Polish attack, after the long waiting, coming as a bit of a surprise, it took Frigyes a bit of time to react. When he did, he threw substantial parts of the army he had destined for a head-on confrontation with Žygimantas to the North, now leaving the Southern Pannonian Plain with weaker defenses.
This division of forces proved a fatal mistake, leading to Hungarian defeats on both fronts. Žygimantas defeated the Eastern army at Szolnok on October 28th, 1438, while Wladislaw III. chased the Hungarians off the battlefield at Gyöngyös on November 10th. Žygimantas and the rebel army he was leading were also the first to reach Buda on November 5th. They received a mixed, but overall not quite negative reception from the population in the town of Pest, on the Eastern bank of the Danube, from where the royal castle on Buda`s hills were stormed four days later with fresh forces. Frigyes and his court had already fled to Vienna at that point, where they would stay for the winter, gathering forces for a campaign of reconquest.
Frigyes` 1439 campaign of reconquest was facilitated by how his opponents would react to the fall of Buda. Žygimantas Kaributaitis was hailed as the new King Zsigmond by a popular gathering of Buda and Pest inhabitants. Supporters of Frigyes and the Dragoners abounded within the twin cities, too, of course, but they kept a low profile at first. What was more problematic to the new monarch of Lithuanian descent was that the members of the old nobility who had called Wladimir III. for aid would, to a great extent, not declare their loyalty to him and acknowledge him, either. Instead, they upheld that they had elected Wladimir (Ulászlo) at the Diet of Szekesfehervar.
The reasons for Žygimantas` lack of popularity among the traditional aristocracy were the same reasons for which he was hailed by the simple commoners in the twin cities and elsewhere: he had not been elected by those who perceived themselves as the rightful, wise, educated, legitime leaders of the land, but by insurgent hordes of unwashed peasants and petty crafters. While Žygimantas had not yet been clear on the agenda he would pursue as a monarch, the old establishment was not expecting much good to come from his reign. Neither did they see any chance for Žygimantas to be supported by the Croatian estates, which would be a prerequisite in order to avoid a protracted civil war and beat back Frigyes and the hegemony of his Dragoners successfully.
Thus, the Polish invasion army led by their boisterious young monarch marched to Buda, too, where they arrived less than two weeks after Žygimantas.
To be continued.