A Different Chalice - A Hussite Timeline
- Thread starter Salvador79
- Start date
Or were you speaking as a prince-elector?
In that case, I'd reply for Frederick's faction:
Sigismund has nothing to defend here anymore - he'll stay in Hungary Where the Turks are knocking at the door. But there, the Turks are far away, but the dangerous parody of a state Where the peasants and paupers Put themselves above the noble and the erudite and Where the heritage of the occident is trampled upon is dangerously close. Frederick has proven itself a vigorous man in Brandenburg - I say we elevate him on Karl's throne!
In that case, I'd reply for Frederick's faction:
Sigismund has nothing to defend here anymore - he'll stay in Hungary Where the Turks are knocking at the door. But there, the Turks are far away, but the dangerous parody of a state Where the peasants and paupers Put themselves above the noble and the erudite and Where the heritage of the occident is trampled upon is dangerously close. Frederick has proven itself a vigorous man in Brandenburg - I say we elevate him on Karl's throne!
No, I wasn't roleplaying; I don't see enough of a change in performance for a potential shake-up like this since Sigismund was in a similar situation iotl and kept strong. Yeah, he didn't intervene in Bavaria, which does weaken his influence on the whole, but the Hussites also aren't tapping their noses into the HRE and he also isn't immediately failing to save the homeland. That's about even by my reckoning.
Gian, that would be awesome! I'll send you a map and an important Link in a few hours!
I'll leave the poll open for another day after Gian will have posted his instructive map. Just in case anyyone wants to change their mind.
Gian appears to be away. He PMed me a map, which I'll post although it's not the hi-res version. Meissen is mistakenly awarded Lusatia here, but other than that, it's perfect.
If anyone wishes to alter their vote, please let me know.
Oh, File is still too big. Will have to upload elsewhere and Link, later.
If anyone wishes to alter their vote, please let me know.
Oh, File is still too big. Will have to upload elsewhere and Link, later.
OK, vote is still 10-2 for YES.
Friedrich III., the first Roman German king from the House of Hohenzollern it is then. What might that imply for the Hussites? I'll try to write a short update throughout this week.
Friedrich III., the first Roman German king from the House of Hohenzollern it is then. What might that imply for the Hussites? I'll try to write a short update throughout this week.
Friedrich`s Election and the First Years of His Reign
After Ruprecht, Friedrich became the second Roman-German King to be elected with the three clerical votes of Trier, Köln and Mainz, plus his own vote. It was the prince-bishoprics who feared the development, consolidation and growth of the heretic Hussite state and the alternative model it represented (secularization of clerical property, complete control of a popular political movement over its own new clergy and ousting of the old) the most. Other German prince-bishops – in Würzburg, Regensburg, Magdeburg, Münster, Bremen and elsewhere – were alarmed, too. Mainz, Köln and Trier did not only give these anxieties and concerns a voice, though. Along the Rhine, urban social and religious unrest had brooded for many decades to a greater degree than elsewhere in Germany. It had manifested itself in the spread of Beghard communities, and it had erupted in the revolts of craftsmen in Aachen, Mainz and elsewhere. To the archbishop-electors, Sigismund`s focus on the Ottomans rather than the Hussites appeared life-threatening. To convince the worldly electors, they argued with the massive territorial losses the Empire had de facto suffered in Silesia (although of course no German king, prince or diet had or would recognize de iure the Hussite cessions of Silesian duchies, or, depending on the perspective, the Silesian defections to Wladislaw Jagiello).
These arguments were not enough to convince the other two prince-electors present in Bingen, though. The other Friedrich, who had only recently been elevated from Margrave of Meißen to Prince-Elector of Saxony, was not as ungrateful to Sigismund and as oblivious of the promotion the deposed Emperor had provided him with. Having first-hand experience with the Hussites, he doubted that his namesake could work miracles. He was joined in opposition to the deposition by the ailing Count Palatine Ludwig III., who remained as loyal to Sigismund as he had been throughout his entire life.
Four votes sufficed, though. Friedrich of Hohenzollern, Prince-Elector of Brandenburg, Burgrave of Nürnberg, Margrave of Kulmbach and Ansbach, left Bingen as king elect thus, and had himself crowned in Nürnberg.
But on the Imperial Diet in Frankfurt, Friedrich III.´s reign began with a setback. In a passionate speech, he elaborated on his agenda of a restoration of “legitimate order” and prepared the estates for a long and costly struggle. To put the military base of the Empire in this struggle against the Hussites on a more solid foundation, he called for permanent commitments of all Reichsglieder (segments). Each prince, duke, margrave, burgrave, imperial count and free city should specify the exact contribution they would permanently make.
Friedrich III.´ first initiative went pear-shaped. Albert of Habsburg, the designated heir to Sigismund`s possessions and the deposed emperor`s closest confidant and ally, was just as reluctant to contribute to the usurper`s imperial army as the Bavarian dukes, who were entangled in resurging inner-Wittelsbach feuds after the assassination of John III. the Pitiless. With the Hussites` immediate neighbours – the Austrians and the Bavarians – not showing much enthusiasm, many other members of the empire were not overly motivated to go to great lengths to equip Friedrich III.´s imperial army permanently.
When Friedrich realized that the contingents the estates were willing to contribute would never suffice, he withdrew the plan and proposed a new imperial tax instead: the Hussitenpfennig. It would be a combined head and land tax. It only found the Imperial Diet`s assent after all of Friedrich`s attempts at installing any amount of direct imperial control over its levying were shot down and no new executive measures other than the well-established Imperial Ban were installed against delinquent contributing members.
