A Different Chalice - A Hussite Timeline

[Salvador79]

Northern Germany and Poland 1444 – 1500

In contrast to Scandinavia, much of Northern Germany was exhausted, devastated, depleted and depopulated by the end of the Great War. This was especially true for the North-West, where Catholic and Reformist forces had battled each other repeatedly, their armies marauding and burning their ways across the countryside between the Rhine and the Elbe. The statelets which came out of the war in this region were weak and powerless, aligned either to the Brunswick Concordance or to the Kingdom of Brabant and unable to influence the latters` agenda.

In the German North-East, in the heartlands of the Brunswick Concordance, things looked slightly better: at least the population losses and the damage done to urban, rural and military infrastructure were less dramatic here. Mecklenburg, Pommerania and Sachsen-Lauenburg even were more stable now than at any previous moment in their history – if only at the cost of having become mere appendices to a powerful union of Scandinavian kingdoms.

Brunswick`s princes and Brandenburg`s prince-elector (he still wore this title, like all his colleagues, even if there was no Emperor to elect anymore) Johann, both less closely tied to Scandinavia, King Erik and the Gryffins by either geography or marriage than their above-mentioned neighbours, pursued policies after the war, which were deliberatedly aimed at preserving their independence and avoiding to be sucked into the Scandinavian sphere of influence.

While the Welfs, who enjoyed a greater degree of support from their towns than the Hohenzollern did in the North, were moderately successful at building up some degree of centralized administration and modernizing their military forces through the increase of pistalen-armed infantry and heavy artillery – both reforms happening at the cost of the lesser nobility, who, naturally, viewed them with great skepticism, but did not dare to toy with the thought of armed resistance or raising the flag of Roman Catholicism –, Johann of Brandenburg failed in this endeavor, too. Johann was a well-connected aristocrat, a charming plotter, and a great admirer of the sciences, but not only was he no military leader, he was also no skilled administrator. The military adventures of the Great War had brought Brandenburg no gains – but they had cost several fortunes. When the war was over, Johann`s court faced bankruptcy. The Hanseatic-leaning towns in his realm had been subdued by force, but, unsurprisingly, they were not willing to grant him further tax increases. Octroying the taxes and extracting them forcefully would have been a dangerous enterprise with unsafe outcome, and it would run straight counter to the Reformist conciliarism Johann avowedly followed. Thus, Johann was not only unable to build up a similarly large and competent royal administration like his Western neighbor. He was also unable to afford his life-long dream: that of endowing one or more of his towns with real universities, where brilliant scholars from the Rhine, from France or even from Italy would teach (and converse with him!).

When Johann died in 1464, he left no male heirs, so his younger brother Albrecht inherited the principality. Albrecht was less interested in science, but a much more capable late medieval princely ruler. When Duke Otto III. of Pommern-Stettin died without male descendants in 1468, Albrecht claimed eventual succession for his house, while King Erik II. of Pommerania, Denmark, Sweden and so on insisted that the territory remained with his House of Gryffin. With the help of Lusatian mercenaries, Albrecht managed to force a stalemate on the militarily much more powerful Kalmar king, which meant that he was able to keep all the castles he had been able to storm.

But his most important coup was the arrangement of a marriage between his son, who was named Johann after his uncle, the reformer, and the sole daughter of Casimir Jagiellon and Anna Sanguszkova [1], Jadwiga Jagiellonka, heiress to the Polish throne.

Albrecht died in 1486, and Casimir in 1492. From then on, Johann II. of Brandenburg and Jadwiga Jagiellonka reigned together over the adjacent lands of Brandenburg and Poland. It was a union which secured what had previously been out of reach: independence, especially from dangerously powerful fellow Reformist neighbours. In Brandenburg`s case, this was the Kalmar Union.

In the case of Poland, Lithuania was the no.1 candidate for the title of scarily big brother. Ever since massive political turmoil within the Polish aristocracy, combined with threats from the Eastern neighbor, had coerced the rash young Polish King Wladimir III. to step down in favour of his even younger brother Casimir, it had become evident that, while Poland`s elites were no longer able to influence the course of Lithuanian politics, Lithuania, on the other hand, was very capable of steering the course of Polish history.

With the new alliance with Brandenburg, this would change, or so Albrecht and Jadwiga – and not only they – thought and hoped. Together, they would be strong enough to withstand foreign interference and pursue their own agenda. Johann`s father Albrecht had already pursued a policy of relaxation and a reopening of the borders for commerce with the House of Meißen, who held the Principality of Sachsen-Wittenberg and their old margraviates in Thuringia and on the Northern slopes of the Ore Mountains. Johann continued and intensified this policy, and applied it to the Hanseatic towns, which were just about to recover from the economic shock of their Baltic losses with the help of the new and surging Atlantic trade relations, too. While this brought him in opposition to the interests of the Kalmar kingdoms, Johann and Jadwiga had little to fear here, given King Christian`s passive behavior. This new and conciliatory policy also helped ease the tensions between the Polish crown and the German coast towns like Danzig and Königsberg. This, in turn, brought Brandenburg-Poland into the comfortable position of being another straw – beside Novgorod – at which the last desperate little German polities in Livonia could clutch in their struggle to preserve their independence from Lithuania.

 

[Salvador79]

The British Isles 1437-1500

The reign of the weak King Henry VI. was a time of troubles for the England. In varying coalitions, powerful baronial warlords fought against each other for influence on the king – which meant privileges – and for a host of other reasons, too. The barons had large numbers of retainers as their own private forces at their disposal, in a system which some historians have labelled “bastard feudalism”. Throughout the 1440s, their feuds haunted both England and English-controlled lands across the waves – Normandy, Brittany, Maine, Gascony, as well as those of parts of Ireland which were still under some sort of English control.

After fifteen years of infighting, which saw English possessions on the continent poorly defended against constant French needle-pricks, but in which England`s high nobility had squeezed out its lands way beyond reasonable limits in order to continue the fights among themselves, a rebellion of peasants and (temporarily) demobilized soldiers shook South-Eastern England. Led by the Merfold Brothers, the rebels pursued an unprecedentedly radical agenda of killing every nobleman and cleric and ultimately deposing King Henry and turning England into a commonwealth after the Swiss, Frisian, or Bohemian model. They were able to take control in a few counties and roved freely through others, moving towards London in late August 1452.

In the capital, they were immediately branded as Lollards and heretics, and forces of the various quarrelling aristocratic factions united for a short time against the common foe. In an open battle in the Thames valley, the rebels, though numerically superior, were massacred by more experienced and better equipped knights. Of those who gave themselves in, many were killed with spectacular brutality.

