A More Personal Union

Shawn Endresen

Hmm. Where there's a land war brewing, the Duke of Alba will surely be called in to handle it. Which implies he won't be commanding forces sitting on the Spanish Netherlands. Which were due to erupt in rebellion in 1566 anyway, and now will likely be faced with additional wartime taxation (which Phillip no doubt considered a fait accompli in his planning, if it can be called planning). I do not think the Spanish Netherlands will be Spanish much longer. Especially if Ferdinand dies on schedule.

Ottomans invade Malta in 1565, and the Moriscos revolt in Grenada; I wonder if 4 fronts at a time will prove too much? Which does Phillip pull back from?

On the plus side, potential Portuguese butterflies will be really interesting.

Wondering where Sigismund II of Poland jumps. He's married to a Habsburg but loathes his in-laws; he's not willing to divorce but the sejm is anxious enough about the future of the country that they would have legitimised any bastard of his. He had none OTL; chance might favor him here.
 
Space Oddity

Space Oddity

You know, with the amount of trouble that's probably going to start up, there's a good chance that Philip is going to more or less HAVE to relent and give Don Carlos a command somewhere. (Said command will probably have several "advisors" attached to it to actually lead the troops and make sure sonny boy doesn't do anything too stupid/crazy, but still--this is Don Carlos.) And if that happens--assuming Don Carlos doesn't charge a cannon, or something--there's a pretty good chance that the fatal break that resulted in Don Carlos' imprisonment and death doesn't happen. (If, through butterflies, Carlos has avoided the accident that resulted in his breaking his head, consider the chances increased greatly.)

Which means a very good chance... of Charles II of Spain, a century early. Admittedly, a less simple and more... crazy Charles II, but still...
 

Thespitron 6000

January - February 1565: War preparations. As winter settles in, both the Spanish and the French begin preparing for war. For France, it is a nightmare scenario: wracked by civil unrest, she faces invasion from without. It will take all of Catherine d’Medici’s skills to maneuver the realm through this time of war. Her major concern now is to tamp down the religious divisions that have done so much to trigger the war. Protestant and Catholic must unite, and remember that they are first of all French. To this end, she conceives of the Regle du Deux, the “rule of two.” In order to appeal to all Frenchmen, the King must appear scrupulously neutral between the two religions, and so, whenever a Catholic is appointed to high position, a Protestant must be appointed to an equivalent position, and vice versa. The key to the success of this policy is that it must never appear overt or conscious; Francis must appear to be placing the good of the realm above religious squabbles, and his appointments must appear to be made in the spirit of merit, rather than quota. If successful, it may push the Reformation to the backburner. But it also has the potential to blow up--massively--in the faces of both Catherine and Francis, if the two factions feel they are being snubbed. It is a fine line that must be trod.

Spain’s obvious weakness is her overseas trade. Swollen on the riches of the New World, Spain is dependent on a flow of gold and trade from Mexico and elsewhere. If the French can disrupt that flow, then they may strike a harder blow against Spain than they ever could on the battlefield. To this end, Francis issues letters of marque to Admiral Gaspard de Coligny--a Huguenot--and “Captain Requin”--a Catholic. “Requin” is the nom du guerre of Antoine Escalin des Aimars, the “General of the Galleys” who took part in the invasion of the Isle of Wight in 1545. However, in the same year he was involved in the massacre of Waldensians in Merindol in Provence, and to avoid destabilizing the south of France once more he has been counseled by Catherine to disguise his identity. Their missions are simple: disrupt the trade on the Spanish Main and abscond with as much gold and treasure as they can. As soon as spring comes, they’ll set sail.

Meanwhile, the Spanish have not been standing pat. Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel, the Duke of Alva, has been tasked by Philip II to assemble and train a force of 15,000 men for a spring invasion of France. They plan to land near St. Nazaire and march up the Loire river valley, reaching Paris roughly a month later. Philip also hopes his forces will be able to raise the Bretons against their French masters, thus adding a further distraction to the already muddled internal situation in France.

The second part of the plan rests on the shoulders of Margaret of Parma, the beleaguered governor of the Spanish Netherlands. Margaret, who has been forced to suffer through Philip’s micromanagement despite the hundreds of miles between them, now finds that he has ordered her to raise troops to invade Normandy through Belgium. If Alva’s and Margaret’s forces can link up, they will effectively cut the French off from the sea, leaving them vulnerable to a squeezing attack, with the Spanish forces in the west forming one pressure, and, with luck, Hapsburg forces advancing from the east to form a second pressure. When Margaret receives his instructions, she can barely see, so apoplectic is she. Already her strategic and political situation is precarious--the Dutch are rapidly turning to Protestantism and nationalism, and the Spanish are more resented than ever--and now Philip wants her to find men she doesn’t have to invade a country most Dutch could care less about. A difficult situation seems to be turning into an impossible one.