Returning relatively empty-handed from Frankfurt, Friedrich III. switched to a more long-term strategy against the Hussites upon establishing his court in Nürnberg. Friedrich III. was convinced that Sigismund`s defeats at the hands of the Hussites were neither results of divine intervention, nor of poor battlefield performance of the empire`s supreme commander. Having relied on raw artillery power and large disciplined infantry forces himself in his campaign to pacify Brandenburg a decade earlier, Friedrich saw the clever and massive use of firearms as well as of corresponding mobile defenses as the Hussites` main advantage. Even with the meager contributions which began to trickle in, Friedrich could have afforded a finer cavalry than any that could be found in Bohemia and Moravia. But if you wanted to beat the Hussites, he thought, you`d have to outmatch them on their own strengths, too. Throughout 1425 and 1426, he supported the construction of new arms manufactures under the supervision of imperial officials in the bustling capital of Nürnberg, and he put great efforts into his attempts to win over one or more of the more experienced military leaders of the Hussites to defect.
The choice of Nürnberg as imperial residence was not coincidental. It was one of the largest cities in Germany, and Friedrich was nominally still Burgrave here, although the castle had burnt down in the war with Ludwig the Bearded and would now be replaced with a more representative edifice planned after the latest Italian fashions. The patrician government of Nürnberg saw the elevation of their city to imperial capital with mixed feelings. On the one hand, such a close proximity of the emperor threatened their autonomy. On the other hand, Nürnberg had become an unruly and dangerous place over the past few years, with the influx of thousands of refugees from Bohemia and the breakdown of the city`s traditionally strong commercial relations with the lands which were now the Hussite Confederacy, and a few armed officials couldn´t hurt to keep things calm.
Residing in Nürnberg – and leaving the administration of Brandenburg to his son John (nicknamed “the Alchemist”) –, Friedrich III. was also right in the middle of the resurging hostilities among the Wittelsbach duchies. Friedrich presided over a royal court which investigated into the death of John the Pitiless and decided on a division of the Straubing territories among the other Wittelsbach princes. Once again, it was Ludwig who was dissatisfied with the rulings in both cases. This time, though, he would not be able to renew his alliance with the Hussites. In the Bohemian Confederacy, pacifistic voices dominated in the year 1426 after the costly adventure in Silesia and against Wladislaw Jagiello and Vytautas – so the Confederacy decided it was not bound by any ties which King Cenek had knit. Ludwig, like all other Wittelsbuch dukes, had long begun to occupy castles in the Straubing territory, and when he would not abandon them, nor appear in the royal court in Nürnberg, he fell under the Imperial Ban.
Thus encouraged, the dukes of Bayern-München and Bayern-Landshut now attacked Ludwig`s positions. Even though they were supported by forces Friedrich drew from his principalities of Kulmbach and Ansbach, the Second Bavarian War still dragged on for three years and left the various branches of the house of Wittelsbach bereft of resources and substantially weakened. Although responsible for its commencement in a certain way (because he placed Ludwig under the imperial ban), Friedrich did not engage too much of his forces in its continuation. His long-term preparations continued, and even before the Bavarian War would end, new conflicts in Germany`s North would demand his attention – and finally bring about the political strategy for which Friedrich would become known in history…
More on Nürnberg and Northern Germany next week – and then we`ll turn our eyes back to the East, of course.
After Ruprecht, Friedrich became the second Roman-German King to be elected with the three clerical votes of Trier, Köln and Mainz, plus his own vote. It was the prince-bishoprics who feared the development, consolidation and growth of the heretic Hussite state and the alternative model it represented (secularization of clerical property, complete control of a popular political movement over its own new clergy and ousting of the old) the most. Other German prince-bishops – in Würzburg, Regensburg, Magdeburg, Münster, Bremen and elsewhere – were alarmed, too. Mainz, Köln and Trier did not only give these anxieties and concerns a voice, though. Along the Rhine, urban social and religious unrest had brooded for many decades to a greater degree than elsewhere in Germany. It had manifested itself in the spread of Beghard communities, and it had erupted in the revolts of craftsmen in Aachen, Mainz and elsewhere. To the archbishop-electors, Sigismund`s focus on the Ottomans rather than the Hussites appeared life-threatening. To convince the worldly electors, they argued with the massive territorial losses the Empire had de facto suffered in Silesia (although of course no German king, prince or diet had or would recognize de iure the Hussite cessions of Silesian duchies, or, depending on the perspective, the Silesian defections to Wladislaw Jagiello).
These arguments were not enough to convince the other two prince-electors present in Bingen, though. The other Friedrich, who had only recently been elevated from Margrave of Meißen to Prince-Elector of Saxony, was not as ungrateful to Sigismund and as oblivious of the promotion the deposed Emperor had provided him with. Having first-hand experience with the Hussites, he doubted that his namesake could work miracles. He was joined in opposition to the deposition by the ailing Count Palatine Ludwig III., who remained as loyal to Sigismund as he had been throughout his entire life.
Four votes sufficed, though. Friedrich of Hohenzollern, Prince-Elector of Brandenburg, Burgrave of Nürnberg, Margrave of Kulmbach and Ansbach, left Bingen as king elect thus, and had himself crowned in Nürnberg.
But on the Imperial Diet in Frankfurt, Friedrich III.´s reign began with a setback. In a passionate speech, he elaborated on his agenda of a restoration of “legitimate order” and prepared the estates for a long and costly struggle. To put the military base of the Empire in this struggle against the Hussites on a more solid foundation, he called for permanent commitments of all Reichsglieder (segments). Each prince, duke, margrave, burgrave, imperial count and free city should specify the exact contribution they would permanently make.
Friedrich III.´ first initiative went pear-shaped. Albert of Habsburg, the designated heir to Sigismund`s possessions and the deposed emperor`s closest confidant and ally, was just as reluctant to contribute to the usurper`s imperial army as the Bavarian dukes, who were entangled in resurging inner-Wittelsbach feuds after the assassination of John III. the Pitiless. With the Hussites` immediate neighbours – the Austrians and the Bavarians – not showing much enthusiasm, many other members of the empire were not overly motivated to go to great lengths to equip Friedrich III.´s imperial army permanently.
When Friedrich realized that the contingents the estates were willing to contribute would never suffice, he withdrew the plan and proposed a new imperial tax instead: the Hussitenpfennig. It would be a combined head and land tax. It only found the Imperial Diet`s assent after all of Friedrich`s attempts at installing any amount of direct imperial control over its levying were shot down and no new executive measures other than the well-established Imperial Ban were installed against delinquent contributing members.