After the Merfold Brothers` rebellion, another wave of anti-Lollard persecution washed over the kingdom. As an intellectual phenomenon, Lollardy had already been rooted out in the late 1430s, but the panicking establishment was not sure enough about this. With this new and massive wave of persecution, hundreds of members of the bourgeoisie and the lower gentry who weren`t killed were driven into exile, frightened. And the deadly calm returned to the disenfranchised populace of Catholic England, while its nobility took less than half a year before infightings recommenced.

Often, those who fled only become Reformers on the flight or in their new homelands. This was certainly the case with many who fled Northwards to Scotland, thanks to a deliberate policy of Scotland`s second Reformed king.

Reformation in Scotland had been superficially octroyed by Archibald of Douglas, who had overthrown James Steward in a coup of a noble faction which merely posed as “Reformers”, in 1432. For the rest of Archibald`s reign, Scotland`s “Reformist” character was limited to its political alliance with fellow Reformist countries like the Scandinavian Kalmar Kingdoms, Holland-Friesland and France, against the eternal English arch-enemy.

When Archibald died in 1439, though, he was succeeded by his son, William II. While only fifteen years of age upon inheriting the throne, William would soon prove to be a political genius. Drawing on the already numerous English Lollard refugees, William founded Scotland`s first university in Glasgow. Attracting more and more Englishmen – only some of them initial Lollards –, the University of Glasgow soon became a beacon of learning and research, where the famous Scottish Empiricist school of philosophy developed, which would set post-medieval European philosophy on a path on which it would remain for centuries to come. It also became a motor of Scotland`s modernization. Soon, William`s court took permanent residence in Glasgow, which had become by far more exciting than Edinburgh, where the Parliament still met. Infiltrated by Glaswegian scholars on all levels, new royal administrations took to modernizing and centralizing jurisdiction, and they conducted active talent-scouting for skilled craftsmen, bright scholars and charismatic theologians all over Europe, especially in territories where Reform-minded people were endangered. Not few of them actually ended up in Scotland, or more precisely in Glasgow and the adjacent lowlands.

From the University of Glasgow, the Scottish Reformation took its beginnings, too. Clearly remaining within the creed sanctioned in Basel, and later within the boundaries of Briçonnetism, Scottish Reformers like Alexander MacArthur or Broderick of Erskine nevertheless developed both a missionary zeal and a distinct theology revolving around the concept of the deus absconditus, the god who does not reveal himself at every step of the way, but whose nature and will can be traced in his creation, the world, and in the few safely attested revelations, e.g. concerning the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, thus combining a selective literalism with a deism which not only removed hindrances for philosophical and scientific enquiry in the emerging tradition of the Scottish Empiricist School, but even provided it with a sacred goal. Not only theological, but also scientific implications were immense: nowhere in Europe were so many dead human bodies sectioned and anatomically studied than in Glasgow, for example.

The proselytizing zeal of the Scottish Reformers was targeted primarily at those groups on the British Isles over whom the reach of English authority was limited, i.e. primarily the Celtic-speaking Irish and, to a lesser degree, the Welsh. For these target audiences, Irish and Welsh translations of the Bible were composed – in Glasgow. Targeting these groups was, of course, a political strategy of William`s, too: it sought to undermine English authority over yet more territory, and to create a support base in Ireland and Wales for closer ties with the Kingdom of Scotland.

To be continued.

 

[Gian]

Well, this would be fun.

How long before these stirring morph into something like pan-Celticism

 

[Archangel]

Long term, the intellectual freedom in Scotland might place it ahead in terms of development compared with TTL England, which retains more feudalist traits, with a parliament that risks becoming a noble assembly.

 

[Salvador79]

Cont.:

Toward the end of his long life and reign, William II., King of Scots, saw the good progress which his government-building, social modernization and proselytization efforts had yielded, threatened, as the overmighty Southern neighbor found his way back on track. Of course, the first thing a consolidated Catholic English kingdom had to do was to stop the dangerous Scots and to reassert their hegemony over the isles.

England`s consolidation in the latter half of the 1460s was, in equal measure, owed to war-weariness and to Brabantian intervention. The Kingdom of Brabant, while economically not yet recovered from the scars of the Great War, was nonetheless one of Europe`s leading Catholic monarchies. King Philip with the Bloody Hands, or Philip the Great as he much preferred to be called, left the affairs of the state to his son Charles in 1465, two years before his death. He left Charles a powerful state, which had more than once played a decisive role in choosing a new Pope in Rome and which guaranteed the survival of over forty tiny clerical and worldly territories in what used to be the Holy Roman Empire. But he also left Charles a scarred and traumatized country, whose population had suffered greatly not only under the consequences of the war, the economic downturn and the related epidemics, but also from the unmitigated violence of the Burgundian Inquisition. Philip had carved out a kingdom from the living body of the Empire, and in spite of the pomp and grandeur, the artistic refinery and unparalleled luxury for which the court of the kings of the Valois-Burgundy dynasty were famous across the continent, the blood was still showing everywhere.

Charles followed in his father`s footsteps insofar as he, too, invested much in making Brabant a first-tier European power. Nevertheless, he set slightly different emphases. During Charles` reign, the Burgundian Inquisition was reorganized and given an extensive code of inquisitional procedure, through which the rights of the accused were much more efficiently protected. Under the new code, the number of burnings of heretics dropped from 170 in the year 1460 to only three in 1470. Charles`s new internal policies were in tune with a new, less paranoid and more lenient Catholicism for which Erasmus of Leuven would stand emblematically.

In foreign policy, though, Charles took a much more aggressive stance compared to the last two decades of his father`s reign, in which an exhausted Brabantian kingdom had restricted itself to plots and schemes instead of sending cannons and cavalry across the continent. Now Charles was more militarily up-front with his ambitions – and he reversed Philip`s later focus on the East and the Empire, turning Brabant`s attention to the West, to France and England, who were still, on and off, at war with each other.

Only a few months into his reign, in the spring of 1466, Charles was confronted with a new French offensive in the Seine valley, which was clearly aimed, once again, at reconquering Paris, the former capital of the kingdom. Philip the Great had received only an inofficial recognition of his position as protector of the Northern Champagne and the Seine valley from successive English kings named Henry. On the other hand, Philip had attempted to stay behind the curtains with his English plots and schemes, having woven an incredibly complex web of loyalties between himself and his dynasty on the one hand, and various English barons on the other hand.