The French are not blind to the threat on their northern border. Catherine appoints Francois, Duke of Montmorency, Catholic, and Marshal of France, as commander of the French forces in the south, while Gabriel, comte de Montgomery, a Huguenot, is appointed commander of forces in the north. The French rightly regard the real threat as being in the south, but don’t dare offend the Dutch by sending a Catholic commander to fight against them. Montmorency immediately rides south to join with his brother, Henri, and La Noue, who he hopes will help him influence the southern parlements and convince them to levy troops for the defense of the Languedoc.

In Scotland, the Hamiltons manage to get one of their agents inside the main hall of Balmoral Castle, where the Earl of Morton is lying low, who then attempts to assassinate Morton. However, the hapless cat’s-paw of the Hamiltons is unsuccessful, and is quickly put to death by Morton’s bodyguards. Although he can prove nothing, Morton believes that Huntly may have sold him out to the Hamiltons. Balmoral is owned by Huntly’s family, the Gordons, and while Huntly has presented himself as a friend of Morton’s and the fugitive Lords, allowing Morton to secret himself at Balmoral, Morton cannot help but suspect that it was Huntly who is responsible for the failure of the Red Conspiracy in 1563.

February 1565: Spanish conquistador Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, along with five ships and five hundred men, lands after an epic journey across the Pacific near Tubog, on the island of Luzon. Lopez de Legazpi and his crew are in desperate need of supplies, and weak from their long crossing. When they attempt to take food by force from the seemingly defenseless natives, they discover that their actions have severe consequences. Although they are successful in looting the local villages, the natives appeal to the powerful Kingdom of Tondo at the head of Maynila Bay for help. Seven hundred Tondonese warriors, led by Rajah Sulaiman II, march from Tondo southeast to Tubog. There they encounter the Spanish. The invading conquistadors, although weak from hunger and scurvy, nonetheless have cannon and muskets, and they beat back the Tondonese, although taking severe losses. Nearly half the Spanish are killed in the battle, along with four hundred and fifty Tondonese.

March 1565: A fleet of nearly two hundred vessels leaves Istanbul, bound for the open Mediterranean. Their target: Malta, a small island but a major obstacle for the desired Turkish domination of the Mediterranean. Suleiman I, called the Magnificent, is as ambitious as Philip of Spain, although his faith of choice is Islam, not Catholicism. For decades, Suleiman has dreamed of extending the Ottoman Empire into Europe. Land campaigns have proven fruitless after the Siege of Vienna in 1529, and so now he turns his attentions to the sea. The Knights of Malta have long been a needle in the eye of the Sultanate, and so Suleiman resolves to crush them once and for all. He hopes to land his fleet and besiege Malta some time in late April or early May.

In London, John Hawkyns forms the New World Company to begin preparation for his expedition to North America. He recruits his cousins, both sailors, a twenty-five-year-old named Francis Drake and a twenty-three-year old named Richard Grenville, to assist him. Hawkyns intends to take no more than a hundred men in two ships across the Atlantic, where the Queen has charged him to map the coast and make friendly contact with any natives they encounter. They are to stay north of the 36th parallel to avoid meeting the Spanish.
 
galileo-034

galileo-034

'Règle du Deux' or 'Règle des Deux' instead of 'Regle du Deux', and 'nom de guerre' instead of 'nom du guerre', would be better.
 
SavoyTruffle

SavoyTruffle

Some of the butterflies are a-flapping.

Instead of landing at Cebu Legazpi lands near Manila, and thus we have an earlier Imperial Manila...
 

Thespitron 6000

April 1565: From Santander on the Cantabrian coast, the Duke of Alva sets sail for St. Nazaire with a force of roughly 12,000 men. Landing on April 16, the Spanish discover that the marshy ground around St. Nazaire makes transporting large numbers of troops and large amounts of materiel problematic. As a result, it takes nearly three days for Alva to finish unloading his troops and transport them just a few miles inland. After they manage to get free of the swamp known as the Brière, they make better time, but the delay has given messengers from St. Nazaire enough time to dash towards Touraine, where Francis II is in residence. Francis dithers for the better part of two days, before Michel de l’Hopital, his chancellor, finally manages to convince the King to rally some kind of defensive force long enough for the Duke of Montmorency to arrive with relief forces from the Languedoc.

Under the command of the 41-year-old Armand de Gontaut, baron de Biron, a force of four thousand men is hastily raised and marches to battle against the Spanish. The two forces meet at Angers, where the raw and unready French make their rallying point at the Chateau d’Angers, a massive walled structure that has been heavily renovated under Catherine d’Medici. Luckily, there is a four-hundred-strong garrison at the Chateau, augmenting Biron’s ill-equipped troops.