Returning relatively empty-handed from Frankfurt, Friedrich III. switched to a more long-term strategy against the Hussites upon establishing his court in Nürnberg. Friedrich III. was convinced that Sigismund`s defeats at the hands of the Hussites were neither results of divine intervention, nor of poor battlefield performance of the empire`s supreme commander. Having relied on raw artillery power and large disciplined infantry forces himself in his campaign to pacify Brandenburg a decade earlier, Friedrich saw the clever and massive use of firearms as well as of corresponding mobile defenses as the Hussites` main advantage. Even with the meager contributions which began to trickle in, Friedrich could have afforded a finer cavalry than any that could be found in Bohemia and Moravia. But if you wanted to beat the Hussites, he thought, you`d have to outmatch them on their own strengths, too. Throughout 1425 and 1426, he supported the construction of new arms manufactures under the supervision of imperial officials in the bustling capital of Nürnberg, and he put great efforts into his attempts to win over one or more of the more experienced military leaders of the Hussites to defect.
The choice of Nürnberg as imperial residence was not coincidental. It was one of the largest cities in Germany, and Friedrich was nominally still Burgrave here, although the castle had burnt down in the war with Ludwig the Bearded and would now be replaced with a more representative edifice planned after the latest Italian fashions. The patrician government of Nürnberg saw the elevation of their city to imperial capital with mixed feelings. On the one hand, such a close proximity of the emperor threatened their autonomy. On the other hand, Nürnberg had become an unruly and dangerous place over the past few years, with the influx of thousands of refugees from Bohemia and the breakdown of the city`s traditionally strong commercial relations with the lands which were now the Hussite Confederacy, and a few armed officials couldn´t hurt to keep things calm.
Residing in Nürnberg – and leaving the administration of Brandenburg to his son John (nicknamed “the Alchemist”) –, Friedrich III. was also right in the middle of the resurging hostilities among the Wittelsbach duchies. Friedrich presided over a royal court which investigated into the death of John the Pitiless and decided on a division of the Straubing territories among the other Wittelsbach princes. Once again, it was Ludwig who was dissatisfied with the rulings in both cases. This time, though, he would not be able to renew his alliance with the Hussites. In the Bohemian Confederacy, pacifistic voices dominated in the year 1426 after the costly adventure in Silesia and against Wladislaw Jagiello and Vytautas – so the Confederacy decided it was not bound by any ties which King Cenek had knit. Ludwig, like all other Wittelsbuch dukes, had long begun to occupy castles in the Straubing territory, and when he would not abandon them, nor appear in the royal court in Nürnberg, he fell under the Imperial Ban.
Thus encouraged, the dukes of Bayern-München and Bayern-Landshut now attacked Ludwig`s positions. Even though they were supported by forces Friedrich drew from his principalities of Kulmbach and Ansbach, the Second Bavarian War still dragged on for three years and left the various branches of the house of Wittelsbach bereft of resources and substantially weakened. Although responsible for its commencement in a certain way (because he placed Ludwig under the imperial ban), Friedrich did not engage too much of his forces in its continuation. His long-term preparations continued, and even before the Bavarian War would end, new conflicts in Germany`s North would demand his attention – and finally bring about the political strategy for which Friedrich would become known in history…
More on Nürnberg and Northern Germany next week – and then we`ll turn our eyes back to the East, of course.
Newcomers Show Genuine Nürnberger Witz [1]
Nürnberg has been one of the more thrilling places in Germany long before it became Friedrich III´s imperial residence. Sculptors and painters developed new styles here, and the skills of its countless other craftsmen were no less famous, their products sought after everywhere, from the most intricate clocks to the most economically produced wire.
Unlike elsewhere in Germany, the craftsmen of Nürnberg were not allowed to organize themselves in guilds which could regulate production, prices, market access, vocational training etc. after a failed craftsmen`s revolt in 1348/9. The free city`s economic enterprises, like its government was in the hands of a limited number of long-established patrician merchant families. The latter followed an intricate system, which both excluded everyone else from participation and kept the most influential families effectively off each other`s throats in a way not too dissimilar to Venice`s situation after the Serrata.
Nürnberg`s guild-less economic constitution proved a magnet for German refugees from Bohemia. Several thousand of them arrived during the late 1410s and early 1420s. Only few of the German Catholics of Bohemia had been farmers. Most of them were craftsmen and traders, and while they could not open up their own workshops in most economic sectors in Nürnberg, either, they were at least able to find employment in the patricians` export-oriented shops.
As the embargo against Bohemia lasted and the ducal wars ravaged Bavaria, employment opportunities worsened in a deepening economic crisis in Nürnberg. Violent conflicts between old citizens and newcomers were frequent. Both were often forced to find new opportunities and show yet more of their creative wit in order to thrive. One group of refugees would excel in this domain – although its groundbreaking innovation was not only driven by the threat of poverty.
The German refugees from Bohemia were remarkable not only for the relative wealth with which they still arrived, but also for their convictions and opinions. They had come with their pockets full of silver, and their hearts filled with wrath. They had become fierce Catholics. To the established Nürnbergers, like to most other Germans, Catholicism was not something remarkable, nothing that would define you. It was normal to fear God, pray to Jesus and go to church, everybody did that except for the Jews, and in church, the priest happened to speak Latin and keep the wine for himself, but that was the way things were, the way things used to be, the normal way here in Central Europe. Some people knew that the Greeks in the East and the Ruthenians, too, had different rites, but that was hardly important, after all, one wasn`t a Ruthenian or a Greek and one didn`t know a lot about such strange lands and their folk anyway.
The refugees from Bohemia, though, saw things differently. To them, Catholicism was the right Christian belief for whose sake they had been chased away from their home towns by the heretic Bohemians. Its utter supremacy in Central Europe was nothing one ought to take for granted, they felt, but something that had to be defended – something that was worth fighting for. Also, understandably, their Catholicism was heavily infused with an anti-Bohemian (and maybe even proto-nationalistic German) sentiment.