Charles was different. He demanded an official enfeoffment for the entire Brabantian-controlled portions of Lancastrian France, he had envoys openly negotiating with various contenders in the English civil war, and he stood by with his army, watching the French occupying the strategically important valley and taking the castles which guarded it, then laying siege to Paris.

Charles`s behavior divided the split-happy English lords – first of Northern France, but by implication also on the island – into what would come to be called the “Brabantian party” and into the opponents of a Brabantian intervention.

When the French King Louis XI., who had succeeded his father Charles after the latter`s death in 1461, managed to encircle Paris, and in the city itself, a Reformist minority managed to seize power and evict influential political opponents, driving them straight into the arms of the French troops, who massacred them, the Brabantian party, led by the young Edward of York, managed to gather enough noblemen behind them to support a combined English-Brabantian relief intervention, which implied their commitment to fulfilling Charles` s demands of being enfeoffed with the Ile de France, Brie, Vexin, and Meaux – most of which legally belonged to the French royal demesne so far, to which the English King Henry VI. still laid claim, just like his French opponent Louis XI.

Together, English forces led by Edward and Brabantian forces commanded by Charles dealt Louis` army a decisive defeat at the banks of the Seine and forced the French to give up their half-gained control over Paris and retreat into the Gâtinais. (The reconquest of Paris from the hands of the Reformists who defended the island stronghold in the Seine at all costs, took its toll on Paris again, of course.)

When the increasingly (physically and mentally) ill English King Henry VI. would not give in to the demands of the Brabantian party, which would have meant the de facto giving up on the dream of reigning as King of France in Paris, Edward and his followers, supported by Brabantians, stormed into London with an irresistible army, imprisoned the king and as many of his court as they could lay their hands on, and coerced Henry to abdicate in favour of Edward.

On January 11th, 1467, the Parliament in Westminster acknowledged Edward`s claim, too. Crowned by the archbishop, Edward soon fulfilled his promises vis-à-vis Charles of Brabant. In the next three years, he hunted down, with continued Brabantian support, many of his opponents, and brought many to trial, condemning a significant portion of the pro-Lancastrian English nobility to death or to other severe punishments which in many cases reduced their family`s wealth and reputation irreparably.

Having consolidated his power, Edward began a more aggressive policy towards Scotland and the Reformers in Wales and Ireland. The 1470s saw a number of English interventions in Ireland, two invasions of Scotland, and the quelling of a nascent rebellion in Wales.

While William II., King of Scots, died towards the end of these dangerous years, in 1481, his work would not come undone and his legacy not be annihilated. For even though Edward`s English armies militarily prevailed wherever they turned, they were never able to maintain control over all these peripheral territories long enough, and didn`t invest enough effort in trying, either, so that, a few years after the fall of a royal castle, the abdication of a local ruler, or his submission to Edward, things would revert to their previous state. While the English attacks weakened and delayed, for example, Glasgow`s ascent to one of the greatest cities on the British isles, they did not damage William`s Reformist agenda at all. If anything, they helped strengthen it. Where the not exactly easily palatable message of a removed and distant God had not enthused the population, the English aggression contributed significantly to a reaction of sullen adherence to the new creed which so annoyed the powerful Englishmen.

Thus, by the end of the 15th century, England has returned to its traditional position of hegemony on the British isles, but its grip of Wales, let alone Ireland, has grown weaker still, since, with Scottish Reformism, a new cultural movement was animating anti-English resistance. And the unequal rivals have begun to engage in another contest: both were attempting to gain as secure as possible a foothold on the newly discovered other side of the Atlantic Ocean, and both tried to undermine the other`s efforts at controlling the lucrative trade with whale oil, salted cod, and increasingly also furs.

 

[Salvador79]

Well, this would be fun.

How long before these stirring morph into something like pan-Celticism

Well, I´ve just brought it a little closer. Anti-English sentiment is a driving factor and a reaction to the prevalent racist attitude among English society vis-a-vis the "peripheral" peoples. But there`s still a long way to go. The Scottish Reformation takes place in the Lowlands, and the University of Glasgow is only going to strengthen the role of English as Scotland`s language, so the Highlands-Lowlands divide isn`t necessarily bridged. The very same reformers who sow seeds of rebellion among Celtic-speaking people elsewhere aren`t necessarily willing to let such archaic clan-oriented groups participate too much in their own polity. So, pan-Celticism may still fail, or at least have serious hurdles on its path. But there`s also a chance for an earlier and concerted resistance against English hegemony.

Long term, the intellectual freedom in Scotland might place it ahead in terms of development compared with TTL England, which retains more feudalist traits, with a parliament that risks becoming a noble assembly.

The Westminster Parliament is indeed not developing quite favourably, it has more or less switched roles with its French counterpart.
William has done a good job for Scotland in the long run, but it´s still an uphill struggle, as I hope the second part of the installment has shown: England still has so much more military power - it´s still going to be very difficult for Scotland to resist English hegemony AND become a modernised (and thus also ambitious) European polity.

Thanks for your input, I was really happy when I read it yesterday

 

[Salvador79]

No, this timeline is not dead - sorry for the long delay, guys.

France 1445-1500

When Charles VII died in 1461, he left behind a kingdom substantially changed from the one he had taken over more than three decades ago. In the never-ending war against England and its allies, France had pulled itself together and stood solidly now – much in contrast to its insular enemy, whose state was showing signs of disintegration. Although important regions in the North as well as in Aquitaine had not been reconquered, the remaining rump was strong enough to make another life-threatening defeat like Azincourt look utterly improbable now.

This had been achieved by massive political transformations undertaken by Charles. Their results were a centralized government, the weakening of aristocratic factions, a greatly enlarged royal demesne, lively parliamentarism and the top-down Reformation, which was met with more and more support at the parish level as years went by. Reformation, Gallicanism, and the new political system with the three strong uniting institutions of the King, the États Généraux and the Parlement have begun to form the core of a defiant and self-confident French identity.

Yet, the situation for Charles`s son, who succeeded him on the throne as Louis XI, was no easy one. Not only was France almost surrounded by inimical Catholic forces (Brabant, England, Castille). More importantly, a French monarch had far-reaching responsibilities now, but to fulfill them, he would need financial resources, and that was where the crown was still in serious trouble.

While revenues from the enlarged demesne had alleviated the near-bankruptcy in which Charles VII had found himself at the end of the Great War, the French crown was still astronomically indebted to the Genoese Banca di San Giorgio. With Genoa being one of France`s most important allies, the backbone of its security in the South-East, and the key to its access to the trade networks (not only) of the Western Mediterranean, the King of France just couldn`t afford to default on these loans. But with all the royal revenues tied up with absolutely indispensable permanent internal items of expenditure and with servicing the payments of interest and principal to the Genoese public bank, Louis saw his hands tied and himself unable, like his father had been, to pursue costly strategic projects like the reconquest of Gascony, Brittany or even the Ile de France, the generous support of pro-French Reformist groups who could destabilize neighbouring states, the modernization of the French army, or the revival of the French economy through repair and improvement of canals, roads, bridges etc.