The initial battle is very short; after less than two hours, the French are pushed back into the Chateau, where they have no choice but to wait for the Duke of Montmorency to arrive and lift the siege the Spanish are rapidly laying in. For Alva, the brief battle has a bitter tinge: now he has to break a siege, when his battle plan called for speed and surprise. Had he been aware of the marshy ground surrounding St. Nazaire, he would have chosen another landing point, and would have beaten the French to Angers. Now he is stuck.

On Luzon, Lopez de Legazpi and his men fight a series of battles with Tondonese natives, who are eager to avenge their countrymen’s loss at Tubog. By the middle of the month, Lopez de Legazpi has lost an additional hundred men, and his expeditionary force has been reduced by seventy percent. He has no choice but to retreat, preferably to a safe harbor, but since none exists, he’ll settle for Guam, which he and his men passed on their way west.

The Duke of Montmorency moves northward with ten thousand men recruited over the winter from across the Languedoc and Gascony, after receiving word that the Spanish have invaded Brittany. He hopes to arrive in time to confront the Spanish and expel them before they reach the Ile de France.

Catherine d’Medici dispatches Blaise de Lasseran-Massencôme, seigneur de Montluc, south on a mission of greatest importance. Lasseran-Massencôme is a stout royalist, and has on numerous occasions shown himself to be a talented military commander. Now, however, he has a more delicate mission. Since 1512, the Kingdom of Navarre has been divided, part of it conquered by Spain. Antoine de Bourbon, the jure uxoris King of Navarre, has long desired to reunite the two portions. If the French are to move freely in the Pyrenees, they will need to have Navarre on their side. Lasseran-Massencôme is therefore to provide inducements to Antoine to enter the war on the side of the French, with the promise of the reunification of Navarre after French victory.

At the end of the month, the Ottoman fleet of Suleiman the Magnificent lands at Malta and begins assaulting the island. Tens of thousands of Turkish troops besiege a few thousand Maltese, as well as Italian and Spanish mercenaries. The Turks attack and defeat the small Maltese fleet, but the fortress of St. Elmo proves to be a tougher nut to crack. Even though the Turks manage to reduce St. Elmo to a pile of broken stone in a week, the Maltese continue to re-garrison and resupply the fortress, preventing the Turks from landing.
 

Thespitron 6000

May 1565: Admiral Gaspard de Coligny raids the port of Cadiz, in southern Andalusia. Setting the town ablaze and burning numerous ships, the attack catches the Spanish completely off-guard, and destroys a good portion of their Mediterranean fleet.

Captain Requin heads west, out into the Atlantic, with a fleet of nine ships to attack the Spanish port of Santo Domingo, Hispaniola.

Upon hearing news of de Coligny’s triumph at Cadiz, Francis II raises him up to the Order of Saint Michael in absentia, giving him the highest chivalric honor in France.
 

Thespitron 6000

June 1565: Adrian VII is disturbed to hear that Francis II has been lavishing (in his opinion) honors on Protestants like de Coligny and moderates like Michel de l'Hopital. It seems the King of France is more than willing to ignore the admonishments of the Holy See; this is very disappointing and unsettling. That the French continue to have problems with their Protestants, fine. Understandable. But that the King of the French himself should encourage them, despite numerous instructions to the contrary, is completely intolerable.

Over the past five years two popes have pleaded, cajoled, threatened, and nothing has managed to convince the King of France to repent from his tolerance and encouragement of heretics. Francis has left Adrian no choice.

Interdiction will not be sufficient, that much is clear. On June 4, 1565, Adrian pronounces Francis II, King of France, anathema and excommunicate with the Eucharist of the Catholic Church.

Francis receives word of his excommunication on June 22. The court is in an uproar already, fleeing the oncoming Spanish, and it seems now that religious chaos shall destroy any semblance of order, and that in that instant, France shall perish.

Francis is weak. He is easily led. He is stumble-tongued and immature. His frail body makes him an easy target of mockery, and diminishes his stature among the people and his nobles.

And yet.

The blood of kings runs through his veins. For the first time, the only time, in his beleaguered life, Francis digs deep within himself, connects with some primal essence of kingship. It is the only time in his entire life when he will do the one thing demanded of him by birth and by his nation. He will lead.

The royal court reaches Paris, the city already riotous, the people frightened of invading Spanish troops, of Papal inquisitors, of the fact that their king is now an apostate, damned to the fires of hell. Mobs of terrified and angry Parisians roam the streets. Catherine implores her son to retreat to outside the city, where he is unlikely to come to harm, but he shakes her off.

With a small group of retainers, he rides through the city, holding aloft the banner of the fleur-de-lis. His arms waver; the banner is heavy. Too heavy, perhaps. But hold it aloft he does.