The refugees sought to convince their fellow townfolk – and the emperor`s surroundings, too, once they had settled in Nürnberg – of the superiority of their own Catholic creed, of the threat it was exposed to, and of the need to take up arms and reconquer Bohemia. And they also sought some way to sustain themselves, to make a living.
A close-knit, almost conspiratorial group of refugees from Kutna Hora, or Kuttenberg, as the Germans called the town, found themselves a solution for both problems at once, and a solution with far-reaching implications at that. Among the refugees from Kuttenberg, there was quite a number of silversmiths. They were not allowed to set up jewelers` stores in Nürnberg, but they quickly found employment in various other shops. One – or maybe several – of them came up with a revolutionary idea for a new business of their own, at some point in time between 1422 and 1424. In Hussite Bohemia, commented Czech translations of parts of the Bible were circulating for a few years already, and now, apparently, German translations with Hussite commentaries began to appear, too. The Hussite project progressed slowly, though: it took years to carve templates for hundreds of pages, which could be used for printing many identical copies of the same page.
The Kuttenberger Bande, as they came to be called, wanted to counteract the spread of the yet-incomplete, but in any way theologically unacceptable Hussite Bibles by distributing affordable copies of the Latin original (at least to their knowledge…), and then they had a great idea. If one did not have to carve whole pages, and operated with single movable letters instead, which one could fit on rows and reuse page after page… one could be much faster than these goddamn Hussites. Obviously, reusing the letter types did not work with wood as material – but they were not silversmiths for nothing! Various alloys were experimented with, until a relatively suitable one was found and used for a run of 1,000 copies of the New Testament, after the group had obtained the backing of the archbishop of Bamberg to ensure that their business would not be outlawed by the patrician government. (Nominally, they worked for the archbishop, who did indeed reserve quite a bit of the profit for himself.)
Rumours about how the archbishopric stumbled upon so many available copies of the New Testament arose – but for a few years, the Kuttenbergers kept their monopoly. Firstly, it was difficult to copy the idea even if you knew what the Kuttenbergers were doing if you didn`t possess good metalworking knowledge and skills. Secondly, the market for printed books had yet to establish itself. But the latter took only a few years to happen - and by 1429, when Friedrich III. forbade movable type letterpress printing because of the multitude of politically dangerous and morally questionable pamphlets which had begun to litter the streets, the idea had already found successful imitators in the North and South, the West... and the East. The Kuttenberger Bande themselves relocated to Innsbruck, by the way, where duke Friedrich "Empty Pockets" of Tyrol, who felt little sympathy or loyalty for his namesake and liege, would protect them.
[1] A late medieval / early modern phrase from OTL, denoting the enormous artisan creativity gathered in Nürnberg. Literally: “Nürnberg`s wit”.
Nürnberg has been one of the more thrilling places in Germany long before it became Friedrich III´s imperial residence. Sculptors and painters developed new styles here, and the skills of its countless other craftsmen were no less famous, their products sought after everywhere, from the most intricate clocks to the most economically produced wire.
Unlike elsewhere in Germany, the craftsmen of Nürnberg were not allowed to organize themselves in guilds which could regulate production, prices, market access, vocational training etc. after a failed craftsmen`s revolt in 1348/9. The free city`s economic enterprises, like its government was in the hands of a limited number of long-established patrician merchant families. The latter followed an intricate system, which both excluded everyone else from participation and kept the most influential families effectively off each other`s throats in a way not too dissimilar to Venice`s situation after the Serrata.
Nürnberg`s guild-less economic constitution proved a magnet for German refugees from Bohemia. Several thousand of them arrived during the late 1410s and early 1420s. Only few of the German Catholics of Bohemia had been farmers. Most of them were craftsmen and traders, and while they could not open up their own workshops in most economic sectors in Nürnberg, either, they were at least able to find employment in the patricians` export-oriented shops.
As the embargo against Bohemia lasted and the ducal wars ravaged Bavaria, employment opportunities worsened in a deepening economic crisis in Nürnberg. Violent conflicts between old citizens and newcomers were frequent. Both were often forced to find new opportunities and show yet more of their creative wit in order to thrive. One group of refugees would excel in this domain – although its groundbreaking innovation was not only driven by the threat of poverty.
The German refugees from Bohemia were remarkable not only for the relative wealth with which they still arrived, but also for their convictions and opinions. They had come with their pockets full of silver, and their hearts filled with wrath. They had become fierce Catholics. To the established Nürnbergers, like to most other Germans, Catholicism was not something remarkable, nothing that would define you. It was normal to fear God, pray to Jesus and go to church, everybody did that except for the Jews, and in church, the priest happened to speak Latin and keep the wine for himself, but that was the way things were, the way things used to be, the normal way here in Central Europe. Some people knew that the Greeks in the East and the Ruthenians, too, had different rites, but that was hardly important, after all, one wasn`t a Ruthenian or a Greek and one didn`t know a lot about such strange lands and their folk anyway.
The refugees from Bohemia, though, saw things differently. To them, Catholicism was the right Christian belief for whose sake they had been chased away from their home towns by the heretic Bohemians. Its utter supremacy in Central Europe was nothing one ought to take for granted, they felt, but something that had to be defended – something that was worth fighting for. Also, understandably, their Catholicism was heavily infused with an anti-Bohemian (and maybe even proto-nationalistic German) sentiment.
The refugees sought to convince their fellow townfolk – and the emperor`s surroundings, too, once they had settled in Nürnberg – of the superiority of their own Catholic creed, of the threat it was exposed to, and of the need to take up arms and reconquer Bohemia. And they also sought some way to sustain themselves, to make a living.