Louis faced this challenge, and many related ones during his reign, with cunning schemes and long-ranging machinations. In this domain, he excelled like earlier monarchs might have excelled in leading wars; so much so that he even earned himself the nickname of “universal spider”. This epithet originated in the context of the États Généraux, which Louis managed to maneuver skillfully towards his goals. Any reforms which would make the French king even more powerful were sure to be opposed by the higher nobility. Therefore, Louis had to rely on the support of the other two estates. The representatives of the urban bourgeoisie, the third estate, were principally sympathetic to sensible reform agendas, even though they were very reluctant to grant yet more taxes. The clergy Louis found most easy to win over: in their case, a few bribes and favours during the synods where bishops and abbots were elected and appointed sufficed to create lasting loyalties. Also, the Reformist clergy knew that a strong French monarchy was the only thing which saved them from conquest and the stake. Basing himself on this support, Louis sought to consolidate his base among the representatives of the commoners by working towards an increased role of the Church of France and particularly loyalist semi-monastic orders in everyday urban life, from hospitals over schools to burial societies (which, given the strict interdiction on money-lending, were growing into the number one source of credit).

Based on such preparations, Louis achieved his greatest success in a session of the États Généraux in 1467 with the establishment of the Banque Publique de France. In its foundational law, Louis and the estates reaffirmed the strict prohibition of any private money-lending for interest once again, threatening the omnipresent and highly unpopular, if sometimes direly sought-after, trespassers with penalties from complete expropriation to capital punishment – only to state that the BPF, as an “institution du bien public”, was exempt from this interdiction. Modelled to a limited extent on the Genoese Bank of Saint George, the capital stock of the BPF was gathered through collective deposits from town councils, from French bishoprics and monastic orders, but also from the Duke of Savoy, the Duke of Lorraine, the city of Bern and a number of other wealthy allies of Louis` from beyond the borders of his kingdom, who not only viewed his Reformist kingdom with great sympathy, but also considered its fundamentally resilient and productive economy a good place to invest their vast fortunes. These stock-holders would elect one half of the executive board, while the other was appointed by the king and approved by the estates. The board elected its own chairman, who would be confirmed or deposed by the king. The BPF was “first and foremost to help in enabling good public works, e.g. the building of churches, the maintenance of houses for the sick and poor et c.”, but it would also lend money to private individuals, and in this quality, it would soon become the backbone of a nepotism unprecedented in scale. While any surplus was to be directed “towards the common good”, only a limited and percentually shrinking degree would be geared towards direct aid of public works, while the rest contributed to increasing the bank`s reserves and thus the powers of those who led and controlled it.

The BPF breathed the spirit of Louis the universal spider through and through. While it didn`t allow the King himself to gain a new source of revenue, it strengthened his economy and taxbase, and most of all, it multiplied the power he himself and his closest allies to create, maintain and enlarge networks of loyalty and support. As time went by, these powers only increased as the crown allowed more and more money to be lent beyond what the vast reserves covered - like it was established practice among the evil Catholic usurers....

But Louis` policies would not always and forever lead to the results he desired. Only a year later, with the election of Briçonnet as Pope Clemens IX, Louis was confronted with a Reformist Pope in Avignon who was French and had excellent connections to large parts of France`s clergy, yet did not owe his position too much to Louis. From the second half of the 1470s onwards, this veiled tug-of-war over political, social, and economic influence began to intensify. If we are to believe King Jean III, Louis` son with Margaret Douglas, Princess of Scotland, who inherited his throne but disliked his father`s scheming diplomacy and his cold and calculating treatment of the church and religious matters, the conflict even grew into such personal animosity that Louis cursed, with his dying words, “ce cureton de merde”, by which he supposedly meant Clemens.

Jean III`s change of political priorities would prove unfortunate for himself and the crown. Jean supported Clemens and the Church of France piously and unconditionally, and he was rather fond of good old-fashioned warfare as a means to enlarge the realm of crown and faith. While the former changed little except that it lessened the crown`s influence on the intricate networks which heldt the new France together, the latter ended in utter disaster.

In 1492, Jean assaulted English Gascony, but met with disastrous failure. Both English and allied Castilian forces made use of better artillery and, after Jean`s army was decimated in unsuccessful sieges and assaults, the final Battle of Mazère saw the French monarch wounded and captured by Castilians, who turned their prisoner over to King George of England [Edward`s eldest son and heir].

After the defeat of Mazère, George sought to exploit his advantage by forcing Jean to cede further territories to England, and have the English army advance across the Garonne to secure them. In these days of greatest need, it was the permanent États Généraux which stood firm and took over the leadership of the realm, appointing Jean`s younger brother Charles as “supreme commander of the compagnies d`ordonnance des États Généraux” and, when news of Jean`s suicide in English captivity reached Tours, as King of France, too. Under Charles`s command, strictly defensive strategies were pursued, and English-Castilian advances soon halted.

Charles VIII died, rather young, of an undefined illness in 1498. He left his project of military modernization – the needs of which were clearly demonstrated by the fact that reversing England`s territorial gains, although held by only few defenders, took almost half a decade of guerilla warfare – only half-finished. Also, he left no surviving male heirs. It is, perhaps, a testimony to the strength and stability of the French political constitution shaped by Charles VII the Reformer that this circumstance did not plunge the kingdom into chaos and aristocratic strife. It took a few weeks of haggling between the Conseil du Roi and the États Généraux to determine that Charles`s namesake cousin, the son of Charles`s sister Suzanne and the Duke of Clermont, the only male grand-son of Louis XI, would succeed on the throne as Charles IX of France.

 

[Archangel]

I'm getting the feeling that TTL France is gonna a be a parliamentary great power in the future.

 

[Salvador79]

I'm getting the feeling that TTL France is gonna a be a parliamentary great power in the future.

Parliamentarism appears on a good way indeed in France, and any France is somewhat likely to be powerful, but other than that, what exactly gave you this feeling?

 

[Archangel]

Parliamentarism appears on a good way indeed in France, and any France is somewhat likely to be powerful, but other than that, what exactly gave you this feeling?

A government that listens to the population is more likely to make the right decisions that improve the soft and hard power of a nation (including its economy).