At first the rioting Parisians jeer and throw objects at their king. He ignores them, and rides on. And soon, the people begin to follow, perhaps out of loyalty, perhaps out of some morbid curiosity. They follow, and the crowd behind the lonely, weak king grows to the thousands.

He arrives on the footsteps of Notre Dame, the heart of Paris, and the square before the cathedral fills to capacity by thousands of Parisians. Gradually, a hush falls over the crowd. And then their king begins to speak.

"These stones are old. They were laid down by generation upon generation of French men. Of French women. Listen to me, O stones of Notre Dame. Listen to me, people of Paris. Listen to me, people of France! Listen to me, my kingdom!

Today I am declared apostate. Today I am declared heretic. Today I am declared deposed. But I am none of these things, for I am France, and France is never apostate. France is never heretic. France is never deposed!

She reigns on! Long may she reign! Long live France!"

The crowd explodes into cheers. Francis raises his hands to quiet them.

"I am weak. I am frail. Look upon me, and see the frail body of your king. Cut me open, and see my heart, riven in two. One half Protestant, one half Catholic. I am beset by enemies from without--Spain, Italy, Austria. My heart may be riven in two, but it is nonetheless one heart! One French heart! And this French heart has more courage, more faith, more blood, more steel, than the entire kingdom of Spain!"

More cheers.

"They think us weak, for my heart be broken. Broken, aye, but not past repair. I have been called apostate, been declared heretic, been branded outlaw. Let it be so, then, if they would have it so! Let me be apostate, let me be heretic, let me be outlaw. But if I be, then let me also be French!

We shall never be beaten, never defeated. I shall never surrender to Spain, or to the Hapsburgs, or to Rome, for I am France, and I have the strength of every man and woman in France! My heart beats with their blood, my hands are filled with their steel, my soul weeps with their souls, and calls out, Let us be France!

One kingdom! One king! One Church! Yes, and one Church! Today, let it be known, that there be but one church in France, not a Catholic church, not a Calvinist church, but a French church! For all Frenchmen!

The Spanish think we are weak. But they have not faced French faith, they have not faced French blood, and they have not faced French steel. Faith, blood, and steel. And victory! We shall have victory. We shall have France! Long live France!"

At that moment, a messenger manages, finally, to wend his way through the crowd to the King. The message he brings could not be more welcome, and is immediately shared to the massive crowd by the King: Montmorency has raised the siege at Chateau d'Angers. The Spanish have fallen back to Nantes.

The crowd erupts into cheers and massive celebrations, and a chant soon takes hold: "Vive la France! Vive la France! VIVE LA FRANCE!"
 
Space Oddity

Space Oddity

The first question I'm asking myself is... who coached Francis on the speech? ;) (Of course, as Charles I proved, even stuttering tyrannical twits can manage to produce one really great speech when their back is up against the wall.)

And with that out of the way--great chapter. Francis taking the English option was seeming increasingly likely as the Papacy and the Hapsburgs whittled down the options. Whatever happens, it looks like the Papacy has made a significant blunder...
 

Thespitron 6000

Discussion post:

Malta is screwed. De Coligny's burning of much of the Spanish Mediterranean fleet at Cadiz means no relief by Garcia Alvarez de Toledo. So we'll probably see an Ottoman outpost in the middle of the Mediterranean, and probably see an earlier Turkish conquest of La Goulette in Tunis.

France vs. Spain: Spain has a massive colonial machine, but can it bring it to bear against France? France, I think, will prove a harder battle than Philip has anticipated.

Portugal: Scared Straight? Will the French defection into pseudo-Protestantism and the loss of Malta cause Sebastian to jump into the Catholic League? Maybe by marrying Elisabeth of Austria?

Papal Excommunication Smackdown: Having excommunicated Francis, I doubt Adrian will be loath to excommunicate Elizabeth I. Expect more Catholic plots against her.

Navarre: Does it join with France against Spain? Spain against France? Or remain neutral?

Also: 1566: The Year a Magnificent English Fleet Sailed to the New World and Ignited the European Colonial Era.
 
Space Oddity

Space Oddity

What, the creation of what is essentially one giant Protestant bloc that stands a good chance of being ruled by one man on the very eve of the Thirty Years War? How bad can that go for the Holy See?
 
SavoyTruffle

SavoyTruffle

Elfwine said:
This can't end well for the Popes. Eurofed should be pleased. :D
Click to expand...

As it is the Papacy is down from its previous high of being a supranational entity capable of humbling Holy Roman Emperors to a mere Habsburg puppet. It has lost its most important non-Habsburg kingdom to an independent church, just as what has happened in England.

Now, what this means for the Huguenots, who as Calvinists are less trusting of a national church hierarchy than the Anglican or Gallican systems...
 
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