A close-knit, almost conspiratorial group of refugees from Kutna Hora, or Kuttenberg, as the Germans called the town, found themselves a solution for both problems at once, and a solution with far-reaching implications at that. Among the refugees from Kuttenberg, there was quite a number of silversmiths. They were not allowed to set up jewelers` stores in Nürnberg, but they quickly found employment in various other shops. One – or maybe several – of them came up with a revolutionary idea for a new business of their own, at some point in time between 1422 and 1424. In Hussite Bohemia, commented Czech translations of parts of the Bible were circulating for a few years already, and now, apparently, German translations with Hussite commentaries began to appear, too. The Hussite project progressed slowly, though: it took years to carve templates for hundreds of pages, which could be used for printing many identical copies of the same page.
The Kuttenberger Bande, as they came to be called, wanted to counteract the spread of the yet-incomplete, but in any way theologically unacceptable Hussite Bibles by distributing affordable copies of the Latin original (at least to their knowledge…), and then they had a great idea. If one did not have to carve whole pages, and operated with single movable letters instead, which one could fit on rows and reuse page after page… one could be much faster than these goddamn Hussites. Obviously, reusing the letter types did not work with wood as material – but they were not silversmiths for nothing! Various alloys were experimented with, until a relatively suitable one was found and used for a run of 1,000 copies of the New Testament, after the group had obtained the backing of the archbishop of Bamberg to ensure that their business would not be outlawed by the patrician government. (Nominally, they worked for the archbishop, who did indeed reserve quite a bit of the profit for himself.)
Rumours about how the archbishopric stumbled upon so many available copies of the New Testament arose – but for a few years, the Kuttenbergers kept their monopoly. Firstly, it was difficult to copy the idea even if you knew what the Kuttenbergers were doing if you didn`t possess good metalworking knowledge and skills. Secondly, the market for printed books had yet to establish itself. But the latter took only a few years to happen - and by 1429, when Friedrich III. forbade movable type letterpress printing because of the multitude of politically dangerous and morally questionable pamphlets which had begun to litter the streets, the idea had already found successful imitators in the North and South, the West... and the East. The Kuttenberger Bande themselves relocated to Innsbruck, by the way, where duke Friedrich "Empty Pockets" of Tyrol, who felt little sympathy or loyalty for his namesake and liege, would protect them.
[1] A late medieval / early modern phrase from OTL, denoting the enormous artisan creativity gathered in Nürnberg. Literally: “Nürnberg`s wit”.
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So a group that invents the printing press early has a name so similar to Gutenberg (classy.)
I could not resist.During my long writing break in summer, I´ve had a bit of time (while swimming in the Mediterranean, or driving a car through the Alps, or rocking my baby) to think ahead, about where this timeline could go.
As a result, I`ve taken the liberty to make a huge decision without a prior poll.
There will be a war in Europe. A bad one.
But no worries, you`ll still get to decide who looks like the probable winners and losers at various steps along the line, so as to keep me from pushing implausible stuff.
Today, I only have time for this extra-short intro - from the middle of October onwards, I´ll resume writing regular updates again.
A Great War Begins
While in the Bohemian Confederacy, pacifistic voices, led by Petr Chelčicky, gained more and more ground in an already exhausted country whose free peasants and townsmen desired nothing more than quiet, healthy years in which they could bring in their harvest, work their ovens and sell their merchandise, the continent around them slowly slid down a slippery slope towards one of the greatest conflagrations in history, which would change the face of Europe – and little Bohemia in its midst, too – forever.
The war which was about to begin – or had it already begun? – bears many names in the different languages of the continent. In quite a few countries, it bears names which translate into English as either “the great war” or “the war of independence”. In Central Europe, it is more commonly referred to as “the coalition wars” or “the wars of religion”. In the Eastern Rus, it is known as the Muscovite Civil War. On the Iberian peninsula, it is referred to as “la guerra de las hermandades”; in the Swiss Confederacy, it is dubbed “der grosse Zwist”. And in some parts of the Balkans, it is merely treated as yet another chapter in “the Ottoman Wars”, just as England, France and Burgundy still consider it as the closing decades of the Hundred Years War.
When did it begin? In the latter two cases, it had evidently begun long before our story unfolds. Bohemians may argue that it began in 1419, when the First Crusade against the Bohemians was proclaimed after the defenestration of Prague. In light of the relatively peaceful character of the first half of the 1420s in many parts of Europe, we shall decline this hypothesis and choose a later date. Choosing the year in which a fire of conflagration was lit which would not be extinguished for over three decades, only passed on from one region to another, devouring ever new parties and regions and spitting out those who were too exhausted to fight on, it makes good sense to define 1426 as the beginning of this great war.
In this case, the great European war of the 15th century began as the Hanseatic-Kalmaric War.
As a result, I`ve taken the liberty to make a huge decision without a prior poll.
There will be a war in Europe. A bad one.
But no worries, you`ll still get to decide who looks like the probable winners and losers at various steps along the line, so as to keep me from pushing implausible stuff.
Today, I only have time for this extra-short intro - from the middle of October onwards, I´ll resume writing regular updates again.
A Great War Begins
While in the Bohemian Confederacy, pacifistic voices, led by Petr Chelčicky, gained more and more ground in an already exhausted country whose free peasants and townsmen desired nothing more than quiet, healthy years in which they could bring in their harvest, work their ovens and sell their merchandise, the continent around them slowly slid down a slippery slope towards one of the greatest conflagrations in history, which would change the face of Europe – and little Bohemia in its midst, too – forever.
The war which was about to begin – or had it already begun? – bears many names in the different languages of the continent. In quite a few countries, it bears names which translate into English as either “the great war” or “the war of independence”. In Central Europe, it is more commonly referred to as “the coalition wars” or “the wars of religion”. In the Eastern Rus, it is known as the Muscovite Civil War. On the Iberian peninsula, it is referred to as “la guerra de las hermandades”; in the Swiss Confederacy, it is dubbed “der grosse Zwist”. And in some parts of the Balkans, it is merely treated as yet another chapter in “the Ottoman Wars”, just as England, France and Burgundy still consider it as the closing decades of the Hundred Years War.