 

[TimTurner]

A government that listens to the population is more likely to make the right decisions that improve the soft and hard power of a nation (including its economy).

Ideally, the King will retain big influence in lawmaking; it'd be best if both the parliament and the King can check potential abuses by the other.

 

[Salvador79]

Italy 1447-1500

Northern Italy had rested and recovered for a decade, while the rest of the continent was still haunted by the Confessional War, when the death of Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, stirred things up anew. Visconti, who had toyed with Reform in its earliest years, had soon cleverly aligned with the other predominantly pro-Roman forces of Northern Italy and obtained territorial gains and improved security for his duchy.

When he died, though, all of this came apart. He left no legitimate sons, and in his testament, he had willed the duchy to D. Pedro, Protector of Portugal and soon its official king [1]. This will was immediately disputed by the House of Habsburg. On the one hand, there were two living male cousins of Visconti`s among their lot (Albert and Sigismund), on the other hand, Archsteward Friedrich claimed that, on the expiration of Visconti`s male line of heirs, the duchy should revert to the Holy Roman Empire, which, given its current state of quasi-non-existence, meant falling into the sphere of influence of himself, the arch-steward.

Portugal was far away, and it was still trying to recover from the devastations of the Castilian invasion. Thus, when Albert of Habsburg arrived in Milan with a few hundred armed supporters, he did not encounter Portuguese opposition, and neither did he expect any in the time to come. His foremost challenge, he thought, was to convince his elder brother that his position here should truly be that of a Duke of Milan, instead of merely that of the arch-steward`s steward.

Albert was wrong. Pedro truly did not stir – but Milan`s population did. A Habsburg takeover threatened to subject their splendid and affluent city and its vast Northern Italian possessions to massive extortions of resources for the extremely costly Habsburg projects of rolling back Ottoman advances in Hungary, and extending the arch-steward`s grip over the German remnants of the Empire bit by bit. Significant Ghibelline resistance formed against Albert`s installation, rallying behind Bishop Antonio Trivulzio, who proclaimed the clergy`s loyal alliance with Pedro (in all likelihood without the latter`s knowledge).

And that was only the harmless tip of the iceberg. Both Milan with its sharp contrasts between super-wealthy merchant families, established artisans, and countless impoverished day labourers, and its nearby university town of Padova were hotbeds of unorthodox and insubordinate thinking at this juncture. Visconti`s flirt with Reform had been brief, but in the following years, the vicinity to Savoy and Genoa had brought Reformist and especially Conciliarist ideas to Milan and Padova, too. Visconti had done little to suppress them, as long as they did not immediately threaten his rule. Now, in the heated atmosphere of public dissatisfaction with the Habsburg takeover, clandestine groups and networks emerged from the underground. Their goal was not to replace one duke with another – it was to overthrow ducal rule altogether and cease Milanese support for the Pope in Rome. The goal of revolutionary leaders like Giorgio Lampugnano and Girolamo Lavorasana was to convert Milan into a Reformist Republic, a commonwealth of pious citizens, a city of God.

On October 13th, 1447, Lampugnano, Lavorasana and ten other men of political importance and weight, proclaimed the foundation of the Golden Ambrosian Republic of Milan before a gathering of over a thousand supporters in the Piazza dell`Arrengo.

Albert, whose military assistance had returned, to a great extent, back home across the Alps, could only send a very meek force against these rebels. The crowds did not need more than their mere knives, hammers, axes, and improvised pikes and halberds to crush Albert`s forces and kill every single one of them. On the next day, the Viscontean Citadel was stormed by a conciliarist crowd, and Albert and his small court were sent fleeing Northwards with nothing but their bare lives.


The Ambrosian Republic was led by a directorate of twelve men (the twelve initiators of the rebellion, who had been acclaimed and their new powers formalized by a popular assembly). This directory combined far-reaching executive and judiciary powers in its hands. It declared its obedience to Pope Felix in Avignon, confiscated the property of various anti-Reformist Dominican and a few Benedictine monasteries, persecuted a few supporters of the Habsburgers and the Roman Pope, and began to levy a militia for the inevitable battle for the defense of the Republic.

Yet, when the battle came, the Golden Ambrosian Republic was not well prepared at all. Conflicts had broken up in the Directorate as well as among the politicized populace itself between a moderate group around Lampugnano, who favoured internal stability and wanted to bring non-Reformist Ghibellines into their camp, too, and a radical faction of Reformist zealots around Lavorasana, who enjoyed enthusiastic support from the lower classes when they demanded to expropriate Catholics, kill all usurers, ban luxury and transform the private workshops of prominent Catholic Guelfs into the property of militant neo-Beghard communities (formed by themselves). In these internal struggles, the Republic had already lost one of its most capable military commanders, and growing numbers of political assassinations and a paralysed Directorate contributed their part to undermining the funding, discipline and morale of the Republic`s armed forces.

On March 26th, 1448, some 8,000 Habsburger forces met more than 20,000 defenders of the Republic in one of the most terrible battles Italy experienced in the 15th century. Although the Republic`s forces were ultimately able to stave off the invasion and kill the overwhelming majority of the attackers, their own losses were immense, too: between 10,000 and 12,000 Milanese militiamen are rumoured to have died on that day, among them close allies of Lampugnano.

After the Pyrrhic victory at Brescia, in which many of the staunchest supporters of the Republic had fallen, the new polity was torn apart by centrifugal forces. Pavia, Lodi, Piacenza, Brescia and Bergamo each declared their independence and, reaffirming their cities` obedience to Roman Catholicism, appealed to Pope Pius II. for support. The Milanese were unable to stop these secessions, given how conflicts between pro-Habsburg Guelfs, pro-Portuguese Ghibellines, Lampugnano`s moderates and Lavorasana`s zealots were escalating into full-fledged civil war.

When Lavorasana`s radicals had achieved a temporary internal victory, eliminating nine other Directors and replacing them with a radical Triumvirate on May 19th, who, basing themselves on their ragtag militant bands, had embarked on the twin projects of purging Milan of the unfaithful and starting an offensive aimed at reconquering Milan`s lost possessions – especially the latter a hopeless endeavor, considering that they had just killed almost all capable military leaders –, two neighbours who had so far viewed the Republicans as useful tools, but who were disquieted now, considered it was time to intervene.