When did it begin? In the latter two cases, it had evidently begun long before our story unfolds. Bohemians may argue that it began in 1419, when the First Crusade against the Bohemians was proclaimed after the defenestration of Prague. In light of the relatively peaceful character of the first half of the 1420s in many parts of Europe, we shall decline this hypothesis and choose a later date. Choosing the year in which a fire of conflagration was lit which would not be extinguished for over three decades, only passed on from one region to another, devouring ever new parties and regions and spitting out those who were too exhausted to fight on, it makes good sense to define 1426 as the beginning of this great war.
In this case, the great European war of the 15th century began as the Hanseatic-Kalmaric War.
1426 – 1429 (I): Baltic War (I)
The Baltic War did not begin as a religious or socio-political conflict. It resulted from a collision of interests: Erik of Pomerania, King of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, wanted to consolidate and centralize his realms by asserting its control over Baltic trade flows and gaining a steady source of royal income. To this end, Erik had begun to expand Krogen Castle, which oversaw the Øresund, in 1420. Once the Krogen was finished and outfitted with powerful cannons which threatened to sink any ship passing the sound, Erik began charging a fee from any foreign ship which passed the Øresund – the Sound Toll. This measure was primarily aimed against the Hanseatic League, to whose interests hegemony in the Baltic Sea was vital, and it provoked the predictable outcry.
Mixed into this conflict between the Hanse and the Kalmar King over the Sound Toll was a long-standing conflict between Schleswig and Holstein. The Danish King had pawned parts of the Schleswig duchy to the counts of Holstein-Rendsburg and wanted to ransom it now. When in 1426, negotiations about exemptions or a share in the revenues broke down. Danish ships began seizing Hanseatic ones, and the Hansa declared an embargo against Danish, Swedish and Norwegian ports, which it began to enforce through sea blockades. Simultaneously, Danish troops occupied Flensburg. Hamburg, Lübeck, Lüneburg, Wismar, Rostock, and Stralsund as well as the county of Holstein-Rendsburg were now at war with King Erik.
The Holstein-led land offensive was costly. Fearing for their traditional liberties in the context of a count of Rendsburg who squeezed his neighbouring lands out to the last drop for the war effort, representatives from the North Frisian localities gathered in St Nicolai on Föhr Island to write down the law of their land and its hitherto unwritten constitution (the Siebenhardenbeliebung). Costly though it was, it was only a limited success. Whilst most of the duchy of Schleswig fell under Holstein control, the city of Flensburg withstood Heinrich IV.`s siege, until Danish troops were able to relieve it. In the ensuing battle, count Heinrich was killed. Hamburg`s mercenary troops withdrew after this setback.
On the sea, things did not go very well for the Hanseatic League, either, in 1426 and 1427. In the first major sea battle of the war, which took place in and near the Øresund, Lübeck`s ships, commanded by their mayor Tidemann Steen, were initially successful in their attacks against Swedish ships commanded by the storman Greger Magnusson, whom they even managed to capture. But then, Danish ships under the leadership of the Pomeranian duke Barnim VIII. drove Hamburg`s flotilla into shallow waters near Copenhagen. Wismar`s ships, commanded by mayors Johann Bantzkow and Hinrik van Haren, arrived too late, and Steen held Lübeck`s ships back – for unfathomable reasons – from relieving the Hamburgers. Hoyer was imprisoned by the Danes, who consequently captured the rest of the Hanseatic fleet, too.
The defeat in the Øresund in 1427 created a lot of heat in the Hanseatic towns. In Lübeck, Tidemann Steen was condemned to a prison sentence by the town council. In Wismar, though, it was an infuriated mob which lynched Hinrik van Haren. Claus Jesup, who had already led a crafters` revolt against the patrician hegemony in 1410 and had been forced to step down together with his alternative, guild-elected town council at King Sigismund`s behest in 1416, rode on this wave of public fury right back into mayoral office, where he claimed to reinstate the guild council (in fact he was staffing the town council with as many of his close allies as he could, both from patrician and guild backgrounds). Then, he had Johann Bantzkow condemned to death and executed.
Other towns were afflicted, too – not only by the costly defeat which the Hanseatic fleet had suffered in the Øresund, but also by the complete breakdown of Baltic Sea trade. Mutual embargoes had stopped German-Scandinavian trade already. Growing and increasingly state-sponsored piracy also sabotaged internal trade, too. The cities on the coast, whose livelihoods depended on export and import, suffered terribly. Small wonder, thus, that chaos broke out in Rostock, too, where the town council was also dissolved and replaced by a rebellious “Council of the Hundred”, who claimed to represent the broader urban populace, especially the craftsmen, who wielded some economic power, but were categorically excluded from political representation under Lübeck law. [1]
King Friedrich, who had still not managed to have Pope Martin V. crown him as Emperor due to Martin`s continuing loyalty to Hungary`s king and Germany`s dethroned emperor Sigismund of Luxemburg, placed both Wismar and Rostock under imperial ban.
Then, as both Schleswig, Hamburg, Lübeck, Stralsund and even the rebel government in Wismar – but not the one in Rostock – as well as the Kalmar kingdoms and their Pomeranian ally, Barnim, prepared for the next round of hostilities, things got from bad to worse in Friedrich´s view.
In spite of popular leanings towards pacifism at the grassroots level, the various hejtmans of the Bohemian Confederacy had pursued their respective competitive foreign policies, both aristocratic-patrician and democratic-egalitarian politicians seeking new allies abroad and attempting to export their revolution. By New Year`s 1427/28, the successes of the radicals were difficult to judge – while the conservative charm offensive had brought one prominent new ally into the broader Hussite fold:
It was, of all people, the Pomeranian duke Boguslaw IX. of Stolp / Slupce. The cousin of the Kalmar King Erik had long been in conflict with the bishop of Cammin, a protracted feud he had inherited from his father and which had earned him both papal and imperial bans. Hussite envoys had gone to great lengths to convince Boguslaw that it was all right to just raze the bishop`s fort to the ground and confiscate what he found in his treasure chambers (he would find nothing there as the bishopric had indebted itself badly to prepare against such an onslaught) and monasteries and replace the bishop with whomever he deemed more worthy, and that he could count on Bohemian and Silesian support in such an endeavor, should he promise to return the favor in case of an imperial attack on the spříseženstvo. As a signal of his pure convictions, Boguslaw was expected to stop any persecutions inflicted on the scattered but not insignificant communities of “Waldensians” (in all likelihood, they were followers of ideas as they were developed in Hussite Bohemia, but in 1427/8, the German public was incapable of conceiving of such a thing as German-speaking Hussites) in Pomerania.