And so, on June 2nd, 1448, mercenaries led by the condottiere Bartolomeo Colleoni and paid from Savoyard and Genoese coffers marched into Milan and overthrew Lavorasana`s Triumvirate. Streetfighting lasting for at least another week, but Colleoni was already busy discussing terms with Lampugnano and Trivulzio, who had both at different times fled the city, and with some of Milan`s formerly subordinate cities. Negotiations which, it would turn out, would have mixed success. Of the secessionist towns, only Bergamo and Piacenza could be brought back into the Republic`s fold against the promise of representation in a new Senate, which would take the place of the Directorate and in which the remaining moderates were deliberately overrepresented. For a public declaration of support for the cause of Reform, proved by his celebration of a mass in which the chalice was shared by the laymen, too, Trivulzio was allowed to return as Bishop of Milan. An revised constitution of the Ambrosian Republic was drafted, this time showing much less of the democratic spirit of 1447 and smelling a lot of Genoese influence instead. For himself, Colleoni had in mind to secure a long-term contract as captain of a permanent Republican Guard or something of the like – which he probably might even have achieved, had he not died from dysentery before the foundational law was officiallsed. As it was, nobody else in Milan wanted to strain the meagre public budgets even more or tax the voters more tightly in order to finance such a standing army – especially since, if needs be, there would always be condottieri available in Northern Italy.

That need arrived soon. When the Arch-Steward Friedrich sent another, larger force against Milan in 1449, the new Milanese Senate was frantic. It had relatively little funds to work with – and none of the renowned Italian mercenary leaders was willing to provide a strong enough force under such circumstances. The Golden Ambrosian Republic was forced to appeal to Savoy and Genoa for help. And the two bigger neighbours provided ample loans for the payment of a Swiss army from the Bund der Bünde. The Swiss did indeed crush the Arch-Steward`s army – for the nth time in the course of two decades now… – but now the Ambrosian Republic was buried in debt. Unable to muster it under any other way, Milan grudgingly agreed to pawn off the Ticino to Genoa and Savoy, who commissioned the Swiss to collect their dues for them against a share of the profits. (This solution, planned to be temporary and very short-term at that, would make a lasting impact. When a group of six Swiss cantons approached the Duke of Savoy to buy the Milanese debt directly so that they could keep everything they collected from now on, Amadeus X. agreed in 1491, and the Genoese Republic ceded their claims to the Bund, too, only two years later. Swiss administration was already in place – and it grew such deep roots that it outlived the Golden Ambrosian Republic in the 16th century, with the Ticino remaining a dominion of six Swiss cantons until the 17th century, when it would be emancipated and joined the Confederacy as members with equal rights.)

Apart from these turbulent events in Lombardy, Italy experienced a rather rest of the century. The North had fallen apart into a patchwork of city states again. Venice, by far the strongest and largest of them, suffered greatly from two strategical errors: firstly, to tie themselves into a lasting alliance with the crumbling Byzantine Empire, the Catholic monastic orders which controlled various islands in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Egyptian Mamluks [more on that later on], and secondly, to try and face their Genoese rival alone, without the support of possible further allies like Ragusa, who had been opposed to Venetian power in the past, but who could have taken to the side of the Serenissima given the threat of total hegemony by the Superba. The latter ended in a humiliating series of naval defeats in 1467 and 1468, which left Venice with greatly reduced military capabilities and cemented Genoese dominance in the entire Mediterranean for half a century.

Farther South, the Papal States experienced calm decades, especially since armed conflicts around the papacy were out of the question – who would become Pope was sorted out between Brabant, England, Castile, Portugal and the Habsburg Arch-Steward these days. Yet farther South, Angevin control over their Kingdom of Naples was still not complete, but both the Reformist monarchy and their Catholic opponents had concluded some inofficial truce, especially since towards the end of the century, the threat of an Ottoman invasion was looming larger and larger over both of them.


[1] IOTL, he willed it to Alfonso of Aragon, who ITTL is a victim of the Wars of the Brotherhoods in Iberia. I was looking for a similar candidate: Catholic, politically on an ascending trajectory, yet disinterested and unable to abuse Milan`s wealth and potential in struggles elsewhere.

 

[Salvador79]

A government that listens to the population is more likely to make the right decisions that improve the soft and hard power of a nation (including its economy).

Ideally, the King will retain big influence in lawmaking; it'd be best if both the parliament and the King can check potential abuses by the other.

How much power the king retains depends, at this point in time, still very much on the individual monarch`s personality.
I won`t go into detail with events after 1500, but I can promise you that I´ll cover the question of how ideal and strong and dialogic the French state is going to develop in one of the concluding installments (the "hypotheses about the future").

 

[Salvador79]

Iberia 1450-1500

Around the middle of the 15th century, the Iberian peninsula was in a deplorable overall state. The devastations of war had been particularly massive here, since the “War of the Brotherhoods” had been a war of large popular armies, who ravaged the countryside they roamed in to a massive degree, and in which casualties were massive. In this respect, Iberia suffered experiences comparable only to the German-speaking parts of the Holy Roman Empire.

While this applied generally to all the Christian kingdoms of the peninsula, in all other respects they had begun to diverge greatly over the past few decades. In contrast to elsewhere on the European continent, this was not primarily because of confessional differences. In fact, the only two Reformist corners on the peninsula were Angevin Catalunya and the quasi-independent Portuguese protectorate of Galicia. Among the other, Catholic states, though, huge differences in political culture had emerged which had severed the ties of a common identity of Christian Reconquista societies.

Comparing, for example, Portugal to Castile, one cannot fail to notice how two kingdoms who shared many common traits around 1400 were featuring more differences than similarities in 1500.

Under Protector (and later King) Pedro, Portugal continued the arduous journey towards building effective, unified statehood. The 1450s saw primarily efforts at reconstructing towns and infrastructure. When Pedro died in 1461, he was succeeded by his eldest son who bore his name and continued his policies. Pedro junior died in 1466, too, and was succeeded by his younger brother João. During João`s reign, Portugal was able to wrestle control over the Canary Islands from Castile. While naval expeditions had been halted with Henrique`s death in the Guerra dos Irmandinhos, they resumed in the 1470s with the first journey beyond Cape Bojador. João`s attempts at profiting from the instability in Morocco, where a revolt had overthrown the Marinid dynasty, were not crowned by success, though, as the local Wattasids were soon able to restore order and establish themselves as the new rulers of the country.

When João died in 1487, he was succeeded by his eldest son Sebastião. History has provided the latter with the questionable reputation as a lover of (lots of) wine and rather young girls (and boys), and not as a particularly good manager of the state. Yet, the Kingdom of Portugal still thrived, even without his good governance, in these last years of the 15th century, too. First Portuguese outposts were established among West Africa`s black peoples, and within Europe, Portugal had acquired a unique reputation for being the most moderate and diplomatically accessible of the Catholic monarchies. Its traditionally strong ties with England and Burgundy/Brabant were only strengthened, and they provided Portugal with unique trading opportunities from Western Africa to the North Sea.

Castile, in contrast, was larger and traditionally wealthier, but the last factor had been severely reduced in the Wars of the Brotherhoods. The formerly most powerful peninsular kingdom had simply overstretched its potential when it had waged war against France, Catalunya, and Portugal at the same time. Its gread blood toll was a difficult heritage, and so was the political tradition of very strong militant orders and privileged Royal Brotherhoods. They prevented Castile from being invaded by any other power, and they made sure no resistance against Castilian Catholicism would arise. But while the Brotherhoods had begun as a relatively widespread popular phenomenon, the long and costly civil war and the privileges granted to them by successive Castilian kings turned these zealous commoners into a new type of quasi-aristocracy: they had a political agenda and an internal ethical codex, and they provided the king with a new type of permanently available military forces – they were pretty much functioning like an aristocracy, even though Castile`s old noble families viewed things somewhat differently.

The political monopoly of the conservative clergy and the new Hermandades elite led to the quick adoption of military reforms which turned Castile`s forces into one of the most formidable on the continent. But they also froze the political and clerical structures in their pre-Basel state. The Castilian King Enrique, for example, was extremely unpopular with all three estates – yet, neither the Cortes, nor the immediate environment of the monarch dared openly rebel against the king whom they unanimously, but only secretly, considered as incapable.

Enrique was rumoured to have been homosexual and/or impotent, but that may merely be a slander stemming from his dislike of the way Iberia`s official and unofficial nobility of this time celebrated their masculinity. This character trait of his was responsible for his poor government records: he was not so much a passive or disinterested man, but he was very detached and distanced from his own elites, without whom he could not get anything done, and his immediate court found no wider acceptance and authority, either, being confronted with the slanders of being “the king`s loverboys”.

When Enrique died in 1474, he left no issue whatsoever. Enrique`s sisters had all died in their infancy [1]. Castile was, thus, in an even worse situation than the impoverished rump Kingdom of Aragon had been after Alfonso`s death in 1458. Back then, Castile`s Crown and Cortes had intervened in Aragon to foster a smooth succession to Alfonso`s younger brother, Pedro. Now, King Pedro of Aragon, aged 69, was also the living male member of the House of Trastámara closest to the deceased Enrique. Bound by the logic they had expounded sixteen years ago in the Aragonese succession question, the Castilian royal council now determined that Pedro was the legitimate heir.

He was crowned in Valladolid in January 1470 – and died only four months later. His eldest son Manuel, aged 29 at this time, thus inherited both the crowns of Castile-Leon and of Aragon, uniting all these realms.

Manuel`s relatively long reign brought back some degree of royal authority, especially since he cooperated well with the militant cofradías and hermandades. Yet, he, too, depended entirely on these groups and on the traditional nobility to support any of his policies. Attempting to satisfy them, Manuel first evicted all remaining Jews from his kingdom in 1474, and pursued policies aimed at driving the remaining muslims out of his realm, too. Those who had converted, though, were still being discriminated again – with the overt acceptance of the king.

Without these economically vital groups, Castile`s and especially Aragon`s economy were still slow in their recovery - much slower than Portugal, where new technologies were advancing faster and the kings made sure that infrastructure damaged in the great wars was being repaired and improved.

Manuel attempted another attack on the Emirate of Granada in 1481, which failed miserably because the Catalonians and the Genoese had provided Iberia`s last muslim emirate with up-to-date heavy artillery, which had been integrated into their lined-up mountain fortresses and made any Castilian advance across this defensive line utterly hopeless and futile.

His attempts to interfere in Portugal and Morocco were not more successful, either. His only limited victory was the one which he and his English allies achieved against the French in Aquitaine, but even that did not yield any long-term gains.

Thus, Castile-Aragon, which also de facto controlled the Kingdom of Navarra, was a potential first-tier European political power, but it had so far failed to play out this potential. Manuel had not even been able to repay his dues to the Portuguese crown and thus regain Galicia. Because of this, Galicia was one of the strangest places not only the peninsula: a federation of Reformist communes on the territory of one of Europe`s most fervent and conservative Catholic kingdoms, but pawned off to another, yet much more tolerant Catholic kingdom, that of Portugal. Because the Portuguese Pedros and João tolerated the Galician Reformers, but were adamant that any Catholic pilgrim would be able to walk safely to Santiago de Compostela and celebrate mass there, the town which harboured the relics of Saint Jacob was quite a unique case on the continent: it was perhaps the only place where Catholic and Reformist pilgrims met, and not only that: in the town`s Cathedral, there were two altars, one around which Reformist Christians shared bread and wine and sung hymns in their various native tongues, and another where Catholic priests sang Latin hymns and consumed the wine alone, giving out only converted bread to their laymen.


[1] Juan II´s earlier death in this timeline prevents the birth of Isabella and Alfonso. Also, just consider Beltrán de la Cueva to have died in either the way with the Catalonian rebels, or with Portugal, so no Juana la Beltraneja, either.

 

[TimTurner]

Are the Muslims still in All Andalus?

 

[Archangel]

OTL, when the Spanish Jews were expelled, they moved en masse to Portugal.

 

[Salvador79]

Are the Muslims still in All Andalus?

OTL, when the Spanish Jews were expelled, they moved en masse to Portugal.

Actually, I had presumed the Jews simply spread across Portugal, Granada, catalunya, France and even farther regions. But Archangel's Info makes even more sense ITTL, where Portugal is about the best place to go if you want relative religious tolerance, a functioning economy and ample trading opportunities. They might even participate in the settlement of the azores, madeira and canaries (if the latter fall to Portugal).

Many moors / conversos in Castille-Aragon will see the writing on the wall and leave, too, while others still remain; they're not yet forcibly expelled. When they leave, i'd expect Granada to be the no. 1 target.

And, yes, Granada still stands, as my hint about the failed conquest reveals. I expect they'd only profit from the Christian divisions and the costly war among their Northern neighbours. Also, Reformists had moved beyond the taboo of making formal alliances with the moors in the Great War already. I suppose that isn't going to heal Granada's chronical problems of internal strife and it won't modernise the Emirate automatically. But it's going to continue to be a crowded place full of interesting people for a while.

 

[Archangel]

Actually, I had presumed the Jews simply spread across Portugal, Granada, catalunya, France and even farther regions. But Archangel's Info makes even more sense ITTL, where Portugal is about the best place to go if you want relative religious tolerance, a functioning economy and ample trading opportunities. They might even participate in the settlement of the azores, madeira and canaries (if the latter fall to Portugal).