Boguslaw kept his promise, and so did hejtman Otakar of Kostelec. Although he failed to obtain the support of the Assembly, he sent a small, but well-armed contingent nevertheless – a highly controversial move which met with massive criticism in Bohemia, but which was made possible by the sizable quantity of financial resources which had gathered in the confederal coffers resulting from its control over Kutná Hora, its mines and mint.
Boguslaw`s victory was swift and unambiguous. The Hussites had quickly gained another ally and entered a new stage. On the other hand, they were now bound by a pact with a small principality far away from their core lands, and they were drawn into a difficult conflict.
Boguslaw had no illusions about the precariousness of his position, especially after his cousin, King Erik of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, had distanced himself from the measures taken in the Slupce duchy. Boguslaw and his new advisors now sought to garner alliances with the rebel councils in Rostock and Wismar.
This was too much for Friedrich. He had intended for his grand anti-Hussite offensive to be launched against the heart of the revolution, i.e. against Bohemia, and he had intended to wait for at least another year, until the mercenaries and other imperial troops he was gathering would have been sufficiently well-versed with the new tactics he favoured. But now, the North seemed to demand his attention first. The damn Hussite virus had spread to the Baltic Sea, and who knew how fast it would spread West along the coast among these renegades! If one looked at it, the Empire`s entire coast appeared under threat: Pomerania was openly supporting the Scandinavian kingdoms in their attempt to keep German merchants out of the Øresund. The rebels in Rostock and Wismar were perhaps already negotiating some neutrality policies and mutual alliance with Boguslaw the Hussite. God forbade that these unruly peasants on the North Frisian harden, in Dithmarschen, and even in Eastern Frisia, where peasants had overthrown two local strongmen in consecutive years, should jump on the Hussite train, too.
No, this rebellion had to be nipped in the bud.
To be continued.
[1] So far, everything is entirely OTL. Butterflies begin from here.
The Baltic War did not begin as a religious or socio-political conflict. It resulted from a collision of interests: Erik of Pomerania, King of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, wanted to consolidate and centralize his realms by asserting its control over Baltic trade flows and gaining a steady source of royal income. To this end, Erik had begun to expand Krogen Castle, which oversaw the Øresund, in 1420. Once the Krogen was finished and outfitted with powerful cannons which threatened to sink any ship passing the sound, Erik began charging a fee from any foreign ship which passed the Øresund – the Sound Toll. This measure was primarily aimed against the Hanseatic League, to whose interests hegemony in the Baltic Sea was vital, and it provoked the predictable outcry.
Mixed into this conflict between the Hanse and the Kalmar King over the Sound Toll was a long-standing conflict between Schleswig and Holstein. The Danish King had pawned parts of the Schleswig duchy to the counts of Holstein-Rendsburg and wanted to ransom it now. When in 1426, negotiations about exemptions or a share in the revenues broke down. Danish ships began seizing Hanseatic ones, and the Hansa declared an embargo against Danish, Swedish and Norwegian ports, which it began to enforce through sea blockades. Simultaneously, Danish troops occupied Flensburg. Hamburg, Lübeck, Lüneburg, Wismar, Rostock, and Stralsund as well as the county of Holstein-Rendsburg were now at war with King Erik.
The Holstein-led land offensive was costly. Fearing for their traditional liberties in the context of a count of Rendsburg who squeezed his neighbouring lands out to the last drop for the war effort, representatives from the North Frisian localities gathered in St Nicolai on Föhr Island to write down the law of their land and its hitherto unwritten constitution (the Siebenhardenbeliebung). Costly though it was, it was only a limited success. Whilst most of the duchy of Schleswig fell under Holstein control, the city of Flensburg withstood Heinrich IV.`s siege, until Danish troops were able to relieve it. In the ensuing battle, count Heinrich was killed. Hamburg`s mercenary troops withdrew after this setback.
On the sea, things did not go very well for the Hanseatic League, either, in 1426 and 1427. In the first major sea battle of the war, which took place in and near the Øresund, Lübeck`s ships, commanded by their mayor Tidemann Steen, were initially successful in their attacks against Swedish ships commanded by the storman Greger Magnusson, whom they even managed to capture. But then, Danish ships under the leadership of the Pomeranian duke Barnim VIII. drove Hamburg`s flotilla into shallow waters near Copenhagen. Wismar`s ships, commanded by mayors Johann Bantzkow and Hinrik van Haren, arrived too late, and Steen held Lübeck`s ships back – for unfathomable reasons – from relieving the Hamburgers. Hoyer was imprisoned by the Danes, who consequently captured the rest of the Hanseatic fleet, too.
The defeat in the Øresund in 1427 created a lot of heat in the Hanseatic towns. In Lübeck, Tidemann Steen was condemned to a prison sentence by the town council. In Wismar, though, it was an infuriated mob which lynched Hinrik van Haren. Claus Jesup, who had already led a crafters` revolt against the patrician hegemony in 1410 and had been forced to step down together with his alternative, guild-elected town council at King Sigismund`s behest in 1416, rode on this wave of public fury right back into mayoral office, where he claimed to reinstate the guild council (in fact he was staffing the town council with as many of his close allies as he could, both from patrician and guild backgrounds). Then, he had Johann Bantzkow condemned to death and executed.
Other towns were afflicted, too – not only by the costly defeat which the Hanseatic fleet had suffered in the Øresund, but also by the complete breakdown of Baltic Sea trade. Mutual embargoes had stopped German-Scandinavian trade already. Growing and increasingly state-sponsored piracy also sabotaged internal trade, too. The cities on the coast, whose livelihoods depended on export and import, suffered terribly. Small wonder, thus, that chaos broke out in Rostock, too, where the town council was also dissolved and replaced by a rebellious “Council of the Hundred”, who claimed to represent the broader urban populace, especially the craftsmen, who wielded some economic power, but were categorically excluded from political representation under Lübeck law. [1]
King Friedrich, who had still not managed to have Pope Martin V. crown him as Emperor due to Martin`s continuing loyalty to Hungary`s king and Germany`s dethroned emperor Sigismund of Luxemburg, placed both Wismar and Rostock under imperial ban.
Then, as both Schleswig, Hamburg, Lübeck, Stralsund and even the rebel government in Wismar – but not the one in Rostock – as well as the Kalmar kingdoms and their Pomeranian ally, Barnim, prepared for the next round of hostilities, things got from bad to worse in Friedrich´s view.
In spite of popular leanings towards pacifism at the grassroots level, the various hejtmans of the Bohemian Confederacy had pursued their respective competitive foreign policies, both aristocratic-patrician and democratic-egalitarian politicians seeking new allies abroad and attempting to export their revolution. By New Year`s 1427/28, the successes of the radicals were difficult to judge – while the conservative charm offensive had brought one prominent new ally into the broader Hussite fold:
It was, of all people, the Pomeranian duke Boguslaw IX. of Stolp / Slupce. The cousin of the Kalmar King Erik had long been in conflict with the bishop of Cammin, a protracted feud he had inherited from his father and which had earned him both papal and imperial bans. Hussite envoys had gone to great lengths to convince Boguslaw that it was all right to just raze the bishop`s fort to the ground and confiscate what he found in his treasure chambers (he would find nothing there as the bishopric had indebted itself badly to prepare against such an onslaught) and monasteries and replace the bishop with whomever he deemed more worthy, and that he could count on Bohemian and Silesian support in such an endeavor, should he promise to return the favor in case of an imperial attack on the spříseženstvo. As a signal of his pure convictions, Boguslaw was expected to stop any persecutions inflicted on the scattered but not insignificant communities of “Waldensians” (in all likelihood, they were followers of ideas as they were developed in Hussite Bohemia, but in 1427/8, the German public was incapable of conceiving of such a thing as German-speaking Hussites) in Pomerania.
Boguslaw kept his promise, and so did hejtman Otakar of Kostelec. Although he failed to obtain the support of the Assembly, he sent a small, but well-armed contingent nevertheless – a highly controversial move which met with massive criticism in Bohemia, but which was made possible by the sizable quantity of financial resources which had gathered in the confederal coffers resulting from its control over Kutná Hora, its mines and mint.
Boguslaw`s victory was swift and unambiguous. The Hussites had quickly gained another ally and entered a new stage. On the other hand, they were now bound by a pact with a small principality far away from their core lands, and they were drawn into a difficult conflict.
Boguslaw had no illusions about the precariousness of his position, especially after his cousin, King Erik of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, had distanced himself from the measures taken in the Slupce duchy. Boguslaw and his new advisors now sought to garner alliances with the rebel councils in Rostock and Wismar.
This was too much for Friedrich. He had intended for his grand anti-Hussite offensive to be launched against the heart of the revolution, i.e. against Bohemia, and he had intended to wait for at least another year, until the mercenaries and other imperial troops he was gathering would have been sufficiently well-versed with the new tactics he favoured. But now, the North seemed to demand his attention first. The damn Hussite virus had spread to the Baltic Sea, and who knew how fast it would spread West along the coast among these renegades! If one looked at it, the Empire`s entire coast appeared under threat: Pomerania was openly supporting the Scandinavian kingdoms in their attempt to keep German merchants out of the Øresund. The rebels in Rostock and Wismar were perhaps already negotiating some neutrality policies and mutual alliance with Boguslaw the Hussite. God forbade that these unruly peasants on the North Frisian harden, in Dithmarschen, and even in Eastern Frisia, where peasants had overthrown two local strongmen in consecutive years, should jump on the Hussite train, too.
No, this rebellion had to be nipped in the bud.
To be continued.
[1] So far, everything is entirely OTL. Butterflies begin from here.
Thank you, guys!Seconded!
Glad you still like it.I didn't know how much people know about OTL stuff like the Danish-Hanseatic War and the urban rebellions, therefore I gave quite a lot of OTL Info here. Please let me know if you want less (or more) OTL background.
Also, any comments on the TL and how you think it should proceed are still always welcome!
I just caught up. Hopefully this isn't dead...
A very interesting timeline, indeed. One mistake I noticed is that according to this TL, Jadwiga is still alive and affecting her husband's policy in the 1420s, when she died in 1399 in OTL, before the point of divergence, too.
You asked about Švitrigaila's stance on Novgorod and Pskov, right? I couldn't really tell you, he only reigned for a few years and failed to accomplish much. And he was a Catholic IOTL (converted in 1387, once again before the POD) rather than Orthodox here, so that complicates matters even more. Švitrigaila's gimmick was seeking independence for Lithuania and breaking the personal union, which he was pretty close to accomplishing...
Novgorod was pretty much dominated by Muscovy in this period, so I doubt Lithuania, especially an independent one, can do much there.
A very interesting timeline, indeed. One mistake I noticed is that according to this TL, Jadwiga is still alive and affecting her husband's policy in the 1420s, when she died in 1399 in OTL, before the point of divergence, too.
You asked about Švitrigaila's stance on Novgorod and Pskov, right? I couldn't really tell you, he only reigned for a few years and failed to accomplish much. And he was a Catholic IOTL (converted in 1387, once again before the POD) rather than Orthodox here, so that complicates matters even more. Švitrigaila's gimmick was seeking independence for Lithuania and breaking the personal union, which he was pretty close to accomplishing...
Novgorod was pretty much dominated by Muscovy in this period, so I doubt Lithuania, especially an independent one, can do much there.