ITTL, if there's no desire to unite crowns, there's much less interest by the Portuguese Crown in enforcing Catholicism as the single religion.
OTL The Sephardim only really spread after being persecuted in Portugal, and even then many stayed (and got assimilated - https://translate.google.pt/transla...tada--pelos-nossos-genes-21878549&prev=search)

 

[Salvador79]

An Endless North

The Great War of the second quarter of the 15th century, with its embargoes and collapses of trade networks, was a mighty factor pushing people with a background of maritime trade in Northern waters into the exploration of vast and cold lands far away on Northern shores.

Some of these lands had been roughly known among some Europeans for centuries already, while others had not been known or forgotten about. In the case of the North-East, explorations and the extension of trade and fishing ranges was basing itself on colonists who had already settled lands in the far North: the Novgorodian Pomors. In the case of the North-West, the departure into new uncharted waters was not basing itself on Icelandic colonists, for this island belonged to a Reformist kingdom, while all the early Atlantic journeys were undertaken by men from Catholic nations. In all cases, the exact size of the cold Northern vastness was not yet cartographed, and general European interest in it was modest, to say the least.

Journeys across the Northern Atlantic Ocean increased in numbers when what had been a secret fishing ground of Basque and English fishermen and whalers was also exploited by Germans from Hanseatic towns, where Reformist embargoes and disadvantageous terms of trade in the Baltic Sea had left many experienced sailors unemployed, their ships empty and merchants in search of new opportunities. The Germans brought with them (sufficient salt and) the innovation of salting cod from Bakailaoa [1] already on their ships, thus making more preserved fish available for long-distance trade.

But it was the Navarrese Civil War, which drove between one and two thousand Basque fishermen to take up permanent residence on Bakailaoa Island, which changed the quality of European presence on the new continent forever. – For all the Basques, Englishmen and Germans around 1450 knew, they had merely discovered another island in the vast Northern ocean, like Iceland or Greenland. – The Basque emigrants came without a mission or a guarantee from their king (or rather, from either of the two contestants for the throne), but they came with wives and children, with relatives from farther inland, and with sheep, grain seeds, tools, and many other things they would require in their permanent settlement. About one quarter of this enormous treck across the ocean died on the way – their ships drowned, or they were lost at sea and died of thirst, or they succumbed to diseases.

Those who made it to Bakailaoa founded Babesberri and Harriguzki, two villages not far from where fishermen had already built summer huts before.

The two villages hardly made it through the first winter, and in their miserable shape, they did not exactly make an enticing impression on the fishermen from across Western Europe who arrived in the next spring. So the settlements failed to grow in their first years, even though new refugees from Navarra continued to arrive until about 1455.

Even in their infant stages, the settlements inevitably attracted the attention of people whom the Basque settlers had spotted from afar and called “Gorri”, for the colour with which they had painted their faces, but who called themselves “Beothuk” in their own language. They had observed the new arrivals for over a decade already, but kept their distance. The way in which the foreigners expanded now, roaming farther and farther inland with their incredibly stupid white furry animals, only confirmed their worst suspicions. Yet, cautious elders insisted that a dialogue should be attempted, and so a group of five Beothuk men went to Harriguzki with a pine twig on April 19th, 1452.

The Basques had no idea what those wild heathens wanted from them, but who knew how they could be useful to them in the future, so they offered them Marmitako. Understanding proved difficult, neither side was able to fall back on any symbolic system the other would understand, and so it took more encounters, this time with “gifts” for the other side. Over the course of a few months, Harriguzki had begun to establish a sort of commercial connection, exchanging mostly small iron items for leather, furs and a sweet, thick liquid which the Beothuk kept in birch-bark-enveloped leather bags.

All was not well between settlers and natives even in these first years, though. A conflict between shepherds from Babesberri and a group of Beothuk, whom they suspected to have stolen a sheep from them, escalated into open violence in which one native was killed and a Basque severely injured. Only subsequent and very different encounters between clan elders and the herdsmen of Babesberri prevented (or rather, postponed) a major armed conflict between both groups.

This conflict finally arose when, in 1454, a mysterious disease befell Bakailaoa`s Beothuk. It killed like no other sickness the natives knew. To make matters worse, the harp seals had not appeared that summer, forcing the natives to compete for the limited resources with the settlers, and bad nutrition made them easy victims of the disease which, for all we know, could have been something as trivial to the Basques as the measles. Nearly every family of the Southern Beothuk bands lost at least one member, and some lineages were altogether extinct. Panic spread, and not few thought that it had to be the fault of the pale-faced sheep men, who had come upon their island like a curse. Because the epidemics disrupted native social structures, it was easy for a group of young hotheads to convince almost a hundred young and still able-bodied men to attack the villages and drive the settlers and their evil spirits back into the ocean whence they had sprung.

The attack on Babesberri on August 18th, 1454, was a complete success. The unsuspecting villagers were overwhelmed by salvoes of arrows with nails at their heads which apparently came from out of nowhere; within seconds, the entire village was panicking, and before many were able to grab their arms or gather, they were already stabbed with knives the Beothuk otherwise only used for cutting caribou. The villagers, counting some 217 in the absence of the fishermen who were at sea, were all slain and thrown over a cliff into the sea.

Fishermen who saw this warned the inhabitants of Harriguzki, who were able to prepare for the onslaught. Even though neither of the Basque settlers had any significant military experience, they had long iron knives and scythes, and they were able to beat off the attackers, then pursue those who fled, and butcher almost every one of them, except for a handful of survivors who returned to their villages in a desolate mood, having lost relatives and friends in the fight and having been unable to drive the accursed sheep men off the island.

The settlers of Harriguzki and the surviving sailors from Babesberri decided that they needed help – and where else could help come from if not from Europe. But their kingdom was in the last stages of its civil war, and none of the contestants were interested in claiming an island somewhere at the edge of the world if that meant that they had to spare hundreds of men they desperately needed to fend off their enemy at home. England, where many of the fishermen came from, and Brabant, which a few of the Europeans called their home, were no better, the former embroiled in its Times of Troubles under Henry VI, the latter still reeling from the War of Confessions and engaged in ongoing hostilities with France.

And so the Bakailaoan settlers turned to an organization which had many spare ships and underemployed young men in search of opportunities living in their once proud and now decaying towns: the Hanseatic League.

To be continued.


[1] Newfoundland

 

[Gian]

Well this is interesting.

So now we have the first European colonies in the New World. Let's see how many European nations will come to claim their stake in the Americas.